Chapter Twenty-Five Sloane
Chapter Twenty-Five
Sloane
The drive to Brian Fletcher’s home took a half hour. His daughter Tristan was among the missing from the Mountain Music Festival. Brian wasn’t responding to my calls or emails. But I was accustomed to rejection. He wasn’t the first person who didn’t want to talk to me.
The Fletcher house was a dark-green two-story wood-frame house. Shrubs lined up in single file along the front. A large oak shaded a mulched bed filled with blooming azaleas.
Tristan Fletcher had wanted to be a dancer. She’d been hired as a backup performer for the Roving Rangers, and local media had taped one of the band’s performances. The film had captured her petite body moving seductively to the rock music. Her long black, curly hair framed her heart-shaped face.
I’d watched the video a dozen times. When she’d moved to the music, her hair had swung from side to side. She was eighteen when she’d vanished, but she looked a few years younger.
As Tristan danced, I shifted my focus from her to the people around her.
A few of the band members tossed her grins, and when one of the guitar players launched into a long riff, he faced her.
Smiling, she moved toward him, swaying her hips.
The guitarist leaned toward her. She skimmed her fingers down his arm. He wagged his tongue at her.
The crowd cheered at the sexual teasing between the two, and when Tristan moved back to her spot in the background, the crowd was applauding.
I rang the bell. Silence echoed in the house. I glanced toward the four-door car in the driveway. As silence stretched, I wondered if Mr. Fletcher wasn’t here. Also not a first.
No one came to the front door. So I retraced my steps and walked down the sidewalk toward a privacy fence.
It was locked. I fished a pocketknife out of my backpack and used the blade to wrestle the lock loose.
The latch gave way and the door swung open.
I pocketed the knife. I listened for the growl of a dog.
When the stillness remained, I stepped into the backyard.
A rainbow of flowers rimmed the privacy fence and filled a mulch bed in the yard’s center.
A children’s swing set complete with a yellow slide, tower, and red rings.
I knew Tristan was the older of Fletcher’s two daughters.
I’d not dug into the younger sister’s life, but I guessed she’d had a child.
When I rounded the corner, I saw a man hunched over a bed. He wedged a trowel at the base of a weed.
“Brian Fletcher.”
When he didn’t react or turn around, I noticed his earbuds.
My eye remained on the sharp edge of the trowel cutting into the weed as I approached.
I tapped Fletcher’s shoulder. He whirled around, the trowel raised like a weapon. I stepped back, hands up in the air. I waited for him to focus on me.
He yanked out the earbuds. “Who are you?”
“Sloane Grayson. I left you messages,” I said. “I’m here to talk about Tristan and the Mountain Music Festival.”
He stabbed his trowel in the soft dirt. “We don’t have an appointment.”
“I’ve driven a couple of hours,” I lied. “Can we talk for a few minutes?”
“This isn’t a good day.”
I’d slipped my foot into the proverbial door. “I promise to be quick.”
He sighed. “Can we do this another day?”
I wasn’t leaving without an interview. “I’d like to learn more about Tristan. All my sources are media and old articles. No one’s talking about her anymore.”
His lips flattened into a level line. A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “I’m not fond of stirring up the past.”
“I like to dig into it. I like to see what crawls out of the shadows when I shine a light into the darkness.”
“Be careful what you wish for.”
My wry smile was calculated. “I’ve heard that before.”
He yanked off his garden gloves and rose as if his knees hurt. “Come on. It’s cooler in the house.”
I followed him inside. The interior was dimmer, and it took my eyes a moment to adjust. I moved into the kitchen, noticed wood-paneled walls covered with dozens of framed photographs.
I was tempted to study each photo, but I was aware he would see my curiosity as a violation of his privacy.
All the mementos and photos told me that this room was a memorial to the family he’d once had.
An old golden retriever slept on a dog bed by the fireplace.
The dog’s tail thumped, and he slowly rose and crossed to me.
I held out my fingers and let him sniff.
Fletcher washed his hands, dried them, and replaced the dish towel back on the sink. “Can I get you something to drink?”
“Water would be great.”
The dog retreated to his bed as Fletcher retrieved a glass from a cabinet and filled it with water from the tap. He set the glass on the counter and stepped back, as if being close to me troubled him. I was the knife poised to slice into old wounds.
I sipped the water, grateful for the cool liquid in my dry mouth.
I didn’t get nervous when I interviewed anyone.
I’d never been afraid to travel into prisons, back alleys, or crack houses.
At moments like this, my mouth still went dry.
Though I didn’t have emotional reactions to tough questions or answers, my body did.
Maybe on a cellular level I had a semblance of a conscience. Maybe.
“What do you want to know about Tristan?” Mr. Fletcher asked.
“I’ve watched her performance at the festival. She was very talented. Did she always want to be a dancer?”
“She was dancing almost as soon as she could walk. Anytime there was a song on the radio, she was moving. Her mother enrolled her in dance classes when she was four. She took to it like a duck to water.”
I skipped my questions about Tristan’s mother because I knew she had died of cancer soon after her daughter’s disappearance.
Few writers examined the damage done to family members.
Like a bomb exploding, the initial blast killed some, but it also wounded more.
Stress had killed my grandmother before her sixtieth birthday.
“She won quite a few competitions,” Mr. Fletcher said. Pride blended with frustration in his voice. “She was very ambitious.”
“That’s what it takes to make it in that world.”
“So many prizes I had to build a second set of shelves in her bedroom. She was so proud of all her accomplishments.”
“She had plans to study dance in New York, right?”
“She’d earned a slot at Juilliard.”
“What was it about the Mountain Music Festival that caught her attention?”
“She heard bands were looking for backup dancers. She wanted the stage experience with a large live audience.”
“The Roving Rangers?” The band had broken up months after the Mountain Music Festival. Two of the three members had died, and the third was in his eighties and living retired in North Carolina.
“That’s right. They thought dancers would add interest to their performance. She begged me to let her go. She thought real-world stage experience would make her a better dancer.”
“But you said no.”
“I did. A festival like that promised nothing but trouble.”
“She lied and said she was visiting friends.”
He shook his head. “Yes.”
“Did she lie often?” I asked.
“She was a good kid.”
“But a kid. They do dumb things.”
He stilled. “They do.”
“Taggart interviewed a witness who possibly placed Tristan in the woods behind the venue with another victim. Her name was Laurie Carr.”
“I know who she is.” Mr. Fletcher shook his head. “Taggart asked me about her, but I never met her.”
“Tristan had just performed a routine onstage. Laurie had sung. They had a lot in common.”
“Maybe. Why do you care about my daughter?”
“I want to know her story. What drove her? What were her strengths and weaknesses?”
He stared at me, silent. I thought he wasn’t going to comment, and then he said, “Tristan called me on that last day. She told me she’d arrived at her friend’s house. She sounded so excited. It was her first real outing since her accident.”
“Accident?”
“She fell the year before. Broke her ankle bad. It had healed, and she was getting her strength back. She became depressed, and she was desperate to prove herself.”
Victims came in all shapes and sizes. Sinners, saints, and all those in between. “Did she mention any problems? Was anyone bothering or following her?”
“No. Everyone liked her.”
“Based on the festival timeline, Tristan’s performance was at ten. The band finished before eleven. What do you think she would have done after her performance?”
“I don’t know. But with all her other performances, she was always full of energy. It could take her hours to come off the high and refocus on the real world.”
I waited for him to explain, but when he didn’t, I chose not to push. “Did you ever speak to the band members about her?”
“No. I didn’t want to see or talk to them.”
His lack of curiosity struck me as odd. “Did they reach out to you?”
“The band leader, Brad. He called a few times. I let his calls go to voicemail. There was nothing he could say.”
“What about your wife? Did she have questions?”
“She was sick then. I tried to shield her.”
“May I look at the pictures on your wall?”
The question caught him off guard. “Why?”
“Helps me understand Tristan.”
A muscle pulsed in his jaw. “Sure. Help yourself.”
I moved to the largest wall in the den, covered in at least twenty color and black-and-white photos of the Fletcher family.
The sisters looked very much alike, but it was clear Tristan had a dancer’s elegance. “Why the swing set in the backyard?”
“The kids next door come by after school sometimes. Their mother works two jobs. I put the set up for them.”
“Nice of you.”
“Nice to hear children’s voices again. I miss that.” He met my gaze. “Do you have children?”
“No.”
“If you get the chance, take it. It’ll make your life better.”
I didn’t have what it took to care for a child. “You’d say that even after losing a child?”
“I wouldn’t wish away the years with the girls for anything.”
Fletcher’s cell phone rang from his back pocket. He glanced at the display. He frowned and sent the call to voicemail.
“You didn’t go to Rafe Colton’s trial, did you?”
“No. I didn’t have the stomach for it.”
Representatives from the other families had all been at the trial at one point or another. Monica Carr and Sara had been fixtures in the courthouse. When I looked back on those days, I realized she enjoyed the trial more than mothering me—the distant, moody child.
But no one from the Fletcher family had attended the trial or the sentencing hearing.
“I don’t want you to mention Tristan in your article,” he said.
“The focus of the piece is the victims.”
His jaw clenched. “Why now? Why after all this time?”
“I want to find their bodies. I want to bring them home.” I knew Tristan had a marker in the cemetery, but the coffin was empty.
Mrs. Fletcher’s grave was to the left, and a marker-in-waiting was there for Mr. Fletcher.
None for the sister, but maybe she’d decided to draw the line with spending time with the family in the afterlife.
“Is an empty coffin enough for you, Mr. Fletcher?”
His brow furrowed with a mixture of frustration and surprised anger. “None of it is enough, Ms. Grayson. That festival blew my family apart. And anyone who thinks bones in the ground will fill the hole inside of me is a fool.”
Taggart had been a linear thinker. His tunnel vision was locked on finding the killer. He’d found enough evidence to prove his case in court. End of story. But he’d not found the missing women. Beyond the families, the remains were a mild curiosity for the world.
Taggart caught his killer, but he had failed the victims.
I would not.