This was certainly the chronology of a botched investigation. I was no cop and would never be one, but I thought Abe Madden had something for which to answer.
"Hunter Fenwick, a month later," Rockwell said. "Hunter was the son of a friend of mine, and he's the reason I ran for sheriff. I respected Sheriff Madden—up to a point—but I knew he was wrong about these missing boys. Hunter…well, his car was parked the same place Chester's pickup was found. At the trailhead. And there was a little blood inside—not enough to be able to say for sure that he couldn't have survived losing it. And his wallet was found not a half mile out of town, in a ditch off this road." She pointed to a meandering county road that led northwest out of Doraville for about twenty miles before heading north and then northeast to the next town, up in the mountains.
"Who next?" Tolliver asked, because the sheriff was getting lost in her own dark thoughts.
"The youngest, Aaron Robertson. Junior high. Fourteen. Too young to drive alone. He stayed at the school to shoot some hoops one afternoon after basketball practice. He always walked home. But we'd had the time change the night before, and it was dark. He never made it to his house. His backpack was never found. No other trace of him." She pulled a sheet of opaque plastic back from a standing corkboard at one side of her desk. We looked at a row of young faces. Underneath each face was the date of the boy's disappearance. Hearing about it was hard, but seeing their faces was harder.
We all kept a moment of silence. Then Tolliver said, "The last one?"
"The last one was three months ago. Jeff McGraw. It was because of his grandmother that we called you in. Twyla didn't think we were getting anywhere, and she was right."
It galled the sheriff to say that, but she said it.
"Twyla Cotton donated a lot of money and raised some more from the families, the ones that could help. And she got some money from some people who just want this to stop, people not related to the missing boys in any way." Sandra Rockwell shook her head. "I've never seen anything like the time and energy she put into this. But Jeff was her oldest grandson…." Her attention strayed from us to the cube of pictures on her desk. Rockwell was a grandmother, too. Her gaze shifted to the last photograph in the row of faces: a boy with freckles, reddish brown hair, a school sports jacket. Jeff McGraw had lettered in basketball and football. I was willing to bet he'd been a local hero in Doraville. I knew my southern towns.
"So you're like the frontman for this consortium of local people who've donated money to a fund to find the boys," Tolliver said. "Since the county, I'm guessing, didn't have the money."
"Yes," Sheriff Rockwell said. "We couldn't spend county money on you, or state money. Had to be private. But I wouldn't have you here unless they let me interview you. And I'm ambivalent about the whole thing."
Whoa, big words from the sheriff, in more ways than one. I'd never heard a law enforcement professional admit to being doubtful about a course of action involving me. Angry, disapproving, disgusted, yes; doubtful, no.
"I can see how you would be," I said cautiously. "I know you've done your best, and it must be, ah, galling to be asked to call in someone like me. I'm sorry about that. But I swear I'll give it my best shot, and I swear I'm not a fraud."
"You'd better not be," Sandra Rockwell said. "And now, I've arranged for you to meet with Twyla Cotton. It only seemed right. After that, we'll pick the place you start to search."
"Okay," I said, and that was that.
TWYLA Cotton was a very heavy woman. You read about fat people who walk very lightly; she wasn't one of them. She walked ponderously. She answered her door so quickly I figured she'd been standing right inside, since we'd called her to tell her we were on our way from the sheriff's department.
She was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt that read "Number One Grandma." Her face was bare of makeup, and her short dark hair had only a few threads of gray. I put her in her midfifties.
After shaking our hands, she led the way through the house. She didn't match the décor. Some designer had worked here, and the result was very pretty—lots of peaches and creams and beiges in the formal living room, dark blues and chocolate browns in the family room—but not very personal. The kitchen was Twyla's natural domain, and that was where she led us. It was full of exposed brick, stainless steel, and gleaming surfaces. It was warm and cozy after the chill gray of the morning. It was the homiest room in the house.
"I was Archie Cotton's cook," she said. She smiled at me as if she'd been reading my mind.
I'd had a white-collar upbringing for my first decade, but after that my parents had descended pretty quickly through blue collar and down below, so you could say I was a medley. It had been a case of riches to rags. Twyla Cotton had gone the better way, the rags-to-riches way.
"And then he married you," I said.
"Yep, we got married. Have a seat, hon," she said to Tolliver, and she pointed at a chair for me. There was also a formal dining room, but this gleaming round table was positioned in a bay window at one end of the kitchen, and the chairs were wide, comfortable, rolling chairs. There was a newspaper and a few magazines, a little pile of bills, handy to the most convenient chair. Tolliver and I both knew not to pick that one. "Can I get you-all a cup of coffee? Some coffee cake?" our hostess asked.
"I'd like some coffee, if it's already made," Tolliver said.
"Me, too, please," I said. I sank into a chair and rolled up under the table.
In short order, we had mugs of coffee, spoons, napkins, and cream and sugar close to hand. It was very good coffee. The morning improved, just a bit.
"Archie had some children, already grown and gone," Twyla said. "They didn't come around as much after his wife died. He was lonely, and I'd been working for him for years. It just came natural."
"Any hard feelings from his children?" Tolliver asked.
"He gave 'em some money, quieted them down," Twyla said. "He laid it out to them about the will, and who would get what, in front of two lawyers. Got 'em to sign papers saying they wouldn't contest the will, if I survived him. So I got this house, and a good bit of cash, plus a lot of stock. Archie Junior and Bitsy got their fair shake. They don't exactly love me, but they don't hate me, either."
"So why did you want us here, Mrs. Cotton?"
"I've got a friend you helped a couple of years ago. Linda Barnard, in Kentucky? Wanted to know what had happened to her little grandbaby, the one who was found a mile away from home, no marks on her?"
"I remember."
"So I thought about calling you in, and Sandra researched you-all. Talked to some policewoman in Memphis."
"Jeff, your grandson. Is he your son's son? He's sixteen?" Tolliver asked, trying to lead Twyla to the subject we'd come to discuss. Though almost everyone we looked for turned out to be dead, Tolliver and I had learned a long time ago to refer to the missing person in the present tense. It just sounded more respectful and more optimistic.
"He was sixteen. He was the older boy of my son Parker."
She'd had no hesitation in using the past tense. She read the question in our faces.
"I know he's dead," Twyla said, her round face rigid with grief. "He would never run away, like the police say. He would never go this long without letting us hear."
"He's been gone three months?" I asked. We already knew enough about Jeff McGraw, but I felt it would be indecent not to ask.