The kitchen door opened, and a man and woman came in, in a hurry. They stopped at the sight of us, but it was more so they could take a good look than because they were startled. He was very tall and had dark brown hair, and she was very curvy and blond by request.
"Where's my mother?" the man asked, and I said, "Upstairs."
Without wasting any more words, up the stairs the couple went. They were both wearing the Doraville winter uniform: heavy coats and jeans, flannel shirts and boots.
"Her son and his wife," Tolliver said. It seemed like a safe guess. "Parker and Bethalynn." He was much better at remembering names than I was.
The phone rang, and was answered upstairs.
To say this was an uncomfortable situation would be putting it mildly.
"We should leave," Tolliver said. "I don't care what the cop said. We don't need to be here."
"At least we could go sit out in our car. That would be better."
"We can do that."
We washed the coffee mugs we'd used earlier and put them in the dish drainer. We pulled on our outer gear. As quietly as though we were burglars, we stepped out of the kitchen door into the carport, and got in our car. A big pickup was parked behind Twyla's Cadillac, and I was relieved we weren't blocked in. Tolliver turned on the engine, and the temperature was barely tolerable after five minutes. It wasn't getting any warmer as the day wore on, and the sky was looking grayer and grayer.
After ten minutes, without us exchanging a word, Tolliver backed out of the driveway and we went back to the motel.
Our room was blessedly warm. I fixed us some hot chocolate, and we sat with our hands around the hot mugs, drinking the watery stuff. I got the book I was reading, and stretched out on my bed to try to get lost in it, but it was impossible to get away from the dead boys.
"Eight of them," Tolliver said. He was sitting in one of the chairs, his feet propped on his bed.
"Yeah," I said. "It was really, really awful."
"Do you want to tell me about it?"
"It's almost too bad to talk about, Tolliver. They were tortured with knives and beatings and all sorts of stuff. They were raped. They were killed slowly. It took a while. I got the impression that there was more than one person there."
Tolliver looked sick.
"I'm sorry for Twyla, then," he said. "This will be worse than just finding him as a skeleton with a broken leg at the bottom of a steep slope."
"It's going to get even worse before it gets better." We'd found plenty of accidental deaths—particularly in the mountains. Most people didn't understand that the terrain could kill you, or perhaps they became complacent in a familiar environment. Hunters, especially, grew so used to carrying guns outdoors that they grew lax about the basic safety rules. They carried their rifles carelessly. They let their cell phone batteries die out. They didn't tell anyone where they were going to hunt. They didn't carry any first aid equipment. They didn't have a hunting buddy. They forgot to wear orange.
But these deaths were far from accidental.
"Yes, it'll be a lot worse," I said again. "And there'll be someone to blame. Someone around here did this."
Tolliver stared at me for a minute. "Right," he said finally. "No one but someone local would bury the bodies there. All together."
"Yeah, no one from out of town would make a trip back to that site to bury a body eight times." That seemed like a reasonable assumption to me.
"Were they killed there? Do you know?"
"I didn't read all of them," I said. "The first one, the first grave—yeah, he died in the old house, or in the shed. Without looking inside, I can't be sure which."
"He took them in there, did everything?"
I puzzled through the rush of impressions I'd gotten. "Yeah, I think so," I said doubtfully. There was something about the feeling of the deaths, something a little off.
"Definitely someone local," my brother said.
"In a small community like this, how is that possible?" I asked.
"You mean, how could a man conceal from other people the fact that he wanted to torture and kill boys?"
I nodded. "And how come the people around here haven't been up in arms about the fact that so many boys are missing?"
"I guess, if no bodies are found, it's a little easier to explain away," Tolliver said.
And then we sat, thinking dark but separate thoughts, pretending from time to time to read, until the early darkness fell. Then Sheriff Rockwell knocked on our door. Tolliver ushered her in. Her dark green uniform pants were covered with stains, and her heavy jacket was smudged, too. "Me and the SBI guys, we've been digging," she said. "You were right. All our boys are there, and even a couple extra."
Five
SHE sat in one of the two chairs. Tolliver and I sat on the side of his bed facing her. She was already holding a cup of steaming coffee from McDonald's, so I didn't offer her hot chocolate. She didn't bring up our departure from Twyla's. She looked exhausted but wired up.
She said, "We're going to get a lot of attention in the next few days. The TV stations are already calling the office. They'll be sending crews. The State Bureau of Investigation has taken charge, but they're letting me stay in it. They want me to liaise with you two, since I brought you in. The supervising agent, Pell Klavin, and Special Agent Max Stuart will want to talk to you.
"You know what I wish?" she said, when we didn't speak. "I wish I could write you your check, and you could just leave town. This thing is going to focus attention on Doraville…. Well, I guess you-all know what it's like. Not only are we going to look like we were so uncaring we let some maniac kill eight boys before we noticed, but we're going to look credulous in the extreme."
If the shoe fits, I thought.
"We'd leave now if we could," Tolliver said, and I nodded. "We don't want to be around for the circus." Some media attention was good for my business; a lot of media attention was not.
Sheriff Rockwell sat back in the motel chair, a sudden motion that made us look at her. She was giving us a strange look.
"What?" Tolliver asked.
"I'd never have believed you two'd pass at the chance for free publicity," she said. "I think the better of you for it. Are you really ready to go? Maybe I can ask the SBI boys to drive to the next town to talk to you, if you want to switch motels tonight."
"We'll leave Doraville tonight," I said. I felt like a huge weight had been shifted off my shoulders. I'd been sure the sheriff would insist we stay. I hate police cases. I like the cemetery bookings. Get to the town, drive out to the cemetery, meet the survivors, stand on the grave, tell the survivors what you saw. Cash the check and leave the town. Sheriff Rockwell was at least allowing us to get out of the immediate vicinity.
"Let's wait until morning," Tolliver said. "You're still pretty shaky."
"I can rest in the car," I said. I felt like a rabbit one jump ahead of the greyhounds.
"Okay," Tolliver said. He looked at me doubtfully. But he was picking up on my almost frantic anxiety to leave Doraville.
"Good," said the sheriff. She still sounded faintly surprised at our agreement. "I'm sure Twyla will want to give you a check and talk to you again."
"We'll talk to her before we leave the area for good. How's the work at the scene going?" he asked as the sheriff pulled herself wearily from the chair and walked to the door.