The phone awakened Diane out of a pleasant dream of swimming in an underground lake flanked with giant crystal formations. She looked at the clock. It was just past four in the morning. She reached for the phone but Frank got to it first. She held her breath. Early calls were never good.
“Hello,” he said, and paused. “It’s for you.” He handed Diane the phone.
“I know it’s very early,” said the female voice, “and I’m so sorry to call you this early, but I need you to come to my house, please. I’m not sure what else to do.”
“Who is this?” said Diane.
“I’m sorry. This is Kathy Nicholson. Could you and Mr. Kingsley come? My son is here. He needs to talk with you. Please come. We’ll tell you about it when you get here.”
“All right,” said Diane. She replaced the phone, sat up in bed, and swung her feet around.
“Who was that?” said Frank.
Diane told him. “You think it’s a trap?” she said.
“Don’t know,” he said. “I’m not sure what would be gained by trapping you at this point. The horse is out of the barn. Are you going?”
“I’m going to call Ross,” she said. “If he can go, I will. If not, I don’t know. Kathy Nicholson sounded frantic, and desperate.”
Diane dialed Ross Kingsley’s number. Lydia answered in a sleepy voice.
“Lydia, this is Diane Fallon. I’m very sorry to wake you up. I just got a call from someone Ross and I have been interviewing-may I speak with him?”
“Yes, just a moment.”
Diane assumed they were replaying the same scene that she and Frank just went through. But she heard Lydia mumble.
“You know, if you and she would have an affair like normal people, I could get some sleep.”
“Hey, Diane,” Kingsley said. “What’s going on?”
Diane apologized again for waking him and Lydia. Then she told him about the phone call from Kathy Nicholson.
“I can meet you there,” he said.
There was no, “What do you think this is about?” Just, “Let’s go,” as if she had called him and said, “ ‘ Come, Wat son, the game is afoot. Not a word! Into your clothes and come!’ ”
Diane got into her clothes. Frank came in with an instant breakfast and told her to drink it.
“Take your gun,” he said.
Diane looked at him and sighed. He was right; she needed to take a gun. The gun issued to her by Rosewood hadn’t yet been returned to her, but she had her backup gun. She slipped on the shoulder holster. It felt strange. She didn’t think it would ever feel familiar. She put on a dark zip-up jacket and finished her breakfast, drinking the last of it down.
There wasn’t much traffic in Rosewood that early in the morning, but by the time she got on the interstate, it had picked up considerably. At the turnoff to Gainesville, dawn had begun to crack enough that she could just see a line of light outlining the horizon. Kingsley had timed it just right. He pulled in behind Diane as she parked on the street in front of Kathy Nicholson’s house.
It was still dark and the streetlights were on. Diane looked across the street at the homes belonging to Marsha Carruthers and Wendy Walters. All the windows were dark. Only the porch lights were lit.
“What do you think this is about?” asked Kingsley.
“Something to do with that house over there,” said Diane, gesturing with her head toward the Carruthers’ house.
The lights were burning inside the Nicholson residence. They walked up to the door and rang the bell. Kathy must have been waiting at the door, for it opened immediately.
“Oh, thank you for coming. I just don’t know what to do and, and, well, you seemed so nice.” She paused. “I hope it was the right thing, calling you, but…” Her sentence trailed off.
Diane could see Kathy had been crying. Her nose and eyes were red and puffy. She sniffed and put a tissue to her nose and led them to the living room, where a young man was standing near the couch that sat under the front window. He had been looking out. Even though the drapes were drawn, there was a slight part where he had held them open. He had been crying too. His tanned face was puffy like his mother’s. Diane tried to remember his name-Colton.
Colton was a tall, lanky young man. Diane did the math. He would be twenty-three. He looked both younger and older. In his face and manner he could still be a teenager. But not in his eyes. They were older. He had dark hair cut short, and light brown eyes. He wore jeans and a navy blue sweatshirt with CALIFORNIA BERKELEY printed across the front.
“Please, sit down. Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?” said Kathy.
Both Diane and Kingsley declined. They sat beside each other on the couch by the front window. Diane felt the pressure of her gun under her jacket.
“My son came in late last night. I didn’t know he was coming until he called me to pick him up at the airport.” Kathy Nicholson sat down in a chair with a sigh. Her son stood beside her and put a hand on her shoulder. “This is just the most, the most terrible thing. I don’t know what to do.”
“I do,” Colton said. “I need to go over and talk to Marsha and her family. I have to do this, Mom.”
“Why don’t you tell us first,” suggested Diane.
Colton nodded. “Okay.” He pulled the other stuffed chair closer to his mother and sat down. “It’s about El Carruthers. That guy in prison? He didn’t kill her.”
Chapter 57
Tears spilled onto Colton’s cheeks. “I was only fourteen. Do you know how young that is?”
“He had just turned fourteen,” said Kathy.
“Mother, please. This is hard enough,” he said. “Tyler Walters was my best friend.”
He stood up and walked around and rested his forearms on the back of the chair, as if he couldn’t sit down, but needed to be propped up.
“Mother told me what happened with that girl, Stacy Dance, Ryan Dance’s little sister. She told me how Marsha Carruthers has been acting-the anger and the drinking. I got afraid for Mother. She didn’t know what really happened, and it’s gotten so mixed up.”
“Why don’t you start from the beginning,” suggested Diane.
He nodded. “I’m not sure what the beginning is anymore,” he said.
His mother sobbed into her handkerchief.
“Just start from the first thing you remember,” said Kingsley.
“I was in my room listening to NSYNC, and Tyler came to my window and knocked. I let him climb in. He was really upset. He kept pacing and saying, ‘Oh, man, oh, man. I really did it this time.’ ”
Colton paused and looked away from Diane and Kingsley, his face screwed up into a grief-stricken mask.
“He was only a kid like me. He told me he had just killed El-Ellie Rose. I thought he was kidding. I mean, who comes in and says they just killed someone? He said he’d been wanting her for a long time but he couldn’t get her alone. She kept avoiding him. He had told me already that one day he was going to jump her and I told him he couldn’t do that. He didn’t listen to me.”
Colton Nicholson sat back down in the chair. His mother reached over and touched his hand.
“I’m sorry, Mother,” he whispered. “Tyler said she started screaming and he put a hand over her mouth. Tyler was really strong. His grandfather made him work out all the time.”
Diane thought that was a strange way of putting it, but she didn’t want to interrupt him.
“Everett Walters, Tyler’s grandfather, took him to some hookers as a birthday present when he turned thirteen,” continued Colton. “Tyler said his grandfather told them to make a man out of him. After that, he was kind of crazy, if you know what I mean. At the time, I was really interested in hearing about his experience with the hookers, but it kind of scared me too. His grandfather scared me. He encouraged Tyler to be a bully at school. He got into trouble more than once for it. He kept telling Tyler he had to be a man. That’s hard when you are just thirteen.”