Jeffrey had dealt with many missing-children cases over the years. Thankfully, most of them had resolved themselves fairly easily. The kid got cold or hungry and came back, realizing there were worse things than having to clean up your room or eat your peas. Something told him Rebecca Bennett wasn’t running away from chores, but he felt the need to calm some of Esther’s fears.
He spoke as gently as he could. “Becca’s run away before.”
“Yes.”
“She always comes back in a day or two.”
“She’s always come back to her family- all of her family.” She seemed almost defeated, as if Jeffrey wasn’t understanding her. “We’re not what you think.”
He wasn’t sure what he thought. He hated to admit it, but he was seeing why her brothers hadn’t been as alarmed as Esther. If Rebecca made a habit of running away for a few days, scaring the crap out of everybody and then coming back, this could be just another cry for attention. The question was, why did she feel she needed attention? Was it some sort of teenage urge for attention? Or something more sinister?
“Ask your questions,” Esther said, visibly bracing herself. “Go ahead.”
“Mrs. Bennett…” he began.
Some of her composure had returned. “I think if you’re going to ask me if my daughters were being molested by my brothers, you should at least call me Esther.”
“Is that what you’re afraid of?”
“No,” she said, her answer requiring no thought. “Monday, I was afraid of you telling me that my daughter was dead. Now I am afraid of you telling me that there’s no hope for Rebecca. The truth scares me, Chief Tolliver. I’m not afraid of conjecture.”
“I need you to answer my question, Esther.”
She took her time, as if it made her sick to even consider. “My brothers have never been inappropriate with my children. My husband has never been inappropriate with my children.”
“What about Cole Connolly?”
She shook her head once. “Believe me when I tell you this,” she assured him. “If anyone did harm to my children- not just my children, but any child- I would kill them with my bare hands and let God be my judge.”
He stared at her for a beat. Her clear green eyes were sharp with conviction. He believed her, or at least he believed that she believed herself.
She asked him, “What are you going to do?”
“I can put out an APB and make some phone calls. I’ll call the sheriff in Catoogah, but honestly, your daughter has a history of running away and she left a note.” He let that settle in, considering it himself. If Jeffrey had wanted to abduct Rebecca Bennett, he’d probably do it just like that: leave a note, let her history protect him for a few days.
“Do you think you’ll find her?”
Jeffrey did not let himself dwell on the possibility of a fourteen-year-old somewhere in a shallow grave. “If I find her,” he began, “I want to talk to her.”
“You talked to her before.”
“I want to talk to her alone,” Jeffrey said, knowing he had no right to ask this, just as he knew Esther could always renounce her promise. “She’s underage. Legally, I can’t talk to her without the permission of at least one of her parents.”
She took her time again, obviously weighing the consequences. Finally, she nodded. “You have my permission.”
“You know she’s probably camping out somewhere,” he told her, feeling guilty for taking advantage of her desperation, hoping to God he was right about the girl. “She’ll probably come back on her own in a day or so.”
She took the note back out of her pocket. “Find her,” she said, pressing the page into his hand. “Please. Find her.”
When Jeffrey got back to the station, there was a large bus parked in the back of the lot, the words “Holy Grown Farms” stenciled on the side. Workers milled around outside despite the cold, and he could see the front lobby was packed with bodies. He suppressed a curse as he got out of his car, wondering if this was Lev Ward’s idea of a joke.
Inside, he pushed his way through the smelliest bunch of derelicts he’d seen since the last time he’d driven through downtown Atlanta. He held his breath, waiting for Marla to buzz him in, thinking he might be sick if he stayed in the hot room for much longer.
“Hey there, Chief,” Marla said, taking his coat. “I guess you know what this is all about.”
Frank walked up, a sour look on his face. “They’ve been here for two hours. It’s gonna take all day just getting their names.”
Jeffrey asked, “Where’s Lev Ward?”
“Connolly said he had to stay home with one of his sisters.”
“Which one?”
“Hell if I know,” Frank said, obviously over the experience of interviewing the great unwashed. “Said she had diabetes or something like that.”
“Shit,” Jeffrey cursed, thinking Ward really was jerking his chain. Not only was his absence wasting time, but it meant Mark McCallum, the polygraph expert the GBI had sent, would be spending another night in town courtesy of the Grant County Police Department.
Jeffrey took out his notepad and wrote down Rebecca Bennett’s name and description. He slid a photograph out of his pocket, handing it to Frank. “Abby’s sister,” he said. “Put her details on the wire. She’s been missing since ten o’clock last night.”
“Shit.”
“She’s run away before,” Jeffrey qualified, “but I don’t like this coming so close to her sister’s death.”
“You think she knows something?”
“I think she’s running away for a reason.”
“Did you call Two-Bit?”
Jeffrey scowled. He had called Ed Pelham on his way back to the station. As predicted, the neighboring sheriff had pretty much laughed in his face. Jeffrey couldn’t blame the man- the girl had a history of running away- but he had thought that Ed would take it more seriously, considering what had happened to Abigail Bennett.
He asked Frank, “Is Brad still searching the area around the lake?” Frank nodded. “Tell him to go home and get his backpack or camping gear or whatever. Get him and Hemming to go into the Catoogah state forest and start looking around. If anyone stops them, for God’s sake, tell him to say they’re out camping.”
“All right.”
Frank turned to leave but Jeffrey stopped him. “Update the APB on Donner to include the possibility he might be with a girl.” Anticipating Frank’s next question, he shrugged, saying, “Throw it at the wall and see what sticks.”
“Will do,” he said. “I put Connolly in interrogation one. You gonna get to him next?”
“I want him to stew,” Jeffrey answered. “How long do you think it’ll take to get through the rest of these interviews?”
“Five, maybe six hours.”
“Anything interesting so far?”
“Not unless you count Lena threatening to backhand one of them if he didn’t shut up about Jesus being Lord.” He added, “I think this is wasting our fucking time.”
“Have to agree with you,” Jeffrey said. “I want you to go ahead and talk to the people on your list who bought cyanide salts from the dealer in Atlanta.”
“I’ll leave right after I talk to Brad and update the APB.”
Jeffrey went to his office and picked up the phone before he even sat down. He called Lev Ward’s number at Holy Grown and navigated his way through the switchboard. As he was on hold, Marla walked in and put a stack of messages on his desk. He thanked her just as Lev Ward’s voice mail picked up.
“This is Chief Tolliver,” he said. “I need you to call me as soon as possible.” Jeffrey left his cell phone number, not wanting to give Lev the easy out of leaving a message. He rang off and picked up his notes from last night, unable to make any sense of the long lists he had made. There were questions for each family member, but in the cold light of day he realized that asking any one of them would get Paul Ward in the room so fast that his head would spin.
Legally, none of them had to talk to the police. He had no cause to force them to come in and he doubted very seriously if Lev Ward would deliver on his promise to take the lie detector test. Running their names through the computer hadn’t brought up much information. Jeffrey had tried Cole Connolly’s name, but without a middle initial or something more specific like a birth date or previous address, the search had returned about six hundred Cole Connollys in the southern United States. Opening it up to Coleman Connolly had added another three hundred.