Jeffrey knew the family included a pretty sharp lawyer, and he sure as shit didn’t want Paul Ward barging in on his conversation with Connolly. The ex-con was sharp, and Jeffrey was going to have a hard enough time cracking him without Paul shutting things down.
Jeffrey wasn’t in his jurisdiction, he didn’t have an arrest warrant and the only probable cause he had to talk to Connolly came from the word of a stripper who would kill her own mother for a fix. All he could tell Lev was, “Do what you have to do.”
Lena tucked her hands into her pockets as the pastor drove away. “He’s going straight to his brother.”
“I don’t care if you have to hog-tie them,” Jeffrey told her. “Keep them away from that apartment.”
“Yes, sir.”
Quietly, Jeffrey walked up the steep set of stairs to Connolly’s apartment. At the top of the landing, he looked through the window in the door and saw Connolly standing in front of the sink. His back was to Jeffrey, and when he turned around, Jeffrey could see he had been filling a kettle with water. He didn’t seem startled to find someone looking through his window.
“Come on in,” he called, putting the kettle on the stove. There was a series of clicks as the gas caught.
“Mr. Connolly,” Jeffrey began, not sure how he should approach this.
“Cole,” the old man corrected. “I was just making some coffee.” He smiled at Jeffrey, his eyes sparkling the same way they had the day before. Connolly offered, “You want a cup?”
Jeffrey saw a jar of Folgers instant coffee on the countertop and suppressed a feeling of revulsion. His father had sworn by the power of Folgers crystals, claiming it was the best curative for a hangover. As far as Jeffrey was concerned, he’d rather drink out of the toilet, but he answered, “Yeah, that’d be great.”
Connolly took down another cup out of the cabinet. Jeffrey could see there were only two.
“Have a seat,” Connolly said, measuring out two heaping spoonfuls of grainy black coffee into the mugs.
Jeffrey pulled out a chair at the table, taking in Connolly’s apartment, which was a single room with a kitchen on one side and the bedroom on the other. The bed had white sheets and a simple spread, all tucked in with military corners. The man lived a Spartan existence. Except for a cross hanging over the bed and a religious poster taped to one of the whitewashed walls, there was nothing that would reveal anything about the person who called this place his home.
Jeffrey asked, “You live here long?”
“Oh”-Connolly seemed to think about it-“I guess going on fifteen years now. We all moved onto the farm some time back. I used to be in the house, but then the grandkids started growing, wanting their own rooms, their own space. You know how kids are.”
“Yeah,” he said. “You’ve got a nice place here.”
“Built it out myself,” Connolly said proudly. “Rachel offered me a place in her house, but I saw this room up here and knew I’d be able to do something with it.”
“You’re quite a carpenter,” Jeffrey said, taking in the room more carefully. The box they had found Abby in had precision-mitered joints as did the other. The man who had built those boxes was meticulous, taking time to do things right.
“Measure twice, cut once.” Connolly sat at the table, putting a cup in front of Jeffrey and keeping one for himself. There was a Bible between them, holding down a stack of napkins. “What brings you here?”
“I have some more questions,” Jeffrey said. “Hope you don’t mind.”
Connolly shook his head, as if he had nothing to hide. “Of course not. Anything that I can do to help. Fire away.”
Jeffrey got a whiff of the instant coffee in front of him, and had to move the cup out of the way before he could speak. He decided to begin with Chip Donner. O’Ryan had given them a concrete connection. The tie to Abby was more tenuous, and Connolly wasn’t the type to hang himself with his own rope. “Have you ever heard of a bar called the Pink Kitty?”
Connolly kept his gaze steady, watching Jeffrey. “It’s a strip club out on the highway.”
“That’s right.”
Connolly moved his mug a quarter of an inch to the left, centering it in front of the Bible.
“You ever been there, Cole?”
“That’s a funny question to be asking a Christian.”
“There’s a stripper says you were there.”
He rubbed the top of his bald head, wiping away sweat. “Warm in here,” he said, walking over to the window. They were on the second level and the window was small, but Jeffrey tensed in case Connolly tried to make a break for it.
Connolly turned back to him. “I wouldn’t much trust the word of a whore.”
“No,” Jeffrey allowed. “They tend to tell you what they think you want to hear.”
“True enough,” he agreed, putting up the jar of Folgers. He went to the sink and washed the spoon, using a well-worn towel to dry it before returning it to the drawer. The kettle started to whistle, and he used the towel to take it off the eye of the stove.
“Hand those over,” he asked Jeffrey, and Jeffrey slid the cups across the table.
“When I was in the army,” Cole said, pouring boiling water into the cups, “there wasn’t a titty bar around we didn’t hit one time or another. Dens of iniquity, one and all.” He put the kettle back on the stove and took out the spoon he had just washed to stir the coffee. “I was a weak man then. A weak man.”
“What was Abby doing at the Pink Kitty, Cole?”
Connolly kept stirring, turning the clear liquid into an unnatural black. “Abby wanted to help people,” he said, going back to the sink. “She didn’t know she was walking into the lion’s den. She was an honest soul.”
Jeffrey watched Cole wash the spoon again. He put it in the drawer, then sat down across from Jeffrey.
Jeffrey asked, “Was she trying to help Chip Donner?”
“He wasn’t worth helping,” Cole replied, putting the cup to his lips. Steam rose, and he blew on the liquid before setting it back down. “Too hot.”
Jeffrey sat back in his chair to get away from the smell. “Why wasn’t he worth helping?”
“Lev and them don’t see it, but some of these people just want to work the system.” He pointed a finger at Jeffrey. “You and I know how these people are. It’s my job to get them off the farm. They’re just taking up space where somebody else might be- somebody who wants to do better. Somebody who’s strong in the Lord.”
Jeffrey took the opening. “These bad people just want to work it to their advantage. Take what they can and get out.”
“That’s exactly right,” Cole agreed. “It’s my job to get them out fast.”
“Before they ruin it for everybody.”
“Exactly,” he said.
“What did Chip do with Abby?”
“He took her out to the woods. She was just an innocent. An innocent.”
“You saw him take her out into the woods?” Jeffrey asked, thinking it was pretty odd for a seventy-two-year-old man to be following around a young girl.
“I wanted to make sure she was okay,” Connolly explained. “I don’t mind telling you that I was worried for her soul.”
“You feel a responsibility for the family?”
“With Thomas like he is, I had to look after her.”
“I see it all the time,” Jeffrey encouraged. “All it takes is one bad apple.”
“That is the truth, sir.” Connolly blew on the coffee again, chancing a sip. He grimaced as his tongue was singed. “I tried to reason with her. She was going to leave town with that boy. She was packing her bag, heading right down the road to wickedness. I could not let that happen. For Thomas’s sake, for the sake of the family, I could not let them lose another soul.”
Jeffrey nodded, the pieces falling into place. He could see Abigail Bennett packing her bags, thinking she was going to start a new life, until Cole Connolly came in and changed everything. What must have been going through Abby’s mind as he led her into the forest? The girl had to have been terrified.