Hard Truth

12

“Hey, Regan, how’d it go?” Lorna called from the front porch, where she sat in one of the rocking chairs.

“Pretty much par,” Regan replied as she walked toward the porch. She smiled at the man sitting in the rocker next to Lorna. “You must be T.J. We have a mutual friend in Mitch Peyton.”

“So I understand.” T.J. stood and offered both his hand and the chair. “He mentioned you when he called me on Thursday.”

“No, keep the rocker, I’ll sit right here on the steps.” Regan lowered herself to the top step. “So what did he say?”

“What did who say?” Lorna asked.

“Mitch,” Regan responded, looking intently at T.J.

T.J. shrugged. “Oh, just that you had a friend who needed a little help with something he thought I might be able to assist with.”

“That’s all?” She frowned.

“Well, he did say that you and he were friends, that you worked together on some case up in New Jersey a couple months ago, and you’ve stayed in touch.”

“Oh.” Regan appeared disappointed to hear that Mitch hadn’t had more to say about her.

“What did you learn from Chief Walker?” Lorna asked.

“Not a whole lot,” Regan admitted. “There’s been no trace of Melinda found, not an article of clothing, nothing. I asked. So to answer your earlier question, the dress wasn’t recovered. He still thinks the mother killed the brother, by the way. This in spite of the fact that all the remains recovered show that every victim was an adolescent male with a fractured skull. What are the chances the mother killed all the other vics? Is she a big woman? Could she have taken these guys?”

“She’s a tiny thing, thin, frail. And back then, she was a heavy drinker. I don’t think she’d be hauling strangers across the field to kill them. She wouldn’t have had the strength.”

“What makes you think the bodies were all strangers?”

“There haven’t been that many young males reported missing in Callen since the beginning of time. They had to have come from someplace else.”

“Is someone doing a search on missing persons in the area?” T.J. asked.

“Not yet. I asked about that, and Chief Walker said they don’t have the manpower right now.” Regan leaned back against the porch rail. “Apparently everyone is out in the field, digging.”

“I’m sure they have computers,” T.J. said.

“Maybe they don’t have anyone on staff trained to do the searches,” Regan offered. “I’ve run into a lot of smaller police forces that don’t know how to access or input information into the national databases. Some others, I’ve found, simply don’t want to be bothered.”

“Maybe we could help them out. Do a little research for them.” T.J. smiled.

“How would we do that?” Lorna asked.

“We’d call Mitch and see if he can do a search for missing boys between the ages of, say, twelve and eighteen, over the past, what, twenty-five years?” T.J. thought for a moment, then said, “They should probably be bringing in the Bureau, anyway. They’re going to be in over their heads, if they aren’t already.”

“You’ll never get Chief Walker to admit that.”

“It’s a capital case, there’s every indication that there could be a serial killer involved here. It has FBI written all over it,” T.J. told them. “Regan, why don’t you give Mitch a call, see what he thinks.”

“I’ll do that. And we’ll ask him to go back thirty years, just in case.” Regan reached for her handbag and took out her phone and began to dial.

“When’s Billie’s preliminary hearing?” T.J. asked Lorna.

“One day next week, I haven’t heard a date yet.”

“I’m betting the charges are dropped between now and then. You know I haven’t thought they had enough evidence against Billie, but with these other victims being found,” he shrugged, “I don’t see them proceeding at this point. Unless they can finger her for all the killings, I think they’re going to have to go back to square one. I guess I’ll have a better feel for it after I’ve met Billie.”

“We can do that now, if you like,” Lorna suggested.

“The sooner the better.” T.J. stood. “You’re coming with me, though, right? I think she’d be much more comfortable if you were there.”

“Sure. I’d planned on being there. Let me give her a call and let her know we’re stopping over.” Lorna got out of the chair and went into the house.

“Where is everyone going?” Regan asked as she put her cell phone back in her handbag.

“Lorna and I are going over to talk to Billie Eagan.”

“I’ll wait here. For one thing, I think the poor woman would probably feel overwhelmed if the three of us showed up. Besides, I’m waiting for Mitch to call back. I had to leave voice mail.”

“Are you sure you don’t mind?” Lorna asked as she came out through the front door.

“Not at all.” Regan got up and walked over to the rocking chair Lorna had been sitting in. “It’s a beautiful day, the humidity has dropped, it’s nice and shady here on the porch, and I have a book in here somewhere…”

Regan began rooting through her handbag.

“Here we go. The newest thriller from my favorite author.” She moved the chair, then sat and rested her feet on the porch railing. Since she was shorter than Lorna by several inches, the rail would have been out of reach if she hadn’t moved the rocker. “I’ll be right here when you get back.”

“Okay, if you’re sure.” Lorna swung her bag over her shoulder and followed T.J. down the steps.

Regan waved them on.

Lorna paused next to T.J.’s car.

“Maybe we should drive over.”

“Isn’t Billie’s house right across the field?”

“Yes, but it is several acres away.” She was still staring at the car.

“You’re incredibly subtle.” He took his keys out of his pocket and opened the driver’s-side door.

“Great. I’ve been dying for a ride in this machine all week.” Lorna grinned, opened the passenger door, and got in.

“You should have said something. I’d have been happy to show ‘er off.” T.J. slid behind the wheel and started the engine. “You want the top up?”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“Just asking. Some women don’t like to have their hair blown around.”

“I’m not one of them.”

He turned the car around and stopped at the end of the drive.

“Which way?”

“Turn right,” Lorna told him. “Then right again in about a quarter of a mile.”

He accelerated slowly, then proceeded to the intersection, where he made a right at the stop sign. Lorna leaned her head back and closed her eyes, letting the breeze blow around her. She was smiling, and he found himself smiling, too.

“That was nice,” she told him when he pulled up in front of Billie’s house and cut the engine.

“Not much of a ride. We’ll take the long way home.”

“Yay.” She got out of the car and waited for T.J., then walked up the two steps leading to the front door. She was about to ring the bell when the door opened.

“Billie, this is T. J. Dawson, the private investigator I told you about,” Lorna said.

“Pleased to meet you.” Billie did not offer her hand, but appeared to be studying him. After a long moment, apparently approving of what she saw, she stepped aside and gestured for her visitors to come inside. “I don’t know what there is to investigate, but we can talk.”

She led them into the living room, which was furnished with an old blue sofa-the cushions of which were sagging slightly-one end table, a floor lamp that Lorna recognized as having come from her family’s attic, a chair with a makeshift slipcover, and a television set on top of a bookcase.

Billie must have caught Lorna’s glance at the lamp, because she said, “That lamp, your momma gave it to me. If you need it, or you want it, you can have it back.”

“No, no, I don’t need it,” Lorna assured her.

“Well, you ever feel you do, you just tell me.” Billie sat in the corner chair.

Lorna and T.J. sat side by side on the sofa.

“Billie, have you been hearing about all the bodies found in the back field?” Lorna asked.

“You tell me what that all means,” Billie visibly shivered, “ ’cause I never heard tell of such a thing. Bodies all through the woods, they’re saying on the news.” She looked from Lorna to T.J. and back again. “You don’t think they believe I had anything to do with all that, do you?”

“Billie, I honestly don’t know what anyone is thinking at this point,” Lorna told her. “But if they gave it serious thought, they’d figure out that you’re not a likely suspect. You’re not physically big enough, or strong enough, to have pulled it off. So I think that shouldn’t be a worry right now.”

“Well, it ain’t like I got nothing else on my mind.” She turned to T.J. “Lorna said you wanted to ask me some questions. You go right ahead. What do you want to talk about first?”

“Let’s talk about the night Jason disappeared,” T.J. said.

“Go ’head.”

“Do you remember where you had been that night before Jason came home?”

“I was right there at home. I’d worked until nine-thirty at the diner, then had to wait for almost forty minutes for Stella’s husband to come pick us up.” Billie turned to Lorna and said, “Stella Rusznick worked the same shift as me, and her husband picked her up every night. Nights when I didn’t have a ride, they’d drop me off. Most nights he was there by ten, but that night he was a little late. He’d stopped at Kelly’s Tavern on the way and had himself a few.”

Billie laughed hoarsely.

“I never knew how scared you could get when a drunk was behind the wheel. All the times I drove drunk, or rode with someone who was, I never was scared. Once I stopped drinking, though, whoa! Scared the bejesus outta me to be in that car with Stella’s husband. Never knew what sober people felt, driving with me, until I sobered up myself.”

“So you got home around ten after ten that night,” Lorna said.

“ ‘Round there. I went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. Never drank it until I stopped- Well, anyway, I made tea and took it outside and I sat on the back steps. Looked out across that field, looked up into the sky. Wondered where my girl was.” Billie stopped and swallowed hard. “With Mellie gone, I had a lot of time to think, mostly about how bad a mother I’d been. Mother from hell, I’d say, and that would be the truth. I prayed every night that wherever she was, she might know how sorry I was for every time I hurt her. Every time I raised my voice when I didn’t have to. Every time I ignored her or made her feel like she didn’t matter. I sat there each night after she disappeared, wondering if she was still alive… wondering if she’d just gotten so tired of me being the way I was that maybe she simply up and ran off.”

The small house was still and silent as a tomb. Billie’s pain and guilt were palpable, her words so soft, both Lorna and T.J. had to lean forward to hear her.

“Hasn’t a night passed since that I haven’t wondered.” Billie’s gaze shifted and she stared out the window to her right. “Even now…”

“Where were you when Jason got home that night?” T.J. tried to steer the conversation back on topic.

“I was still there, out on the back steps. I heard the car pull up and I heard the door slam and I waited to see if he was going to come out, but he didn’t, so I went on into the kitchen.”

“Talk to me about that,” T.J. said. “About what happened when you went into the kitchen.”

“Well, it’s like I told Walker. I went inside and there he was, stumbling drunk. Pissed me off so bad, I could hardly see. I hadn’t had a drop since my girl disappeared, and there was my boy, drunk as a skunk at three in the morning. He’s there, looking for something to eat, and we have words. He’s fourteen years old and he’s shit-faced in my kitchen.”

“What did you say?” T.J. asked.

“What do you think I said?” Billie raised an eyebrow. “So he starts yelling at me, about the pot callin’ the kettle black. We stood around doing a lot of shouting, I remember that. He’s yelling at me, about me teaching him how to be a drunk, and I’m yelling at him to look at my life and learn from it. That I wanted better for him, that I may not have given him much in the past, but I was trying to give him something right then and there. Drinking like that ain’t no kind of life. I ruined myself and I ruined my children, but it could end with me, if he did better than what I had done. And then it just stopped.”

Her voice was thin, almost wistful, like a girl’s.

“The yelling just stopped. And I told him how sorry I was for the way things had been, for all I’d done to him and to Mellie.” Her eyes filled. “And he said, ‘That’s easy to say, now that she’s gone.’ ”

Billie wiped her eyes with the back of her hand. “Well, that was like a slap in the face, but one I deserved-I did-and I told him that. I deserved to have him hate me and I wouldn’t have blamed him one damned bit if he did.”

“And then what?” Lorna asked.

“And then my big, strapping, drunk fourteen-year-old man-child put his head on my shoulder and he started to cry.” She nodded her head. “Just like that. Jason started to cry. Hadn’t cried since he was maybe three, four years old. And I put my arms around him and I rocked him, just like I did when he was a baby. At least, I rocked him best I could, him being so much taller than me and all. But it was okay, he was okay after that. And I thought, ‘Maybe it’s not too late, for me to be more of a mother, him to be more of a son.’ ”

“Why did he leave, Billie?”

“Sir, I have asked myself that question a hundred times, I surely have.” She turned to T.J. “One second, he was all peaceful and resting his head right here,” she patted her left shoulder, “and the next thing I knew, he was cursing and running out the back door.”

“What did he say?” a puzzled Lorna asked.

“He said, ‘You son of a bitch,’ and went right on out the back door like he was being chased. I looked out the window, but I couldn’t see nobody, not even him. I don’t know why he started cursing at me after he’d been so calm, or why he ran out like that.”

“Where was the window in relation to where he was standing?” Lorna asked.

Billie thought for a moment, then said, “It was to my left.”

“Could you see out the window, Billie?” T.J. resumed the questioning.

“I couldn’t, no, I wasn’t facing it.” She thought for a moment, then said, “But he probably could have. His head was on my left shoulder, looking away from me.” She focused on them and said, “He probably could have seen out the window, but if he did, he wasn’t saying what he saw.”

“Did you hear anything? Voices, conversation, anything at all?”

She shook her head.

“When Jason didn’t come back in, I went out onto the back steps and called him, but there was no answer. And I didn’t hear nothing out there, nothing but the wind blowing through that field.” She bit her bottom lip. “I figured he’d started to remember how bad I’d been and it pissed him off all over again, and maybe he’d run away.”

“Had you seen anyone around that night? Heard any cars?”

“Just the one that dropped off Jason.”

“Billie, did anyone have it in for Jason?”

Billie’s eyebrows raised. “Mister, just about everyone who knew Jason had it in for him. He had a way, brought out the worst in everyone he met. That boy had a chip on his shoulder, big as the moon.”

“Did he mention anyone in particular?” T.J. continued. “Ever talk to you about anyone he was having problems with?”

“No. He wasn’t the type to tell you much of anything. Kept it all to hisself, mostly.” Her voice dropped slightly. “Guess when you know no one’s listening, you just stop talking.”

“The police report also indicates that the police spoke with your ex-husband, who stated he’d had no contact with you or the children in many years. Is that correct?”

Billie nodded. “Buddy didn’t have nothing to do with us at that point. He had hisself a new wife and a new family.”

“Did you ever seek child support from him?” Lorna asked.

“Not much point in that,” Billie told her. “He didn’t have nothing for me to get. I didn’t see much reason to bother with him. Once a man washes his hands of you, that’s pretty much it.”

“But they were still his kids,” Lorna protested. “He should have helped support them.”

“He wasn’t working for a long time. Never seen anyone get blood from a stone.”

“Any idea where he is now? How we can get in touch with him?”

“What d’you want with him?” Billie’s eyes narrowed.

“Well, the police interviewed him then, I’d like to speak with him now.”

“He didn’t have nothing to say on the subject back then. Chances are, he’d have less to say all these years later.”

“They were his kids,” T.J. reminded her. “A lot of times, when a child disappears, it turns out that the noncustodial parent has taken them.”

“I can guarantee you, right now, that Buddy Eagan did not take Melinda.” Billie’s jaw set. “And we all know where Jason has been, all these years.”

“Still, I’d like to speak with your ex.”

“Well, good luck finding him, then. I don’t know where he is.”

T.J. opened the file he’d brought with him and had tucked on the floor next to his feet.

“Billie, this is a copy of the police report from the night your son disappeared. It says that you told the officer who interviewed you that you and Jason were arguing and that he stormed out of the house.”

“We weren’t arguing no more by the time he left.”

“But the report indicates that you were.”

“That’s not the way I would have told it. That’s not the way it happened.” Billie shook her head for emphasis. “We weren’t yellin’ no more then. I wouldn’t have said that we were.”

“But you initialed the pages that you’d read it and it was right,” T.J. pointed out to her.

“I didn’t read real good back then. I wouldn’t have known what he had written on that page.” Her cheeks colored slightly at the admission. “He told me he’d written down just what I said, and he just needed me to write my initials, which he told me meant that I had said those words.”

Billie frowned. “Never occurred to me that he woulda wrote down something else.”

“It’s an important detail, Billie. The way it’s written, it sounds as if Jason left the house because you two were arguing. From there, it’s not much of a stretch to think maybe you followed him.”

“All these years, I did think he’d left the house that night because of me.”

“But it sounds to me as if you and he had, well, come to an understanding,” Lorna said.

“I thought we had, but then he left sudden like that.”

“Maybe he saw something or someone outside,” T.J. pointed out. “You said his head was facing the window.”

“You mean, maybe he’d seen someone out there, through the window?”

T.J. nodded. “If he wasn’t cursing at you, he was cursing at someone else.”

“Huh. Wouldn’t that beat all, if it had been someone else he’d been cursing at. Wouldn’t that be something.” She shook her head slowly. “All these years, I thought he’d been cursing at me…”

“You think she was telling the truth?” Regan asked after T.J. and Lorna had filled her in on their interview with Billie. “You think she seemed sincere?”

“Either that, or she is one fine actress.” T.J. settled himself on the top porch step.

“I think she was telling the truth. I think Melinda’s disappearance was a real wake-up call for her. I think she did stop drinking, and I think she would have tried to reconcile with Jason at that point. It all makes perfect sense to me.” Lorna looked at Regan, then T.J. “Is anyone that good an actor?”

“You’d be amazed at how resourceful people can be when they’re trying to save their skins,” T.J. told her. “An accomplished liar could easily have pulled off that kind of performance.”

“The question is, is Billie Eagan an accomplished liar,” Regan interjected. “Do you think Jason really saw someone outside the window that night? Or do you think she’s making that up now, to offer another plausible scenario? If she could convince people that there was someone else there, and Jason ran out to confront that person, it’s just a short step to suggesting that this other person killed him.”

Lorna nodded. “I agree, it’s convenient that she hasn’t told this story to anyone else.”

“We don’t know that she didn’t,” T.J. reminded her. “Billie said that this is the story she gave the cop who interviewed her after Jason disappeared. She says he wrote it down wrong, and because her reading skills were so poor, she didn’t realize that he hadn’t gotten it right.”

“That happens more often than you’d believe,” Regan said. “I’ve found that in my own research, for my books, that sometimes the cop taking down the information uses words that intimate something other than what was intended. Or sometimes the cop doesn’t take real good notes, he’ll think he’ll remember something, but forgets it and writes down his impressions rather than what the person really said. And if, like Billie, the witness or suspect doesn’t read well, he or she could sign something as being correct when it’s not a true account of what happened.”

T.J. shuffled through his files, then, finding the one he was looking for, opened it and took out a sheet of paper.

“The cop who signed this report was a Duncan Parks.” He looked at Lorna. “Do you know if he’s still around?”

“I have no idea. Chief Walker would know, but I’d prefer to keep my face out of his for a few days. I’ve pissed him off enough for one week.” She tapped her fingers on the side of her chair. “Fritz might know, though.”

“Fritz, who is on the list of witnesses we wanted to talk to?” T.J. asked.

Lorna nodded.

“This gives us a real good excuse to pay him a visit,” he told her. “Know where we can find him?”

“I know where to start.”

“Let’s do it.”

“I’ll stay here and wait for Mitch,” Regan said. “He told me he’d be here around dinnertime.” She smiled. “Typical Mitch.”

“We should think about dinner,” Lorna said as she stood.

“Pizza would be good,” Regan suggested. “Got beer?”

“Got a state store about three miles down the road,” Lorna told her.

“Excellent. I’ll just sit here with my book while you two fetch food and drink.”

“Any preferences?” T.J. asked.

“Nope. As long as the pizza’s hot and the beer’s cold, I’m a happy woman.” She leaned back in the rocker and opened her book. “I’m starting to feel a little like I’m on vacation here, and I like it. At least, till Mitch arrives and shakes things up, as he usually does. So you two just go on and see what you can pry out of Fritz, and I’ll stay right here and enjoy what’s left of the afternoon.”