Carolina Moon

Got himself a motorboat. Does a lot of fishing. Chief Tate, he always was one for fishing.”
    Russ paused. “I was a deputy the summer little Hope Lavelle was murdered. Terrible thing. Worst thing ever happened around these parts. Chief Tate, he figured it was a drifter did what was done to that little girl. Never found any evidence to the contrary.”
    “You never found anything,” Tory corrected. “Whoever killed her knew her. Just like he knows me and you and Cade. He knows Progress. He knows the swamp. Tonight he came up to the window of my house.”
    “But you didn’t see him?”
    “Not in the way you mean.”
    Carl D. sat back, pursed his lips. Considered. “My wife’s granny on her ma’s side holds whole conversations with dead relatives. Now, I’m not saying that’s the true case or that it’s not, as I’m not the one having those chats. But in my job, Miz Bodeen, it comes around to facts.”
    “The fact is I knew what had happened to Hope and where she could be found. The man who killed her knows that. Chief Tate didn’t believe me. He decided I’d been out there with her, then had run off when I got scared. Left her there. Or that I found her after she was dead, and just went home and hid until morning.”
    There was kindness in Carl D.’s eyes. He’d raised two girls of his own. “You were hardly more than a baby yourself.”
    “I’m grown up now, and I’m telling you the man who killed Hope was out there tonight. He’s killed others, at least one other. A young girl he picked up hitchhiking on the way to Myrtle Beach. He’s already targeted someone else. Not me. I’m not the one he wants.”
    “You can tell me all this, but you can’t tell me who he is.”
    “No, I can’t. I can tell you what he is. A sociopath who feels he has the right to do what he does. Because he needs it. Needs the excitement and the power of it. A misogynist who believes women are here to be used by men. A serial killer who has no intention of stopping or being stopped. He’s had a run of eighteen years,” she said quietly. “Why should he stop?”
    “I didn’t handle that very well.”
    Cade closed the back door, sat back down at the table. He and Carl D. had walked the property, scouted the edges of the swamp. They’d found nothing, no fresh footprints, no handy torn swatch of material on a tree branch.
    “You told him what you know.”
    “He doesn’t believe me.”
    “Whether he does or not, he’ll do his job.”
    “Like they did their job eighteen years ago.”
    He said nothing for a moment. The reminder of that morning was always a quick, sharp jab to the gut. “Who are you blaming, Tory? The cops or yourself?”
    “Both. No one believed me, and I couldn’t explain myself. I was afraid to. I knew I’d be punished, and the more I said, the worse the punishment. In the end, I did what I could to save myself.”
    “Didn’t we all?” He pushed away from the table, went to the stove to pour coffee he didn’t want. “I knew she was out of the house that night. Knew she planned to sneak out. I didn’t say anything, not then, not the next day, not ever, about seeing her bike hidden. That night I considered it the code. You don’t tattle unless you’re going to get something out of it. So what if she wanted to ride off for a couple of hours?”
    He turned back to see Tory watching him. “The next day, when we found her, I didn’t say anything. That was self-preservation. They’d blame me, as much as I blamed myself. After a while, there just didn’t seem to be a point. We were all missing a piece, and could never get it back. But I can go back to that night, replay it in my head. Only this time I tell my father how Hope’s stashed her bike, and he locks it up and gives her one hell of a talking-to. The next morning she wakes up safe in her bed.”
    “I’m sorry.”
    “Oh, Tory. So am I. I’ve been sorry for eighteen years. And over that time I’ve watched the sister I have left do whatever she could to ruin her life. I saw my father pull away from all of us as if being with us hurt more than he could stand. And my mother coat herself with layer on layer of bitterness and propriety. All because I was more interested in my own affairs than seeing to it Hope stayed in bed where she belonged.”
    “Cade. There would have been another night.”
    “There wouldn’t have been that one. I can’t fix it, Tory, and neither can you.”
    “I can find him. Sooner or later, I will