4

After Preach left the station, he wanted to order his thoughts before he talked to Claire, and he felt the need for more coffee. Good coffee, that was.

Minutes later, he pulled into the gravel lot of Jimmy’s Corner Store, a cafe and local market that served as Preach’s second office. He entered the packed cafe and sat on a barstool at the counter, facing the chalkboard menu and an old tin Sunbeam Bread sign that had probably been there for fifty years.

Over the years, the aroma of roasting coffee had permeated the tables, overstuffed chairs, and blue clapboard walls. Preach hunched over his mug and thought about how best to approach Claire. He hated to impose on her grief so soon, but a timely investigation was essential. Evidence degraded over time.

Officer Wright’s case file was painfully thin. It was obvious he hadn’t thought David was in imminent danger. Bill had made a few calls but, except for David’s argument with his mother, uncovered no evidence of enemies or disturbing behavior.

Which Preach wasn’t buying. That kind of crime, the murder of a healthy male from close range and a careful dump of the body, didn’t scream spur-of-the-moment decision to Preach. What he thought was that past events had initiated a chain reaction that for some reason had come to a head after David left his house. Whether the argument with his mother had anything to do with that, well, he would just have to see.

On Monday, he planned to visit the school. Talk to the teachers and coaches and David’s friends. Where else did teenage boys hang out these days ? Preach thought about his own youth and the hell he had raised, but things were different now. He and Wade and the crew had drunk themselves silly and smoked a little pot, but they hadn’t had drugs that could ruin your life with one puff or pharmaceutical concoctions mixed in bathtubs that could make you claw your own face off.

Had David been into drugs? Gotten involved with the wrong crowd?

There were other possibilities, ones Preach had seen with homeless teens time and time again. Ones that made him shudder. He still didn’t like to look at a missing persons report for children, or even the back of a milk carton. A crime against a child was a stain on the human race.

Still, none of that rang true here. He needed to know more, peel back the layers.

It just pained him to do it with Claire’s child.

The town was buzzing as Preach drove through the leaf-strewn streets to the Lourdis house. The activity still surprised him. In his day, Sunday was for church and nothing else. Fancy clothes and fried chicken on the table, shuttered shops throughout the town. His own parents would rather have slept in the snow than pass through the doors of a church, but the Creekville of his youth was still steeped in Southern tradition.

Over the years he had done some reading on how secularization and religion waxed and waned in various cultures over time. He had some thoughts on the matter, most of them involving societal norms instead of any sea change in spirituality. But now, as far as he could tell, cafés and brunch spots were the preferred form of worship in Creekville on a chilly Sunday morning.

He swung into Wild Oaks, and driving through the neighborhood in the daylight, with its abundance of wood chips and wire fencing in the front yards, made Preach feel as if he were inside a giant chicken coop. Yippies, he liked to call the residents of Wild Oaks. Half yuppie, half hippie.

Claire’s handsome, traditional two-story home was much more all-American than the others. Featuring white siding with brick trim, along with dogwoods, accenting an ivy-covered arbor, the home was one of the few with a manicured lawn. About the only solidarity with the Creekville vibe was a patch of solar panels on the roof.

After parking, Preach shrugged on his overcoat, stuck his notebook in an inside pocket, and walked to the front door. A burly man in his forties answered the knock. He looked Preach up and down. “Can I help you?”

“Is Claire home ?”

“Who are you?”

He had the quick speech of a businessman, along with a hint of Carolina twang. Preach took a moment to answer, noting the man’s tanned skin, cunning eyes, and clipped dark hair. His two front teeth were a touch too long, and the one on the left was shinier than the other. Probably reconstructed. With his loafers, slacks, and Ralph Lauren sweater, he looked as out of place in Creekville as a farmer in Manhattan.

“A friend.” Preach took out his badge. “And a detective.”

“She can’t talk right now. Jesus,” he said, his eyes darting to the side, “have some respect.”

“What’s your name ?”

“Brett. Brett Moreland.”

“And you are ?”

“Her boyfriend.”

“I understand your concern, but I promise to be gentle. Given the circumstances, I think she’ll want to talk to me. Timing is crucial to a murder investigation.”

Brett steepled his fingers on his forehead. “Murder. God, how did this happen? What was that kid into ?”

“Why do you think he was into something ?”

“Oh, I didn’t mean—hey, aren’t they all ? I just don’t know what to do. Claire isn’t doing so well.”

“I’d expect not.”

Brett didn’t seem to notice the remark. “You said you’re a friend?” “I knew her in high school.”

He looked the detective over again, with new eyes, and then grunted. Before he could respond, Claire shuffled into view behind him, wearing lavender sweats and a Creekville Football hoodie. The cuffs were rolled so the sleeves would fit her.

Brett turned, laying his hands on her shoulders as she approached. “You don’t have to talk to him right now, baby. You have rights.”

She stepped away from him and hugged her arms across her chest. “You think I care about rights?” She started to break down but composed herself with a shudder. Come in, Joe. I’ll do everything I can to help.”

“I guess I’ll go to the store,” her boyfriend called out, as Preach stepped past him. “Unless you need me ?”

She waved him off.

“You still need almond milk?”

Her face twisted, furious at the innocent tone, the intrusion of daily routine on her grief. “Just go.”

Preach watched him walk toward a Mercedes S-Class and beep the lock. After Claire closed the front door, Preach asked, “What’s he do?” “He has an Internet marketing company. Vertical Integration or something.” A hiccup of a laugh slipped through the sadness. “To be honest, I don’t really know. Every time he tries to tell me, my eyes glaze over.”

“So he’s probably got a lot of money.”

She gave a sad smile and looked away. Preach heard the unspoken story, saw the quick clench of her jaw.

The interior was a modern open floor plan that comprised most of the first floor. Moving as if dazed, she led him to a sectional sofa across from a stacked stone fireplace. Preach shrugged out of his coat and sat a few feet away. Before he started the interview, he leaned in and took her hand. “I can only imagine how hard this is. If you need to stop, let me know.”

“I want to help.”

He gave a slow nod. “Okay.”

“Thank you for coming. I know it didn’t have to be you.”

“It kind of did. But you’re welcome.”

She gave a little shiver, still huddled within the protective embrace of her own arms. “What do you need?”

“I’ll need to see David’s room, but why don’t you take me through the day he disappeared?”

Her arms uncrossed and moved to her lap, her thumbs rubbing against each other as if she couldn’t sit still. “It was a day like any other. A school day. I made him eggs and toast and bacon . . . I still make him breakfast . . . and he left for school.”

“Is the old Wrangler outside his ?”

“It breaks down all the time, but he loves it.” Her face crumpled as she looked down. “Loved.”

“Who brought it back?”

Her eyes lifted. “Sorry?”

“I assumed . . . go ahead and finish, please.”

“After he left, I went to work, as I always do. I’ve been at the boutique for a few years now. I get home at five and make dinner. He got home from practice late, around six-thirty. He seemed a little preoccupied and wouldn’t talk about his day.”

“Was that strange ? Was he open with you?”

“He used to be, until he started high school. Except for my mom, we’re all the family each other has. My dad is dead, and David’s father’s parents are in a nursing home in Pennsylvania.”

“Have you contacted his father ?”

“Brett sent him a text this morning.”

Preach’s eyebrows lifted.

“We don’t talk,” she said.

“What about him and David?”

“Barely. I don’t really know anymore.”

She didn’t explain further, and Preach made a mental note. “Does he live close?”

“Richmond.”

The absence of emotion on her face, as if all feeling had long ago been stripped away, spoke louder than words.

“Do you think something happened at school ? Maybe at practice ?”

“I don’t know. He’d been acting weird all week.”

“In what way?”

“Just . . . preoccupied. But he was a teenager, you know? That’s more usual than not.”

“Was he a well-adjusted kid in general?”

“As well adjusted as a kid can be whose father abandoned him.”

She said it deadpan, with as little emotion as her earlier mention of her son’s father.

“No recent fights at school?” he asked.

Her hands moved to cup the back of her neck, gently massaging. “He was such a good boy, Joe. Never in trouble. Good grades. Lots of friends.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “He had his whole life ahead of him. He was so young. My baby . . .”

She began to cry, shielding her brow with her hand. When she didn’t stop, he reached for her hand and gently squeezed it. In return, she dug her nails into his palm with the strength of the bereaved.

After letting her hand slide away, she blew her nose and composed herself.

“I can come back later,” he said.

“No. We do this now.”

His eyes flicked to the fireplace, taking in the photos strung along the mantle. David throwing a football, David at the prom with a tall blond girl, David and Claire posing on a mountaintop, David in the back of a boat with some friends. He was a strikingly handsome kid, with a fine-boned face and large expressive eyes. Gentler, more refined than Preach at that age. There was also a depth in David’s eyes, a brooding self-awareness that Preach knew had never been present in his own. At least not until his senior year when he had watched his cousin Ricky suffer a horrible death, and Preach’s self-awareness had come swooping in like a vicious homing pigeon.

But enough of all that. “So he came home, was acting a little off, and you sat down to dinner ?”

“Fried chicken and waffles with chocolate sauce.” She flashed a wan smile. “His favorite.”

“Homework after dinner?”

“We didn’t finish until eight or so. He disappeared to his room for a while, maybe for homework, probably for Snapchat, and by the time I washed up and saw him again it was after nine. We—” She paused and looked out the window to her left, at the pine cone-strewn yard behind the house that sloped down to a tract of woods. “We had an argument.”

“About school?”

“About Brett.”

She stood and walked to a cabinet in the kitchen. After sloshing Jack Daniels into a rocks glass, she took a long drink, her face wrinkling in displeasure. “I assume you don’t want one ?”

“No.”

She returned to the sofa and stared into the glass. As the silence lengthened, despite the professional nature of his visit and the terrible circumstances behind it, he caught himself looking at the curve of her neck, and a jolt of attraction coursed through him. As beautiful as Claire still was, it was not so much a physical longing for the grieving, disheveled woman on the sofa, but rather a ghost of unrequited lust rattling its chains, the return of a supernatural force that had once consumed him.

He forced the intrusion away, thinking of Ari, berating himself for the weak moment.

“David didn’t approve of Brett,” she said finally. “He didn’t think he was good for me.”

He left the unspoken question hanging in the air. “How bad was their relationship ?”

“It wasn’t physical, if that’s what you mean. I doubt Brett could have laid a hand on David even if he’d wanted to. David was a strong kid.”

Preach wasn’t so sure about that. David may have been an athlete in the prime of his life, but he was still a kid. Adults had a different kind of strength, and a different outlook on violence. Grown men fought for keeps.

But he could talk about that with Brett.

“Let’s keep going. You argued. What happened next?”

She resumed staring into the glass, her head sinking lower, as if she hadn’t the strength to hold it up. “He ran out of the house and got in his Jeep. I heard him leave, and then—” she sobbed once, “that was the last time I saw my son alive.”

After giving her another moment, he said, “How did the Jeep get back here ?” When she looked at him in confusion, he continued, “Did you find it somewhere ? Or did someone report it ?”

“Oh. No. It was here when I woke up the next morning.”

“You didn’t hear him come in the night before ?”

“I was really upset about the argument. I . . . took some pills.” “What kind?”

She waved a hand. “Just something to help me sleep. Does it matter?”

“It might,” he said, then caught himself when she flinched. He wondered if he was overcompensating for his earlier moment of weakness. “If you were too far gone to hear a struggle.”

“You mean you think someone might have come to the house ?”

“I don’t know what I think.”

Her face fell. “It was just an Ambien. God, Joe, if I missed something that night—”

“Don’t think like that. You didn’t know.” She put her head in her hands and began to softly weep again. He yearned to leave this woman to her grief, but there was one more question he had to ask. He knew how the question would affect her, and it seemed as if he had to rip it out of his own gut. This wasn’t a hardened criminal in Atlanta or Charlotte, this was Claire Lourdis, grieving mother, lifelong citizen of Creekville, and denizen of his own past.

“Claire, do you own a gun?”

Her head slowly rose, and he winced at both the accusation and the suffering in her eyes. “I have a Ruger. It has a pink handle.”

“It’s called a grip,” he said, with a faint smile. “What’s the caliber?” “I have no idea.”

He could tell by the curtness of her answers what she thought of his line of questioning. He didn’t want to upset her by pressing further, and it would be easy for forensics to verify the type of gun that was used.

“Joe” she said, shaking her head. “Don’t waste your time.”

“It’s a standard question. I’m sorry I had to ask. Do you have David’s phone?”

“No. It wasn’t . . .” She couldn’t finish.

“We didn’t find it either. Can you give me his number? I’ll request the phone records.”

After she wrote the number down, he pushed to his feet. “Could I see his room, please?”

She pointed. “Up the stairs and to the left. I can’t . . . I’ll just stay here.”

“Of course.”

As he made his way upstairs, he noticed expensive furniture and elegant touches throughout, signs of careful selection at high-end department stores. Shiny pottery displayed on a mantle, a trio of diamond-shaped mirrors in the hallway. There was also a series of framed watercolors, impressionistic stick figures dancing in the moonlight that Preach suspected might be Claire’s. In high school she had been very artsy, a talented painter and singer as well as an aspiring actress. Her taste for clothes and jewelry was always impeccable, though she never had any money. Like most everyone else in the Creekville public school system, Claire’s family had gotten by just fine, but they were solidly middle class. Her mother had worked as a bank teller, and he couldn’t recall what her father had done. But Claire had never needed money to stand out. A born fashionista, she had bargain hunted and shopped at thrift stores and, if he remembered correctly from their few conversations, designed some of her own clothes.

In David’s room, a queen bed faced a television mounted on the wall. There was a set of dumbbells and dirty football pads in the corner, and a desk scattered with schoolbooks, notepads, pens, a photo of Claire, and one of David with his father. Stacked on the desk chair were a few college information packets: Davidson, Emory, Furman, and NYU. Atop a nightstand, he saw a leather cross necklace, three books, a football-shaped alarm clock, a recent copy of Men’s Health, and an iPhone stand with speakers.

Preach read the book titles. A Tale of Two Cities he guessed was a school read. The other two were American Gods by Neil Gaiman and a nonfiction book titled Why Does the World Exist?

When he returned to the living room, he asked, “David didn’t have a laptop ?”

“We shared one, but he rarely used it. Kids are always on their phones these days.”

“Was he religious?”

“You saw the necklace ?”

“And the books.”

“He picked the necklace up on a spring break trip to Charleston. He didn’t go to church or anything, though since he was young”—she gave a smile so wistful Preach felt a lurch in his stomach—”he always wanted to know where we came from and what happened after death. And now . . .”

As her eyes teared up again, he gave her his card. He had intruded enough for the day. “If you think of anything else,” he said quietly, “anything at all, let me know. The smallest detail might matter.”

She stood to see him out. When they reached the door, she teetered on her feet, as if she had lost her balance. He put a hand on her shoulder to steady her, and she gripped it. “It doesn’t feel real, Joe,” she whispered. “I don’t know what I could have done—”

“Claire!” he said sharply. “You can’t let yourself go there.”

“Go where? Where is there left to go?” She snarled and stepped closer. “Somebody murdered my baby boy. Shot him and left him lying in the bottom of a goddamned swamp.” She jabbed him hard in the chest. “You find out who did this, you understand? Find him and hide him somewhere, then take me to him. I’ll do the rest of your job for you.”

As he backed through the door, the intensity of her stare burned into him as if cauterizing a wound. “I’ll do everything I can,” he said. “You have my word.”

“You find him” she said, right before he turned and walked away. “You find him.”

On his way out, Preach searched David’s Jeep and found nothing of interest. A few smelly clothes on the back seat, empty Gatorade bottles, candy wrappers, a pair of movie ticket stubs, and an iPhone charger. He called a tow to impound the vehicle so forensics could search for hair and other fibers.

As Preach was pulling away from Claire’s house, he saw Brett’s black Mercedes with custom rims turn onto her street. Preach reversed, lowered the window, and pulled alongside the sedan. “Can I talk to you at home later ?”

Brett frowned. “I guess. Why?”

“Just a chat.”

“About what?”

Preach didn’t bother with a reply. “What’s your address?”

He hesitated. “212 Baddington Street. Chapel Hill.”

“Six o’clock sound okay?”

“If we need to talk,” Brett said, “why don’t we do it here ? I’m free for a few minutes.”

“I think Claire could use a break.”

“We can go in the garage, light a stogie—”

“Brett.” Preach stared at him until the other man glanced away. When Brett turned back, his eyes were more wary. “Sure. I get it. I eat early, so maybe we could push—”

“I’ll see you at six.”