THE PRESS CONFERENCE was scheduled for one p.m. in an 1870s plantation home that had been converted into a hotel called the Planter’s House.
Chief Dooger had asked me to meet him in a caretaker’s cottage behind the hotel.
I parked and found the place. Some private cigar room out back. The ceiling was made of tin squares that had been painted a deep red. The walls had decorative oak molding from floor to ceiling.
“P.T.” Miles motioned me inside.
My oldest friend and mentor on the force sat in the dark.
“Grab some wood,” he said, motioning me into a leather chair with copper rivets along the arms. On the table between us was a bottle of Evan Williams 23. I’d heard of this variety, but never seen one in person.
“I wanted to meet privately before the presser,” Miles said. “Let’s start with a toast.”
Miles poured the Kentucky liquor into two lowball glasses and lifted one. “To cases that don’t require juries,” he said. “The fastest and cheapest prosecution around.”
I’d never heard anyone use this as a toast, but I lifted my glass.
My phone buzzed with a text as the warm liquid coated my throat. It was from Gattling, the blue-suiter.
Guy from ’93 never paroled. He was killed in a prison fight in ’99.
“I know you’re still going through the details,” Miles said. “And no one’s expecting you to answer a bunch of questions today. I’m just gonna say that Burkette was our number one suspect in Kendrick’s death. There’s still a lot of loose ends. Questions about how. Questions about why.”
“Good.” I nodded, glancing a second time at the text.
The killer from the ’93 crime wasn’t paroled and roaming around. He was dead.
This meant that if there was any connection to twenty-five years ago, it had to be a coincidence.
Miles noticed me looking at my phone.
“There’s no update I should know about, is there?” he asked.
I thought of Abe’s career. Of how it could be ruined if I opened my piehole about Burkette’s shooting. If I threw out some crazy theory about a picture on Burkette’s phone.
“No,” I said. “No update.”
“Good,” Miles said. “Because I’ll let you in on a little secret. This bottle”—he pointed at the Evan Williams 23—“was bought for both of us. I met Toby Monroe in this room an hour ago. Talked him through what happened.”
“Toby Monroe as in Georgia’s governor?”
Miles smiled. “Said he’s got his eye on you, P.T. Made me really proud. Proud to have you on the force. Proud to be the guy who taught you everything you know.”
“I’m pretty sure you just taught me where the vending machine was,” I said. “Where the bathrooms are . . . how to avoid filling out paperwork.”
“We call that delegation.” Miles laughed.
He pulled out a business card of his and flipped it over. A phone number was scribbled on the back.
“Governor wanted you to have this,” Miles said. “In case y’ever need anything.”
I looked at the business card.
“His private line,” Miles said.
“Wow,” I said, pocketing it.
Miles winked at me then, raising his glass. “And as for Mason Falls, let’s just say there’s a good chance the next state police lab might be built off I-32.”
I toasted to that, knowing Miles had been working his ass off to get that lab here. The local economy could use it.
We got up after the next drink and walked around to the front of the hotel. A college kid was playing “Jingle Bells” on the lobby piano, dressed in a suit that was two sizes too big. We entered a ballroom. A podium stood up front, a single chair to its side.
Miles stood in front of the podium and made a small statement, talking about the menace that entered our community and how proud he was of how the police handled the investigation.
He mentioned me and Abe by name, but left out Remy, who was at home ever since the YouTube video had surfaced.
“Chief Dooger,” a guy from CNN said. “Does the department reflect the race of the communities it serves?”
“I believe so. We had three detectives on this case. Two of them were African American.”
Reporters took notes. Drilled Miles from a dozen different angles. When they got to me, I didn’t give them much to bite on, because there wasn’t much I could say yet. As the press conference ended, reporters continued with Miles, and I walked out the side door to my truck.
I was tired and wondered if I really had to keep looking into the cases. The crime in ’93 had been solved, and it wasn’t in my jurisdiction.
Who cared how Burkette and Rowe knew each other? They were both white supremacists, and one of them had killed Kendrick. Miles was right. Silent justice was often smarter than what we could dole out in a courtroom.
I steered myself back toward the cigar room behind the hotel. I was betting the bottle of Evan Williams was still sitting on the table.
So what if Burkette was at the county fair at the time of Kendrick’s abduction? He still could’ve taken the information from Kendrick’s text and sent it to Virgil Rowe. Tipping Rowe off to the boy’s location. Maybe Burkette took the pictures at the county fair with the prize pig purposely for that reason—to establish an alibi for himself. After all, who takes a selfie with a pig?
“Detective Marsh,” a voice said.
I turned and saw a patrolman. Young guy. Slicked-back hair. I’d seen him around, but didn’t know his name.
“We got a woman who needs to talk to you.”
“What for?” I asked.
“Yeah, uh . . .” He stumbled on his words. “She came for the press conference, but had some sorta seizure in the ladies’ room.”
He pointed at the hotel. “She’s better now, but refused an ambulance. Asked for you by name.”
I headed back to the lobby where I’d come in a half hour ago, and the blue-suiter steered me into one of the conference rooms. A black woman sat on a couch.
She was in her seventies and dressed in an island-themed dress that my wife would’ve called a muumuu. It was green with orange butterflies and flowers.
But what was most striking were her eyes.
The vessels in her left eye were popped, and black mascara was mixed in with something dark and reddish below both eyes. It looked like blood. She had a stinger of a red bruise on her chin too.
“My name is Dathel Mackey, Detective,” she said. “I work for the Websters at First Baptist.”
This was the woman from Abe’s notes. From the Q&A I’d read last night.
“How can I help you, Ms. Mackey?”
She unfolded a flyer from her pocketbook. It was the same one that Remy had seen on the Websters’ fridge.
“I saw an evil man the night of this talk,” she said. “And it wasn’t Mr. Burkette.”
“Can you describe the man?”
“He was white,” she said. “Big black beard down to his collarbone. Big teeth. Good-looking like you. In his thirties.”
Big teeth?
I picked up the scent of kitchen spices as she spoke. Of nutmeg and ginger. “And you think what?” I asked. “That he’s connected somehow to Kendrick’s death?”
“Are you a believer, Detective Marsh?”
“I grew up going to Sunday school.”
“When I was fifty-one, I took a pilgrimage to Trinidad. I got separated from the group and was kidnapped,” she continued. “They thought I had money. Held me for a week. Beat me something awful.”
I shook my head. She wasn’t a small woman, and there was an intensity right below the surface.
“I came back with the gift of sight,” she said. “The man I saw is a hunter. Hits women. Tortures animals.”
As she spoke, a tear of blood dripped from the corner of her right eye. I noticed bruises on her arms and neck. Probably from falling during seizures.
“Are you all right, Ms. Mackey? Your eye.” I pointed.
“The gift comes with a cost,” she said.
She leaned into me and whispered so the patrolman couldn’t hear.
“When I close my eyes, I can see the rope, Detective. The one you found around Kendrick’s neck.”
I stared at her. Dumbstruck.
Impossible, Purvis said.
“Don’t worry, hon,” she said. “I haven’t told the Websters. What could be worse for a parent to learn?”
I hadn’t breathed in about ten seconds, and I exhaled. Told the patrolman I could talk to Ms. Mackey on my own.
“So when I saw this man,” she continued. “I could sense the pure evil in him.”
Virgil Rowe, the arsonist, didn’t have a beard, but I pulled his picture out of my satchel anyway, to be sure. “Is this the man?”
“No,” she said. “The hunter I saw, Detective . . . maybe I could describe him, and you got someone who can make a picture for me?”
“Sure, we have a sketch artist,” I said.
I hesitated. “I got an odd question for you, Ms. Mackey. We found a pair of Kendrick’s underwear out in the shed where Burkette was living. Did you ever see Cory Burkette around young boys?”
“Not in the way you’re thinking,” she said. “But I do all the laundry, Mr. Marsh. Mr. Burkette’s, right along with the family’s. So I wouldn’t take too much stock if you found underwear in that shed.”
“Meaning what?”
“It’s highly possible I just sorted one of Kendrick’s underwear out in Mr. Burkette’s dresser. It’s happened before. Socks too.”
I shook my head again. Another vote for Burkette’s innocence.
“So this guy you saw,” I said. “It’s been a couple days. Do you think you remember him well enough to describe his face and eyes? Or did you see him again today, during your seizure?”
“Today I saw something different,” she said, wiping the blood from the corner of her eye.
“Today it was a different boy,” she said. “Muscular and darker. Someone was burning him too. But it wasn’t nowadays, Detective. In the midst of the vision I saw a year. A month. It was November 1993.”