JOHNSON LED US back through the village in his truck, almost to the mainland bridge.
Then he turned off and parked at the Dauphin Island Marina. Fewer than half of the slips were occupied, and the office and snack shack on the waterfront both looked closed and shuttered for the season.
We followed him up one of the three long docks to a sport fishing boat called the May. A heavyset woman, presumably Mrs. Johnson, was waiting on the deck. She looked at us a lot more skeptically than her husband had.
“This them?” she said.
“You know it is, May. Let’s go.”
She didn’t move. “This girl’s been through a living hell, do you understand me? You need to go easy with her.”
I had no quarrel with the attitude; actually, I was grateful for it. We assured Mrs. Johnson that we’d be good with the girl, and then followed her down to the little cabin below deck.
“Annie” was sitting in the crook of the dining banquette, looking drawn and nervous. Even so, she was an obviously beautiful girl, with the kind of china doll features that Tony Nicholson seemed to have favored for Blacksmith Farms. Her cargo pants and baggy pink sweatshirt were either borrowed or thrift shop specials, and she had a gray canvas sling on her right arm. She was huddled over, and when she moved, I could see that her back, where she’d been shot, still hurt quite a bit.
Mahoney started with introductions and asked if she was willing to give us her name.
“It’s Hannah,” she said, tentatively at first. “Hannah Willis. Is that something you can help me with? Becoming somebody else? Witness protection, or whatever it is you use these days.”
Ned explained that the US Attorney’s Office would decide if she even needed to testify, but if so, then yes, she was a perfect candidate for WitSec. In the meantime, he assured her, we wouldn’t record anything that she had to tell us.
“Let’s start with what happened to you,” I said. “The night Aubrey picked you up in his truck.”
She nodded slowly, mustering the memory, or maybe just the will to tell it. May Johnson sat next to her, holding her hand the whole time.
“It was supposed to be some kind of private party at Blacksmith,” Hannah said. “We didn’t know anything except the client code name. Zeus. You think maybe he has a high opinion of himself? Code name is a god?”
“Was this party held in the apartment over the carriage barn?” I asked.
“That’s right.” She seemed surprised that I already knew. “I’d never been up there before. I knew the pay was better.”
“When you say ‘we,’ ” Ned asked, “how many of you were there with Zeus?”
“Just me and one other girl, Nicole,” she said. “Although I doubt that was her real name.”
It also wasn’t the first time I’d heard it used in a conversation like this. I could feel my heart thumping as I reached into my pocket and took out the picture of Caroline that I’d been carrying with me from the start of this terrible, unholy mess.
“Is this her, Hannah?” I asked.
She nodded, and the tears started to come.
“Yes, sir. That’s the girl who died. That’s Nicole.”