They went straight to the marsh from the school—it was turning into that kind of day.
The body had been found in New Baltimore, about twelve miles northeast of the high school, in a boggy area of Anchor Bay not far from Walter and Mary Burke Park, where Owen watched fireworks as a boy. The area was public enough (downtown shopping and popular beaches were close by) that both men wondered if the killer was trying to make a statement.
It took a moment for the startling connection to be made: the girl who provided the information that led to the discovery of Winston Collins’s body was the very same who stabbed the star athlete to death. In the sheriff’s mind, Renée “Honeychile” Devonshire was quite possibly a double-murderer.
Owen phoned Dr. Robart from the exhumation site. When she asked him certain details about what they had found, it was compelling enough that the sheriff broke confidentiality. He told her that toilet paper had been stuffed down the boy’s throat and all of his teeth removed. When he shared about the penis being severed, the therapist said that Renée, “speaking as Winston,” had told her the killer “hurt my mouth and pee-pee with a sword.”
He needed to speak with the parents right away—but most of all, he needed to interview “Honeychile.” Unfortunately, that would have to wait. When he called the hospital, they said she’d become violent and was hallucinating. The doctors were bombing her with antipsychotics.
Standing on the sidelines of the dig, Willow’s thoughts drifted to the bedroom of Elaine Rummer—then back to the Cold Case conference room with its files and baggies, its corkboard and spilled evidentiary detritus. He floated there awhile before dipping his toe in the stream of subconscious memory, whose waters lapped up on the old Rummer place—
July 4, 2000.
Their photos weren’t on the corkboard, but he could already see them there, pinned in his mind’s eye:
Roy Eakins and his ungainly son, Grundy.
Harold and Rayanne camped out in the family waiting room of Macomb County General’s psych wing.
They wouldn’t let them see their daughter and Rayanne was right behind Honeychile in losing her mind.
She blamed herself for not having listened to the therapist. Harold reminded her that he hadn’t believed the woman either—how could anyone have? Rayanne attacked it from all angles. One minute she was attributing the surreal, horrendous events to some undiscovered neurological quirk of cleidocranial dysplasia; the next, indicting Honeychile’s birth parents for being a “minefield of shitty genes,” something she’d always believed but never dared declare out loud. She even went after the bully football player, impugning him for sending those cruel, disgusting texts to their daughter. (They’d looked at her phone before handing it over to the police.) When Harold gave her a look that she’d gone too far and was being unchristian, she grew quiet and relented, though without becoming contrite.
Rayanne said We need an attorney and Harold said We’ll talk about it later. Rayanne wondered if they should reach out to the parents of the dead boy and Harold said Too soon, talk about it later. She broke down and said Oh, Harold! What if they put her in jail and throw away the key? and Harold said They’re not going to do that, Rayanne. She wrung her hands and said They never allow an insanity defense, never! and Harold said Maybe not on TV but they do in real life, they do it all the time. He said it like a seasoned criminal lawyer.
Zelda came by with her parents and sat with the Devonshires awhile. Zelda’s mom and dad were kind, but standoffish. Later Rayanne told Harold it was “obvious” Zelda’s folks never liked their Honeychile, never liked the way she looked or acted, never liked her “bad influence.” Did you see how far away they sat? Like we had shit on our shoes. Harold said she was being too sensitive and that Zelda’s parents behaved just fine.
Two cops came into the waiting room after Zelda left. When they said they were here to see their daughter and just wanted to say a quick hello, Rayanne’s eyes sparkled for the first time since the world turned on end.
“Please,” said Rayanne, in the quietest, sanest way she could muster. “Please tell them it’s all right for us to see our baby. She’s probably so scared! And please come back! Come back and tell us how she’s doing?”
Lydia promised she would.
They wore their old deputy uniforms, a strategy both cagey and naive, thinking they could bluster their way into visiting the girl under cover of “official business.”
Why had they come in the first place?
This time it was on Daniel’s instigation.
A few days before the high school killing, he awakened from a deep sleep with an overwhelming feeling (like the one Lydia had about Rhonda) that “Winston,” the new girl from the Meeting, was in some kind of danger. When they learned Honeychile had been arrested for murder, the vision was validated. The two of them rehashed Dabba Doo’s theory that wires had been crossed and decided more would be revealed—once they got into a room with her.
But the head nurse wouldn’t allow it.
The frustrated deputies returned to the waiting room. When they told her, Rayanne was stoic. She knew what she was about to say was futile but couldn’t help herself.
“Did she ask for us? Did they say that she asked for us?”
“We didn’t talk all that long,” said Lydia. “The nurse kind of had her hands full.”
The deputy wisely kept to herself the only intel they were able to gather: that Honeychile had been screaming for her mother—whom she alternately referred to as “Hildy-Bear,” “Mommy Bear” and “Mrs. Collins.”
The next morning at the office, Willow laid into them.
“What the fuck was that little stunt about?” Lydia and Daniel stared at the floor and took it in the neck; there was nothing else to do. “Do you know the shit I got from the sheriff about you going to see that girl? What did you think you were doing?” They remained silent. “Open your mouths and give me some fucking answers. Now!”
“She’s—a family friend,” said Lydia, without looking up.
“A family friend?” said Willow, his rage building. “Really?”
Daniel improvised. “We know her folks, that’s all. It was . . . an emotional decision and we were wrong.”
“It was dumb,” said Lydia. “Totally inappropriate and we’re sorry.”
“How do you know the family?”
Daniel made an executive decision that the only way out of the shit was to go deeper in. “I know the dad from a veterans’ group. I work with a PTSD group.”
“Harold and Rayanne called us from the hospital,” said Lydia. “They sounded so frightened. My heart went out.”
Willow was still red hot. “What in hell did you think you could accomplish by seeing that girl?”
“It was stupid,” said Lydia. “They wouldn’t let her see her parents and then we thought that if we could get in to see Honeychile for a few minutes, we might be able to calm the girl down.”
“Calm her down,” said Willow, stunned by their idiocy.
“Maybe make it easier for Owen and his people to interview her,” said Daniel, in futile damage control.
Willow looked like he was going to have an embolism.
“They wouldn’t let the parents see her—they won’t let the fucking sheriff see her—but somehow you two, the casual acquaintances and bleeding hearts—somehow you thought, We’ll ride in like the cavalry and save the day for the department! That it’d be just a wonderful idea to drop in on the prime suspect of an ongoing homicide investigation and potentially contaminate said investigation. Is that what you’re telling me?”
“I know, I know,” said Lydia, in star-spangled my bad mode. “It’s totally crazy and effed-up, and, sir, we completely apologize.”
“A terrible judgment call,” added Daniel.
Willow shook his head in disgust and resignation.
“I’ll tell you who you’re going to have to make those apologies to: Sheriff Owen Caplan. You better hope and pray he’s not going to hang your asses out to dry. And not just from this unit—you better hope he doesn’t ask you to turn in your guns and badges, period. That man went out on the line to put you here and you go and do something so stupid, like a couple of kids—”
“We’re sorry, sir,” said Daniel.
“It won’t happen again,” said Lydia.
“Damn straight it won’t. I’ll fire you myself.”
The sheriff spoke to Zelda at the Mount Clemens office of the Detective Bureau, with her parents present. He would have liked to have done the interview at her home but needed everything on video. Honeychile’s best friend was completely unglued, crying nonstop. He was joined by the detective lieutenant heading the case, but Owen was taking charge for now.
About fifteen minutes in, he asked Mom and Dad if they would mind waiting outside. They didn’t, of course, because he’d already had a private conversation about it with them. He said there were things a teenager tended not to talk about if their parents were in the room. They understood.
“Zelda,” he said, softly sympathetic. “I know this has been very, very hard on you. It’s a terrible shock and I know that you’re worried about your friend. But I want to assure you that right now she’s in the absolute best place she could be, getting the best of care.”
“K,” said Zelda, sniffling and avoiding his eyes.
The detective lieutenant sat back, doing his best to become part of the wallpaper so as not to antagonize the girl.
“Can you tell me a little bit about Renée?”
“We call her Honeychile.”
“Right—Honeychile. From everything I’ve heard, she sounds like a very good person. A sweet, decent girl.”
“She is,” said the loyal friend. “Oh my God, she’s the best.”
“That’s why what happened is so hard to understand. Because I’ve talked to a lot of people about her. And they say she’s a wonderful, funny girl. A joy to be with. That’s not up for argument—that’s a fact.”
Zelda nodded. She was getting calmer, which was good. It was all about building trust.
“What really bothers me,” she said emotionally, “is that people are saying—some people—that she was on drugs. She is so not on drugs, she hates drugs. She never even tried marijuana!”
He pushed a box of Kleenex her way.
“Okay. Okay. And I believe that. I really do believe that, Zelda. And I understand how hurtful it is to hear people make false accusations about a friend.”
“They are so false!” she said, blowing her nose.
“What I need to know—what I’d like to know, if you’ll help me—is if there was anything you noticed that was different about her, different about your friend. In the past few days or weeks. If she was hanging out with any kids or even grown-ups that you didn’t know. At school or outside of school—”
“Not really,” she said, nonplussed.
“I need you to think about it. Really think. Because it’s important—if you want to help your friend. If you want to help Honeychile.”
“All I want to do is help her!”
“I know. I know that. And you’re helping her right now, Zelda, just by meeting with me and talking with me in exactly the way that you’re doing. I just need you to think about what I asked. And it doesn’t matter if it’s a big thing or a small thing, Zelda, you can let me decide. All I want you to do is go back in your mind and think—we can meet again too—go back and search your thoughts about Honeychile’s activities and behavior over the last few weeks.”
“Well . . . she did start acting kind of different—”
“Okay. Good. Tell me about it.”
“After the asthma attack.”
“She had an asthma attack.”
“A really bad one.”
“When was that?”
“Maybe a week ago? Oh my God, we thought she was going to die. Maybe she got scared that it would happen again. Maybe she started acting different because she thought it was going to happen again and that she would die. It was really, really bad.”
“Can you tell me how she was acting ‘different’?”
She shook her head and he didn’t want to press.
“Did Honeychile ever mention Mrs. Collins?”
“The woman who placed her?” said Zelda.
“That’s right. Did she ever talk about her?”
“Not really—but I know she really loved her.”
“Did Honeychile ever talk about Mrs. Collins’s little boy? She had a son named Winston. You probably heard what happened to him.” Zelda nodded. “Did she ever talk about Winston?”
“I don’t think so—”
“Did she ever tell you about going to visit Mrs. Collins?”
“No . . .”
“Are you sure? That would have been sometime recently. Are you sure she never mentioned going to see Mrs. Collins?”
“She didn’t!”
Owen believed she was telling the truth. Still, he followed the theme. “Did Honeychile ever say anything to you about Winston, before or after he disappeared? Anything at all? It’s important, Zelda.”
“No.”
“She never said she was upset about what happened? That she was upset for Mrs. Collins and wished she could find the people who were responsible for what happened to her little boy?” Zelda kept shaking her head. “Did the two of you ever go to the beach together?”
“Not really.”
“‘Not really’—does that mean ‘maybe’? Try to remember. Did you ever go to New Baltimore? The beach over there? I used to go when I was a kid. There’s a pier there and a park. Did Honeychile ever take you there?”
She shook her head once more, then said, “There was something—it sounds really dumb . . .”
“If it’s ‘dumb,’” he said, smiling, “which I promise it won’t be, then we’ll laugh about it together.”
“Honeychile asked if she could sleep over. After she had the asthma attack. We’d been fighting so much I thought it would be really nice. The next day, we went to the museum in Detroit. Five classes went. And we . . .”
“Go ahead, Zelda.”
“Am I going to get in trouble for this?”
“You’re not going to get in any trouble, I promise.”
“Well—Honeychile said there was someplace she needed to go, so we left. I don’t want to get thrown out of school for this!”
“You’re fine. No one has to know but you and me.”
“We left—I mean, while everyone else was still there. But only during lunch hour! We were totally back in time and no one even found out.”
“Where’d you go?”
“To this church—we took a cab.”
“You went to a church . . .”
“I don’t think she ever went there before, but it was like she knew exactly where she was going. But they wouldn’t let us in.”
“Who wouldn’t let you in?”
“These people. It was weird, I can’t explain! This woman . . . actually, they wouldn’t let me in, they were going to let her in but the woman said I couldn’t come. Honeychile told the woman no way—that she wasn’t going to go if I couldn’t go.”
“You said that she told a woman. What woman?”
“She was older and wore a long dress. And jewelry—like turquoise jewelry? She said I couldn’t come with. She wasn’t, like, mean about it, she was really nice. She said I could sit outside and they’d bring me cookies and lemonade. But only Honeychile was allowed to go in.”
“Then what happened?”
“We left.”
“Did Honeychile tell you who the woman was?”
“I don’t think she even knew,” said Zelda. “It wasn’t like they were friends.”
“Did Honeychile tell you what was going on? After you left?”
“She wouldn’t. I kept asking but I finally gave up.” Zelda’s face contorted in a mask of misery. “It wasn’t her fault, what she did! Everyone hated him! He was a bully and everyone hated him!” Her entire body seized. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I know he shouldn’t have died, no one deserves to die, but he was so horrible, he texted such horrible things to her! People don’t have a right to do that either, do they? And I know she probably didn’t mean to hurt him like that—she probably didn’t even know what she was doing! Because she’s a really, really good person! And I just want to see her! I just really need to see her! Can’t I see her? Why can’t I see her! Why can’t I see her?”
He knew the interview was over.