Page 2 of The Witch's Orchard
“A lot of grannies used to,” Max says.
We both look down at the photo of the doll, its shriveled apple head resembling an old lady, its black eyes—mere cavities in the apple flesh—seeming deep and endless. It wears a bright red dress with white lace at the neck and a white petticoat underneath. These old-timey dolls are cute or nightmarish depending on who you ask, but considering the context, I’m guessing Max is in the latter category.
Max turns the page again and there’s a newspaper article fromThe Quartz Creek Heraldthat reads, “Third Girl Taken.” He points at the spread of black-and-white photos on the front page.
“When I was eight years old, three little girls in my town were kidnapped. The first was Jessica Hoyle.” He turns the page to show me a girl who looks about four or five, with pale blond hair and expressive blue eyes. “And the second was Olivia Jacobs.” He points at a picture of a girl with porcelain skin, her gaze directed off camera, her chestnut hair curly and free.
“Both times,” Max says, “an applehead doll was left in their place.”
“Oh…” I say. And what I want to say is “Jesus Christ. That’s horrible.” Which isn’t new or helpful information for the brother of one of the girls who was taken and who has clearly been keeping a scrapbook with all the details of the crime ever since.
“After Olivia Jacobs was taken, it was pretty clear something was going on,” Max says. “Parents started guarding their kids, not letting them leave the house, no playing in the park without an adult around. But then… about two weeks after she was kidnapped, Olivia was brought back.”
“Broughtback?” I lean forward, look closer at Olivia, at the page opposite to Jessica.
“Yeah,” Max says. “And then four days after she was returned, my sister was taken. And an applehead doll was left inherplace.”
My heart picks up speed, looking at these kids, these little girls all part of something strange and horrific. I look away from the book and back at Max, and his haunted, intense, birdlike quality makes a lot more sense now.
“I was at home,” he volunteers. “I had a piano lesson that day. My mom was out in the garden, weeding. The last time I saw Molly, she was sitting on the couch watchingSnow White. My mom checked on her before she went out and Molly was asleep. I went outside to play after my lesson and, when I came back inside, she was just…”
“Gone,” I say, making myself look at the two other girls. “And they never found Jessica?”
“No,” he says, shaking his head. “Only Olivia was ever returned.”
He flips back to the first photograph, the one of Molly, and says, “Molly was four years old in this picture. It was taken about a week before she was kidnapped. It’s the last picture of her we ever got.”
“But there must have been an investigation,” I say.
“The cops looked. We don’t have much in Quartz Creek. Just the county sheriff’s station, which consists of the sheriff and five deputies. Fish and wildlife. The FBI came down after Molly disappeared. The search went on for about a year, but…”
“Nothing.”
I look back at the newspaper article, check the date. The article is ten years old. I think back to my own life, a decade in the past. I grew up only a few hours from Max and his family but I was in the Air Force when the kidnappings occurred. I was half a world away, trying hard to forget all the reasons I’d joined to begin with.
“It’s like they vanished,” he says breathily. He spreads his hands in front of me like he’s offering something. Or begging for something. “I started this… casebook, as I thought of it, a couple years later. I was about ten. I just… I felt like I needed to do something. I still do.”
“Max…” I start.
“I know,” he says. “I know. I started working when I was fourteen, trying to save up. I did lawn work and I waited tables until the steak house closed down. There’s not a lot of work in Quartz Creek. So, I fixed up an old cabin on our property. I’ve been renting it out as an Airbnb—mostly to fishermen—it’s not fancy or anything but I’ve got money. And I can offer you room and board so—”
“Max…” I try, but there’s no stopping him at this point. He’d probably practiced this spiel all the way from Western North Carolina.
“My folks hired a PI about a year after my sister disappeared, but they could only get the best one they could afford and that wasn’t much. He poked around for a while, never turned up anything.”
The gravy on my plate is cold now, congealed and gray. I push the plate aside and pick up my coffee, take a long drink.
“I want to hire you, Miss Gore. I need to do this.”
After a moment I say, “Max, after this long, the odds—”
“I know. But that’s why I came here. In person. I wanted to meet you. I read about you. I know you’re the one who solved the Lehman case.”
I let out a sigh.
“The Lehman case was—”
“It was cold for nine years,” he says.
