Page 41 of The Witch's Orchard
I nod.
“It’s that or she was here the whole time,” I say. “I don’t know what’s more unlikely. But either way—”
“Makes you sick, don’t it?” AJ says, finally turning toward me.
“Yeah,” I say. “It does.”
It’s all I can manage. I watch the wind in the field, try not to think about it.
“If shewerehere,” I say, “who would have the means to hide a girl for that long?”
AJ says, “About anyone with a little bit of land. Even anyone with an extra room. Two young girls, I guess all you’d need is a sturdy setup. Everyone around here values their privacy, and we respect it until there’s a reason not to. So, as long as Molly and Jessica were kept somewhere out of sight, somewhere they couldn’t make too much noise…”
“She could’ve been just about anywhere,” I say. “Some kind ofFlowers in the Atticsituation.”
“Right,” AJ says.
Deputy Flora comes out of the house with her case snapped up.
“All done,” she says. “You’re free to go on back inside.”
“Find anything exciting?” I ask.
“Looks like he came in through the bathroom window. The lock on that side was jimmied off. I found what was left of it on the floor.”
I nod, and she heads down the steps, gets in her cruiser, and drives away.
“Your sheriff isn’t gonna like me staying around this town,” I say.
“That’s okay,” he says, watching the cruiser disappear down the lane. “Iwant you to stay.”
“You don’t trust Jacobs?”
He shakes his head. “It’s not that. Jacobs is a good man, but he’s shortsighted and underfunded. Ten years ago, the cops looked for the girls. Fish and Wildlife looked for the girls. Hunters with bloodhounds looked for the girls. The FBI came down and looked for the girls. Hell, even my scout troop pitched in, combing the woods. Nobody found anything, and after that, officially, it was over.”
“But unofficially?”
“Unofficially, off the record, Cole Jacobs has a whole board of evidence still standing in his home office. I saw it once. When I became a deputy, he and his wife had me over for dinner. I don’t think I was supposed to see it. I took a wrong turn looking for the toilet. “Anyway, he’s never been able to find anything. And I don’t think it’s for want of looking.”
“So, what’s the problem?”
“The problem is him and me and Max and all the rest of us were born here. We have our own suspicions and we have our own biases.”
I think about Mandy Hoyle and the way Kathleen Jacobs had called the Hoyles “trashy.” I think about how the FBI didn’t show up until Cole Jacobs’s niece was kidnapped. I think about how she’s the only one that was ever brought back.
Until now.
“You want fresh eyes,” I say.
“Weneedfresh eyes. My kin went to school with Max’s kin who went to school with Sheriff Jacobs and all their kin went to school with each other and married each other and whatever. Weknoweach other.”
“Or you think you do.”
“That’s the problem,” he admits.
“What can you tell me about Susan McKinney?” I ask. “The old woman who lives in the woods across the creek.”
“Susan? You run into her?”
