Page 18 of Tell Me (Savannah 3)

One of the news vans had vacated the lot, but Nikki knew there would be more. Blondell O’Henry was going to be at the forefront of news, not only in Georgia but throughout the South and perhaps across the nation, and Nikki planned to be front and center on the story.

She switched on the engine, opened the sunroof, and pulled out of the parking space. Since Fairfield was a new facility, the long lane winding to the main highway was smooth, the pavement unbroken. She glanced in the rearview mirror and saw the prison receding through the back window. Though modern and backdropped by rolling hills, the concrete-and-steel fortress wouldn’t be mistaken for anything other than what it was. Watchtowers rose from the corners of thick walls topped with coiled razor wire.

Nikki thought of being locked inside and wondered how Blondell had survived all the years behind bars. She’d made it out once, during her only escape, from the first prison where she’d been incarcerated. For nearly three weeks, the news had been filled with images of officers and dogs searching for one of Savannah’s most notorious convicted killers—on the run.

Nikki remembered that time because it was the summer after her senior year of high school. At the time, Nikki was more interested in her boyfriend, streaking her hair, wondering how she would deal with being so far apart from Jonathan after their inevitable and oh-so-tragic breakup, which would happen as she went off to college. But the state had been abuzz about Blondell’s bold escape via a garbage truck.

“Can you imagine?” her mother had said at the table on the veranda where Nikki and her parents were eating breakfast. Fingering the diamond cross at her neck, Charlene Gillette had wrinkled her nose as if she, herself, were hidden in those bags of sweltering, rotting garbage.

Their conversation had taken place just after the Fourth of July, and the Georgia summer had arrived in full force, the heat sweltering. “It’s amazing that she made it out alive,” Charlene said, adding, “Then again, I’ve heard that cockroaches can survive a nuclear blast.”

“She’s a tough one, I think,” her father observed, reading the paper, a cup of coffee near his ever-present glass of sweet tea on the glass-topped table. The sun had already heated the flagstones on the veranda, and bees were vying with hummingbirds, whose shiny green backs gleamed in the bright morning light.

“More like callous. And heinous! Dear Lord, what that woman did was unimaginable.” She’d physically shuddered, then sent Nikki an “I told you Blondell O’Henry and her kind were filth” look.

Nikki had finished her orange juice and ignored the fritters soaking up syrup on her plate, excusing herself quickly to catch up on accounts of the escape in the solitude of her room. At eighteen, in the throes of teenaged angst and lost in her own problems, she’d been awakened to her interest in the news by Blondell’s bold escape.

In the ensuing weeks, the police had sent out a plea for help in finding her, asking the public’s help in locating the notorious femme fatale and her newest lover—oh, God, what was his name? Nikki had thought she’d never forget it.

Nikki flipped down the visor and concentrated. Barry something? No. Not quite right. Larry. That was it. Lawrence Thompson. Now she remembered. It had been Thompson who had been spied in a trucker’s cap, oversized sunglasses, and newly grown goatee at a gas station in West Texas that happened to have a surveillance camera and caught the tattoo on his right arm as he’d paid for gas, beer, and chips. The inky head of a chameleon had peeked out of his sleeve. The cashier had seen it and recognized the tattoo as belonging to Thompson.

Within hours, the police descended on a fleabag of a motel south-west of San Antonio, where the pickup Larry had “borrowed” from his sister had been parked, dusty and baking in the pock-marked back parking lot.

He and Blondell, it was presumed, had been on their way to Mexico.

Upon her capture, Blondell was returned to prison, and her accomplice stood trial. Thompson had been incarcerated as well for his part in her escape.

Damn! Nikki needed to speak to Blondell.

She tapped her fingers on the steering wheel as she drove, then found her cell phone in the pocket of her purse and clicked it on. Sure enough, she’d missed several calls and texts while she’d been at the prison. After giving the screen a cursory glance, she dropped her phone into her cup holder as she considered her options.

Surely she’d get a little more insight from Reed, though she knew it wasn’t going to be easy. Aside from him, she also had another source at the police department, a contact she hadn’t tapped since the Grave Robber case, her brother Andrew’s best friend, who had leaked information before. But if she contacted Cliff Siebert and Reed found out, there would be serious hell to pay.

That said, there was, as Big Daddy had often intoned, “more than one way to go at this,” she thought, as she tore around an RV that was ambling along the road, filling most of the lane and making it impossible for her to see anything ahead. She did have an ace up her sleeve, as Blondell’s attorney had been her very own uncle and, as she saw it, another personal connection to the story.

“Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Ina,” she said aloud as she retrieved her sunglasses from a hidden compartment in the dash, then slipped the shades onto the bridge of her nose. Her mood elevated a little as she considered her next course of action after the bust at the prison. Of course, she wasn’t going to give up on getting an interview with Blondell. Somehow she would manage to talk to the woman. She had to. Speaking directly to Blondell O’Henry would be pivotal for her book and would certainly add reader interest to the series of articles she hoped to write for the Sentinel. If she could just talk to Amity’s mother, Nikki felt she could convince Blondell to tell her side of the story. Maybe Blondell would want money, but that could probably be arranged. Or maybe she just would finally want to set the record straight.

If she’s not guilty, what if the police find another way, another piece of evidence to ensure that Blondell spends the rest of her life in prison? But no, she couldn’t be retried for the same crime. That would constitute double jeopardy. Still, Blondell was far from home-free yet. The state of Georgia and the police department would want to see her kept behind bars.

It was time to pay a visit to Uncle Alex, Blondell O’Henry’s onetime attorney and Nikki’s favorite uncle.

Merging into the traffic on the interstate, she ignored the lush farmland and thickets of pine and oak as she drove toward the lowlands and Savannah.

The problem, of course, was that Alexander McBaine was suffering from dementia, most likely early-onset Alzheimer’s, and so his recollections would be spotty and undependable at best. But surely he had notes from the trial . . . ? If she could just see both the prosecution’s and the defense’s sides of the trial—how perfect would that be?

“You’re dreaming,” she told herself, as she glanced over her shoulder, switching lanes to exit the freeway on the outskirts of the city. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained. And just maybe it would be one of Uncle Alex’s good days.

CHAPTER 6

“It’s a mess, that’s what it is,” Morrisette said, eyeing all the boxes and chewing her nicotine gum as if her life depended on it. She and Reed had been summoned by Kathy Okano, who had asked that they meet in the training room that was to be converted for a special use: reconstructing the case against Blondell O’Henry.

The state of Georgia wasn’t giving up on keeping one of its most infamous criminals right where she was.

“It’s not just a mess,” Okano announced as she joined them in the area that was being set up primarily for the review of Amity O’Henry’s homicide. “It’s your mess. I’m putting you in charge, Reed. And, Morrisette, you work with him.”

“We have other cases,” Morrisette said.

“Oh, I know.” Okano, a tall woman with a blond bob, wire-rimmed glasses, and a sharp mind, frowned as she eyed box upon box of dusty documents and information that had been archived for nearly two decades and that were now spread over two tables. “And you can’t ignore them, of course. But I’ll spread the wealth, trust me. But for now, you need to lock this down. The press is already all over this case, and the department doesn’t need any new black eyes.

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