“Nothing would keep me away,” she said.
“You don’t look well,” Blackstone said.
She smiled and locked on his gaze. “Don’t worry yourself about me.”
Ricker extended his hand to her. “We owe this moment to you.”
“Let’s hope we find Gina,” she said.
Ricker’s frown deepened. “Let’s get started.”
“Remember,” Blackstone said. “My client has complete immunity regarding any and all of the Gina Mason abduction and/or death.”
“Understood,” Ricker said.
Quinn opened the back door of the squad car and hauled out Hayward, who drew in a deep breath, tipping his face toward the cloudy sky.
“Too bad the sun isn’t shining,” Quinn quipped.
Hayward winked. “Baby, it’s always shining when you’re around.”
Quinn gripped his arm even tighter and smiled.
Hayward shifted his attention to Kaitlin and slowly looked her over. “You smell good. And your skin looks so soft. Maybe when this is over we could meet again, and I can give you another interview.”
She didn’t draw back. “Let’s see how today goes.”
“I loved to come out here. I’d sit in my tree stand over there and just enjoy the view.” He looked toward a stand of trees and then back at Kaitlin. “Remember when we all used to come out here?” Hayward teased.
Blackstone shook his head. “No chitchat, Mr. Hayward. This isn’t a social call.”
Kaitlin couldn’t help but prod him. “The Fourth of July bonfire.”
He winked. “Remember the barn? We had a good time in there.”
The barn. That, she did remember. She couldn’t even blame booze for the stupid choices of that night. She’d made them all stone-cold sober. “I’m also remembering now that Brad, Derek, and you got into a fight. Brad looked like he wanted to take your head off. What did you say to him that made him so mad?”
“Don’t answer that,” Blackstone said.
Hayward chuckled. “You know how it goes—boys will be boys.”
“Looked pretty intense,” she pressed.
Blackstone stepped between them. “Show us what you promised to show us.”
“We just got here,” Hayward said. “I’m trying to catch up with my girl.”
Ricker’s face darkened. “We’re waiting.”
“Kaitlin’s coming, right? I want her to see this. This could have been her,” Hayward teased.
She tipped her chin up a notch. “Let’s do this.”
“Can I have a cigarette?” Hayward asked. “I think better when I smoke.”
Quinn mimicked a pout. “Sorry, fresh out.”
“Come on,” Hayward coaxed. “There’s got to be a cop here who’s got smokes.”
Blackstone shook his head. “I don’t smoke.”
Ricker shrugged, held up empty hands.
Adler strode back to the cops and after a quick survey returned with a crumpled pack of Marlboros. He fished out a cigarette and a lighter from the pack and lit the tip. Hayward’s cuffs rattled as he accepted it. When he raised it to his lips, his hands trembled slightly.
“Nervous?” Kaitlin asked.
He took another pull. “Being around you always makes me weak in the knees, girl.” He took two more drags and then threw it down and ground his foot into it. “You’ve got more in that packet, Detective?” Hayward asked.
Adler tucked the packet in his pocket. “I do.”
Hayward seemed to understand he’d danced up to the line. Another minute and Adler would transport him back to jail. “Sure. Why not?”
“Where to?” Adler snapped.
Hayward nodded toward the graveled road ahead. “About a quarter mile up that way on the other side of the barn.”
“Let’s go.” Adler took him by the arm and hauled him forward.
Hayward started walking. “Showtime!”
Even with the cool breeze, Kaitlin quickly started sweating as she struggled to keep pace. If Adler had slowed up for her before, he didn’t this time. And she was glad. She didn’t want to slow him down. The priority was finding Gina.
“How you doing, girl?” Hayward glanced back over his shoulder at her.
“What’s taking you so long?” Kaitlin refused to show Hayward any weakness.
Hayward laughed. “Don’t pass out on me.”
The dirt road doglegged to the right, but Hayward turned left down a well-worn dirt path made by hunters, farmers, and most likely, moonshiners.
“When’s the last time you were here, Hayward?” Adler asked.
“I’ve been here a few times in between stints in prison. Last time was in mid-January.”
“Why return?” Adler asked.
“To see if Gina was still here. I always liked her. That hasn’t changed. No one else knew where she was, but I did. And that made it special between us.”
Kaitlin sympathized with the officers’ feelings of anger and frustration. This was a joke to Hayward. A parlor game.
Hayward ducked under a branch and pushed through the thicket of trees. “Good thing it’s early in the year. The bugs will eat you alive in the summer. One time I was here I got a terrible case of chiggers.”
Kaitlin pressed her hand to her side, keeping a sharp eye on the ground. As “fast” as she moved, Adler, Quinn, Ricker, Blackstone, and Hayward were putting distance between them. She wasn’t sure how much farther she could walk when Hayward pushed through to a small clearing.
In the center was the barn. Once it had been painted red, but in the last decade, sun, wind, and rain had stripped most of its color.
Hayward’s smile turned electric. He counted off fifty paces from the north corner and stopped at a patch of ground under a collection of young oak trees.
The untrained eye wouldn’t notice the sparse patch of vegetation or the slight dip in the land. A small part of her had hoped Gina had somehow survived, but Adler’s and Quinn’s deepening frowns telegraphed what she’d known in her heart for fourteen years.
Gina was really dead. And they were looking at a shallow grave.
INTERVIEW FILE #24
RETIRED FORENSIC INVESTIGATOR
Sunday, March 4, 2018
Sam Weston has been retired from the Richmond City Police for three years. He lives in the country now, and his small ranch-style house looks out over a pond. He’s feeding his two dozen chickens as we talk.
“The problem with that Mason scene was the weather. Right after the 911 call came in, there was a hell of a rainstorm. It was a real gully washer. The river rose, and part of the street flooded. The entire riverbank was immersed with rising water and debris.”
“Were you able to collect anything of use at the abduction site?”
“Not at first. Everything looked like it had been through a car wash. But we stayed out there for several days. Finally, one of the investigators found part of a green dress a quarter of a mile down the road. It was stuck on a tree branch. We bagged it and took it back to the lab. Gina’s mother said the fabric looked like the dress her daughter had been wearing. We did DNA testing on the fabric, and some of it matched Gina and some did not.”
“There were two blood samples on the cloth?”
“Yes.”
“Did you ever identify who the second sample belonged to?”
“We thought it might be Hayward, but it wasn’t a match. We compared it to several other known sex offenders in the area, but in the end, we never came up with a match.”
“Someone else was on that road?”
“That’s my best guess.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Friday, March 23, 2018; 10:00 a.m.
Adler had the excavation crew on standby, and as soon as he gave the go-ahead, a technician equipped with ground-penetrating radar (GPR) moved into position. The technician began his search several feet away from the target area now designated with orange flags. Working slowly in a grid pattern, the technician swept the device in strai
ght lines.
The machine transmitted a gray image to a computer screen. During the first few passes, the picture produced was smooth with no signs of any discovery. But as the passes grew closer to the orange flag, small ripples appeared. No telling what was in the ground, but there was something there. Closer to the flags, the waves grew in size and frequency. The technician marked the spot where excavation could begin.
Hayward’s expression grew somber as two technicians approached with shovels. “I’m going to miss her.”
“Get him out of here,” Adler said to a uniformed officer.
“I want to stay,” Hayward countered. “I want to see Kaitlin’s face when she sees Gina again.”
Adler motioned to the officer, and he escorted Hayward back to the cruiser. Adler continued, “Blackstone, you can leave, too.”
“I’m staying. I have to look out for my client’s best interest.”