Page 78 of Blood Moon

“No, he didn’t. Know why? Because we treated him kindly, didn’t make fun of him, call him a dummy. All those incidents were his reaction to being bullied. They failed to putthatin their damn reports.”

Patiently, John continued. “There was another red flag. We discovered a number of pornography websites bookmarked on Billy’s computer. Some of it very graphic.”

“He had the typical urges of boys that age,” Carla said. “Didn’t you like looking at pictures of naked women when you were sixteen?”

“Still do.”

Beth cut him a sharp glance.

Carla harrumphed, but he could tell that because he wasn’t patronizing her, he was gaining ground.

He said, “He lived next door to you. That proximity was another factor we couldn’t ignore. I was in their house onseveral occasions that week. You could see Crissy’s bedroom window from Billy’s. Did she ever indicate to you that he made her uncomfortable? That he might be watching her? Anything like that?”

“Never. Not once. If he’d been creepy, would she have taken him places with her? Walmart, grocery shopping, a movie sometimes. Little outings like that.”

Gracie Oliver had told John the same thing.Billy idolizes that girl because she befriends him and treats him with dignity.

In his and Mitch’s interview with Billy, he told them that Crissy had invited him to walk with her to the convenience store that night. He’d blubbered, “It was raining, so I didn’t go. Why didn’t I go? If I’d only gone…”

Carla was saying, “If Billy had been of a mind to, he could’ve done something bad to Chrissy at any time. He never laid a hand on her. I’ll stand by that till the day I die. Billy didn’t harm anybody.” Her lip quivered. “Except himself. And poor old Gracie had to hear all those awful things said about him even after he was gone.”

John never would have expected a demonstration of such a tender emotion from this hard-shell woman. He looked at Beth and saw that she was equally surprised.

She said, “We don’t believe it was Billy, either, Carla. We believe the guilty person has gotten away with it, which will give him confidence to do it again. We’re running out of time to even identify him.”

“Well, I don’t know what you expect me to do about it.” She glanced at a wall clock. “And I can’t sit here any longer jawing about it. If I’m not on time, it’ll piss off the person I’m relieving.”

When she made a move to get up, Beth raised her hand to stay her and pressed on. “For the moment, let’s assume the same individual took all four girls. Let’s assume that the eclipses were significant to him, that he was adhering to a superstition, or observing a religious ritual. Was Crissy acquainted with anyone who had a fascination or preoccupation with anything like that?”

“Most of her friends go to mass.”

Beth fought to contain a smile. “What I had in mind was a ritual that’s a little more untraditional.”

“Stargazing? Moon cycles? How about voodoo? Now, there’s a preoccupation.”

John said, “Carla, please. I know this sounds off the wall, but—”

“Sounds plumb crazy. I’ve got better things to do than listen.” She stood up.

A second later, Beth was also on her feet. “What about zodiac signs?”

“What about them?”

“Did Crissy read her horoscope?”

“Lots of people do.”

“So she did? Was she obsessive about it? Did she plan around it? Had she had someone prepare her natal chart?”

“What the hell is that?”

“It shows the position of the sun, moon, planets at the exact moment of a person’s birth. Some believe it’s a forecaster of—”

Carla waved her hand in front of her face as though swatting at a housefly. “I never heard of such, and if Crissy had a chart like that, I didn’t know about it. Frankly, Ms.Collins, this all sounds like hocus-pocus you cooked up for your TV show. Which, by the way, I didn’t want any part of, and resented my tragedy being turned into entertainment for couch potatoes.

“The only reason I consented to giving that interview was to get you people off my back. I wouldn’t watch that program if you tied me to a chair and propped my eyelids open with toothpicks. Andyou.” She turned to John. “You had your chance to find the person who took my girl. But you didn’t.”

“That’s right,” he bit back. “I was pressured to stop looking, and I did. It was a self-serving decision that I’ll regret forever.”