Page 100 of The Witch’s Orchard

“Yes.”

“Did he admit to seducing a fourteen-year-old?”

“He did.”

“And he was how old?”

“Eighteen.”

“Hmm.”

“It’s not the same, though. Right?” I say. “That’s what I keep telling myself. A teenager having sex with a younger girl at a party in the sixties where he maybe didn’t even know her age isn’t the same thing as kidnapping three little girls. Jessica was the oldest. She was almost six. But she looked younger.”

He nods.

“I don’t know, Annie. I don’t think we can rule anyone out.”

He tells me the cops paid a visit to Lucy’s dad today and checked up on him. He was at his home, in Asheville, with his wife and her little boy and their dogs when they got there. Last night, they were all at a birthday party together.

“So, it wasn’t him,” I say.

“No.”

“But we knew it wasn’t.”

“Had to check,” he says.

We both eat some crab Rangoon, dipping the deep-fried cream cheese wonton into the sweet tangy red sauce.

“Have you ever been out to Susan McKinney’s cabin?” I ask.

“Once,” he says. “Sort of a creepy place. But not big enough to hide a couple kids, is it?”

“No,” I say. “And the FBI searched her cabin after she was brought in for questioning. She told me herself they found a bunch of applehead dolls in her bedroom. But, hell, my own granny had some of those sitting on a shelf in her room. I’d love to know what was said when they questioned her, though.”

“Oh,” AJ says. “That I can actually help you with.”

He hops off his stool, opens the backpack he’d left lying on the floor, and pulls out a manila folder. I’d been hoping for a thick stack of reports and witness statements but, instead, what I see is maybe ten or twenty pages.

“I still don’t think I have all of it. I spent most of the day out combing the woods, but I did manage to find these.”

He slides the folder across to me and I open it up. Here, again, is the list of cars checked the day Jessica was taken. And a small stack of pages of statements from the church picnic. Finally, I discover Deena’s statement from the day Molly was taken, and I read over it while eating, never bothering to look at what I’m putting in my mouth.

“It’s just like she said,” I mumble after reading through it. She came at her usual time. When she was finished, she shouted goodbye. She ran into a plumber on the way out and was afraid she’d lose time trying to get him to move his truck. He was leaving. They exchanged pleasantries. She had no idea Molly had been taken until the next day.

“She told me today about a scarecrow,” I tell him. “But she doesn’t mention anything about it in the statement.”

“Probably didn’t think it was relevant,” he says. “If she was sure it was a scarecrow.”

I find the same version of events from Dwight Hoyle’s point of view. Came to fix a pipe. Heard piano music. Finished up. Saw Janice in the garden, later heard her talking to someone. Saw Deena. Left.

“Someone else was there,” I say.

“What?”

“Someone else was there. Dwight says he heard Janice talking to someone in the garden.”

“It must have been Deena,” AJ says.