Page 120 of The Witch’s Orchard

I remember the story Mandy told me. How Odette died young. Drank herself to death. How she had tried to warn Mandy away from Tommy. How she hadn’t wanted to go to Tommy’s haunted house. I imagine Tommy in the maze of rooms he’d built, covered in tattered black fabric, hands grabbing at the girls who paid to walk through and scream at the make-believe horror.

“Tell me about Odette,” I go along with him. “Who took her?”

“That witch,” he says. “Like I said. She would go see that old witch in the woods. Tell her all kinds of things. Ugly stories. Ugly. Saying I hurt her. Saying I… No, I loved Odette. I would never hurt her. I loved her. I loved her more than the world.”

“And what happened?”

“Odette told the witch. I know she did. And the witch told the sheriff.”

“Jacobs?” I ask. My heart is thumping.

He shakes his head, violently, then seems to regret the movement, and grimaces. He screws up his face some more, and a fresh batch of tears slide down his cheeks.

“Kerridge?” I ask. “Was it Sheriff Kerridge?”

“Yes,” he blubbers. “He told me not to touch her. Told me he was sick of men like me. Men… like me… Ilovedher. I wasscaredof how much I loved her.”

He grimaces again, the tears streaming.

“Kerridge asked her questions, but she was a good girl. Wouldn’t say nothing bad about me. A good girl. Always went to church, did Odette. Always said her prayers. Every night. Never said a word. Only to the witch. That… witch.”

“Are you the one who made the anonymous call? The one who pointed at Susan?”

“What? Anony—what?”

“Did you call the sheriff’s office from a burner phone, after Molly Andrews was taken, and tell them that the kidnapper was Susan McKinney?”

I look at my phone. Time is running out.

“What? No. No, I told them it was that witch the whole time. Right from the start. I always said that witch took my girl from me. Just like she took Odette. Just like my pretty baby. But that sheriff wouldn’t do shit. He hated us Hoyles. He thought we were trash. He saw Odette in her trailer. The day she died, he saw her. And he said it was my fault she drank like she did. He said he would kill me. I’m glad he’s dead. I’m glad. Him and that witch. They took my girl. My pretty baby.”

He starts to drift off again, talking in circles. I look at the phone one more time and make a break for it, waving to Kathleen as I head back down the hall. I try to tell myself it’s the sickly fluorescent lights or the pale green walls or the orange tile floor that’s making my stomach roil.But as I break into the cold October air, I still have an overwhelming urge to be sick.

Because if I understand it right, Odette Hoyle told Susan McKinney that her brother had been abusing her. Susan tried to help her. And maybe, if that’s the case, Sheriff Kerridge helped Susan cover up at least one kidnapping.

FORTY

ON THE WAY BACKto the cabin, I call AJ.

“I think you need to try and get a warrant for Susan McKinney’s property.”

“That little cabin?” he asks. His voice is muddied, and he cuts out, so I only hear pieces of the next bit. “Jacobs said—FB—so I’m—road and—”

I try to tell him what I’ve learned from Tommy, but the phone cuts off. Instead, I text the most abbreviated possible message along with a question about whether Susan owns any other buildings on the mountain. I think about how the combined force of the FBI and the local sheriff’s station would be better equipped than me to go combing through the woods around Susan’s house, but I also wonder what they might have missed ten years ago.

I drive back to Max’s farm. I know Susan said there are several paths to her cabin through the woods, but I only know the one. Through Max’s field, down the gorge, through the stone circle, and up the hill. On the way, I think about the moments I’ve spent in Susan’s cabin. The way I’ve grown to like her. The way she reminds me, subconsciously, of my own granny. The way she handed me warm tea for comfort and read my fortune and always pointed me in any direction but her own. The way she appeared as if from nowhere, startling me, looking right through me. The way her wrist was scratched. The way she hadn’t been in her cabin this morning when I was getting shot at.

By the time I pull onto the Andrews property my hands are shaking with anger and frustration, but it all turns to cold, sweating panic when I see Shiloh sitting on my front porch, crying.

I park and jump out of the car and I’m standing next to her before I’ve even registered my movement.

”What happened?” I ask. “Did they find her?”

She wipes her nose and eyes on the sleeve of her shirt and looks up at me.

“They found a shoe,” she says.

My heart takes a big swan dive into my belly.