Page 13 of The Witch’s Orchard

NINE

M Y NEXT STOP IS the church Jessica Hoyle was taken from. Quartz Creek First Baptist is a mostly brick building with a white roof and steeple. The wet, gravel parking lot looks like it would fit more than fifty cars but there’s only one sitting there when I pull in, a late-model gray Buick Regal.

“All right, Honey,” I say. “Let’s see what the local holy rollers have to say about these girls.”

I turn the key, get out, and walk toward the church, passing a tasteful cream and burgundy sign advertising the annual First Baptist Fall Festival in a couple of days.

I head up the front steps, through the huge front door, and into the hunter green–carpeted foyer.

Padding into the sanctuary, I look past the pews toward the empty pulpit.

The ceilings are high but not beamed and the windows are plain glass that look out to the parking lot and empty playground on one side and a tree-dotted meadow—mostly apples, oaks, and elms—on the other.

Nothing to distract from the Lord’s word, I guess. Certainly not interesting architecture.

“Hello?” I call. I hear some rustling of papers and then a woman comes out of a door in the foyer.

She’s reed-thin with a white fluff of short, full curls that sweep away from her face.

She is dressed in a skirt suit that, while simple, looks perfectly tailored from soft, gray wool.

Probably a pattern from McCall’s, I think.

“May I help you?” she asks.

I tell her who I am, what I’m doing there.

“I’d like to speak to the preacher, if he’s around,” I say.

“Oh, I’m sorry. He’s not in at the moment. He’ll be here tonight for Bible study.”

She takes a pamphlet from a plastic rack on the wall and hands it to me. It’s the church schedule, and, sure enough, there’s Bible study with Brother Bob Ziegler, right there on the events for Monday night.

“He was in this morning to take care of some paperwork and then he left to do some visiting.”

“And you are?”

“Oh, I’m Rebecca Ziegler. I’m the church secretary, and Brother Bob’s wife.”

I look back at the pamphlet, read the schedule. “It looks like he’ll be in again tomorrow morning? For this… Promise Keepers thing? Could I come by then?”

“Promise Keepers is men only. But the meeting should be over around eight o’clock. It’s early but—” She looks me up and down, no doubt a little dubious about whether or not I’m capable of being awake before noon.

“I’ll be here,” I say. “Can you let him know?”

“I will. Do you have a card?”

She pulls on a pair of gold-rimmed glasses attached to a thin gold chain around her neck. While she’s reading my name and job title and phone number, I ask, “Can you tell me anything you remember about the disappearances of those three little girls?”

“Heavens,” she says, still looking at the card. “It was an awful thing, wasn’t it? Of course, the Andrews family attended here.”

That was confirmation, at least, that Max and his family were familiar with this place, the scene of the first crime, where Jessica went missing from the swing set.

“The Jacobses too?” I ask, wondering about Olivia’s family.

She nods.

“And the Hoyles?”

“No. They never have. Mandy’s come around a few times, requesting food from the food bank. Formula when her youngest two were still in diapers. We sent them Christmas dinner a couple times, but I got the feeling Tommy didn’t appreciate that so we stopped.”

“Jessica Hoyle was taken from here.”

She nods and says, “That’s right. Out on the playground in broad daylight.”

“Were you here?”

“Yes. There was a committee meeting that day. Quite a few of us were here to plan that year’s Vacation Bible School.

I remember Mandy coming into the church, screaming that something had happened to her girl.

We all started looking, trying to help. I think most of us figured the girl had wandered off or was maybe hiding somewhere. But we found no sign of her.”

“Can I get a list of everyone?”

She sighs, “Well, it’s been…”

“Ten years,” I say.

“Mercy,” she says, letting out a breath. “Has it really? We still keep those girls and their families on the prayer list.” She appears lost in thought for a while, like maybe she’s wondering whether, after all this time, those prayers are being wasted.

“About the planning committee list…” I nudge.

“Oh yes. If you’re coming by tomorrow, I could get you a list. But it might not be the most accurate. I’d just be guessing at who all was there. A lot of us are still on those committees but, you know, it’s been a while, like I said.”

“That’s all right,” I say. “I’ll take any list I can get. I understand that Olivia Jacobs was taken from a church picnic. Would that have been a First Baptist event?”

“Yes,” Rebecca says. “It was awful.”

“What do you remember about it?”

She breathes out heavily through her nose and then says, “I was at another table, helping some of the women organize the drinks. I heard a scream. It was Kathleen. She was searching for Olivia. I remember thinking, at first, that Olivia must have just wandered off. She was always an obstinate girl. But then there was the doll.”

“Where was it found?”

“Lying against a tree,” she says, bringing her fingertips up to touch the small gold cross at the hollow of her neck. “Near the tables where Olivia went missing. The whole congregation split up to search for her but…”

“You found nothing.”

“No,” she says. “Nothing.”

“Did the police question you at the time?”

“Of course,” she says, her voice going shaky. “They questioned everyone. Anyone who’d been around either of the kidnappings. But we didn’t know anything. All we could do to help those girls was pray to the Lord for their safe return. Which we still do.”

“Okay,” I say. “Well, I appreciate your help. And if you can get me that list, I’d really appreciate it.”

“Yes,” she says. “All right.”

“Thank you,” I say. And because sometimes you catch more flies with honey, “I really appreciate it, ma’am.”

I leave and walk back down the steps and across the empty parking lot.

I slide behind Honey’s wheel and rev the engine, but I don’t move.

Instead, I sit there for a minute, thinking.

Jessica was taken from this church. Olivia was taken from a picnic hosted by this church.

But what about Molly? Shiloh said Max and Molly’s parents attended this church, but was that the only connection?

Instead of backing out and leaving, I pull to the rear of the parking lot, to a little playground sitting under the edge of a tree line.

Just like Mandy said, there’s a dark wood swing set and slide with one of those square towers at one end.

A little sun-bleached now, but still plenty usable.

The chains on the swings have been oiled or replaced over the years since Jessica was taken from one of them.

I sit in the driver’s seat in the cool, damp air and watch the swing. “She must’ve been exhausted,” I say to Honey.

Honey purrs.

I think about Mandy. Tired and hungry and probably feeling hopeless and sad. A baby in her belly, another one in the backseat, another one on the swing.

Jessica had been there, I think, picturing the little blond fairy of a girl. She had been there pumping her legs. And then what?

I rest my hands in my lap instead of on the wheel and watch the swing and think about those dolls with their little bright dresses and their empty black eyes and think about the witch who turned herself into a crow and taught the other crows to cry and I think about Susan McKinney seeming to look at me and right through me at the same time.

The heater runs, blowing hot air over my feet and hands.

The top blower isn’t working. The windshield fogs.

Watch the swing, I think.

Watch the swing. Watch the swing. Watch the swing.

It’s almost hypnotic. A little girl, swinging. Mandy so tired. A toddler snoozing in the backseat, the rhythmic sound of his breath lulling and calm.

My eyelids begin to droop.

A crow caws. Startles me awake. The crow is standing on the top of the swing set’s tower, looking down at me, his feathers a wet, glossy black, his eyes like polished glass. He caws again.

I hear Leo’s voice from so many years ago, the first time I met him.

“You always gotta go after shit. That’s what they tell me,” he’d said, slapping a file down on the table in front of me. “Can’t leave nothing alone.”

I’d shrugged. I’d been looking into a suspicious money trail on my own time.

I was still in Security Forces then, but the unofficial case had fallen well outside of my purview.

Still, I’d refused to let it drop, and my searching had led to the discovery of a first lieutenant’s paying off a local girl to keep quiet about some of his boys getting rough with the strippers at the club in town, part of a larger, disturbing pattern I couldn’t keep quiet about.

I’d thought I was going to catch hell from Leo, the way I was digging around.

I figured the moment I stepped foot in his office, I’d be booted out of the Air Force for all my meddling.

Instead, he recruited me to his unit within the Office of Special Investigations.

I’d be operating both within and apart from the Air Force.

Much of the time, I’d be investigating our own airmen.

“Now you can find shit out for a job,” Leo had said. “Seems like you got the stones for it, and maybe, working for me, you won’t get yourself killed.”

My mouth had dropped open in surprise, and he’d laughed. The first time I ever heard his laugh.

The crow caws again.

I stare up at the crow, watch him stretch his wings in slow, rhythmic motions. Watch him lift into the air with a thwip-thwip-thwip and disappear into the trees.

“Okay, Honey,” I say. “Time to get back to work.”