Page 36 of The Witch’s Orchard

TWENTY-NINE

I LOOK AT THE PHOTO of the doll on my phone.

I’d snapped it before the sheriff’s department showed up, and now I’m zoomed in on the doll’s shriveled apple face while I sit at the counter in the cabin’s kitchen after about three hours of restless sleep.

It’s Friday morning, the fifth morning of this investigation, and all I can feel is a dismal unease.

I pour another cup of coffee, try like hell to think of anything I could’ve missed, anything I can do.

Eventually I just go back to staring at the doll face.

I swipe the photo around, looking at a close-up of the hair. It was gathered together in little bunches and then joined with a rubber band, which was then glued to the apple, and, the glue failing, the clumps of hair were stuck in with straight pins.

I call AJ.

“How’s Shiloh?” I ask.

“Not great,” he says. “We’ve got a deputy with her back at the bakery. She didn’t want to stay at home.”

“What else have you got?”

“We took more dogs out this morning. Nothing. We’re sending the doll down to Raleigh for analysis.”

“Make sure they test her hair,” I say.

“Her hair?”

“It looks just like Molly’s.”

“You think maybe it is Molly’s?” AJ asks.

“Maybe.”

I look at the doll’s dress. It’s not the same as the others. It’s not the same kind of simple, home-sewn garb made with velvet scraps and bits of cast-off lace. This is a store-bought doll dress, all cheap shiny fabric and scratchy lace.

“This body…” I say. “This is a Lovely Lady Lavender doll.”

“Jesus,” AJ breathes. “My sisters had those. Everyone had them. They were made—”

“Yeah,” I say. “I know. They were made here in town.”

In the very factory I’d barely escaped two days before.

“Find anything else at the scene?” I ask.

“No,” he says. “Just like the others. It’s like they vanished into thin air.”

“Except for the dolls.”

“Sheriff Jacobs has been on the phone with the FBI all morning. He’s trying to get a team down here.”

“It’s about time,” I say.

“I think he’s realized that what happened ten years ago isn’t really over,” AJ says.

“Yes,” I say. “I don’t think it ever was.”

There’s a knock at the door and, hand on my gun, I yell for whoever it is to come in.

It’s Greg Andrews, Max’s dad. He’s looking the absolute opposite of combative, holding a sealed bottle of whiskey, his mouth pulled into an aggrieved frown.

I tell AJ I’ll talk to him later and we hang up.

I hold the door open for Greg and he walks across the room and sets the bottle of whiskey on the counter.

“What’s this?” I ask.

“An apology,” he says.

I look at him and his bottle and his red, haggard eyes.

“I accept.”

I pull two short tumblers from the cabinet and fill them halfway with the amber liquid. We both drink.

“I take it you want me back on the case?”

“Were you ever off the case?”

I shake my head.

“This is going to kill my son,” Greg says.

I nod.

“I think he’s worried that his friendship with Shiloh got Lucy kidnapped.”

“It’s more likely that my meddling did it,” I say.

But, in truth, I’d already considered whether someone was targeting Max.

Taking his surrogate little sister the same way they took Molly.

But who would do such a thing? It’s not like the introverted, artistic eighteen-year-old had spent his whole life going around making enemies.

I take another sip of the whiskey. It’s not great but it’s good. It burns appropriately for eleven o’clock in the morning the day after one was present at a little girl’s kidnapping.

I put my glass down and look back up at him and ask, “So why do you want me looking into it now? What’s changed?”

“Like I said the other day, the cops couldn’t do it ten years ago. I don’t trust them to do it now. I just… I thought it was over. But it’s not. And this isn’t right. It’s not right. I like Shiloh. She’s a good kid. She doesn’t—no one does—no one deserves to go through what Janice and I did.”

“Fair enough.”

“I can pay you,” he says.

“I’m already being paid.”

“Okay.”

I tilt my glass and watch the liquid slide. I tilt it the other way.

“Were you and Max’s mother having marriage problems before Molly was kidnapped?” I ask.

The question takes him for a wild ride. His eyes widen and then darken, and his cheeks go red like he might be about to shout, but in the end he just slumps down where he sits.

“Yes,” he says. “Did Max say something?”

“No. If Max remembers it or ever knew it at all, he’s never mentioned it. Were you getting counseling from Bob and Rebecca Ziegler?”

He half sighs, half groans.

“Of a sort.”

“What’s that mean?”

“It means I sort of didn’t want to do it.”

I look at him. He looks at his drink.

He says, “Janice wanted more kids.”

“Okay.”

“I didn’t. She grew up with four brothers and two sisters.”

“Big family. Where are they all now?”

“Brothers all joined the military, moved away. One sister stayed here. She used to look in on Max. But she died—cancer—a couple years ago. The other one went with her husband—Navy guy. They’re in San Diego now.”

“Janice wasn’t satisfied with two kids.”

He shakes his head.

“And you were?”

“I didn’t think we could afford any more kids. Didn’t think it was a good idea.”

“So, she wanted counseling.”

“Yes.”

“From two people who didn’t have any children.”

He shrugs and drains the rest of his drink and then says, “Yeah. She said the flock were the Zieglers’ children. The congregation. It sounded like a line straight from Bob.”

“You were never very religious, though, were you?”

Headshake.

“And it—the argument about kids—did it get worse after Molly was taken?”

Nod.

“Mister Andrews, who did you think took your daughter, back then?”

He looks at the bottle like he’s thinking about pouring himself an other drink but then rests both his hands on the wooden countertop instead.

“Someone from the church,” he says. “I was sure of it.”

“Why?”

“It all went back there, didn’t it? The little Hoyle girl was taken from there. The Jacobs girl was taken from a church picnic.”

“But Molly wasn’t.”

“No,” he says. “No, but the Zieglers were here that day. They were in our home. Bob and Rebecca sat right there at our kitchen table and told us all about prayer and listening to God’s voice and whatever, and a couple hours later my little girl was gone.”

“Dwight Hoyle was also in your home.”

“Yes,” he said. “Apparently, he was. But—”

His brows draw together in agitation, and he looks down into his glass.

“What?”

“I went to school with Dwight. He smoked pot and I always had the idea that he sold it, but a lot of kids did. He could be enterprising, but he wasn’t a criminal mastermind or anything.”

“Enterprising?”

“Senior year, he started this racket where he broke into teachers’ desks after hours.

He was working part-time on the janitorial staff, you know?

So, it was easy. Anyway, he would take our test or quiz answers, copy them, put them right back where he got them, and then sell them.

Never classes he was in, though, so I don’t think he ever got caught. ”

“How’d you know about it?”

Greg winces, and then a pained smile crosses his face.

“How do you think I passed my AP Geometry midterm that year?”

“So, you never suspected that Dwight took the girls? Even though he was here the day Molly was taken?”

“But he and Deena saw each other, didn’t they?” he asks.

“Yeah,” I say. “I haven’t seen their statements but, from what I hear, they saw each other leave.”

“I remember a pipe was leaking out in the barn,” he says, his gaze distant.

“I called Mack’s after Bob and Rebecca left and before I had to go to school for some teacher training on a new STEM initiative.

I asked if he could get someone out to the house.

I remember Janice saying that she would take all the extra water in buckets and pour it on the garden.

It was a hot summer. We couldn’t afford to waste the water.

I remember saying that sounded like a good idea but not really thinking about it.

Not really thinking about her or Max. Or Molly.

I couldn’t find my keys. I was distracted.

I was in such a hurry to leave that morning… ”

I watch him, waiting as he gets lost in the memory of the day Molly was taken and then blindly gropes his way back to the present.

“I had no idea,” he says. “How can anyone…”

He shakes his head, and we sit in the quiet for a little while before he says, “How do you do this? How do you get involved in stuff like this? It all feels so… nebulous. Like fog.”

“I don’t know,” I admit. “I’m just following every lead I have. Most of what PIs do is go around gathering information until they get ahold of something with substance. Then they follow that thing until it either turns up results or doesn’t. If it doesn’t, we go back to gathering.”

He nods understanding.

“That year—you hear people in town talk about that year like it was cursed,” he says.

“The hottest year we’d had for decades. And the factory closed.

The whole town went out of work. That spring, I remember seeing the look on these kids’ faces.

Kids who always just assumed they’d go work at the same factory their moms and dads worked at. ”

“And that was no longer possible. What did they do instead?” I ask. But I already know the answer.

“Army, mostly. Recruiters swooped in. It was a poverty draft.”

I feel myself smile. It’s the same draft that got me. The same one that got so many other kids in Appalachia. The only path to education through a war zone.

“And then you left as well.”

“I didn’t leave,” he says, defensive.

“You took a long-haul trucking job.”

“I thought losing my daughter was the worst thing that could happen to me. I… Yes, I ran away. I just couldn’t stay in that house. I’m not proud of it. I didn’t know what else to do. I just couldn’t stay in that house. Janice had the church.”

“But not you.”

“No. I just… I never liked the Zieglers. I never trusted them.”

“And you brought this up at the time?”

“Yeah.”

“To Sheriff Jacobs?”

“Yeah.”

“Did he check them out?”

“Sure, but, you know, he was still new to the job. I never felt like he was up for it… not like that. Not the way the job was handed to him in the middle of his own niece’s disappearance.

I always thought the church… the Zieglers…

I just never got a good feeling from them. Jacobs told me he investigated but…”

“Well,” I say. “I think I’ll do some extra investigating. Just to be sure.”