Page 37 of The Witch’s Orchard
THIRTY
I TIME MY NEXT VISIT to First Baptist for when the Friday afternoon prayer meeting should be letting out, and I’m not disappointed when I pull up and see several older men shaking hands with Bob Ziegler before heading down the steps.
They all look somber and sad, and I recognize a couple of them as some of Shiloh’s dad’s friends who brought their tracking dogs last night.
They nod to me as I approach the church. I nod back.
“Any news?” one says. I tell him no.
“Afternoon,” I say to Bob Ziegler. He’s changed his suit since last night. “I’ve got some questions for you.”
“Miss Gore—” he starts.
“About your time in the Army,” I say, and I watch as most of the color drains out of Bob’s face and disappears behind the collar of his crisp navy blue shirt.
He recovers fast, offers the men around him a polite goodbye, and waves me into the church, across the foyer, and into the same office with the big desk Rebecca had taken me to. He shuts the heavy door behind us.
He walks behind the desk, but he doesn’t sit. He also doesn’t invite me to sit.
Instead, we stand on opposite sides of the desk from each other and, as is in both our natures after years of practice, we fall in, spines straight, shoulders squared, hands at our sides.
The look in his eyes is intense and defiant but not squirrelly, not angry.
I cut to the chase.
“You were in the Army before you were a pastor.”
“Yes.”
“You were in the Army because you were given a choice between the military and jail.”
He grinds his teeth by way of answer, so I keep going.
“You committed statutory rape and were told that you could go to jail or join the Army. Is that right?”
He grinds his teeth some more. I wait.
Behind him, on a bookshelf, is an array of framed photographs.
Bob and Rebecca in front of the church. Bob and Rebecca at a fundraiser twenty or thirty years before.
Bob and a man I vaguely recognize as Harvey Drake standing in front of a cabin made with huge, waxy-looking timbers, the sunshine illuminating Bob’s white hair and Harvey’s straight white teeth.
Rebecca at a Christmas parade with Bob dressed as Santa.
Rebecca receiving an award of some kind from a man in a suit.
Bob looks at me looking at the pictures. Then he looks toward the window. Then the ceiling. Then back to me.
Finally, out of things to stare at, he says, “That’s right. That’s what happened but—look, I had no idea about the girl. I was at a party. It was a big party, and my friend took me. I didn’t know anyone. There were a lot of drugs, a lot of drinking. I had sex with a girl I didn’t know.”
“She was fourteen.”
“I didn’t know.”
“And after?”
“After?”
“Have you ever had sex with another underage girl?”
“Certainly not.”
I shrug.
“Maybe you didn’t know.”
His eyes narrow, and the color comes back.
“I did my time. Maybe not behind bars but I did my time. I made a mistake and I did my time, you understand? And when I got out, I went to seminary and I met Rebecca and—”
“Where did you meet?”
“She was the daughter of one of my teachers at seminary.”
“Hmm.”
He ignores that, keeps going, “I met her and I married her and I finished school.”
“And you moved here.”
“Yes. I preached at a small church in Georgia for a few months and then this position became vacant and it was closer to where Rebecca grew up—”
“Which was where?”
“Just over in Hardstone County, few miles down the road.”
“So you met Rebecca and you got married and you moved here and started preaching for First Baptist.”
“Yes.”
“And you never had kids…”
He looks away. His big shoulders slump.
“It’s odd,” I say, pressing it.
“It’s not your business. That’s between a husband and a wife.
You wanted to know about my time in the Army, the mistake I made to put me there, you got it.
If I can help you find that missing little girl, then I will.
But my history and mine and Rebecca’s private life have nothing—and I mean nothing—to do with it. ”
“Okay,” I say. “Where were you last night?”
“Here. I was here, you saw me.”
“And Rebecca? She went to get an extension cord, is that right?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all? Nothing else?”
He nods.
I’d timed my drive from Max’s to First Baptist on the way here. I knew it didn’t take more than fifteen minutes, but I wasn’t sure how long Rebecca had been gone or exactly how much farther Bob and Rebecca’s house was.
“She helped search,” Bob says. “When she got back. We both did. We searched all night. You saw us.”
“Did you notice anyone strange in the crowd? Anyone who shouldn’t have been there?”
His eyes search the cottage-cheese ceiling for answers and then he finally shrugs.
“No. Like I already told Sheriff Jacobs. I don’t know. It’s a public function. The whole purpose of the festival is to get the community to visit the church. There were scores of people I didn’t know. You were there.”
“Can I see your hands?” I ask.
“My—”
“Your hands. May I look at them?”
He grits his teeth and blows a huff of air out through his nose like a bull. But he does finally put his hands out over the desk.
“What’s this about?” he asks as I inspect his thick fingers and the tops of his hands, his white-haired wrists.
The skin is unmarked. Clean. His nails are clipped short, the edges neat. There are no scrapes or scratches.
“Nothing,” I say.
I get up to leave, turn toward the door, then turn back and ask, “Does Rebecca know about your mistake with the fourteen-year-old?”
“Of course,” he says.
“Okay,” I say.
I go back through the church and out to Honey and start her up.
As I pull out, I see a news van from Asheville roll by.
It won’t be the last. Lucy’s disappearance has resurrected a tantalizing story, and I know that before long national news teams will be flowing into town.
It’s the job of the press to report the news, but it irks me that the rest of the world only ever sees towns like Quartz Creek when they’re at their worst.
I drive back toward Max’s farm but turn off early onto Lilac Overlook Lane, thinking about Deena Drake. Of everyone I’ve spoken to, she’s the one who knows the Zieglers the best. The one who would know if there were any leads I might be able to follow.
Honey putters and sputters on the climb so I take it slow, and I have plenty of time to keep an eye on the forest around me, on the near silence of the fog-laden trees, almost bare, and the carpet of scarlet and gold and plain, almost colorless brown.
It’s early afternoon and not nearly time for the sun to be setting, and yet the dull dimness—not darkness but absence of sunshine—is almost palpable.
No shafts of light seem to cut through the cloud cover today.
No beams of illumination scatter the fog before me.
I take a huge inhalation of air as I break through the trees into the cleared mountaintop, unaware I’d been breathing so shallowly. The oppressive dimness is gone, replaced by a plain, flat autumn sun. There is no Range Rover in the drive.
I pull up, park, and get out. The property is quiet. A breeze rustles the trees and red leaves swirl around my feet. The scent of roses and mountain laurels fills my nose.
“Where is she?” I ask myself, and walk up the steps and onto the porch. I knock on the door and it swings open.
“Mrs. Drake?” I shout into the house. The large, open living room is empty, and the only sound I hear is the ticking of what must be a huge grandfather clock.
I look back at Honey, sitting alone in the driveway.
I think about what I told Greg Andrews only an hour ago.
How all I can do is follow every possible lead until I run out or someone makes me stop.
How it has occurred to me, more than once, that Deena Drake was at every crime scene and lives alone on this mountaintop.
How if I don’t take an opportunity to unravel a knot when it’s presented to me, then why am I even here, what good am I.
“Mrs. Drake? Are you in?” I shout once more.
I look around the porch again for cameras.
“Nothing,” I say to myself. I poke my head into the living room and see expensive furniture and rugs, but, again, no cameras and no sign of Deena Drake.
“Who leaves their front door unlocked these days?” I mutter. “Anyone could just walk right in…”
And then I push the door fully open and walk over the threshold.