Stephen White - Blinded

“And you roast this… thing for how long?” I asked. “It must weigh most of a ton.”

“We are doing a large one. Fourteen hours should bring it close to perfection. Then it will need to rest a while to stitch the flavors together before we carry it to the table.”

With a smile as warm as apple pie, Mary Pat said, “And you haven’t had a real Thanksgiving supper until you’ve tasted my sister’s gravy, or her cornbread.”

Mary Ellen savored the compliment. “Red pepper,” she explained. “Our mother’s secret. Abundant red pepper.”

“Can I let you know?” I asked them. “My plans for Thursday are still a little up in the air.”

“No need to call. You just come by if you can. We’ll have a place all set at the adult table for you, and you can be certain that the good Lord willing there will be no shortage of food beneath this roof on the day we give thanks. Mary Ellen will start carving right around two.”

Less than a mile from the twins’ home I stopped on the shoulder of a fallow field of what I was still guessing had been cotton and called Alan Gregory to catch him up on what I was up to in Georgia, and then I called Gibbs Storey to tell her that I thought it was premature to assume her husband was dead.

“He’s alive?” she replied, of course. What else would she say?

I’d told her I thought that was a premature conclusion, too. But I suggested prudence might be warranted, and counseled her to temporarily move someplace where her husband couldn’t easily find her.

“Sterling won’t hurt me,” she said.

“If I had a dollar for every time a woman’s told me that in the past twenty years, I’d be driving a Lincoln.”

She sighed at me and told me she’d think about it.

“Trust me, Gibbs. You’re not thinking straight. After what you’ve been through…”

“I’m fine.”

It’s what I expected. I’d done what I could do. I folded up my phone and started driving again.

An hour later I was on the outskirts of Albany, Georgia, trying to decide between two adjacent motels for a place to spend the night when Lucy paged me using our personal code that indicated an emergency. At full arm’s length I could barely read the code: 911 followed by the phone number. Imaginative, no. But it worked for us.

I picked the motel that wasn’t a national chain and finished checking in before I used my cell to return Lucy’s call. The motel room was full of my grandmother’s oldest chenille, the air was musty, and the background smells in the shadowy room were born of burnt tobacco and constant humidity and were as unfamiliar to me as the accents of all the people I was meeting in Georgia.

Lucy had left me her own cell number, not her office number. I figured that was important.

“Hey,” I said. “It’s me.”

“Hi, Sammy. I really miss you. You okay?”

“Later, what’s up?” She didn’t 911 me to ask me how I was doing.

“Listen, you’re not going to believe this, but Crime Stoppers-yeah, I’m serious: Crime Stoppers-got a tip, anonymous, of course, that Sterling Storey may be responsible for as many as four murders. All women, all in towns where he’s worked over the years. He travels around producing sporting events on cable.”

“I know about his job. Does the story check out?”

“At least one piece of it seems to. There’s a woman in Indianapolis who went missing in the same circumstances that the tipster reported. She’s the same general description as Louise Lake-single, attractive, late twenties-and she worked where the guy said she worked. Donald and I have just started putting it together. There are other teams tracking down all the other women, but I haven’t heard anything about their progress.”

“You have a name?”

“Julie Franconia. She worked in PR or marketing or something for the Indiana Dome or-”

“It’s the RCA Dome now, I think. The Colts play there. Peyton Manning. Good kid.”

“Whatever. She disappeared in 2000. Late March, I think. Just a sec… yeah, March twenty-third, 2000.”

“Remains?”

“We just got on this.”

“Circumstances?”

“She told her co-workers she was going to meet some girlfriends for a drink after work. Disappeared.”

“No body?”

“That’s what we’re trying to confirm. It was dumped on us as a typical without-a-trace, but a local cop told me he doesn’t know what all the fuss is about, that they have it as a cleared homicide. We’re waiting to hear back from the homicide guy. You know what it’s like with the holidays coming.”

“Is the press on this?”

“Nobody’s called me personally, but I think yes, probably.”

“Four? You said four?”

“Four total, including the California murder.”

“Where are the other two?”

“Augusta, Georgia, and West Point, New York.”

“That would be, what, the Masters and… I don’t know, the Army-Navy game?”

“I guess,” Lucy said. Other than occasional Broncos football, she didn’t pay much attention to sports she didn’t participate in, and she didn’t apologize for it.

I asked, “Any progress on the river search down here? Did Storey’s body show up today? Tell me yes. If you tell me yes, maybe I’ll come home.”

“I wish I could tell you yes, Sam. They’re still looking, but nobody seems hopeful about finding the body. The search is winding down. Oh, and in case it matters, you were right about Storey. He is, or was, a swimmer-a star on his college water polo team.”

“Water polo? Didn’t play that a lot when I was growing up in Minnesota.”

Lucy knew me well enough not to respond to my sarcasm. She asked, “You’re not in touch with the local authorities down there?”

“I made a courtesy call when I first got here. They’re looking for a body. I’m looking for something else.”

“You think he’s alive?”

“I’m not ready to think out loud. I assume someone interviewed Sterling’s friend Brian Miles.”

“Georgia State Police talked to him. Miles said Sterling called from Tallahassee and said he was coming to visit but never showed up. The story checks out.” Through the phone I heard an overhead page in the background.

“Where are you right now, Luce?”

“Whole Foods, getting something for dinner. Why?”

“You going back to the department?”

“I’ll be eating at my desk. For now, this case is all computer and phone work.”

“I’ll keep my pager on. Enjoy your dinner.”

“You okay, Sam?”

“I’m meeting some nice people down here. Luce? Send some patrols past Gibbs Storey’s house. Can you do that?”

“Sure. You do think he’s alive?”

“I forgot, one more thing. Is Reynoso still in Boulder, or did she go back to California?”

“Her? None of the above. I heard she was leaving for Georgia to look for Sterling. You haven’t run across her yet?”

“I think I’d recall that.”

She laughed. “I imagine she’ll be trying to find you.”

“We’ll see how good a detective she is. Thanks, Luce. Talk to you.”

I leaned back against the headboard of the motel bed. My mass caused it to crack hard against the wall, and I imagined what a percussive racket an energetic couple could make on this bed. The thought froze me for a moment, as I wondered when the last time was that Sherry and I had rocked a bed. I mean really rocked it.

I couldn’t recall.

Lucy had said that there were suspected victims of Sterling Storey in Augusta and Indianapolis.

Augusta was closer, but I’d be flying blind if I went there. Indianapolis was farther, but at least Lucy would have facts to feed me. What did I hope to find?

I didn’t know. Maybe when I tripped over it, I’d know.