LITMIR.BIZ

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she lovely?”

      I looked out the window and my heart stopped with screeching pain. A young girl with flowing dark hair skipped up the sidewalk. She wore blue jeans and a red shirt. For just one second, I thought it was Annabelle. My brain knew better, but my heart, that foolish organ, believed. I half rose from my chair. My hands reached out to the girl, who hadn’t noticed me.

      The women beside me hushed. A fork clattered onto a plate. A woman got up and ran to the door as the young girl entered. She pulled her to her side and steered her away from me as she returned to her table.

      I sat down, waited for my lungs to fill again, my heart to beat. When I thought I could walk, I left money on the table and fled.

      I drove for a while, trying not to think or feel. At three o’clock I had no choice but to pull over, find a pay phone—because reception was too aggravating on my cell—and dictate my story back to the newspaper. Jack volunteered to take the dictation, and I was glad.

      “I’ve got about thirty inches on Alvin Orley’s illegal activities,” he said as he waited for me to think a minute. “I even got an interview with one of his old dancers. She said most all of them had to have sex with him to keep their jobs.”

      I gave him my story, the gist of which was that Alvin failed to notice his parking lot was dug up. It wasn’t much of a story, but it would be enough for Brandon.

      “Hey, kid, are you okay?” Jack asked.

      “Tell me about the fire that killed Mitch’s parents.”

      “I forget that you didn’t grow up around here. I guess I remember it so well because at first blush everyone thought it was arson. Harry Rayburn was a prominent local attorney who defended a lot of scum. Everyone jumped to the conclusion that an unhappy client had set the fire.”

      “It was an accident?”

      “That’s right. Electrical.”

      “Both parents died, but the boys escaped?”

      “Mitch was just a kid, and he was on a Boy Scout campout. Jeffrey was at baseball camp at Mississippi State University. He was still in high school but scouts were already looking at him. From everything I heard, it was a real tragedy. The Rayburns were sort of a Beaver Cleaver family. Mrs. Rayburn was a stay-at-home mom.” He sighed. “The house went up like a torch.” He hesitated. “Sorry, Carson.”

      “It’s okay,” I said. “I asked.”

      “I covered it for the paper, and I was there when Jeffrey got home from State. He’d picked Mitch up at Camp DeSoto along the way. It broke my heart to see those boys standing by the smoking ruins of what had been their home.”

      “You’re positive there was no sign of arson?” I could have read Alvin Orley wrong, but I thought he’d hinted that Mitch’s luck was bad for a reason.

      “None. That fire was examined with a fine-tooth comb. It was accidental.”

      “I’m headed back to Ocean Springs. Tell Hank to call me on my cell if he needs me.”

      “Will do, Carson. Drive carefully.”

      I was tempted to get off the interstate at Covington and revisit some of my old haunts. Dorry and I had both shown hunter-jumper. Covington, Louisiana, had hosted some of the finest shows of the local circuit. Dorry had always been the better rider; she rode for the gold. I was more timid, more worried about my horse. I smiled at the full-blown memory of both my admiration for, and my jealousy of, her.

      When I went to visit my parents, I’d be able to see Mariah and Hooligan, our two horses, as well as Bilbo, the pony. Both horses were close to thirty now, but they were in good shape. Dad took excellent care of them, and Dorry’s daughter, Emily, groomed and exercised them. She was the only one of Dorry’s children who liked animals, and truthfully, the only one that I felt any kinship with. At twelve, she was only a year older than Annabelle would have been. Had we lived close together, I believed they would have been famous friends.

      I checked my watch and stayed on the interstate. I’d spent enough time on memory lane. I needed to get back to Ocean Springs. There were a few loose ends I wanted to tie up before the weekend, and Mitch Rayburn was one of them. He’d promised to call. There was also the matter of the four missing girls. I’d have to run their names in Sunday’s paper, but it would look better for everyone if I could quote Mitch or Avery. I wrote leads in my head as I sped down the highway toward home.

      Dark had fallen by the time I pulled into my driveway. My headlights illuminated the shells that served as paving. If someone buried even a rabbit under the shells, I’d notice that they’d been disturbed. Much less five human bodies. Alvin Orley was either blind or lying, and I was willing to bet on the latter.

      The cats were glad to see me. The truth was, Daniel would have made a better home for them. It was my selfishness at wanting to cling to that last little piece of my daughter that had made me insist on keeping them. I fed them, and somewhat mollified, Vesta settled on my lap as I went through my phone messages. My mother had called twice, Dorry once, Daniel once and Mitch Rayburn once. I called Mitch back.

      “We got a positive identification on the bodies. Or at least four of them. You were right, Carson.”

      I took no pleasure in that. “We’ll run the story Sunday. Any idea who the fifth body might be?”

      “Not yet. Did Orley tell you anything?”

      “I didn’t find out squat except that Alvin Orley belongs in prison. He’s a vile man.”

      “He still manipulates from behind prison bars,” Mitch cautioned. “He’s not a man to piss off.”

      “Don’t worry, I try to keep my personal opinion out of print.”

      He laughed. “Brandon must be bitterly disappointed.”

      Mitch knew Brandon well, yet he didn’t let it bother him. “Did you find any leads to the girls’ killer?”

      “The missing fingers. The hair combs. We have leads we’re pursuing.”

      “I wonder why he stopped killing.”

      Mitch hesitated. “That’s a good question. Maybe he moved on, found a new location.”

      “Have you checked the MO with other locations?”

      “Nothing so far, but this was twenty-odd years ago.” He sighed. “I’m going to go for a jog and hope that self-abuse will shake something loose in my brain.”

      “Sweat some for me,” I said. “I’m going to listen to some country music and drink something with ice and olives in it.”

      “You’re too classy for me, Carson,” he said, laughing as he hung up.

      5

      I took a long, hot bath, eventually realizing that I couldn’t scrub Alvin Orley off my skin or out of my consciousness. Contamination by proximity. He was like a virus, a nasty one. I dressed, opened a can of soup for dinner, then headed for the public beach.

      In truth, it wasn’t much of a beach, just the eastern shore of the Bay of Biloxi. Front Beach Drive curved along the water, the homes of the wealthy perched like dignified old guards upon the embankment. Many were set back off the road, telling of a time when lawns were purchased with playing fields for children in mind. Huge oaks shaded the houses and the road. It was early for a Friday night, and the road was quiet. The city had cracked down on the teenagers who liked to park and party there. To the north, it was cocktail hour at the Oceans Springs Yacht Club, a Jim Walters-looking building on stilts. To the south, the water undulated to the Mississippi Sound, passed between Horn and Ship Islands and finally mingled with the waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

      I sat on a low stone wall and listened to the shush of the water. Instead of being comforting, it was unsettling, and I took off my shoes and walked in the cold sand. March was warm enough to tempt the flowers out, but

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