A Shred of Evidence (8 page)

She went back to Google and followed the same procedure for sex offenders in Mississippi, Georgia, and Alabama and got the same results. She turned off the computer and sat back in her chair.

Should she tell the police what she’d overheard Eddie say? Should she talk to Julie first? Or should she mind her own business and just try plotting the
next chapter
of her novel?

Julie Hamilton pulled up in front of Hank’s Body Shop and spotted Ross with his head buried under the hood of a blue sports car. She tooted the horn.

Ross looked up, then wiped his hands with a rag and walked over to the car, the lines across his forehead revealing his mood. “What’re you doing here?”

“I brought your lunch.” She took his lunch pail off the passenger seat and handed it to him through the open window. “You walked off without it.”

“I wish you’d have called first. I’m coming home at noon.” He looked in the backseat, the lines disappearing from his forehead. “Hear that, baby doll? Daddy’s got the rest of the weekend off.”

“Good,” Julie said. “That’ll give us some time to talk.”

Ross dropped his head and shook it from side to side. “Here we go again.”

“It’s not as though I’m asking for the moon,” she said. “I just want things to be the way they used to be. Do you know how awful it makes me feel when you avoid me?”

Ross lifted his eyes and shot her a disgusted look. “No, tell me again. I’ve only heard it now about a thousand times.”

“Don’t you find it alarming we can’t seem to carry on a normal conversation since Nathaniel—”

“I told you I’m not over it. Anyway, I need to finish this car. The customer’s waiting.” He turned on his heel and started walking toward the service garage.

“Ross, please don’t turn your back and walk away mad. It upsets me for the whole day.”

“Yeah, well, my day hasn’t been a picnic either.”

Julie blinked the stinging from her eyes, wondering if anything would bring back the man she married.

Ellen sat in the Seaport police station, her hands folded on a big oak table. She glanced up at the clock and wondered what was taking Police Chief Will Seevers so long. She was eager to turn this matter over to him and get herself uninvolved as quickly as possible.

The door opened and the police chief came in the room and sat across from Ellen. “Okay, Mrs. Jones. You did your civic duty. Well take it from here.”

“Are you going to tell me whether Ross Hamilton’s a sex offender?”

“He doesn’t have a criminal record, ma’am.”

“Aren’t you at least going to question him—or Eddie or Hank Ordman?”

“Well look into it. But unless someone presses charges or produces evidence, this kind of information isn’t terribly useful.”

Ellen leaned forward on her elbows. “Chief, I was a newspaper editor for ten years, and a reporter for many years before that. I’ve been in the thick of some serious situations. I wouldn’t have brought this to your attention if I didn’t think it warranted investigation. My instincts are pretty good. Something’s wrong in that family. I can feel it.”

“Yes, ma’am. Like I said, well look into it.”

He had the audacity to patronize her? “I sincerely hope you do. If what Eddie overheard is true, Ross Hamilton poses a threat to the children of this community, not to mention his own daughter.”

The chief’s intense gray eyes locked on to hers.
“Nobody
wants to keep kids safe any more than I do. Why don’t you let
me
do my job?”

“Very well.” Ellen pushed back her chair and stood.

She left Chief Seevers’s office with an uneasy feeling that he didn’t take this seriously enough. She remembered Eddie saying that Ross Hamilton had been accused of doing something to a little boy named Nathaniel in Biloxi. She decided to go online and check the Biloxi newspaper and see if she could find anything archived.

Ellen opened her eyes wide and blinked several times to get rid of the grainy sensation, then took another sip of coffee. She had
been online all afternoon and had already accessed the news articles that appeared in the Biloxi-Gulfport
Sun-Herald
over the past three years and found no mention of Ross Hamilton or a boy named Nathaniel.

She took in a breath and forced it out. She backed out of the
Sun-Herald
website and noticed a website listed for a
Biloxi Telegraph
. She went to the home page and clicked on to Archived Articles and began to scroll backwards.

Ellen looked through all the articles in April and March and started reading February’s when she started to nod off. She was just about to quit her search and take a break when her eyes fell on a February 15 article:

Ellen sat back in her chair and tried to assimilate the magnitude. Nathaniel was Ross’s
son?
How horrible that must have been for Julie! Ellen reread the article. Not once was it even implied that Ross Hamilton was a child molester. Why hadn’t Hank just said that?

But this new information gave Ellen a sinking feeling. Was Ross Hamilton an unusual type of serial killer? She thought of
the hit-and-run in Seaport. Blue pickup. Mustached man. She remembered parking behind a blue pickup when she went to talk to Hank Ordman.

Ellen turned off her laptop and skipped down the winding staircase to the kitchen, where Guy sat at the breakfast bar, drinking a glass of lemonade.

“So what did you decide to do about Ross Hamilton?” he said.

Ellen told Guy everything that had happened from her confrontation with Hank Ordman to her encounter with Chief Seevers to her finding the article in the
Biloxi Telegraph

“You’re a news magnet, you know that?” Guy said.

“I didn’t go looking for this. But I can’t just ignore it.”

“I agree. So, what’s the next step?”

“I’ll have to go back to Chief Seevers on Monday and give him the article. Even if Ross Hamilton doesn’t have a record, the chief should be made aware of his suspicious history.”

O
n Monday morning, Ellen Jones awoke to the inviting aroma of freshly brewed coffee. When had she finally dropped off to sleep? Her body would have been content to lie right there, but her mind was already in high gear. She threw off the covers and heard Guy singing in the shower. She put on her bathrobe and headed for the kitchen, aware of the dull throbbing in her fingers.

She took two Advil, then poured a cup of coffee and went out on the veranda. She sat in her wicker rocker and tried to get quiet inside. She closed her eyes and absorbed the sounds—the chirping of birds, the stirring of palm fronds in the warm breeze, and the deep, resonating blast of a freighter’s horn in the distance.

She prayed for Julie and Sarah Beth—and for courage and wisdom to appropriately handle the encounter she would have with the police chief later this morning.

Ellen sat quietly for a few minutes, then opened her eyes and took a sip of lukewarm coffee. The chirping of a tiny Carolina wren filled the backyard, and she wondered if what she had to tell Chief Seevers would create as much stir at the police station.

Guy came out on the veranda. “Okay, honey, I’m off to Tallahassee. I’ll call you tonight.” He pressed his lips to hers. “Thanks for giving me space to work. I know it’s been difficult trying to decide what to do about Ross Hamilton. Maybe by the time I get home Wednesday afternoon, we can put this behind us and spend next weekend doing something fun.”

Julie Hamilton stirred fresh blueberries into the bubbly oatmeal, then put the lid on the pan and turned off the burner. The front door slammed so hard the kitchen window rattled.

“It’s okay, sweetie,” she said to Sarah Beth. “Mama will be right back.”

Julie went into the living just as Ross flung the newspaper at the far wall and let out a string of curse words.

“What’s wrong?” she shouted in a whisper. “Sarah Beth can hear you.”

Ross pushed open the front door. “Take a look. I’m sure half of Seaport has by now!”

Julie went out on the porch and noticed cars slowing and drivers looking up at the house. She went down the steps and halfway down the front walk, then turned around. On the garage door, the words “Child Molester” had been written in black spray paint. She stood staring until her eyes clouded over, and then stormed up the steps and back into the house.

“Ross, what’s this about?”

“I’m gonna kill Eddie Drummond, that’s what this is about! He overheard Uncle Hank talking to Aunt Alice about what that reporter in Biloxi wrote and came up with some stupid notion that I’m a child molester.”

“
What
?” Julie threw up her hands. “Hello? I’m your wife! I can’t believe you didn’t bother to tell me!”

“I was too upset. That’s what was wrong with me when you brought my lunch Saturday.”

“You’ve known since
Saturday?”

“Yeah, Eddie came in early, loaded for bear. Said I was a sicko pervert. Hank set him straight, but you should’ve seen his face. I can’t prove it, but I know Eddie’s behind this.”

“I’m calling the police,” Julie said.