Don’t Talk to Strangers: A Novel (32 page)

I kept an eye on the rearview mirror on the way back to Whisper. I didn’t want any
more surprises. Peele had waited in the parking lot after his interview, while I met
with Dr. Pope. Why? The nod, was that supposed to intimidate me? Or was he waiting
for something else as well? Or someone? Could Peele have given Brenda Roberts information?
She’d be the journalist most likely to nibble at a tip that included my name. Peele
would relish doing anything that might muddy an investigation, because it entertained
him, or because he was in fact the killer Meltzer wanted him to be. Sensational headlines
could hurt Skylar’s parents even more than they’d been hurt already. And Peele liked
hurting people.

The air was full of wild mint and sweetgrass and baled hay, and smelled like a basket
weaver’s shop. I checked the time. Almost ten. Almost nineteen hours since Skylar
had last been seen alive. She’d probably had her last decent meal at school yesterday.
She’d been mad at her mom when she was dropped off yesterday morning, and all her
pubescent misery had propelled her out of that car. Hayley Barbour had probably replayed
that argument in her mind a million times.

I pulled over on the shoulder. I needed a minute, one minute to
draw the clean air into my lungs and push out the images, the terrible images. Because
they were only useful when I summoned them, controlled them, when I could scrutinize
them for evidence, what they told me about
him
, the man who could break a little girl’s bones for his own pleasure.

I leaned against the car, looked down the empty highway. As soon as Peele pulled out
of the justice center today, someone would be on his tail. Meltzer wanted Peele as
badly as he wanted to find Skylar. Where was she? In what windowless room, what hole
in the ground, what basement, what barn? And where were we? Not far enough. Detective
Raymond was getting the skinny on Lamar Bailey, the sex offender who hadn’t shown
up for group. Raymond and Brolin would be following other leads and reinterviewing
witnesses. Had anyone noticed a man with a broken-down car? Someone changing a flat
tire? Having the right question was sometimes the key to jogging the flawed human
memory.

I got in my car and wished for an iced coffee, one of Neil’s treats for scorching
days. I was heading back to Whisper to see what I could shake loose. It felt like
I was chipping away at a stone wall with a toothpick.

I drove down Main Street and parked. I left the tiny key and padlock that fit Skylar’s
diary in the glove compartment and took the journal with me.

I exited across the park under a jasmine-smothered arbor and walked to the middle
school Melinda and Skylar had attended, a long one-story building, unremarkable and
institutional. I pulled open a double door and walked into a corridor lined with display
cases—trophies, photographs, ribbons—not for athletics, but for the school band. An
article from
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
about Whisper Middle School’s invitation and subsequent performance at the Rose Bowl
was framed and displayed. Skylar’s parents had wanted her to stay in the band.

I walked down the empty hall on sound-absorbent commercial tiles in three colors—pale
yellow, navy blue, and gold, the school colors. I slipped by the principal’s office
and then the admin office, unnoticed.
I didn’t want anyone alerted to my visit. I wanted to find Daniel Tray on my own.
I drew bored stares as I passed open classroom doors, from kids who wanted to look
at anything but what they were supposed to be looking at. I thought about that, and
about how easy it was to walk into the school.

The hall was T-shaped. I followed it to the end as I had yesterday and turned right,
passed another bank of lockers and a couple of classrooms. I stood there watching
him, average height, average frame, not skinny, not fat. His hair was brown and short,
thinning in the crown so that a bare spot the size of a half dollar showed white scalp.
He was the kind of guy who looked better straight-on than in profile because his chin
was short and pulled down into a skinny neck. He had a bulging Adam’s apple. He was
humming to himself, absorbed in his task, putting instruments back in cases, breaking
down music stands, folding chairs and stacking them.

“Daniel Tray?” I said.

He jolted the way people do when they’re thinking hard and unaware of the world. He
crossed the room wiping his hands on a chamois polishing cloth, an unsure smile on
his face. “Can I help you?”

“My name’s Keye Street. I’m a consulting investigator with the sheriff’s department.”

Tray wiped his right hand again and shook mine. I was thinking about polishing cloths
and oil and Skylar’s phone. “I heard the sheriff had hired an outside investigator
to help with Melinda Cochran’s murder. And that other girl.” He had the fringes of
an accent that had once been southern.

“Tracy Davidson,” I said. No one seemed to know her name and it bothered me. “You
have a second to talk?”

“Sure.” He said it enthusiastically, like he’d wanted someone to talk to. He hurried
to the back and grabbed two chairs off the stack, unfolded one for each of us. “You
know Melinda was a student of mine. It’s terribly sad what happened to her. It was
such a shock. Nothing like that happens in Whisper.”

The room had the fatty smell of slide grease and woodwind swabs and valve oil. And
it hit me the way scents do that connect to
memories—Jimmy deciding he’d have a go at the trumpet when we were kids, his plastic
bottle of valve oil tucked in a corner pocket of the velvet-lined case.

“Did you know Melinda well?” I asked.

“I like to think so.” He glanced at the diary I’d put in my lap. “I try to develop
relationships with my kids. We have more fun that way.”

I thought about Bryant Cochran’s comments, which implied Daniel Tray was overtly and
stereotypically gay. What I saw was a thin guy in his forties with a quiet voice who
was losing his hair and probably stayed in on Friday nights. I thought about what
Melinda’s friends had told me, the dangerous rumors about Tray behaving inappropriately
with children. I’d run across pedophiles in my career. They’d all identified as heterosexual.

“Melinda confided in you?” I asked.

“As much as children that age are willing to confide in a teacher or parent. And teachers
are not high on their list of confidants.”

“You think Melinda was hiding something?”

“No. Not really. But I had noticed she seemed … less focused. She started wanting
to leave as soon as practice was over. She seemed less involved with the band outside
practice.” He shrugged. “It’s natural. It’s about the age we begin to lose them.”

Skylar had been less interested too. She’d written about wanting to quit. It wasn’t
much, just a scrap to file away. “You talk to Melinda about this?”

“I asked her if anything was wrong. She said there wasn’t.”

“You had this discussion with Melinda after school?”

He nodded. “One afternoon after practice. We have one after-school practice a week
on the field, so we can work on our routines. And we meet two days a week in the classroom.”
Tray’s eyes moved to the diary and back again. I heard the rush of air through the
HVAC system in the silence between us.

“Did you consider telling the police Melinda had been disengaging?”

He looked surprised. I couldn’t tell if his eyes were green or brown or both. “No.
I only saw Melinda for forty-five minutes three times a week. I guess that’s why they
didn’t talk to me. All the teachers were
brokenhearted for her family. Melinda was special. We all cared about her. And I think
we all felt she’d ace a scholarship one day and contribute something to the world.”

“I was told she was a little awkward,” I said, thinking again about the conversation
I’d had with her friends.

“Melinda Cochran?” Tray asked and again looked surprised. “Hardly. Very smart, confident
young woman.”

“With boys?”

“Again, not awkward,” Tray said. It was another small thing, something that didn’t
fit. Someone was lying—Tray or Melinda’s friends. Why?

I pulled up Logan Peele’s photograph. “You recognize this man?”

“Never seen him.”

“Were you surprised to hear Melinda’s body was discovered?”

“Oh no. We all thought the child was dead,” he said. “I just don’t think we understood
what she’d fallen victim to.”

“What was that, in your opinion?”

“Well, there was that other girl out there who’d been killed too, so …”

“Tracy Davidson.”

“So this clearly wasn’t some random thing. This was someone who kills kids.” He swallowed
and the knot that was his Adam’s apple slid up and back again. “Never thought I’d
be talking about murdered kids, kids who were ours.”

“You ever see Melinda out of school?”

“I suppose I’ve run into most of the kids at some point at the grocery store or the
pizza place. But specifically to meet her? Or any student. No. Even if she’d wanted
to talk I would have insisted on it being here at school.” His forehead was glistening.

“But the band travels,” I said. “You travel with them. So you do see the students
off campus.”

“Well, yes, but—”

“In fact you have a lot of time with them outside the classroom, right? Airplanes,
buses, hotels.”

Sweat let go of his hairline and trickled down his temple. He dabbed at it with the
chamois cloth. “I’m not sure what you’re implying,
Miss Street, but I can assure you that our trips are chaperoned. We always have at
least two parents along. And I don’t spend any time alone with the children. Not ever.”

“How about Skylar Barbour? She travel to California with the band last year?”

“Yes.”

“Is she a good student? Smart like Melinda, talented?”

“They actually have a lot in common—bright, outgoing, grown up for their age. But
why are we talking about Skylar?”

“When was the last time you saw Skylar, Mr. Tray?”

He didn’t hesitate. “Yesterday, in the hall. Today was her day for music class but
she wasn’t present.” The trickle of sweat had turned to a stream. It made it all the
way to his jawline before he swiped it away. “Has something happened to Skylar?”

“No one’s told you? Her parents made several calls to teachers and friends last night.
The detectives spoke to some of her friends, the bus driver.”

“
No
. My God. What’s happened?”

“She didn’t make it home from school yesterday.”

“What do you mean she didn’t make it home?”

“Vanished.” I said it bluntly.

“Oh God.” He was getting breathy and twitchy as if he might fly up out of his chair.
“I come in after second period on Friday. I haven’t spoken to anyone today.”

“No one called you last night at home? You’re not friends with the other teachers?”

“No. No one called me. And no, we’re not really friends outside work.” His eyes had
darkened. I saw more brown than green now.

I opened the diary, glanced down at a random page. “Says here Skylar talked to you
about wanting to leave the band.”

“What is that? Is that her diary or something? So something awful happened to her
too?”

“It appears she was abducted. Perhaps by the same person who murdered Melinda and
Tracy.”

He touched his forehead, rubbed his eyebrows. “Okay, wow. Yeah. She wanted to leave
band.”

I remembered the music stand and flute book I’d seen at the Barbours’ house. “She’s
what, alto flute?”

“One of only two in the band. And good. Would have been a big loss. I kept hoping
she’d rediscover her passion for it if she just stuck with it a little longer.”

“Like Melinda?”

“Yes,” he agreed quietly. “I really can’t believe this is happening.” He paced to
the door and back. His hands pushed through thin hair. “Her parents must be frantic.
The whole school will be frantic.”

“Skylar wrote about a boy named Robbie,” I said. “What’s Robbie’s last name?”

He shook his head. “I’m not sure. I’ve only taught two that went by Robbie, one is
in the sixth grade and one moved on to Whisper High a few years ago. Eighth-grade
girls don’t get crushes on sixth-grade boys. And Melinda and Skylar were in-girls.”

That didn’t fit with the awkward girl her friend Heather had described. “You know
Melinda’s friends well? Briana, Shannon, and Heather?”

“No,” Tray said. He was forcing himself to calm down a little but his face was still
flushed. “None of them took band. But I’ve seen them. And you know the teachers talk
in the lounge. We kind of know what’s going on with the kids. Melinda’s group was
inseparable. I mean, they walked home together.” He sat back down. “That’s why we
were all surprised Melinda could be abducted after school. I mean, how can that happen?”

“How do you think it happened, Mr. Tray?”

“I … I don’t know. I heard that Melinda lived in a different neighborhood and he got
her when she was alone on her street.”

“So you never went to her home.”

“No. Of course not. Why would I?”

“Do you know all the kids who walk home from Whisper Middle School?”

“Of course not. It’s just that we’ve had a lot of time to talk about Melinda.”

“Of course,” I agreed sweetly. “Do you know if one of the boys you taught named Robbie
has a band?”

“Robbie Raymond. He would be a senior now. He’s quite a talented guitar player.”

“Where were you yesterday afternoon, Mr. Tray?”

“Me?”
Astonishment and panic crossed his face.

“Just routine,” I assured him.

“I was here until four. And then I went home.”

“Really?” He was lying. “You have someone who can verify that?”

“I don’t have to ask permission to leave. I just leave.”

“Uh-huh. How about after that?”

“I went home. I practiced. Then I made dinner and watched television.”

“Practiced?”

“I play violin.”

“Wife?”

“I’m not married.”

“Partner?”

“I live alone.”