Rude Awakening (19 page)

Mary Ellen sat in Emmett Hopkins's office and stared at the wall. If she was thinking of anything, it was at too low a note to be recorded here.

After the sheriff left the room, Holly was able to gather her wits about her to some extent. She stopped crying and took the tissue offered by the sheriff's wife, using it to wipe her eyes and blow her nose. She felt like an idiot. But if she thought about her laptop, she got all weepy again so she had to just push it out of her mind.

‘I'm sorry,' she said to the sheriff's wife. ‘I know it all seems silly, what with the boy being kidnapped and all, for me to be carrying on about my laptop, but . . .' She snuffled and blew her nose one more time.

‘Not at all,' the sheriff's wife said. She smiled at Holly and Holly tried a tentative smile back. ‘I'm Jean, by the way. My husband didn't introduce us.'

‘Hi, Jean,' the girl said, sticking out her hand, ‘I'm Holly.'

‘Is it OK if I ask you a couple of questions? I'll leave all the stuff about “Mr Smith” to the sheriff. Right now we'll just focus on girl talk. Is that OK?'

Holly nodded her head. ‘Sure,' she said.

‘How old are you, Holly?' Jean asked.

‘I'll be twenty-three next month. But I can play older – or younger.'

‘So, you're an actress! What parts have you had?' Jean asked.

‘Well, I was Rita's stand-in in
Educating Rita
in our high-school production,' Holly said, her chest swelling with pride.

‘Wow,' Jean said. ‘That's a tough role! “Rita” is on stage almost the entire time.'

‘Yes, I know! That's a role you can really sink your teeth into.' Holly said, smiling brightly.

‘How often did you get to do it?' the sheriff's wife asked.

Holly's face fell. ‘Well, I didn't, not exactly. The play ran for two weekends, two Fridays and two Saturdays, and the second Saturday, Nanette Michelson, the one who was playing Rita, was like twenty minutes late and I thought, “Tonight's the night!” But then she showed up.'

‘Oh,' Jean said. ‘That's tough.'

Holly brightened. ‘But I did get to play Juliet in a class production. It was mostly just reading from our seats in drama class, but Mr Clyde, the teacher, said I was
very
good.'

Then the door opened and the sheriff came back in. Holly straightened in her seat, hands clasped on the chipped and graffiti-marred table in front of her, and kept her mouth shut.

After listening in to Jean's gentle questioning of Holly Humphries, I came to the following conclusion: Holly Humphries calling herself an actress is like me calling myself a writer 'cause I write a mean grocery list.

I sat down across from the two women. ‘OK, Miz Holly, I'm glad you're feeling better.' The girl nodded her head at me. ‘Now, you called a number “Mr Smith” left on “Craig's List”, is that right?'

‘No, an email address,' she corrected.

‘OK, you replied to his ad by sending an email,' I said. She nodded. ‘Then what?'

‘I gave him my cell phone number when I emailed him, and then he called my cell phone.'

‘OK, great,' I said. ‘Then what?'

‘He asked me to meet him at a diner and I did,' Holly said.

‘You remember the name of the diner?'

‘Yes, it was Karla's Kitchen on Third Street down by the Goodwill.'

‘Was that your pick or his?' I asked her.

‘You mean Karla's Kitchen?' she asked. I nodded my head. ‘You mean as a meeting place?' Again, I nodded my head. She thought about it for what seemed a fairly long time. ‘I think it was his idea,' she said, staring off into space. ‘But I can't really be sure. I mean, it's not like I'd never been there before. They have real cheap lunch specials. The food's not good, but you get a lot for like $3.99. Sometimes me and a friend would go in there and split it.'

‘But you think it was his choice? To meet at Karla's Kitchen?' I said.

‘Coulda been,' she said.

‘What happened when you met there?' I asked.

‘He looked at my résumé and then told me about the gig . . .'

‘What did he say the, ah, gig was?' I asked.

‘He said it was a documentary on safety to be shown to schoolchildren,' she said.

‘Stranger danger,' I said.

‘Huh?' Holly said.

‘Never mind,' I said. ‘Please, go on.'

‘He told me it was going to be filmed on location, that all my expenses would be paid, and that I'd get an additional $500.' She looked up at me between long lashes. ‘I don't guess I'm gonna get that $500 now, huh?'

I swear to God at that moment all I wanted to do was reach in my back pocket and give her all the cash there was in my wallet. But then, my wife was sorta sitting there. That'll curb those impulses.

ELEVEN

H
olly Humphries told me her story, backtracking here and there, getting some things wrong and needing to correct them, remembering halfway through the story something she shoulda said at the very beginning, and me having to ask a hell of a lot of questions to get any kind of cohesive statement out of her. My main point of interest was where Emil Hawthorne had kept her and Eli the whole time.

‘It was just a barn,' she said for the fourth time.

‘What color was it?' I asked. Again.

She shrugged. ‘Barn-colored?'

‘Red? Natural wood? Pink with purple polka dots?'

‘Milt . . .' Jean said.

I sighed. ‘Can you do better than “barn-colored”?' I asked.

‘Well, mostly wood-colored but I think there was some red in there. Like it had peeled and faded off mostly?' she suggested.

‘Can you remember how long you drove and from where?' I asked.

‘Well, we drove from Tulsa,' she said, looking at me like I was a total idiot, ‘and it took a real long time.'

‘Did you go through a town on your way to the barn?'

Holly thought about it. ‘Nooooo, I don't think so.'

‘Like with buildings, and red lights and stop signs?' I asked, getting a little testy.

She shook her head. ‘No. No red lights. We passed some stop signs, though. At least, I remember stopping. He had me in the back most of the time doing stuff for him,' she said.

‘Doing what stuff?' I demanded.

‘Rolling up ropes neatly, and making sure stuff was secured on the walls of the van.'

‘What stuff?' I asked.

‘Oh, I dunno. You know, like duct tape, and screwdrivers, and a hammer, and a little hatchet thingy, and stuff like that,' Holly said.

‘OK, so tell me about the barn,' I said.

She shrugged. ‘It was a barn. I don't know much about barns. It seemed kinda big to me. There were hay bales in it, and he expected me to actually sit on one of them!' She shuddered at the thought. ‘They were really itchy!'

‘When you left the barn – when you and Eli ran off – what did you see?' I asked.

‘Trees. Lots of trees. I mean, it was night-time, you know? Who could see? There was a driveway to the barn, and we tried to get to it, but Mr Smith caught us with his flashlight, and we ran back into the trees.'

‘Tell me about Mr Smith,' Jean said, and I shot her a look.

The girl looked at Jean and widened her eyes. ‘What about him?'

‘His demeanor . . . how he acted. Angry, purposeful . . .' Jean tried.

‘Oh, he was angry all right. All the time. Mad about everything! He yelled at me constantly, and then when he brought poor little Eli in . . . well, he didn't bring him in, I did,' Holly said.

I put up my hand to stop any further questions from my wife. This one I needed to field myself. ‘
You
brought Eli in? How do you mean?'

‘Oh, Mr Smith had him in his van, and he told me to go get him out and like pull him into the barn, like I was his captor. And he filmed it.'

‘He
filmed
it?' I repeated.

‘Yes!' Holly said, drawing the word out to four or five syllables. ‘I told you he told me he was a film director and I
thought
we were making a movie!'

‘Excuse me,' I said and left the room. The girl was getting on my last nerve, and I had something I needed to do anyway. I found Emmett.

‘Get the county map and check out the area for barns. Old ones. Think we can borrow that helicopter from Tulsa again?'

‘No harm in asking,' Emmett said.

Then I walked down the hall to my office. I had me a deputy to interview. And I wasn't looking forward to it.

Dalton blushed blood-red when the sheriff walked in, even though he hadn't been exploring the sheriff's office in over fifteen minutes. There just hadn't been that much to see, although it had all been fascinating to Dalton. All the paperwork the sheriff had to fill out, all the forms, and then there'd been the personnel files, where he found out Anthony Dobbins, who'd been hired a good ten years after Dalton, was getting paid a lot more than him. Dalton was thinking that wasn't fair, but he figured he needed to think on it some more.

‘Hey, Dalton,' the sheriff said, and went and sat down in his chair behind his desk, which Dalton had luckily vacated when he finished going through the drawers.

‘Hey, Milt,' he replied. ‘Everybody OK out there?'

‘Everybody's fine,' the sheriff answered.

‘That girl Holly OK? You know, she didn't do nothing, Milt. She was just a . . . a pawn in that man Smith's scheme.'

The sheriff nodded his head. ‘Dalton, I'm not gonna ask you where you were this weekend, or why you lied to your mama about it. That's your business. I just wanna know what happened when you met up with Holly Humphries and Eli, how that came about.'

Dalton blushed even harder, as impossible as that would seem, at the mention of his weekend and lying to his mama. ‘Ah, well, I was in Tulsa and Mary Ellen had to come get me, and while she was driving us home, I fell asleep and she sorta got off track, I guess, lost, I guess, and when I woke up, she was gone and the car was dead, and I didn't know where I was. Didn't know we were right there at the falls. And I started wandering around, and then I met up with that girl Holly and she had Eli with her,' he said, all in a rush with hardly a breath in between.

‘Did you see this Smith character?' the sheriff asked him.

Dalton shook his head vehemently. ‘No, Sir! I did not.'

‘Anything you can tell me about your nephew's kidnapping?'

‘No, Sir!' Dalton said, sitting up at attention, feeling like he should stand and salute.

The sheriff stood up and headed for the door. ‘Don't go anywhere,' he said and left the room.

Getting about as much out of Dalton as I figured I would, I left him sitting in my office and went next door to Emmett's office, where I'd had Dalton stash his sister, Mary Ellen. I knocked and opened the door. She was sitting in a visitor's chair, staring at a framed award on Emmett's wall. Somehow, I figured she wasn't actually seeing it.

‘Miz Knight?' I asked her.

She didn't start, just slowly turned her head to look at me. Her expression didn't change. ‘Yes?' she said.

I slid in behind Emmett's desk and took a seat in his chair. ‘Need to ask you a few questions,' I said to her. She didn't respond. ‘Can you tell me where you went after you left Eli with Jean, my wife?'

‘Tulsa,' she said.

‘Why'd you do that?' I asked.

‘Dalton called me.'

‘Why?' I asked. She shrugged in response, but didn't say anything. ‘Did he tell you why he wanted you to come to Tulsa?'

‘Said he was in trouble,' she said. Her eyes, which had mostly been looking at my left ear, moved to stare again at Emmett's framed award.

‘Ma'am?' I said. ‘Could you look at me, please?'

Mary Ellen Knight turned her head slightly, her eyes tracking slower than her head.

‘So, Dalton said he was in trouble and asked you to come get him in Tulsa. So you left Eli with Jean and you drove to Tulsa and got Dalton, right?' I said.

‘No,' she said.

I shook my head like one of the Three Stooges. ‘You just said that's what you did.'

‘I didn't get Dalton. Not right away.'

OK, I thought. Here we go! She's talking. Two whole sentences! ‘Why not?' I asked.

‘He wasn't there,' she said, her fascination with my left ear back on.

‘Where was he?' I asked.

She shrugged, and as she did, her eyes left my ear and traveled back to the framed award.

‘Ma'am?' I said, and snapped my fingers toward her face. Her head turned slowly again, and her eyes made contact with my ear.

‘Mary Ellen,' I said softly, ‘is there
anything
you can tell me?'

Miracle of miracles, her eyes left my ear and actually looked directly into my eyes. ‘No,' she said and then drifted back to the wall.

I got up and left the room, going back into the interrogation room, where my wife was still sitting with Holly Humphries. Opening the door, I motioned for Jean to join me outside.

I waited in the hall until she came out. ‘What?' she asked.

‘I think there's something wrong with Mary Ellen Knight,' I told her. ‘Something
your
kinda wrong.'

‘She seemed a little depressed when I talked with her at the birthday party yesterday,' Jean said.