“Come on, Rainey. You’ve ridden this horse before,” she said aloud.
Sheila’s voice followed. “You okay, Rainey?”
“Yeah, just give me a minute.”
“I came to tell you Jedidiah Lilly is in Interview C. He isn’t alone.”
Rainey took a deep, slow breath, counting in her head,
one, two, three, four.
She held the breath, counting again,
one, two, three, four.
She blew it out,
one, two, three, four.
She counted to four again and then restarted the cycle.
Shut it out, all of it,
she thought.
In her mind, Rainey’s father’s presence remained as a voice of reason. She heard him say, “Focus on the numbers and the cycle. Calm the storm, Rainey, calm the storm.”
After a full minute of rhythmic breathing, she was ready to exit the stall. Sheila waited while Rainey washed her hands and face.
“I don’t know how you can look so calm on the surface,” Sheila said after Rainey finally gave her eye contact. “Teague had sweat popping out on his forehead and you sat there cool and unruffled.”
“That’s what this situation called for. Had I let him see a speck of concern or fear, even a second when I wasn’t in control of the room, he would have pounced on that. You’re going to see something different in this next interview. Are you ready?”
Sheila smiled at her. “Yes, I’m ready. I have three suspects in custody for three different crimes in less than an hour. No need to stop you now.”
Rainey walked toward the door to the hall. “I didn’t get a message back from those kids and Brooks hasn’t located the phone yet. I hope they just ran. I hope we aren’t too late.”
Sheila asked, “Is there anything I can do?”
Rainey stopped with her hand on the door handle. What was she missing? What clue had she not seen?
“One of those kids, Henrique—they call him Hurricane or Cane, he came from New Orleans, displaced by Katrina—he was arrested and put back in the system a few weeks ago. Can you find that cop? Maybe he knows where these kids go when they run.”
“I’ll see what I can find out,” Sheila said. “If this isn’t the answer, what else can we do to find Wendy? Can we be doing it now?”
“Teague’s right. If he didn’t take her, she was taken in a car or left somewhere nearby. Find the neighbors at work, the ones no one spoke to this morning, the ones that left before I got there, before sunup. Maybe they saw something.” Rainey pulled the door open. “Get the dogs out there. Search the woods.”
#
1:10 PM, Friday, March 6, 2015
Durham County Sherriff’s Department
Interview Room 212C
Durham County, NC
They stood when she entered. Jedidiah Lilly and Nick Prentiss wore identical fake smiles—until Nick saw Rainey.
“Good afternoon,” Jedidiah began. “Are you the one that summoned me with that grotesque photo? I assure you, there are better ways to ask for an audience.”
“It would only be grotesque if one knew exactly where that particular mole is located,” Rainey said with a smile. “Thank you for confirming the boys' story.”
“I've confirmed nothing,” the flustered Lilly exclaimed.
Rainey ignored him and directed, “Have a seat.” When the two men hesitated to follow her order, she applied more authority to the command, “Sit down.”
The men looked at each other and then slowly lowered themselves down into the chairs on the other side of the table.
“May I ask who you are, what agency you represent?” Jedidiah wasn’t used to taking orders.
Rainey pulled her phone from her pocket, touched the screen a few times, and then put the phone down on the table in front of the men.
“I am the person who has the picture of your penis, Mr. Lilly. Or should I say, I have a copy of the picture of your penis taken by a teenage male prostitute. That young man and another were found murdered. Two other boys, who can verify the existence of this picture and that they previously encountered this identifying mole while confined to your conversion camp, are now missing. I want your pimp unless you brought him and that’s you, Nick.”
“Now wait just a minute. I have no such mole,” Jedidiah complained.
“You’re here, Mr. Lilly. You have or had a mole just like that or you wouldn’t be. Did you have it taken off after the boys took the picture and word got around?” Rainey asked and dashed his hopes with, “You’d be better off if you hadn’t. You could have argued pixelation made it hard to identify. Now, the jury will only know you tried to cover something up.”
Nick sat quietly by, saying nothing, but Rainey could see he was thinking very hard. It was as if he wasn’t listening, but running scenarios of his own making through his mind.
Rainey watched him but continued to hammer at Jedidiah. “I don’t think you are capable physically or mentally of snapping those two boys' necks. Who would do something like that for you, Reverend Lilly? Who has as much to lose as you? You know who killed these boys. You know who is cleaning up the mess. I need a name. Now!” Rainey slammed her hand down on the table.
Nick spoke. “Can you keep the Reverend out of this?”
Rainey laughed. “Are you kidding? All he has left is a Jim Bakker swan dive into the ‘Forgive me, I’m a sinner’ pond of mercy and hope the good people of his congregation see fit not to let him drown. And why are you so concerned about him? You’re going down for pandering. You lived on the street and now you turn around and sell those children to these sick fucks. What the hell is wrong with you?”
“It’s safer for them if I set them up. I know the men involved. I’m trying to help them,” Nick said, defending his actions.
“It was so safe that two are dead and three are unaccounted for,” Rainey countered.
The sound of loud voices and a scuffle had erupted from the hall, mere seconds before a heavily muscled, uniformed Durham officer stormed into the room, with several deputies trying to restrain him.
“Don’t say anything, Dad,” he shouted.
Jedidiah Lilly stood up. “Son, what have you done?”
Just that fast the case of the murdered boys was well on the way to being solved. Sheila walked into the room after the deputies gained control of Officer Jedidiah Lilly, Jr.
“Where was this guy this morning?” Rainey asked.
“It wasn’t him, Rainey. He was at the gym at five this morning and on duty by seven. He did not take Wendy.”
1:40 PM, Friday, March 6, 2015
Wendy King’s Residence
Chatham County, NC
“They ought to just tear that house down,” the woman said.
Rainey parked on the street in front of Wendy’s house and had just exited the car when the woman in the winter running suit stepped off the curb. Fit and proudly wearing her Senior Olympics sun visor, even as the sleet began to fall, she appeared in her late seventies and was moving at a pretty good clip toward Rainey.
She extended her gloved hand and introduced herself. “Hello. I’m Rita James. You have to be the older sister Wendy talked about. You look so much alike.”
Rainey shook Rita’s extended hand. “Yes, ma’am. I’m Rainey Bell. Why do you say that about the house?”
“That makes two young women snatched out of there in the last ten years. It’s cursed, or the guy that took them lives close by,” Rita said.
Rainey was immediately intrigued. She had not thought to ask about crimes committed ten years ago at Wendy’s house, not that anyone would have. However, Rainey had forgotten the first rule of crime analysis and zeroed-in on the prominent suspects. Suspects clouded evidence interpretation. The men she questioned were all guilty of something, but not her sister’s abduction. Back at the house to start over, this new bit of knowledge was as good a place as any to begin.
Rainey asked the neighbor, “Do you have a basis for the assumption that he’s close by?”
“My husband Earl and I were one of the first to buy a house in this subdivision.” Rita pointed at the house directly across the street from Wendy’s home. “We lived right over there for the last 26 years, at least I have. Earl passed six months after Joanne Bonner went missing in 2005.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Rainey said.
Her words left smoke trails as temperatures plummeted with the arrival of the cold front’s arctic blast. Rainey watched sleet pellets bounce from Rita’s visor bill while she explained the activities in the neighborhood ten years ago.
“I think he worried himself sick over who took her. She vanished without a trace. The two years prior, cats and dogs went missing, people’s trashcans were set on fire, and everyone kept their doors locked. After Joanne went missing, it all came to a stop. I’ve read enough true crime novels to see the correlation. Earl retired from the Marines. He looked on the folks in this neighborhood as part of his family. He started the neighborhood watch. I think losing Joanne broke him.”
“Did they ever find her?”
“No, they never did. I talked to Wendy about it when the Triangle Terror started up. I thought he’d come back, the one that worried us those two summers. I just heard on the news that it was that professor expert they had working on the case. Can you believe that?”
“You just never know, do you?” Rainey commented but did not explain she was the one who ended the professor’s life of crime. She was focused on one aspect of Teague’s confession. “He doesn’t have Wendy and that’s my primary concern at the moment.”
“I’m sure you’re worried sick.”
Rainey answered, “Yes, we all are,” and then asked Mrs. James, “Did you speak with the police this morning? Did you remind them of the unsolved case?”
“No, I was at my daughter’s house last night. I came home about an hour ago.”
“Did the police have any suspects in the Bonner case?”
“I don’t know if they did or not, but Earl thought he’d narrowed it down. He had a stroke before he had any proof. He went into the hospital and never came home.”
“But he thought he knew who took the Bonner woman? Did he tell you?”
Rita turned her back to Wendy’s house as if she didn’t want the lingering police on the lawn to read her lips.
“Buddy Cashion, Juanita’s boy. Earl wasn’t sure, but he was watching Buddy like a hawk. The Cashions moved in right after we did. Buddy was just a baby. We watched that boy grow up. He was always shy and quiet. He was thirteen when he found his daddy hanging in the workshop out back. After that, Buddy turned dark, very dark.”
Rainey grew more interested in Rita’s story. Like the rest of the homes in the neighborhood, Wendy’s shared fences with the houses on either side. The dwellings also shared identical floor plans with slight variations in exterior presentation. Both Wendy’s house and the Cashion’s had a small workshop or storage building at the back of the lot. Each fenced backyard had a gate allowing access to the Eagles Spur Rail running trail, which wound through the pine barren to the tip of Jordan Lake. Comprised of sandy swamp, shrubs, and small pines, the outwash wetlands were the ideal place to hide a body. Sheila had told Rainey before she left the Sheriff’s Department that the search team dogs were deployed. Dead or alive, the dogs were the best chance of finding Wendy in the woods.
“Mrs. James, did the police question Buddy about the missing woman?”
“That’s the weird part. They did question him and he confessed, but his story did not match the details of the crime. He was not in his right mind. He would have admitted to killing Kennedy at that point. Juanita had to send him to Dix Hill to get help. I think he lives in a halfway house now. He’s okay as long as he stays on his medications. Juanita said Buddy has schizophrenia just like his daddy.”
While Rainey reached for her phone, she continued probing for information.
“Juanita mentioned that her son didn’t like her boyfriend. Have you seen Buddy around?”
Rita glanced over her shoulder at Juanita’s home. “Gary Don Miller is a convicted sex offender. He is a reformed heroin addict who claims the girl was fifteen and came on to him. All I need to know is he went to prison for it and now lives across the street from me. Juanita sure can pick ‘em.”
“And Buddy doesn’t like him?” Rainey said, reminding Rita of her question.
“I haven’t seen Buddy in years. It’s Travis that doesn’t like Gary Don. Travis is from Juanita’s first marriage to Barney Odom. Barney was killed in an accident on a barge when a frayed cable broke, cut him nearly in half. Juanita got a lot of money from the settlement. She married Johnny Cashion afterward, had Buddy, and bought that house. Travis was five when they moved in.”
Rainey held her phone, having already typed the beginning of the email to Brooks while listening to Buddy Cashion’s history. She sought clarification from Rita, “What is Buddy’s name? I’d like to check with a friend on his whereabouts.”
“He’s John Cashion, Jr. I’m pretty sure that's it,” Rita said.
Rainey typed in Buddy’s name and sent her request for information concerning all members of the Cashion household to Brooks, with an accompanying text to her private cell number to get her attention.
Rita continued her narrative. “Juanita is a good woman, but the men in her life are troubled.” She paused, before adding, “Travis seems okay, I guess. He works in the banking business. I think that’s what Juanita said. His wife, Reece, is attractive, but she doesn't come here often because of Gary Don.”
The sound of young boys mouthing off at cops reached Rainey’s ear, just as the gate to Wendy’s backyard flew open. Two heavy-breathing uniformed officers appeared unamused by the two handcuffed and complaining teenagers. Steam rose from all four of their bodies, signaling recent physical activity.
“I want a lawyer,” the smaller boy said.
The other asked, “What did I do wrong, officer? I was fuckin’ walkin’ on a walkin’ trail.”
Rainey recognized the voice and the teenager that went with it.
“Excuse me. I need to deal with this. Thank you for the information,” she said to Mrs. James and left to intercept the duo.
“Rainey Bell. Hey, I’mma need that bail money,” Cane said.
Barron smiled in relief. “Hey, she knows we ain’t stealin’ nothin’. She knows us. Hey, Rainey, tell these guys Wendy told me to come here.”
Rainey gave the officers the respectful dip of her head they deserved and spoke to them as if the boys were not there, “Officers, I’m Rainey Bell. I am consulting on a case with the Sheriff’s department involving these two material witnesses. If you’d like to call Sergeant Detective Sheila Robertson to verify that, I’ll wait here.”