chapter Thirty-four
“You’re sure it was this man?” Casey held out the photo of Cyrus and the two men.
She hadn’t believed the story Billy had been given about the guy being a cop, and thought she’d take a chance that it was Cyrus’ old cronies who had been back in Marshland, on the hunt for Elizabeth. Billy couldn’t say for sure that the man was the same as one of the guys on the photo with Cyrus, but he thought it might have been. He was so upset, however, she wasn’t sure he was seeing anything clearly, and a lot of years had passed since the picture had been taken.
Now, she was showing the photo to a different teenager. Robbie Greer studied the photo for the tenth time. They were in the dingy motel office, so the lighting wasn’t great, but it was good enough if Casey tilted the photo to the right, to catch both lamps in the room. Robbie himself looked different from the evening before. Tonight he was nervous, biting his fingernails and tapping his knuckles on the counter. His eyes jumped around from thing to thing, and he didn’t call Casey “ma’am.”
“I think it’s the same guy,” he said. “I mean, like I said, he’s older now. His hair had gray in it.”
“And what exactly did he ask you?”
“I already told—”
“Again, Robbie. Tell me.”
He sighed, like Casey was asking for him to recite all the presidents. In order. “He wanted to know if I’d heard anything new about Elizabeth Mann. I like that kind of stuff, I mean, mysteries, or whatever. There’s her, and then there’s that guy from down the road, who took off one night in his truck and never came home, and that ranch where they think the ghosts of cowboys are coming back to haunt them.” He chewed on his thumbnail.
“And? What did you tell him?”
“He didn’t actually want to know about all the history. I guess he knew that. He just wondered if I had any idea where she was.”
“And did you?”
He shifted his feet. “Not for sure.”
“Robbie, Billy told you something. He admitted that. Did the guy ask you what he said?”
Robbie paled. “Why would he?”
“Because you’re one of Billy’s friends, and because, according to you, you’re the town expert on Elizabeth’s disappearance.”
“But no strange men have ever asked me before.”
“Then something must have happened. Something to tip them off that new information had come to light.”
Robbie’s tapping became more frantic. “I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I thought it was good. Billy was so happy, you know, but also freaked out, because he’d seen his aunt, and he wasn’t supposed to tell his mom, but he wanted to tell somebody, so…so he told me. He knew I would be interested, wouldn’t think he was weird.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Robbie, what did you do?”
He scratched at his forehead.
“Robbie.”
“I had a web site, okay? I talked about the unsolved crimes around here, in all of Texas, really, but this case—Billy’s aunt—she’s special, you know? Because she’s from here, and Billy’s my—” He choked, and cleared his throat. “—my friend.”
“So when Billy told you about Elizabeth, and that she’d been here, you put it on the Internet? Even though he told you it was a secret?”
“I didn’t know it was going to get her killed! It seemed like no big deal, I mean, Colorado’s a big state! She could’ve been anywhere! I didn’t think…” He slumped. “I just didn’t think.”
Casey wanted to reach across the counter and shake him, but it wouldn’t change what he’d done, and really, what had he done that every other teenager on the planet wasn’t doing? Tweeting and blogging and…whatever else they did that had a weird name. Well, every other kid except for Billy, who had a personal stake in it all.
“Okay,” Eric said. “So he found you because of Billy, and your web site. Did you tell him anything new, that you hadn’t already posted?”
“I didn’t know anything new. Only what Billy told me.”
“But you did report Elizabeth’s description of where she was living.”
If anything, he looked more miserable. “Word for word.”
“Does Billy know this?”
He shuddered. “Yes. He knows.”
So much for that friendship. Casey couldn’t imagine how betrayed Billy was feeling. “Did the man tell you who he was?”
“I told you—he said he was a cop. I don’t remember his name. He called me to the office at school, so I figured he was for real.”
Apparently the school administration thought so, too. They’d called both boys down to the office that same day, except they’d called them separately. Too bad the boys hadn’t confided in each other that time.
“Why didn’t you tell Billy the guy was here asking questions?”
“Seriously? Because I didn’t want him to rip my head off for posting what he’d said. And because the guy told me not to tell anyone.”
So now he can keep a secret?
“But he found out, anyway.”
Robbie nodded miserably. “He saw the blog and figured that’s why the guy came asking for us.”
Casey was confused. “Did you use Elizabeth’s name on your blog? And the name of this town?”
“Sure.”
“Then why didn’t we find it when we were doing Internet searches for Elizabeth Manns from Texas?”
Robbie hunched over. “When were you searching?”
“Couple days ago.”
“Yeah. You wouldn’t have found it anymore. I deleted it.”
“You deleted her name?”
“No. The entire web site. Billy was so mad. It was the only thing I could think of that might make him not hate me anymore.” He sniffed, and wiped his nose with his arm.
Eric shrugged. “You had to do something, man. That was a start. Now, anything you can remember that could help us find this man?”
Robbie plopped down on the chair behind the counter. “You think he did it, don’t you? You think I gave her away on my web site, and this guy saw it, and then he went and killed Billy’s aunt.”
Casey leaned over the counter. “Can you remember anything.”
He shied away, then looked at his shoes for a long time, muttering things like, “He was dressed like a cop,” and “He spoke like us,” and even, “He just looked like a guy. There was nothing special about him, or anything that screamed where he was from or…” He sat up.
“What?” Casey could see a new light in his eyes.
“I don’t know if it means anything.”
“What is it?”
“He called him Cyrus.”
Casey and Eric just looked at him, not sure what he was getting at.
Robbie waved his hands, like he had something in his brain rushing to get out, but was stumbling over itself. “He didn’t call him Mr. Mann. Or Elizabeth’s father. Or even the murder victim. He called him Cyrus. Like he knew him.”
“Not like Cyrus was just part of a case he was working.”
“Right. And then…and then he asked where I thought it was.”
“Where what was?”
“That’s what I asked him. Billy said he asked him, too.”
“And?”
“He wouldn’t tell me what it was. Just said if I didn’t know what he meant, then I wouldn’t know where it was, and he wouldn’t bother me any more. He told me to go back to class, and I never saw him again.”