“Yeah, okay, boss,” Steve said.
His old supervisor, Special Agent Tolliver Young, used to say being a good leader was sometimes pretending you were spotless even as the shit was hitting the fan. Things weren’t quite that bad yet, but he couldn’t afford to let doubt settle into the minds of his deputies. Doubt was gangrenous. Cutting it out was nearly impossible once it started. He wouldn’t let that happen here. Finding Elias was now priority number one. The old fire-and-brimstone bastard was tied to all this. His current absence all but confirmed it.
Another knock at the door.
“Boss, got Dayane here. She agreed to come in, but it took some doing,” Carla said.
Titus got up from his desk. He grabbed his notepad and a pen.
“Get the case file for Cole. Bring it to the box. I want you to sit in on the questioning. You got her to come in, so maybe she’ll feel more at ease with you there,” Titus said.
“All right, if you really think it’s a good idea,” Carla said.
“I do. For her and for you. I know you want my job one day and I wouldn’t be doing right by you if I didn’t try to give you the experience to get you there,” Titus said. He’d never intended to be sheriff forever. He hadn’t even expected to win, but now that he’d sat in that chair and worn that badge, he knew he had to do everything to make sure guys like Tom or Roger didn’t take over and run the county as their personal fiefdom like Ward and Cooter had.
Carla smiled. “Thank you. I mean that.”
“I know you do. Now let’s go see what she has to say about Cole getting his face cut off,” Titus said.
* * *
Dayane was sitting with her arms crossed at the table when they entered the room. She was chewing gum like it was her cud. Titus and Carla sat down, nearly in unison.
Titus thought Dayane had probably been beautiful once. She wasn’t hideous now, by any means. But too many late nights, too many long days, had started to take their toll on her. Crow’s-feet around the corners of her eyes deep enough to hold a penny, a smile that was yellowed and incomplete. She looked like she had aged five years since he’d busted her and Danny Fields in the parking lot of the Safeway at 3:00 A.M. sharing a hit from some soda-bottle crank. At least she was doing better than Danny. He’d overdosed a few weeks later.
Her thick blond hair was pulled back so tightly in a long ponytail the skin on her forehead looked like it was about to split. She was dressed in a jean jacket and sweatpants. She was also wearing the T-shirt of a band Titus had never heard of called the Dionysus Effect.
“How you doing, Dayane?” Titus said.
“How you think I’m doing? Your girl there comes and drags me out of work and brings me down here. I’m missing time where I could be making money, so I’m not doing so great,” Dayane said.
“Well, we are gonna try and get you back to the plant as soon as possible. We just have a few questions for you. Don’t worry, you won the shucking contest at last year’s Fall Fest, I’m sure you can make up any money you lost,” Titus said.
Dayane scowled at him but didn’t respond.
Titus pulled an eight-by-ten photo out of the manila folder Carla had brought into the room. He laid it facedown on the metal table.
“All right, I’m not gonna jerk you around. We know you and Cole hooked up from time to time. We don’t care about that. What I want to know is, why did you text him to hook up at your regular spot the same night he ends up getting his throat cut?” Titus asked.
Dayane chewed on her bottom lip.
“Y’all got his phone, huh? Ain’t no shame in my game. I was trying to get fucked. I texted him, went down to the phone tower, but he never showed up, so I left,” Dayane said.
“What time did you go down there and how long was it before you left?” Titus asked.
“I don’t know. Like, nine? I waited for fifteen minutes and then I left,” Dayane said.
“No,” Titus said.
“What you mean, ‘no’? That’s what happened. The dick was good but it wasn’t worth me sitting around all night.”
“No, see, Cole didn’t leave his house at eight thirty. The service road is ten minutes away. If you got there at nine you would have seen him. You had to have seen him. Try again. Try the truth this time,” Titus said.
Dayane stopped chewing. She swallowed the gum while she stared at Titus. “All right, it was probably closer to ten. I get mixed up sometimes.”
“Dayane, we found Cole just forty steps off the service road. He was tied to a tree and somebody cut his back to the ribs. They did this to his face,” Titus said. He turned the photo over. It was a close-up of Cole’s skinned visage.
Titus watched Dayane struggle. She didn’t want to look at the photo, but her eyes seemed drawn to it by gravity. Finally, she peered at it, then closed her eyes.
“Why you showing me something like that?” Dayane said.
“Because I know you’re lying. Here’s what else I know. Cole called up here to tell us about someone he thought might be dangerous. A person he’d done work for with his side job. He told us he partied with this person. That they used to hang out with some girls in a place that had angel art on the walls. I think you’re one of the girls. You and Cole and some other folks that we don’t know about used to get down at this place. Yeah, you got together at the service road, but that was just for quickies. This place is owned by someone you and Cole trusted. Except after my press conference Cole started thinking about this person. He started thinking about the place with the angel pictures. He called up here but lost his nerve. I think he confronted that person. Then that person asked you for a favor. Get Cole out the house. And you did it and now Cole’s dead. Just like those kids under the weeping willow tree. Because the person who killed Cole was the one who killed them too,” Titus said. He knew there were holes in his theory, but it held up enough. He’d put it together last night. The fibers from the wig sealed it for him.
“I don’t know what the fuck you talking about,” Dayane said.
“Dayane, if you know who did this to Cole, your best bet is to tell us now,” Carla said.
“I don’t know anything, so I can’t tell you anything,” Dayane said.
“Do you think you’re safe?” Titus asked.
“What?”
Titus pulled more pictures out of the file.
“He did this to Cole. Somebody he considered a friend. A friend he shared his secret place with, a friend he shared women with. And he still gutted him like a fish. You think he won’t do the same to you? You think he won’t take that big-ass bowie knife and slide it across your neck? You know too much. He can’t let you live. You tell us his name, and we can help you. You don’t, and you might find yourself screaming in the dark,” Titus said. He knew his words were harsh, that they were bordering on threatening, but Dayane’s resolve was brittle. He could tell by the quick shallow breaths she was taking and the way she was devouring her bottom lip. He had to push her. Because he hadn’t been spouting hyperbole. Her life was in danger. If she didn’t tell them what they needed to know now, today, the next time they saw her might be on a slab.
“I don’t know nothing. If you ain’t charging me with nothing, I’d like to go back to work now,” Dayane said. She was tapping her left foot so fast Titus suspected it might be a spasm.
“Dayane, are you scared? Because, trust me, no matter how scared you are, it’s not nearly enough.” Titus spread out the crime scene photos like a deck of cards. “You should be fucking terrified.”
Dayane stared up at the ceiling. She wouldn’t look at the photos.
“I wanna go back to work.”
“Dayane, please think about this,” Carla said.
“I said I wanna go!” Dayane screamed. Titus and Carla looked at each other for a moment before Titus nodded. They didn’t have anything to hold her on; they couldn’t even say she was a material witness.
“Okay, let’s go,” Carla said. She rose and Dayane rose with her.
Carla opened the door and Dayane followed her out of the room.
“If I was you, Dayane, I’d get something to protect myself,” Titus said.
Dayane stopped. “If I was you, I’d worry about catching whoever killed them kids, whoever killed Cole. I’d worry about protecting my own flock.”
Titus felt an icicle slide down the back of his neck.
He stood up and followed her out of the room.
“What did you say?” Titus said.
Dayane didn’t respond, but Carla stopped walking. Dayane went past her.
Titus caught her by the arm.
“I asked you a question,” Titus said. He’d spun her around to face him.
“I just said you should worry about yourself,” Dayane said.
“No, you used the word flock. What did you mean by that?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even remember saying it,” Dayane said.
“You’re lying,” Titus said.