*
Carrie Simms’s mother lives in the Happy Trees Mobile Home Park, which is a misnomer, because Sammie doesn’t see a single tree in the whole place, and if there were, she can’t imagine they’d be happy. She’s seen nice trailer parks, with well-kept homes and lawns and swing sets, but this is all concrete and desperation. There’s a pile of loose trash near the front gate, weighed down by snow, and a ditch of standing water that might be a pond, but probably isn’t. Simms’s mother—Delilah Simms—lives in Number 15, a faded pink trailer down at the end of a long street. There’s an aluminum silver Christmas tree in the front window, a wreath made of plastic holly berries pinned to the door.
“Mrs. Simms?” Sammie says to the woman who answers her knock. She has dark hair, but it must be from a bottle, because her roots are gray. “My name is Samantha Peterson. I’m a reporter with the Post.”
“Is there something he forgot to ask me?” the woman says. She doesn’t look like she should live here, Sammie thinks. She’s well put together, wearing a pantsuit and a simple gold chain, but she’s also tired-looking, as if life’s been too much for her.
“I’m sorry?”
“Mr. Weber—did he send you with some more questions?” She glances at her watch. “I don’t have the time to speak right now, and I don’t know what else I could possibly say. I haven’t spoken with Carrie in almost four years.”
“I’m sorry to bother you,” Sammie says, backing down the steps. This is not how she imagined this would go, but what else could she have expected? It’s standard procedure, SOP. Someone is killed, you interview the family. Get what you can out of them. Readers eat up family stories—the more emotional, the better. Of course Weber would’ve made this his first stop. “My mistake, we do have everything we need.”
She runs lightly to her car and pulls away without buckling her seat belt, because Simms’s mother is still watching her, one hand resting on the tarnished doorknob, the other arm crossed over her waist and cupping the opposite hip, as if she’s in pain. Sammie drives until she can’t see the pink trailer anymore and then pulls aside. Her stomach is turning, but even if she pushed open the door and leaned out there is nothing in her stomach to bring up, except the half cup of coffee she’d drunk hours before. She swallows the gathering saliva in her mouth, once and then again, and her stomach settles.
Talk to the families, that was standard. Weber would write a nice piece about the emotional impact on the family, a real sob story, even if he had to stretch the truth. He was going by the book, doing exactly the same things she’d do in his position. He was already outpacing her, and he’d keep ahead unless she started doing things differently, and she’s drawing a blank now. The victim’s family—done. She’d tried to get a hold of Simms’s landlord, the man who’d discovered her body, but she’d had no luck on that end. She could hunt down the families of the first two victims, Abeyta and Brody, but she has a feeling that Weber already has those bases covered. She despises the guy, but he’s not stupid—and that makes her hate him even more.
A dog lopes by, picking its way carefully over the snowdrifts. She unrolls her window and whistles. It is brown and skinny, too skinny. No collar, but it still pricks up its ears, looks in her direction and starts barking. It doesn’t stop, even after she rolls her window back up and drives away, but chases her for a while, snapping at her bumper.
*
Dean is still at work when she gets home, and the house is empty, cold. She sits at the kitchen table. It’s old, they’d picked the table and chairs up at a garage sale for ten dollars when they were first married, and Dean had fixed it up; he’d spent hours sanding it down and staining it, he’d called it his labor of love, and she’d laughed and kissed him heartily on the mouth. It’d looked new when he was done, but now it’s worn and beaten; there are water rings left on the top and stains on the cushioned seats. She wonders how it got that way, how she’d never noticed it getting so run-down.
She digs her cell phone out of her purse and opens up the Internet browser, types in a few words. The icon spins for a moment, considering, and then pulls up pages and pages of information, two hundred fifty million results. It’s amazing, how easy it is to find anything online now, without hardly any effort at all.
She sees what she needs, taps on it, and her phone automatically dials. She doesn’t know why it had never occurred to her before, she needed Ralph Loren to remind her, but she has access Chris Weber will never have. She is approved to visit Jacky Seever.
“You’ve reached Sterling Correctional Facility,” the automated voice says in her ear. The voice is sexless, robotic. She can’t tell if it’s supposed to be a man or a woman. “If you know the extension of the party you’re trying to reach, please dial it at any time. Our visiting hours are Wednesdays, ten to one…”