‘Hope you’re telling the truth about keeping your mouth shut, Holly. God knows I need this money, my asshole husband cleaned out our bank account when he left, but Mrs Kelly doesn’t kid around. She’s like one of the dragons on that Thrones show.’
Holly once more zipped a thumbnail across her lips and turned the invisible key. Candy Wilson smiled and seemed to relax. She looked around the living room, which was small and dark and furnished in Early American Yard Sale. ‘Ugly fucking place, isn’t it? We had a nice house over on the west side. No mansion, but better than this pit. My asshole husband sold it right out from under me before he sailed off into the sunset. You know what they say, there are none so blind as those who will not see. I almost wish we’d had kids, so I could turn them against him.’
Bill would have known how to reply to this, but Holly didn’t, so she took out her notebook and went to the matter at hand. ‘Heath Holmes worked as an orderly at the Heisman.’
‘Yes indeed. Handsome Heath, we used to call him. It was sort of a joke and sort of not. He wasn’t any Chris Pine or Tom Hiddleston, but he wasn’t hard to look at, either. Nice guy, too. Everybody thought so. Which only goes to prove that you never know what’s in a man’s heart. I found that out with my asshole husband, but at least he never raped and mutilated any little girls. Seen their pictures in the paper?’
Holly nodded. Two cute blondes, wearing identical pretty smiles. Twelve and ten, the exact ages of Terry Maitland’s daughters. Another of those things that felt like a connection. Maybe it wasn’t, but the whisper that the two cases were actually one had begun to grow louder in Holly’s mind. A few more facts of the right kind, and it would become a shout.
‘Who does that?’ Wilson asked, but the question was rhetorical. ‘A monster, that’s who.’
‘How long did you work with him, Ms Wilson?’
‘Call me Candy, why don’t you? I let people call me by my first name when they pay my utilities for the next month. I worked with him for seven years, and never had a clue.’
‘The paper said he was on vacation when the girls were killed.’
‘Yeah, went up to Regis, about thirty miles north of here. To his mother’s. Who told the cops he was there the whole time.’ Wilson rolled her eyes.
‘The paper also said he had a record.’
‘Well, yeah, but nothing gross, just a joyride in a stolen car when he was seventeen.’ She frowned at her cigarette. ‘Paper wasn’t supposed to have that, you know, he was a juvenile and those records are supposed to be sealed. If they weren’t, he probably wouldn’t have gotten the job at Heisman, even with all his army training and his five years working at Walter Reed. Maybe, but probably not.’
‘You speak as if you knew him pretty well.’
‘I’m not defending him, don’t get that idea. I had drinks with him, sure, but it wasn’t a date situation, nothing like that. A bunch of us used to go out to the Shamrock sometimes after work – this was back when I still had some money and could buy a round when it was my turn. Those days are gone, honey. Anyway, we used to call ourselves the Forgetful Five, on account of—’
‘I think I get it,’ Holly said.
‘Yeah, I bet you do, and we knew all the Alzheimer’s jokes. Most of them are kind of mean, and lots of our patients are actually pretty nice, but we told them to kind of … I don’t know …’
‘Whistle past the graveyard?’ Holly suggested.
‘Yes, that’s it. You want a beer, Holly?’
‘Okay. Thanks.’ She didn’t have much of a taste for beer, and it wasn’t really recommended when you were taking Lexapro, but she wanted to keep the conversation rolling.
Wilson brought back a couple of Bud Lights. She offered Holly a glass no more than she had offered one of her cigarettes.
‘Yeah, I knew about the joyride bust,’ she said, once more sitting in the mended easy chair. It gave a tired woof. ‘We all did. You know how people talk when they’ve had a few. But it was nothing like what he did in April. I still can’t believe it. I kissed that guy under the mistletoe at last year’s Christmas party.’ She either shuddered or pretended to.
‘So he was on vacation the week of April 23rd …’
‘If you say so. I just know it was in the spring, because of my allergies.’ So saying, she lit a fresh cigarette. ‘Said he was going up to Regis, said he and his mom were going to have a service for his dad, who died a year ago. “A memory service,” he called it. And maybe he did go, but he came back to kill those girls from Trotwood. No question about it, because people saw him and there was surveillance video from a gas station that showed him filling up.’
‘Filling what up?’ Holly asked. ‘Was it a van?’ This was leading the witness, and Bill wouldn’t have approved, but she couldn’t help herself.
‘I don’t know. Not sure the papers said. Probably his truck. He had a Tahoe, all fancied up. Custom tires, lots of chrome. And a camper cap. He could have put them in there. Drugged them, maybe, until he was ready to … you know … use them.’
‘Oough,’ Holly said. She couldn’t help it.
Candy Wilson nodded. ‘Yeah. Kind of thing you don’t want to imagine, but you just can’t help it. At least I can’t. They also found his DNA, as I’m sure you know, because that was in the paper, too.’
‘Yes.’
‘And I saw him that week, because he came in to work one day. “Just can’t stay away from this place, can you?” I asked him. He didn’t say anything, just gave me a creepy smile and kept walking down B Wing. I never saw him smile like that, never. I bet he still had their blood under his fingernails. Maybe even on his cock and balls. Christ, it gives me the willies just thinking about it.’
It gave Holly the willies, too, but she didn’t say so, only took a sip of her beer and asked what day that had been.
‘I don’t know off the top of my head, but after those girls disappeared. You know what? I bet I can tell you exactly, because I had a hair appointment that same day after work. To have it colored. Haven’t been to the beauty parlor since, as I’m sure you can plainly see. Just a minute.’
She went to a little desk in the corner of the room, came up with an appointment book, and flipped back through the pages. ‘Here it is, Debbie’s Hairport. April 26th.’
Holly wrote it down, and added an exclamation point. That was the day of Terry’s last visit to see his father. He and his family had flown home the following day.
‘Did Peter Maitland know Mr Holmes?’
Wilson laughed. ‘Peter Maitland doesn’t really know anybody, hon. He had some clear days last year, and even early this year he remembered enough to get to the caff on his own and ask for chocolate – the things they really like are the things most of them remember the longest. Now he just sits and stares. If I get that shit, I’m going to take a bunch of pills and die while I still have enough working brain cells to remember what the pills are for. But if you’re asking if Heath knew Maitland, the answer is sure, you bet. Some of the orderlies switch around, but Heath stuck pretty much to the odd-numbered suites on B Wing. He used to say that some part of them knew him, even when most of their brains were gone. And Maitland is in suite B-5.’
‘Did he visit Maitland’s room on the day you saw him?’
‘Must have. I know something that wasn’t in the paper, but you can bet your ass it would have been a big deal at Heath’s trial, if he’d ever had one.’
‘What, Candy? What was it, what?’
‘When the cops found out he’d been in to the Memory Unit after the murders, they searched all the B Wing suites, paying especially close attention to Maitland’s, because Cam Melinsky said he saw Heath coming out of there. Cam’s a janitor. He noticed Heath especially because he – Cam, I mean – was washing the hall floor, and Heath took a slip and went on his ass.’
‘You’re sure of this, Candy?’
‘I am, and here’s the big thing. My best friend on the nursing staff is a woman named Penny Prudhomme, and she heard one of the cops talking on his phone after they searched B-5. He said they found hair in the room, and it was blond. What do you think of that?’