Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(14)

I get a sick feeling in my stomach. I’ve fielded lots of abusive phone calls, of course. Nameless strangers who want to kick me while I’m down, shouting insults. Nameless men who tell me in detail about their fantasy of raping and murdering me, or my children, or both. A creepy more-than-few who tell me they loved me at first sight and knew we were destined to be together, if only I’d just understand.

Then that hesitant female voice continues, “Please, I’m begging you. Please answer me. I don’t know where else I’m supposed to turn.”

And I know it’s one of those calls.

It started with a random call, the distant friend of a cop who had my number. A woman crying months ago, begging me to tell her what to do because she didn’t know how to stay alive. She was the mother of a fourteen-year-old boy who’d abducted, raped, and killed a neighbor’s five-year-old. Who’d hidden the body under his bed for three days. She’d found it. Reported it. Turned in her own son to the police.

She hadn’t been prepared for the terrifying truth: people blamed her too. Blamed her for raising a killer. Blamed her for not knowing. Not stopping him.

I’d spent an hour trying to help her find ways to deal with what she was going through. In the end I looked up a domestic violence shelter where she could at least hide out for a while. I don’t know what happened to her. But she told someone else who’d contacted her about me, and how I’d helped. And so on.

For the past three months I’ve been getting these tragic, disembodied voices begging me for help and answers I don’t have. The best I could give most of them was understanding and the cold comfort of knowing they weren’t alone in this nightmare.

Sam’s watching me, and his expression says don’t. And he’s right, of course. We don’t need more trouble. I almost let it go. I can hear her breathing. Hear her choking back a sob.

“Okay, then,” she says, and I hear the dull defeat in it. “Sorry I bothered you. I’ll hang up now—”

I grab the receiver. “This is Gwen,” I say. “What’s the problem?”

There’s a deeply indrawn breath on the other end of the line. “Sorry,” the woman says. “I figured I could get through this without being such a . . . a damn mess. I guess I’m not like you. You seem pretty near made of steel, from what I’m told.”

I still have no idea who this is, or what it’s about, but I have an instinct that I should listen. “Oh, I’m not, believe me,” I tell her. “It’s all right. Take your time. What’s your name?”

“M-Marlene,” she says. “Marlene Crockett. From Wolfhunter.” Her accent is pure rural-Tennessee drawl. “It’s up around—well, up ’round the backside of nowhere, I guess.” She laughs nervously. It sounds like cracking glass. “Never heard of it, right?”

She makes it a question, so I’m honest. “I haven’t. What do you need from me, Marlene?”

She doesn’t get right to the point. I recognize the tendency; she wants to circle around the point, work up her courage. She tells me about her town, about her frustrations with her job, about the patch of grease she just can’t scrub off her wood floor. I wait her out. Sam finishes the dishes. He writes me a note and slides it over. Got some work to do. He heads back toward our shared office. We have partner desks in there now, set a decent space away from each other. Sam’s both working freelance as a laborer on construction projects, and running a couple of small commercial jobs for a firm out of Knoxville; I’m maintaining an online accounting business that takes a few hours a day, with some graphic design on the side. I’d be more financially secure with a day job, but then again, I like being home with my kids, especially during these epic long, hot summers. And I like the idea that I can—even now—drop everything and run at a moment’s notice. It’ll take a while for me to gear down from that impulse. If I ever can.

I finally judge that she’s winding down, so I cut in. “Marlene? How did you get this number, exactly?”

“A lady said on social media about how you weren’t no monster like some say, and you helped her. I asked her if you might help me too. She said you might and gave me your number.”

“In the open? On her social media?”

“By email,” Marlene says. She sounds even more nervous. “Was that wrong?”

At least it wasn’t posted on the internet, but still: I need to change this number. Or get rid of the landline completely. “Who was it?”

“Don’t know her real name, but she goes by Melissa Thorn.”

Melissa and I are going to have a talk. “Okay,” I say. “Can you tell me what’s wrong?”

I expect her to say something about her boyfriend, her husband, someone else in her family. Even a friend. But she says, “It ain’t wrong with me exactly. It’s more . . . it’s more like it’s this whole damn town. Well, some people in it, I guess. Though this place here has never been good land. Got blood soaked in it from the jump.”

This is going nowhere, and I’m starting to think I’m being played. Maybe she’s just a lonely time-waster. “I’m giving you one more minute to tell me what I can do for you. Then I’m gone and I won’t take your call again. Understand?”

She pauses. “I understand.” But she doesn’t go on. Silence stretches. She finally says, all in a rush, “So if something bad’s happening around here, what can I do? Can’t go to the police, no way. What do you do if you don’t trust folks in town?”