Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake #3)(35)

I conquer that impulse in another second and put it back to my ear. “Vee? Vera! Talk to me! What’s happening?”

Sam’s still on the phone, watching me. I raise a hand helplessly. Vee Crockett isn’t talking. But I can hear something. Movement? Distant shouting? Something like that.

And then, suddenly, her flat, calm voice is back. “That sent him runnin’.”

“Vera, what just happened?”

“I fired the shotgun,” she says. “Right through the door. Guess that one’s headin’ right for the hills.”

“Are you okay?”

“Yes.”

“Vee . . .” I don’t know what else to do but keep her talking. “Vee, your mom said that she was worried about something. Was it about you?”

“No,” she said. “My momma’s never worried about me. Well, if she did, she sure gave up a while ago. Can’t really blame her.”

None of this makes sense. I don’t know how to read this young woman. “Vee, how old are you?”

“Fifteen,” she says. That hurts. I close my eyes briefly.

“I have a daughter your age,” I tell her. “I know I’d do anything for her. I’m sure your mother felt that way too.” I swallow hard. I need to keep her talking. God, she’s just a baby. “Tell me about your mom, Vee. What happened the last time you talked with her?”

“I don’t remember,” Vee says. “Doesn’t matter now. She’s dead. She’s dead, and I . . .”

She doesn’t finish the sentence, but I feel a sick, crawling sensation. Was the end of that sentence: and I killed her? Marlene had been so vague about what was happening. She’d mentioned nothing specific, but maybe she’d been loath to admit she was scared of her own daughter. That would be an awful thing to face.

I hear something in the distance. Sirens.

“Vee? Are you still holding the shotgun?” I ask her.

“Yes.”

“I need you to do something for me,” I say. I keep my voice calm, assertive, and caring as I can manage. Sam hangs up his call and comes to stand across from me, drinking in my expression, my body language. There’s nothing he can do, though. This is all on me. “I want you to put the shotgun on the floor. Do it now, please.”

I hear movement. Rustling. A heavy thunk. “All right,” Vee says, “I did that. But they’re gonna shoot me anyway. They’ve been itchin’ for an excuse.”

“They won’t,” I say. “Now I want you to open your front door, hold up both hands real high, and stand there on your porch. You have a porch, don’t you?” Most people do, in the rural south.

“Yes’m,” she says. “But if I go out there, they’re gonna shoot me dead.”

“I promise you they won’t if you raise your hands high.”

“If I do, I can’t hear you on the phone,” she says. Perfectly reasonably, yet still with that odd, flat lack of emotion.

“Can you put me on speakerphone?”

“Oh. Sure.” She does, I hear the change in environment, the way the world opens up into an indistinct fog around her. “Okay. I’m goin’ to the front door.” Shockingly, she giggles. “Man alive, I punched a hole clean through that thing! I can see all the way through.”

I’m sick, thinking that there might also be a dead person on the porch on the other side of the door, but I don’t say that. I just say, “Okay, please open the front door, slowly, and raise both your hands. Are you doing that, Vee?”

I hear the creak of hinges. Vee’s voice comes more distant now. “Yes’m.”

“Step out slowly, and keep your hands up.”

This is the moment. I hear the sirens outside wailing to a stop. I hear car doors opening. I can close my eyes and imagine it in a spinning 360 degrees: Vee, on the porch. The hole blasted in the door behind her. Someone wounded on the ground, maybe, or even dead. Two—no, three now—police cars, which must be the full complement of Wolfhunter police, gathered around the place. Officers with guns drawn, nervous and ready to fire.

“Drop it!” one of them yells, and I realize he’s mistaken the phone she’s holding above her head for a weapon.

“Drop the phone, Vee,” I tell her.

“Okay,” she says, calm as a winter lake.

I hear the phone fall.

An impact.

Then three beeps, and the call goes dead.



There’s not a lot of discussion about what to do next. I try calling the number back. It just rings and goes to an automated robotic greeting. I can picture the phone hitting the porch and shattering . . . and even if it didn’t, it’ll be in an evidence bag shortly, and no one will answer. Either Vee Crockett has been shot, or she’s in handcuffs right now.

Fifteen years old.

I’m shoving a couple of changes of clothes into a duffel bag as I talk to Sam. “I have to go,” I tell him. “Her mother called me for help. And now I’m in this as a witness whether I go or not. Vee called me before the police came; they’ll need my statement on the record. I don’t want them coming here and making a scene for Miranda’s film crew to record.”

I see Sam flinch at that. Or maybe just at the mention of Miranda. “You don’t know that will happen.”