Mother May I(68)

Marshall was already getting his phone out. He showed Toby the grainy picture from Bree’s security camera. The old woman, her eyes like black holes, stared boldly up into the camera. “You recognize this woman?”

Toby nodded. “Fuck, yeah. That’s her. Lexie’s mom. Spooky old bat, eh?”

Marshall had been almost sure, but now he knew. Lexie Pine was the daughter. He was on the right trail, for all that it was cold here. Time to go. He passed the bill over and let Toby disappear back inside. Then he went out and sat in his car to check his phone, setting his .38 out in easy reach beside him because he knew the neighborhood.

The first thing he opened was an email from Bree. It was long. Detailed. He sat in the car, looking up and checking his perimeter every few sentences, scanning the story Trey had told her.

Scanning wasn’t enough. He went back to the start and read it slow and careful, the way he would a witness statement, with his brain in neutral. As if it were possible to kill off every warring bias in his head.

It wasn’t possible. He finished it, then went back to the beginning again. This time he tried to read it the way Bree might. With a different, more believing bias. He read it as if Bree herself had witnessed these things and was telling him this story.

Even assuming it was gospel, he felt a deep fury growing toward Trey, singular and separate from any other feelings he had about Trey’s wife. The girl, Lexie-that-was, must have been so bright and so driven to parlay a high-school diploma from a public school in Eastern Jesus, Georgia, to a full ride at UVA. She’d grown herself a single, shining opportunity in a wasteland with no seeds or soil or light. She’d been driven out and lost it, while the boys suffered no consequences at all. He could see how, in Coral Lee’s eyes, her daughter’s life had been stolen. He could admit that her anger was righteous.

Her response to that anger, what she’d done to three families, was pure evil, though. This was a woman who, according to Trey’s story, had always had a dark bent toward Old Testament judgment. The images she’d put in her child’s head—Lexie walking down the aisle in a little white dress that bore the stain of her every sin for all to see—it gave him the shudders. He hated Coral Lee Pine for everything she’d done. Even so, he found he had room to hate Trey, just a little, too.

It was getting late. He sat quietly, breathing, letting all the emotional backwash flow out and through him. He did not have time for it. When he was calm, he called James Weaver again. He had one more question for Tiana, and he needed the answer now. Sooner than now.

“Shoot,” James said, and after Marshall asked, he named a fee.

“Fine,” Marshall said, and hung up. Then he got his phone to find him a diner close by. He needed protein and caffeine.

He’d bolted his sandwich and was heading out to his car with more coffee in a to-go cup when James called back. His wife was magic on that keyboard, just as Spence had said.

“Oakbrook Treatment Center, just outside of Tucker. Lexie Ann Pine, same DOB. She completed a six-week program and was released to her mother, Coral Lee Pine.” The dates matched up with Toby Leland’s story and Marshall’s own timeline. Lexie had gotten out a scant eight weeks before Geoffrey Wilkerson went missing. So she’d finished the program, and they’d started planning this revenge while her mother still could act. Nothing like a goal with a deadline to keep a person on the straight and narrow.

“Thanks,” Marshall said, but Weaver wasn’t quite done.

“They marked her as a no-show for her follow-up therapy, though. She never came back for the outpatient care. Poof.”

“Good work,” Marshall said, and hung up. He transferred their money, then sat, stewing.

He didn’t believe she’d no-showed for her appointments because she’d slipped. If she had, she’d be back in Toby’s orbit. No, she’d ditched because she was invested in helping her mother complete her final task.

Sober, she’d be tougher and smarter and stronger than the Lexie he’d been hunting. This person had once forced open a slot for herself at one of the best colleges in the nation. Considering what she and her mother had done so far—child murder, kidnapping, expert manipulation, making or acquiring poison—she’d gotten back a good deal of her will and drive. She would see this through.

Worst of all, clean Lexie had a separate past, separate places, separate memories and comforts. He knew nothing of these, and he had no source he could tap to learn more. All his research so far, all his connections, only showed him a life she had abandoned.

His leads were ashes, and she might as well be air.





18




Trey was waiting for a reaction, but I didn’t have one. Not yet. I said, “I have to tell Marshall. Now. He needs to know all this. It could help him find Lexie.”

Suddenly Robert was in the room with us. His small, urgent heartbeat was so much bigger than this history.

“Of course,” Trey said, relieved, I thought, that I would handle this. That he wouldn’t have to say it all again. He didn’t object when I left the room to do it.

I needed time away from his questioning, anxious gaze, and more important, I didn’t know how to tell his own story in front of him. I might say something to Marshall that would reveal my faith or lack of it, before I knew how I felt. I went to Trey’s office.