“What was I supposed to say? Yes, I think my mother and uncle are involved, but I don’t have a thing to prove it?”
Her smile looked angry. “You know, it’s funny. I wasn’t aware that we had an agreement to only discuss what we can prove. I must’ve been absent the day you sent the memo out because I clearly don’t remember.”
“C’mon, CJ. Give me a break here,” I said, hands spread out, shaking my head. “You know what I mean…”
“No, I really don’t. So please enlighten me. Tell me why you haven’t been honest. Tell me why I’ve been spinning my wheels, working my ass off on a story with someone who doesn’t reciprocate, who won’t share the most important facts of this case.”
I stood up. “I did share. I just told you.”
“Sooner.”
“Huh?”
“You should have told me sooner. Much sooner. And the only reason you did it now was because the note forced your hand.” She walked to the vanity area, placed both hands flat on the counter, locked her elbows, and stared at her angry reflection in the mirror.
The silence that stretched between us only added to the pressure I was feeling. I threw my hands up. “Okay. I apologize. I was wrong. I should have told you. You’re right.”
She spun around to look at me. “I’m about this close to making you a memory. As in,
“Don’t do that.”
“Give me a reason why I shouldn’t.”
I didn’t have one.
“God!” she said. “You’ve got walls around you that are stronger than steel.”
I looked away, shook my head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, you do. You know exactly what I mean. It’s not even anything that you say, more what you don’t… like some unspoken language. I can’t even describe it…like you carry a wound so deep it’ll never heal. What the hell happened to you?”
It was brutal, it was honest, and it was truthful. It made me feel exposed and vulnerable and raw. The pressure inside me was almost too much to bear. I said in a choked voice, “Look, I’m sorry. I mean it. It won’t happen again. I promise. It’s just…I’m not used to working with other people. I’m used to going at it alone, and I get scared sometimes. But I’m trying, I really am, and believe it or not, I’ve shared more with you about this story than I’ve done with anyone else. Ever.”
“All I’m asking is that you—”
My phone rang.
I looked down at the caller I.D. “It’s Sully. I’ve got to take this call.”
Grudgingly, she nodded her approval.
I cleared my throat, tried to act unaffected. “Hey, Sully.”
CJ got up and moved slowly across the room. She took a seat on a chair. Sully’s voice pulled my attention away from her.
“Think I got a location on your boy Bill Williams,” he said.
“Talk to me.” I put the phone on speaker so CJ could hear.
“Now this isn’t confirmed, so you’re going to have to do some legwork here. Write this down.”
I grabbed the pen and paper from the nightstand. “Go ahead.”
“Telethon, Texas.”
“Say what?”
“Exactly. Near the Mexican border. Population 455 at last count about six years ago, but I can’t imagine they’ve had a baby boom since then. We’re talking the middle of nowhere.”
“What makes you think he’s there?”
“Couple things. He has a cousin there by the name of Nancy Skinner. And believe me, Skinner’s a real winner. She’s a tweaker, and her rap sheet reads like a never-ending story. According to the police report, your boy Bill was at her place when she got popped for a probation violation.”
“When was this?”
“June of last year. That’s why you’ll need to do some legwork. He may be long gone by now.”
I said to CJ, “How far is Telethon from here?”
“About seventy miles,” she replied. “A little over an hour’s drive.”
“Thanks, Sull,” I said. “Anything else?”
“Actually, yeah.”
“Shoot.”
His voice got deeper. “This Bill guy is one nasty son of a bitch.”
“Yeah, we’ve heard …”
“No, I mean bad.
I started writing the word
“Negative. He’s too smart for that. But he’d just as soon kill you as look at you, and you’d never know what hit you. Neither would anyone else. He’s that bad.”
I glanced at CJ. Her eyes were wide and blinking fast. Back to Sully: “How do you know all this?”
“I got people.”
“I need details, Sull.”
He paused and then, “The bureau’s been following the guy for years but can’t get him on anything. He’s a suspect in several murders.”
“How many?”
“A lot.”
“What about—”
“Nothing with the Kingsley case. I checked. But I’m telling you, he’s dangerous as hell, one bad-assed bastard.”
“Sully. The details,
“Okay, okay…one of the stories goes like this: a couple of agents came looking for him at his mother’s house one evening, and she made the mistake of telling them he was at the local bar. When they walked into the place, he darted inside the John, escaped through the window.”
“And this makes him dangerous?”
“Hell no. It was what he did after that.”
“Which was?”
“Put it this way. It was the last mistake his mother ever made. They found her the next day, floating in a lake. When they pulled her up, her larynx had been cut out. His way of telling her to shut up, I guess. Permanently.”
“Jeeze.”
“At first they thought he’d taken it with him. But the M.E. found it during the autopsy.”
“Where was it?’
Sully paused. “Shoved up her ass.”
Chapter Forty-One
Up and down. Up and down. My life had turned into a sickness seesaw, one episode following on the heels of another. I was tired, depressed, and fed up. Fed up with my mother, fed up with my life.
