first had to persuade his wife to let me speak to him. His voice sounded hoarse down the line, as though speaking might be painful for him.
‘Throat cancer,’ he said. ‘I’m in remission, but it’s a bitch. Know what? I never smoked. Don’t even drink much. I always tell people that, because they make judgments, you know?’
‘I’ll try not to keep you talking for too long.’
‘Well, that’s kind of you, but there was a time when I was worried I might never talk again. I don’t take the facility for granted. My wife says you’re a private investigator, and you want to talk to me about my brother?’
‘That’s right.’
‘Why?’
‘Until recently, I was working on behalf of William Lagenheimer.’
From the other end of the line came an expectoration of disgust.
‘Now there’s a name from the past. Little William. Lonny told me that he hated being called Billy, always insisted on William. Don’t know why, just the way it was. Naturally, everyone called him Billy, just to watch him burn.’ He wheezed, and his breath seemed to catch in his throat. ‘Dammit.’
‘Lagenheimer is living under a new identity in the state of Maine. A girl has gone missing here.’ It was more than I wanted to reveal about Haight, but I had little choice.
‘I’ve read about it, I think. Anna – something.’
‘Anna Kore.’
‘Unusual name. Ironic, even.’
‘Why is that?’
‘It’s a Greek dialectical variation on the name “Persephone.” Persephone was the daughter of Zeus and Demeter who was abducted by Hades to the Underworld. Benefits of an amateur classical education, you might say. And where does Lonny fit into this? They trying to pin the girl’s disappearance on him?’
‘When the girl disappeared, Lagenheimer had the same concern for himself that you just expressed for your brother. He believed his past might lead to him being suspected of a crime that he did not commit, so he came clean to the police about his past, which meant telling them about Lonny as well. If they haven’t already been in touch with you, they soon will be.’
‘But you found me first.’
‘It’s what I do.’
‘Maybe the police should use you to help them find that girl.’
‘It’s an unofficial inquiry, but to the same ends.’
‘If you’re asking me where Lonny is, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in many years, not since shortly after his release, and that was just one call to let me know that he was alive and out. He used to write me from his first prison, and I wrote back occasionally, and sent him a card at Christmas, but we were never close. We got on okay, but there was a big gap in age between us.’
‘If you’re asking me where Lonny is, I don’t know. I haven’t heard from him in many years, not since shortly after his release, and that was just one call to let me know that he was alive and out. He used to write me from his first prison, and I wrote back occasionally, and sent him a card at Christmas, but we were never close. We got on okay, but there was a big gap in age between us.’
‘Protective of Lonny? Lonny didn’t need protection. Other people needed protection from Lonny. He was a wild one. But when he killed that girl…’
He paused. I waited.
‘He marked us all, you know? Our family name became associated with that crime. That’s why I tried to reduce it to a single letter. I suppose that for all these years I’ve been hiding from my family, from myself, maybe even from Lonny too.’
‘But your parents stayed in Drake Creek?’
‘My father was a deluded zealot, and my mother lived in his shadow. Lonny’s sin was a cross that my father could bear, and he forced my mother to share the burden of it. I think he even found a way to blame her for it. He was a God-fearing man, so the fault must have been in her
‘Was there a lot of animosity toward your family as a result of Selina Day’s murder?’
‘Some. The colored folk put the windows of our house in I don’t know how many times, but eventually that stopped. Would have been worse if she was a white girl. Don’t get me wrong: I’m no racist, but that’s just the truth of it. What bothered people more was that they’d interfered with her before she died. They didn’t like that. Even if they’d raped her and left her, people would have dismissed it as boys getting out of hand, but they didn’t care for the combination of killing and sexual assault. That’s how I read it, anyway, but my take on it is pretty poisonous. My take on William Lagenheimer too.’
‘Why is that?’
‘Because everybody blamed Lonny for what happened, as though he was the only one who was there. Even at the trial he was portrayed as the bad boy who led innocent little Billy astray, but it was more complicated than that. Lonny and Billy, they set each other off, you understand? It was like each of them had a part missing, and the other fit it perfectly. They were the bow and the arrow, the bullet and the gun. Without one, the other was pretty much useless. I don’t believe Lonny would have gone after that girl had he been alone, nor Billy. But Billy Lagenheimer was worse than Lonny in some ways. Lonny was all up front. You looked at him, and you knew that he was trouble. Billy, he kept it hidden. He was insidious. If you crossed Lonny, then he’d call you on it. He gave his beatings, but he took them too. Billy, though, he was the kind who’d come up on you from behind and slip the knife into your back, then twist it just to be sure. He was a self-righteous little prick, but there was real harm in him. He had a way of goading my brother, pushing him, daring him. If Lonny killed that girl like they say he did, if he put his hand over her mouth and suffocated her, then Billy Lagenheimer was behind him, screaming him on. He wouldn’t have tried to stop him, not the way he claimed that he did. It took two of them to kill her, doesn’t matter whose hand felt her final breath.’
As I listened to him, I was reminded of Randall Haight telling his story, first to Aimee, then to both of us, and finally to the unsmiling agents and detectives in Aimee’s conference room. Each time the telling had been similar, practiced. But as Jerry Midas spoke, pain both physical and emotional in his voice, I recognized the sincerity of true insight. He had held these thoughts in his head for so many years, but rarely had he spoken them aloud: to a therapist, perhaps, or to his wife when the memories came and his mood sank, but not to a total stranger. Later, he would perhaps wonder if he should have been so open, and the police, when they came to him, might get a different version of the story as a result. Still truthful, but less revealing.
‘And you haven’t heard from Lonny since his release?’
‘No. Wait, that’s not true. He called me after he was released, but we didn’t talk long. I told him to come down and see me sometime, but he never did. That was the last contact I had with him. I don’t even know what name he’s living under.’
‘And your parents?’
‘My father died halfway through Lonny’s time in prison. Heart attack. Passed away behind the wheel of his car on his way to church. My mother died a couple of years before Lonny was due to be released. She used to take the Greyhound bus to visit him once a month before they moved him to Washington.’
‘Washington?’
‘Yeah, the Washington Corrections Center in Mason County. He was there for a while, and then I lost track of him when they moved him again.’
‘Under his own name?’
‘Yes, as far as I can recall. After that, old Bowens’s bleeding-heart scheme must have kicked in, because I lost track of him, and my mother was dead by then. She was old, and tired. I know that Billy’s momma eventually sold her house in Drake Creek so that she could be with him when he was released. I only heard rumors, but Mrs. Lagenheimer’s life stopped when Billy was jailed. She kept talking about him as her little boy, even when he was a grown man. It was like she’d put his childhood on hiatus, and they could pick up on it again as soon as he was
