“Patsy Lynn. I named her after my mama.”
“How old is Patsy Lynn?”
“She’ll be eleven this October.”
Maleah looked Cindy square in the eye. “Cindy, my name is Maleah Perdue, and I promise you that Derek—” she glanced at him “—this is Derek Lawrence. I promise you that we will do whatever we can to protect you and that includes protection from the police.”
Cindy took a deep breath. “He paid me five thousand dollars. All I had to do was visit Jerome Browning at the Georgia State Prison and exchange a few letters and a few phone calls.”
“Who paid you?” Derek asked. “Who hired you?”
“Wyman Scudder. I thought you knew.”
“Are you saying that Wyman Scudder hired you and he’s the one who paid you five thousand dollars?” Maleah asked. “You never met anyone else, were never contacted by anyone else?”
Cindy shook her head. “Nobody else. Just Mr. Scudder.”
“Then you never met a man named Albert Durham?” Derek asked.
Cindy didn’t respond immediately. Maleah sensed that the woman was giving her reply a great deal of thought.
“Cindy?” Maleah prompted.
“I never met him. But . . . Jerome talked about him. You know, when I’d go visit him. The first time I went for a visit, he said a man named Albert Durham was going to write a book about him and make him even more famous than he already was. Jerome liked the idea of the whole world knowing who he was and what he’d done.”
“But you never met Durham?” Derek said.
Cindy shook her head.
“Can you tell us exactly why Wyman Scudder hired you?” Derek asked.
“Wyman was my lawyer, a few years back. We . . . uh . . . sort of had a thing. You know. For a while. I hired him to help me try to keep my daughter out of foster care. I couldn’t afford to pay him.” Cindy hung her head.
“When did Scudder first contact you about visiting Jerome Browning?” Maleah asked.
“About five months ago. He said he had a client who needed a friend, a female friend, to visit him every once in a while. I thought why not? I mean for five thousand, I’ll do just about anything.”
“What did you and Jerome talk about?” Derek asked.
“Everything. Nothing. Mostly about him. He liked to brag. And sometimes, he’d give me messages for Wyman.”
“What sort of messages?” Maleah asked.
“Nothing really. Just things like, ‘tell Wyman to come see me’ or ‘ask Wyman to tell Mr. Durham that we need to talk.’ Stuff like that.”
“You exchanged letters with Browning and spoke to him on the phone,” Maleah said. “Do you still have those letters?”
“No, I ain’t got them.” She shook her head. “I turned each one over to Wyman as soon as I got it. They weren’t really for me no how. That’s what Wyman told me.”
Maleah and Derek glanced at each other.
“What about the letters you wrote Jerome?” Maleah asked.
“I didn’t write them letters. Wyman gave them to me, all typed out real neat like, and told me to write them out in my own handwriting and then mail them off to Jerome.”
“Do you remember anything about what was said in those letters?” Derek asked.
“Not really. I didn’t care. Weren’t nothing to me one way or the other.”
“I understand,” Maleah told her. “But if you could remember something, anything, about the content of those letters, it might help us.”
“Would it help you find the man who killed Wyman?”
“Yes,” she replied. “And the person who has already killed five innocent people, using the same method that Jerome Browning used in his Carver murders. If you would come with us, let the Powell Agency give you around- the-clock protection, you could work with us to prevent this person from killing again.”
“But how can I help you? I really don’t know nothing.”
“You probably know a lot more than you realize,” Derek said. “The more you think about your visits with Browning and about the telephone conversations and the letters you exchanged with him, the more you might remember.”
“You think so?”
Derek smiled. Cindy responded the way all women did to Derek’s charm.
“You help us and we’ll help you. Tell us what you want and we’ll do our best to see that you get it.”
Cindy studied Derek as if trying to decide whether or not she could trust him. She nodded. “Okay. You’ve got a deal, but I need to talk things over with my sister first and then pack a bag.” Cindy got up and headed for the front door, then paused and asked, “I can let my sister know where I’ll be and I’ll be able to talk to her whenever I want, right?”
“Absolutely,” Derek assured her.
As soon as Cindy disappeared inside the house, Derek and Maleah got up and walked out into the yard.
“Do you think she really can’t remember anything or she’s playing us to see what she can get out of us?” Maleah nodded toward the house.
“A little of both. I’m sure it didn’t escape your notice that Cindy isn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer.”
Maleah grunted. “I noticed, and apparently it runs in the family.”
“I figure if Griff can find a way to get Cindy’s daughter out of foster care and if we can promise to return her daughter to her, she’ll tell us everything she knows. And I can guarantee you that she knows more than she’s told us.”
When he had left Ardsley Park, he had fully intended to check into a downtown Savannah hotel and get a good night’s sleep. He had planned to kill Saxon Chappelle’s cute little sixteen-year-old niece tomorrow evening. But as fate would have it, he had decided to stop for a bite to eat and had carried his Netbook into the coffee shop cafe. While drinking an after-dinner cappuccino, he had removed a keychain flash-drive from his pocket, hoping it contained some useful information. After killing Wyman Scudder, he had downloaded the files from the man’s computer before wiping Scudder’s computer clean. It would take an expert a good while to restore those files, if it was even possible.
Just as he had hoped, Scudder had kept a current address and phone number for Cindy “Di Blasi” Dobbins.
He laughed. He had put off killing Poppy Chappelle, but not without a good reason. He wanted her alone when he killed her. No witnesses. No collateral damage. Following in the Carver’s footsteps as closely as possible didn’t allow him much leeway.
He wasn’t sure exactly how much Cindy knew, but if she knew anything at all that might help the police or the Powell Agency, she was a liability, just as Wyman Scudder had been. He no longer needed either of them, just as he no longer needed Jerome Browning. But Browning didn’t pose a threat. He had used the convicted killer for his own purposes. And as smart as Browning was, his ego had prevented him from realizing the complete truth. However, by now, the Carver knew that Albert Durham would never write Jerome Browning’s life story.
He could have waited until tomorrow to hunt down Cindy. Maybe he should have. But the moment he read the info from Scudder’s file on Cindy, he realized that she was probably hiding out at her sister’s place in Apple Orchard, South Carolina, and he had gotten an overwhelming urge to get the job done as soon as possible. And that’s why he had driven straight from Savannah, a nearly three-hour trip. That’s why he had set up about 250 yards into the woods, just far enough in so that he couldn’t be seen from across the road at Jeri and Lonny Paulk’s house. He had parked his car at a safe distance, but close enough to make a quick getaway. Hitting a small target, the size of a human head, at between 200 and 300 yards required the type of skill that he had acquired years ago and had used numerous times. He never became attached to a specific weapon, neither pistols nor rifles nor knives; instead he used whatever he considered perfect for the individual job. Tonight he had brought along a recent purchase—an
