“Sorry to hear that.”
“Thank you. Doctors say she has a few more months to live. Glad I could be here for her in her last days.”
I listened intently as Micah slowly questioned her about her family and her living here in Abilane. It took a considerable amount of restraint not to jump out of my seat and tell him to get on with the critical line of questioning. The real reason we’d driven hours across this big ass state. I held back because I trusted he knew what he was doing. He was a professional investigator. One who had a nearly perfect clearance rate on all his cases while working as a ranger. That wasn’t a minor feat.
Right when the waitress brought us our plates is when Micah asked his first question about Amy.
Patricia took her time answering. She slowly unraveled the paper wrap that held her metal utensils together, before placing the napkin into her lap. I did the same, working to hold onto my patience. Micah calmly cut up the steak he’d ordered as part of his steak and eggs dish.
“She was fifteen when she first came to stay with me,” Patricia finally said, around a spoonful of her pea soup.
I took my bite of country fried steak, chewing slowly not to become too distracted that I didn’t miss anything she said. Although I knew Micah was recording this entire conversation.
“That girl was a handful.” Patricia let out something between a laugh and a snort. “She was tough, ya know? She had to be. Amy had been in foster care since she was seven years old. Passed around from one place to another. I think she’d been in five or six different homes by the time she got to me.”
“Did she warm up to you?”
“Eventually. It took months, but eventually, she grew comfortable around me. She was also a teenage girl, ya know? I knew there were all kinds of shit she kept from me. I didn’t press her. As long as she went to school and stayed out of trouble. She followed the rules of the house, and I didn’t push her too hard.”
I frowned. That didn’t seem too caring. My parents always pushed me to work harder, growing up. As a teen, I always felt like they were riding me. Looking back, I knew it came from a place of love.
But Patricia quickly followed up with, “Don’t think I didn’t care about Amy, either. I did. Still do, which is why I’m sitting here with both of you today. I loved all of the kids I took into my home, even the ones who stole from me and got into so much shit you wouldn’t believe.”
“But?” Micah asked.
She shrugged. “There is no but. Amy was a teenage girl with a fucked up past. That creates for an enormous amount of will and hard-headedness. She would’ve rebelled had I tried to be extra strict with her. As it were, my tactics worked with her. That’s how I know she didn’t run away.”
Micah planted his elbows on the table, his look switching from casual to more interested. “What do you think happened to Amy?”
“Isn’t that what you two are trying to figure out?” she shot back.
He nodded simply. “We are, but we need some place to start.”
Patricia took a few more spoonfuls of her soup before finally opening up. “I bet it had something to do with that boy.”
“What boy?” Micah and I asked in unison.
“I think his name was Randy, Randall, something like that. I heard Amy mention his name a couple of times. Said he was someone from school. He dropped by the house a few days before she disappeared. She wasn’t home, and I answered the door. I knew right off the bat that this boy wasn’t anyone she went to school with unless he worked there. He had to be in his twenties.”
“What’d he look like?”
“Dark brown hair, thick eyebrows. He was big and broad.”
I stiffened. It was a vague description, but it conjured up the memory of the guy who attacked me in my home. It was dark, and I couldn’t make out his face or and distinguishable features. All I knew is that he was a big SOB.
“Do you know his last name?”
“Mckenzie, he said. Probably was a lie.”
Micah snorted. “Probably. What made you suspicious of this guy, aside from his age?”
“He tried to say he was a classmate of Amy’s, but he was at the house at like one in the afternoon. She was still at school. When I asked why he wasn’t at school, too, he made up some bullshit about being sick. Said he was looking for her to get the notes from their chemistry class. That’s when I knew he was full of it. Amy wasn’t in a chemistry class.”
“A few days after that, she disappeared?”
Patricia nodded at Micah’s question.
“Describe that day to me.”
