“Not yet,” says Bree. “We just found his bike, left on a trail in a nature reserve. We’re putting up flyers around campus and setting up a search party for later today.”
“What do the police say?” asks Jannie.
Alex speaks up. “They say there’s no evidence that Damon’s been harmed or in danger. They’re following their own policies and procedures. As far as they’re concerned, Damon is an adult and if he wants to go somewhere on his own without telling anyone, that’s his right.”
“Those by-the-book fools!” Nana Mama’s reedy voice crackles all the way from DC. “You can bet if it was a white boy, maybe the son of the mayor or something, they’d be following some different …procedures.” She spits the last word like it’s an obscenity.
“Anything we can do to help?” Ali pipes up.
“Just stay home and take care of one another,” says Bree. “Don’t be wandering around outdoors. Knowing you’re safe will make our job easier.”
“Nana,” says Alex, “we heard about the bomb at the Vietnam memorial this morning. How are things in the city?”
“Crazy,” says Nana. “I’m keeping the children inside today. John left from here to check things out. Haven’t heard back from him yet.”
A girl’s voice comes through, sweet and high-pitched: “I know my daddy will find this guy and stop him. He promised!”
“Willow!” says Bree. “It’s good to hear your voice, baby. You stay there with Jannie and Ali and Nana, okay?”
“I will. I promise. No bomber is gonna get me!”
CHAPTER 37
Sampson
ANNA RIZZO AND I are standing in a sandpit with Wilma Grace, the police chief from Palmer, Georgia. The chief sounded a little surprised by our call, but when we told her we were on our way down, she agreed to meet us at the site, a few miles outside town.
The pit takes up about half an acre. It’s clearly been used for plenty of parties and target shooting over the years. I see shot-up paper targets propped up against the pit’s sandy walls and rusty fifty-five-gallon drums riddled with bullet holes. Firepits are scattered across the sandy ground, as are crushed beer cans and empty wine bottles.
“Looks like a popular hangout,” says Rizzo.
Chief Grace nods. “Not much else to do around here.”
The chief is in her mid-fifties, tall, with a tan and weathered face. She wears khaki trousers, a blue uniform shirt, and a dark blue baseball cap with a badge insignia on it.
“On weekends,” she tells us, “high-school kids come out here to drink and raise hell. During the week, good ol’ boys come out to exercise their Second Amendment rights. Once in a while, we get a call to break up a fight here, but otherwise, we pretty much leave the place alone. It’s like a no-man’s-land.”
“Were you around last year when the bomb went off out here?” I ask.
“I was,” she says. “A farmer down the road called 911 and said he heard something explode. At first, we thought it might be somebody shooting off a shotgun or blowing up a tree stump, but when we got out here, we saw it was a lot bigger than that.”
“You found the van?” asks Rizzo.
“What was left of it,” says Grace. “You could hardly recognize it as a vehicle except for an axle and what was left of the engine block.”
I can see that Rizzo is only half listening. She’s walking around, head down, moving in expanding circles. “Excuse me, Chief,” she calls out. “Do you remember where the van was located?” She kicks the sand with her boot. “Was it right about here?”
“It was. How did you know?” asks Grace.
Rizzo digs into the sand with the toe of her boot as the chief and I walk over. “Look. Even now, a year later, this spot is more depressed than the surrounding area. And some of the sand is fused from the heat of the explosion.”
I turn to Grace. “What happened to the remains of the van?”
She frowns. “We took a lot of photos and kept some of the nuts and bolts. But nobody in our department is a forensics expert. We knew we were in over our heads. So we called in the GBI. They rolled up one day, collected all the evidence, and that was that.”
“They never told you where the van came from?” asks Rizzo. “Or the explosives?”
Grace chuckles. “The GBI isn’t big on returning calls from little old Palmer.”
