“Do it,” he said. “As long as you don’t tell them I am, you can let them think I’m this Sammy kid.”
Chapter Three
“BOYD. EXCUSEme, Boyd,” a woman Boyd didn’t know stuck a square recorder in front of his face as he stepped out of the hotel. “Is it true that the police have found Samuel Calloway? Did Mark Gail tell them where to find him? Do they think that Samuel was one of his victims?”
Boyd sidestepped her. A camera flashed from the side, and he grimaced as he turned his head away.
“… friend, Boyd Maccabee.” A woman walked toward him and narrated for the camera held by the man who walked backward in front of her. “As yet there’s been no sign of the missing boy’s family—his mother and older brother.”
Another flash dazzled Boyd, this time from an iPhone held up in his direction.
“Boyd. Mr. Maccabee,” a man panted into Boyd’s personal space as he fell into step beside him. “Were you aware that Deacon Hill, your old teacher, spent a year teaching in this very area?”
Despite himself, Boyd faltered a little at that news.
“We haven’t kept in touch,” he said in a dry rasp that hurt his throat.
It was a mistake. He knew that. The key to this gauntlet was to keep his mouth shut and give them nothing but photos as you walked away. If you spoke to them, that opened a dialogue, and they felt entitled to another answer, a secret, and maybe a confession of something.
The man lifted the iPhone to catch Boyd’s face as he asked, “Do you still believe that Deacon Hill had something to do with Sammy’s disappearance? Was he a pedophile?”
Boyd kept walking. He was used to this. Every year someone would find a sad little skeleton in a shallow grave that could have been Sammy’s. Or they’d arrest some pedophile or murderer who passed through Cutter’s Gap at around the right time that year. Dead ends, usually, but they churned up old interest like silt among the blogs and journalists.
In the beginning it was Donna and Shay at the morgues and in the interview rooms as they appealed to some pervert to tell them if he’d killed Sammy. It was too much for Donna, though, and Shay had punched the last man who asked him a question like that about Mr. Hill. So these days Boyd tried to step in when he could, vet the claims so the Calloways only had to deal with the most likely ones.
This wasn’t bad, just the loyalist and the locals, but if the information got out about Morgan, it would pick up.
The guy didn’t grab Boyd—he knew better—but he ducked in front of him. For a schlubby guy in his forties, he had good footwork. He held his iPhone thrust out to the side, and out of the corner of his eye, Boyd could see his own face captured on the screen.
“Tell me, Boyd, was Mr. Hill only interested in Sammy?” the guy asked eagerly. “Or did he molest you too?”
There was a right way to react to that. Boyd knew it. Unfortunately his brain was about a second behind his body. In the time it took to decide to walk away with dignity, he’d already grabbed the reporter’s tie and wrenched him up onto his toes.
The tie dug into the reporter’s throat, and red flushed up into the sweaty, pale face, But his outstretched hand kept the iPhone steady as he gagged. It wasn’t quite far enough away to capture the whole confrontation, but it was probably enough for a tweet.
One good punch would probably make them both feel better about their morning. Boyd would get somewhere to vent all the staticky energy that crawled under his skin, and the sweaty, red-faced man dangling from his own tie would get a good shot of it.
“Maccabee, that’s enough.”
Habit made Boyd loosen his fingers at the order from the familiar voice, and the reporter squirmed free. A thin, mean smile twisted the guy’s lips as he tugged the tie loose from his collar.
“That’ll look great online,” he said as he stuck his phone in his pocket. “I’ll tag you.”
He flicked off a quick mockery of a salute and left.
Boyd watched him go and then turned to look at Mac. “You should have let me hit him,” he said. “What are you doing here?”
Captain Joe Macintosh of Cutter’s Gap smiled thinly as he slung a leather jacket over one broad shoulder. Out of uniform he looked more like a belligerent farmer than a cop, with callused hands and a wind-burned tan over his close-cropped beard. His eyes were dark gray and steady.
“Same thing as you,” he said. “I got your message last night, flew in this morning. Detective Bennett told me you were here. Did you call Shay?”
Every hour on the hour. On the half hour once the insomnia had really settled in for the night. It had cut to the voicemail’s bland, singsong instructions every time, and Boyd did what he was told and left a message. It didn’t seem to have done any good.
“You know Shay. He could have lost his phone or still be at the bar with whatever collector he had to go to Florida to see.”
Mac raised his eyebrows.
“You really believe there’s a collector?”
