Page 44 of Girl, Remembered

Ella motioned for him to continue. Her hand hadn’t left her Glock since she’d gotten here.

‘They took me outside, and there were two deep, square holes next to each other. There were white sheets at the bottom, covered in dirt and insects and whatever else. The girls said that their dad made them dig their own graves, and whenever they misbehaved they’d have to sleep in them. Suddenly, the dirty hair and black fingernails made sense.’

Dever had remained fixed on the pond this whole time. Only now did he finally turn and look Ella in the eye. The Dever that stared back was a different creature than the usual fumbling Terrance Dever that she’d known for the past six months. He had conviction in his voice and his expression was no longer firmly fixed in what Ella knew as Bureaucratic Deadpan.

Still, she listened, unsure of how and why Terrance Dever, the ultimate yes man, had swept straight into confession without so much as asking Ella how she’d discovered this buried information.

‘Terrance, back up a minute. How did you know I knew?’

‘Oh please. As if you weren’t going to find out. I knew the moment you joined the task force. I’ve had dreams of you showing up at my door, usually a SWAT team. And then that’s it. Game over for me. But you have to know this: I was a part of the task force before we knew the killer was Lindsey Doyle. Do you remember?’

‘Yes. Of course. But maybe you knew she was the killer all along.’

‘No. I had no idea. I promise you. When we found out it was her, I nearly had a panic attack. That’s the whole story.’

Ella jumped out of her seat, because she sensed some finality to this conversation, and she didn’t know what kind of finality Dever was planning. Because of Doyle, six people had already lost their lives today, and Ella was all but certain there’d be at least one more before the night was out.

‘Terrance, what does all of this mean? You were the one who saved Lindsey from her abusive home life. You were the first responder. But what does all of that have to do with now? Have you been in contact with her since. Because if you have-’

‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ Dever said, as though Ella was the crazy one. ‘I haven’t seen Lindsey Blanchard since she was twelve years old. I haven’t communicated with her, and I doubt she even remembers who I am. I’m not sure she even knew my name in the first place.’

‘So, when did you last see her?’

‘When I helped her change her name. After her mom was convicted, I accompanied Lindsey, Tracy, and a careworker to the Clerk of Court’s Office near Moss Bluff. They wanted new names, just in case their mom ever got out of jail and tried to find them. They kept their first names, and then settled on Doyle.’

A certain term caught Ella’s attention. ‘Wait a minute. Moss Bluff?’

‘Yeah. It’s on the outskirts of Lake Charles, where I was stationed.’

Since becoming aware of Doyle, Ella had become an expert in Louisiana geography. ‘I know, it’s just… that’s right by Austin Creed’s farm. Doyle’s childhood house was around there?’

‘Five miles, give or take.’

Ella filed that as relevant, but how? If Doyle was twelve at the time, Creed would only have been sixteen. It was perhaps a coincidence of circumstance, and Ella had more pressing issues to concern herself with. She turned her attention back to Dever.

‘Why didn’t you ever mention this?’

‘I couldn’t say anything, because it would look exactly like it looks now. Like I’m involved in some grand conspiracy.’

‘Why didn’t you speak up at the time? This is a…’ Ella wanted to say conflict of interest, but that wasn’t accurate. Ella didn’t know what the hell this was, and Dever’s full motivations were still a mystery.

‘Ella, don’t think for a second that I don’t want to catch Doyle. The woman is a monster, pure and simple. She needs to be in a cell, or a mental hospital. I just…’

‘Just what, Terrance? Because I’m struggling to understand things here. What exactly are you hoping to achieve from keeping this a secret?’

‘Achieve?’ Dever joined her in standing up. ‘I’m not trying to achieve anything. I’m just trying to keep a promise I made to a young, neglected girl who had no running water so had to drink her mom’s vodka. The last day I saw those girls, they told me I was their hero.’

‘And that gives them a pass, does it?’

‘No, it doesn’t. But it doesn’t stop me wanting to do this right. I wanted to capture Doyle so that I could apologize. Everyone let them down, from the school to the state to their parents to the cops. It was only thanks to some anonymous tip we found them at all.’

Hero.

Dever hadn’t said protector, hadn’t said cop doing his job. He’d said hero, unprompted, like it was the only word that had ever mattered to him.

And then there was the matter of five miles. Not fifty. Not five hundred. Five miles between the house where Lindsey Blanchard dug her own grave and the farm where Austin Creed had grown up. A sixteen-year-old and a twelve-year-old, breathing the same swamp air, and not the case files, not months of Ella’s own obsessive digging had ever put those two facts in the same sentence before tonight.

The theory that abruptly emerged was, even by her own considerations, insane.