Page 33 of Bitter Falls

I don’t until the door shuts, and I remember that I probably can’t open it by myself. But I’m not the one in trouble here. My daughter looks tough, but I see the scared little girl inside, and it hurts.

Detective Prester takes out his phone and presses a recording app. “This is Detective Timothy Prester interviewing Atlanta Proctor. Lanny, state your address and birth date for the record, please.”

She does, stammering a little; I’m not sure whether that’s the chill she’s still feeling, or nerves. Prester gives her a warm, reassuring smile. It puts me on guard. “Right, the time right now is...two fifteen a.m. Okay, I promise we won’t be long, I know you’ve been through a lot tonight. You doing okay? You need anything?”

Lanny shakes her head, but she’s still shivering. Prester turns on the engine, and the heater starts blasting. “You just tell me the story the way it happened, Lanny. I’m listening.”

Lanny’s unusually reticent, but he coaxes it out of her, step by step. Sneaking out. Arriving at the party. Hanging out with a senior named Bon. Going up to the cliff to get away from the crowd. Finding the victim.

I know she’s telling the truth about the sequence of events. I also know she’s leaving things out. Prester will too.

She recounts the terrifying story of being confronted on the cliff, tells him about Bon Casey and a second man. And Prester just nods. He looks, if possible, even more grim. “From your description, sounds like it’s probably Olly Belldene,” he says. “Bon Casey does some grunt work for him, pushing pills and weed at parties. We’ll look into that.”

I know this isn’t good. We didn’t need another reason to be at war with the Belldenes, but here it is. My daughter’s the only witness to what seems to be a crime that Olly Belldene is involved in, and that makes me very, very worried.

Lanny must realize it too. Her shoulders are hunched, and though she’s stopped shivering, she seems drawn into a tight ball of nerves. Prester gives her a break and thanks her for her help. I let out a breath and realize that my whole body is aching. I’ve been trying so hard not to interfere.

Lanny reaches for the handle, and Prester says, “One last thing, Lanny. I’d like to get a DNA swab so we can eliminate you from the scene, okay?”

I want to object. I’m frozen with doubt, but Lanny just turns her head and opens her mouth as he takes a sealed swab from his jacket. Before I can tell her it’s a bad idea, it’s done; Prester’s as slick as a stage magician. And, truthfully, her DNA will probably be found on Candy, there’s no doubt about that; she must have touched her, checked her pulse at least. So maybe this is a good step, not the start of something worse. But I can think of a thousand ways this can go sideways.

Prester tells us we can go home after that. I’m exhausted but jittering with nerves, and I just want to get my kids home. But I linger just a moment to ask him a blunt question. “Are we safe here?”

He takes his time with the answer. “Ms. Proctor, I wish I could say you were. But you’ve got trouble with the Belldenes already, and now this? Might want to take your family on a vacation, if you know what I mean. If I need you back here, I can call.”

I heave a sigh. “Thanks, I will. Speaking of the Belldenes, though...I got a visit from the top today. Jasper and Lilah Belldene. Lilah made me meatloaf.”

He stares at me. For the first time, I’ve surprised Detective Prester. “Did you eat it?”

“Nope. I was afraid it might have a nasty surprise inside.”

“Well, I doubt that; Lilah’s a damn good cook, and her meatloaf’s pretty near legendary around these parts. She wouldn’t want to cast a shadow on her reputation. What did they want?”

“They want us gone,” I tell him. “And that was before this happened. Can’t imagine this will make them like us any better.”

“The good thing is that since we’re going to be looking for Olly, we get to sweep that compound of theirs pretty thoroughly. That should set them on their heels a bit.” Prester looks grim. He knows better than me how dangerous this could be. “You need to be real careful, Gwen. I don’t like this. None of it.”

I don’t either. I take my family home, to a house I’m no longer sure is really safe. It’s a very short night. I try to talk to Lanny, but she seems too exhausted and distraught, and I feel like a bad mom for keeping her awake. There’ll be time.

I don’t sleep at all.

11

GWEN

Our escape is the case of Remy Landry.

We leave Stillhouse Lake in the morning, all of us, and head for Louisiana. It’s a good eleven-hour drive heading south by southwest. We take the SUV, which at least allows us to ride in relative comfort, and I admit I feel a sense of existential relief putting our home in the rearview right now. Too much trouble.

Leaving it behind feels like freedom, even though I know that’s a temporary relief; regardless of what happens while we travel, we’ll come back to the Belldenes, who must be mad as a nest of poked hornets by now that my daughter is the main witness against one of their own. They wanted us gone, and I’m willing to make them happy on that front. But I’m not going to ask my child to lie for them.

The chill of the morning morphs into rain before we hit Mississippi, but the temperature rises along with it. Sam drives, and I sleep as much as I can before I call ahead to Remy’s father. No answer, I get voice mail. I explain to him that I will be coming into town and would like a meeting to talk about his son. I leave my phone number and the address of the place we’ll be staying, since I booked ahead.

We’re all tired and cranky by the time we arrive.

Remy’s hometown isn’t anything much—a wide spot in the road, basically, with a few thousand residents, the usual Dairy Queen and Sonic and truck stops. A few Cajun restaurants, all brightly lit with neon signs.

We slide into the motel pretty close to 10:00 p.m., and I have a flashback of all the cheap wayside inns I’ve stayed at these past few years, as the kids and I fled from one compromised home to another. I stayed at even more with Sam as we went on the hunt for Melvin. It’s strange how simultaneously depressed and nostalgic I feel about motels in general.

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