Page 56 of What She Saw
“Why kill the other women?”
She shrugged.
“Does Kevin have a favorite place to visit?” I asked.
“No. But he does like to drive at night.”
“Any consistent destinations?”
“Every time I’ve followed, he goes northeast of town. Turns east before reaching the festival site.”
“And PH Puckett. When was the Puckett Computer building built?”
“Fifteen years ago. It was a large vacant tract of land in 1994.”
“How close to the concert?”
“Ten miles south of the venue and ten miles north of town.” She hesitated as pieces of a puzzle connected. “All that land was out of the way thirty-one years ago. Unless you were farming or poking around the old gold mines, there was no reason to go up that way.”
“Gold mines?”
“Not really gold. A hundred years ago, some fool thought he’d found gold. It was pyrite.”
“Fool’s gold.”
“Yep. The mines collapsed in on themselves before any of us were born.”
“Why does Kevin still return to that area?”
She shook her head. “Do you think Kevin got a job on the very site where the women are buried?”
“Maybe. He wouldn’t be the first killer to obsess over unmarked graves. Any other construction that happened after the concert?”
She leaned forward, her eyes sharper with interest. “Sure. Half the town has been built in the last fifteen years. We have a lot of folks moving here to retire. Dawson was voted one of the best retirement communities in the US.”
A hidden ravine on the mountaintop was almost as inaccessible as tons of concrete. “Where does Kevin live?”
“Fieldstone Apartments. It’s a two-hundred-unit complex outside of Dawson.” She recited his address as if it were etched in her heart. “It was built ten years ago.”
I scribbled it down. “Do you think Kevin is a killer?”
“I thought Kevin murdered Debra. But then Taggart made his arrest. So I guess I was wrong.”
“How well did Kevin know Rafe Colton?”
“I always thought they met at the concert,” she said.
“Could they have been working together?” I asked. “I’m convinced Colton had help. I just don’t know who.”
“Why are you so sure?”
“Colton was popular. His festivals had groupies. He was MIA a few times during the event, but someone could always place him somewhere.”
“Several girls testified they were having sex with him in the farmhouse or in a tent.”
“I don’t think he got off that mountain until sunrise, like everyone else.”
“Colton was seen driving his truck off the site about nine on Saturday morning. No place to hide bodies.”
