Page 59 of What She Saw
Kevin crossed over the hill and slowed. To the right was an old barn. It was gray, weathered, and falling in on itself. It was at least a hundred years old. As he slowed toward a stop sign, I pulled off to the side of the road. He lingered at the sign, taking time to look right and then left. There was no traffic coming from either direction, but still he paused. Was he checking his phone? Grabbing a stick of gum or adjusting the radio? I couldn’t tell, but I made a note of the spot.
He was on his way soon, and anyone who wasn’t watching him wouldn’t have noticed the hesitation. Traffic picked up on the next stretch, allowing me to fall back. The rest of the route was straight road and fed into the Puckett parking lot.
I drove past the gate and continued west. When I approached a turnaround, I pulled off and angled my Jeep back to where I’d been. I retraced Kevin’s trip, and when I reached the stop sign and the old barn, I parked on the side of the road. I got out of my Jeep.
I crossed the road and walked up to a split rail fence. I hopped it and moved into the field. This location was ten miles from the Nelson farm. It was close enough for convenience’s sake but not so close that anyone moving around here would be noticed. A van could’ve fit in the barn. With the cover of shiplap and beams, anyone could haveoff-loaded the bodies. They could have been stored here temporarily or buried in the nearby woods. The van could’ve slipped away after dark unnoticed. This area hadn’t been covered in the searches.
I stood in the center of the barn, staring up at the softening sunlight trickling through open patches in the roof. I closed my eyes and listened. I half hoped someone would reach beyond the veil and tell me something important. Of course, they did not. I’d found the dead mutinously silent. It would be up to me to force the living to speak.
Beams above creaked and groaned as the wind whistled through the barn rafters.
I knelt and ran fingertips over the soft soil. Thirty-one years ago, there might have been tire tracks from the van. But those remnants were long gone.
Colton had been convicted of four murders. There’d been witnesses who’d seen him talking to the victims, but there’d been no red flags. But late into the evening, someone had lured, drugged, or coerced the women away from the crowds. None had ever been seen again. The commonwealth’s attorney argued Colton had been the person who’d enticed the women into the shadows and murdered them.
But kidnapping healthy, young women required time and energy. Colton had vanished for a few hours, but taking four women in that time frame would’ve been tough.
And Colton left the site in a vehicle that wasn’t big enough to store four bodies. I believed someone, like a devoted groupie, had helped him transport the victims off the festival site. Any van or truck leaving during the mass exodus would have blended into the parade of vehicles rolling down the mountain.
Kevin had picked up Debra at her dry-cleaning shop about 10:00 p.m. on Friday night. The grainy old security film showed Debra smiling when she opened the shop door. Kevin wasn’t wearing his security guard uniform but jeans and a flannel shirt. He’d leaned in for a kiss, and she’d shifted so his lips landed on her cheek. He’d looked young andvery strong. She’d handed him a dry-cleaning order, and he’d stepped behind a changing curtain. He emerged in his uniform.
The couple had been in the dry cleaner’s for ten minutes. Then Debra unhooked a key from her ring, hid her purse behind the counter, and exited the front door. She’d locked the door and tucked the key behind the mailbox. After she’d climbed into his 1980 Ford truck with a camper top, they’d left for the festival.
The truck’s back windows had been covered with interior curtains. Kevin said that was because he often took the truck camping, and he liked his privacy. The truck’s bed would have been big enough to transport four bodies. But Taggart had searched Kevin’s freshly washed truck. Kevin said he liked a super-clean truck and detailed it a couple of times a week. The sheriff had had a state forensic team comb the cab and bed for evidence. There’d been no signs of the victims’ blood, hair, or clothing.
Even the best detail job didn’t clean the cracks and crevices, where bodily fluids could drip, trickle, and slide. Even single hair fibers could attach to the underside of a seat or a floor mat.
My gaze scanned the tall grass in the field. I’d have to double-check Taggart’s notes, but I was certain this area had not been combed extensively.
Many of the 1994 searches had focused on the land north of the festival. The primary tipster had been Hazel Miller. She’d been in her eighties. She’d called after Taggart’s press conference. She’d sworn she’d seen a shadowy figure digging a hole in her fallow field. She was certain that had to be bodies.
Taggart and his group of growing volunteers had searched the north side of the mountain as Ms. Miller had indicated. They’d found graves, but they’d been for the remains of two deer poached out of season. When Taggart had explained to Ms. Miller what he’d found, she’d not been convinced. And when the crowds and attention drifted away from her, she’d called Taggart again. At least a dozen more times. A second, smaller crew was dispatched, but this time they found nothing.
Despite Ms. Miller’s mistakes, her calls had biased everyone. All eyes tended to look north. No one had searched this far south.
Nothing in the barn caught my attention. Maybe Kevin had just stopped to stretch his shoulders or scratch his balls. Or maybe he was savoring handiwork that had gone unnoticed for thirty-one years.
Chapter Nineteen
CJ Taggart
Saturday, May 21, 1994, 6:00 a.m.
Sunrise
Taggart stared at the scorched edges of the field. It had taken him fifteen minutes to stomp out the blaze.
The concertgoers were trickling out of the muddy, ruined field. The line of cars and vans stretched at least a mile. Those who’d secured parking spots down the mountain and left had gotten out. But the rest at the top were trapped in a bottleneck that would take hours to unwind.
He looked toward the food tent. Buddy was packing up what little supplies remained. There was still no sign of Patty.
“Buddy, have you seen Patty?” Taggart asked.
“No. I think she’s flaked on me.”
Taggart glanced at overturned tables. The griddle that had run cold when the propane went dry hours ago. The cashbox lay on the ground, now dented and muddy. A few scattered coins lay beside it, but all the bills were gone. “Why would she do that?”
“She’s pissed at me.” Dark circles smudged under Buddy’s eyes.
