Cotton Read online

  Copyright © 2016 by Paul J. Heald

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  Cover design by Slobodan Cedic at KPSG

  Cover photo credit: Bigstock/Bonish Photo

  Print ISBN: 978-1-63158-086-4

  Ebook ISBN: 978-1-63158-093-2

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Jill

  I.

  GHOSTS: 2013

  James Murphy made a deal with himself, and it worked for a while. During the increasingly long periods of time when his wife rebuffed his attempts at intimacy, he permitted himself to peruse lingerie shows on YouTube or surf through the PG-13 submissions on Mygirlfriendsbikini.com, just so long as he did not dip his toe into the cesspool of hard-core porn. He rigorously kept this promise, but as a volunteer deacon in the First Baptist Church of Clarkeston, Georgia, he was not supposed to indulge lustful impulses under any circumstances, so each click to a teasing bikini girlfriend came with a tug of guilt. Nonetheless, he carried on, regret never quite managing to divert his eyes from the computer monitor nor his hand from his manipulable mouse.

  James sat in his study on a quiet Sunday afternoon, ignoring that morning’s sermon on the tenth commandment and working his way through the week’s newest swimsuit posts. Sondra was out shopping, and he clicked idly for almost a half hour before an unexpected image froze his restless finger and his hand fell to his side. He shook his head slowly and murmured an obscenity, unable to take his eyes from the familiar face smiling from the high-definition screen. He had never met her, but their relationship was truly intimate. Her eyes called out to him and his whole body went limp, initial shock giving way to failure and impotence. He had let her down, and now she was back and he was shaking.

  The images on the monitor belonged to Diana Cavendish, a twenty-year-old dance major who had disappeared five years earlier, presumably abducted by her boyfriend from a blood-spattered apartment in downtown Clarkeston. James, an investigative reporter with the Clarkeston Chronicle, had covered the sensational story until—and well after—the authorities finally gave up on the case. And now Diana was suddenly back in his life, one hand on her hip and another touching a strand of hair teasingly close to pouting lips, languid body outlined distinctly in front of a white bedsheet. He had spent hours combing over every known photo of her, and he had never seen any of the pictures staring at him from the computer. Nor did he recognize the floral swimsuit she was wearing.

  He gave his temples a hard rub, grimaced, and opened up an Excel spreadsheet stored in a file folder containing everything he had collected on the disappearance of Diana Cavendish. He confirmed that the official police inventory of her possessions listed no swimsuit, but that did not necessarily mean anything. The photos could have been taken long before the girl ever came to school at Clarkeston College. But there was something strange about the pictures, wholly apart from the fact that they had unexpectedly appeared in the “This Week’s Babes” section of the website. Her expression in the photos was inviting … enigmatic. What had she been thinking as the shutter clicked?

  He stood up and forced himself to look away. A cat was stalking squirrels in the backyard, its shoulders high and bobbing, slinking through the monkey grass like a miniature tiger. The tabby’s prey scattered as soon as it leapt, but the unfazed feline hopped nonchalantly up on the birdbath, ignoring the angry chatter coming from above. James closed his eyes and pictured Diana in his mind, remembering the photo he published of her the day after her apartment had been forced open by the police. He held fast to that image, sat down again in front of the computer, and studied the series of pictures dispassionately.

  Her hair. The bikini-clad beauty had short hair, clipped just to the edge of her ears, a thick wedge of meticulously groomed auburn locks. In every other photo he had seen, Diana sported luxuriously long tresses, falling well past her shoulders, obscuring her face in shots taken from the side. James knew every step she had taken during the week before the crime, every place she went, every person she talked to and what they talked about. Two days before her disappearance she went to her favorite salon and got her hair cut short for the first time in anyone’s memory. Her longtime hairdresser was surprised by the request but did a beautiful job, or so her friends said. Only her boyfriend, a photographer for the newspaper named Jacob Granville, did not like the new look. It was one of several things they argued about that week.

  He studied the face one more time, checking for any signs of aging that would indicate the photo was somehow of recent vintage. What a wonderful thought: Diana resting peacefully, on vacation. He wished with all his heart that he could give her that peace. Then he noticed that the sheet hanging behind her did not completely hide the corner of a bookshelf. He recognized it from her apartment and shivered involuntarily. Within two days of the haircut and the taking of these pictures, she had disappeared, perhaps killed by the person holding the camera.

  He almost bookmarked the page, but the paranoia he had developed during his investigation of Diana’s disappearance resurfaced and instead he wrote down the URL and slipped it into his pocket. Then he deleted all temporary Internet files and search history, logged off the computer, and left the house, looking for a place to carefully consider what to do with the potential story of a lifetime.

  Clarkeston, Georgia, was experiencing a particularly colorful spring, but James barely noticed the blossoming fruit trees lining the residential streets on his way downtown. He briefly considered driving west and out into the countryside, but the winding roads and kudzu-covered fields were not conducive to meditation, unless one wanted to run into a ditch. Besides, he did not crave loneliness and green vistas. He needed to be closer to the epicenter of the disaster, nurse a hot coffee, and figure out what the hell to do next.

  As he turned away from an avenue of gracious older homes and onto the edge of downtown, he spotted an angled parking slot a half block from Clarkeston’s best café. The meter needed no feeding on Sunday, and soon he was working his way around the racks of dresses on the sidewalk in front of the vintage clothing store that shared space with the coffee shop in an old remodeled bank. He pushed open the polished brass door, placed his order, and took a quick look around while a tattooed hipster in a stiff plaid hat frothed his latte. On a sunny afternoon in May, the interior of the place was almost empty, the student clientele preferring to squeeze themselves around the tiny tile-covered tables that sat outside.

  He absentmindedly loaded up his drink with artificial sweetener and cinnamon and walked out into dazzling sunshine. The air was mild and carried no hint of the oppressive summer weather that waited just around the corner. Having grown up in the breezy mountains of western North Carolina, James had never made his peace with Clarkeston in July and August, but early May was a different beast altogether and the antebellum brick warehouses that dotted the business district were glowing gently in the late afternoon sun. He treasured every feature of the town as if i
t were an old friend. He often wrote as though the town were alive, both a reader and a character in his news stories.

  As he rounded the corner and passed the courthouse, he approached Diana Cavendish’s old apartment. Someone had spray-painted remember on the bricks next to the front door several years earlier; repeated scrubbings and pounding rain had failed to erase its urgent whisper.

  According to her friends, Diana had been both a free spirit, caring little what the mainstream thought about her, and a community-minded volunteer who spent much of her free time helping children in various public dance programs around the county. The Clarkeston Park District had been about to give her its big yearly service award when she disappeared. She had grown up in a wealthy suburb of Atlanta but eschewed the ubiquitous sorority scene at Clarkeston College. Her friends, mostly other dancers, described her as loyal and passionate about anything that interested her. Unfortunately, this included several boyfriends who had failed to charm her inner circle. She was so original, a fellow dancer had explained, but such a cliché when it came to men. The edgier the man, the more she was intrigued. James resented this side of her. Were he twenty years younger, maybe things would have turned out differently.

  He turned away from Diana’s building and headed toward the Episcopal church that occupied a nearby corner of Main Street, right across from the obelisk commemorating the town’s fallen in the Civil War. The memorial sat in the middle of a small grassy square, and James crossed the street and slumped down on a green bench facing the church. The neo-Gothic structure had been built at the same time as the college campus on the far side of the river that paralleled Main Street, and it managed to pay homage to the past without committing historical parody. The limestone and granite chosen by the architect blended easily with the older downtown buildings. James had always envied the Episcopalians the elegance of their house of worship compared with the clunky plantation-style pillars of his own First Baptist complex.

  Unfortunately, the dignified old building had almost certainly watched the murderer of Diana Cavendish grow up in its congregation, and a former priest may well have conspired with the sheriff and the district attorney to keep her boyfriend from justice. James’ sources suggested that Jacob Granville still had influential friends in the incestuous world of town and temple, and James could not discharge his duty to Diana simply by making a call to the local authorities alerting them to the new online photos, nor did he want to unnecessarily risk his own neck by doing so.

  He took a sip of coffee, flicked a ladybug off of his pants leg, and then took another sip and sighed. The proper course of action was really pretty obvious. What did one do in the South when one caught a whiff of local political corruption? Go to the feds, of course, and that meant driving to Atlanta and talking to a bunch of transplanted midwesterners who would probably do nothing more than nod condescendingly at his tale. He did not look forward to dealing with the US attorney’s office, nor did he relish the time-sucking drive to Georgia’s sprawling capital, but he owed it to the victim and to himself. He had worked as hard as the detectives on the case and run into the same brick walls. He had failed her, but maybe now the feds could track down the source of the swimsuit photos and finally crack the case of the young student’s bloody disappearance and presumed death.

  As he stood up and tossed his cup into the garbage bin, he wondered whether he might find some way to help spur the feds into action or maybe even track down the perpetrator himself. Who knew what sort of reactions he might be able to get by flashing a new picture of Diana at folks who had not thought about her for years? Maybe the passage of time had loosened some tongues. There was no reason why his own queries might not reveal as much as the authorities’.

  James ran his hand through his hair and rubbed the back of his neck as a gust of wind rustled the litter collecting at the base of the obelisk. A quick look up reminded him that many of the same surnames etched on the granite memorial still populated the St. James church rolls. Yeah, Atlanta was the best place to start his journey, and after he returned, he needed to make two more visits, one to his wife and one to his pastor. Secrets did not stay undiscovered for long in Clarkeston, and if the pictures reopened the investigation, then the whole town would soon know that its star reporter and volunteer deacon had been spending time at Mygirlfriendsbikini.com. Thank god, it wasn’t outright porn, just titillating poolside photos sent in by persuasive boyfriends. The possibility of a more malevolent photographic intent had not occurred to him until he saw Diana offered up as the website’s “treat of the week.”

  II.

  IDYLLS

  First assistant US attorney Melanie Wilkerson was too young for a mid-life crisis. Still in her early forties and fresh off her ninth marathon, she carried herself with a bounce and confidence that betrayed no regrets about the past and no doubts about the future. So, why did she feel like moving to Atlanta had been a mistake? She tapped her fingers on the windowsill of her spacious office and looked out over the asphalt parking lot next to the federal building. Springtime in Georgia and not a single dogwood or azalea in sight. She wondered if newly appointed federal prosecutors had any jurisdiction over the gardening around the massive office complex. Probably not. She could help hunt down serial killers and shut down meth labs all over the Southeast, but putting some barrels of pansies in the parking lot probably required more power than she was allowed to wield.

  She spun back in her chair and checked the agenda that her assistant had laid next to her computer. The first meeting of the day was with a newspaper reporter from Clarkeston. Now that was a city with no shortage of flowers. Twenty years earlier, she had spent a year in the pretty college town clerking for a federal judge and developing a taste for criminal prosecution that earned her dizzying success in Washington, DC, and a move back south to head up a team of crack federal prosecutors (or, as she sometimes called them, federal crack prosecutors). She had grown up in Atlanta, but had returned to Georgia only once in the ten years before taking the new job. That lone trip was for her judge’s funeral on an appropriately grim and rainy day, but she never forgot the tidal wave of color during her one spring in Clarkeston. Of course, young stupid love tends to make flowers more vibrant.

  But she had not come to Atlanta for the flowers, nor was she merely fleeing a tattered relationship with a commitment-phobic FBI agent. Ambition and opportunity had brought her home, but the first six months on the job had yet to offer anything interesting to justify the move back, and a hint of that old southern lassitude had begun to seep into her bones.

  “Mr. Murphy to see you, ma’am,” a bright voice popped over the phone, and before she could hang up, a middle-aged man stuck his head in and knocked on her door frame.

  “Come on in.” She waved him to a chair facing her desk. He was slim, with a thick shock of graying hair pushed back over his forehead and an anxious look on his face. She recognized the type. If she put him on the lie-detector machine and asked him if he killed JFK, his nervous denial would register a lie even if he’d never been to Texas.

  She introduced herself and offered her hand over the desk. “What can we do for you, Mr. Murphy? You were a little vague with my assistant.”

  His voice was not what she expected. It was strong, with a dry hint of a drawl, his manner straightforward and self-assured. “I’m not usually so paranoid, but I’d like to keep what I have to say between you and me for now.” He took out a battered black notebook, much like the ones her FBI investigators sometimes used, and flipped it open.

  “About five years ago—to be precise, four years, ten months, and six days ago—a young woman named Diana Cavendish disappeared—presumed murdered—in Clarkeston. I covered the story for the local newspaper and in between flower shows and pet-rescue stories spent around three months investigating the case.” He looked up and tapped his swollen notebook as if to emphasize that there was a lot more that he could say. “To summarize: The police found a large amount of blood and a bullet in her apartment, but
her body was never found. The last person seen with her was her boyfriend, a part-time photographer for the newspaper who also disappeared at the same time. Most people assume that he killed her, hid her body, and fled, but he was the son of the district attorney in town and the investigation may have been … well, flawed.”

  The tale was interesting, but Melanie failed to see the immediate connection to any sort of federal crime. “Was there evidence that she was taken across state lines? Was the FBI alerted that the boyfriend had fled the state?”

  “The FBI was not informed until three days after the disappearance.” He spoke in a tone that suggested the delay was intentional. “As far as I know, the feds never found any evidence of where her boyfriend went.” Murphy put his notepad on his lap and continued. “I’m not really here to complain about the local cops.” A brief smile suggested, however, that he would be happy to do so on a moment’s notice. “I’m here to talk about what I saw Saturday on my computer.” He paused and a slight flush infused his face.

  “And that was …?”

  He sighed, took off his glasses, and polished them while he spoke. “I was surfing a website called Mygirlfriendsbikini.com. It’s sort of like YouTube, but guys post pictures of their girlfriends in swimsuits—nothing racier than that,” he emphasized before daring to put his glasses back on and glance up at her. “Anyway, I clicked on one of the photo series and up pops Diana Cavendish. She’s wearing a floral bikini and posing for the camera.”

  “Five years is quite a while for someone to wait to post a picture.” Melanie thought back to a child-pornography case she had prosecuted in Maryland. It was amazing how quickly a single set of photos could find its way around the world. “Maybe it was posted years ago; a lot of this trash gets recycled from site to site.”

  “Maybe.” He looked relieved that she was focusing on the mystery and not his taste for swimwear. “But there’s two more things.” He reached into his breast pocket and handed her a printout of one of the pictures. “First, her hair. She got it cut short for the first time in years the week before she was killed.”