“Miss Goss?” he said.
“Yes,” said the woman.
“Katie Goss.”
“Yes.”
“My name is Sheriff Halsey. I don’t know if you remember me.”
“I remember you. You used to be a deputy.”
“Yes, ma’am, I did. I’m sorry to just show up like this. I tried to catch you at work but you’d already left.”
She stood with one hand on the door, one on the back of the little girl’s head.
He said, “Do you mind if I step in for just a minute? I’d rather not talk to you in the hallway like this.”
She didn’t answer, and he knew what he was asking of her, and he didn’t know what he’d say if she refused him. But she didn’t; she opened the door and stepped aside.
He removed his hat and stepped inside and she closed the door behind him. He bent toward the little girl and smiled. “Hello, what’s your name?”
The little girl flinched at his voice and said nothing.
“That’s Mel,” said her mother.
“Hello, Mel. My name is Wayne.”
The little girl said nothing. He straightened again, and Katie Goss was watching him. She said, “Sheriff, why do I get the feeling you’re about to say the name Audrey Sutter?”
“I don’t know, ma’am. I hadn’t planned on it.”
“But that’s why you’re here.”
“No, ma’am. Why would it be?”
“Because of what she told you.”
He watched her. “What do you think she told me?”
“Something she promised me she wouldn’t.”
Halsey stood there. The little girl looking up at him, then at her mother, then at him again. He said, “She kept that promise as far as I know, ma’am. She came to see me before she came to see you, and it sure wasn’t me who sent her your way.”
Katie Goss watched him. “Then why are you here, Sheriff?”
THE LITTLE GIRL would not go to her room, but finally she agreed to play with her horses on the coffee table, and Katie Goss found a cartoon channel on the TV, and when that was settled she took off her coat and cleared the little kitchen table and poured two glasses of filtered water and sat down in the chair across from him.
Halsey lifted the glass for a drink and set it down again. The TV was playing and the little girl was out of view behind a pony wall, but just the same he tried to keep his voice down.
“I guess you won’t be too surprised to know that I know about your talk with Sheriff Sutter, ten years back.”
“You mean about Danny Young?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t. I mean before that.”
She said nothing. Then she sat back in her chair with both hands around the glass of water and the glass on the table. The cartoon voices looped forth in a continuous babble. She began clicking her fingernails on the glass. Halsey watched her nails for a moment and looked up again.
“And just to be clear,” he said. “I’m not asking you to tell me anything you don’t want to tell me. I’m not asking you to go into any… particulars.”
Her nails on the glass sounded like a soft typing. She watched him, saying nothing. Finally she stopped clicking and said, “I’m still trying to figure out why you’re here, Sheriff. I mean why now.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m trying to figure that out too.” He looked at his own glass of water. “They’s a thaw to ever freeze, as my granddad liked to say.”
“What’s that mean?”
“I think it means the past doesn’t stay in the past. That it comes back around, eventually.”
“And you think it’s come back around?”
“I don’t know. I’m not even sure what that would look like.” He gave his glass a slow half-turn. “When Holly Burke was killed,” he said, “I was just a young deputy about as green as I could be. And I believed then that the sheriff, and the rest of us, that we all did the best we could with what we had, and what we had was not much. Now, as sheriff myself, knowing the things I didn’t know then, well. I wonder.”
“What do you know now?” she said, and he looked up from his glass. The young woman just sitting there, awaiting his answer.
“The truth is I don’t know what I know,” he said. “But certain… information has come to light, with regards to that case, the Holly Burke case. And I’m sitting here now because I think there might be a connection.”
“A connection?”
“Yes, ma’am. Between what happened to her and what happened to you, back then.”
She watched him, and he could see in her eyes that he wasn’t telling her anything she hadn’t already considered—maybe even before Audrey Sutter tracked her down.
“Have you spoken to Danny Young?” she said. “I mean recently?”
“No, ma’am. I wish I could. But he’s gone missing.”
“Missing?”
“Yes, ma’am. Part of me was hoping maybe you’d heard from him.”
“Me?” She gave a small huff. “I haven’t heard from him in ten years.”
“Yes, ma’am. It wasn’t much of a hope.”
She watched him, and he held her eyes.
“You don’t think he killed Holly Burke?” she said.
“No, ma’am, I don’t. I don’t think I ever did.”
“You must be about the only one then. You and your old boss.”
“Did you believe it?”
She didn’t answer, but she didn’t look away either—and at the same time she did; her eyes were on him because he was in front of them, that was all. Then she looked down.
“I didn’t know what I believed anymore, Sheriff.”
He waited. Turning the glass in his hands. She did not wipe at her eyes and no tears came. The TV played on in the other room. He resisted the impulse to check his watch.
Katie Goss shook her head. “You’ve got nothing on him,” she said, still looking down. Then she looked up and her eyes were focused again.
“Ma’am?”
“You’ve got nothing on him for Holly Burke.”
He watched her, and he knew who she meant.
“No, ma’am, I don’t. Not without Danny Young I don’t.”
“So you’ll take him any way you can get him.”
“Yes, ma’am. That’s right.”
She nodded, watching him. Then she shook her head again. “A little late, though, isn’t it, Sheriff? Ten years. Why would anyone wait that long to come forward?”
“For good reasons. Because he’d threatened her. Because she was young. Because she didn’t think anyone would believe her. Because she wanted to get on with her life.”
“And suddenly she decides she doesn’t care about any of those things?” said Katie Goss. “Suddenly she doesn’t want to protect that life anymore? And if they wouldn’t believe her then, what would make her think they’d believe her now, ten years after the fact—the alleged fact?”
“Because, for one thing,” he said, “she’d have the full support of the law enforcement apparatus, including the sheriff’s department and the county attorney. And for another thing, she wouldn’t be the only one.”
Katie Goss was silent. Watching him. The cartoon voices, the sound effects playing on in the other room.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she said.
He opened his hands and clasped them together again. “It means, do I think in ten, fifteen, however many years, you were the only one? That it was just your bad luck and nobody else’s?” He shook his head. “No, ma’am. If what happened to you is true, and I believe it is, then you haven’t been the only one. And you won’t be the only one to come forward, once he is served and arrested. I can pretty much promise you that.”