College. Grant County. The Chief.
Nesbitt was talking about Jeffrey Tolliver.
2
Faith had to use the men’s restroom because the only women’s room was a ten-minute walk to the visitation wing. She washed her hands at the slimy-looking sink. She splashed cold water on her face. Nothing short of a Brillo pad would remove the prison grime from her pores.
Even inside of the administrative building, the air was thick with desperation. She could hear shouting from the segregation ward. Crying. Howling. Pleading. Faith’s skin tingled in a fight-or-flight reaction. She had been on flight from the moment she’d walked through the gate. Her job meant that she spent most of her days being the only woman in the room. Being the only woman in a men’s prison was a different beast. She couldn’t stray too far from the men she knew were good guys. And by good guys, she meant the men who wouldn’t gang-rape her.
She shook the water off her hands, dismissing the fear. All of her brainpower had to go toward breaking Daryl Nesbitt because she was not going to blow up Sara’s life over some sleazy convict’s play for attention.
Faith opened the door. Nick and Will were both stone-faced. She could tell they hadn’t talked to each other because why would they talk when they could silently brood?
She said, “This Nesbitt asshole has to be full of shit, right? He’s a con. It’s never their fault. They’re always innocent. The cops are always crooked. Fuck the man. Am I right?”
Nick sort-of-but-not-really nodded.
Will glowered.
She asked Nick, “What do you know about Nesbitt?”
“I know he’s a convicted pedophile, but I didn’t do a deep dive into his jacket.”
Drilling down on Daryl Nesbitt would’ve been Faith’s first act before running around like a chicken with its head cut off.
She asked, “Why?”
Faith watched Nick’s jawbone stick out like a goiter on the side of his face. This was the reason that Will was glowering. Nick wouldn’t be this upset if he truly believed that Daryl Nesbitt was lying. He would not have pinwheeled into the interrogation room. His skin would not be the color of hot dog water. Every single action Nick had taken so far was like a giant neon sign with a flashing arrow pointing at the word MAYBE!
“Let’s get this over with.” Faith started up the hallway. She didn’t bother to check in with Will. He wasn’t going to stop for a heartfelt conversation. Based on past experience, she could hazard a guess as to what was running through his mind. He was trying to figure out how to hide all of this from Sara.
Faith was all in on this conspiracy of silence. For fucksakes, Sara had watched her husband die five years ago. She had crawled back from grief through the flames of hell. She was finally happy with Will. They were probably going to get married if Will ever worked up the nerve to ask her. There was no reason to tell Sara about Daryl Nesbitt unless and until there was something to tell.
Faith took a left into the last office at the end of the hall.
Nesbitt was sitting in a chair behind the folding table. Caucasian, mid-thirties, brown hair streaked with gray, glasses taped at the bridge. He was unrestrained. No cuffs, no chains. The bottom half of his leg was missing. A below-the-knee prosthetic leg was propped against the wall. He looked like a stoner who had dreamed of becoming a skateboard star but ended up arrested for robbing a Dunkin’ Donuts. Newspaper clippings were stacked neatly on the table in front of him.
Nick made the introductions. “Daryl Nesbitt, special agents Trent and Mitchell.”
Nesbitt dove straight in. “This one here—” he stabbed his finger into a stack of articles. “She was twenty-two.” He pointed to another stack. “She was nineteen.”
Faith sat down in the only other chair in the room, across the table from Nesbitt. The man smelled of decay, but maybe Faith was smelling herself. Her clothes and hair had absorbed the odor from the cafeteria. The office was small, slightly larger than one of the cells. Nick took his place directly behind the inmate. His back pressed against the wall. Will stayed in the doorway just behind Faith.
She let the silence linger so Nesbitt knew who was in charge. She’d made a point of not looking down at the clippings, but she had seen enough to get the basics. Ten stacks in total, maybe five or six articles each. Two of the piles looked recent, though the other eight had yellowed with age. One set had almost completely faded. The gray words ghosted across the news page. She saw a logo for the Grant Observer. Nick hadn’t said anything about the articles. Then again, Nick wasn’t saying much about anything.
Nesbitt told Faith, “If you read—”
“Hold up.” She put the interview on formal grounds, telling the inmate, “You’re in custody, but you still have the right to remain—”
“I waive my rights.” Nesbitt held up his hands, palms out. “I’m here to work a trade. I’ve got nothing to hide.”
Faith doubted that very seriously. If she’d seen Nesbitt on the street, she would’ve immediately clocked him as a con. The beady eyes. The beaten-down, angry slope of his shoulders. If he wasn’t hiding something, then she was in the wrong business.
He pointed to the articles again. “You need to read these. You’ll understand.”
She read off some of the headlines from the first stack of clippings. “‘Teenager’s Body Found in Woods.’ ‘Student Declared Missing.’ ‘Mother Pleads with Police to Search for Missing Daughter.’”
She thumbed through the other stacks. More of the same, all in reverse order so they started with a body being found and ended up with a woman who hadn’t shown up for work, class or a family dinner. Someone else had collected these stories for Nesbitt. There were no newspapers in prison. The articles must have been mailed to him. And since they were actual newsprint articles, she assumed a mother or elderly relative had done the honors.
Faith checked the dates above the bylines. The Grant County clippings were from eight years ago. The others spanned the years in between. “These stories aren’t exactly current.”
“My research is limited by my circumstances.” Nesbitt indicated the two more recent cases. “This one, she went missing three months ago. Her body was found last month. This one was found yesterday morning. Yesterday morning!”
His voice had screeched up on the last sentence. Faith let a few seconds pass before she answered, making it clear that yelling would not be tolerated. “How’d you hear about a body being found when you’ve been in lockdown since the riot?”
Nesbitt’s lips smacked open, then quickly shut. He must’ve had access to a smartphone. “The woman’s name is Alexandra McAllister. Her body was found by two hikers.”
Faith wanted to check on Will. She looked over her shoulder, telling him the name of the city where the body had been found, “Sautee Nacoochee.”
He nodded, but his attention was zeroed in on Nesbitt’s face. Will was good at spotting liars. Judging by his expression, he wasn’t looking at one.
Faith scanned the eight-day-old article on Alexandra McAllister’s initial disappearance. The woman had gone for a hike and hadn’t returned. The search had been called because of inclement weather. Sautee was in White County, which meant the sheriff’s department was handling the investigation. Faith had watched a news story about the woman’s body being found in the woods. The reporter had said foul play was not suspected.
She asked Nesbitt, “Who sent you these?”
“A friend, but that doesn’t matter. I have valuable information to trade.” Nesbitt clasped his hands together. His nails were rimmed with black like mold around a shower tile. “I know who killed Jesus Vasquez.”
“We’ll probably know who killed him by the end of the day,” Faith bluffed, but not by much. She was pretty sure from scanning the jackets on the eighteen inmates that they were close to nailing their guys. “Get out of jail free cards are very expensive.”
“I can save you the time. All I’m asking for is a fair shake.”
He was holding back something. Obviously. Cons held back the happy when they called their mother on her birthday.
“Look into these.” Nesbitt indicated the articles again. “You could be the cop who arrests a serial killer. All of these women got snatched after I was convicted. That’s the guy you want. Not me. I’m innocent.”
“That sets you apart from every other inmate inside these walls.”
“You’re not listening to me, dammit.” Nesbitt’s voice was loud enough to echo in the cramped room. He gritted his teeth, biting back an explosion of words. He had been institutionalized long enough to learn that anger would not get him what he wanted. But he had also been institutionalized, which meant self-control was probably not one of his strengths.