“Don’t say that shit too loud in this town Kiln, you’ll have a panic on your hands for sure. We’ll wait and see what the captain says and lets hope these were isolated incidents. Maybe we should have another look at their friends, the answer has to be there somewhere.”
“That’s just it. They don’t have the same friends as near as I can tell. In fact the only place their lives intercept is with Sanders. He picked up with the Claiborne girl as soon as Taylor dumped him.”
“You sure about that? From what I gathered from everyone I spoke to, he dumped Taylor last summer, weeks before the other girl showed up.” That didn’t sound right, maybe someone had got their lines crossed somewhere.
“Look, I’ve been doing a little digging into their backgrounds. Far as I can tell none of them have ever been in any real trouble before. I did find something in my search. I don’t know how important this is to the facts, but of all the players involved the Taylor girl is the only one with humble beginnings.”
“What does that mean?”
“It could be nothing but until her mother married that big shot they were living pretty close to the edge.”
“So what? Because she wasn’t born with a silver spoon in her mouth like the rest of them she’s somehow responsible?”
“I’m not saying that. Look, forget I said anything.”
He went back to reading over the papers on his desk and I sat there fuming in silence. Mandy Taylor may have come from humble beginnings but she was no more a criminal than the rest of them. I hate that about this town. No matter how hard you work to get the stench of poverty off of you they never let you forget.
Sanders will never have that problem the bastard. His family has been running things around here for a very long time. Now it seemed he and his new fling of the month had teamed up and decided to make this poor girl’s life miserable.
I didn’t like the fact that the Claiborne girl had been attacked either, but if she insisted on standing by Sanders with his bullshit lies then I’d have no choice but to take her down with him.
I’d done a run on the Track kid after coming back from the hospital and so far there was nothing in his background that gave me any answers. In fact it was quite the opposite. From what I could see he was a problem child always in some kind of trouble that made his old man send him off to be dealt with at least twice a year. So why the hell did the Captain call us off at his say-so? Or was someone else behind it?
I can’t help but remember the forceful way in which he spoke, as if he had some type of authority, which was a joke. If Sanders wasn’t the culprit, if he wasn’t good for the Taylor job then it was back to the drawing board. But I wasn’t writing him off that easily. “I guess tomorrow we start from scratch and take another look at the people around the two girls.” It was knock-off time anyway, time to go grab me a beer or two and put this mess behind me for another day.
THE END