“His cousin tried to find out,” Mrs. Greene said. “Tanya Reed didn’t care for that boy, Sean. She put a padlock on her refrigerator because he kept stealing her groceries. He used to come over when she wasn’t home from work and smoke cigarettes in her house and watch cartoons with Orville. She tolerated it because she thought Orville needed a male role model, even a bad one. She said Sean got worried about Orville going in the woods all the time. Sean told her he thought someone in the woods was doing something to Orville. Tanya wouldn’t listen. Just threw him right out on his behind.

“One of the men who hangs around the basketball court has a few pistols and rents them to people. He says Sean couldn’t afford to rent a gun, so he rented him a hammer for three dollars, and he says Sean told him he was going to follow his little cousin into the woods and scare off whoever was bothering him. But the next time they saw Sean he was dead. The man says he still had his hammer, too, for all the good it did. Says Sean was found by a big live oak back in the deep woods where someone had picked him up and mashed his face against the bark and scraped it right down to the skull. They couldn’t have an open casket at Sean’s funeral.”

Patricia realized she wasn’t breathing. She carefully let out the air in her lungs.

“That had to be in the papers,” she said.

“It was,” Mrs. Greene said. “The police called it ‘drug-related’ because Sean had been in that kind of trouble before. But no one out here thinks it was and that’s why everyone’s real skittish about strangers. Before he stepped in front of that truck, Orville Reed told his mother he was talking to a white man in the woods, but she thought maybe he was talking about one of his cartoons. No one thinks that after what happened to Sean. Sometimes other children say they see a white man standing at the edge of the woods, waving to them. Some people wake up and say they see a pale man staring in through their window screens, but that can’t be true because the last one to say that was Becky Washington and she lives up on the second floor. How’d a man get up there?”

Patricia thought about the hand vanishing over the edge of the sun porch overhang, the footsteps on the roof over Blue’s room, and she felt her stomach contract.

“What do you think it is?” she asked.

Mrs. Greene settled back in her chair.

“I say it’s a man. One who drives a van and used to live in Texas. I even got his license plate number.”

Kitty and Patricia looked at each other and then at her.

“You got his license plate number?” Kitty asked.

“I keep a pad by the front window,” Mrs. Greene said. “If I see a car driving around I don’t know, I write down the license plate number in case something happens and the police need it later for evidence. Well, last week, I heard an engine buzzing late one night. I got up and saw it turning, leaving Six Mile, heading back for the state road, but it was a white van and before it turned off I got most of its license plate number.”

She put her hands on the arms of her chair, pulled herself up, and limped to a little table by the front door. She picked up a spiral notebook and opened it, scanning the pages, then she limped back to Patricia, turned the notebook around, and presented it to her.

Texas, it read. - - X 13S.

“That’s all I had time to write,” Mrs. Greene said. “It was turning when I caught it. But I know it was a Texas plate.”

“Did you tell the police?” Patricia asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Mrs. Greene said. “And they said thank you very much and we’ll call if we have any further questions but I guess they didn’t because I never got a call. So you can understand why people out here don’t have much patience with strangers. Especially white ones. Especially now with Destiny Taylor.”

“Who’s Destiny Taylor?” Kitty asked before Patricia could.

“Her mother goes to my church,” Mrs. Greene said. “She came to me one day after services and wanted me to see her little girl.”

“Why?” Patricia asked.

“People know I’m in the medical field,” Mrs. Greene said. “They’re always trying to get free advice. Now, Wanda Taylor doesn’t work, just takes a government check, and I can’t abide lazy people, but she’s my cousin’s best friend’s sister, so I said I’d look at her little girl. She’s nine years old and sleeping all hours of the day. Not eating, real lethargic, barely drinking water and this weather is hot. I asked Wanda if Destiny’s going into the woods, and she says she doesn’t know, but sometimes she’ll find twigs and leaves in her shoes at night, so she reckons maybe.”

“How long has this been going on?” Patricia asked.

“She says about two weeks,” Mrs. Greene said.

“What did you tell her?” Patricia asked.

“I told her she needed to get her little girl out of town,” Mrs. Greene said. “Get her someplace else by hook or by crook. Six Mile isn’t safe for children anymore.”

CHAPTER 15

Patricia only knew one person who owned a white van. She dropped Kitty off at Seewee Farms and with a heavy sense of dread drove to the Old Village, turned onto Middle Street, and slowed to look at James Harris’s house. Instead of the white van in his front yard, she saw a red Chevy Corsica parked on the grass, glowing like a puddle of fresh blood beneath the angry late-afternoon sun. She drove by at five miles an hour, squinting painfully at the Corsica, willing it to turn back into a white van.

Of course, Grace knew exactly where to find her notebook.

“I know it’s probably nothing,” Patricia said, stepping into Grace’s front hall, pulling the door shut behind her. “I hate to even bother you, but I have this terrible thought gnawing at me and I need to check.”

Grace peeled off her yellow rubber gloves, opened the drawer of her hall table, and pulled out a spiral-bound notebook.

“Do you want some coffee?” she asked.

“Please,” Patricia said, taking the notebook and following Grace into her kitchen.

“Let me just make some room,” Grace said.

The kitchen table was covered in newspaper and in the middle stood two plastic tubs lined with towels, one filled with soapy water, the other filled with clean. Antique china lay on the table in orderly rows, surrounded by cotton rags and rolls of paper towel.

“I’m cleaning Grandmother’s wedding china today,” Grace said, carefully moving the fragile teacups to make room for Patricia. “It takes a long time to do it the old-fashioned way, but anything worth doing is worth doing well.”

Patricia sat down, centered Grace’s notebook in front of her, then flipped it open. Grace set her mug of coffee down, and bitter steam stung Patricia’s nostrils.

“Milk and sugar?” Grace asked.

“Both, please,” Patricia said, not looking up.

Grace put the cream and sugar next to Patricia, then went back to her routine. The only sound was gentle sloshing as she dipped each piece of china into the soapy water, then the clean. Patricia paged through her notebook. Every page was covered in Grace’s meticulous cursive, every entry separated by a blank line. They all started with a date, and then came a description of the vehicle—Black boxy car, Tall red sports vehicle, Unusual truck-type automobile—followed by a license plate number.

Patricia’s coffee cooled as she read—Irregular green car with large wheels, Perhaps a jeep, Needs washing—and then her heart stopped and blood drained from her brain.

April 8, 1993, the entry read. Ann Savage’s House—parked on grass—White Dodge Van with drug dealer windows, Texas, TNX 13S.

A high-pitched whine filled Patricia’s ears.

“Grace,” she said. “Would you read this, please?”

She turned the notebook toward Grace.

“He killed her grass parking on it like that,” Grace said, after she read the entry. “Her lawn is never going to recover.”

Patricia pulled a sticky note from her pocket and placed it next to the notebook. It read, Mrs. Greene—white van, Texas plate, - - X 13S.

“Mrs. Greene wrote down this partial license plate number from a car she saw in Six Mile last week,” Patricia said. “Kitty went with me to take her a pie and she scorched our ears with this story. One of the children at Six Mile committed suicide after he was sick for a long time.”

“How tragic,” Grace said.

“His cousin was murdered, too,” Patricia said. “At the same time, they saw a white van driving around with this license plate number. It niggled at the back of my mind, thinking where else I’d seen a white van, and then I remembered James Harris had one. He’s got a red car now, but these plates match his van.”

“I don’t know what you’re implying,” Grace said.

“I don’t either,” Patricia said.