born and raised, but my home’s in Cotton Grove, close to the Florida border.”
She swallowed, the tendons in her graceful neck tight. “I don’t know where to start.”
“How ’bout at the beginning.”
She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. “I was born in Atlanta and moved to Freemont with my mother when I was a baby. We lived in a remote area, not far from the highway.”
Dawson pulled a notebook and pen from his pocket.
“My...my mother disappeared when I was four.” Lillie’s voice was weak. She cleared her throat. “Most folks thought she had abandoned me and returned to Atlanta with a man.” She shrugged. “Her lover. Sugar daddy. Whatever you want to call him.”
“Granger Ford?”
“No. The man she was seeing at the time.”
“How can you be sure it wasn’t Granger?”
“There was a storm the night she disappeared. The thunder awakened me. I was frightened and ran to my mother’s bedroom.”
Dawson’s could envision young Lillie, green eyes wide with fear, golden-brown hair tumbling around her sweet face, scurrying down a darkened hallway.
“The door opened and he...he told me to go back to bed.”
“Who was he, Lillie? Do you know his name?”
She shook her head. “But the memory of that night still haunts me, especially when it storms.”
“Can you still see his face?”
“Enough to know it wasn’t the man who died on my doorstep tonight.”
Dawson did the math. “It’s been twenty-five years. Appearances change.”
She straightened her shoulders. “I know what I saw. The man that night was someone else.”
Dawson made a notation on his tablet. “Who raised you after your mother disappeared?”
“Sarah and Walter McKinney took me in. They were an older couple and didn’t have children of their own.”
“Good people?”
She nodded. The gloom lifted for an instant, revealing her love for her foster parents.
“They wanted to adopt me, but I...” Once again, her eyes sought his. “Maybe it was foolish, but I kept thinking my mother would come back for me.”
A nail to Dawson’s heart. Did all kids give wayward parents the benefit of the doubt? Must go with the territory. Children wanted to be loved. Hope provided comfort during the dark times. When hope gave out, the reality of life had to be accepted, although some people never made the transition and spent a lifetime looking for the love they never received as a child.
“But your mother didn’t come back,” Dawson prompted.
Lillie licked her lips as if gathering courage to continue. “When I was fourteen, the river flooded. Not long afterwards, a steel drum was found close to the water, on Fort Rickman property.”
Dawson knew about the raging waters that had washed the drum downriver. Dental records confirmed the decomposed body found within was Irene Beaumont, who had gone missing ten years earlier.
“The last time you saw your mother was that stormy night?” He repeated what he already knew to gauge her response.
“That’s correct. The night she disappeared.”
“You were four years old?”
She nodded.
“Ten years later, your mother’s remains were uncovered in a steel drum.”
“And found along the river, although I’ve never visited the actual site. Someday...” Her voice was wistful. “Someday I hope to be strong enough to do just that.”
Dawson made another notation on his tablet. “At the time of her disappearance, the townspeople thought your mother had run off to Atlanta with her boyfriend.”
“That’s...that’s what I thought too.”
“Finding her remains must have changed local opinions.”
“The folks in town started to realize my mother had probably been killed the night she disappeared.”
“What did you think, Lillie?”
“I didn’t know what to believe.”
Dawson heard the confusion in her voice. “What happened next?”
She hesitated before she spoke. “Granger Ford worked for Nelson Construction at the time. The police were investigating the employees and found a picture of my mother under his mattress in the motel where he was staying. They accused him of murder. He was found guilty and sent to jail.”
Dawson tapped his pencil against his notepad. “Did you testify at the trial?”
“Supposedly, the case was open and shut. They didn’t need to place me on the stand.”
Hearing Lillie’s response ignited a fire deep within Dawson’s belly. From what he had read about the trial, the prosecution had deemed the case open and shut because Granger was a drifter who worked construction when he needed money. Personnel records at Nelson Construction verified the laborer had been on the payroll at the time of Irene Beaumont’s disappearance and again when the steel drum, bearing the Nelson Construction name and logo, had been found.
“Do you know anything about the case?” Pritchard stood in the doorway to the kitchen. Dawson hadn’t heard him come back inside.
“I did an internet search before I got here.” Dawson pocketed his notebook. “Easy enough to access news stories about Granger’s release from prison. The article included information about Irene Beaumont’s murder.”
“The article probably didn’t mention that they found the T-shirt she must have been wearing in the drum along with her decomposed body.” Pritchard sniffed, unaware of the pained expression on Lillie’s face. “Two blood types were identified on the fabric. A-positive, which was Irene Beaumont’s blood type, and B-negative. That matched Granger Ford’s type.”
Anger welled up within Dawson. He had read the transcript of the trial and knew Granger had denied, under oath, ever seeing the bloodied T-shirt or having known the victim.
Dawson made sure his voice was even, his gaze level, before he spoke again. “Yet Mr. Ford was recently released from prison?”
The cocky cop nodded. “Law students from the University of Georgia got wind of the case. They probably hoped to make a name for themselves.”
“And the outcome?” Dawson knew too well what the determination had been.
Pritchard pursed his lips. “Something about the blood type being incorrect.”
Granger’s blood had proved to be a rare “Du”-positive, which would appear negative on an initial rapid-slide test. More definitive blood typing had not been run prior to his trial, and the jury found Granger guilty because of a bloodied T-shirt and an inaccurate blood type. In addition, DNA testing had not been done, and as Lillie had mentioned, a photo of the deceased had been found under the mattress in Granger’s motel room, which anyone on the housekeeping or janitorial staffs could have accessed.
“An open-and-shut case, eh?” Dawson couldn’t resist the barb that went over Pritchard’s head.
“Recent DNA testing verified the B-negative blood on the T-shirt wasn’t Granger’s. He was released from prison ten days ago, but we’re not sure when he arrived in Freemont.”
At least seventy-two hours earlier, judging from the phone call Dawson had received when Granger got to town. He kept the information to himself. Pritchard could