Terri cast her a look that said what a crock of bull. She knew Autumn could be a real bloodhound when she was set on something. This was a major something.
“Call me when you get back,” Terri said, rising from her chair. “I’ll worry until you do.”
“I’ll let you know how it goes.” Autumn grabbed her paper cup in one hand and slung her small brown leather purse over her shoulder with the other. “Wish me luck.”
Terri nodded. “I have a feeling you’re going to need it.”
Six
According to plan, very early Saturday morning, Autumn pulled her red Ford Escape out of its narrow space in the garage beneath her apartment building and drove the small SUV toward the Freeway 5 on-ramp, heading for Portland. The traffic wasn’t that bad. Most people left the city on Friday night and she was getting out of town long before the Saturday shoppers hit the road.
It was a four-hour drive to Portland. Once she got there, she turned onto Highway 18 for the sixty-mile drive to the Sheridan correctional facility. On the seat beside her sat four pages—single-spaced—of visitor regulations.
Autumn had read them thoroughly, making sure not to wear anything khaki—expressively forbidden since the prisoners wore khaki pants and shirts—or anything metal on her person.
Her nerves began to build as she drove into the lot in front of the tile-roofed main building, parked in a visitor’s space, got out and locked her SUV. Then she took a deep breath and headed for the entrance marked Visitors. Inside the lobby, security cameras were everywhere, watching every inch of the building.
Autumn walked to the information counter and a woman in a white uniform shirt and pants walked over at her approach.
“Name, please.”
“Autumn Sommers…with an ‘O’.”
The guard, a bulky matron with heavy breasts and short black hair, looked down at the pages on her clipboard. “Your name’s on the list. You’re here on a special pass to see Gerald Meeks?”
“That’s right.”
“You’ll still have to go through security check-in just like any other visitor.”
“I was told I would.”
“Follow me.”
The matron led her along a linoleum floor waxed to a polished sheen, toward a door that led to the check-in area. There were even more cameras inside and three male guards who looked as if they took their jobs in deadly earnest.
Visiting hours ended at three o’clock and it was almost two now, so most of the inmate visitors had already checked in. Still there were a couple of beefy guys dressed like bikers with stringy hair and tattoos in line behind a heavyset Hispanic woman who was accompanied by a chubby girl of about fourteen.
As Autumn took her place at the rear of the line, the bikers’ attention swung from the girl and they eyed her as if they had just been served a fresh piece of meat. Autumn’s nose wrinkled at the sour smell of body odor and the foul breath of the man standing beside her, his lecherous gaze creeping rudely over her breasts.
“Nice tits,” he said to his buddy.
“Nice ass,” the other man said.
“Keep a civil tongue,” ordered the guard, “or you won’t be seeing your good-for-nothing brother.”
The men said no more but the curl of their lips and their heavy-lidded gazes made it clear what they were thinking. Wishing she were anywhere but in that room, Autumn fixed her attention on the guard and set her purse on the conveyor belt that carried it beneath an X-ray machine like the ones at the airports. She was asked to remove her shoes and jacket, which also went through the machine.
She had read in the regulations that visitors were subject to random drug tests and prayed she wouldn’t be chosen. But she only had to walk through a metal detector—which thankfully didn’t go off—and make her way to the opposite end of the conveyor belt.
“First door to your left down the hall,” said one of the guards as she picked up her purse and slung it over her shoulder.
Eager to escape, she walked out the exit door, made a left and spotted a door with a small window in it. When she opened the door, she saw that it wasn’t the main visiting area, but a narrow room that accommodated only four inmates at a time. It was set up much the way she had seen on TV, with the prisoner seated on one side of the glass and the visitor on the other.
Three of the four spaces were currently in use. An obese woman with dirty, coarse black hair sat on one of the stools talking to a huge, dark-skinned man with earrings in both ears. There was a skinny white guy talking to his girlfriend, who looked like she was on drugs but couldn’t be because they wouldn’t have let her in.
The third guy was talking to a man in a cheap striped suit who seemed to be trying to conduct some sort of business, though Autumn couldn’t imagine what. The entire scene was depressing and she began to think coming here was the worst idea she’d ever had.
Then the door on the opposite side of the glass swung open and Gerald Meeks walked in. He was wearing the khaki inmate’s uniform and looked exactly like his picture—thin to the point of being gaunt with hollow, sunken eyes. His hair was a faded brown, not blond like the man in her dreams.
He took a seat across from her. When he looked into her face, Autumn shivered.
“Take it easy, lady. You’re way too old to interest me.”
She sat up a little straighter. She had come here to talk to the man. She wasn’t about to let him intimidate her.
“Thank you for seeing me,” she said.
“I don’t get many visitors. I figured it might help pass the time.”
“I came here to ask you some questions about Molly McKenzie.”
He smiled, a thin slash across the lower half of his face. “A lot of people have asked me about her. What makes you think I’ve got something new to say?”
“I don’t know…I was hoping…It’s been six years since Molly disappeared. You’ve been locked up for most of that time. I thought maybe by now you might be more forthcoming where Molly is concerned.”
“What’s it to you, one way or the other?”
“I’m a…friend of the family. I’m just trying to find out if Molly is really dead.”
Dark eyes bored into her. “You don’t think so? Everyone else is sure I killed her.”
“Did you?”
He didn’t answer for the longest time. “It took guts for you to come. The guys in here would eat you up with a spoon if they had the chance. They’ll all be jealous when I tell ’em what my visitor looked like.” Those sunken eyes moved over her, making her skin crawl. “I bet you were a real pretty little thing, Autumn Sommers, when you were a little girl. Those bright green eyes and all that silky red-gold
