where he stood, Dawson noticed the blood spatters on the thick fabric.
She turned, hearing him behind her.
He hadn’t expected her eyes to be so green or so lucid. She wore her pain in the knit of her brow, in the downward tug on her full lips, in the tear-streaked eyes whose sadness wrapped around his heart. His breath hitched, and time stood still for one long moment.
Pritchard asked another question. She turned back to the lead cop, leaving Dawson dangling. He straightened his neck, trying to work his way back to reality.
Long ago, Dawson had learned to weigh everything, never to take a chance. He put his faith in what he could do and affect and impact, not on emotions that left him hanging in thin air.
“The middle of a stormy night.” Pritchard restated the last question. “Yet you opened your door when Mr. Ford knocked?”
“I...ah...” She searched for an answer.
“Do you always open your door to strangers, Ms. Beaumont?” Pritchard pressed.
She shook her head. “Of course not, but—”
Once again, she glanced at Dawson, as if asking him to clear the confusion written on her oval face.
“Had you been asleep?” Dawson knew better than to prompt a witness, yet the question sprang from his lips before he could weigh the consequences.
She nodded, her brow raised and lips upturned for the briefest of moments. “I was dreaming. The knock sounded. Before I realized what I was doing, I was staring at him through the open doorway.”
Pritchard cleared his throat and jotted her answer in a notebook. After recording the statement, he glared at Dawson. “I’m finished questioning Ms. Beaumont. If there’s anything you want to ask her, go right ahead. I’ll be outside.”
Dawson read between the lines. Pritchard didn’t want his interrogation compromised by a newcomer from post. A subtle reprimand, perhaps? Not that Dawson would be intimidated by a small-town cop.
As Pritchard left through the kitchen, Dawson took a seat on the chair next to Lillie and held up his identification.
“Special Agent Dawson Timmons, ma’am. I’m with the Criminal Investigation Division at Fort Rickman. The Freemont Police Department is handling the murder investigation, but the CID was called in because you work on post. I’m here as a liaison between the local police and the military.”
“Does...does General Cameron know what happened?” Lillie asked.
“He’s being notified.”
“I don’t want anything to—”
“To jeopardize your job? I don’t see how that could happen. Unless your position as the general’s secretary has a bearing on this crime.”
“No, no.” She held up her hand. “This has nothing to do with General Cameron.”
“What does it involve, Ms. Beaumont?” He leaned closer. “May I call you Lillie?”
She nodded. “You’re not from around here?”
“Georgia 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
