“What did you intend to do?” Mak asked.
“Do? I was going to tell Lanier Ragan to leave my boy alone. He had his whole future ahead of him. I wasn’t going to let him throw away his life for that little whore.”
Makarowicz wanted to point out that nineteen-year-old Holland Creedmore Jr. wasn’t a boy. He was old enough to have sex with a married woman six years his senior. But he didn’t want to put the “boy’s” mother on the defensive.
“What time was this?”
Dorcas’s face scrunched up. “I guess it was close to two by then. The longer I waited, the more worked up I got. Finally, I got out of the car and walked around toward the back of the house. I had a little flashlight on my key chain, and I was using that because it was raining so hard, and it was pitch dark.”
Dorcas Creedmore shook the ice cubes in her glass. Without another word, she got up and left the room. When she returned, her glass had been refilled.
“I was walking out toward the dock. I thought … I don’t know what I thought. I wasn’t myself. At all. And then, I stumbled over something in the dark. I thought it might be a dead raccoon, or a feral cat. But … it was her.”
Dorcas had done away with the straw. She took a gulp of vodka, holding the palm of her hand to her chest. She looked up at Makarowicz, who was waiting.
“It was her. She wasn’t moving. I shined the flashlight and could see there was blood on her face. I touched her, and I knew. I knew she was dead.”
“Where was Holland? Your son? Where was he?”
“I didn’t know.” She was crying now, her shoulders rising and falling with each sob.
“What did you do next, Mrs. Creedmore?”
“I … I called Holl. He was sound asleep. I told him something terrible had happened, and he had to come right away. I was hysterical. It was raining so hard. I unlocked the house, and I waited, in the dark, for Holl to get there.”
“You didn’t think to call the police?” Makarowicz asked. “You’d just found a dead woman, in your backyard, and you didn’t call the police?”
“I told you, I wasn’t myself.”
“What happened next?”
“By the time Holl finally got to the house the rain had stopped. I showed him the body. There was nothing we could do for her. She was dead. So we, that is, Holl, moved her into the old boat house. She was a tiny little thing.”
“Where was your son while all this was going on?”
“Turns out he was in the dock house. Sleeping. We found a nearly empty pint bottle of rum next to him. Holl said we should let him sleep it off. He’d spotted a car, I think it was a Nissan, parked behind some trees in our neighbor’s driveway. The house was for sale, and it was vacant. Holl got a flashlight from the house and looked around and he found her purse, in some bushes near where we found the body, and the keys were in it. Holl said…”
“Dorcas!” Holland Creedmore stormed into the room. He saw the nearly empty glass of vodka she was clutching. “Goddamn it. Be quiet. I talked to Web. He’s calling someone from his old firm. No more talking.”
Dorcas raised her glass in a defiant gesture. “It’s too late, Holl. I told him everything. He knows our boy didn’t kill her. And we didn’t kill her.”
Creedmore sighed. “Goddamn it.”
Makarowicz pointed at his cell phone, which was still recording. “Your wife is right. It’s too late. There’s no putting the toothpaste back in the tube now. I already know enough to arrest both of you in connection with Lanier Ragan’s murder. I’d suggest you sit down and tell me exactly what happened next.”
Creedmore didn’t sit. He stood with his back to the fireplace, feet placed a few inches apart.
“We knew it looked bad for our son. He would never have hurt that woman, but there he was, passed out cold in the dock house, with her corpse a couple hundred yards away.” He rubbed his jowls. “I found the keys to her car. I drove and Dorcas followed in my car. We left the car at a shopping center. We went back out to Tybee, checked on Holland, who was still passed out—”
“I was afraid he’d been poisoned or something,” Dorcas interrupted. “But Holl said…”
“Let him sleep it off,” Creedmore said, picking up the narrative again. “We drove back home and waited.”
Makarowicz was watching Dorcas, who was watching her husband recount their night of horror with chilling, detached clarity. He kept thinking of four-year-old Emma Ragan, being awakened by the storm that night, discovering her mother was gone; forever traumatized by the sound of lightning.