Page 69 of The Family Cross

“How about on the night the guy was killed?” Sampson asked. “Were you there then?”

“Yeah, but I didn’t hear a thing. Gin before beddy-bye will do that.”

“Can anyone confirm that you were there?”

“Before dark, probably someone saw me. After?” Campbell shrugged. “Can’t see much at that point in a place with no electricity.”

I said, “But you definitely did not see Charlie there that night.”

“I did not that night and had not for a week, give or take.”

The human mind has a tendency to jump to the worst conclusions, and even when you know that, it does not stop it from happening. My thoughts immediately leapfrogged all logic, fact, and theory to the worst possibilities.

Was my brother Charlie homeless?

Was he the man who was shot and burned behind that condemned building?

Was my own brother the very first victim?

61

AS MUCH AS MY head and heart ached from these speculative questions about my brother Charlie, we had come here to ask Aldous Campbell about the other cases.

I pushed my concerns about Charlie down for a moment and said, “Mr. Campbell, where were you last Thursday night, the night of the big thunderstorms?”

Choir Boy squinted. “Under the bridge.”

“Try again,” John Sampson said. “You’re on security footage from the Fall Flower Motel that evening.”

“Well, maybe earlier that evening,” he said.

“You saw Corey McGovern earlier that evening at the Fall Flower,” I said.

“I guess that’s right.”

John asked, “You pay her for sex?”

“That’s how it usually goes with a hooker,” Campbell said, a smile coming to his lips.

I said, “She was fifteen.”

The smile fell. “Not a chance,” he said. “I checked her ID myself.”

“Fake.”

He got defensive. “Well, I had no idea. I mean, I’m no forgery expert.”

Sampson said, “Folks say you were obsessed with Corey.”

“Obsessed? No.”

“How many times did you pay her for sex?”

Choir Boy looked at us, then around the church. “A bunch of times, I guess. Whenever I had enough to see her.”

I said, “You knew Corey had other clients.”

He shrugged. “I’m not stupid.”