“Oh, yeah. Plenty boys get prohibition. But the policemans, they turn that into hard time if they be wanting to. This ought to be over and done with.”
“That may not be possible,” Zach said. “Some probation, or ‘prohibition’ as you call it, will be included in your sentence. Do I have your permission to talk to the district attorney about a deal? You would have to be willing to plead guilty to at least some of the trespassing charges and agree not to do it again.”
“I told missy here, I be tying up to an old tree from here on.” The old man’s eyes watered. “I just be needing a place of peace where they can’t find me.”
“Who?” Zach asked.
Moses looked at me. “The faces. I ain’t on the river, but that little girl, she found me last night. I dream ’bout the river an’ there she be. How she do that? In my dream, miles from the river edge?”
“What is the girl’s name?” Zach asked. “Do you know her?”
“It’s not relevant to the case,” I said to Zach. “We don’t need to ask about this. Please leave it alone.”
“What’s her name?” Zach persisted, leaning forward in his chair.
Moses licked his lips. “It be Prescott. She a pretty little thing. No more than ten or eleven year old. I don’t do nothing bad. So, why she bother me all these years?”
I remembered the photograph in Mrs. Fairmont’s room. The blood rushed from my head, and I felt slightly dizzy.
“Did you say Prescott?” I asked in a voice that trembled slightly.
“That be right, missy.”
“What color eyes and hair does she have?”
“She be yellow-haired with eyes like the blue sky. Even in the dark, dark water, that hair, it still glows, those eyes, they see right through my soul.”
“Is she the girl who was murdered?”
Moses stared at me and blinked.
“What are you talking about?” Zach asked me sharply.
I bolted from the room and let the door slam behind me. I leaned against the wall and took several deep breaths. The deputy on duty in the room started walking toward me. Zach came out of the interview room and joined me.
“Are you okay?” the deputy asked.
I held up my hand. “I just needed to leave the room for a minute. I’m okay.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes sir.”
The deputy backed away.
“What’s going on?” Zach asked as soon as the deputy was on the other side of the room. “Who is the Prescott girl?”
I didn’t answer. Zach put his hands on my shoulders and came close to my face. “Talk to me!”
I pushed away his hands. “That’s not necessary,” I said. “Give me a second.”
He backed away.
In a shaky voice I told him about the old photograph and Mrs. Fairmont’s story.
“A terrible crime like that would have been the talk of the town for months,” Zach said matter-of-factly. “Everyone else in Savannah would have known all about it. The girl’s picture would have been on the front page of the paper every time it ran an article.”
“But that doesn’t explain why Moses sees her face in the water. You heard him. He wanted to make sure we didn’t think he’d done anything wrong.”
“Which proves?”
My frustration with Zach flew to the surface. “That you don’t understand we may be representing a man who should be charged with murder, not trespassing!”
“Keep your voice down,” Zach whispered as he glanced across the room toward the deputy. “We’re here to talk to Moses Jones about a misdemeanor trespassing case.”
“Then why did you keep going on about the girl in the water after I asked you to stop? This isn’t my fault!”
“I’m not blaming you,” Zach answered. “But we can’t leave Jones alone while we argue. I’m going back in. We need to finish meeting with him about the trespassing case before thinking about anything else.”
We returned to the interview room.
“Sorry to leave you like that,” Zach said to Moses.
I stared at the old man’s hands. They were arthritic now, but when he was younger they could have been lethal weapons.
“How did the Prescott girl die?” I blurted out. “Was she strangled and drowned?”
“No, Tami,” Zach said. “Leave it alone.”
Moses didn’t pay attention to Zach. “People, they know. I not be telling the policemans. How could I?”
Zach spoke. “Mr. Jones, you don’t have to talk about this if you don’t want to.” Moses blinked his eyes and began to cry softly.
“Tami, do you have a tissue?” Zach asked.