Wade was led to a picnic table under the oak tree at the cemetery's edge. Driftwood sat across from him, a small notebook open, a recorder placed between them. "Wade," Driftwood said gently,
"I'm going to ask you some questions, and I need you to answer as clearly as you can. Take your time. If you don't know something, say you don't know. Don't guess. Understood?" Wade nodded.
"How old are you?" "11." "Where do you live?" "Harlan County Group Home for Boys. 318 Mill Creek Road." "How long have you lived there?"
"22 months. My dad died of an overdose. Accidental. They placed me 9 days later."
Driftwood's expression didn't change, but his eyes did. Wade saw something there. Understanding. The look of someone who knew what it felt like to lose everything in 9 days. "I'm sorry, Wade." "Thank you, sir."
"Tell me about the night you found Nell." Wade told it. The thunderstorm, the loose fence board, the 2.3 mile walk to the warehouse where he sheltered when the group home got too loud at night. The northeast sub room behind the gin machinery, the burlap sacking, the fever, the girl who should have been buried, but was breathing. Driftwood wrote it all down. Every detail.
Every date. Every measurement.
Then he asked the question Wade had been dreading. "Did you tell anyone before you told Hawthorne?" "Yes, sir. Three times." "Who?" "First," Wade said,
"I told the overnight supervisor at the group home, Mr. Fenway. It was 6:40 in the morning, 21 days ago, November 7th. I told him there was a sick girl in the warehouse on Route 9."
"He was filling out attendance sheets. He didn't look up. He wrote something in the incident log and told me to go brush my teeth." "What did he write?"
"I snuck a look later. It said, 'Overactive imagination. No action required.' He never called anyone." Driftwood's jaw tightened. "Second attempt?"
"16 days ago. I flagged down a police car on Route 9 near the warehouse. The officer got out. I told him everything."
"He asked my name. He went to his car and ran it on his system. Then he got back in the car and told me, 'Go back to your home, son.' He drove away." "Did you see what he looked at on his system?"
"No, sir. But I know what he saw. There's a flag on my file. Says I'm a fabricator." "Why does it say that?"
Wade hesitated. This was the part that had killed every attempt before. The part that made adults stop listening. "13 months ago," Wade said quietly,
"I reported that a supervisor at the group home took cash from the boys' commissary fund. The supervisor denied it. They put a note in my file that I make false accusations. The supervisor resigned 4 months later for unrelated reasons. The note stayed in my file." Driftwood stopped writing.
Looked up. "Wade, was the accusation false?" "No, sir. He took $340 over 6 weeks. I saw him do it twice." "So you told the truth and got labeled a liar?"
"Yes, sir." "And that label has followed you ever since." "Yes, sir."
Driftwood closed his notebook. Leaned forward.
"Wade, I'm going to tell you something and I need you to hear it. You are not a liar. You are the only honest person in this entire mess. Every adult who turned you away failed, not you. Them. Do you understand?"
Wade's throat was tight. He nodded. "Third attempt?" Driftwood asked gently.
Wade took a breath. "9 days ago, three people from Rotary Club, they were leaving a lunch meeting at the Civic Center. I walked up to them on the steps. I asked if I could speak to someone who could help a sick child. One of the men..." Wade stopped, swallowed.
"He looked at me and my hoodie, at my sneakers, at the wristband from the group home, and he said, 'The group home is on Mill Creek Road, son. They'll sort you out over there.' Then they all walked to their cars." "Did you try to explain?"
"One of them was a woman. She's on the County Children's Services Advisory Board. I thought she might listen, but she didn't even look at me. She just got in her car." Driftwood's pen was pressed so hard against the notebook that Wade could hear the paper creak.
"One more question," Driftwood said. "Why didn't you give up?" Wade looked at him. "Because Nell's still there, sir. And nobody else was going."
20 minutes later, Hawthorne found Wade sitting on the back bumper of someone's truck drinking a Gatorade that Sandstone had handed him from a cooler. Wade looked small, smaller than he'd looked standing at the grave with his feet planted and his voice steady. Now he just looked like what he was, an 11-year-old boy who'd been carrying something way too heavy for way too long. Hawthorne sat down next to him, didn't say anything at first, just sat there. Two people on a truck bumper in a cemetery parking lot surrounded by motorcycles and men who were waiting for orders.
"You did good in there," Hawthorne said finally. "With Driftwood?" "I just told him what happened." "That's all we needed. The truth. That's the thing that'll hold when we get to court."
Wade nodded. Took a sip of Gatorade. "Can I ask you something?" Hawthorne said. "Yes, sir."
"Why didn't you run? When you found her? When you realized what you'd stumbled into? You could have walked away, gone back to the group home, pretended you never saw her. No one would have known."
Wade was quiet for a long time. Long enough that Hawthorne thought maybe the question was too big. But then Wade spoke. And his voice was so quiet Hawthorne had to lean closer to hear. "My mom died 3 years ago," Wade said.
"Ovarian cancer. It took 8 months. At the end, she was in hospice. And I remember..." He stopped. Swallowed.
"I remember one night she woke up crying because she was afraid of dying alone. She asked me to stay with her. So I did. I sat in the chair next to her bed and I held her hand and I didn't let go until the nurse came in the morning and told me she'd passed."
Hawthorne's chest tightened. "When I found Nell," Wade continued, "she was so scared. And she was alone. And I just... I kept thinking about my mom."
"About how the worst thing in the world isn't dying. It's dying alone. Or being hurt alone. Or being scared alone." He looked at Hawthorne.
"I couldn't leave her there. I couldn't do that." Hawthorne was quiet for 5 seconds. Then he said, very softly, "Your mom would be proud of you."
Wade's eyes filled. He blinked fast. "There's something else," Wade said. "Something I didn't tell Driftwood yet." Hawthorne straightened. "What is it?"
"The night I heard the phone call. The night Voss said the thing about the old woman in Natchez. I heard him say a name." "What name?"
"Eugenia. He said, 'Eugenia was easier. She didn't have family asking questions.' Then he laughed." Hawthorne's blood went cold. "Eugenia?"
"Yes, sir. I don't know who she is, but I wrote it down when I got back to the group home. I hid the paper inside my pillowcase."
Hawthorne stood, pulled out his phone, dialed Chainsaw. "I need you to run a name," Hawthorne said the second Chainsaw picked up. "Eugenia, connected to Natchez, Adams County, possibly connected to Randall Voss. Look for death records, estate filings, anything with Voss listed as executor or funeral director." "On it," Chainsaw said. "Give me 10 minutes."