14. Ridley

14

RIDLEY

Grady Smith was older than the last photo I could find online. His hair was more silver than light brown now, and he had more lines around his eyes and mouth. But they didn’t seem to be the lines that came from smiling and laughing, at least as far as I could tell.

He’d worked for Shady Cove Parks and Rec as a groundskeeper when Emerson was taken. He was one of the few that law enforcement had circled around before finally giving up due to lack of evidence. But that attention had led to Grady leaving his job. As far as my online research could tell, he’d taken another on a road construction crew a couple of towns over.

“Hello, Mr. Smith,” I greeted him, crossing toward him and extending a hand as Bryan peeled out of the parking lot. “Thank you for meeting me.”

His gaze swept over me before coming to rest on my outstretched palm. “Grady,” he said before taking it.

“Thank you, Grady.”

He held my hand for a beat longer than was necessary. “You look too young to be doing investigative reporting.”

The hold and the statement didn’t read creepy to me, more like a display of dominance. I’d give it to him. Whatever he needed to do to feel okay about giving me this interview. I’d gotten good at feigning deference to alpha-male personalities. It didn’t matter to me if they wanted to be known as the apex predator, just as long as they gave me the information I needed.

I gave Grady an easy smile. “Twenty-seven, and been doing this for more than four years now.”

He ran a finger across the scruff below his bottom lip. “Practically still a baby. Your parents okay with your career path?”

A hint of annoyance flickered, but I shoved it down. “You’d have to ask them.”

Grady chuckled. “Fair enough.” He scanned our surroundings. “Where do you want to do this?”

Relief swept through me that he wasn’t asking to be off the record like the coach. Because if I didn’t come back with some interviews soon, Baker was going to cut this season short. “I thought we could walk and talk. You could show me where you were when you last saw Emerson and anything you observed.”

His fingers tapped against the outside of his thigh. “Yeah. Whatever.”

It was a bizarre statement for someone in his midfifties. It felt like the phrase of someone younger.

Swinging my bag around, I pulled out two wireless lav mics. “I’ll have you attach one of these to your shirt so we can get good quality sound. It’ll connect with my phone, which will be recording.”

I’d found that it was better to explain how each step worked so no one felt like I was trying to pull something over on them. But Grady’s eyes still narrowed on the mic, though he didn't say a word as he took it from me and clipped it to his tee.

I turned my own on and fastened it to my shirt. Pulling out my phone, I quickly attached the receiver to my lightning port and opened the recording app. “Testing, testing.” My levels were in the acceptable range. I’d become an expert in where to place my mic to get that on the first try or two. I glanced at Grady. “Can you say something for me?”

“Something,” he muttered.

The level was a bit high. “Can you move the mic a little farther away from your mouth.”

Grady’s amber eyes hardened but he moved to adjust the lavalier.

“Try it again.”

“How’s this?” he asked.

I watched the screen. “We’re good.” I hit the record button and carefully slid the phone into my pocket.

Grady started toward the tennis courts without waiting for me. There were four in total, and it looked like two were now being used for pickleball. Just one thing that I knew had to have changed in the past ten years.

The moment of distraction meant I had to pick up my pace to catch up with my interview subject. “What all has changed in the park in the past ten years?”

Grady sent me a sidelong look, surprise lacing it. He probably thought I’d dive straight into the heavy, but that wasn’t how I liked to work. He took a moment to really take in his surroundings. “Fucking pickleball,” he groused.

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “A little louder than tennis.”

He shook his head. “Thank God I got out of here before all the yuppies and millennials started playing that shit.”

“Definitely a headache starter.”

Grady’s gaze moved on from the courts. “New playground equipment. Regraded walking trails into the woods there. And more lights. The lights went in right after the girl went missing.”

It was interesting that he’d said the girl . Not using Emerson’s name depersonalized her. But there could be a million different reasons he’d do that. “Can you walk me through the day she went missing?”

Grady’s jaw worked back and forth as his molars ground together. “Just like any other day. Wife made me breakfast, and I headed to work. Boss wanted me to prune all the shrubs around the park. They were starting to creep into the lawn.”

I followed his line of sight as he led me out onto the grass. I could see how the forest around the park on three sides could easily encroach. “That’s a big task.”

Grady simply grunted in agreement. “And it wasn’t like his ass was going to help me. Worked all day with only a short break for lunch. But the boss wanted me to finish it in two days. Was still working when the tennis team started practicing.”

“You had to see them practicing often, right?”

His eyes narrowed on me. “So what?”

The short answer was understandable. As far as I could tell from my research, Grady had been questioned at least half a dozen times by the sheriff’s department and state police. That made a person defensive.

My hope was that he would lose the defensiveness around me. I didn’t carry a badge or have the ability to lock him up, and maybe with time, he would tell me some detail he hadn’t shared with the cops. Because sometimes a detail, no matter how tiny, could break a case wide-open.

I kept my posture easy, relaxed. “I just meant that you likely saw things others might have missed. Saw things the players and coaches might’ve missed because they were on the inside. A bird’s-eye view is often the most powerful.”

Grady kept on walking but didn’t speak right away. He led me to a place where the woods met the park’s grass. “Was working this section while they practiced that day. The girl was the star. That was easy to see. No one on that team held a candle to her. There were a few who were bitter about it.”

“Do you know the names of the kids who might’ve been jealous?” I asked, wondering if Grady would list the same two names Coach Kerr had.

He shook his head. “Brunette girl with glasses. Another blond with a skirt so short I sure as hell wouldn’t have let my daughter out in it.”

So, not the same names. I needed a team photo, maybe a yearbook. Schools had gotten tighter about what they put online, and I hadn’t found much through the Shady Cove High School website or local papers. But there might’ve been a feature on the team that would give me something.

“But I don’t blame ’em for being jealous,” Grady went on. “That coach did a piss-poor job of pretending she wasn’t his number-one focus.”

“What kind of focus?” I asked, trying to keep any opinion out of my tone.

Grady scoffed. “Greedy. Could’ve been he thought she was headed to Wimbledon, and he was gonna ride those coattails. Could’ve been something else…”

He let that something else hang in the air. We both knew what that something else could be. Something darker.

I didn’t go there. Not when the coach had been cleared by camera footage, and there were plenty of other persons of interest. “When you left that evening, was the team still practicing?”

“Yeah. They weren’t gonna call it quits for at least another half hour.”

“And did you know that Emerson often kept practicing after her teammates left?”

Grady’s hands fisted at his sides. “I seen her a time or two on my way home after a beer at The Barrel.”

“And did you go get a beer that night?” I prodded.

“Yeah. Had a beer with a bud and then headed home.”

Except there was an hour window between when his friend said he left The Whiskey Barrel and when Grady’s wife said he arrived home.

“It took you a while to get there.” It wasn’t a question, but I still let it hang.

Grady’s amber eyes melted into a gold color, hot with anger. “I told the cops. Sometimes I need a drive to clear my head after a long day.”

“Did anyone see you on that drive?” I asked, keeping my voice calm.

“If I’d known the pigs had it out for me, I’d have installed a goddamned dashcam. But I didn’t know, did I?” he snapped.

“Your wife said it was typical for you to get home late, but your friend, Wallace, said you usually hung at the bar longer. Why was that night different?”

Grady’s hands fisted and flexed over and over. “What’re you getting at? Thought this was a chance to clear my name.”

I’d never once said that. I didn’t have the facts to know if Grady’s name needed to be cleared. “I said this was a chance to tell your story.”

“You wanna know my story, bitch? This is my fuckin’ story. I worked minimum wage for half my life. Bleeding for this town. And how do they repay me? Cops puttin’ me in the back of a goddamned squad car in front of my kids.”

He spat on the ground. “And they just kept on comin’. Time after time. My boss tells me he thinks it would be best if I quit so he didn’t have to fire my ass. Didn’t have a choice because I couldn’t risk one more black mark on my record.”

My heart hammered against my ribs as my free hand dropped, preparing to reach for my Taser if I needed to. That delicate balance of how long I could wait to find out if Grady was simply furious or if there was violence in him too.

Grady prowled toward me one step and then another, like a panther poised to attack. “Now I see you. You think you’re gonna come in here and pin this all on me? Not gonna happen.” His hand lashed out. “You don’t wanna know what happens to nosy little bitches?—”

A figure stepped between us. The way the sun was angled in the sky, he was pure shadow to me. But somehow I still recognized him. The broad shoulders and dark hair. But more, the aura that radiated around him. That aura had turned to pissed-the-hell-off as he glared down at Grady.

“Don’t even think of laying hands on her.”