Or…“I know you didn’t tell him,” Casey said. “And you didn’t tell your parents. Did you tell anybody about your meeting with your aunt?”
Billy dropped his face into his hands, and his body shook with sobs. “I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t planning on it. But he was talking about it, and I just wanted…I just wanted to…”
“Who did you tell, Billy?”
He gulped, and wiped his nose with his arm. “It was just one person. Just one. And he swore he wouldn’t tell.”
“Billy, who was it?”
“It was Robbie. Robbie Greer. I told him.”
Chapter Thirty-four
“You’re sure it was this man?” Casey held out the photo of Cyrus and the two men.
She hadn’t believed the story Billy had been given about the guy being a cop, and thought she’d take a chance that it was Cyrus’ old cronies who had been back in Marshland, on the hunt for Elizabeth. Billy couldn’t say for sure that the man was the same as one of the guys on the photo with Cyrus, but he thought it might have been. He was so upset, however, she wasn’t sure he was seeing anything clearly, and a lot of years had passed since the picture had been taken.
Now, she was showing the photo to a different teenager. Robbie Greer studied the photo for the tenth time. They were in the dingy motel office, so the lighting wasn’t great, but it was good enough if Casey tilted the photo to the right, to catch both lamps in the room. Robbie himself looked different from the evening before. Tonight he was nervous, biting his fingernails and tapping his knuckles on the counter. His eyes jumped around from thing to thing, and he didn’t call Casey “ma’am.”
“I think it’s the same guy,” he said. “I mean, like I said, he’s older now. His hair had gray in it.”
“And what exactly did he ask you?”
“I already told—”
“Again, Robbie. Tell me.”
He sighed, like Casey was asking for him to recite all the presidents. In order. “He wanted to know if I’d heard anything new about Elizabeth Mann. I like that kind of stuff, I mean, mysteries, or whatever. There’s her, and then there’s that guy from down the road, who took off one night in his truck and never came home, and that ranch where they think the ghosts of cowboys are coming back to haunt them.” He chewed on his thumbnail.
“And? What did you tell him?”
“He didn’t actually want to know about all the history. I guess he knew that. He just wondered if I had any idea where she was.”
“And did you?”
He shifted his feet. “Not for sure.”
“Robbie, Billy told you something. He admitted that. Did the guy ask you what he said?”
Robbie paled. “Why would he?”
“Because you’re one of Billy’s friends, and because, according to you, you’re the town expert on Elizabeth’s disappearance.”
“But no strange men have ever asked me before.”
“Then something must have happened. Something to tip them off that new information had come to light.”
Robbie’s tapping became more frantic. “I didn’t mean anything. I didn’t want to get her in trouble. I thought it was good. Billy was so happy, you know, but also freaked out, because he’d seen his aunt, and he wasn’t supposed to tell his mom, but he wanted to tell somebody, so…so he told me. He knew I would be interested, wouldn’t think he was weird.” He squeezed his eyes shut.
“Robbie, what did you do?”
He scratched at his forehead.
“Robbie.”
“I had a web site, okay? I talked about the unsolved crimes around here, in all of Texas, really, but this case—Billy’s aunt—she’s special, you know? Because she’s from here, and Billy’s my—” He choked, and cleared his throat. “—my friend.”
“So when Billy told you about Elizabeth, and that she’d been here, you put it on the Internet? Even though he told you it was a secret?”
“I didn’t know it was going to get her killed! It seemed like no big deal, I mean, Colorado’s a big state! She could’ve been anywhere! I didn’t think…” He slumped. “I just didn’t think.”
Casey wanted to reach across the counter and shake him, but it wouldn’t change what he’d done, and really, what had he done that every other teenager on the planet wasn’t doing? Tweeting and blogging and…whatever else they did that had a weird name. Well,