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Sam’s voice was hard as her hand wrapped around the butter knife once more. “I didn’t have anything to do with it.”
Vera sidestepped the topic, her opinion still unformed as she stared at the desperate teen. “What about your stint in that cell?” Sam lifted a brow. “Anything interesting happen beyond the Sheriff being mad about the report?”
She shrugged and Vera’s teeth ground together. Twirling the knife between her fingers, dirt gleamed beneath her nails. Sam sighed. “I could know something… for the right price.”
“And what’s that?”
Another blasé shrug. “Hundred bucks.”
“How do I know it’s worth my cash? For all I know you could be pulling this stuff out of thin air.”
“You know,” she tapped her finger on her chin in mock consideration, “I guess you’ll just have to fuckin’ trust me. I’m all you’ve got and from how much you’re poking around this shit, I’d say you need me.”
“I’ll give you fifty, see if what you know is worth my time and maybe you’ll get the other half.” She slapped the bill between them, hand covering it as she watched Sam. Hunger flashed in her eyes at the sight of the paper.
“I may have seen someone in the woods.”
“Where? When?”
A thin smile lifted the girls lips and she shook her head slowly. Vera pushed the cash towards her.
“In the woods.”
“When, Sam?” She ground the question out.
“I really can’t be sure, it was so dark.”
Exhaling sharply through her nose, Vera pulled out a twenty.
“Oh! I remember. It was right after I found the body and before the Sheriff came.” She smelled the bills and then shoved them in her bra.
“Sam.” She warned.
“Jesus, calm your tits. I didn’t see who it was so don’t bother asking, I just saw a figure in the woods between the trees. I’m pretty sure they knew about the body. They were wearing a hat.”
“What kind? A beanie, baseball cap, cowboy hat?”
Sam looked at her pocket. Vera took out another twenty.
“It was like the ones the Sheriff wears.” She tucked the cash into her bra.
“But it wasn’t the Sheriff?”
“Nah, way skinnier and not as tall, that dude is built like a brick shit-house. They had that same wide brim though. It looked like a guy to me.”
Deputy Gunson. Deputy Stocker wore a uniform tan baseball hat at the crime scene. Gunson brandished the same wide brimmed style that the Sheriff wore. It was sitting next to him at the reception desk when they identified Alex too. Gunson was first on scene more than once, a witness possibly putting him at Alex’s crime scene and the note. The goddamn note that pointed every finger at him.
“Did they come towards you? Did you see any blood on them? A weapon? More than one person? Anything distinguishable about them?”
Sam leaned back as their food was set down. They both were quiet, murmuring thank you’s to the waitress before continuing on. Vera didn’t need anymore ears on what was happening.
Picking up a sausage link, the teen huffed in surprise at the too-hot food. “Ah, shit. No, I didn’t see much of anything. It was already dusk and it’s not as if that forest lets in much light. I got lost more than once in there.” She shivered before shoveling scrambled eggs into her mouth, speaking around the food as she went. “I looked up from the body, saw them standing there and it freaked me out but they were far enough away to not really be an immediate threat.” Vera noted the way the girl evaluated her life, the situations around her. Knives, threats, she was living on survival mode every moment of her life. “They began backing away when I pulled my phone out. Couldn’t get a bar so by the time the cops met me on the road and I’d shown him, poof. Gone.”
“And you didn’t tell the Sheriff.” It wasn’t a question.
She snorted. “Prick didn’t deserve to know shit about shit.”
A vehicle pulled up right in front of the diner with a quick blink of its headlights. The blonde watching her over the steering wheel smiled softly. Vera’s heart squeezed in a way that made her swallow.
