The Girl and the Cursed Lake (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 12)

by A J Rivers

  “That sounds like a kind of risky game,” Sam says.

  “I guess it can be. But he might have been able to pick up on some information. Then we can see where that might go,” I say. I let out a sigh. “I still can't help but think all of this is going to tie back to Greg. I can't figure out how or why. But it can't be a coincidence. It cannot be a coincidence that Lydia Walsh crossed his path while investigating Dragon and then showed up in Harlan. And I don't know what the hell I'm supposed to think about Gabriel, but that wasn't a fluke. You know that as well as I do.”

  “You called her to Harlan,” Sam says. “You had been trying to get in touch with her since Greg died.”

  “I know that. But she stayed involved. There's no way we could have encountered two separate situations that have to do with the Dragon and not have them linked in some way. All of this is going to come back to Greg. Either it will tell me how and why he died, or finding out how he died is going to give me the information I need to figure out the Dragon’s involvement with the Order. I just don't know which one first.”

  “He did give you a key,” Sam points out.

  “I know,” I say. “He just didn't give me the code.”

  “Come on,” Sam says. “Come on to bed. You have a lot going on in the next couple of days and you need some rest.”

  “I have to figure these things out. I need to find the link. These people are dead. Someone has to pay for it."

  "I know, babe. But you can't run yourself into the ground trying to figure it out."

  I pick up the picture frame in front of me and look at the image in it. My old friend Julia and her daughter Iris are smiling from a park bench. Most of their wounds are healed and the light has come back to their eyes. But I can't help but focus on the overly shiny wig Julia's wearing to cover the fact that they had to cut off her hair because it was so matted, and the sleeve of her sweater pulled down over her wrist to conceal where her hand was chopped off. Iris is on her way to looking like the teenager she should be, but I can still see the scars. The last time I talked to them, she was still working on building up her strength again.

  "This is what happens when things don't get figured out. When I don't get it right," I say.

  "Emma, what happened to them wasn't your fault."

  "If anyone had listened to me, it wouldn't have happened. Or at least, they would have gotten to her sooner."

  "You can't blame yourself for that. You can't. You did absolutely everything that you could. You were just a kid."

  I let out a short, mirthless laugh and shake my head. "Do you realize that all happened just a few months before the last four went missing? When I was trying to find Julia, she was already in those woods. He'd taken her to the cabin, and she was out there in the cold, in the same park as those other people who went missing. It was miles away, I know. But the same park. The same woods. They were missing at the same time."

  "But you found her," Sam says. "Maybe not then, but you found her. She's not out in those woods anymore."

  "But how about them? Are they still out there?"

  Sam reaches down and takes my hand, helping me to my feet and wrapping his arms around me. I close my eyes and rest my head to the middle of his chest. It's my favorite place. I can hear his heartbeat; I breathe in the smell of him. We've stood this way thousands of times. I could happily do it millions more and never get tired of it.

  Chapter Eight

  "How's the weather?" Sam asks.

  I laugh and look at my phone where I've secured it to the holder on the dashboard.

  "You're talking to me about the weather? I think our marriage has taken a downturn."

  "Before it's even started. Now that's impressive," he notes.

  "It's all right. I think we can weather the storm," I tell him.

  There's a long silence. "I knew I loved you for a reason."

  "If terrible puns is it, I'll take it,” I say.

  “Good. Now, seriously, has the rain started where you are?” Sam asks.

  “Not yet. But the sky's looking pretty nasty. I'm hoping to get to the hospital before it starts. I hate driving out here in bad weather.”

  “I hate when you're driving out there in bad weather,” he says.

  “I'm going to be okay. Don't worry about me too much. But if it gets too bad, I might try to find a hotel for the night rather than coming home in the storm. The forecast says once it starts it's pretty much here for the next twenty-four hours.”

  “I'll miss you,” Sam says. “But I think that would be the better idea.”

  “I'll give you a call when I’m done at the hospital and let you know how everything is progressing. I love you.”

  “Love you too, babe. Be careful. And tell her I say hello, and I hope she's doing well.”

  “I will. Talk to you soon.”

  I hit the button to end the call just as the first raindrops start splashing on my windshield. I mumble a few complaints and slow down a bit. I'm the only car on the road, but that doesn't mean I couldn't have an unfortunate incident with one of the many trees lining either side of the long stretch ahead. Checking the GPS, I see it isn't too much farther until I can turn off of this fairly desolate piece of road and get to the hospital. Hopefully, the rain won't get too serious before I can get inside.

  Almost as if my thinking it causes the sky to feel spiteful, a massive crack of sound suddenly roars. Everything around me lights up in a brilliant flash before a deluge pours down on me. I'm tempted to pull up on the side of the road and try to wait it out. But I don't want to miss afternoon visitation hours. Besides, as I’d told Sam, this storm is supposed to last for quite a while. I don't have much interest in camping out on the side of the road.

  Xavier's pressuring finally made me upgrade my sparse but adequate emergency supplies to include a couple of pillows, several blankets, towels, enough food and water for a few days, a roadside supply kit, and various other things he sneaked into my trunk and I haven't yet explored. I might be ready to be stranded, but I'd prefer not to be if I can avoid it.

  I don't stop, but I slow down and creep my way on down the road. By the time I make it to the hospital, the storm has only gotten worse and visitation hours have begun. Grabbing my umbrella from the backseat, I run across the parking lot and into the lobby.

  “Emma,” Marion Kincaid greets me from behind the reception desk. “I was getting worried you weren't going to make it today.”

  “I wouldn't miss it,” I tell her. “The weather just surprised me a bit, so it took me longer to get here.”

  “No worries, she'll be happy to see you. Go ahead on back,” Marion says.

  I smile at her as I shake out my umbrella. “Thanks.”

  The electronic locks on the big blue double doors beside the desk buzz as I approach. A deep click somewhere inside says the door is ready to open and I push through it. The hospital ward beyond has been carefully crafted to look as welcoming as possible. These aren't stark, cold rooms or cubicles. Instead, the doors have been made to look as if they open into teeny apartments and the walls painted with murals to replicate a cheerful little town.

  It's almost childlike, but without the strange giant eyes that seem to end up on everything, or the impossible colors. The effect is a kind of inside-out reassurance. Seeing these things around them doesn't actually make those living inside feel as though they live in a normal environment or as if everything is perfectly okay. But it makes them feel that people are trying to make them comfortable, so maybe one day it could be.

  I walk down the hallway and have flashes of going into the visitation room to see Xavier. It was a different facility, with very different surroundings—but in truth, there are just as many, if not more, similarities as there are differences. That’s because the ward I am in isn’t a conventional hospital. These patients aren’t dealing with injuries or physical illnesses.

  This is a psychiatric facility specifically designed to house the mentally ill, rather than putting them in prison.
It’s where they belong. Despite what people want to say to make themselves feel better, the prison system isn't for rehabilitation and isn't equipped for those suffering severe mental health issues. Especially those who buckled under the torment of their minds when they committed their crimes.

  Times are changing. Prisons are changing. But not enough, not yet. Not enough that any part of me believes the woman sitting on the cushioned window seat looking out through the bay window as she waits for me should instead be in a prison cell.

  I want to just stand here and watch her look out through the glass at the rain. There are bars across the window, but she doesn't seem to notice them. She’s too enthralled by the water hitting the glass. I shift just enough so she can see my reflection, and she turns a smile toward me.

  “Emma,” she says. “You came.”

  “Of course I did. How are you feeling, Lilith?”

  She nods as she unfolds herself from the seat and comes toward me. She looks so much stronger and healthier than she did when she first came here. That was less than a year ago, but it feels like so much longer. The last time I was here to visit her, she told me it felt as though an entire lifetime had passed since she’d left the house at the edge of the cornfield, and yet there were moments when she was afraid if she turned around, she would see that she was still there.

  "I'm feeling good. It's getting better. I was really nervous about getting to this time of year. There are a lot of bad memories. But my therapist warned me about it and has been preparing me. There are moments that are harder than others. I think there always will be,” she says.

  “There will be,” I nod as we settle down at one of the round tables in the open part of the room. “There's no point in lying to you about that. There are always going to be hard moments for you, but you'll get through them. That's what's important.”

  “Thank you for coming, Emma. It's so good to see you," she says, letting her eyes trace my face as if she's trying to memorize me, just in case she doesn't see me again.

  There's always at least one point in every visit when she looks at me like that. I hate seeing that look. Not because I don't want her to look at me that way, or because it makes me uncomfortable. I hate that there's still a lingering feeling inside her that I might leave and not come back. It's happened to her too many times before. But as much as I wish there was something I could tell her that would reassure her it isn't going to happen with me, I know there's nothing I could say.

  Words are just that to Lilith. Words. She learned in a brutal way that words are not only unreliable but that they can be used as weapons. My telling her that I'm not going to disappear isn't enough to convince her. She has to see me again and again until, with any luck, one day she'll settle in.

  Of course, there's also the voice in the back of my mind that reminds me she isn't just worried I will leave of my own accord. Not everyone who disappeared from Lilith's life walked away from her voluntarily. Others were ripped away. I know there are times when that's what in her thoughts when she looks at me that way. There's nothing I can do to ease that fear. All I can hope is that one day the hurt inside her will be soothed enough that she doesn't feel it anymore.

  “Sam wanted me to tell you hello, and he hopes you're doing well,” I say.

  This makes her eyes light up and a smile comes to her lips.

  “He's a good man,” she says. “Hang on to him.”

  “I will,” I tell her. “As tight as I possibly can.”

  “You're going to be a beautiful bride, Emma. And I know your wedding is going to be just magical.”

  “You'll see it,” I tell her.

  She gives me a wistful smile and a slight shake of her head.

  “You know that's not true,” she says. “I'm not leaving this building anytime soon. They might not have put me in a cell, but I'm still caged up. And I should be. This is exactly where I should be.”

  “Lilith,” I frown, wanting to try to find words to reassure her, but I can't.

  “No, listen,” she says. “I'm not being morose. This is just my reality. A reality that I only get to experience because of you. Don't think I ever forget that each day I wake up is a day I wouldn't have if you hadn’t been in the cornfield. Nobody else would have done for me what you did. I thought he loved me. Maybe in a twisted and impossible to understand way, but he loved me, nonetheless. Now I realize he would’ve just let me bleed out into that dirt. He would have been happy to see it.”

  “I'm glad I was there,” I say. “Because I'm glad you're here. He didn't deserve any more than you had already sacrificed for him. He didn't deserve that to begin with. You definitely didn't deserve what he did to you.”

  She still doesn't say his name. I don't know if she ever will. But the progress she's made is remarkable. Little by little, she's coming to the point at which she can talk about what she went through. I know some details, but they're fractured and scattered around. I don't know if the story will ever fall into a linear telling, but I don't really need it to. Lilith deserves to reclaim herself, and that means claiming the story of what happened as well. She can tell it however she wants to.

  “I've been doing art therapy,” she tells me. “There are some things I'm still not able to talk about, but my therapist has been encouraging me to paint.”

  “Do you enjoy painting?” I ask.

  “I do,” she says. “It helps when I can't find the right words to say. I just paint them out and I feel better. Would you like to see some of what I've done?”

  “Absolutely,” I smile.

  Grinning, she gets up and goes over to an area in the corner that contains a variety of art supplies. Several easels prop up canvases, but they're turned so I can't see what's on them. Lilith takes hold of three of them and carries them over to me. She sets them on the table and my stomach jumps.

  Chapter Nine

  “I don't even know how to describe them. They're incredible. I don't know exactly what each one of them is, but there are things in there that I recognize. The corn fields. Some of the men. But there are other things, too. If I have more time to really look at them, I think they could tell me a lot.”

  “Did you ask Lilith to see the other ones?” Sam asks.

  “I did," I say, walking into the hotel bathroom with the small toiletry kit I tossed in the back seat before leaving home this morning. “She gave me permission to look at the rest of them. The administrator of the facility has them and showed them all to me. I took pictures of them with my phone. She asked me what I was looking for, but I didn't really know what to tell her. I think I'll know what I'm looking for when I find it.”

  Fishing out the toothbrush and toothpaste, I turn on the faucet. I lean one hip against the counter as I brush my teeth.

  “At least it's something,” he notes. “You've known all along Lilith was going to have more information for you.”

  “She has to. She knows the Order like nobody else. She was a victim of it while also being used as a tool of it. And thinking she was in love with one of its highest-ranking members. There are details trapped inside her I want to know.”

  I finish brushing my teeth and walk back across the room to climb into bed. I've always had a thing for hotels. I love the way they smell and the cold, clean feeling of the room when I first check-in. I also love how tightly the staff makes the bed. I always do my best to loosen it as little as possible when sticking my feet under the fold of the blanket and sheet, then slide the rest of the way in as if I'm putting myself in an envelope.

  The only thing missing is Sam. I figure this is about as close to the kind of comfort and reassurance Xavier gets from his weighted blanket I can get. He let me use one of his weighted blankets once and I felt like someone was holding me down, and I was being strangled. Needless to say, that had the opposite effect on me as intended.

  “I miss you,” he says. “I know you're safer there than out in the storm, but I hate that you're not home.”

  “I miss you, too,” I say. “Bu
t I'm going to leave here as soon as I can tomorrow and be home for when you get back from work.”

  “Sounds good,” he says. “What are you doing now?”

  The words come out in a long, deep yawn, and I laugh.

  “If you need to go to sleep, go ahead,” I say.

  “I don't,” he insists. “I'm wide awake.”

  “You sound exhausted. Was it a long day at work?”

  “You have no idea,” he sighs.

  “Well, why don't you get some sleep and tell me all about it tomorrow.”

  We say our goodnights and get off the phone. I'm tucked in bed warm and cozy after taking a hot shower, but I'm not tired. My brain is rushing too quickly, and I don't have my files with me to occupy me. I scroll through the pictures of Lilith’s art therapy paintings a few times, trying to draw out any more details.

  As I study them, I find my mind wandering back to the story Sam told me about the murders and disappearances at the campground. It's unsettling, to say the least. So many people dead or missing. So many families struggling with not knowing what happened. And yet, I had no idea about that. Which means there are countless others who have no idea what happened on that mountain.

  I don't have my computer with me, but I've gradually become better friends with my cell phone. I still refuse to attach myself to it as if it's another appendage, the way so many do, but I'm learning to appreciate its benefits. Including letting me scroll around on the internet in a compact form.

  Snuggling down deeper and turning over onto my side, I prop myself up on my elbow and start my search. I want to know as much as I can about the case. It fascinates me. And horrifies me at the same time.