The Girl and the Deadly End (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 7)

by A J Rivers

  “I can’t be absolutely sure of anything, obviously,” Dean says. “I wasn’t there, and there aren’t specific notes in her file that explain the situation. But I did a little bit more digging after I found this. I noticed something else in her file, and it made me curious.”

  “What did you notice?”

  “Where it asks who is responsible for payment for her treatment,” he flips through the file and slides it closer to me.

  I lean down to look at it.

  “Spice Enya,” I murmur, then look at Dean. “What is going on? What does this mean?”

  “I don’t know, but like I said, I did some more digging. It would stand to reason if your mother was going to the doctor this frequently, she’d be living or at least long-term visiting somewhere in the area. So, I accessed some of the databases I’ve used in my private investigating.”

  “And?” I ask.

  “Her name didn’t come up. She didn’t own any property in the area, wasn’t renting any of the property in the area, and wasn’t staying in any of the hotels as far as I can tell. At least not in her name. So, I searched for your father’s name. Still nothing. Then I took a cue from you.”

  “What do you mean?” Sam asks.

  “Catch Me,” Dean says. “Alice. Murdock. It’s all in the name, right? So, I searched for just your mother’s first name. It’s fairly distinctive, so as you can imagine, there weren’t any hits. But when I put it in your father’s, that was a different story. Quite a few people under the name of Ian showed up in the area. One caught my attention in particular. Let me know if any of these looks familiar.”

  He takes out another piece of paper and hands it to me. It was a typed-up list of short-term rentals at two addresses. Each of them had the same name associated.

  “Ian Nesbach,” I whisper.

  “Who is that?” Sam asks.

  “My father. At least… I think it is. Nesbach was my grandmother’s maiden name.”

  “I doubt there are many people with that name around,” he says.

  “Especially not in Feathered Nest, Virginia,” Dean affirms.

  “These are in Feathered Nest?” I ask, shocked.

  Dean nods and pulls his tablet out of his satchel. He pulls up the Feathered Nest website, the same one I used to find Clancy the handyman what felt like a lifetime ago. From it, he enlarges a map of the area. He circles one finger around the upper portion of the map, to a section I barely ventured into during my time there.

  “Right here,” he says. “The houses were two streets down from each other.”

  “Were?” I ask.

  “Yeah. They were both demolished.”

  “When?”

  “Six months after your mother died.”

  A surge of heat rushes across my skin so intensely I have to stand up to get away from the fabric of the couch and the feel of Sam’s body close to mine. I cross the living room, desperate for air. Everything is closing in on me, and yet I feel like I have nothing to grab hold of to anchor me.

  “I don’t understand,” I say. “My parents were in Feathered Nest? Not just once or twice. That list has at least eight visits over a few years. And while they were there one of those times, my mother went to the hospital because she was afraid she was going to get pregnant. But apparently not afraid enough to stop me from happening just a few weeks later.”

  “There’s one more detail,” Dean says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “Those houses. The owner…”

  I don’t need him to say anything else. I know what’s coming.

  “Spice Enya,” I say.

  “Like the house in Iowa,” Sam says.

  “What house in Iowa?” Dean asks.

  “The house my parents lived in when they were in Iowa was owned by Spice Enya. Bellamy found that out after I visited and couldn’t find anything. It wasn’t listed like a person but as a company. We could never find anything about a company with that name,” I explain.

  “What is your uncle’s name?” Dean asks.

  I resist the urge to growl in frustration, reminding myself he’s only trying to help.

  “I didn’t even know I had an uncle. How would I know his name?” I ask.

  “It starts with a ‘J’,” Sam adds.

  My pacing strides back and forth across the living room stop.

  “How do you know that?” I ask.

  “Remember the picture?” Sam asks. “The one Christine sent along with the Easter card from Florida? When we first looked at it, we thought it was your mother and father.”

  Realization hits me.

  “But the inscription on the back didn’t look right. It should have said M and I, but it looked like it said M and J.”

  “You’re right. It’s a start,” I say. “It’s something. Maybe it will help us find out who he is. But that doesn’t explain this Spice Enya thing, and it doesn’t get me any closer to Catch Me. He pointed me to the medical records because he wanted me to know about my mother getting the emergency contraception, but he specifically called out Alice. That’s the big thing he highlighted.”

  “He knows your link to the Jake Logan case,” Sam points out.

  “Everybody knows about my involvement in that case. It’s on the news. The question is, how did he know about Alice?”

  I’m suddenly dizzy. I can’t get my brain to focus, and I’m trembling just under the pressure of standing. Sam comes up and takes me by the shoulders, squeezing them until I look him in the face.

  “You need sleep,” he tells me. “After everything you went through today, you have to get some rest. All this will be waiting for you when you get up.”

  “I can’t go to sleep,” I reply.

  “Yes, you can. Just for a couple of hours. Everything will seem clearer after you get some rest.”

  Dean starts packing everything into his satchel again.

  “I’ll come back in the morning,” he says. He glances at the clock. “Later in the morning.”

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “I’m going to grab a hotel room and catch some sleep,” he says.

  “You don’t have to do that,” Sam says, then looks at me.

  “No, you don’t. There’s a spare bedroom. Stay here.”

  “Are you sure?” Dean asks.

  We both nod.

  “I’ll feel better keeping as many of us close together as possible,” I say.

  “She would pile Eric and Bellamy in here, too, if she could,” Sam jokes, with a little less enthusiasm than usual. He rubs his eyes.

  “He’s teasing me, but don’t think I wouldn’t roll out sleeping bags if they would come.” I point to the end of the hall. “The room is down here. Bathroom across the hall. Make yourself at home.”

  “Thank you.”

  Sam and I go into my bedroom, and as soon as I see the bed, I feel like I can’t even move my feet enough to get to it. The adrenaline left me faster than I thought it would, but those seconds were valuable, if even more confusing. I finally make it to the bed and slide between the sheets. My head hits the pillow. I can’t even lift my hand to turn the light off before I fall asleep.

  My mother appears in my dreams. It’s not uncommon. I’ve dreamed of her many times in the years since she died. Sometimes it’s as if that night never happened, and I’m living my life the way it would have been if she was still alive. But tonight, it’s memories. Like home videos playing out against the backs of my eyes, my dreams let me dip back into the happiest days of my life, when I didn’t know there was anything to be afraid of. When the world was still full of color and light. When the thought of a life in the FBI was so far from my mind, it wouldn’t have even occurred to me.

  I dream of smiles and laughter, of carefree joy. In the dream, I play with my mother through all the seasons and the places we lived in. We sled together down bumpy hills that send us tumbling off the curved red plastic and into the snow, then make angels and snow families. We browse pumpkin patches washed in gol
den autumn light and carve silly faces into them, surrounded by the smell of roasting seeds sprinkled in coarse, crunchy salt. We open Easter eggs and pour out our jellybean jewels to mix and share.

  Summer was always my favorite. With burning summer sunlight turning the tips of our shoulders gold, my father and I splash in the pool and race down slides. We run across the yard and jump through the sprinkler as it waves back and forth. Overhead, clouds gather in the sky, threatening a storm. Mama calls out to us, beckoning us inside, but Dad tells her to come out to join us instead.

  “We’re in the sprinkler. Why come in from the rain? Come play!”

  The raindrops swell in the clouds as he beckons her. They begin to fall, and I join in. She’s refusing to come out, but there’s a smile on her face, teasing us. Dad shoots across the yard, running for her, where she stands just outside the door still under the overhang of the patio. She tries to dive inside, but he is too fast for her. She squeals when he grabs her around the waist. I laugh as he carries her out into the spray of the sprinkler. It hits them, and the sky decides to join in, splitting open to empty all the looming raindrops in a cascade.

  My mother lets out another playful scream and kicks as Dad, still holding her from behind, lifts her up and swings her through the water from the sprinkler and the rain spilling down. She cries out, slipping into her native Russian. I feel something when I hear them. In my dream, I know what the words mean, but it’s just out of grasp. She laughs, shouting again, and I snap awake, gasping in a sharp, hard breath.

  “What’s wrong?” Sam mumbles as I scramble out of bed. “What’s going on?”

  “Spice Enya,” I say, running for the living room and flipping on the light.

  The door to the spare bedroom opens, and a bleary-eyed Dean steps into the hallway.

  “What’s happening?” he asks.

  “I don’t know. She just got out of bed and ran out here,” Sam tells him.

  They come into the room as I open my laptop and pull up a search.

  “What are you looking at?” Dean asks.

  “I remembered something. When I was little, my mother would sometimes slip into Russian when she was talking, especially if she was really excited or happy or angry. Any big emotions would blur the language lines. When we were playing, my Dad liked to pick her up and run around with her. She would always yell out this one phrase. She never tried to teach me Russian. I’m not sure why. But she would tell me what she was saying if I asked. This was one of those phrases I picked up on, but I must have shoved it deep into the back of my mind when she died because I didn’t think about it until now. I had a dream about us playing and my father picking her up and holding her in the rain. This is what she was calling out. Tell me what it sounds like to you.”

  I click the little microphone button to have the translator pronounce the words I translated.

  “Spasi menya,” the voice says.

  The men look at each other and step closer.

  “Play that again,” Dean says.

  “Spasi menya.”

  “And this one,” I say, pulling up another word.

  “Spaseniye,” the voice says, and they both draw in breaths.

  “Spice Enya,” Sam says. I nod. “What does it mean?”

  “Save me.”

  Chapter Nine

  “What?” Sam asks, his eyes wide and his voice thin.

  He comes to sit beside me, and I point to the screen.

  “This is what I used to hear my mother say. She was always joking and playing with my father. He would be holding her or running around with her in his arms and she would say this. ‘Spasi menya, spasi menya.’ Save me. It’s related to the word spaseniye. Rescue.”

  “But what does that mean? Rescue who?” Sam asks.

  “Women,” Dean says.

  “Women?” I ask.

  “Yes,” he nods. “Think about it. Houses owned by this entity no one knows anything about. Nobody knows if it’s a company or a person. It’s right out there in the open, listed on deeds and medical records, listed as insurance providers. Spice Enya isn’t an individual or a corporation. It’s an organization.”

  “An underground group that rescues women in danger,” I muse. “They have to stay as anonymous as possible to avoid being detected and revealing people they helped.”

  “Like my mother,” Dean says. “She was in a really bad place before I was born. She didn’t want to tell me, but I found a marriage license when I was looking for some papers for school when I was a kid. I didn’t even know she’d been married. That’s when she told me about her husband. They got married when she was really young. Too young. But he convinced her he was the only person in the world who loved her and could take care of her. Of course, the second they were married, he started treating her like trash. He beat the hell out of her all the time and controlled every second of her existence. She came from Russia, and he made sure she had no one. No friends. No job. No hobbies. Nothing to take her attention away from him. If she so much as spent ten minutes longer at the grocery store than he thought she should have, he would punish her. He kept her locked in the house with no phone. She was completely reliant on him, and he made every day of her life hell.”

  “Why didn’t she leave?” I asked.

  He looks at me, a cold, painful look in his eyes.

  “She did,” he says. “The first chance she got.”

  “But that sounds nothing like my mother. She defected from Russia, but she didn’t experience anything like that. By the time she came to this country, she was already in love with my father. That’s one of the biggest things that convinced her it was time to leave. He never treated her like that. They adored each other,” I say.

  “Emma, when my mother escaped from her ex-husband, she didn’t do it by herself. Someone helped her. Someone whose name I heard on the TV when I was a teenager, and whose husband was there for me during the darkest moments of my life.”

  “My mother,” I whisper.

  Dean nods. “She wasn’t rescued. She was the rescuer.”

  Realization widens my eyes, and I scramble to pull up the pictures Eric sent of the Doc Murray cold case in Florida.

  “Look at the dog tag. ‘Call Spice’. This was left behind in the cabin, and strong evidence suggests it was ripped off of Doc Murray before he was dumped in front of that construction site. Dean, you said the man who helped you during those four days when your mother was missing was wearing a dog tag. Can you bring up the picture of your graduation again?”

  “Sure,” he says. He goes back into the spare room and comes back a few moments later, staring at his phone. “Here it is.”

  He turns the screen toward us and shows me the picture again. I look closely at the image of a teenage Dean standing beside the man I know as Ron Murdock. I focus carefully on the collar of Murdock’s jacket. Something stands out to me, and I point it out.

  “There,” I say. “If you look really closely, you can see the edge of a chain under his shirt. It’s coming up just enough, but it’s there. He’s wearing one of these necklaces. That’s at least three men wearing these tags. The only explanation I could ever come up with for why Murdock was in my memories was that he had something to do with my father. I figured he had to be my father’s handler, but maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he was there for my mother. It was him at the house with me the night she died. Up until now, I couldn’t remember. I knew someone was there. I didn’t see him fully or talk to him, but the TV was on, and I knew Dad wouldn’t just leave me at home by myself without saying anything to me. It was him. Ron Murdock was there to take care of me that night.”

  “Then what happened to him?” Sam asks. “Why did you never meet him, and why didn’t you see him again after that?”

  “I did see him again,” I say. “A year ago, when he died on my porch. My name wasn’t written on that piece of paper because he had just found it or because somebody told him to find me. He already knew me. He came to tell me something, and he died for it.�
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  “Whoever killed him must have known who he was,” Dean muses.

  “But why kill him that night? What was happening that night that made him come for me and his shooter come for him?” I asked.

  “Because that was the night you came back to Feathered Nest,” Dean offers.

  His words hit me directly in the middle of the chest, feeling like they punched a hole in my ribs and burrowed into my very being.

  “Back?” I ask. “That was the first time I was there.”

  “I don’t think so,” Dean tells me. “I wasn’t sure when I first saw it, but I am now.”

  “Saw what?” Sam asks. “What are you talking about?”

  Dean pulls my mother’s medical records toward him and flips to a later page. He turns it around to face me and points his fingertip hard into the paper.

  “Right there. This note was added into her record by hand. It doesn’t look like the other entries. It’s not about a specific appointment and doesn’t have anything other pages do, like vital signs, weight, or complaints. All it says is seven-two-three, L,B,F, seven-eleven. Then, under it, A,L.”

  “What does that mean?” I ask.

  “July twenty-third. Live birth. Female. Seven pounds, eleven ounces. Signed Alice Logan.”

  My lungs close, clawing the breath down out of my throat, so all I can do is shake my head.

  “No,” I say. “It has to mean something else. I was born in Sherwood.”

  “Do you have a copy of your birth certificate?” Dean asks.

  I get up and head for the room that will always be my father’s office. There’s an old filing cabinet there, stuffed in the corner of the closet. I put copies of all the important papers he left me when he disappeared in that cabinet, with the others going into a safe deposit box. Opening the drawer, I sift through the file folders and documents until I come to my birth certificate.

  “Here,” I say.

  He takes it, glances at it, then turns it to me.

  “Homebirth,” he says.