by Leslie Wolfe
Moving on, Kay entered the next bedroom. The moment she stepped over the threshold, she knew it was Julie’s. Large posters with Justin Bieber and Taylor Swift covered some of the walls. The floor was littered with discarded clothing, socks, and shoes, as if a whirlwind had swept through the closet, leaving barren hangers, fallen soldiers in an unfair fight.
Julie had abandoned her hairbrush on the dresser, and Kay quickly sealed it in an evidence bag. Several long strands of chestnut hair were still attached to it, and Doc Whitmore would be able to extract DNA from the roots. Julie’s DNA could be attached to both girls’ missing persons reports, the close familial match being enough to offer positive identification in case Heather was found. From that perspective, Cheryl’s DNA could’ve been used, but Julie’s was ideal.
A pang of fear stabbed Kay in the chest. She kept collecting evidence as if the girls were never to be found alive, just like the old Mrs. Livingston had said, although it made no sense. Kidnappers could change a girl’s appearance and name, even get her fake papers, and brainwash her into believing she was someone else, but DNA never lied. One day, hopefully soon, those girls would be found and returned to their remaining family.
Shaking off the sense of doom that chilled her blood, Kay moved on to the last bedroom. We’ll find them today, enough with this nonsense, she admonished herself as she entered. A different kind of chaos ruled, with Lego pieces and comic books and glitter, and the smell of Barbie plastic. Lots and lots of glitter, stuck in the carpet’s fibers, covering the desk and the blankets of the two unmade bunk beds. Just a normal, ordinary girls’ bedroom, seemingly serene and sheltered from all of life’s perils.
There was nothing else left for her to do on the second floor.
She walked over to the stairs and grabbed the railing, then started down the flight of stairs, holding on tight, her booties slippery on the carpet. She was about halfway there when she thought she heard a beep.
It sounded like a phone. Running out of battery.
Cheryl’s phone had been found in her purse, downstairs. Was this one Julie’s?
Climbing back up in a hurry, Kay followed the source of the sound into the largest bedroom and looked around. She opened drawers and entered the closet, listening intently, but was met only with silence. She searched the bathroom thoroughly, then went back into the bedroom, running her gloved hands over the sheets, under the pillow, in the folds of the comforter.
Nothing.
She listened intently, holding her breath, but all she could hear was the distant noise of the medical examiner’s team downstairs, collecting evidence, chatting in low voices, wheeling equipment in and out of the house, all against a backdrop of heavy rain drumming against the roof and windows.
She was about to leave, writing the sound off as something she might’ve heard from downstairs, when she felt something tug at her ankle. She froze in place, her heart pumping fast. Standing perfectly still, she looked down and saw a girl’s hand, fingernails covered in pink glitter nail polish, holding on tight to a fistful of coverall fabric.
“Oh,” Kay whispered, kneeling slowly and looking under the bed.
The girl hiding under there was about eight years old. Her thin body fit loosely under the bed as she was lying on her stomach. She stared at Kay with eyes round, her mouth agape, not saying a single word. She held a phone in her left hand, clutched tightly.
“Hello, Heather,” Kay whispered. “My name is Kay, and I’m with the police. You’re safe now.”
The girl stared at her, perfectly silent, not acknowledging in any way the words she’d just heard.
“Let’s get you out of there, all right?” Kay held out her hands, inviting the girl to hold on and let herself be pulled out, but the child didn’t budge. A shiver ran through the child’s thin body, clattering her teeth for a moment.
The girl was in shock.
Kay reached under the bed and touched her hand gently. “We’re going to play a game, you and I, something like thumb war, but you have to hold on to my hand and can’t let go, or we both lose.” She held out her hand and waited for Heather to grab it. After what seemed like forever, the girl’s cold, shaky fingers clutched her own. “Ready?” Kay asked, but no reply came. Pulling gently, she got the child out from under the bed, then scooped her up in her arms and rushed toward the stairs.
She slipped and nearly fell with the girl in her arms, the plastic of her booties not gritty enough for carpet. Peeling them off, she climbed down the steps and headed for the living room, avoiding the kitchen stained in Cheryl’s blood.
“Doc?” she called out with urgency in her voice.
The medical examiner rushed over.
“Ah,” he reacted when he saw the girl. A smile of relief stretched the corners of his mouth, and Kay could’ve sworn she saw tears in the old man’s eyes. “I am so happy to see you, my dear,” he said, then disappeared for a brief moment and returned, slowly pushing a stretcher with one tiny passenger strapped on it.
Erin sat on the side of the stretcher, wrapped in a blanket, sucking her thumb, the straps running around her waist holding her in place. Kay set Heather by her sister’s side, and Doc brought another blanket for her.
Kay took a rebel strand of hair off Heather’s face, tucking it gently behind her ear. “Do you know who took your sister?” she asked, looking straight at the girl.
She remained silent, her eyes glassy and vacant.
“It’s important that you tell me what happened here last night,” Kay spoke gently. “We need to find your sister.”
Heather didn’t give any sign she’d heard Kay. She stared into thin air, her hand still clutching the phone. She hadn’t acknowledged her little sister in any way, nor anyone else. Her eyes were dry, her mouth slack-jawed. She was dissociated.
“Monster,” Erin said, taking her thumb out of her mouth.
Kay turned toward her. “What did you say?” she asked, her voice a soft whisper. “Do you know who took Julie?”
“Monster,” she repeated. “A monster came.”
Tell me something I don’t know, she thought. With a long sigh, Kay propped her hands on her hips. It was going to be an uphill battle.
“I heard the good news,” she heard a voice behind her. “You found one of the girls.” Sheriff Logan had entered, wearing coveralls and booties like everyone else, the one size tight around his girth. He was a bulky man with puffy, dark circles under his eyes and lines woven around the corners of his mouth and across his brow. His strong voice made Heather startle, her eyes focused and fearful for a moment before drifting into nothingness again. “I’ll put a call in to social services.”
“Sir, if I may, let’s delay that.”
“You know we can’t, Detective; we have procedures to follow. It’s the law.”
“We do, but this is a special situation,” she pleaded, approaching him and lowering her voice. “These girls are witnesses, covered in evidence. They’re in shock, and Heather won’t speak a word.”
“I understand all that, but—”
“I’m a psychologist. That’s what these girls need, a trained professional who can help them cope with the trauma. At the same time, I can extract valuable information that could help us find Julie.”
Sheriff Logan scratched the roots of his buzz-cut hair. “I don’t know, Kay. Things could get ugly if the family comes calling. I’ve tasked Deputy Hobbs to dig into next of kin. We have no right to—”
“They’re witnesses in a murder-kidnapping, Sheriff. And they’re in shock. Social services will put them in a children’s psychiatric hospital, where they’ll pump them full of drugs. We’ll never see Julie again.”
“And what are you planning to do with them, Detective? Take them home with you like a couple of rescue puppies?”
The thought had crossed her mind, but she couldn’t do it. She had to catch a killer and find Julie. She couldn’t afford to take care of the girls all by herself.
“No. I was thinking of repurposin
g the nap room for a while.” That was a room in the back of the sheriff’s office building, where several bunk beds were set for cops pulling double shifts to catch some shuteye when needed.
“And you think that’s appropriate for two young girls?”
“It beats the psych ward, Sheriff,” she replied, looking at him with an unspoken plea. “Let me at least try to get to them. I’ll need a few days, not more.”
“You have twenty-four hours, Detective, then I make the call. And if the family comes calling, you handle it.”
She frowned but decided against arguing for more time. For that, there was always tomorrow, when maybe she could show some progress. Instead, she pasted a grateful smile on her lips. “Thank you. I’ll need a couple of deputies to help me take care of them. Farrell, for one, she’s a mother; she’ll do fine. She can get us some clothing—”
Logan scoffed, raising his arms in the air. “We have a missing child, and you want two deputies sidelined as babysitters?”
“Witness sitters, Sheriff,” she replied. With the corner of her eye, she spotted Elliot approaching. Good. She needed reinforcements, all the help she could get. “Once the killer learns he left some loose ends last night, he might want to finish the job.”
“You’re saying he didn’t know there were two other girls here last night?” Logan asked, his voice seeded with disbelief.
“I’m saying that I, for one, don’t want to take the chance,” she replied calmly, knowing the effect her words would have on her boss. “What if he didn’t know? What if Heather and Erin were upstairs and hidden?”
The sheriff rubbed his chin with short, stubby fingers stained yellow from chain-smoking cigars. “How are you handling the ransom calls?”
“I don’t really expect any,” Kay replied. “Cheryl was a widow, and the killer knows she’s gone. This house doesn’t really speak of money.” She thought for a second, then continued, “I’ll forward the landline to my phone, just in case. Maybe we’ll get that lucky. But until then, the girls—”
Logan had been gazing at her intently as if trying to read her mind. “Twenty-four hours, Sharp, not a moment more.” His phone rang as he was voicing his ultimatum. He answered with a short, “Yes,” listening for a moment, then ended the call without a word. “Detective Young, I’m assigning you to another case.”
So much for reinforcements.
Elliot nodded and approached. “What’s going on?”
“A man’s been found dead on the side of the interstate. First on the scene said he’s taken a bullet through his heart.”
6
Julie
The only light came from a yellow bulb hanging by its wires from the ceiling, several feet above her head. The room was cold and musty, the air loaded with an odor of mildew and staleness that she stopped sensing a while ago. There was only one window, closer to the high ceiling and fully boarded, as if she’d be able to reach it, even if she tried her best. The floor was barren, hard concrete and cold as ice, but Julie sat on it, hugging her knees, rocking back and forth as bitter tears fell from her swollen eyes.
“Oh, Mom, I’m so sorry,” she whimpered, as she’d done time and again since she’d come to in that dreadful place. “Please, forgive me… please, Mom, forgive me.” How she wished she’d taken her mother seriously in the first place and left Mount Chester instead of what she’d done, and then going out on a date on top of it all. How she wished she would’ve listened to her… now she’d still be alive, giving her crap for the mess in her bedroom.
Instead, she was locked up in that forsaken place, her most vivid memory of her mother’s body falling to the ground, blood gushing from her wound, while that dreadful man laughed. And her sisters… what happened to them? Were they still alive, upstairs, where she’d told them to stay put? Or were they—
She couldn’t bring herself to finish the thought, afraid it would make it true. Shivering, she wrapped her arms tighter around her knees and prayed silently, just like her mother had taught her many years ago when she was little. After a while, the words of the repeated prayer melded into a simple request. “Please, let them be alive.”
Then she sobbed again until she couldn’t breathe anymore. The moment she closed her eyes, the image of her mother’s body formed against her eyelids, deepening the hollow, burning chasm in her chest.
She shouted against the concrete walls at times, but no one ever responded. “Why did you kill her?” she asked, pounding against the large metallic door with her fists. “Why? Why not just take me, and let her live? It’s me you wanted, you sick son of a bitch, so why kill her?”
Then the answer she already knew came to her weary mind, sucking the breath out of her lungs and chilling her blood.
Her mother had died defending her. Her mother had died because of her. Because of what she’d done. Because she wouldn’t listen. Because she ran out of the house and went with Brent to the movies instead of staying home so they could escape to San Francisco. She’d made out with him, so taken with his kisses that she hadn’t even noticed the movie had ended and another had started. Only on the drive back home had she remembered her mother’s warning, the reality of her situation hitting her like a freight train, leaving her a whimpering, guilt-ridden mess on Brent’s passenger seat, someone he couldn’t get rid of fast enough.
She’d forgotten all her mother had asked of her, and now her blood was on her hands.
Would she ever forgive herself for what she’d done?
She buried her face between her knees, too weak to scream. She deserved to die, just like her mother had died, maybe her sisters too. Because she’d been such a careless, selfish idiot who didn’t realize the danger they were in, although her mother had explained it over and over again, even if she knew what her daughter had done. Julie had seen it with her own eyes and still couldn’t believe it.
Stupid, reckless… that’s what she was.
Restless, she rose to her feet and started pacing the floor, back and forth, listening. Only the sound of rain came through the boarded window, the unmistakable patter against the metal gutters. At times, low thunder echoed strangely against the concrete walls, making them vibrate almost imperceptibly, as if the house itself feared the storm, shuddering from the foundation.
Someone had hung a mirror on one of the gray unfinished walls, a sick sense of humor or an even sicker sense of who knows what she didn’t even understand. In the weathered glass surface, she caught glimpses of herself captive, desperate, hopeless, every time she paced by. She was still in the clothes she’d worn when she’d returned from the movies the night before, now almost completely dry from her body heat. Yet she didn’t recognize herself whenever she passed by the mirror and saw herself out of the corner of her eye. That girl with hollow eyes and an unsteady gait couldn’t be her. It was just a bad dream, and she’d soon wake up. But how could she, when she wasn’t even sleeping?
In the far corner stood a bed with sheets, pillows, and a duvet she hadn’t touched, preferring the coldness of the floor, the hardness of the locked door to the risk of falling asleep on soft pillows and being taken by surprise by whoever could walk in.
She wasn’t planning on being surprised ever again. No, she wanted to ask the man who’d taken her what he’d done with her sisters. Then she’d let herself go limp in his hands, deserving to be punished for the harm she had caused and unwilling to live through yet another day.
Her head hanging low under the renewed threat of tears, she sat on the musty, hard concrete floor and wrapped her arms around her knees, sobbing quietly. If only she could know about her sisters. If only anyone would tell her.
7
Shelter
Mount Chester Sheriff’s Office rarely had any use for the so-called nap room. On the rarest of days when all shifts were pulling double duty in search of a missing child or a lost tourist, the occasional deputy would grab one of the six bunks, placed along the walls in two rows of three. They weren’t very comfortable; only male deputies use
d them, the women more likely to drive home to the comfort of their own beds. Narrow and some bent out of shape, the bunks each came with a knotty pillow and a coarse, drab blanket that smelled of stale air and dirty socks.
The room served many other purposes, doubling as a storage closet for janitorial and office supplies, an old printer covered in a layer of dust so thick it seemed alive, and several computer monitors, probably busted but still showing up somewhere on a fixed asset inventory. A shelf against the back wall housed the ammo supply for the entire precinct, right next to spare bulbs and several neatly folded uniforms.
Kay had pushed together two of the better bunks and had lined each with spare blankets. Deputy Farrell had rushed home and returned with clean, dry clothes that the girls could wear and a set of bed sheets with a colorful, Lion King animal print. Then the two women went through the heart-wrenching process of collecting evidence off the girls’ bodies.
Heather resisted Kay’s request to let go of the phone she’d been clutching the entire time; she had to gently pry her little fingers off the device. Having it taken from her brought tears to Heather’s haunted eyes, the first Kay had seen, silent tears that rolled on a perfectly still face. With increasing concern for the girl’s ability to cope with her trauma, Kay slid the phone into her pocket, then spent a few minutes holding the child’s hands and speaking to Heather in a soothing voice about how she was going to get it right back after she collected evidence from it. How everything was going to be all right eventually, although it didn’t seem like that right now. How she was a brave little girl, so brave Kay wished she had a daughter just like her. And as she spoke the words, she found herself believing them.
Then the girls’ clothing was removed, piece by piece, and sealed in evidence pouches, Jodi helping them every step of the way, Heather not seeming to care. Dr. Whitmore’s assistant guided them through the entire process with few words, spoken in a choked voice.