by Leslie Wolfe
Shaky and feeble, she paced the room with an unsteady gait, ignoring the stomach pain she was feeling. She hadn’t touched any food since she’d been taken; there wasn’t any. She’d survived on water from the small sink in the bathroom, using the scoop of her hand to drink it. It smelled funny, of mildew and deep, dark, moss-covered well walls. Exhausted and too weak to stand, she let herself slide to the ground.
Fear held her stomach in a tight grip. It was primal and intense like she’d never felt before. She’d always been safe, sheltered by her mother, her teachers, her family. She’d never been preyed on until now. She had no words for it in her vocabulary and no idea what would happen to her. But she’d watched enough TV for her imagination to run wild with horror scenarios woven one after another as she sat awake, leaning against the door, hugging her knees.
How would he kill her?
In her mind, there was no doubt she was going to die. Every waking moment she waited and listened, holding her breath at times, wondering when he would come. What he would do. How she would die. And somehow, she found those thoughts less painful than wondering about her sisters or remembering her mother’s last moments. How she’d looked at her, not blaming but pleading, worry and regret woven together wordlessly in a gaze she would never forget. How she’d reached for her, her hand extended toward her just as that man was pouncing and striking, not allowing her a single moment to say goodbye.
Tears burned her eyes, seeding a knot in her throat.
Restless, she stood again, leaning against the wall for support. She banged against the walls, the door, even in that stupid mirror that didn’t belong, but no one came, and no other sound but the distant rain kept her company.
She wished he would come already. She wanted to ask him why.
She wanted to scream at him and pummel him with her fists until her knuckles turned raw. Then she wanted him to suffer, to feel the hurt that squeezed her heart and weighed on her chest until she couldn’t breathe. She didn’t know what she’d do to make that happen; her imagination never went that far.
She wanted to be awake when he came, alerted by the moving door against her back. Not asleep between those sheets, no matter how cold it would get, how hard the cellar floor.
But what if he never came?
What if she died of hunger, alone, not knowing if her sisters were still alive?
Feeling suddenly weak at the knees, she let herself slide against the wall until she hit the floor. Hugging her knees, she rested her cheek on her folded arm, letting her eyes wander aimlessly on the stained wall.
Something caught her attention.
By the door, there was something scrawled in the masonry, about a foot above the ground. She crawled the short distance on her hands and knees and squinted, crouched closer to the scribbles, almost impossible to decipher in the dim light.
HELP ME
Written in scratchy caps dug into a section of the drywall, the two words brought a deep, lasting shiver down her spine.
Someone had been held captive in there before.
18
Colors
The unsub must’ve been someone who knew the family; Kay had no doubt about that.
To Sheriff Logan’s clearly made point, kidnappers don’t usually advertise. Some sadistic serial killers do—as part of their psychological torture routine, to get their victims to comply out of fear for their loved ones. But the typical kidnappers don’t. They grab their victims and run, usually from a lower-risk location than their own home, where they are surrounded by other family members gathered around the dinner table, sharing a glass of wine and waiting for the stew to be done.
It didn’t make sense unless the unsub was someone who had been, at least initially, welcome in the Coleman residence.
Nothing was typical about this case. The killer didn’t care about loose ends, apparently. He’d killed Cheryl and immobilized Julie, rendering her unconscious, if not dead. Yet, before leaving, he didn’t bother to check the rest of the house. He’d just grabbed Julie and made for his vehicle, then immediately left the area, without even bothering to close the door. It seemed that Julie was the reason he’d visited, and Cheryl had been in the way.
But then, why not grab Julie from somewhere else? Why risk a standoff with the girl’s mother? What kind of kidnapper doesn’t spend a few minutes casing out the place, seeing through the windows how many people live there? Was it possible he knew about the other girls but didn’t care?
And, most of all, why take Julie? On the nine-one-one call, she’d heard Cheryl and the unsub arguing, although she couldn’t make out what they were saying. That didn’t suggest a blitz attack; that spoke of an existing relationship, of explaining, of pleading and persuading. If Julie’s father weren’t deceased, Kay would’ve thought this was a family abduction gone wrong. More common than the average citizen assumes, estranged and disgruntled spouses grab their own children and take them away from the parent who has legal custody; from the law’s standpoint, they’re kidnappers. Many times, the abducting parent’s concerns are legitimate, especially when drugs or violence are factors, while other times people just snap after having lost their family, their reason to be alive, and can’t tolerate a single moment without their child.
But that didn’t fit at all, not with all immediate family members accounted for and completely lacking motive.
Someone knew who that man was, and that was Heather. Maybe Erin too.
She closed her laptop and walked quickly toward the back, passing by the holding cells where the wino greeted her with a sleazy smile and a whiff of back alley that churned her stomach. She found the girls in the nap room with Deputy Farrell. She’d set up Erin with a flipchart pad and some markers, and the little girl was doodling away, sharp-angled lines in black and green.
Heather sat on the edge of her bed, absentminded, her stare still vacant, her cheeks drained of blood. Since she’d woken up screaming, she hadn’t cried a tear yet; she was still in shock. She held her head straight, with her hands folded neatly in her lap. Her chest barely moved; her breathing was shallow and slow.
“I need to speak with her,” Kay said, speaking softly to Farrell.
“Um, I’ll take Erin to the interview room. She won’t know the difference.”
Farrell must’ve been a great mother. She was patient and kind, always smiling when she talked to the girls, her voice calm and reassuring, her round face pleasant and seeming relaxed. She collected the girl’s paper and markers, then took her little hand and walked out of the room with Erin in tow. As she was leaving, the child turned her head and looked regretfully behind, toward Heather, but her sister didn’t react.
Kay waited a moment, ready to intervene if Heather had a delayed response to her sister leaving the room, but nothing happened. Then she approached her slowly and sat on the cot by her side. Wrapping her arm around the girl’s shoulders, she waited, anticipating the tension in her body would start to ease off. A few long minutes later, it still hadn’t.
“You were very brave,” Kay said, her voice a soothing whisper, “calling for help the way you did.”
She didn’t react. Not a change in her shallow breathing, in her posture, in the tension in her shoulders.
“You held your own really well. You make me proud, you know,” Kay continued. “And I think you can help me.” She leaned over to look at Heather’s face, partially hidden by unruly curls of long brown hair. “You could tell me where to look for your sister.”
She sat perfectly still, staring into thin air. Kay couldn’t be sure that girl had heard what was being said, but she continued, just in case there was some part of Heather’s brain that could still process her messages, that could emerge from the trauma with a will to survive, to move past what had happened. She was dissociated, as if the trauma was still continuing, as if she were still at her house, witnessing her mother being killed, her sister being abducted. Her young mind struggled to process all that had happened, overwhelmed by intense emotions, choo
sing to shut itself down on some level until it could cope with everything. Forcing Heather out of that state was not only dangerous but also irresponsible and had the potential to cause permanent damage to the child’s frail psyche. She hoped there was still a way to reach her, to get the answers she was looking for, by gently grounding her back into reality, with the speed and level of detail her mind was able to handle. Julie’s life depended on it.
“Do you know who took Julie?” Kay asked, and silence was the answer. “Who came to visit your mother on Monday night?” She caressed Heather’s hair with soft motions, inviting her to lean in and rest her head against Kay’s shoulder, but it was as if the little girl wasn’t really there. She sat completely still, seemingly unaware of her surroundings, her brain effectively shut off, distancing itself from a reality that was too painful to endure.
This was going nowhere, Kay had to admit. The only alternative left was to interview Heather under hypnosis while helping her get grounded and process her trauma response a little better. She’d had success in the past with both cognitive interviewing and hypnosis. And for that, she needed a controlled environment, free of noises and interruptions.
The interrogation room was soundproof to some extent, but on second thought, she decided to stay put instead and conduct the session from the nap room, provided someone could make sure there were no disruptions.
She opened the door and called for Deputy Farrell to ask her to take care of Erin for a while longer while setting everything up. When Farrell came out of the interview room, she brought a sheet of flipchart paper, scribbled in black and green marker.
“Detective Young suggested I give paper and markers to Erin, so she could draw her monster,” she said, with a hesitant, incredulous smile. “This little girl is four; it’s not like she can come up with the perp’s composite, right?”
Kay nodded, wondering where that was going.
“Well, the little girl drew this,” she said, keeping the sheet against the wall for Kay to see. “That’s the monster she keeps talking about.”
The doodle resembled teeth and fangs shown in an open mouth depicted simply as an oval line, with what appeared to be blood dripping from them, only drawn in green, not red. It could’ve been something she saw during the attack, and it might’ve had some relevance, but… green blood?
“Did she have a red marker available?”
Farrell nodded. “First thing I checked.”
“Interesting.” Taking the drawing with her, she went to the interview room where Erin was working on another version of the same drawing, only bigger, still using green instead of red for the blood.
As if that case could get any stranger.
She crouched by Erin’s chair and took her hand in hers, squeezing gently.
“You have real talent; did you know that?”
The child continued drawing sharp, elongated teeth with the black marker. “Yes. My mommy told me,” she whispered, her voice fraught with tears. “Where’s my mommy?”
Kay and Farrell exchanged a brief look. The deputy stood in the doorway, keeping an eye on Heather through the open door to the nap room.
Kay lowered her voice to a whisper and asked, “Could you please help me with something?”
Erin lifted her eyes from the paper and nodded.
“You see, I’m a monster slayer.”
“You are?” Her voice caught a higher pitch, lifted from the depths of her sadness by traces of excitement.
“Yes, I am, and there’s nothing I’d like more than to catch the monster that came to your house the other night.”
Erin’s mouth opened a little, but she didn’t say a word, her eyes rounded in amazement.
Without drawing any attention to herself, Kay swiped the green marker off the table with a sleight of hand. “Could you please draw this monster for me once more?” Erin nodded and pulled toward her the new sheet of paper Kay had detached from the flipchart pad. “Draw it carefully, with all the details you remember, so when I see this monster, I will recognize him and slay him.” Kay gestured with her hands as if she were wielding a heavy sword. “Will you do that for me, sweetie?”
Surprisingly, the girl shook her head, her shoulder-length hair bouncing in lively curls of auburn silk. “I can’t,” she replied, looking at Kay with confusion written all over her scrunched features. “You took my green.”
Speechless, Kay placed the green marker back on the table. “There you go, sweetie,” she said, “now you draw me that monster, just like you saw it.” She ruffled her curls playfully to silence the sadness that gripped her heart, watching the little girl doodling on the scratched and dented metallic table in the interview room, oblivious of where she was or how her circumstances had changed.
She drew a long breath to instill courage in herself for what she was about to do and tugged a little at the collar of her turtleneck, wishing she’d chosen a button-up shirt for that day’s attire. For some reason, her favorite pullover seemed to choke her.
Then Kay walked over to Logan’s office, her gait stern and determined, rushed.
His office door was open, the sound from a TV newscast loud enough for her to catch. It was coming from Logan’s wall-mounted TV, the one they all turned to whenever local news channels covered any of their cases. But this time, Logan was watching something else.
“Remnants of Hurricane Edward still battering the West Coast, Northern California has been at the center of the storm as it made landfall only a hundred miles north of San Francisco,” the familiar news anchor said. “Four people have been reported dead, twenty-six were injured, and forty-two are still missing after heavy rainfall led to landslides along the I-5 corridor, sweeping away houses, bridges, and critical infrastructure, and blocking access to emergency vehicles for several remote areas near Mount Chester in Franklin County. Emergency crews are headed toward the site where the new hospital is being built, where the threat of new landslides—”
“We’re getting hit pretty badly,” Logan said, muting the sound of the TV. The newscast continued, showing swelled waters rushing over what was left of a bridge on State Route 3. Then the image switched to a house being swept downstream when the side of the hill it was built on gave way and collapsed. “I’m calling off the search,” he added, clasping his hands together in a gesture of powerlessness.
Kay stared at him in disbelief, but he avoided her gaze. “You can’t—” she started but then stopped herself. She’d already stepped on his toes not too long ago; there was no reason to repeat the offense. “Please, think of Julie.”
He stood and paced the floor angrily, staring out the window where the dark, loaded clouds rushed and clumped together in angry whirlwinds of rain and thunder. “What do you think I’ve been thinking of?” he said, raising his voice to the loudest she’d ever heard the man speak. “Don’t you think I know I might be signing her death sentence right now?”
She let the air she’d been holding in her lungs escape. It wasn’t like he had much choice. The weather was not letting up, and everyone had been pulling double shifts since Cheryl’s body was found. Since that morning, calls for support with everything from traffic accidents to missing persons and storm-related injuries had quadrupled. It was about to get worse.
“What do you have?” Logan asked, turning to face her with his hands propped on his hips. “Are you ready to let those girls go? They’ve been here for longer than we agreed to. We need all hands on deck with this damn storm.”
She thought for a moment before opening her mouth. “I’m about to start a hypnosis session with Heather.”
“Now?” he asked, his pitch elevated in disbelief. “You said we’d have all the information from her by now. And you have nothing?”
She shook her head slowly for a brief moment, staring at the run-down, stained carpet, gathering her thoughts. Then she lifted her gaze, looking straight at him. “People’s minds aren’t like drawers we pull open, get what we want, then slam shut on our way out. Traumatized minds,
even less so. Children’s traumatized minds are the frailest and most sensitive. Accessing them the wrong way, too soon or too abruptly, can cause permanent damage. But I believe she’s ready now, and so am I; we have to be. We’ll know within the hour.” She paused for a beat, waiting for questions or pushback. There was nothing but silence and a look of deep-seated concern tinged with doubt on his weary face.
“And you’ve done this before?” His eyes were piercing and filled with doubt in her abilities.
“I’m not a clinical hypnotherapist, if that’s your question; I had chosen a different career path when I joined the FBI as a behavioral analyst,” she replied, holding back a frustrated sigh. “I do have the knowledge and the formal training to be these girls’ psychologist and conduct the hypnotic interview.”
“I’ll take this long-winded answer as a yes.” His gaze remained focused, inquisitive. “Then why are you here? What do you need?” he asked, while a frown ridged his brow.
“Perfect silence and someone to make sure the session isn’t interrupted. It’s very important—”
“Hobbs, get in here,” he called, not letting her finish.
The deputy rushed over. “Yes, boss.”
“Get that DUI out of holding and put him in the van, outside. Make sure he’s cuffed.” The deputy nodded and disappeared. Sheriff Logan clicked the TV remote, and the screen went dark. “I’ll keep things quiet for you myself, Detective. Now get me those answers.”
19
Hypnosis
There were so many ways interviewing Heather under hypnosis could go wrong.
Unlike cognitive interviews, questions asked under hypnosis could yield answers that were only partly real or not at all. But cognitive interviewing required the witness to be able to sustain a conversation, to access memories directly, lucidly, in a waking state, and that wasn’t going to happen in Heather’s case.