by Leslie Wolfe
She picked herself up—groaning, dizzy and shaky, pain throbbing in her skull—and rushed to Julie’s side. Kneeling between two rebars, she felt for a pulse. It was there, thready and weak. The girl was fading away, unable to withstand the coldness of the concrete, her heart at risk of stopping from the shock.
Kay slid her hands under Julie’s armpits and tried to lift her up, but couldn’t. The girl’s lower body was already immersed in concrete, the dense material clinging to the many folds of her long white dress, and Kay wasn’t able to budge her a single inch.
She threw a side glance toward the concrete truck and saw it reversing to the side of the hill, following the edge of the landslide. Mitchell had probably given up on trying to approach the form directly, and was about to turn and climb back up using the main road instead. Within seconds, he’d drive by Victor’s body, lying in the mud in front of the mobile office. She had less than a minute, at best.
Propping herself against the rebars, she pulled hard at Julie’s body, but to no avail. As the truck approached quickly from the other side and turned, she lifted the girl’s head and slid her legs underneath for support.
Then the concrete started pouring again, gushing toward Julie’s head. With a look of steeled determination in his eyes, Mitchell came at her with a crowbar.
As she willed herself back on her weary feet, she thought of Elliot and called his name in her thoughts. If he’d only find her. Soon.
She bent quickly to avoid the crowbar wielded by Mitchell and eyed her gun, several feet away. It was out of reach. Her hands, covered in dripping concrete, weren’t much use for anything she wanted to grab to defend herself. Staring Mitchell straight in the eye to see where and when he was going to strike again, she scraped some of the concrete off her hands and built it into a small ball of mushy stone. Then, without warning, she threw it in his eyes, blinding him for a few precious seconds.
Desperate to clean his eyes, he dropped the crowbar, screaming and cursing. “I’ll kill you, bitch, if it’s the last thing I do.” With trembling fingers, he wiped the sticky material from his eyes, blinking rapidly and swaying like a blind man who’d lost his footing. In a second, he’d be able to see again just enough to kill her.
She eyed her gun again, but it seemed too far for the time she had left, while the abandoned crowbar was right there, at her feet. She grabbed it with both hands, then said, “Mitchell Montgomery, you have the right to remain silent—”
He shouted as he leaped, holding out his hands, getting ready to grab her by the throat and choke her. With a swift move that took all the life she still had coursing through her veins, she wielded the crowbar up and sideways, aiming for his head.
The sound of his skull cracking was loud enough to briefly cover the thunder rolling in the distance, then was followed by the thud of his body falling to the muddy ground. Blood started to color the rainwater gushing away under the tarp.
Heaving from the effort, she fell to her knees by Mitchell’s side and felt for a pulse. He was gone. Then she looked toward Julie. “Oh, no, please, God, no,” she cried. The concrete had reached her face and almost completely engulfed it, only a portion of her lips and her nostrils were still above the gray mass.
Kay looked at the truck, remembering how long it had taken her to climb inside and remove the parking brake to make it slide backward, and decided there wasn’t enough time for that. Instead, she crawled over by Julie’s side and elevated her head on her legs, like she’d done before.
Holding Julie’s head in her lap, she started gently cleaning the concrete away from her face. She couldn’t stop the flow of concrete, but she could still reach for an edge of the plastic sheeting. She grabbed it with frozen fingers and yanked it as hard as she could, again and again, until it gave. A wave of accumulated rainwater washed over them, and Kay gasped, chilled to the bone, teeth clattering uncontrollably. But rain washed away some of the concrete, diluting the mix and sending it downhill, where it stained the brown of the exposed earth with shades of cement gray.
Somehow, seeing that made it all worthwhile.
Between wind gusts and the flapping of the torn plastic sheeting above her head, Kay almost missed Avery’s rageful bellow. She turned her head to look, pain shooting up her nape, and saw the old man approaching, his hair whipping in the wind and his mouth open, spouting curses and shouting senseless words.
She realized she didn’t have it in her to fight again. Desperate, she looked toward the highway, hoping she’d see Elliot’s vehicle approaching, but there was nothing. Only rain. She’d always loved rain… until now.
“Mother Earth has spoken to me,” she shouted, hoping her manipulative strategy would work.
Avery stopped shouting and listened, transfigured. “You can hear her?” he asked, grabbing the locket he carried on a chain around his neck and holding it in the palm of his hand, then taking it to his lips.
“She says you are forgiven, and you can rest now. Your sons will continue your work.”
The moment she’d said it, she realized her mistake. He had no sons left… Dan had been killed the week before, Mitchell lay bloodied at Avery’s feet, and Raymond had turned his back on him decades ago.
Enraged, he screamed so loudly Kay thought she heard an echo of his voice against the hillside, despite the rain. Lightning struck nearby, the flash of light blinding her, and the ensuing thunder shook the ground.
“Did you hear her?” he shouted. “She demands her chosen sacrifice!”
He charged, but Kay didn’t move, still holding Julie’s head in her lap. At the right moment, she lifted her foot and kicked forward, hitting Avery in the knee as he was leaping over rebar to pound on her. He yelped and fell to the ground, where his skull met the edge of the concrete form with one loud crack.
As he fell, his locket opened and a few grains of earth scattered on his chest, quickly turned to mud by the falling rain.
Kay’s breath shuddered. With the adrenaline leaving her body, falling water drops felt like ice daggers piercing her skin. Shielding Julie’s face and lifting her closer as rain washed off the concrete, she built up the strength to move. Then, willing herself to move sideways and touch Avery’s dead body, she reached for his pockets, hoping to find a working phone.
In the distance, a police siren grew loud enough to cover the sound of rain, just as a ray of sun shone through a distant crack in the clouds.
53
Curtain Fall
Kay sat on the rear bumper of an ambulance, wearing the EMT’s spare scrubs, and a blanket wrapped tightly around her shoulders. The site was crawling with people, seemingly going in all directions without any rhyme or reason, when in fact everyone did exactly what they were supposed to do. She didn’t pay much attention to them; not to her boss, who barked orders a few yards away, keeping a safe distance from the edge of the landslide. Not to the mayor, who had put one hand on his head when he got out of his vehicle about an hour earlier, and seemed he hadn’t taken it down since, apparently battling the mother of all headaches. He appeared to be in a total state of shocked dismay, staring at an utter disaster in an election year. It was understandable; after all, he’d come close to cutting the ribbon for a brand-new edifice and be among the first to walk only inches above the corpses of two women in what was supposed to be the region’s largest healthcare facility. His name would forever be associated with Ash Brook Hill.
No, she only cared about the cop standing a few feet away from her, wearing a black, wide-rimmed cowboy hat that still retained a few droplets of rain sending diamond-like sparks in the piercing rays of the setting sun. He threw daggers with his eyes at anyone who wanted to approach her, and seemed ready to wring the neck of the EMT who’d made her whimper when he patched up her scalp wound.
“You’ll need to ride with us to the hospital, Detective,” said the EMT, a solid man by the name of Deshawn as per the embroidered tag he was wearing, and she was wearing also on the chest of her borrowed blue cotton top. He’d been
kind enough to lend her his spare uniform, and she was grateful to be warm and dry for a change, even if the starched fabric smelled of disinfectants more than it did of fabric softener.
“Don’t wanna do that, D,” she replied, looking at him with pleading eyes. “I kind of need some time away from everything right now.”
“You have to, D,” he replied, laughing at his own joke and showing off two rows of incredibly white teeth. “You might have a concussion.”
She rolled her eyes, but even that tiny movement of her eyeballs triggered a sharp bout of pain. “No, I don’t. My vision is clear, I’m not sleepy, I don’t feel dizzy, nauseated, or faint. I’m fine.”
“But—”
“I’d rather wash off this damn cement from my hair, before it turns to stone and I have to shave my head.”
He pressed his lips in a straight line and crossed his thick arms at his chest, the look of disapproval on his face needing no other words. She smiled as sweetly as she could manage and patted his elbow. “Thanks, D, I appreciate it.”
She stood carefully, taking a thoughtful inventory of all her aches and pains. They were too many to count, but a couple of days of rest would fix most of them.
The rain had stopped, and the sun’s shy rays warmed her face. She closed her eyes for a moment, noticing the birds were chirping, a sound she hadn’t heard in a while.
“You’ll never guess where they found Dan’s truck,” Elliot said.
Smiling, she opened her eyes and looked at him. There was a flicker in his gaze when their eyes met, a heat that she sensed for the most fleeting of moments before he looked away. It warmed her heart and seeded her mind with lots of maybes.
“Where?”
“The company was finalizing a government building—the new sorting facility for the postal service on the other side of the mountain. Cheryl must’ve known about it, because she parked Dan’s truck behind that building. No one would’ve ever reported it.”
“How did we find it?”
“We didn’t.” He laughed a quick, humble laugh that touched his eyes. “The man who lives up the road from there has insomnia and sometimes takes walks at night. He noticed it parked there for several nights in a row, and called it in an hour ago.”
“Gotta give it to Cheryl, that’s smart,” Kay replied.
Elliot clapped his hands once, as if to show his excitement. “That’s exactly what the doc said, when he was showing me where they found the murder weapon.” She nodded, encouraging him to continue. “Under the sink, in plain sight, in a container that looked like it was there to catch leaky drainage.”
Kay’s smile widened. After the horrors she’d been through, just seeing sunshine and his smile gave her wings. “Makes me wonder, though, about Cheryl—what she’d been through, by herself, with no one she could trust. Living here, where her husband was killed, possibly by a grandfather she suspected but couldn’t do anything about, and sleeping with Calvin’s uncle in a desperate attempt to get to the truth. I can’t help imagining how she must’ve felt. My skin crawls.” She paused, thinking they would probably never find out what really happened that night when Dan came calling, and how he ended up dead, shot in the back. She knew now that Avery had sent him to get Julie; she’d heard the conversations between Avery and Mitchell, his eldest son; that part was clear. But why did Cheryl stay in town, after she’d killed Dan? Why give Victor the opportunity to come calling? Had she assumed, much like the detectives had, that there was only one killer taking girls, and she’d done away with him? And why not call the cops?
A bullet in the back might’ve required a lot of explaining, and the risk was considerable. They were lovers, Cheryl and Dan. The argument of self-defense invoking what seemed like nothing more than a strange tale at the time would’ve surely landed Cheryl in jail, and she would’ve lost custody of her daughters.
In favor of the Montgomerys.
Aah… That’s why she hadn’t called for help. But why stay?
Maybe there would be a way to find out, when Julie would feel better.
“Any news from Julie?” she asked Elliot, but Deshawn popped his head out from the ambulance.
“She’s in intensive care. She was malnourished and severely dehydrated, but they’re estimating she’ll make a full recovery.”
“Awesome!” On an impulse, she walked over to the EMT and hugged him. Her heart swelled, imagining the reunion between Julie and her sisters. “Thanks, Big D.”
“Thought I heard your voice, loud and chipper,” Sheriff Logan said, approaching quickly, paying little attention to the mud puddles he was stepping in with his military-issue boots. “Are you cleared by medical?”
“Yes,” she replied decisively.
At the same time, Deshawn said, “No,” just as decisively.
Logan raised his arms in the air then let them fall. “Great. I’m glad you guys agree about something.” He took two steps closer to Kay. “You know what you have to do.”
She sighed. “Yes.” Her thoughts kept returning to Julie and her sisters. “What’s going to happen to the girls?”
“Well, the DA says the only family member we’re not charging is Lynn Montgomery. She appears to have been completely removed from all this mess. Do you know her?”
A wide smile had bloomed on Kay’s face when she heard her name. “Yes, I do.”
“I take it you’re okay with her taking the girls?”
“I am, yes.” If her relationship with Jacob continued, Kay could have the girls close to her. The thought of staying in touch with them—of helping them with their recovery—wouldn’t let that smile wane from her lips.
“We still don’t know where Victor is—”
“Wait, what?” she said, feeling a chill travel down her spine.
“Victor Montgomery, he’s—”
“I downed the sick son of a bitch and left him lying in the mud right there by the office door,” she interrupted Logan again. “You mean to say he’s gone?”
Logan had already pulled his radio from his belt. “Yeah. Anywhere we should be looking?”
“Yeah,” she groaned, checking the time. He had a good three hours lead time. “He’s heading south, to Mexico.”
“Did he tell you that?” Logan’s radio drew closer to his lips a few more inches, then stopped in midair.
“I kind of suggested it.” She smiled sheepishly.
Logan shook his head. “I’m not going to ask.” Then he pressed the button on the radio. “I want roadblocks and the APB updated on Victor Montgomery. He’s headed south.”
“He was wearing a Vipers sweatshirt,” Kay said to Elliot. “You were right. We still don’t know how he got it, though, not that it matters anymore. He went to college here, in California.”
“Well, turns out that when you ask the wrong question, you don’t get good answers for a while,” Elliot quipped. “I handled this one like I was raised in a barn.” His cheeks colored a little. “I’ve been told the Vipers are not a college team; they’re a high school one, and he was there for his senior year. I just got the text message an hour ago.”
She laughed in the warm rays of the sun. “We would’ve caught him anyway.”
“And caught him we have,” Logan said, beaming, his chubby cheeks lifted by his grin so high his eyeglasses rested on them. “He got picked up for speeding, just north of San Fran, little over an hour ago, snake shirt and all, bleeding from his temple. I guess that’s your handiwork?”
Kay raised her hand in the air. “Guilty as charged. I’m actually surprised he was able to run.” She stared at her hands, her thin fingers, clenching and unclenching her fists. She felt weak, feeble. “I might need to go to the gym, build some strength. Can’t have perps running off on me like that.”
Logan chuckled. “You do that, Detective. For now, we’re buried in work, thank you very much. We have hundreds of buildings to inspect with ground-penetrating radar and mobile X-ray, and we’re still trying to figure out what will happen if we find bodie
s buried in the foundations of functional buildings. Do we demolish them to get to the bodies?” He scoffed, all the good humor gone from his face, replaced by a look of frustrated bitterness in his eyes. “Thankfully, that’s for the DA to decide, in what could end up being a legal battle lasting who knows how many years.”
“I can help somewhat,” said Kay, looking at the site once more in the dimming twilight. A shiver traveled up her spine when she looked at where the concrete was poured over Julie’s body. There was a space between that place and the edge of the form, and she suddenly realized why. That was where her body was supposed to be… Avery had saved her a spot by the crown of the landslide. Choked, she cleared her throat quietly. “They never buried girls in foundations unless the weather was bad. I can correlate the dates of the missing persons reports with buildings they were erecting at the time—specifically those that were impacted by storms—and we can start from there, with only forty-three buildings, not hundreds.”
“You’re sure about that?” Logan asked, scratching the roots of his buzz-cut hair.
“Positive,” she replied without a trace of hesitation in her voice. “Avery had a thing for building on top of hills, like Ash Brook Hill, and believed the storms to be Mother Earth’s anger, demanding human sacrifices.” She remembered her conversation with the meteorologist. “Barren hills like this one are prone to landslides in heavy rain, but he thought it was supernatural.”