Path of Bones

by L. T. Ryan

  David listened, but Harris sounded further and further away the more she talked. “Strangled and crushed legs?”

  “Yeah.” Harris drew the word out. “It’s why I called you.”

  “How’d you know about that?”

  She forced a laughed. “I’ve done my research, okay? The name David Klein would be one of myth and legend if you weren’t still on the force, proving to people that you’re real. I was interested in what kind of cases you’d tackled over the years. You know, what kind of cases you’d solved. And what kind of cases you hadn’t solved.” She paused, placed her hands on her hips, and looked past him. “This one case stuck out.”

  “That was twenty years ago.” David’s feet were rooted to the ground. “Are you sure it’s the same?”

  “No. Not at all. But I figured you’d be the one to ask.” Harris waited for David to say something. When he remained silent, she took a step toward the body. “Want to walk me through what you remember?”

  David followed her to the man’s still form. His hair was gray, as was his skin. He’d been dead long enough for the blood drain from his face. He looked peaceful, but a deep bruise around his neck indicated he’d suffered as he died. His crushed legs meant he hadn’t been given a chance to get away as someone stole his life.

  “In the early ‘90s,” David began, “we figured out someone was killing addicts around Savannah. Within a few weeks of being released from prison, they’d show up dead. The first three had been dumped in the ocean. They’d washed up on shore not long after and it was easy to tell they’d been killed in the same way—first their legs had been crushed, then they’d been strangled. Somewhere in there, all of them had been pumped full of heroin.”

  “The first three?” Harris asked.

  David figured she knew the answer to her own questions, but he played along. Explaining it to her out loud, detail by detail would force him to remember what it was like to work the case back when he was still a rookie cop. Maybe he’d remember something critical that could help them now.

  “The next four bodies were discovered while we were out searching the woods for a missing girl. It’d been about two years since the three bodies had washed up onto shore. One of the bodies hadn’t been buried deep enough, so one of our dogs had sniffed it out. We couldn’t tell if the man had been strangled, but his legs were crushed. When we kept looking, we found three more. Seven bodies total.”

  “And then nothing?”

  “And then nothing.” David gestured to the body at his feet. “Until now, I guess. Do we know anything about this guy?”

  “Not yet. I’m gonna have the boys do their thing, but I wanted you to have the first look.”

  David bent down to get a closer look, this time allowing himself to grunt as his knees resisted the movement. Harris didn’t say anything, for which he was grateful. There was nothing like staring in the face of a dead man, not much older than David was, to make him feel like he was on death’s door.

  He took in what he could without moving the body. The man was dressed in casual clothes—jeans and a t-shirt—and had no distinguishing features. He was average, bordering on handsome, with a clean-shaven face. He wore a wedding ring on his left hand.

  “It’s been a while.” He looked up at Harris, “but he doesn’t look much like what I remember of the other victims.”

  “How so?”

  “The three we found on the shore were thin, weak. Addicts. He looks healthy. And he’s wearing a wedding ring.”

  “Were the others not married?”

  “Not that I can remember, but we’d have to go back to the old case files to find out for sure.”

  “What do you make of the wounds?”

  David turned back to the body. “Strangulation. Hard to tell without a closer look, but they don’t look like they were made with rope. Back then, we thought maybe he was killing people with a tourniquet.”

  “And the legs?”

  David’s gaze shifted to the man’s lower body. Blood had seeped through his jeans, but without that, it would’ve been obvious something was wrong. His right knee was out of place, and his left leg was bent at a strange angle. “Probably to incapacitate him. Make sure he can’t run away. Then the killer can take their time strangling him.”

  “So, it was personal?”

  “Can’t know for sure.” David placed his hands on his knees and stood up with another grunt. “But seems likely. The killer was trying to send a message, we just never figured out what it was.”

  “Think this is the same guy?”

  “Feels similar, but that was twenty years ago. It’s been a long time since we had a body. We always figured there were more victims, but never found them. So, why now? Why him?”

  “That’s the million-dollar question.” Harris waited until David caught her eye before she spoke again. “You gonna call her?”

  David didn’t have to ask to know she was talking about Cassie Quinn.

  “No,” he said. “Not yet anyway. She deserves as much of a break as we can give her.”

  Book 2: Chapter 2

  Cassie didn’t blink as she studied the ghost of the young boy standing in the corner of her therapist’s office. She’d been there a few minutes before he materialized, translucent and stoic. She’d been seeing him outside of her bedroom walls more often as of late, but she had no clue why. He had only spoken to her once, uttering the name Sarah Lennox, before returning to his silent watch of her everyday life.

  His presence had become more comforting than not. His initial disappearance, when he was replaced by the ghost of Elizabeth Montgomery, had disturbed Cassie. Since then, he had come and gone as he pleased, and Cassie found herself looking for him when he was gone too long.

  Where did he go when he wasn’t watching her? Did he haunt other people? Did he have other objectives to fulfill? She’d ask him these questions, but he never responded. He’d just stare and stare and stare until she went back about her day.

  “Cassie?”

  The voice of Cassie’s therapist, Dr. Rebecca Greene, caught Cassie’s attention. Dr. Greene was in her fifties, with brown hair streaked with grey. She always dressed in a monochrome pantsuit. She must’ve had at least three for every color of the rainbow. Some of them came in various hues and Cassie thought her closet must’ve been satisfying to look at.

  Today, she wore a periwinkle blue pantsuit with a white undershirt. Cassie had seen at least three other blue pantsuits over the years, but this one was the palest. It made Cassie feel warm and light. It was the exact color of the Savannah sky on a clear summer day.

  “Cassie?”

  This time she caught Cassie’s attention in full. “Sorry. What were you saying?”

  Dr. Greene’s smile was always calm and serene. Her eyes sparkled behind her black-rimmed glasses. “I was asking you how you were doing.”

  “Oh.” Cassie laughed. “I’m sorry. I haven’t been getting much sleep lately.”

  “What’s been going on?”

  “Um.” Even after years of being with Dr. Greene, she sometimes felt strange about opening up to her. “I’ve been having this recurring nightmare.”

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  Cassie shifted in her seat, glancing back over at the ghost of the little boy. Was it for reassurance? She wasn’t sure. “It starts off with me driving a car. It’s not mine. Just a regular car.”

  Dr. Greene nodded her head politely.

  “It’s night and I’m on the highway. I can’t steer the car. I keep drifting back and forth across the line, but no matter what I do, I can’t control the car. Then I see people in the distance, just standing in the middle of the highway.”

  “Do you recognize these people?”

  Cassie nodded. “When I get closer, I see that it’s my parents and my sister. My parents look like they do in real life, but my sister is about five or six years old? She’s pretty young.”

  “Is your sister often young in your dreams?”

&n
bsp; “I’m not sure.” Cassie tried to think back to any other time she’d dreamed about her sister. “I don’t think so?”

  “What happens next?”

  “I get closer. It feels like the car is speeding up. I try to step on the brakes, but nothing happens. I get so close that I can see the terror on their faces. My sister is crying and screaming. I try to swerve, but there’s no stopping the car. Right before I hit them, I wake up.”

  “And how do you feel once you wake up?”

  And how do you feel when… Dr. Greene had asked Cassie that kind of question thousands of times over the years, yet it was strange for Cassie to analyze her own thoughts and feelings. She’d rather keep her head down and carry on with life, but that didn’t fix any of her problems.

  “Scared.” Cassie’s laugh sounded nervous. “Terrified, really. Sad. I’m crying or sweating or both.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Regret.”

  “Hmm.” Dr. Greene wasn’t the kind of therapist who kept a notepad in front of her to make notes on, but every once in a while, she’d make an affirming noise and pause, as if she were filing the information in her brain’s file cabinets. “Do you know why you feel regret?”

  “Not really. I understand the fear and the sadness, but not the regret. I tried everything I could to stop the car. It wasn’t my fault.”

  Dr. Greene pushed her glasses further up her face. “So, as long as you do everything in your power to stop something bad from happening, you won’t feel any regret?”

  Cassie smirked. Dr. Greene was good at asking Cassie questions to flip her perspective. “No, of course not.”

  “Regret is a good indicator that a situation may not feel resolved to you, even if you’ve done everything in your power to fix it. We gotta accept some things are out of our control. It’s what you do with that feeling of regret that matters most.” She paused for a moment and rested her chin in her hand. “When did you first have this dream?”

  Cassie looked up at the ceiling while she thought. “Maybe a couple weeks ago?”

  “About the time you decided to see your sister again?”

  Cassie’s gaze snapped back to her therapist’s face. “Yeah, about that time.”

  “Is it possible that these dreams are related to anxiety about seeing your sister again? It has been a few years, after all.”

  “It’s more than possible.” Cassie blew out a long breath. “It’s been weighing on me pretty heavily.”

  Dr. Greene leaned forward slightly. “How come? What are you worried about?”

  Cassie let it all out now. “Oh, everything.” She laughed. “We used to be pretty close as kids, but it’s been so long and so much has changed. Will we still get along? Will she still feel like my little sister? Will she treat me like I’m made of glass, like most people do once they find out what happened to me?”

  “Have you asked her any of these questions? Raised any of these concerns?”

  Cassie blushed. “No.”

  “Hmm. I’d bet Laura is pretty nervous, too. You’re the big sister, after all. She looked up to you when you were kids. What do you think she’s afraid of?”

  Cassie bit the inside of her lip as she tried to put herself in her sister’s shoes. “The same things? Whether we’ll get along. Whether it’ll be awkward. Whether we’ll still feel like family.”

  Dr. Greene leaned back. “You share a lot of the same fears. That means you have a middle ground, a common issue. And, as always, the best way to solve a situation like this is with—”

  “—communication.”

  “Exactly.” Dr. Greene’s eyes sparkled again. “I know you’ve been paying attention.”

  Cassie tried smiling, but it came out more like a grimace.

  Her therapist didn’t miss a beat. “What else are you worried about?”

  “I’m not the same person I used to be. She isn’t either. My life is so different now. I want to tell her so much. She needs to know more about me.” Cassie’s eyes once again drifted to the ghost of the little boy in the corner of the room. “But that requires time and energy and a willingness to listen.”

  “Is there anything indicating that Laura isn’t willing to listen?”

  “No, but that doesn’t mean she will be.”

  “True.” Dr. Green shrugged her shoulders. “But as much as we’d love to, we can’t control other people’s reactions. Or their emotions. Or their actions.”

  “That’s stupid,” Cassie said, eliciting a laugh from her therapist.

  “I don’t disagree with you. Life would be much easier if we could predict how people interacted with us.” Dr. Greene checked her watch. “We’re almost out of time for today. Did you ask Laura if she’d be joining us next time?”

  Cassie dropped her head. “No, not yet.”

  “Okay, well no pressure. It’s there if you want it. If not, I’m sure we’ll have plenty of other stuff to talk about.”

  “Don’t we always?” Cassie shook her head. Even after a decade of therapy, Cassie and her therapist always had something to talk about. Then again, therapy as a constant in her life was reassuring, but weird. She might not tell her therapist everything, like that she could see ghosts or get psychic visions. But it was nice to talk to someone who wouldn’t judge her, no matter how anxious her thoughts got.

  She owed her therapist a great deal of gratitude.

  Dr. Greene stood and walked to the door. “When will you be picking up your sister?”

  Cassie checked the time on her phone. “Four hours and counting.”

  She tried to not let the dread built up in the pit of her stomach show on her face.

  Book 2: Chapter 3

  Cassie’s heart drummed against her chest as she stood in the Atlanta Airport baggage claim area, wondering if she would spot her sister before her sister spotted her. Her palms were sweating, and she felt dizzy as mobs of people shuffled back and forth, grabbing their bags and hugging their loved ones.

  How long had it been since she’d last seen Laura? Three or four years? She’d returned to Savannah for a few days in the spring to visit her friends. She hadn’t stayed with Cassie. But they’d met up for an awkward dinner which was nice, but superficial.

  This time felt different.

  Laura was visiting her. She had returned to Savannah to be with her. The plan was to spend a long weekend catching up, getting reacquainted, and visiting some of their favorite spots in town. Then, they’d pack their bags and head to Charlotte to talk to their parents as a unit. It was time to change the relationship between all four of them.

  Cassie caught a flash of red amidst a sea of blondes and brunettes. Laura’s hair had always been brighter than Cassie’s auburn locks, making it easier to spot Laura in a crowd. Laura made a beeline for the conveyor belt, giving Cassie a moment to catch her breath.

  Laura hadn’t changed much in the last few years. She was shorter than Cassie, but more athletic and muscular. Tonight, she wore leggings and a long shirt with a pair of flats. A backpack hung off one shoulder, and as she leaned forward to grab her bag, her soft curls fell in front of her face.

  Once Laura snatched her suitcase and set it on the ground, pulling up the handle to wheel it behind her, she scanned the crowd and found Cassie’s gaze. For a moment, the two stared at each other in shock, and then they broke out in twin smiles.

  Cassie waited for Laura to push her way through the crowd, still nervous about what the next few days would entail. Once Laura was in front of her, Cassie felt her arms reach out and pull Laura into a hug so tight her sister squeaked in surprise.

  “Watch the ribs,” Laura said. “I kind of need those.”

  “Sorry.” Cassie pulled back and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “How was your flight?”

  “Not bad.” Laura shrugged and made her way to the door. “It’s not that bad of a flight. I just hate sitting next to gross dudes who don’t know how to refrain from manspreading.”

  Cassie cringed. “Gross.
Have you eaten?”

  “Yeah, they fed us on the plane. Surprisingly not terrible.”

  Cassie drooped a little bit. She’d hoped to take her sister out tonight. The sooner they got back to her house, the sooner it’d be one-on-one sister time, and she wasn’t ready for that just yet. What would they talk about? What if they got into a fight? What if they got along perfectly and she ended up regretting not reaching out sooner?

  Maybe her therapist was right about the true meaning of her dream.

  Cassie spent the entire walk to long term parking thinking about what she should say to her own sister. By the time they’d reached her car, she hadn’t said a single word. Instead, she popped the trunk and helped Laura lift her bag into the back.

  “Did you pack a bunch of bricks?”

  Laura’s laugh was a welcome sound. “Fifty pounds. I was so scared it was going to go over. But I needed to make sure I had enough clothes, just in case.”

  “Just in case what?”

  Laura froze. “In case I needed to stay longer than a week.”

  Cassie slammed the trunk and looked at her sister across the top of her car. A light was out nearby, shrouding them in darkness. But she could still make out the sheepish look on her sister’s face.

  “Why would you need to stay longer?”

  “In case Mom or Dad need me.” Laura waited until Cassie unlocked the car doors to open the passenger door, but stopped short of getting in. “Or in case you need me?”

  Cassie slid behind the wheel and waited for Laura to shut the door before giving her sister an incredulous look. “Why would I need you?”

  “You know, just in case. I don’t know, Cass, I’m just trying to be helpful.”