We talked in the kitchen as we made a salad for the dinner.
I had two lamb shanks cooking low and slow in the heavy Dutch oven. The brown bubbling broth of wine—the Realtor’s gift—root vegetables, tomato sauce, garlic and herbs filled the house with a delightful aroma that would make anyone want to eat immediately.
“There’s something else I have to show you,” I said. I took her hand and led her to the basement door. Amanda followed me down the stairs and saw my pile of lumber and tools in the middle of the floor.
“What on earth are you doing down here?”
“Making a wine cellar!” I announced proudly.
“You don’t even have a bedroom set yet but you are building a wine cellar?”
“Priorities, ma’am. I’ve always dreamed of having my own house with a great wine cellar. I’m halfway there.”
She laughed at me, as usual, but I talked to her about my ideas as we walked around the basement. Racks here… A table there… An archway here…
Chapter Fourteen
Casey’s Diary
After she’d left, that was when I found the diary. Congressman Stone’s daughter had been murdered. His wife had committed suicide. In this house. Casey Stone.
April 2
I can’t believe it! He found my other diary and burned it!
He’s such an A-Hole. I hate him!
I am hiding this where he’s never going to find it!
And he apparently never had. I found myself plunged inside the head of this young girl. It felt like I was betraying a trust, but I couldn’t stop reading. I was mesmerized. My first thought was that I had to give the journal to her father, but the more I read, the more I realized this was not ‘daddy’s girl’, at least not in her mind. I read farther, now sitting on the pile of lumber that I’d temporarily forgotten about.
Saturday
Tonight was so awesome! Until I got home. Dad flipped out again. He’s totally out of his mind. All we did was hang out on the beach. Mike and Pete built a bonfire. And it’s not like Ben and I were there alone. And Darla and Lynn were there, too. If they only knew! I can’t do anything without him calling me a ‘little whore’. All we did was make out. Dad calls Ben every name in the book just because he isn’t rich…and because he lives with his nana. That is so lame. And you know what? Ben would never hit me.
The congressman was whacking the kid? But was he right about Ben?
Dad said to be home by ten. I got home on time, and he still started screaming at me. Mom stuck up for me and he gave her the ‘I’ll talk to you about this later’ routine. I know he hits her too. He doesn’t think I know, but I hear everything. And he lies about it! Last time he hit me I got so mad I yelled at him about hitting Mom, too, and he had a hissy fit and threw stuff all over my room. I know he was hitting Mom later. Mom should divorce him. We’d both be better off without him. I don’t know why she won’t. I hate him!
I stopped reading. Words from a murdered kid, who had a father who’d smacked her around. Sixteen and getting hit? That was just wrong. But what do I know? I loved my parents, and they loved me back. In my whole life, neither one of them had ever hit me or my brother. Not once. Maybe we were abnormal.
I decided to read the rest of this piece of history that maybe no eyes but mine—and hers—had ever seen, but that it would require one of the bottles for which I was building this cellar in the first place.
I thought about calling Amanda right then but I didn’t, because she was driving back to Twin Oaks and I didn’t want her to freak out. And I wasn’t sure I should share its Pandora’s Box of horrors with her. She might never come back. Or maybe somehow, just for now, I wanted this between us—me and this kid. I’ve seen death and destruction. I’ve seen dead kids, too. But for whatever reason—maybe because this was my house—it just seemed to instantly get under my skin. I thought I’d left death overseas, but sonofabitch, it had followed me home—and I felt violated.
I found a bottle of Joseph Phelps Cabernet that was deserving of a steak or special occasion, but I opened it anyway. I had resigned myself to the fact that this would take a while to read. At least I would have a great bottle of wine to drink while I got depressed.
I picked up the journal and went upstairs to the kitchen to grab a large wine glass. It was sunny outside, something I hadn’t thought about in the dark cellar. I opted for reading outside at the patio table. Perhaps the flowers and marble angels would chase away the gloom. Maybe the gloom was just inside me.
Sunday, April 12
I hate, hate, hate this house! I heard them last night. Mom was crying. I put my pillow over my head and cried and prayed he would stop. It went on for a long time. When I came downstairs for breakfast, they were just sitting there. Dad was reading the paper, drinking coffee, and Mom was sitting like a zombie. Her face looked bruised, but I didn’t dare ask about it. Dad would go batshit on me. He grounded me for the whole week last night and wouldn’t even say why. When he goes to work, I am going to make Mom talk to me. I can’t take this anymore! Everyone is going to the beach tonight and I know Ben will be there—and that Jessica Smith will be there drooling all over him! And I won’t be there to tell her to get lost. He’ll end up going out with her and breaking my heart, all because Dad is such an idiot.
I sipped my wine and read for almost half an hour. Most of what she wrote was typical kid stuff, I guess. Girls are mini-women—tough to figure out. Boys just want to get laid—or least touch a boob or something—when they are that age. They certainly don’t keep journals ‘to express their feelings’. Hell, by nineteen I was jumping out of airplanes.
A few things were becoming clear, though, if I could believe everything she wrote, which I wasn’t sure about. I mean, would a kid lie to her own journal? Why? I assumed she was telling the truth, but I also had to remember that it was her perception of what was going on in the house. A sixteen-year-old girl can’t know everything going on between Mom and Dad.
If I could take everything at face value—I mean, bruises are not something a person would imagine…or maybe they were—there were a few themes that seemed to run through the diary. First, the congressman was physically and mentally abusive to his daughter and probably to his wife. Maybe this wouldn’t be so unusual in the world of twenty years ago, and there are lots of crazy people out there, but this particular person was now a well-known United States Congressman whose name was being tossed around as a Presidential hopeful. Now re-married, with a young son, the guy presented a model of great husband and father.
An act? Who knows? The other theme was this kid named Ben, who Casey seemingly had a crush on. She seemed slightly goofy about him, but that’s called being sixteen.
The more I read, the more I got the sense that Casey Stone was a smart kid but a little troubled, maybe. The phone ringing snapped me out of my stupor. I was just sitting there staring at the pages. I wasn’t reading. I was just in la-la land, shocked at what I had read. I finally looked at my cell phone on the wrought-iron table and saw Amanda’s number. I grabbed it.
“Hey, I just got home. Miss you already.”
I said hi, but Amanda knew something was up.
“What’s wrong, handsome?” she asked, not sounding as cheerful as usual.
“Why?”
“Your voice sounds a little funny.”
I couldn’t see myself reading a hundred pages out loud over the phone, which was what she’d want me to do. I lied and said nothing was wrong and that I was just concentrating on my wine cellar. Never mind that the lumber hadn’t been touched since I’d found the diary.
She got the sense I was busy working on the house and said she’d call me later. I hung up and looked down at the diary, the faded flowers on the cover now seemed so much sadder.
I went back into the kitchen and poured another glass of cab, praying my good friend Joseph Phelps would help me feel better, then returned to the patio. It had started like such a nice day. A normal day. Now I was one of two people left o
n the planet who knew Congressman Earl Stone’s sickening secret.
By the time I had finished the glass of wine and walked through the flower beds, pulling weeds as I went, I had calmed down a bit. I went to the patio, where Casey’s journal still sat on the table. When my day had started, I’d thought I should call the congressman.
Now I was thinking I should call the police.
I went back to the diary but I couldn’t read any more. I skipped to the last entry she’d made.
He did it again. He said it was going to be a spanking because I was ‘acting like a whore with Ben again, even after I warned you.’ Same speech as last time. ‘If you want to be a whore, I’ll treat you like one.’ He made me take my underwear off. He unzipped his pants and made me touch it. I hate him. I told him I would tell mom if he didn’t stop. That just made him madder. Then he got it all over me. I cried my eyes out and I couldn’t stop. I hate him I hate him I hate him.
I sat there, numb, a sick feeling in my stomach. Was it possible that this guy who wanted to be President of my country could have sexually assaulted his own daughter? I felt so disgusted that I wanted to take a shower. I would have expected I would feel anger and rage—but I didn’t. I just felt sick and heartbroken for this little kid. ‘He did it again,’ she had written. How many times before had this guy abused her? Did her mom know? What was he doing to her?
I decided to put the diary away and give myself a break. I hid it in the back of a drawer in a roll-top desk in the library. I’m not sure if I was hiding it to protect it or just protecting myself from the disgusting images it contained. I stormed down to the cellar to saw lumber and pound nails until I felt better.
I worked nonstop until the phone rang. Amanda would be the only one calling me, so I put the hammer down, grabbed the phone, looked at my watch and saw how late it was. I was surprised.
“Hey, baby, how’s Mr. Fix-It doing?”
I looked over at the wall of the cellar and saw that I had done three days’ work in one afternoon. My right shoulder ached from hammering nails. “Pretty good. I should be finished with the woodwork tomorrow, then I’ll stain everything and I’ll be done.”
“Wow…impressive,” she said. She sounded like she was smiling. “That was fast.”
“Yeah,” I mumbled. “I guess I just got going and cranked it out. What’s up with you?”
“I have some news, actually.”
“Pregnant?” I said, trying to be funny but not feeling particularly comical. As soon as I said it, I thought about Casey being abused by her father—a gross image.
“Very funny…and no. I spoke to my boss. Told him I might be moving…” She let that hang out there for a second. “And guess what! He knows a therapist in Morehead City who would hire me.”
She was waiting for my reaction. I was happy to hear the news but just still felt sick. I tried my best. “That’s huge news, honey. When are you coming?”
She was quiet. Damn. Women have radar or something. “You don’t sound as I happy as I thought you would.”
“I’m exhausted, Amanda, but trust me, I’m very happy. I can’t wait until you move in.” And I meant it.
“Well, I don’t know exactly when, but I’m thinking maybe two weeks, if that’s okay with you. I mean, if you really want me to move down.”
“Of course I want you to move down! I’ve been begging you for weeks.” I guess she was mulling over my sincerity.
“Well, I still need to get out of my lease and do a million things over here. Then I have to talk to this guy Frank down in Morehead City. Then I have to see how this will work out because there’s no bridge to Morehead City from the island. I’d have to take the ferry. That might be a total nightmare getting back and forth to work. If I drive, it’ll take me way out of the way.”
“Well, just get down here and we’ll worry about that when you get here,” I said.
Mr. Sensitivity.
“Easy for you to say. And what about you? Did you decide what you are going to do for work?”
That was when I said it by accident. “Yeah, I was thinking about becoming a private detective.” It just came out. I was still thinking about the kid, I guessed.
“A private detective? And when did you decide that?”
“I dunno. What else do ex-soldiers do? We become cops half the time…except I can’t do the ‘by the book’ thing anymore, so I’ll just work for myself.”
“Don’t you have to go to school or something? What do you know about being a detective?” She was laughing.
“Well…I know how to track people down and kill them,” I said. That stopped the laughing.
“You can’t kill people anymore.”
“Too bad,” I said. And I meant it. At that particular moment, I wanted a hug. “Listen… It’s only been four hours and I miss you already. When are you coming back?”
“Friday night after work. You know, that work thing? Remember?”
“Right. That work thing. Okay. Well, call the guy in Morehead City and tell me when to be at your place with a moving truck.” We talked a while longer, said our goodnights and I immediately went to my computer.
Chapter Fifteen
Playing Detective
I sat down and started searching for any references I could find on the murder of Casey Stone. Sometimes a person should be careful what they wish for. I’d thought I wanted information. I’d thought I wanted details. Then I got them and I couldn’t un-get them. I just have them…and they were burning a hole in my brain.
As I started researching, I remembered back to my Army days. I’d been looking into the case of a staff sergeant who’d ‘lost it’ on a patrol in Iraq. Over the course of one month, four Humvees had been hit by improvised explosive devices. The roadside bombs had killed six men and permanently injured four. One was a best friend of the sergeant, and the unfortunate soldier had lost both legs in the explosion. When the sergeant had come upon an insurgent running from his latest ‘roadside project’ some days later, the sergeant had run after him into his stone house. The sergeant had thrown two grenades into the house after the insurgent, then had hosed the house with his M4. When he went inside, he’d realized the insurgent had run into a house full of kids. It hadn’t even been his house, just a place to hide. The kids had been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Such was life in a war zone.
I’d ended up having to investigate the wrongful deaths of the civilians, since the staff sergeant was in my outfit at the time. I’d had to look at the pictures of the inside of that house.
Point is, I couldn’t un-look at it. Ever. And now I was about to start delving deeper into this girl who’d been abused by her own father, only to be murdered. By him? And he got away with it? By someone else? Was he involved? I think she was in a war zone, too. She just didn’t know it.
I found an old article in the Carolina Banks, one of the bigger papers in that part of the state.
Judge’s Daughter Found Dead
The body of Casey Stone, sixteen, daughter of Judge Earl Stone, has been recovered. State police announced the body was found floating in the water behind the Woods’ commercial fishing dock on Harkers Island at five-forty-seven a.m. Saturday by local fisherman Thomas Woods, forty-seven. Casey’s mother, Anne Stone, forty-one, was found dead at nine-thirty a.m. in the basement of the Stone home by her husband. The cause of Casey’s death has not been announced, pending an autopsy. Anyone with information is asked to contact the Carteret County tip line at 888-TIP-LINE.
There was her picture, looking at me from my computer screen, staring right through me. Her green eyes stood out from straight, strawberry-blonde hair that fell to her shoulders.
She was real now—a pretty teenager, full of life, seemingly on her way to becoming a valued member of society, murdered on this quiet little island. The article was dated August third, 1991.
Her distraught mother had killed herself a few hours after Casey’s body had been found. All of it was a tragedy.
I search
ed for other articles. August fourth had the next big headline, and reading it made my heart pound in my chest.
Benjamin McComb arrested in the Murder of Congressman’s Daughter
Benjamin McComb, seventeen, a local teen, has been arrested in the death of Casey Stone.
According to the autopsy report released by the medical examiner, Michael Greller, Casey was raped then strangled and her body was dumped in the ocean near a commercial fishing dock.
I sat there stunned. She had been raped, then murdered. I wanted to kill somebody. It took a few minutes before I could read the rest of the article.
Police arrested McComb at his grandmother’s house on Harkers Island this morning. He will be tried as an adult. Judge Stone could not be reached for comment. His spokesperson, Barbara Ellis, expressed the congressman’s gratitude for the many flowers and notes of sympathy the congressman has received.
I read that and thought, my home. They left those flowers and cards at the end of my driveway. Then the light bulb went off—Benjamin McComb! Ben. Casey’s crush. I sat back and let that soak in. The kid she’d had a crush on had raped then murdered her? And poor dad was home grieving? Bullshit. I kept reading. Article after article about the arrest, about the girl and her family, about how Harkers Island hadn’t had a murder in a hundred years…and about the trial.
I stared at a picture of Ben at the top of the story. His booking photo. It was the first time I was laying eyes on the kid mentioned in Casey’s diary. He had skinny features and long brown hair. He looked like a terrified kid, not a sociopathic killer. Not that anyone could know who was guilty or innocent by looking at a picture, but Ben McComb just didn’t strike me as a rapist or a murderer. Casey had a little-kid crush on him. In another photo halfway down the page, he looked like a kid, too, nothing short of heart-broken.
Blood from a Stone Page 6