Dying Breath

by Heather Graham

  “I’m sure you’ll find them,” Vickie said, not sure what else she was about to say. Although, she almost added the word “eventually.” She was very glad she hadn’t.

  “We don’t stop until we do,” he assured her. “Thing is, we don’t know when they’ll strike again.”

  “You’re sure that they will?”

  “Yes.”

  She hesitated and then asked, “Do you know why Chrissy or George Ballantine would blame me in any way for her having been taken?”

  “Fear. And, of course, they don’t want to believe anything they’ve said or done could have caused such a thing.”

  “Fear. Do you think the kidnappers will make another try at Chrissy? From what I’ve seen, it seems that they’ve chosen their victims randomly.”

  “They might have been victims of convenience, too.”

  “You mean...”

  “I mean the kidnappers obviously watch their prey. They know when they’re alone—or, in Angelina’s case—when a street is empty and someone can be snatched up. In every case, the kidnapper or kidnappers have come from behind. Each woman has been taken before she had any clue whatsoever that she was being stalked. They have to be watching people; they’ve never come up to a situation where anyone has seen them or fought back.”

  “So any woman in the city is at risk.”

  “In the city, and anywhere near, so it seems. They haven’t struck outside Massachusetts, yet.”

  “I do imagine that everyone—every law enforcement agency—is on the alert.”

  He nodded. “Of course. But I think you should know, we might have looked forever—looked until it was too late—for Chrissy Ballantine. You’re the reason we found her.”

  “Well, no, I mean, not really, I know a fair amount about Boston. But of course, that didn’t really matter—she was actually in the house all the time.”

  “And we might have been tearing apart every business and apartment building there—and we wouldn’t have found her. She really does owe you her life. Vickie, your gut intuitions are...a talent. Like seeing the dead.”

  Vickie waved a hand in the air, feeling uncomfortable.

  “Vickie, I’m wondering if you mind heading to the Boston Neck with me,” he said quietly.

  She stared at him in surprise. “To do with—this case? Griffin... Special Agent Pryce... I’m great with kids and young adults and I love history. But I don’t think I had a single class in criminology. Everything I might know or think that I know comes from crime shows on television.”

  “I don’t need a criminologist,” he said quietly. “I need someone with special talents. Someone close there in the area who knows the lay of the land.”

  “I...”

  Her students were arriving. Through the back windows of the restaurant, she could see that they were coming.

  Art was quietly in the lead.

  Hardy wasn’t far behind him, but walking backward and flirting with Cheryl. Cheryl had an adoring look on her face—young love.

  She seemed to care about him, but in exactly what way was hard to ascertain.

  Behind them came the others: Jan, Frank and Ivan—the three had lost both parents and had no family; Gio, Cindy, Cathy and Sasha—had all been taken from abusive homes. Cathy’s dad had been so high on crack, he’d burned their house down. She’d barely escaped and still bore scars from the incident five years ago. Gio’s name had been legally changed; he was the son of a multiple offender who was serving time in Leavenworth for counterfeiting, forgery and arms deals. Cheryl and Hardy had both come to Massachusetts via other states; they’d been runaways, street kids, just left to fend for themselves. A few of them had gotten into trouble. Sasha had been in juvenile court for shoplifting; Art had actually been found on the street, suffering from an overdose of heroin.

  Doing anything that might change their lives for the better meant a great deal to her.

  “I don’t do this every day,” she murmured, “only one or two days a week. And I don’t miss. The kids count on me. I know people think that hey, she’s a writer, her time doesn’t matter, she’s just at home, she doesn’t really do anything, but...”

  “I don’t need a lot of your time. It wouldn’t interfere with anything you do for the kids. Vickie, we don’t know who has been taken yet, but the next clue has arrived at the paper. Out there, somewhere, we have another victim.”

  “Oh. So, yes—you do know they won’t stop. That they do have someone else...”

  “And your name is on the clue again,” he said softly.

  She gasped, stunned, and sat back, not sure at all on how to reply.

  “What?” she managed in a frantic whisper.

  “‘Vickie knows where some of the righteous met the Neck,’” he quoted.

  “No,” she murmured.

  Then she saw Dylan was coming; he was hurrying ahead of her students, as if he knew Griffin Pryce was there, talking to her, and he wanted to beat the others.

  He ran into the room and stood at the end of the table. She tried not to notice him because Griffin Pryce was staring at her.

  “Vickie! You’ve got to help him because I’m afraid. For my folks. For Noah. Yes, he’s taking women. Or, they’re taking women. But they’re killers. They don’t care who they hurt.”

  She could see Mario greeting her group of young people out in the main part of the restaurant.

  Griffin kept staring at her.

  “I’d like to help,” she said softly. “I really would.”

  “Then tell him that you’ll go with him, that you will help!” Dylan said.

  “Yes, please. Listen,” Griffin said intensely, “we’ll see to it that you’re never in any danger. You will never be anywhere without one of us in the field, and when you’re working at home or with the kids, you’ll have a guard on you, twenty-four seven, until these men are caught. I know, of course, how your parents feel about this, and I’m really sorry to ask.”

  “It’s not that I’m afraid,” she said. “Well, I mean, I am afraid—I’m a horrible coward. But I do trust in you and the police, and I suppose I’m very lucky at this moment, actually having a guard when anyone might be in danger, it’s just that, I’m not sure how I can help. I know Boston, and I know the Ballantine family, so...”

  “You know Boston!” Dylan said.

  Griffin smiled. “I’m sure you know all of the environs well.”

  “I do, but...”

  “Please, Vickie,” Dylan said. “Help us out here!”

  “Yes, please help us out here,” Griffin repeated.

  She frowned and stared at him. Despite what Noah had told her, and despite what she’d been certain about in her own mind, she nearly jumped out of her chair.

  “You see Dylan,” she said in a heated whisper. “You just heard him talking!”

  “Yes,” Griffin said simply.

  “My name is in a new clue, you don’t even know who was taken yet...and you spring this on me! And you see Dylan clearly. And you did...you did before. The day that...Bertram Aldridge was in the Ballantine house and you shot him... But he was down before he could shoot me and Noah because Dylan had tripped him. You saw him then.”

  “Yes.”

  “You—jerk! You bastard. I’m on the spot now, and back then, you didn’t say a word.”

  “I didn’t know if you’d seen Dylan then,” Griffin said quietly. “You didn’t tell me.”

  The kids were nearly there. He leaned closer. “Vickie, this concerns me. The killer—killers—know you. We can’t figure it out. You do have special talents. We need you.”

  He and Dylan were both staring at her, waiting for her answer.

  And uneasiness poured into her.

  Her name, now her first name, on a clue.

  Was she
somehow involved? How could it be? She knew the man who had nearly killed her and Noah was in prison. Why would someone else target her or the Ballantine family or...just use her name in a clue?

  Was she in danger—and was Griffin Pryce saying that he needed her—exactly because he thought she might be in danger?

  Her kids—or young almost-adults—were pouring in, excitedly talking about the house, about Paul Revere and the men who had signed the Declaration of Independence, risking their lives to put their names on a piece of paper.

  “I can’t believe I’ve never been there before!” Cheryl said, heading toward Vickie and then stopping as she saw Griffin, who had risen.

  “Oh! Hello, um, hi. I’m Cheryl,” she said, giving him her hand.

  “How do you do, Cheryl. Griffin Pryce,” he said. He turned to Vickie. “I’ll give you a minute and wait for you just outside.”

  Then he was gone. And when he was fully out of the room, Cathy McDonald said, “Wow! He’s fine, Miss Preston.”

  “Hot!” Cheryl teased.

  “Miss Preston’s got one on the line,” Art teased.

  “Who is cuter—wait, wrong word!” Cheryl teased. “Sexier? Yeah, that’s it! Who is—whew!—more charming, adorable...whatever! Him or her?”

  “Hey!” Vickie protested.

  “Disrespectful, right?” Hardy asked.

  “Griffin is a friend,” Vickie said. “Come on, guys—this is a great restaurant, and a friend of mine manages it. I have to go, but you’ll be all set. And you’ll behave like great young adults!”

  “No spitballs out of straw wrappers, huh?” Hardy teased.

  “Nope, sit down.”

  “Come on, Miss Preston!” Hardy said. “We’re in high school!”

  “My point exactly,” she told him. High school. Yes, they were physically adults; they could dress up and walk down the street and appear to be mature and complete, well beyond their ages.

  She remembered being that age so well. Some of her friends were determined and excited to face the future, leave home, head to college. Some weren’t leaving home; they were taking jobs, they were going to Boston-area schools, perhaps heading into the military.

  Few were like this group—in many ways—far too wise regarding the world.

  And in many ways, still just kids.

  “There are set menus at the seats. Choose from those, and make me proud, guys, huh?” Vickie said.

  “Sure! Promise,” Hardy said, sitting.

  Griffin had gone outside.

  Dylan had not.

  He was at her side, grinning.

  “Okay, so, Bick-bick, I’m surprised one of them hasn’t said it yet.”

  She looked at him, a silent “Said what?” in her eyes.

  “Miss Preston,” Cheryl said. “No disrespect intended. That dude is wicked hot. You’re really not going to tell us about him?”

  Dylan laughed softly and headed on out of the restaurant.

  5

  “Scholars disagree on exactly when the Puritans lost control of Boston and the Massachusetts Bay Colony,” Vickie said. “The society was extremely repressive, and actually, the Pilgrims and Puritans were two different peoples in a way. The Pilgrims wanted to break from the Church; the Puritans wanted to reform it. Too much? Sorry. I’m trying to simplify all this. But when the Puritans were in power, they were the law. This was, of course, way before the formation of the United States of America and the separation of church and state. Okay, so, there was a problem with the Quakers. The Puritans banished them—if they came back, they’d be hanged by the neck until dead.”

  “Only way to hang someone,” Dylan murmured.

  Griffin watched Vickie and lowered his head, not to show a smile. She was excellent at pretending that she didn’t hear or see the boy, and, of course, Barnes was still with them, hopeful that Vickie would miraculously have some kind of a sense for what they were trying to do. They had come out to the Boston Neck—once the tiny strip of land that had connected the peninsula with Boston as the tip to the mainland, and now a thriving area—not the actual geographic south of the city, but the South End, nevertheless—made possible by landfill in the marshes surrounding the Boston Neck.

  “Now, of course, a whole new history has come around. We’re looking at land changes, at the Victorian era. And a pretty cool place, too, really. This area is known for its diversity now, and has been for years and years,” Vickie said.

  “I used to be a patrolman here,” Detective Barnes said. “You’d think I’d know where I was going or what I was doing. But this is always like looking for a needle in a haystack.”

  They stood on Washington Street, looking north. Barnes watched Vickie, hopeful and doubtful all in one.

  Jackson Crow appeared to be certain that Vickie would discover the missing woman—although they didn’t even know who she might be as yet.

  The workaday world and the traffic of the busy city went on all around them.

  “So, we try all kinds of locations,” Griffin said. “But we forget the ‘newer’ history and concentrate on the older?”

  “Yeah, that sounds weird,” Vickie said. “There will obviously be new, but I think that we’re looking at new that still pertains to the very old, as in built over the area where the gallows once stood or where bodies were thrown after hanging. If the clue is really meant to give us something, and so far, the clues have been real.”

  “Witches, huh?” Dylan murmured.

  She managed to answer him and ignore him, all in one. “That’s the thing, hanging wasn’t all intolerance and it wasn’t all during the Puritan hold on the city. There were people hanged who, through the years, weren’t just of different faiths—they were hanged for murder and other serious crimes. The last gallows were located in the yard at the Charles Street Jail, starting 1826. But out here...”

  She paused and shook her head. “I know of at least three areas where we could look. Bodies were dumped in the Common Grounds...not Boston Common, but an area referred to as the Common Grounds.”

  “Every word in these clues seems to mean something, Vickie. Righteous. A murderer wouldn’t likely have been righteous,” Griffin pointed out.

  “Okay. The Quakers, through their religious beliefs, thought it was their duty to return and spread what they saw as the true word of God. When they came back, they were hanged. Back then, Boston was nearly an island. Boston Neck had a gatehouse, so you couldn’t just come and go. The gallows were moved a few times during the centuries, though. Obviously, there’s landfill now where there used to be marshland.”

  “We don’t even have a report regarding a missing woman as of yet,” Detective Barnes muttered.

  “We will,” Jackson said quietly.

  “So we’re looking for a random woman,” Barnes said.

  “We’re looking for a woman who is buried alive, boxed up somewhere, caged to smother to death,” Griffin said evenly.

  “Maybe they’re playing with us,” Barnes said.

  “I don’t think they are,” Jackson told him.

  “The Neck being capitalized, I’d say they do mean the Neck,” Griffin said, his attention focused on Vickie.

  She nodded, apparently not disturbed by Barnes’s skepticism. But of course, she was accustomed to ignoring the ghost who haunted her.

  She definitely had focus.

  “Yes, okay. The Neck was fortified with a gatehouse. Just south of that area was what they called Gallows Hill—not much of a hill, slightly higher ground, mostly even now. Four Quakers—among others—met their demise there. William Robinson, Marmaduke Stevenson, William Leddra and Mary Dyer. Mary escaped the penalty once, but being a Quaker, had to come back again against the Puritan’s ‘bloody law.’ So, they might have been righteous—in my mind, ridiculously foolhardy as well, not t
o take anything away from anyone’s beliefs.” She paused and pointed. “There are firsthand accounts of what happened. The deaths were circa 1660. Years later, someone got a stone up in memory, but that quickly came down. But in 1699 a Quaker came through on his way from Brookline to Boston and commented on someone pointing out the location to him. The Massachusetts charter was revoked in 1684, and in 1689, a Toleration Act was passed and the whole Puritan thing began to die out. But back to the likely location of the gallows—really a tree with a ladder and rope—where the Quakers or Friends were martyred, it would be somewhere around West Dedham and Washington Street.”

  “Let’s see what we see,” Griffin said.

  It was hard to imagine the distant past; the area now was a nod to the Victorian era. Well-tended row houses in red brick were abundant. Industry was keen; with plentiful bars, coffeehouses and music venues.

  “You keep a close eye on our civilian consultant,” Jackson said. “I’ll branch off at Dedham.”

  They heard the buzzing of a cell phone; Barnes excused himself to answer it.

  The others started walking.

  “Hey!” Barnes called to them. His features were grim—and very pale.

  Jackson, Vickie and Griffin stopped. Barnes was white as he hurried to catch up with them.

  “Fiona West, forty-three, of Brookline. She went missing yesterday. She works nights, so her husband didn’t realize until he just got home from work himself that she never came back last night. He called her work; she never reported in. Her car was in the lot, but she never made it into the door. Five-five, brunette—they’re sending the picture over the phone now...yes. Here she is.”

  He produced his phone for them all to see.

  Fiona West had a great smile. She was dark-haired, blue-eyed, pretty with an enthusiasm for life that came alive, even in a bad picture over the phone.

  “Let’s find her,” Griffin said.

  “We’re calling out the troops—I have several squads coming for a sweep. The Neck—the damned Boston Neck. It’s not a pile of farms anymore, there are business, churches and homes...what the hell!” Barnes muttered. “Needle in a haystack!”