Elle let that sink in. Ida Mae was right. Kids were resilient. Unless their spirits had been broken… As Elenore’s had.
But Elle’s spirit wasn’t broken. No, Elle was strong and determined.
With that thought in mind, she turned toward the door, knowing full well that Ida Mae followed close. She could feel the elderly woman there, a comforting light in an otherwise dark world.
“Drive safe, Elle…”
Chapter Thirty- Seven
Elle arrived in Albany, Georgia, trying to maneuver Evan’s car through the insane traffic while following the directions on her phone’s GPS.
She had driven straight through, stopping only once to fuel up the car and use the restroom.
The GPS announced her arrival at Ray Durden’s a little after six o’clock that evening.
Parking along the cul-de-sac, Elle got out and nervously wandered up the drive to the one-story white brick house—the house her mother had once lived in.
She stopped at the front door, her finger hovering over the doorknob resting there.
“Can I help you?” a man called out from her left, startling her.
Elle backed up a step and turned in the direction of the garage.
There, holding a cat in his arms, stood a middle-aged man with graying hair. He wore a light blue golf shirt and a pair of khaki pants.
Elle cautiously approached, her gaze darting around for a way of escape if need be. She reckoned she would always be that way…skittish and suspicious. Thanks to Elijah and the likes of Bill.
“I-I’m looking for Ray Durden.”
A friendly smile touched his lips. “Lucky you. You found him.”
Elle knew he attempted to tease, but she couldn’t find it in her to return his smile. “My name is Elle…er, Elenore Griffin.”
Ray’s skin turned as white as the cat he held in his arms. He stood there for what felt an eternity before setting down the cat and slowly moving toward her. “Elenore…”
Elle stood still as a statue, not knowing what to expect, what to say in return.
“Your mother would have given anything to have seen you all grown up. I can see the resemblance. You’re just as beautiful as she was.”
Swallowing her anxiety, Elle whispered, “What happened to her?”
Tears gathered in Ray Durden’s eyes. “She died over eight years ago.”
“How?” Elle continued, needing answers.
Ray cleared his throat, his neck turning red with color. “It doesn’t matter how she died, Elenore. Just know that she wanted you more than anything in this world. Including me.”
Elle took a hesitant step forward, anger warring with grief. “She never came for me, Mr. Durden. She just left me with that-that monster who hurt me every day of my life.”
The tears in Ray’s eyes began to track down his cheeks. “She tried, Elenore. I swear to God, she tried to get to you so many times.”
“Then why did she leave me to begin with!” Elle practically shouted. She didn’t care. Her life had already been ruined by Mary Griffin. Nothing mattered anymore but the truth.
“She didn’t want to leave you behind, Elenore. She had no choice.”
“Everyone has a choice,” Elle choked out. “Everyone.”
Ray shook his head, the sadness in his eyes unmistakable. “Not Mary. Elijah had been beating her since the day she said I do.”
Taking a shaky breath, Ray went on with his story. “Then one day, she turned to me for comfort. I shouldn’t have allowed myself to have an affair with Mary. But I loved her. Then, Elijah caught us together one afternoon. He tried killing us, but we managed to escape. When Mary went back to get you, Elijah told her he would kill you both and claim a murder-suicide.”
Elle couldn’t look away from Ray Durden’s tormented eyes. “Then what happened?”
“Mary tried to file charges and take him to court to get custody of you, but she was told there was nothing she could do by a Detective William Burnham.”
So many pieces of the puzzle fell into place for Elle in that moment. William Burnham made sure that Mary didn’t get her daughter, as did Judge Powell. Elijah had sold her to both of them.
“So, Mama wanted me?” Her voice cracked on that last word.
“Wanted you? Honey, Mary Griffin loved you so much she couldn’t live without you. She’d been depressed for a long time. Ever since we left Wexler and…left you behind.”
A strange feeling settled in Elle’s gut. Though she already knew the answer to her next question, she asked it anyway. She wanted no more secrets surrounding her past, no matter what answers she uncovered. “Tell me how Mama died.”
Ray visibly swallowed. “It doesn’t matter how she died, Elenore. It only matters that she died loving you.”
“Tell me.” She wasn’t leaving there without the truth.
Silence descended for so long, Elle thought for sure Ray wouldn’t answer her. And then he whispered, “Suicide.”
Even though Elle had already assumed that was how Mary died, it still hurt to hear the words aloud. “Where is she buried?”
“I’m really sorry, Elenore. For everything.”
Elle ignored his attempted apology. “Tell me where she’s buried, Mr. Durden.”
“At the Oakwood Cemetery on 19th Street.”
Without another word, Elle turned and strode across the yard to Evan’s car. She got behind the wheel and programmed the address to the cemetery into her phone’s GPS, noticing that she had a missed call from Evan. She would call him back after she saw Mary Griffin’s grave.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
It was after midnight when Elle returned home that night. She’d gone to the cemetery and located Mary Griffin’s grave.
Elle had thought to say goodbye to her mother, to finally have some sort of closure where Mary was concerned. But the opposite had happened.
Bitterness and rage had welled up inside her the longer she stood there staring at Mary’s tombstone. She’d been cheated of her mother’s love by none other than Elijah, robbed of her childhood, her innocence. If he were alive, Elle would take great pleasure in killing him again.
She paced the kitchen of Evan’s home, her insides alight with an unholy rage like nothing she’d experienced before. Not even when she’d taken the pain that Bill had doled out.
Voices began to swirl through her head, Elenore’s cries, Elijah’s and Bill’s disgusting taunts, until Elle could do nothing but bend in half and scream.
She screamed so long her throat hurt, and her chest felt as if it would explode.
Straightening, Elle marched to Evan’s office, determination fueling her every step.
She booted up the laptop, pulling up the page she'd previously been on. The local sex offender’s list.
There, beneath Carl Erwin’s information, she found what she looked for. Another predator resided less than two miles from Evan’s home.
Elle studied the man’s face, sickened by the look of evil in his eyes.
“Amis Peterson,” Elle read aloud, scrolling down to check out his charges. There were four counts of child molestation. One of the children had been under the age of five.
In a daze of hatred and nausea, Elle printed out the page and set about readying herself for a visit to Peterson’s residence. He would die before the night was over. And die horribly.
Dressed in a black shirt and jeans, knife in her boot, Elle left by way of the back door and headed east.
With Peterson’s address programmed into her cell phone, Elle paced herself, keeping as far to the shadows as she possibly could.
She arrived at Amis Peterson’s house twenty minutes later.
There was one vehicle in the drive and no dogs that Elle could see. His lights were off, with nothing but a porch light burning in front.
She circled around back, glad to see there were no close neighbors on either side. There was also no porch light.
Lifting her hand to knock, Elle noticed a dim light shining through a
crack in the door jam. Which told her one thing, no deadbolt would be present.
She wondered briefly if she should have brought the pistol with her. But no, she didn’t need the gun. She would sink her blade into Amis’s gut the moment she got close enough to him.
Glancing around to be sure she wasn’t seen, she fished the knife from her boot and slid it into the crack of the door. With very little pressure, the lock slipped free.
Elle pushed the door open, listening for sounds of life in the belly of the house, and then quietly closed it behind her.
And then, the unthinkable happened. One second, she stood at the edge of the kitchen, and the next, something slammed into the side of her head.
All the wind flew from Elle’s lungs as her body impacted with the unforgiving kitchen floor.
A heavy weight fell on top of her, effectively preventing her from breathing.
Panic immediately set in. Elle fought with everything she had to break free, to no avail.
“So, you’re the one setting the fires,” a man’s voice sneered in her ear. “You picked the wrong house this time, little girl.”
He grabbed a handful of Elle’s hair, yanked her head back, and slammed her face against the tile again and again.
Elle’s world turned black.
* * * *
Pain. So much pain. Elle’s hips scraped across something cold and hard while a heavy weight pressed her down. It took her a moment to realize she lay on her back and another to comprehend something terrible had happened to her—was happening to her still. She was being raped.
She tried to open her eyes, but they were swollen shut. Blood ran from her nose into her mouth, choking her in her attempt to scream.
A hand clamped over her lower face, cutting off what little air supply she had.
The man continued to defile her, animalistic sounds coming from his throat.
Somewhere in the midst of her incomprehensible nightmare, Elle’s mind snapped. Blurred colors and shapes danced through the slits of her eyes, keeping time with the thrusting of the man crushing her body.
She could hear a whistling sound coming from her nose. Or maybe it was her throat. She wasn’t sure.
And then there was his stench. She could smell him through the overpowering scent of blood invading her senses.
Elle began to gag amidst her panic, her gaze struggling to find something—anything to free her from the nightmare of the man on top of her, defiling her.
Something shiny caught her eye. It lay close by, but her arms were somehow trapped at her sides.
Elle sank her teeth into the hand that covered her face, forcing him to jerk back enough to free her arms. Still, she didn’t let go.
Her arm swung out to her side, her hand slapping around on the tile floor in search of the shiny object she’d seen.
And then her fingers connected with the cold, hard steel of the knife she dropped when she’d been clocked on the side of the head.
Terror lent strength to her determination. She released him with her teeth, gripped that knife handle tightly in her hand, and swung with everything she had.
His silent scream surrounded her, fueling her to stab him again and again.
He rolled to his side, his heavy weight suddenly gone. But Elle didn’t care. She followed him over, continuously burying the blade of that knife anywhere she could reach. His face… His neck… His chest. Even his eyes.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Elle wasn’t sure how much time had passed with her lying in a puddle of warm sticky blood next to Amis Peterson’s mutilated body.
She moaned in pain, rolling as far from him as she could.
Trembling uncontrollably, she attempted to push to her knees, only to slide down into the blood surrounding her.
She had to get up, to find her pants and get out of there before she was discovered. Someone had to have heard the commotion going on in Peterson’s house.
Locating her jeans with her eyes swollen nearly closed proved more difficult than she imagined. But she somehow managed.
Her boots were lying on the kitchen floor, approximately six feet apart, where Amis had obviously tossed them.
Elle sat on that floor, painfully tugging her jeans up her blood-soaked legs. She wasn’t sure if the blood belonged to her, or if it came from Amis’s dozens of wounds. It didn’t matter. She would deal with that later when she got home. If she made it home. The police had probably already been called.
Somehow, she got her boots on next and used the kitchen counter to pull herself to her feet.
Staggering around the body, Elle tucked the knife back inside her boot and turned toward the kitchen door. But she couldn’t simply leave Amis on that floor, her DNA all over his dead body.
With another moan of pain, she limped over to the window to peek out. No lights were on inside the closest neighbor’s house. Which meant maybe they hadn’t heard anything.
Elle pulled the lighter from the pocket of her jeans and staggered to what she assumed to be the living room. She couldn’t be sure in the darkness, looking through the slits of her swollen eyes.
She felt around the room until she located the fabric of a couch and then lit a throw pillow resting there.
Next, she emptied a nearby wastebasket onto an overstuffed chair and ignited that as well.
Feeling her way back to the kitchen, Elle set fire to what curtains she could find in there and then let herself out the same door she’d entered through.
She fell off the porch, crying out from the pain of impact.
A light came on in the house next door.
Panicked, Elle crawled to the corner of the house and then pushed to her feet and ran.
The two-mile run back to Evan’s place felt more like ten, with Elle’s body screaming in torment the entire way. Had it not been for the terror of being caught, she would have never made it home in her condition.
She was about to unlock the door and go inside when she changed her mind and staggered over to Ida Mae’s.
Barely able to lift her hand to knock, Elle rapped on the door with her sore knuckles.
“Elle?” Ida Mae breathed, opening the door in her nightgown. “Oh my God, girl, you’re hurt!”
Elle practically fell inside, her breath punching in and out from her two-mile trek back home. “H-help me.”
Ida Mae sprang into action. “I’m calling 911. I—”
“No,” Elle rasped, stumbling toward the hallway. “No police.”
The older woman followed, her face pale and drawn. “Were you in an accident?”
Elle attempted to shake her head.
“What then?”
“S-shower. I need…a shower.”
Ida Mae hurried ahead, opening the door to the hall bathroom. She turned on the water, then stood wringing her hands. “We need to get you to the hospital, girl. You’re hurt bad.”
Elle began to numbly remove her boots, her voice coming out wooden and hoarse. “I can’t go to the hospital, Ida Mae. I killed him.”
“You killed who?”
Fishing the paper out of the pocket of her jeans, she handed it to the only person in the world she trusted.
The older woman unfolded the paper, her gaze scanning the contents. “You killed this man?”
“Yes,” was all Elle could manage.
Ida Mae looked up, her eyes sharp and assessing. “He did this to you?”
“He beat and raped me.”
Ida Mae’s face paled even more. She covered her mouth with her hand and stared back at Elle in horror.
No one spoke while Elle finished removing her clothes.
And then, Ida Mae whispered, “I’m so sorry, Elenore.”
Elle couldn’t look at her. She pulled back the shower curtain and moved to step under the spray. “Elenore is dead, Ida Mae. She’s never coming back.”
With a nod, Ida began to pick up Elle’s clothes. “I’m going to get rid of these. Is there anything at Evan’s house that can implicate you in any
of the recent murders?”
“Just the pistol and Evan’s laptop.”
Ida Mae nodded. “Where is the pistol?”
The hot water sluicing down Elle’s back seemed to help with her trembling. “In the top drawer of my dresser.”
“I’ll be back in a minute.” And with that, Ida Mae turned and left.
Chapter Forty
Elle stayed with Ida Mae for the next three days, listening to the sounds of Sarah’s laughter from the next room.
Ida Mae had refused to allow the little girl in to see Elle, claiming that she was sick with the flu and therefore contagious.
Elle couldn’t be more grateful.
Listening for the car that would take Sarah to school that morning to leave, Elle crawled out of bed and went in search of pen and paper.
She sat down at the kitchen table and began to write. “Dear Evan…”
By the time Ida Mae returned, Elle had penned a goodbye letter to Evan and sealed it in an envelope.
“It’s good to see you up,” Mrs. Gordon announced, stepping through the back door. “How are you feeling?”
Elle picked at the corner of the placemat in front of her. “I’m sore but better. I’d like to go to the airport today and purchase my plane ticket. I’ll be leaving on the next available flight.”
The older woman paused in her steps. “Are you going to see Evan before you go?”
“No. I said my goodbyes the last time I saw him. Besides, I don’t want him seeing me this way.”
Ida Mae looked up. “I understand. The swelling is gone, but you still have some bruising around your eyes. I’m pretty sure your nose is broken, if not your cheekbone.”
Elle had figured the same thing. She got to her feet. “I’m going next door to pack my things. If I’m not back before two o’clock, will you get Sarah from school?”
“Of course,” Ida Mae gruffly answered.
“Also,” Elle began as she trailed across the kitchen to the back door, “will you see that Evan gets this?” She handed Ida Mae the envelope.
“Are you sure you don’t want to give it to him yourself?”
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