The Return of Rachel Stone

by Amy Cross

  “Have you checked with Bradley?”

  “None of his guns have left the house,” she replied, “and I don't think any of his were the right caliber, anyway. Margaret's smarter than that. By now, she might have hidden the evidence away, somewhere we'll never find it.”

  “Then we're done here,” Nick said with a sigh. “Maybe this is one of those cases where you just have to let go.”

  “Never.”

  “You've got two of the buggers in jail. That's a two-thirds strike rate.”

  “I want her.”

  “But if -”

  “She killed Cassie!” Jo snapped, turning to him. “Right in front of me, in cold blood!”

  “People get away with murder all the time,” he replied.

  She shook her head.

  “They do!” he continued. “For every bastard who ends up behind bars, there are two more who walk away. Maybe that's something you didn't want to admit when you were a cop, but trust me, from my side of the line we see it all the time. Some people just manage to commit the perfect crime, or at least it's perfect enough that they get away with it. The cops might come around to the idea that Margaret killed that girl, but they can't do anything without proof. Do you know how hard it is to prove in court that someone's a murderer?”

  “I was an officer for more than a decade,” Jo replied. “You don't need to lecture me.”

  “Margaret Stone's been faking bad eyesight for years,” he pointed out. “That's the kind of thing that introduces reasonable doubt and -”

  “I know all of this!” she said firmly, momentarily losing her temper before quickly getting her anger back under control. “I don't need you to remind me of the problem here! I need you to help me come up with a solution!”

  “You just have to do your best and move on,” he told her. “If you get seventy-five per cent of the bastards, and the other twenty-five per cent get away, you're still doing pretty well.”

  “I'm not willing to accept that. Not with this case.”

  “Doesn't matter what you're willing to accept,” he muttered, before taking another sip of beer. “Unless you've got that gun with her prints all over it, Margaret Stone's gonna walk away into the sunset. And I need to run this story tomorrow, 'cause otherwise it's gonna leak and I'll lose my exclusive.”

  “I need one more day.”

  “You said I could have the story when it was all over.”

  “It isn't over!”

  “Yeah, it is,” he told her, finishing his beer before checking his watch and getting to his feet. “And now I've got to go to my room and get the final part of the story done. Deadline's at midnight, and that's when this sucker has to go to press. Should be online by about 1am, too. If I don't do it, some other bugger will.” He patted her on the shoulder. “I won't be able to point the finger at Margaret, either. The last thing we need is her suing the paper for libel.”

  The mere suggestion was enough to send a shudder through Jo's chest as she was left sitting alone at the bar. She wanted to grab Nick and force him to give her more time, but deep down she understood why he had to go to print with the story. At the same time, the thought of Margaret Stone sitting at the mansion – with a smile on her face and plans to head off to a new life – was infuriating, and Jo knew she wouldn't be able to just walk away. A moment later, just as she was about to head to her room and do some more research, she heard her new phone buzz. Checking her messages, she saw she'd received one from Sam Bartleby.

  “Heard you solved a big case in Landsley,” the message read. “Nice one, mate. Congrats. You back in this part of the world any time soon?”

  Without answering, she slipped the phone away and took another sip of coffee. Somehow, she was going to make sure that Margaret Stone went to jail for the murder of Cassie Hayes. She knew that without a shadow of a doubt. She just had to figure how she was going to make it happen.

  ***

  “I'm not going back to that house,” Cassie Hayes said, standing in a patch of moonlight, “not ever. I'm not going to see those people again. I'm going to walk away and go back to London, and they'll never hear from me, and this will all be over. And hopefully, eventually, I'll be able to forget I ever met any of them.”

  “You can't be serious,” Jo replied. “Cassie...”

  Her voice trailed off.

  Something was wrong.

  “Deadly,” Cassie replied.

  “After everything that's happened so far?”

  “It's not worth the drama.”

  “But if -”

  “I'll tell you,” Cassie continued, wiping away some tears. “Fine. I don't owe anything to anyone anymore, and it might be for the best if it all just comes tumbling out. I'll tell you all of it, I'll tell you Herbert and Diana Stone's nasty secret, the really nasty secret that makes all their other secrets seem like child's play, and then I'm off.”

  “This isn't right,” Jo whispered, suddenly feeling a rush of fear. She looked around at the dark forest, convinced that somebody was watching them both, before finally turning back to Cassie. “Are you really Rachel Stone?”

  “I -”

  Suddenly a shot rang out, and Cassie turned before letting out a gasp and collapsing. Racing toward her, Jo dropped to her knees, but a moment later she heard the roar of an engine nearby. Looking along the empty road, she spotted a black-clad figure turning a motorcycle around, and she briefly spotted a gun as the driver began to speed away.

  “Cassie?” she stammered, looking back down at the girl. She waited for a reply, before grabbing her shoulder and gently rolling her over, only to gasp and pull back as she saw that a bullet had struck the side of the girl's head and blasted out the other side, splattering the tarmac with blood and bone.

  Cassie's dead eyes stared up at the gray afternoon sky.

  “I should have saved you!” Jo sobbed, her whole body trembling as she pulled back and then sat numb on the forest's damp floor. “I should have done something! I should have stopped it all before this happened!”

  She looked down at her shaking hands, and a slow, gradual sense of utter impotence began to rise through her body. The fact that Jack Stone and Natalie Briggs had been apprehended meant nothing at that moment, not when Margaret Stone was still a free woman. She could almost hear Margaret's laughter echoing in her mind, and for a few seconds she felt tempted to march straight over to the Stone mansion and grab Margaret by the neck, and force a confession out of her. Slowly, however, she realized she could hear a very faint creaking sound nearby. When she turned to look over at Cassie's body, she saw not a slumped corpse but, instead, a dark figure standing silhouetted against the moonlit forest.

  “I died because of you,” Cassie said, with blood running down her face. “Then again, maybe I shouldn't be so surprised by that. People have a habit of dying because of you, don't they?”

  “I didn't know we were being followed,” Jo stammered, too horrified to stop staring up at the girl's dead eyes.

  “Always so full of excuses.”

  “No, please, I -”

  “Grace Clark,” Cassie continued. “That was her name, wasn't it? The little girl who died because of you.”

  That name sent an immediate shudder through Jo's chest.

  “Poor, sad Grace Clark,” Cassie said again, this time with a faint smile. “Oh, but wait. Everyone said that wasn't your fault, didn't they? They said you were distracted, that you weren't thinking straight. Poor, pathetic Joanna Mason, the woman who was being eaten away by cancer. Yeah, I remember now. Everyone was happy to make excuses for you. And meanwhile, little Grace was dead on a slab, getting cut open and -”

  “No!” Jo shouted, but there were tears in her eyes now and she was trembling with fear.

  “Nick was right,” Cassie added. “Two out of three isn't bad. And Margaret probably won't kill anyone else. I mean, she might do, she might not, but we can always hope she won't. And even if she does, it won't be your fault, because you're poor, pathetic Joanna Mason, and
nobody wants to be mean to the poor bitch who's dying of cancer.”

  “I'm going to stop her!” Jo replied through gritted teeth. “I'm going to find a way!”

  “You are?”

  “I just need more time!”

  “You don't have more time. The story's going to be all over the front pages tomorrow.”

  “I can still get Margaret!”

  “Then maybe you should start by waking up.”

  Jo opened her mouth to reply, before realizing that the world around her seemed to be swimming slightly. She looked toward the moonlit trees and saw that their tall, straight trunks were starting to shimmer, and a moment later she realized she could hear a sound over her shoulder. Turning, she looked toward another part of the forest and listened for a few seconds to what sounded like a baby crying for help.

  “You can't help me now,” Cassie whispered into Jo's ear, while blood dribbled from her shattered head, “but you can still help her.”

  “You mean...”

  “Rachel,” Cassie continued, as her smile grew. “You can still help Rachel. But first, you have to wake up.”

  “I -”

  Suddenly realizing that her eyes were closed, Jo sat up straight and found herself back in her room above the pub. She could hear people downstairs, still drinking and playing music, and then she looked around the darkened room and realized she must have fallen asleep in the chair while she was going through some notes. Startled by the vivid dream that was still ringing through her thoughts, she reached over and switched on a lamp, and then she rubbed her hands against her face as she tried to pull herself together.

  And then she heard the baby crying outside her window.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Today

  “Where are you?” Jo whispered as she hurried along the dark street, following the sound of the baby's cries but never quite getting close enough. “Rachel, why won't you let me see you?”

  She knew this was insane.

  She knew there was no way the ghost of Rachel Stone was calling to her.

  At the same time, she could hear a baby crying, and she knew she had to follow. If she was losing her mind, she had to know.

  Spotting movement up ahead, she saw a woman pulling a box of glasses out from a nearby house, getting them ready for the recycling truck in the morning. After a moment the woman glanced in her direction, and a flicker of concern crossed her face as she watched Jo getting closer. Nearby, a loud TV was filling the air with the sounds of a game-show, almost drowning out the sound of the baby's distant cries.

  Almost, but not quite.

  “Are you alright there, love?” the woman asked as Jo passed. “Are you lost?”

  “I'm trying to find where it's coming from,” Jo replied cautiously. “Do you know if anyone near here has a newborn baby?”

  “Huh?”

  “The crying!” Jo hissed. “Do you know where it's coming from?”

  “I don't hear anyone crying,” the woman replied. “Are you sure it's not just on the TV?”

  Jo hesitated for a moment, worried that perhaps she was imagining the whole thing, but a moment later she realized she could still hear the baby over the sound of the game-show.

  “You really don't hear a baby right now?” she asked the woman.

  “We've got Pointless on a bit loud, maybe.”

  “There's a baby!” Jo continued, starting to feel a little desperate now. “I can hear a baby crying!”

  “Right.” The woman hesitated, clearly a little nonplussed and confused. “Are you sure you're alright? Have you maybe had a couple of pints too many?”

  “I'm fine.” Turning away from her, Jo continued to make her way along the street until finally she reached the next junction. Stopping for a moment, she looked all around, but the baby's cries seemed to echo against the walls of the stone houses until finally the sound shifted and she suddenly realized that the baby was at the far end of a street that led toward the edge of town.

  Instinctively, she set off after the noise.

  A while later, having passed the last house and headed off along a dark country lane, Jo could still hear the baby crying in the distance. No matter how far she walked, however, the sound seemed to always stay a little way ahead, as if the baby was being carried through the night and used to lure her far from Landsley. She couldn't stop following, however; not even when she had to head off-road and clamber over a fence, and not even when she found herself following a path that led alongside a high white wall at the edge of the Stone estate.

  And then suddenly she stopped as she finally realized that the child's cries seemed much, much closer.

  Spotting something on the ground, she took a couple of steps forward and then crouched down. A portable speaker had been left in the mud, partially forced into the ground but with enough still poking out for it to be impossible to miss. Reaching down, Jo picked the speaker up and saw immediately that it was identical to the one that Nick had found, and when she looked at the rear of the casing she found a series of switches, one of which seemed to reverse the direction of the transmission. She flicked the switch, cutting the child's cries off, and then she flicked it again. The cry returned.

  Looking around, she half-expected to find somebody watching her, but there was no-one in sight.

  “What is this for?” she called out.

  Silence.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she continued, looking back down at the speaker. Slowly, she began to realize why the other speaker had been in the Stones' garden. “It was a signal,” she whispered. “It was a signal between Cassie and...”

  She hesitated, before setting the speaker aside and starting to use her hands to dig in the spot where it had been left. The ground was damp and cold, but the soil seemed to have been recently disturbed and Jo continued to dig for a few minutes until she'd made a hole several feet deep. Still finding nothing, she almost gave up, before deciding to try for a little while longer. She felt certain that the speaker had been used to lure her to this particular spot next to the wall, so she kept digging and digging until finally her fingertips bumped against something hard and cold and metallic.

  Even before she pulled it loose, she knew she'd found the gun.

  Holding the weapon up in the moonlight, she could immediately tell that it would be a good fit for the weapon that had been used to kill Cassie. She set it aside and continued digging, but there was nothing else in the hole and finally she picked the gun up and got to her feet. As her heart began pounding, she turned the gun over and saw that the metal was badly scratched, almost burned, and she was starting to realize that it must have been carefully, extensively cleaned before it was buried. Fingerprints were unlikely, but at least she'd be able to start tracing the weapon, which would hopefully allow her to prove a connection to Margaret Stone.

  Turning, she looked around at the dark trees, waiting for any hint of movement.

  “Is this what you wanted me to find?” she asked, hoping against hope that she might receive a reply. “I might need more. I'm going to need to prove that she used this. Just having it won't be enough.”

  She waited.

  Silence.

  “Who are you?” she called out. “I'm here to help! I'm -”

  Before she could finish, she spotted a hint of movement in the distance. Somebody was watching from the dark forest, although the figure quickly turned and sprinted out of view.

  “Stop!”

  Racing after the figure, Jo clattered between the trees, desperately trying to keep up. After a couple of minutes, however, she stopped and struggled to get her breath back, while looking around and seeing that there was no sign of anyone.

  “I just want to talk to you!” she yelled. “Please, just let me talk to you!”

  Again, she waited.

  Again, the only answer was silence.

  The walk back into town was long, but she kept up a quick pace and eventually she reached the pub. The landlord had just started closing up, and
he made a few comments to Jo about her having been out late, but she barely had time to reply as she headed to her room. Focusing on the gun and the speaker she'd recovered from the forest, she slipped through the door and headed over to the desk, where she set the new discoveries down before reaching for her notebook.

  And that's when she saw her phone.

  Her old phone, the one that had gone missing when she'd first arrived in Landsley. The one that had seemingly vanished from her pocket.

  Picking it up, she found that the battery was low, but the phone had been left with the screen unlocked. The photo app was running, and she was surprised to see that someone had been taking a lot of pictures. Bringing the first image up, she saw a blurry picture of the dark forest, followed by another and then another. Just as she was starting to think there was no point swiping through them all, she found a picture that showed a figure far off in the forest, and she realized that someone had been taking photos while following a figure in the middle of the night.

  After checking several more images, she came to a video file and immediately pressed play.

  The video was jerky and wobbly at first, but after a moment it stabilized and she saw a figure stopping next to the white wall, in the same spot where she'd found the gun just a couple of hours earlier. A moment later the video zoomed in, revealing the unmistakable features of Margaret Stone. Someone could be heard breathing close to the phone's microphone, but Jo was focused on the footage of Margaret kneeling on the ground and using a trowel to start digging a hole. The video continued like this for several more minutes, showing Margaret digging and digging, until finally she set the trowel aside and took something from her pocket.

  The gun.

  “Got you,” Jo whispered, watching as Margaret set the gun in the hole and then began to cover it with soil. “Margaret Stone, this might just be enough to -”

  Suddenly the file ended, but a second video started automatically, this time showing Margaret walking across a bright, sunny field. The video didn't follow her this time. Instead, Margaret was seen disappearing into the distance, before the video wobbled as the unseen recorder hurried across the field. Jo watched impatiently, and then she felt a flash of relief as the video focused on a motorbike that had been left hidden in a bush. A pale hand reached into the frame and pulled part of the bush aside, giving Jo a better view of the bike, and then the video ended abruptly.