“And how, exactly, does that help you conclude that the victim died of blood loss?” Manny questioned.
“Blood doesn’t burn, Detective. Thanks to the firefighters, I can still see that there’s blood all over the wood that was near the body. I also noticed what might be a small cut on the C1. I’ll need to look at it harder under lab conditions, but yes, if you forced me to make a conjecture right now, I’d say the boy’s throat was cut, and cut deeply. Death would have been very quick. The fire was most likely set to burn the evidence. There is one thing I find odd, though.”
“And what might that be, Doctor?”
Rather than answer outright, Dr. Winherst lowered herself back down and directed a finger toward the body’s feet. Manny squatted alongside her and let his eyes follow to where her finger was pointing. It looked like a large mound of burnt gelatin: a sickening pile of black, red, and purple mush.
“What am I looking at, Doctor?” Manny asked.
“Unless I’m mistaken, that’s a burnt pile made up of the boy’s entrails; stomach, liver, intestines, that sort of thing.”
“And what’s so strange about that?”
“The position,” she retorted stiffly. “The woodpile collapsed, but slowly, according to the firefighters, and the body stayed in the same relative position that it is now. So if the body was laying on its right side, whatever entrails were left unconsumed by the fire should have spilled out down here.” She pointed to the ground in front of the skeleton’s torso. “There’s no logical reason they should be down by the feet and behind the body.”
“What about an illogical reason?” Manny mumbled under his breath. He didn’t mean for anyone to hear, but Dr. Winherst’s head snapped around toward him.
“What was that?” she said, less than kindly.
“Well, if there isn’t a natural, physical reason that those organs should be there, would it make sense to say that someone removed them and intentionally put them there?”
“I suppose that could be one explanation. I’m pretty much wrapped up here. I’ll be in touch with my report within the next twenty-four hours or so.” She stood, stripped the glove off her right hand and offered it to Manny to shake. There was no discernible emotion in her eyes.
Manny nodded and grasped her hand. He turned away from the ash pile and looked toward the back of the yard. Along the fence line there was another firewood pile with row upon row of stacked logs. The pile was very neat and even, except for right at the end, under the branches of a lone tree at the fence’s corner. Here, the wood had clearly been disturbed, and pieces had been hauled away, creating a stair effect that stood in stark contrast to the rest of the pile’s neat symmetry. Manny paced the length of the stacked wood slowly. It was all the same wood, and he was certain that it would match the kind used to burn the body. The only question is, did whoever did this know the wood would be here, or did they just get lucky?
As he stood thinking about this, he noticed a yellowish stain in the grass not two feet from him. He bent down for a closer look. It was evident by the patterns in the grass that whatever had been there had been raked up by hand, most likely the previous night. Manny bent down further and put his nose to the ground. The odor that he detected was faint, but what was there was sour smelling.
“Hey, Doc,” he called before deciding against the informal. “Dr. Winherst, would you come over here for a second?”
Within moments, she came up behind him, and he indicated that she should squat down as he was.
“I don’t seem to see any evidence markers over here,” he said, feeling more confident now that he was certain he had found something she’d missed. The potential shift in the balance of power felt good, but he reminded himself to stay professional. He pointed to the pale yellow residue. “Does that look like vomit that someone maybe tried to clean up to you?”
The Doctor’s dark brown eyes widened, and her face flashed with anger and frustration. “Emmsley, get over here!” she yelled over her shoulder toward the house. Within seconds, a thin, young man with sandy brown hair and glasses ran up to them. He had the expression of a student being called into the principal’s office.
“Derrick Emmsley, my assistant,” she said to Manny, gesturing at the boy. “Derrick, you were supposed to make a thorough sweep of the entire yard while I was examining the body. How is it that Detective Benitez here found that?” Her voice hit its crescendo as her hand shot downward and pointed at the vomit.
“I, uh . . . I,” Emmsley began to stutter, his face flushing crimson. It became clear almost immediately that he knew there was no appropriate response. “I’m sorry, Dr. Winherst,” he said and hung his head.
“Mark, photograph, bag, and tag,” she snapped as she stood. “And fast. We need to get the body and the samples back to the lab. I’ll be over by the vans. Find me when you’re done so we can get out of here!”
She didn’t even wait for the boy to nod a response before she turned around and began to stalk around the side of the house back toward the front yard. Manny stood and looked at the shell-shocked assistant as he proceeded with his instructions. Poor kid, he thought as he jogged the few paces needed to return to Dr. Winherst’s side. The last piece of evidence had finally given him the beginning of an insight into the psyche of who could have done this. She seemed to sense his excitement.
“Is there something you’d like to discuss with me, Detective?” she asked blandly.
“Not really,” he said as coolly as possible, “it’s just, what kind of person has the mental makeup to murder a child and try to incinerate the body like that, yet has such a weak stomach that they’d throw up while committing the crime?”
“That vomit could have come from anywhere,” she retorted. “It could have been from the dog for all we know. Let the science speak, and base your hypothesis on that, Detective.”
“You might be right,” Manny said in his friendliest voice. Never mind that the family doesn’t have any pets, Doctor. They were nearly at the vans out front and the noise from the crowd was starting to make it hard to hear. He leaned in toward her a little. “One more thing.”
“What?” she said curtly, clearly not wanting to spend any more time talking to him.
“You guys have the means to compare DNA over there at County, right?”
“We can compare one sample to another and see if there is a match, yes. But we’re a small county, Detective. If we want to do anything more complicated than that, like compare it to the Federal Database or something, you’re going to have to make a call up to St. Louis and turn the investigation over to the FBI.”
“Well we wouldn’t want that, would we?” When they reached the vans, Manny pulled open the passenger’s side door for Dr. Winherst. She rolled her eyes and frowned, but hopped in nonetheless. “Let’s keep that last part between us. Hopefully I’ll have a suspect sooner, rather than later.”
She nodded indifferently and grabbed the inside handle, pulling the door out of his grasp and closing it. She was such a cold woman, he was surprised he didn’t get frostbitten shaking her hand. Manny shook his head again as he turned from the van and nearly slammed into Derrick Emmsley running breathlessly from the backyard, camera swinging from his neck, carrying the last evidence bag.
“Careful with that, pal,” Manny said as cheerfully as he could. He certainly didn’t want to add to the young man’s agitation. He smiled and laid his hand on Derrick’s shoulder. “Thanks for getting that last piece of evidence so quick. You’re doing good work. Keep it up. Your boss will see it in due time.” He gave the kid a quick pat on the shoulder and continued to head to the front door. There was more to be learned from the family, he just knew it. It would be a hard interview, but if he was going to get to the bottom of this, Detective Manny Benitez would have to harden himself and do what had to be done.
FIVE
Maureen’s eyes opened of their own acco
rd. She didn’t want to wake up, but her mind betrayed her and wouldn’t let her stay asleep. She raised her head off the couch cushions and looked around the room as the apartment slowly came into focus. She swung her legs around and felt the floor rise up to meet her feet. It seemed to sway underneath her for a moment. The effects of last night. Maureen laid her elbows on her thighs and rested her head in her hands, slowly rubbing her palms into her eyes. Last night’s headache had abated, and now all that was left were the horrifying images from her nightmare. Front in her mind was the upside down U. Even going back to her childhood, letters and numbers would always be the things that stuck longer in her mind after the other visions and sensations had blended into little more than a swirl of impressions left on her psyche. Her mother and the nuns always told her that what she had locked in her head was the work of pure evil. The way she saw it, they were the ones who were evil; they were the ones who left visible scars. But since she couldn’t change the past, she could only hope to outrun it for as long as possible.
She pushed herself to her feet, trudged across the room to her bedside, and groaned as she saw 9:33 on the clock radio. There were still five more hours before she had to leave for work. She switched off her alarm and headed to the refrigerator, grabbing a can of vegetable juice from the door and drinking it down. She knew what she should do was run to the grocery store for some bread and maybe some milk and peanut butter, but that seemed like a chore today. It was going to be another night of french fries and a chicken sandwich behind the bar.
Maureen turned back to her bed and stooped down to pull out two dark-colored duffel bags from under it. They were filled with all of her clothes, her flip phone and charger, her IDs, and nearly $1900 in cash. She was ready to leave when need be, but she had intended to save up a few hundred more to get her car running properly again.
She’d only bought the old pile that spring. The doors were rusty, the air conditioning had never worked, and it was creeping up on two hundred thousand miles, but it had only cost her seven hundred bucks. She knew someone who could get hold of a retired West Virginia license plate for her, which cost five times what it would have cost to register the title, but Marie Adams was already supplying her with her medication, and Marianne Anderson had an eviction and three arrests on her record, so Maureen Allen had to keep her profile as low as possible, and therefore skipped the registration. The only reason she stopped in Sycamore Hills was the fact that the temperature gauge had indicated it was overheating, and she didn’t want it to break down on the side of the highway. Within a day, she’d found a help wanted sign in a bar window and a for rent sign in an old building. She wasn’t sure how long it would take to save cash and fix the car, so she had settled in.
But now that the nightmares had found her again, she prepared to pack up her life and run. The problem of her car remained, though. The grubby garage owner she had left it with was charging her an arm and a leg for the part he insisted was needed to fix it. Based on his quote, it would cost almost her entire cash reserve. Not that it mattered anyway. Though he swore the part was ordered over two weeks ago, it had yet to arrive. She wasn’t going anywhere by car.
On her first day in town, she found out where the nearest coach station was in case she needed to make a quick exit. Unfortunately for her, the station was nearly twenty miles away with only the highway to take her there. None of the local buses went there. She’d have to walk, and a person walking on the highway, weighed down with two bags like she would be, would rouse quite a bit of suspicion or, at the very least, unwanted attention from handsy truck drivers. No, that wouldn’t do either. Maureen knew she’d have to find a way out, and she would spend the next few days looking for it, but for now, circumstance had trapped her in this town with the nightmares.
As she calculated all of this in her mind, she grabbed a pair of running shorts, a T-shirt, and a sports bra and shoved the bags back into their place. She changed into her running attire and ran into the bathroom, grabbing her hair tie and pulling her honey-blonde tresses back into a ponytail. She spent only a moment in front of the mirror to mark the bags under her eyes and decided that she needed to buy a little tube of concealer before work tonight. She grabbed a five-dollar bill and her apartment key from the dresser, slipped on her socks and running shoes, tucking the cash into her left sock, and jogged out of the door, locking it and stashing the key behind the fire extinguisher in the stairwell. Then she raced down the stairs and out into the sunlight.
The air was damp and stifling. It was supposed to have rained the previous night but, since the humidity hung thick in the air, it seemed not a drop had fallen. Maureen picked up her speed until she found the pace she liked and settled into her rhythm. The old buildings of the town’s former commerce area rushed past in her peripheral. At the height of post-war America, it would have provided the majority of the jobs to the local residents. But those were the grandparents of the current generation. The factories had closed, and those jobs had moved on and left the buildings standing. Small businesses on Main Street still provided a good living for some of the locals, but most commuted to the surrounding cities to ply their careers in cold office buildings. Still, it was more pleasant than a lot of towns in middle America that Maureen had lived in.
She hit Main Street and veered left at the courthouse to make her way over to the subdivision about a mile down the road. She had decided to run her usual route through town, and though she never measured it, she knew it should take her about half an hour. Half an hour to get lost in thought. Half an hour to run from the nightmares.
Her breath steadied into its rhythm, and the sound of her shoes on the concrete beat in time, hypnotizing her into that familiar state where she couldn’t help but let her mind drift back through the years. Thoughts of the previous night awakened images of other nightmares, buried deep in her mind but never erased from her memory. She recalled the monster that would come in the night to her companions at the hospital when she was a girl: a lecherous ghoul overcome by desire, lifting the bed sheets and nightgowns to slither his hand up the warm young legs. She had watched through the eyes of a brute whose hands had held down the wrists of her schoolmate. She had seen every ounce of the fear reflected in the tears pouring from her eyes and had felt the violent thrusts as if it were her own hips doing the wretched deed. When the girl had wrenched a hand free and tore off the white collar from around her assailant’s neck, it was Maureen’s own hand that felt the sting of its strike on the young woman’s cheek.
She kept running. The memory of a young black man tied to a chair flashed in her mind. His head was slumped, and the wall behind him was covered in blood and brain matter. It wasn’t her own hand that had pulled the trigger, but she had again watched through the eyes of the man the hand belonged to. And then, of course, there was the first nightmare: arms that were not hers carrying the little boy and leaving him in the woods, buried under a pile of leaves. The picture of Braden’s face—peaceful, as if asleep—was still an image that refused to fade, though it had been more than twenty-five years.
A daughter who sees with the eyes of evil. Her mother’s voice snapped her back to the present. She had nearly reached the end of Main Street when she came to a stop. Her eyes were fixed on the subdivision sign no more than four hundred yards up the road. A prickle began to climb her spine as a dark foreboding hung in the atmosphere and held her in place. She turned around to look back down Main Street. Everything was silent. Main Street was never what one would call bustling but at that moment, there wasn’t a soul to be seen, and not so much as a breath of wind broke the air. It was as if she were the only person in the world.
Maureen raced from the dead street toward the subdivision. When she passed the stone entry sign and turned down the first street, the silence that had followed her from Main Street was shattered. It was broken by the overlapping of dozens of voices singing a chorus of confusion. Maureen slowed her run as she approached the mass of people
and vehicles. Her eyes moved from the county vans to the yellow police tape around the yard and to the white colonial home with the red door she had run past nearly every day for the past two weeks. The blue and red lights of the police cars were dancing on the side of the house. As Maureen continued to look on, her stomach dropped as another sight came into view.
From around the corner of the house came a stretcher with a black bag on it, pushed by two men in uniform. Maureen edged closer for a better look, while still keeping to the outer edge of the crowd. The officers loaded their cargo into the back of one of the vans as a young man in a jacket and tie came over from the house to speak to them. She watched as the man made a few gestures to the other two, who nodded back politely before closing the rear doors of the van and heading to the front seats. The man in the jacket and tie moved back toward the house, making a few notes in a small notebook he produced from his pocket. As he approached the front door of the house, his eyes raised to look out at the crowd. His gaze met her own.
Maureen broke eye contact within a second. Before she knew what she was doing, she began to back away. A cold sensation raised the hairs on her spine. The sickening suspicion that another of her nightmares had been brought to life struck her like a bolt of lightning. She had no choice; she was a slave to her feet and her instincts. She turned and ran.
Within moments, Maureen had left the subdivision and was racing back toward Main Street. All thought of completing her circuit was gone. The only thought in her mind was to head straight back to her apartment and take a pill to calm herself. Her eye contact with the man in the jacket replayed in her mind. His gaze held an intensity and determination that she was unfamiliar with in a man as young as he was. Did he see her turn and run the way she did? She had to admit, it was a mistake to have done so.
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