by Willow Rose
"How do you get out of here?"
"You don't," the person answered.
"Excuse me?" Coraline said.
"You don't."
"B-but…I have to…go."
"No, you don't," sounded the answer, eerily calm.
"But…I…"
The person rose and approached Coraline with fast steps. The look in those deeply angry eyes made her wince and back up.
"W-what do you want from me? W-why am I here?"
"Because I want you to be," the person said.
"I…I want to go home," Coraline said. "Please."
She backed up further till she felt the stony wall behind her. The person came closer and closer, then lifted a hand up, almost threateningly, and Coraline winced again, her eyes locking with theirs.
To her surprise, the hand touched her cheek gently, then caressed it, and her shoulders came down once again. Maybe this person didn't want to harm her after all? Despite the look in those deep-set eyes. Despite the fact that this was a room with no windows or doors. Despite the fact that she felt much like a prisoner.
Coraline exhaled, relieved, just in time for the fist to slam into her cheek so hard she knocked her head against the stony wall before sliding to the ground. The next punches that followed felt like a rain of pain, and soon she didn't feel anything anymore.
Chapter 46
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
Emily was holding her cup between her hands. I felt like a pig sitting there eating my bagel and scrambled eggs, while she had nothing. I kept wanting to ask her again if she was certain she didn't want anything, but I didn't want to ruin the mood. We were doing so well.
"So, what did you find out?" she finally asked, breaking the ice. "While I slept?"
Happy to talk about something else, something that interested both of us, I pulled out my notes. I wiped egg off my lips with a napkin, then started to read out loud.
"First of all, I found tattoos on all three of them. They all looked to be recently made."
"That can't be a coincidence, then," she said and sipped her coffee.
"Exactly," I said, then continued, "All three victims had their tongues cut out as well."
"Which tells us the tongue must have some significance to the killer," she concluded.
I gave her an impressed look. "Yes, but what?"
She shrugged. "He wants to deprive them of the ability to speak, maybe? To silence them?"
"Sounds plausible," I said. "It could also refer to a traumatic event in his early life. In all three cases, it was done while they were still alive. The cause of death in all three cases was suffocation as the lungs were filled with blood.”
Emily looked up from her cup. "So, they choked on their own blood?"
I nodded. "I am afraid so."
"Yak."
"I know. It's nasty."
She took another sip. She had that pensive look in her eyes like a million thoughts were running through her mind at once.
"So, he kidnaps them, cuts out their tongues, and lets them bleed to death. Anything else? Sexual abuse?"
I shook my head. "Not according to the autopsy."
"So, the mutilation itself is what gets him off. That's the reason he keeps doing it. He's perfecting it, doing it over and over again. Plus, he has a type; all the girls are similar-looking and have the same origin; they are all American. That must mean he's killing the same person over and over again. Maybe because the real person who is the subject of his anger can't be killed or already has been killed."
"How do you know so much about this stuff?" I asked, quite surprised.
"I’ve been reading a lot. You have many books around the house about this stuff, and then there is a lot about it online."
"So, you've been reading about profiling serial killers just for the fun of it?" I asked.
She shrugged. "I guess."
"I see," I said, impressed, and looked down at my notes, then back at my daughter. "And what do you make of all this, then?"
She chewed on my question a few seconds, then said:
"The tattoos. I think we need to take a closer look at them. At first, I thought it was because they had all been with the same tattoo artist before they were kidnapped, and that was where he had spotted them, but Nancy Elkington's mom said that Nancy would never go into such a place and her friend confirmed that. I don't think that they had them made willingly. I say the key is in the tattoos."
I leaned back in my chair, feeling one of those proud dad moments. I couldn't believe my daughter was so good at all this stuff.
My stuff.
"Then let's do just that," I said and grabbed the laptop.
Chapter 47
Bahamas, May 1984
It was time for Dylan's bath, and Carla asked the girl to help her out. She was busy in the kitchen getting a big dinner ready for twenty guests that The White Lady had invited that same night. Even though Carla had all the girls in the house working on it, there were still not enough hands, she complained.
So, the girl drew Dylan's bath, filling the tub in his bathroom upstairs, carefully testing the temperature to make sure it wasn't too hot or too cold. Dylan was sitting on the tiles where the girl had told him to sit, staring at his feet. His toes were dirty from playing outside, something The White Lady hated when he did, but he ran out there anyway. The White Lady had seen him out there and screamed for the girls to make sure he was cleaned up for tonight when all her important guests arrived.
The girl didn't really understand why the son seemed to be more important than the father, who wasn't there and wouldn't be joining The White Lady for dinner with the important guests. Come to think of it, he hadn't been around for months, and several of the girls in the kitchen were whispering about him, saying that he had left, that he finally had enough of all her yelling and bossing him around.
"Do I have to?" Dylan asked. "Do I have to take a bath?"
The girl nodded. "Your mom says so."
Knowing there was no way to get around his mother's orders, Dylan got undressed and stood naked in front of her. The girl looked down at that thing between his legs, then chuckled. It was the first time she had ever seen one of those, and it was quite tiny and wrinkled, she thought. Nothing much to brag about in her opinion.
Seeing her amusement, Dylan covered himself up and blushed, while she helped him get into the warm water and sink his body down.
The girl then grabbed the soap and started to scrub his back and, lifting his arms, she cleaned his armpits and stomach, rubbing them roughly while images of Gabrielle's dead body being carried out of the shed rushed through her inner eyes, like a movie of deep horror.
The girl tried not to, but every time she was near The White Lady, she would think about it. She could feel that anger rise inside of her and found it hard to hold it back. A couple of months earlier, she had ended up losing it and screaming at her at the top of her lungs. The White Lady had stared at her, eyes wide, when Carla had rushed in, grabbed her by the hand, and dragged her out of the living room, apologizing to The White Lady, telling her she would take care of it and punish the girl properly.
Back in the kitchen, she had scolded the girl and told her never to do that again, never to raise her voice at The White Lady again if she wanted to stay alive. The girl had listened to her words, but they hadn't taken root. She couldn't help herself. Every time she was near her, she was filled with such anger, she wasn't sure she would be able to hold it back much longer.
"Ouch," Dylan said and winced.
The girl was pulled out of her train of thought when the boy whimpered and felt his armpit where she had been scrubbing so hard it was turning red and blistering.
Chapter 48
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
"So, I have found all the tattoos and written them down," I said and showed Emily my notepad. "They're all words. Look."
"We know that Nancy's was 'Joy,'" Emily said and came up behind me to look over my shoulder.
> "If we take them in the order they were killed, then we have Laurie Roberts. On her back was a tattoo with the word PLEASE. She was followed by Annie Turner who had the word PANIC on her back. And finally, we have Jill Cardigan who had the word CHURCH tattooed to her chest."
"And Ella Maria?" Emily asked.
I shook my head. "I haven't been able to find any pictures of hers, and it's not described anywhere in any reports. Maybe it was in a place where it was well hidden. We would need to see the body to find it, and that might be a little hard by now."
"Okay, so we leave her out of it. For now. So far, we have the words Please, Panic, Church and finally, Joy," Emily said. "Those are all very odd words."
"I know, and it would be easy just to conclude that they're random, but I think they must mean something," I said.
"How come this wasn't a part of the investigation?" she asked. "How could they have missed this?"
I shrugged and put my feet up on the chair next to me. "Maybe the police here didn't think it was significant. They might not even have mentioned it to the parents."
"Or maybe they did, and the parents felt embarrassed that their daughters had a tattoo like that, maybe they thought that she had been hiding it from them and then just never said anything," she added.
"I wonder if there's a connection between these words," I said pensively.
"We can try and put them together in different orders to see if they create something, if the killer is sending us a message," Emily said.
I did as she told me to and put the words in random order, then switched them around, but nothing seemed to make any sense. I rubbed my forehead and finished my coffee that had gone cold when my cell suddenly started to ring. I picked it up.
It was Commissioner Maycock.
"Great news!"
"How so?" I asked, surprised to hear him so cheerful.
"We have caught the killer."
"Excuse me?"
"Nancy Elkington's killer. We have him in custody. He was bragging to all his friends, telling them about the body in the swampy waters. That's how we found him."
"Found who?" I asked, sensing this was going somewhere terrible.
"The boy. You were right. He did exist. His name is Jamie Davis. He's a local boy."
"You arrested the boy who found the body and then ran away?" I asked, almost unable to breathe.
"Yes indeed. He confessed to everything."
"Even to cutting her tongue out?" I asked.
The commissioner went quiet for a second. "Well, yes, of course. Anyway, we are on our way to tell her parents. I should think they would be very happy. Case is closed. You're free to leave if you need to."
"I…are you sure about this?" I asked, wondering how on earth this man could be so terribly blind.
"Yes, yes. I have a signed confession."
"And what about all the other killings? The boy can't be any more than fifteen, seventeen at the most."
"What other killings?" the commissioner asked, then added a tsk. "Just be happy, will you? Case is closed. We can all sleep well now. Weather is good. Sun is shining. Go chill on the beach."
I hung up, thinking that if he thought I was able to sleep well or even chill anywhere after he yet again had arrested an innocent for what this serial killer was doing, then he was fooling himself.
I looked at Emily with a deep sigh.
"Now what?" she asked.
"I think I need to visit Juan Garcia in prison. After three years in jail, he might be willing finally to speak."
Chapter 49
Bahamas, October 2018
Coraline could hardly open her eyes. They were swollen and painful. She woke up lying on the tiles, still in the windowless room. Coraline sat up. She tasted blood in her mouth. She wiped her nose and realized she had a nosebleed. Coraline started to sob.
How did she end up in this mess?
You trusted the wrong guy. Meghan told you this would happen, didn't she? She warned you, but you wouldn't listen.
Coraline thought about her friend. Would she know that she was missing by now? Coraline had the day off, so it wasn't like she would be missed at the club. She lived alone, so no one would miss her at home either. Would her mother maybe call? It wasn't very likely since she hadn't called Coraline much since she met her new husband, Greg.
Greg was a software developer with his own company and hundreds of people working for him. He was a self-made man, who had worked so much in his younger years that now he had just sold his company and received almost a hundred million dollars for what he had spent the past ten years building. So now, he wanted to see the world, he had told Coraline's mother when they met through a dating app.
"And I want a companion."
It hadn't taken Coraline's mother many seconds to say yes, and now, that was all they did. Travel all over the world to exotic places, forgetting all about her daughter and everything else back home.
It wasn't that Coraline didn't think her mother deserved this newfound happiness; she totally did. Her dad hadn't exactly treated her well in the divorce, and she had been miserable for many years. She had then turned to drinking and, soon after, Coraline had seen a side to her mother that she didn't care for much. That side was gone now, so that was the good news. The bad news was that Coraline missed her mother and now that she had gotten herself into some deep trouble, she needed her more than ever.
"There has to be a way out," Coraline mumbled to herself as she got back on her feet. She tried to look through her beat up eyes, to search for an exit somewhere, but all she could see were walls and more walls. At the end of the room was a bathroom but that had no windows either.
"If there's a way in, there's a way out," she reassured herself, walking into the bathroom and looking around. In the ceiling, she spotted a ventilation duct. Could she possibly open that and crawl up there?
Coraline stared at it, then down at her body. She was short, but not exactly light. Over the past year, she had gained a lot of weight on her butt and thighs. Her arms weren't strong enough to pull her up. She'd have to find something she could stack, or maybe there was a chair that could help her reach?
Coraline looked around inside the room again, then found one by the corner. It wasn't a very tall chair, more like a fancy recliner, one of those designer ones you only saw in magazines.
Coraline grabbed it with her bruised hands, then pulled it, straining her back. She placed it directly underneath the duct and then stood on the chair. She reached her arms up toward the ceiling. Coraline breathed in excitement.
If she stood on her tippy toes, she could touch the duct.
Chapter 50
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
Juan Garcia's brown eyes rested on me across the table. We were sitting in one of the barren rooms at the prison the next day. It was early in the afternoon, but in there, it might as well have been in the middle of the night. I wondered when Juan had last seen daylight or even felt the sun on his skin.
I had just told him I didn't believe he killed those three women.
Juan Garcia's brown eyes stared at me from a dirty face. I wondered from the smell of him if showers were even offered.
"It doesn't matter."
"I think it does," I said. "I’ve looked into all the three cases, and they bear too many similarities to two recent cases, which were committed after you were incarcerated. I think the killer is still out there and you were just used as a scapegoat, giving them someone to blame."
Juan smiled an almost toothless smile, then shook his head. "You're looking for justice? There is no such thing."
"Yes, there is," I said. "If you help me."
"How? How can I possibly help you? Look where I am."
I leaned forward. "You signed a confession; why?"
Juan shook his head and leaned back. "It was a very long time ago."
"I have a feeling you still know why you did it," I said, "why you signed the papers."
Juan looked down like he was as
hamed and that was when it struck me.
"You can't read, can you? You didn't know what you were signing?"
Juan lifted his eyes, and they met mine. He didn't have to answer. The look in those eyes was more than enough. I felt my heart rate rise as the anger settled inside of me. This man had been wrongfully imprisoned for three years just because he couldn't read what he was signing.
"I was illegal," he added. "Came from Ecuador. I traveled through Columbia, where I paid all I owned to be put on a boat and promised to reach America. But I ended up here. It is many years ago now. They gave me a job, food to eat, and a roof over my head. But I never learned to read."
"You were a gardener, right?" I asked.
Juan's face lit up. "Yes."
"At Lyford Cay, right?"
He nodded eagerly like the memories of the great outdoors made him forget where he was for just a few seconds.
"Who did you work for?"
Juan smiled. "The White Lady."
"The White Lady?"
He nodded with a shiver. "That's what we called her. She told us we didn't need to know her name. To us, she was either ma'am or simply Mrs. When she wasn't listening, we just called her The White Lady because she always wore those white dresses and scarves on her head. Scary woman."
"I take it she didn't treat you well?" I asked.
Juan scoffed for an answer when a thought struck me.
"Did she tell you to sign those papers?" I asked, leaning forward again. "Was she the one who told you to do it?"
Juan spat on the floor, then looked up at me, fire in his usually so-gentle brown eyes. Once again, he didn't have actually to say the words for me to understand.
Chapter 51
Nassau, Bahamas, October 2018
When I returned to the hotel, it was crawling with police. Six police cars were parked outside, and my heart immediately dropped. My first thought was that something had happened to Emily.