by Blake Pierce
She started taking steps from the back of the wall, which felt like it was made of aluminum, knowing that when she made eight steps, she’d come to another wall. Sure enough, eight steps brought her to another aluminum wall. She pushed gently against it. Maybe it wasn’t aluminum. Maybe just hollow metal. Maybe…
She almost drew her hand back to thump on it—to see what it was made of. But the last thing she wanted to do was to attract the man that she supposed had brought her here. She really couldn’t remember how she had gotten here. She remembered sitting in the kitchen and hearing her parents scream. Her father had even yelled at her to run but the sentence had been cut short. Still, she had run—because of the gunshots. She’d had her phone in her hand and had started to dial the police when she ran into something on her way out of the back door.
And that was the last thing she remembered. She had a very fleeting memory of scenery passing by a darkened car window, but that was all. After that, she had opened her eyes to this dark place.
She walked to the wall to her right and did her little counting-by-steps procedure again. From front to back, the place she was trapped inside was eight heel-to-toe steps. Walking from side to side in the same manner allowed her only five steps. She outstretched both of her arms as wide as she could and found that she could not touch the sides.
So this thing…it’s something like eight feet by five feet. Right?
She knew she was lousy with measurements. But at least she could hold that concrete information in her mind. At least she had some type of knowledge in this—
“Is my little pet moving around again?”
His voice came from somewhere beyond the darkness. It was the third time he had spoken to her. He had an almost cheerful voice. It made him sound like he might be pretty young, but she couldn’t be sure.
She did not respond. Hearing his voice, she slunk back to the farthest corner of that dark place and cowered.
“You can talk back to me, if you want,” he said. “But like I said before…if you scream for help, no one will hear you. And if you try it, I’ll hurt you. But in a way that’s going to make me feel plenty good. You understand?”
“Please,” she muttered. “Please let me out. I’ll…I’ll do whatever you want.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he said dryly. “But I can’t let you out. Not just yet.”
“Please…”
She couldn’t help it. She started crying then. It was just as well, because her captor did not respond to her. She wondered if he was standing out there, enjoying her pleading. Finally, he spoke up again.
“Do you understand what I said?” he asked again.
She thought she did. She thought she understood perfectly. And there was something in his voice that made her believe him. Sure, it was cheerful but there was something almost childlike in it—something that made him sound crazy.
And it was that crazy timbre to his voice that made Mercy Fuller feel that she didn’t have much time—that he may decide to just go ahead and kill her at any moment.
CHAPTER TEN
Kate had never been much of a drinker. She’d have a glass of wine here and there and whenever she did, she thought of her mother. Her mother had enjoyed a single glass of white wine every night, just after dinner. One glass; no more, no less. She’d have a few more on special occasions like birthdays or anniversaries, but even then, she was very selective.
She thought of her mother as she sat at the small bar that sat just off of Deton’s only motel—a sloppy-looking Best Western. She sipped on a glass of wine as DeMarco enjoyed a beer roughly the color of a moonless midnight.
“Have you noticed all of the locals banding together?” DeMarco asked. “All these locals, trying to help with finding this one girl.”
“I have,” Kate said. “I overheard two officers talking in the station, about this newly retired man who is heading it up. He’s had people out in the woods, looking for anything that might help.”
“And God knows Barnes can use all the help he can get. I think he’s a good enough leader, but the force itself…”
“They’re doing their best,” Kate said. “But I’m not sure that’s quite enough.”
They fell into silence then. Kate felt rather bad, sitting here with a drink while there was a missing girl out there. But she knew there was not much she could do right now. Sometimes a case came down to a moment when there was nothing to do but wait.
“How’s your granddaughter?” DeMarco asked.
“Crawling. Can you believe it? She literally started just before I got the call about this case.”
“Jeez…already?”
“Yeah. That’s the thing about kids. They grow up so damned fast. It seems like it’s going even faster now that I have a grandkid.”
DeMarco smiled and took a sip from her beer. “Please don’t take this the wrong way…but just based on how I know you, I find it very hard to believe you’re a grandmother.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because you’re such a badass. You don’t think of women like you as having grandkids.”
“Thanks…I think. How about you? Anything new going on in your life?”
“Sort of. But it’s a little embarrassing.”
“That makes me want to hear it even more.”
“Well…I sort of write in my spare time. I have for a while. Nothing serious, just a hobby, you know? Anyway…I sold my first short story a few weeks ago.”
“Hey, that’s great!”
“It’s just a small online journal thing. Thirty bucks for it.”
“What’s it about?”
“It’s, um…well, it’s sort of R-rated. Actually, it might be closer to NC-17. Lots of sex. Lots of women.”
Kate chuckled and nodded her head. “Hey, whatever sells, right? Now, is this piece a reflective piece on your life?”
It might have been the first time Kate had ever seen DeMarco uncomfortable. She took a longer sip from her beer and gave a small nod. “I’m actually dating someone now. More than just casually seeing. It’s nice.”
“That’s fantastic. How long?”
“About two months. She’s an interesting one. And I know that because when she met my parents two weeks ago, that was the verbiage my mother used. Interesting.”
“So—and forgive me for asking—but have your parents always been okay with you being gay?”
“Mom fought it for a while, but not for very long,” DeMarco said. “Keep in mind, I dropped this bombshell on them when I was only fourteen. I was sixteen when she finally came around.”
“And does Director Duran know?”
“Yeah. I told him before I was even hired.” She laughed here and shook her head. “When you were coming up in the bureau, it was still taboo, huh?”
“Not taboo. But I think if it did come up in an interview or something like that, it would be a topic of discussion behind closed doors before a decision would be made.”
“Man, we’ve come a long way, huh?”
“We have. I wonder, though…was it always easy for you? I may be way off the mark here, but you don’t seem to wear your sexuality on your sleeve. You keep it private. It’s like you’re accustomed to it, like you’re comfortable in it. Has it always been like that?”
A look came over DeMarco’s face that Kate thought might be one of appreciation. And as she began to speak, it again made Kate wonder how DeMarco viewed her. As only a co-worker? As a friend? Maybe as a secondary kind of mother-figure? Or all of the above?
For the next several minutes, DeMarco told a large part of her story. How she discovered she was homosexual the first time she kissed a boy, in some lazy form of Seven Minutes in Heaven when she was fourteen. She’d wasted no time telling her parents, instantly going to them for advice. She detailed a few awkward months as her parents came to terms with it, wrapping up with a touching moment at her high school graduation and the first time she ever brought a girl home to meet her parents as a sophomore in college.
When DeMarco was done, they took a moment to let the day dwindle away around them in silence. Kate watched the patrons come and go. There weren’t many, as she assumed there were other more appropriate water holes elsewhere in town. But even the people who came into the seedy little motel bar looked lost and out of place. Not that they did not belong in Deton, but that their lives were stuck in some sort of limbo.
“This town,” she said. “I’ve seen dozens of similar ones. The people are close and everyone knows one another but there are secrets. Sometimes I don’t think the residents even realize they’re keeping secrets. It’s just…part of the lifestyle. Shit happens, you handle it, you move on. That sort of thing. It creates a very distant sort of feeling between just about everyone in town.”
DeMarco slid her now-empty beer glass to the side of the table. “I can sense it, too. Even with Barnes. But I won’t lie…it’s not a very cheery outlook.”
Kate knew it wasn’t. And she hated to think in such stereotypical ways. But sometimes, in her estimation, proven history turned stereotypes into solid facts. And based on her history with places like Deton, she couldn’t help but feel that whether it was intentional or not, she and DeMarco were not getting the entire story.
***
It had been a while since Kate had dreamed of Michael. The last one she’d had was more of a memory than anything else—a memory of how he had nearly cut his fingers off while trying to repair the very first lawn mower they had owned, six months into their marriage.
But the one she had several hours after leaving the bar with DeMarco was nothing of that sort. In this dream, she was standing in the tiny interrogation room in the Deton PD. Michael was sitting on the other side of the little desk, looking up to her expectantly.
“You know, Michelle looks like you,” he told her. “Poor Melissa…that kid got her looks from me. But our granddaughter…she looks just like you.”
“I know,” Kate said. “I wish you could meet her.”
“Same here,” he said. “But dead is dead. It’s not so bad, though. If our parents were right in all that stuff they believed, I will get to see her one day.”
“Why are you in Deton?” she asked him.
“Because you are. I’m never too far away from where you are, you know?”
“You can’t be here…while I’m working. My job created too much stress between us.”
“It did. But the determination in it was sexy.”
He smiled and stood up from the table. It was the first time she had seen the bullet hole in the back of his head—the very bullet hole that had resulted in his death. It was not gory or gruesome; it was just there, part of him.
“Kate, is this really where you want to be?” he asked.
“Deton?”
“No…back at work. You’re a grandmother now. Aren’t you over all of this?”
He took her hands. They were cold and clammy. As she looked into his eyes, she saw only the whites.
“Michael…”
“Aren’t you done with all of this yet?”
“I can’t…”
And then he started squeezing her hands, pulling her to him so that she could feel the coldness of him, smell the graveyard stench of him.
That was when she screamed and pulled herself out of the nightmare.
She opened her eyes and stared at the ceiling, feeling the vibrations of the scream in her throat, the sound of it echoing slightly in the small motel room.
Is this really where you want to be?
Aren’t you done with this yet?
They were fair questions—questions she had asked herself multiple times since coming back to the bureau. But she knew the answer to both questions…and she was fairly certain Michael would understand if he was still here.
Yes, she felt like she was supposed to be back. Even from that first call nearly a year ago, she had not felt out of touch or uncomfortable. It had been like slipping on an old glove and finding that it still fit perfectly.
She looked to the bedside clock and saw that it was 4:12 in the morning. She was pretty sure she would not be able to go back to sleep but she stayed in bed anyway. She thought of Allen and how understanding he was being in regards to her work. She thought of Melissa and Michelle, hoping that they saw her return to work as a hopeful indicator that age meant nothing and that the woman they both looked up to was strong enough for all of them.
She spent the next hour and a half in a fitful nap, dozing off for ten minutes or so and then snapping awake, over and over again.
It came to a stop when her phone started to ring. She sat up, feeling surprisingly rested, and saw an unfamiliar number on her display screen. She was pretty sure the area code was Deton.
“Hello?” she answered.
“Agent Wise, this is Officer Mark Foster. We’ve got movement on the case.”
“What is it?” Kate asked, instantly sliding out of bed.
“Someone used Mercy Fuller’s credit card late last night.”
Her thought of why does a fifteen-year-old girl have a credit card was overruled by the jarring excitement of a potentially huge jump in the case.
“Nearby?” she asked.
“It was used at a gas station between Deton and Deerfield. And it gets even better. Security cameras at the gas station give us a clear shot of the man that used it. The time on the video footage and the time of the transaction match up perfectly.”
“How long ago was the match made?”
“I got confirmation about three minutes before I called you. I looked over the video feed myself about half an hour ago. And here’s the good thing about a small town…the face was familiar. All faces are familiar.”
“So you know who it is?”
“I do. I double-checked in the files here at the station just to make sure, and it’s a positive ID.”
“Damn, Foster. Do you ever sleep?”
“Hardly,” he said. And it didn’t sound like he was joking. “Can you and DeMarco meet the sheriff and I at the station? I’m headed over right now.”
She agreed to meet at the station as quickly as they could. She wasted no time dressing, leaving her room in her gym shorts and T-shirt right away and walking outside. She walked to the next door along the open-air corridor and started knocking. She couldn’t help but smile as she knocked, waking her partner up before six in the morning. Surely, it was a good indicator that the case was moving along. And also, given her comfort level of waking DeMarco by pounding on her door in her pajamas, it was an equally good indicator that she had found a partner she trusted in DeMarco.
DeMarco answered the door, already fully alert. Kate saw that DeMarco slept in much less than she did, leaving little to the imagination. She looked away for a moment, finding the line between being professional and considerate.
“Something happen?” she asked.
“Yeah. We need to meet Barnes and Foster at the station as soon as we can.”
“Give me three minutes.”
And with that, they were on the move, Kate rushing back to her room with a surge of pure adrenaline propelling her forward.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Kate drove close behind Barnes, headed down yet another back road off of Highway 44, as the first light of morning came glowing in between the trees. The residence they were headed to technically had a Deton address but was closer to Deerfield. Out on the back roads, it all looked the same to Kate and it amazed her how Barnes and Foster could differentiate each road and property.
Foster was riding shotgun with Barnes, keeping Kate informed in real-time via text. The last message he had sent told her that they were four minutes awa
y from the suspect’s home—a man named Todd Ramsey. He also informed her that they had one other unit on standby if things should get hairy. They were electing to keep the caravan to Ramsey’s house small so as to not alert any news crews hiding out in the area.
They were also treating this as a high-profile crime and, as such, were prepared to go in with guns drawn. Kate didn’t fully agree with this approach but it was not worth arguing over. The fact was this man had used the credit card of a girl who had been missing for three days, and all signs did indeed point to Todd Ramsey being guilty as hell.
Barnes started to slow down as they approached a house on the right side of the road. He turned quickly onto a thin strip of dirt that looked to have once been covered in gravel. The driveway was short, the house sitting less than fifty feet off of the road. Kate parked directly behind Barnes, nearly nose-to-tail. The four of them got out of their cars right away, Barnes and Foster drawing their sidearms. Kate and DeMarco stayed a few steps behind, not yet pulling their weapons. The play here was that someone local might actually recognize Barnes or Foster (and if they didn’t, they’d certainly recognize the badges on their unmistakable uniforms). It might be a little more alarming and confrontational if two strange women came knocking on his door at six in the morning, aiming guns at him.
Barnes wasted no time psyching himself up or preparing. He walked directly up to the front door and knocked. He knocked hard, putting his full weight into it. The door trembled in its frame.
“Todd Ramsey! Answer the door! It’s Sheriff Barnes with the Deton PD.”
When there was no answer within two seconds, he repeated it all. He hammered on the door with his meaty fist and gave the same command. Only this time, he ended it with: “You have three seconds to come to the door or I will break it down!”