“Guy walks into the Six-Gun Saloon and spots me, obviously alone. Maybe I’m a bit melancholy, a little maudlin. Guy muscles up to where I’m sitting and throws me some pathetic line like, ‘Hey beautiful, what’s a nice broad like you doin’ sittin’ in a place like this all by yourself? Let me buy you a drink.’ And of course, I do, because that’s what I’ve always done.
“Only this drink is different. It looks like the rest of the ones I’ve had all night; it even tastes the same as the ones I’ve been drinking all night. But he’s crushed some drugs into it to make sure I’ll be completely out of it in the next twenty minutes.
“Twenty minutes later, he’s helping me outside and into his car, telling anyone who happens to glance our way that I’m a featherweight drunk and he shoulda stopped me at three.”
Leah stopped and watched the sun sparkle in the water. The reflection off the lake was nothing short of breathtaking and the word filled her mind: breathtaking. Breath taking. That’s what this man did to Mercy. He took her final breaths away.
“By now, I’m so out of it, I can’t even fight him off. I don’t even know to fight him off. So I get into his car and he drives me . . . where? To his house? No, that would be too chancy. He drives me somewhere else. Somewhere secluded, but not too far away. Some little hidey-hole away from home he’s gonna stash me away somewhere around Alvin.”
Leah walked farther down the deck. “I occasionally come to my senses for brief moments, and in those moments, I’m scared. What does he want, sex? I get to wherever it is he’s taking me and decide to give him whatever he wants so I can just leave and go home. But he doesn’t want sex, and he certainly doesn’t want me going home.”
Behind Leah, there’s some screams. Startled, she turned to see a group of kids playing Frisbee in the afternoon’s crystal sunlight. She continued her train of thoughts pretending she really was in Mercy’s shoes that night.
“Instead, he ties my wrists and ankles very tightly and puts me somewhere in his home away from home. Likely, he leaves me left lying on my back with my wrists tied behind me. Then he brings out the unimaginable: the sewing kit. And, even though I may be drugged and drunk, it doesn’t stop the pain as he carefully stitches both of my eyes closed. In fact, my screaming becomes too much for him and he slaps a piece of duct tape over my mouth to keep me quiet.”
Leah was growing more and more impatient with the clues she had to this case. They didn’t add up. She sat down on the end of the wharf cross-legged and looked back toward the park where mothers were nursing babies, children were being pushed on swings, and the Frisbee game was still in full play. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she said. “Why doesn’t he want to have sex with me?”
The writing on the body, according to the medical examiner, likely came postmortem. But he didn’t just let Mercy Jo die. He kept her alive for six or seven days on a constant diet of alcohol and roofies.
Why?
None of this case made any sense.
“Okay, now let’s run it again from his point of view.”
“I walk into the bar that night and see Mercy Jo all by herself and think, ‘She should be pretty easy pickin’s.’ Only, I’ve been snubbed before, so when I ask her if she wants a drink and she says yes, on my way back from the bar I make sure this one works by crushing a roofie in it. I had the roofie in my hand all ready to go.”
Mercy Jo seems to like me. She doesn’t put up any sort of fight. Nobody reports anything out of the ordinary or even remembers her leaving, even though she would’ve been completely out of it.
Or would she? Perhaps she left under her own volition before the alcohol and drugs hit. Perhaps she knew me. That would make sense. Then the drugs kicked in along the way to my hidey-hole.
After that, for you, it was all a blur.
CHAPTER 15
Carry and Jonathon continued their walk down Hunter Road until they came to the end of it. Then they followed the dirt trails leading into the woods that surrounded Bullfrog Creek. Most of these were walking trails, not nearly wide enough for a vehicle to drive down.
The rain from the night before had given the forest that dewy wet smell that almost made it feel like spring, if it weren’t for the naked branches on everything but the evergreens.
Since thinking about what her mother’s reaction would be to her walking in the woods with a strange boy, Carry began to question her own intuition. Had she made a terrible mistake agreeing to go on this walk? She really didn’t know anything about Jonathon Mitchell other than that he worked at Raven Lee’s Pizzeria. That is, if he still had a job there after missing two pizzas during his delivery and being a half hour late with the others.
“So what happened yesterday after I left? Did you get in major shit about the pizzas being a half hour late and cold and not havin’ the missin’ two you left with?”
“Of course,” he smiled. “But my grandpa owns Raven Lee’s, his name actually is Raven Lee Emerson, so he wasn’t so rough on me, especially when I told him I had a very good reason for being late.”
“And what reason did you tell him?” Carry asked.
“That I met the most fantastic girl who was nothin’ like anyone else I’d ever run into in my life. My grandfather is a complete romantic. He believes in eternal and everlasting love. Him and my grandmother were together fifty-five years before she died last year of cancer. I thought for a while her death was going to take him with her. He became so sad. But he’s sort of bounced back again now.”
“Wow. That’s a long time to be together,” Carry said.
“My family comes from a history of romantics. We all should’ve been born in the early eighteen hundreds; we would’ve definitely fit in better. Nobody is romantic anymore. I think that’s a shame, don’t you?”
Carry had just been walking, listening to the cadence of his voice, and not really listening to the words. She’d been smelling the forest. Occasionally, she’d glance over at Jonathon’s red hair, which looked very curious as they walked through the shadows of the trees. The sunlight would hit the top of Jonathon’s head, almost making it look engulfed in flames, and then it would be bathed in darkness a few seconds later.
It took her a minute of silence before she realized he had asked her a question. Then she quickly tried to think back to what it was. She couldn’t remember. “I’m sorry, I missed your question,” she said.
He laughed. “You’re already ignorin’ me and you don’t even hardly know me yet. I asked you if you think the fall of romanticism is a shame? Because nobody is a true romantic anymore.”
“Definitely. I love romance.” The butterflies from the other day were back and they’d brought helium-filled balloons with them. It felt like they were fluttering in Carry’s stomach and unleashing the helium, making her start to become buoyant, and soon she would just rise up into the sky and probably get trapped in one of the bare branches above their heads.
The bare branches came to an end about a half block later and they found themselves under a veil of evergreen boughs. Douglas fir and pine—those were the only two Carry knew for sure. A hard wind wound up and hit Carry and Jonathon in the back.
Carry shuddered. “It’s getting cold.”
“Want my coat?” Jonathon asked.
“No, then you would freeze to death.”
“Better me than you.” He stopped walking, took off his coat, and handed it to Carry, who hesitantly put it on.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Sure.” Once again, his hand found hers as they headed farther into the woods. “You okay now?”
“Yes, I’m fine. But you look cold.”
“You look beautiful.”
Carry felt her face flush.
“How ’bout we walk well around Skeeter Swamp and head to Painted Lake? It’s beautiful over there,” Jonathon said.
“Okay.” At this point Carry would get into a rocket and follow him to the moon and back.
The walk to Painted Lake took almost an hour, but tim
e stopped meaning anything to Carry. She just kept looking at Jonathon, wondering how she got so lucky to actually “run into” such a fabulous guy.
Once they made it to the lake, they walked around it a bit until Carry said she better get going home because God only knew what her little brother actually told her mother about where she was going.
“When will I see you again?” Jonathon asked.
“When do you want to see me again?”
“The moment you walk away from me.”
Oh, this guy definitely knew how to say the right things. “How ’bout we go to a movie. There’s that new comedy coming out. You know . . . I can’t remember the name.”
“Beetlejuice?”
“Yeah, that’s it. We could go on Tuesday or Wednesday. It would at least give me something to look forward to.”
They walked out of the woods by Painted Lake and found themselves at the Anikawa River. It was low and hardly moving. This was unusual. Normally the Anikawa is a dangerous river.
“There’s a place to cross over here,” Jonathon said, and guided Carry to a footbridge that looked like it was made by fourth-grade students.
“Are you sure it’s safe?” Carry asked.
“I use it all the time. It’s safe.”
“I dunno.”
“You have trust issues, don’t you?”
Carry thought this over. “If I do, I’ve never noticed before and definitely nobody’s ever pointed them out to me.”
“Well, we all have some sort of trust issues. It’s what keeps us alive. Your instincts are pretty good at tellin’ you when to trust and when not to, but some people have trust instincts that are a bit wonky. I think yours are a bit wonky.”
“I’d have to check with my mother. She likes the family to go carolin’.”
“What?” Jonathon said. “What does that have to do with your trust issues?”
She laughed. “Sorry, I’m still back at the movie. Probably Monday would be better.”
“Ah, so we could celebrate the day after Christmas. I like that, too.”
“It gives me at least something to look forward to between Christmas and going back to school.”
“I noticed you changed the subject about your wonky trust issues,” Jonathon said.
“Oh, was it that obvious? I was hoping to slip it past you.”
“Why are you so messed up?” Jonathon asked.
“With what? How am I messed up?”
“With your trust issues,” Jonathon said.
“I’m not. I have normal trust issues like everyone else,” Carry said.
“You won’t trust me,” Jonathon said. “Why not?”
“Okay,” Carry said. “Maybe they’re a little messed up. After all, my mother’s a cop. It makes you a little strange.”
“Well, it’s time to take your strangeness away.”
“And how do you propose we do that?” Carry asked.
“By startin’ to trust people you feel are trustable. People like me, for instance. Now, walk across the bridge.” He was standing two thirds of the way over already.
Carry decided to do as he said. She started walking across, took two steps, and made the mistake of looking down. “I’m scared,” she said.
“Oh, man, just be happy this isn’t the spring or summer when the Anikawa looks like one of the entrances to hell. Come on, you’re a third of the way across already. You can do it.”
She took two more steps and was halfway across. Then two more. Then two more and she’d made it. Jonathon quickly grabbed her and pulled her into a hug. “See? I told you you could do it. You have to face your fears; otherwise, they have too much power over you. Speaking of which, you’re going to have to face your fear of the cold because I need my coat back.”
She slipped out of the brown bomber jacket and handed it to him. “Thanks for freezing to death and letting me use it.”
“No, you don’t understand. I had an ulterior motive.”
“What’s that?”
He held the jacket to his face and sniffed it. “Now it smells like you.” Then he put it on.
“Do I get another hug?” he asked.
“For certain,” Carry said.
This one lasted at least a minute. Any coldness Carry felt was quickly disappearing. No, that was one hug that would go with her all the way home.
She looked into his deep blue eyes. A warmth filled her from head to toe. She liked Jonathon Mitchell.
A lot.
CHAPTER 16
Leah was already at her desk when Chris came in with a newspaper tucked under his arm. Leah liked to get in early so she could get home early. That was the plan, anyway. Usually it never worked. She wound up getting in early and working late.
“Ever read the Birmingham Times?” Chris asked her as he poured himself a coffee from the freshly brewed pot on the small table beside the water cooler.
“If I had time to read newspapers from every city in Alabama, I wouldn’t have no time for police work,” Leah replied.
“Well, I don’t usually either, but I got a call last night after you left. Guy named Douglas Stein told me I should check out the front page of the Birmingham Times issue from September twenty-fourth.”
“Who the hell is Douglas Stein?”
“He was one of the looky-loos at our crime scene. Apparently, he got a better sight of the body than most others. Anyway, I went to the library and found the issue. They carry all the major newspapers going back near on three months before they microfish ’em.”
Leah took a sip of her own coffee and smiled. “I think you mean microfilm or microfiche.”
“Whatever.”
“So, what’s on the front page?”
“You’re gonna get excited.”
“Just show me, goddamnit.”
Chris flipped the paper open in front of her and he was right; excitement, along with repulsion, whipped through her body. “It’s . . . it’s our body.” She looked up at Chris expectantly.
“No, it’s a body. But not ours. A different one.”
On the cover was a close-up of a woman’s face and shoulders, the shot going down just below the neckline. Her eyes had been sewn up exactly like Mercy Jo Carpenter’s had been, and at the bottom you could just see the top of a message that was written across her chest. She had blond hair, full and long enough that it went down out of the shot. At first glance she looked almost identical to Mercy Jo.
Leah read the article. When she was done, she said, “There was no mention of finding a cross anywhere on the body like we had, but the authorities may have held that back. They hadn’t held back the eye stitches, though.”
“Like us, they probably weren’t able to,” Chris said. “Apparently the body was found by a bunch of schoolkids. If they got to it first, the authorities may as well come up with the fact ’bout the stitchin’ ’cause everyone would’ve known ’bout it sooner or later. Besides, they’d need a picture to canvass with like we did.”
At the time of the article, the woman was unidentified, making her a Jane Doe. She showed up in a small town about fourteen miles northwest of Birmingham called Graysville.
Welcome to Gray . . .
It was too much of a coincidence. This had to be what the psychic had meant. Leah’s skin tingled.
Graysville had a population that didn’t even make a dent in the size of Alvin’s. They found the body in an abandoned coal mine that hadn’t been used since the 1960s. During the 1950s and 1960s, Graysville’s coal mines and steel mills attracted families from all over Alabama.
“Chris?” Leah asked.
“Yeah.”
“What interstate is Graysville on?”
“Uh, let me check.” He typed on his computer for a minute, and said, “Highway Seventy-eight.”
Leah sighed. “There goes another one of that psychic’s clues.” She lifted the paper and scanned the article once more. The statement was issued by Daniel Truitt, the homicide detective from the Birmingham Police Departmen
t who was working the case.
Leah doubted he was still working it. Two and a half months was a long time to go without solving something. It had probably grown cold, maybe even slotted cold. Leah decided to call Detective Truitt up and ask. She didn’t expect to get much cooperation, though. Detectives were renowned for not enjoying other detectives asking about their cases.
“I’m looking to talk to Detective Dan Truitt,” Leah said when a woman from the Birmingham Police Department took the call.
“One minute.”
Leah knew she was checking the board. Looking to see if he was on duty or off duty or in or out. “I’m afraid he’s away for a while,” she came back with.
Away for a while? How long is a while?
“Can you get him to call me when he returns? My name is Leah Teal and I am the detective from down here in Alvin.”
“Alvin. Is that in Alabama?”
“Yes, it is.” Sometimes Leah forgot how small Alvin really was.
“What’s your number, Detective Teal?”
Leah gave her the numbers for both her office and her home.
“And what’s this concerning?”
“It’s . . . it’s in regard to one of his cases. I may have a lead for him.” Leah thought this was the safest way to handle this question, and probably the most probable way of getting a response. “Please get him to call me back as soon as possible.”
CHAPTER 17
Leah had just gotten in the door from work when Detective Dan Truitt from the Birmingham Police Station returned her call. As usual, Abe grabbed the phone before anyone else could, and then yelled (mostly into the receiver), “Mom! It’s for you!”
“Thanks,” Leah said, taking the phone from him.
“Detective Truitt here,” said the voice on the other end. “You say you’ve got a lead on one of my cases?”
“Thought you were away for a while,” Leah said.
“Not for people with leads.”
“Ah.”
“Which case we talkin’ ’bout?” Truitt asked. “No, wait . . . Bradley Thomas.”
A Thorn Among the Lilies Page 8