The Devil's Closet

by Stacy Dittrich

  In my dream I was on the edge of the well filled with rats again, this time alone. No one was anywhere nearby. Not the corrupt cops or their sidekicks, not Michael, Eric, Naomi, or Coop. Although I was alone, something from behind pushed me into the well. I kept falling until I felt the mushy thud of hitting all the rats. They were climbing all over me, biting me, and shrieking their high-pitched squeals. I tried to swat at them, but my hands were tied.

  I woke up covered in sweat and screaming. Michael was shaking me. When I was fully awake and realized it was a dream, I began to sob uncontrollably. Michael took me in his arms.

  “Shh, it’s going to be OK. I’m here. You’re safe. My God, what happened?”

  When I was able to speak, I told him. Michael had been there when all of it happened originally, so he understood about the nightmares. “I thought you said you were all done with the dreams, Cee.” He was gently stroking my hair.

  “I thought so, but I guess not. I quit taking medicine months ago and haven’t had a nightmare since. I wonder if you being back and this whole case didn’t trigger them again.”

  Michael held me for the rest of the night, not that I was able to go back to sleep. I was too keyed up and terrified that the dream would return. It felt better simply to get up early and go to work, though it was still dark when we got to the department. The night shift was just coming in, ending their day. Jordan and her new training officer, who was filling in for Eric, were standing by the door.

  I had every intention of ignoring her, but she waved me over to one of the patrol cars. Michael stopped, anticipating a problem, but I told him to go ahead. I’d deal with her alone.

  “CeeCee, I just wanted to tell you that Eric called. He told me you said he should. I just wanted to say thank you, and I’m sorry for what I’ve put you through.”

  “Do you have any idea how Eric and I are supposed to tell our daughters they’re going to have another brother or sister, Jordan? I don’t. And secondly, what do you think is going to come out of all this?” Right then and there I knew I didn’t want her to have Eric. Maybe it was a pride thing, and I was being catty and selfish, but I couldn’t help it. Not that I wanted him…

  She shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “You realize Eric wants to work out our marriage, don’t you? We spoke last night and he wants us to go to counseling. I haven’t decided yet, but that’s a scenario you might want to start considering. Your baby will be taken care of no matter what. Eric would never abandon you there, but start allowing for all possibilities.”

  She began to cry while I just stood there. A slight part of me felt bad, but the rest of me didn’t.

  “Jordan, if you don’t need anything else, I’m going in now.”

  I left her there crying. By the time I got upstairs to my office, I was entirely riddled with guilt. Although I had nothing but contempt for her, her baby was Eric’s, and our daughters’ sibling. Jordan was obviously under a great deal of stress, and I certainly hadn’t helped her situation. But I didn’t want her to do anything outrageous.

  Acceptance breeds action. The first thing I did was leave a message for an attorney friend of mine to discuss filing for divorce. Michael was around for that call. There was no turning back.

  “Your conversation with Jordan went well, I see.”

  Michael never wanted to say much when it came to Eric and Jordan, and this time was no different. All he cared about was that I had taken the first concrete step to legally end my marriage.

  I wanted a respite from thinking about all of this mess and to get going. It was time to drive to Cleveland.

  Less than an hour later, we were pulling into the entrance of the zoo. The zoo wasn’t open yet, but we had arrangements to see the lions exhibit first thing. The zoo’s director had the trainer in charge waiting for us at the gate in a golf cart gassed and ready to drive us back to the lion exhibit.

  It was a large area of forest, and it was going to take us a while to walk the whole thing. But walk it we did, with the temperatures soaring into the mid-nineties by the time we were done. We found nothing. Not a footprint, piece of paper, or a chewed piece of gum. I was so hot and sweaty by the time we were done I gave serious thought to jumping into the river. However, the idea that every animal in the zoo used it as a bathroom dissuaded me.

  “If I’d known we were taking an African safari nature walk today, I would’ve worn shorts,” Michael grumbled.

  “Sorry, I didn’t know we were supposed to have Congo-like temperatures.”

  On the ride back to the hotel to clean up, we reviewed our little adventure, both of us acknowledging that no one, let alone a man holding a little girl hostage, had been anywhere near those woods.

  “At least we know for sure now. Damn,” I said.

  After a long shower, which we took together, we grabbed lunch and headed back to the office. Coop’s door was open, but I didn’t see him. A couple of the other detectives were in their offices working away on other cases. It was business as usual.

  It was back to the Bible passage for me. I hoped the time away might have brought some fresh insight. Again, I looked at the passages before and after the one given by Jim Carlson.

  “Michael, do you know why Daniel was cast into the lions’ den?”

  “He prayed to God.” I didn’t know Michael knew that.

  “Right, but because praying to God was ‘breaking the law,’ or ‘breaking the rules.’ Daniel was thrown into the lions’ den for breaking the rules.”

  “Where are you going with this, CeeCee?”

  I wasn’t sure. What initially came to mind didn’t make sense, but then again, nothing in this case did.

  “Michael, I think I might be Daniel.”

  “Now, how do you figure that?”

  “Jim Carlson has predicted every step we’ve taken in this case. He’s done homework on me and knew I would eventually find him. Knowing I wouldn’t have enough for a search warrant, he predicted I would go in his house anyway. What he hadn’t anticipated was me taking his doll. Regardless, I had become unethical and broken the law, therefore deserving some type of punishment. Plus, this being a game to him, I had broken the rules. Jim Carlson considers himself king and would not be outwitted.”

  “That’s really stretching it, Cee.”

  “Agreed, which is why I think I might be right. It’s too simple to believe. Again, the question we need answered most is what the hell, or where the hell, is the lions’ den?”

  “Wait, back up. You think Carlson considers himself the king, accusing you of a crime or breaking the rules of his game, for which he will punish you by throwing you into a den of lions. Nope, I don’t buy it, sorry. It has absolutely nothing to do with these murdered children.”

  Now I was feeling angry. Michael simply did not understand what I was trying to get across. “It has everything to do with these children, Michael! I think he chose me, and Richland County, ahead of time. He wanted to see just how smart he really was. And who should he test that theory against but the high-profile, newsworthy CeeCee Gallagher? Except he knew I would cheat, hence the Bible passage, and I did; I didn’t play fair. Now, he’s not either, but I need a penalty for my foul—catch me? This is one big fucking game of cat and mouse, and his only goal is to see if I’m smarter. Period.”

  Michael sat quietly, mulling over everything I had said, but I knew he wasn’t convinced. I wasn’t so sure I was either, but it sounded good. Yet the more I thought about it, the more I thought I might just be right after all.

  “CeeCee, do you know why he uses the dolls?”

  “I have a fairly good idea.”

  “No, I don’t mean just for sex. He knows he’s sick, and I think he has remorse. I’ll bet years ago he got the doll idea to suppress his urges so he wouldn’t hurt a child. When those weren’t good enough anymore and he started with real little girls, painting them up like the dolls made them seem a lot less human to him. Therefore, easing his guilt. You might be right. He wants to
get caught.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  As I was figuring it out, Michael left to get coffee for us. He hadn’t been gone for more than thirty seconds when my cell phone rang.“CeeCee!” Naomi yelled into the phone, making me jump right out of my skin. She was sobbing.

  “Naomi? What the hell’s the matter?”

  “Pl-Please, Jeff broke up with me again and I…” She was unable to compose herself. “I can’t take it again. I don’t know what I might do.”

  “What do you mean you don’t know what you might do? Naomi, where are you?”

  “I-I’m at a pay phone by the Falls. I’m going to the Falls, CeeCee. I really need help.”

  “I’m on my way. Don’t do anything! Do you hear me?”

  She sobbed again into the phone, and then it went dead. I was staggered as I ran into Coop’s office to see if he was there. He was going to get a piece of my mind later, no doubt about it, but first he was going to help me with Naomi. He wasn’t there, so I tried his cell—no answer. I left quite a nasty message saying that I was going to get Naomi at the Falls as she was “quite a mess,” thanks to him, even threatening to harm herself.

  I couldn’t believe what was happening. And now I couldn’t find Michael either. Where the hell did he go to get coffee? I left a quick note telling him I was going to the Falls, why I was going, and that I would be back shortly.

  The Falls was a hiking trail in the Mohican State Forest in the southern part of the county. The trail ran along the bottom of the Clearfork Gorge, which was a thousand feet across and three hundred feet down.

  I don’t know if classifying it as a waterfall quite works, since every time I’ve been there the water trickling from the top has been as wide as a faucet, with no water at the bottom. At its highest point, it was about a hundred feet. Whatever. It was very dangerous no matter what.

  I wasn’t thrilled about the drive down. The state forest was made up of the Appalachian foothills and reminded me entirely too much of West Virginia and what happened at Murder Mountain. Eric and I had built a home in the hills several years before, but sold it last year and moved back to the city. I couldn’t live in the woods anymore.

  On the way, I tried calling Michael but was surrounded by small mountains and couldn’t get a signal. Why was Naomi down here? The obvious answer was that she was going to jump off the falls, which I prayed wasn’t the case. What a horrible way to die.

  However, if she was as upset as she sounded, she may very well want to die horribly. I was furious at Coop, who got her hopes up and then stepped all over them. Again. I knew Naomi must really love him, but I never took her for being suicidal, no matter the circumstances.

  After entering the state forest, I forgot how to get to the beginning of the trail. It took twenty minutes of turning around and getting lost before I finally found a ranger and flagged him down for directions.

  “The trail’s closed, ma’am.”

  “Why?”

  “They’re going to start digging out all the ruts and rocks. Every day someone was breaking an ankle, and emergency personnel couldn’t get to them quickly enough, so the state finally decided to get it cleaned up.”

  I told him I wanted to get to the covered bridge instead, which was right by the trail to the falls, and he gave me directions. I was glad I’d dressed casually, and I was hoping Naomi would be out by the entrance. If not, the forty-five-minute hike on the trail was a treacherous one. I had almost broken my own ankle hiking it several times over the years.

  As I neared the covered bridge, I saw Naomi’s SUV parked on the other side, near the entrance to the falls. I parked next to her and started yelling her name as I got out, hearing nothing back but the echo of my own voice. There was no one around.

  It took a few minutes to find the sturdiest walking stick I could; I would need it. The trail sometimes leaned at an angle and if you didn’t hold on well enough or secure your footing, you were apt to tumble down through a hundred feet of rock and trees into the river.

  Twice the walking stick broke and I lost valuable time finding another. At one point, I thought I twisted my ankle hard enough so that I wouldn’t be able to continue, but after a short rest, it was fine.

  It was when I had to go to the bathroom and couldn’t hold it any longer that I stopped. Something bit my leg and caused me to cry out in pain. I hoped it wasn’t a spider bite. I didn’t need to get sick over halfway down the trail and not be able to make it back. I stopped to see if any poison would kick in and silently admonished myself for being such a city girl.

  The entire time I was walking, no matter what minor “catastrophe” took place, I continued calling Naomi’s name. I was almost near the falls when I thought I heard something behind me. I looked about and there didn’t seem to be anything, so I wrote it off as a deer.

  Yelling as loud as I was, Naomi should have heard me. If she was still alive, that is. But I refused to let myself think the worst. It was impossible to believe that Naomi would truly harm herself. Maybe it was all a ploy to get Coop’s attention. That sounded like Naomi, but I didn’t think she would put her job in jeopardy by faking a stunt that would end up with her on the psychiatric ward of the hospital.

  I was almost at the point where the trail turned into pure sand, leading back to the falls. I saw signs that pointed in the direction of the cliffs and to the smaller falls farther down the trail.

  I stopped in my tracks, and my blood went cold. I looked at the signs again, my mind reeling as the magnitude of what I was looking at finally hit me. I had forgotten that, being locals, we all referred to the falls as just that, the Falls.

  Only when I saw the sign did I remember the Falls’ true name: Lyon’s Falls.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  There it was, right in front of me. Lyon’s Falls. The falls had been named after the reclusive pioneer Paul Lyon, who moved his family into the forest to get away from civilization. He’d died one night trying to find his cow in a rainstorm. He and the cow went over the falls, dropping eighty feet to the jutting rocks below. Legend said his family buried him between two of the falls.I had known about Lyon’s Falls my entire life and never gave a thought to them during this entire investigation. But here I was, standing before the sign, knowing now that Naomi wasn’t suicidal. Jim Carlson had her, and she would be extremely lucky to still be alive.

  I was about to run the trail back to my car and call for help, but it was too late. Just then, I heard a small child screaming. The cries came from the falls area. Jim Carlson was waiting for me.

  I continued down the sandy path, around the bend into the opening of the falls. Their majestic presence stood high in the forest with the deep cavern below.

  The falls themselves were almost in the shape of a horseshoe. I walked into the middle, stopped at the mass of rocks before me, and looked up.

  The screams had diminished to low sobs but were echoing throughout the cavern, so it was hard to pinpoint their origin.

  “It’s nice to see you, Cecelia!” A voice rang out from the top of the falls. “You were not smart enough to figure it out on your own, so I enlisted the aid of Naomi, your friend and captain.”

  I kept looking around and hoping the forest ranger I had spoken to had seen our cars and assumed I went on the trail anyway. With luck, he would see that I wasn’t on the covered bridge and was heading my way to arrest me for trespassing.

  “No one’s coming, Cecelia. Now, take off your gun and throw it into the rocks, or the child dies.”

  Normally, we’re taught never to give up our gun no matter the circumstances. However, this time I had no choice. I took my.45-caliber handgun and threw it as hard as I could into the cluster of rocks, hearing it bang around before stopping.

  “I want to see Naomi!” I yelled out, looking above me.

  “Here she comes!” he yelled back.

  Naomi Kincaid came sailing over the side of the falls to my right. I began screaming until, instead of falling into the rocks below, she stopped
halfway down. Her hands were tied with a long rope that went up to the top and over the edge. He must’ve secured it to one of the trees lining the edge.

  Regardless, the fall she took surely would’ve pulled both arms out of their sockets. I don’t know if she even noticed since she was covered in blood, beaten beyond recognition.

  I was pretty sure at that point she was dead. I began to cry at the sight of her, hanging there with her hands above her head, swaying back and forth. I fell to my knees.

  “Get up!” yelled the voice. “You have exactly one hour and ten minutes to go back to your car and get my doll—I know you have it! If you are one minute late, you’ll find little Brooklyn lying down below in the rocks! If you try to call for help, and believe me I’ll know if you do, she dies!”

  “The hike is forty-five minutes one way!” I was screaming hysterically by this point.

  “The clock has already started, Cecelia. Bye-bye!”

  I turned and started running down the trail as fast as I could go. It was hard to run and cry at the same time, so it was vital to get myself together. Tearing down the trail, I twisted my ankle more times than I could count. I also fell more times than I could count, one time hitting my face on a large tree root smack in the middle of the trail.

  Even as blood ran down the side of my face, I felt no pain. I kept running until I thought my lungs would explode. If this did not make me stop smoking, nothing would. That is, if I survived.

  At last the end of the trail was in sight, and I ran full speed toward my car, fumbling for the keys in my pocket. Sweat and blood poured into my eyes, but all I could think about was getting back in enough time to save Brooklyn.

  I didn’t bother closing the trunk after I grabbed the doll. My watch said I had only thirty-five minutes to get back. There was no way I was going to make it. Out of breath, tired, and cramping, I kept dropping the doll because my hands were so sweaty. I finally looped my hand through the belt around its waist to keep ahold.