Turn to Stone

by Brian Freeman

  “Is that how Jet treated Mike, too?” Stride asked.

  “Every day,” Ginnie snapped.

  “That’s why I think Mike knows more about what happened at the Novitiate than you’re telling me. I think Jet forced Mike to watch what he did to Kelli Andrews.”

  “Mike was home with me. He didn’t see anything.”

  “Forgive me, Ms. Black, but I don’t believe you,” Stride said.

  “I don’t care what you believe. I don’t have to talk to you.”

  “No, you don’t. That’s true.”

  “Don’t you get it? All I want to do is forget Jet. I don’t want to remember anything from those days. Neither does Mike. I’m not going to waste another second of my life on my husband. Jet deserved everything that happened to him.”

  Stride stared at her. “Everything?” he asked softly.

  “I mean he deserved to die,” she said, but she knew she’d made a mistake.

  “Did you see your husband’s body after he was killed?” he asked.

  “No. Tom Bruin took care of everything. Jet was cremated and the ashes buried. It’s more than I would have done for him.”

  “Did Mike want to see his father?”

  “No.”

  Stride crossed to the small kitchen in the Black house and dampened a hand towel with warm water. He sat down next to Ginnie and wrapped the towel around her wounded finger. He held it there, applying pressure.

  “Why did you drop the vase when you heard about Greg Hamlin’s body?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “It’s shocking. Cruel.”

  “Is that all?”

  “Yes, of course that’s all.”

  “I was thinking it wasn’t the first time you’d heard about someone suffering that kind of torture,” he said.

  Ginnie’s head turned. He could see weariness written all over her face, like a mask she could never take off. “Do you really want to be asking me these questions, Mr. Stride?”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “It seems to me they could take you somewhere that Kelli Andrews doesn’t want anyone to go.”

  The message hung between them. She knew. All this time, she’d known what had really happened to her husband, and she’d never said a word.

  “Kelli told me that she killed Jet,” he murmured. “Not Percy.”

  “That doesn’t strike me as a smart thing for her to do.”

  “I know. She took a risk by trusting me.”

  “Well, I don’t trust you. I’m sorry. I don’t trust anyone.”

  He leaned closer. “Do you think Kelli Andrews killed Greg Hamlin?”

  “I have no idea. I wouldn’t blame her if she did.”

  “Well, whoever killed Hamlin knew what happened to Jet. That’s a short list. At first, I thought it was only Kelli, but now I find out that you knew. So did Mike.”

  “Greg Hamlin was a creep and a sadist. When he came to me, I had no interest in his sniveling apology. As far as I’m concerned, finding God and putting the bottle down doesn’t absolve you of anything. However, if you look around my house, you’ll realize that Mike and I treasure life. Not death. I didn’t kill Hamlin, and neither did my son.”

  Stride eased back against the armchair. The dogs watched him, making sure he had no evil intentions against their master. He looked out the living room window, where it was almost dark.

  “What really happened that week?” he asked.

  Ginnie fingered the box that contained the wreckage of the glass. She seemed to be counting the broken pieces. “I didn’t know what was going on. Believe me. If I had thought for a moment that Jet was involved in Kelli’s disappearance, I would have done something immediately. I never would have let her suffer.”

  “I’m sure that’s true.”

  “Jet and I didn’t sleep in the same room. I had the bed. He used a cot in the garage. I never knew when he was gone. He took Mike with him to the Novitiate, but I didn’t realize it. All I knew was that there was something wrong with Mike. He became a different boy that week. He stopped talking. He had this look on his face like he’d seen the end of the world. I asked Jet why Mike was acting strangely, but he said I was making too much of it. It went on for days. I was scared.”

  Ginnie stopped, and Stride waited. She didn’t want to go on, as if she’d already said too much. Finally, he prompted her: “You found out the truth when the police came?”

  “Yes. Yes, that’s right. It was like the earth opened up under my feet and swallowed me. I knew Jet was violent, but this was depraved even for him. I was horrified by what had happened. At the same time, I have to be honest. I was happy he was dead. It was the greatest day of my life.”

  “What about Mike?” Stride asked. “When did you realize he’d been there, too?”

  Ginnie hesitated and composed her thoughts. She pointed to one of the cats, an under-sized Siamese with gray fur, who was following their conversation as if he understood every word. “He told Sheba. He was out in the yard one time, and he found this cat cowering in the shadows on the porch. Hungry. Scared. We took Sheba in. He was our first. Sheba still sleeps curled up against Mike every night. When Mike wouldn’t talk to me, I asked him to tell Sheba everything that had happened, and he did. Everything. How his father had brought him to the Novitiate. How Kelli was there, hooded, imprisoned. How Jet made him watch as he—”

  She shook her head. Tears leaked down her face.

  “I’m not sure which is more cruel,” she said. “To do what he did—or to force Mike to be there.”

  “What about the last day?” Stride asked. “Did Mike tell you what Kelli did to Jet?”

  “Do we really need to talk about this? What does it matter? Kelli told you what happened.”

  “It matters.”

  She stuttered. She didn’t want to tell him more. “Well, I guess—I don’t know. The last day, he heard something different. He heard a woman’s voice, but it didn’t sound like a woman. It was distorted and strange. He heard this odd, whining laughter. It was barely human. It was as if Jet was upstairs with—”

  “With who?”

  “With the Devil,” Ginnie said. “I know that sounds crazy, but it’s true. Mike stayed there until the screaming stopped. Eventually, I guess he crept upstairs. Either Kelli was asleep or unconscious. Mike saw—well, you know what he saw. After that, he ran. He ran for miles all the way home.”

  “I’m truly sorry for what he went through,” Stride said. “Did you get counseling for him?”

  “He refused to go.”

  “Were you shocked at what Kelli did? Did you think she should be punished?”

  “Punished? After what Jet did to her? No. He deserved what he got.”

  “The law might look at it differently,” Stride said.

  “That’s why I never said a word to anyone. I didn’t want Kelli to get into trouble.”

  “What about Mike?”

  “He would never talk about what he saw,” Ginnie said. “He treats that experience like it’s a monster that he wrestled into a box. You don’t open those boxes, Mr. Stride. You leave them where they are.”

  Stride frowned. “No, I’m sorry. I think Mike told people.”

  “Absolutely not,” she insisted. “It’s not possible.”

  “I talked to a girl who knows Mike. He told her about the Devil in the Novitiate. That the Devil killed his father. That’s what worries me. Who else at school did he tell? How far does the secret go? What if someone connected the dots and figured out that the Devil was really Kelli Andrews?”

  Ginnie’s face was shadowed with worry. Sheba jumped up on the table and bumped against her face and licked her chin. Ginnie held the cat’s face as if it could give her answers.

  “You must be wrong,” she said.

  “I’m not wrong. I need to find him. Do you know where Mike is?”

  She sighed and removed her phone from her pocket. “After all this, do you think I could ever stand not knowing where my son is? I have an app t
o track him. He bikes all over town on his moped, but I can always find when I need to.”

  Ginnie punched a few buttons on the phone. She showed him a map marked with a cross, which moved slowly eastward along a country road toward the lake. “He’s near the arts center,” she said. “He spends a lot of time there. I’m not sure why. It’s empty during the winter. I asked him once, and he said he just likes to sit in the open-air theater and think about things.”

  “Mike’s heading to the theater?” Stride said, getting up.

  “Yes, so what?”

  “We need to get over there, too,” he told her. “It’s no accident that he’s going there now. That’s where Kelli Andrews meets her clients.”

  Kelli left her car where she usually did, in the children’s park on the other side of the creek from the theater. Snow covered the grass, with only a few blurred footprints left by toddlers earlier in the day. It was deep dusk. Blackness reached into the woods. The ribbon of water connecting Shawano Lake to the Wolf River was shallow and frozen. Algae and dead brush made the ice dirty.

  A wooden footbridge led over the creek. Thick webs of branches leaned down, making an archway she passed beneath. On the other side of the bridge, the trail became a white snake slithering between the trees. With each footstep, acorns cracked under her boots, as sharp as rifle shots. She could barely make out the tree trunks packed tightly around her.

  She stopped when she felt someone near her. Her breath clouded in front of her face.

  “Hello?” she called.

  There was no answer.

  She continued through the woods to the amphitheater. It was really just a tiny flat stage, in need of a fresh coat of green paint, fronted by a handful of wooden benches on a shallow slope. The arts center building loomed behind the outdoor theater, but the building was closed and locked. She pushed through clusters of ferns and stood on the stage, as if she were Hamlet about to deliver a soliloquy to ghosts waiting on the benches.

  “Hello?” she said again.

  She was alone.

  Kelli waited. Minutes ticked by. She brushed snow from a front row bench and sat down. Hair pricked up on the back of her neck, and she kept looking over her shoulder, expecting to see or hear someone. No one was there. The cold began to eat through the damp seat of her jeans and her down vest.

  When fifteen minutes passed, she walked up the slope to the rear of the arts building. It was one-story, made of tan stucco. She peered into a window but couldn’t see inside. She made her way around the building, feeling oddly ill at ease as she turned the corners. In the front, several dirt roads came together through the tall trees. There were knolls cut into the forest where theatergoers parked, but most of the groves were hidden. She couldn’t see if anyone else was here.

  Dusk got blacker and blacker.

  Kelli wandered down one of the dirt roads. A street light over her head was cracked and broken, offering no light. She saw an opening in the woods and saw a car tucked in one of the grassy parking areas. It was invisible from the road, blocked by winter brush. The car was a silver Audi, and it had been there for a while. The vehicle was covered over with snow, making it even harder to see. Leaves and branches had fallen on the hood. Drifts had blown up over the license plate.

  She came close to the car and looked inside. The leather interior was empty and spotless and looked expensive. With a queer sense of dread, she brushed snow off the license plate and saw that it was personalized.

  HAMLIN1.

  This was Greg Hamlin’s car.

  Here, abandoned, in the place where Kelli Andrews met her clients.

  She turned and ran. She knew it was important to escape from this place right now. Her boots slipped. Tree branches grabbed for her arms and face. She could barely see in front of her. In the clearing, where the dirt roads converged, she stumbled toward the arts building, hearing only the sound of her own loud breathing as she ran. She sped for the woods, desperate to reach the amphitheater, the trail, the bridge, and then the freedom of her own car.

  As she fled past the rear of the stucco building, something—someone—swept out of the darkness. An arm—was it an arm?—hooked like a vise around her throat, stopping her cold and wrenching her body backward. Her legs pedaled, spinning through air, running out from under her. She flew, landing hard on her back and head.

  She lay on the ground, dizzy, staring up into nothing. A heavy weight fell on her chest.

  Through the blackness, she was aware of something moving, rushing up and down, landing on her forehead. Pain bloomed. Lightning cracked behind her eyes. Then everything stopped.

  21

  Stride inched down the dirt road. Ginnie Black sat beside him, peering through the windshield. His truck tires crunched over rocks. Flurries made a mist through the headlights. Ahead of them, he saw a small stucco building in the clearing where several roads came together. He left the headlights on as the two of them climbed out. Wind and spray slapped his skin. He had a vivid memory of Percy Andrews emerging from his car in the cemetery, stepping into the hot glow of the headlights.

  “No one’s here,” Ginnie said.

  Stride took out a flashlight and swept it across the ground in front of the arts building. “Footprints,” he said.

  There was one set of footprints coming and going. They were small, like a woman’s boots. The prints headed down a dirt road to his left, and Stride followed them. Ginnie stayed a few steps behind. He tracked the prints into a break in the trees, where he saw the parked Audi. He saw the license plate.

  “Greg Hamlin’s car,” he said. “Whoever kidnapped him did it here.”

  He studied the footprints. The woman who made them had squatted in the snow to clear the license plate. When she recognized it, she’d turned and ran. The footprints leading away were farther apart. Made in panic. Made in fear.

  If it was Kelli, she knew what it meant to have Hamlin’s car here. Someone was pointing another finger of guilt at her.

  “Come on,” Stride said. “We need to find her.”

  “I texted Mike,” Ginnie said. “I asked him where he was.”

  “Did he answer?”

  She shook her head.

  Stride studied the ground again. There were no other footprints. Just a woman arriving and leaving. He left Hamlin’s Audi behind and pushed out of the forest to the narrow road. The flashlight guided him. He could still see the glow of his truck lights near the arts building.

  The footprints led them back toward the building. He checked the woods on both sides of the road but didn’t see signs of life. The snow made a low hiss, and the erratic gusts of wind knocked the tree branches together. Next to him, Ginnie shoved her hands in her pockets. Her coat was old but heavy.

  “Could Mike have been seeing Kelli for therapy without telling you?” he asked.

  “No, he wouldn’t do that. Neither would she.”

  “Kelli counseled teenagers,” he said.

  “He would have told me.”

  They reached the arts center, which was locked and empty. Icicles dripped into sharp spears from the roof line. Trees towered over their heads, swaying like drunk giants. The high beams of the Expedition lit the two of them and cast huge shadows behind them. The footprints in the snow led behind the building. He began to follow but stopped as he heard the crack of branches breaking deep in the trees. Someone was coming. Running toward them. Making no effort to hide the noise. With one arm, he nudged Ginnie Black behind him. He slid his gun into his hand. The footsteps got closer, so close he could hear panting.

  A body flew around the corner of the building.

  It was Mike Black.

  The teenager skidded to a stop. Stride quickly put away his gun. Ginnie leaped out from behind him and wrapped her son in a bear hug. The boy eyed Stride, who quickly assessed the boy’s clothes, looking for signs of struggle or blood. There was nothing to suggest that anything had happened to him. Even so, Mike was panicked.

  “Where’s Kelli Andrews?” Stride a
sked.

  Mike nudged away from his mother. “I don’t know.”

  Stride pointed at the footprints they’d followed. “Are those her footprints?”

  “I told you, I don’t know. I didn’t see her here, but her car—her car is parked on the other side of the river. There’s no one there.”

  “Show me.”

  Mike led them behind the arts building. Ginnie stayed next to her son with her arm around his shoulder. Stride followed, keeping watch on the footprints in the snow. Near the hollow where an open-air amphitheater nestled in the trees, something changed. Two sets of footprints collided. The snow was trampled.

  “Stop,” he said.

  Stride studied the scene under the glow of his flashlight. He saw a man’s footprints, slipping on the slushy terrain in long streaks. The tracks hugged the wall, and where Kelli had come around the corner, the ground was in disarray. The snow was flattened as if a body had fallen there. He bent down and lit up the litter of dirt and leaves where the snowfall had been scraped away.

  Wet, dark drops glistened on the earth. Fresh blood.

  He checked the trail that disappeared into the trees and saw overlapping tracks. The larger footprints he’d found stuttered under the weight of something in the man’s arms. He was carrying something as he retreated. A body. Kelli’s body.

  Stride hurried down the slope into the forest. He stayed on the snowy edge of the trail, where woody limbs scraped his jacket. Spidery ferns sprouted from the ground. The beam of his flashlight bounced. Behind him, Mike and Ginnie Black followed, trying to keep up. The man’s footprints continued, deep and unhurried, and at a small clearing, the trail split. Going forward, the snow was untouched, but to Stride’s right, the footprints headed over a bridge across the frozen creek.

  He crossed. Ahead of him was a parking lot. He saw an old-model blue Camry parked there. Snow had gathered on the windshield. Next to the car was Mike’s moped.

  He heard Mike and Ginnie come up behind him.

  “Is that Kelli’s car?” Stride asked.

  The boy nodded.