by Misty Evans
We come to a dead end out of the blue, and JJ slams on the brakes. "What the...?"
He gives me a hard look and I shrug. "I told you GPS couldn't track the exact location. It doesn't seem to exist on the map."
JJ puts the vehicle in park. "You stay here. I'll have a look around."
Meg used to make me tromp around the woods with her when we were little. I don't exactly hate it, but I find nature to be...messy. Bugs and snakes are one thing, but hell, in these woods? There are bears and cougars. Not just messy, downright dangerous.
There's no way I'm letting JJ treat me like a diva, though. I made sure to wear hiking boots in case this sort of thing happened, and, as he bails out, I follow.
He doesn't waste his breath arguing, just shakes his head, and says, "Which way?"
From my estimate, Billy Ray's should be over the next hill. I spot a foot path a few feet away. "There. Let's follow that."
It disappears in places as we hunt for it in the overgrowth. We trudge through dead leaves and forest debris, over fallen limbs and around large rocky outcroppings. A few birds sing above us and the rustling in the detritus warns me of small creatures scurrying away from our footsteps.
Small creatures I can handle. Most of them, anyway. "I hope there aren't snakes," I say, knowing it's a stupid comment. Of course there are, and my hand lightly touches the butt of my handgun at my waist for reassurance.
"I'll protect you," JJ says, making fun of me and cupping my elbow.
A lot of help he’d be against a bear or mountain lion. "Good thing I have my gun."
He grins and something smolders in his eyes. Alpha male all the way. "You don't think I can protect you?" he asks.
"Have you ever seen a bear up close? Growing up near the woods, every once in a while a bear would pay us a visit. Come on the back porch and try to get in the screen door. Wrecked everything in sight. Trust me when I say, we don't want to run into one out here."
I'm slightly out of breath from the climb and stop for a moment, the smell of pine filling my nostrils. A light mist has begun to fall. So much rain this week. "Why the hell would anyone want to live in a place this secluded?"
"Makes a good place to bury bodies," JJ jokes.
At least, I think he is, but I realize, maybe that's one of the reasons I don't like the woods. It's not only nature and wild animals that give me the creeps, I feel like a stupid heroine in a horror flick. The sinister killer is going to pop out from behind a tree at any moment.
JJ and I make it to the top of a hill, and I swear the temperature has dropped ten degrees since we climbed out of the car. My lightweight spring jacket isn’t enough to block the chill and shivers run down my spine. Below, through another thicket of trees, there's a cabin. A barely visible fog floats around it and a small outhouse.
I spot the large wagon wheel Dixie described. On the north side of the house is a pile of stacked wood, but there is no smoke coming from the stone chimney. No lights shining through the windows. There's a drive that leads in the opposite direction we came from—probably a different way, an easier way, to get to this place without walking through the woods.
There's no vehicle parked in the drive—if you can call the dirt road leading to the cabin that—just a four-wheeler sitting on the side, the tires caked in dried mud.
No dogs raise an alert as we make our way down the hillside. It's muddy here, and my boots slide on the wet leaves. I nearly end up on my backside, but in true alpha-male-protector form, JJ manages to grab my arm and keep me from going down. The hem of my pant legs are wet and crusted with dirt and pine needles. Definitely have to send them to the cleaners when I get home.
We slow at the edge and JJ stops me. "Let's assume Billy Ray is armed and probably doesn't like strangers showing up out of the woods at his house. I don't want to die out here from a misunderstanding."
Good thought. "Maybe we should circle around and approach from that direction."
"Maybe you should stay here and let me go talk to him."
"Fat chance. This is my lead, my idea. Besides, he's less likely to be on guard against a woman. Like you, he seems to have a protective streak toward us. All I have to do is let him know Dixie sent me."
JJ is silent a moment, stewing it over. "Yeah, no. I'm not letting you approach alone."
I start moving south toward the dirt drive. "You're just afraid to stay here and take your chances with the bears," I tease.
JJ follows. "Damn straight, I am."
I wait until we get to the drive to say what I'm thinking. "He's not here. There's no vehicle, lights, or smoke from the fireplace."
"He could be nearby, hunting or whatever guys like this do out here alone."
We're standing in plain sight, and I stare at the windows, seeing no movement of curtains. "Guess there's only one way to find out."
I keep my hands loose at my sides and call, "Billy Ray? I'm a friend of Dixie's. She sent me to talk to you."
I almost ask permission to move forward, but instead, I wait. There's no reply, still no visible movement inside. I call out again, repeating what I said, and walk slowly toward the front porch. JJ stays a few steps behind me, and I sense he is watching the woods as well as the house.
Smart man.
We spend a few more minutes trying to make sure Billy Ray isn’t playing possum. Eventually, we’re at the door. I look at JJ and he shrugs.
We didn't come all this way to turn around and head back to D.C. without getting something for our troubles.
I knock loudly and step back. "Billy Ray? My name is Charlize Schock and I'm looking into a copycat killer I believe is using Mickey Wilson as his mentor. I know you don't want to talk about him or what he did to your sisters, but young women are dying because of this guy. If you could answer a few questions, give me five minutes, it could save lives."
Nothing. The rain begins to fall harder. JJ motions me off the porch, signals he's going to walk around the house, peek into windows.
I keep talking, practically begging Billy Ray to help us. Finally, I stop wasting my breath. He's not here.
Dammit all to hell.
JJ finishes walking around. He shakes his head at my questioning gaze when he emerges on my left. "Could be he went to town, or maybe he hasn't been here in a long time. What do you want to do, Charlie? Wait and see if he comes home?"
I bite the inside of my bottom lip, tapping my foot on the ground and cursing silently. My hair is already soaked, and rivulets of water run down my neck, under the collar of my jacket. I stomp up the front steps once more and grab the doorknob, jiggling it. It's locked. No surprise.
I step back and give it a hard kick. The wood groans slightly, but the lock doesn't give.
"What the hell are you doing?" JJ asks.
I motion at him to come up. "Help me kick this door open."
"You want a U.S. district attorney to break into a guy's house with no provocation?"
I hate breaking the law, but on the other hand, innocent women are dying, and I have to stop the man killing them. "I'm feeling sick, really sick, probably picked up something in the woods and I could die. You don't know what's wrong with me, and I can't make it back to the rental car. You need to get me inside, warm me up, make me tea or...something."
A muscle in JJ's jaw works. He's trying not to smile as he curses under his breath. "What do you think you're going to find in there?"
"A notepad and pen and leave this guy a message. One way or another, I'm going to talk to him. We can drive back to town and I'll find a hotel. You head back to D.C., but I'll stay here and see if I can meet him face-to-face and get something—anything—that’ll help us."
The tingle in my gut is working overtime. JJ's phone rings, the soft buzzing foreign in the noise of this forested area. I'm shocked he has service at all. He pulls it out, stalling me and my break-in, to answer. I walk to the nearest window and try to peek in, but the closed curtains mostly block the view of what lies inside. I cup my hands around my eyes a
nd stare harder. A table under the window. A rifle lies on it, three hunting knives, steel gleaming even in the shadows, on newspaper next to it.
"Yeah...when was that?" JJ's tone makes me turn to him. The hair on the back of my neck stands up at the look on his face. "You're sure? Okay, thanks."
He disconnects and pockets the phone. Walks up onto the porch to the front door.
Something has changed—he's ready to bust it down.
"What is it?" I ask. "Who was that?"
"I asked the warden to look up all the times Billy Ray, or the sisters, visited Mickey."
"And?"
He wiggles his fingers at me. "Give me your gun."
I hand it to him, and he points it at the spot where the lock is. "Billy Ray visited Mickey in prison three days ago."
The tickle turns into a full blown cramp. "Holy shit," I say. "Do you think...? There are three knives on the table in there."
Probable cause. We don't want our search thrown out of court just in case.
He doesn't say anything, and I jump back and cover my ears as JJ fires at the door.
Inside, rain drips off the sleeves of my jacket and I pull up short only a few steps in. A wall covered in newspaper clippings and photos grabs my attention, horror slamming into me. They’re from Mickey's trial, but it's the photos that make me gag and run back outside to vomit in the yard.
The majority of serial killers like to kill close to home. In this case, it appears ours prefers to do so near his childhood home.
I hear JJ's voice as he makes the appropriate calls to law enforcement, cursing at the shitty reception, but managing to get through. My fingers shake as I pull out my cell to call Meg.
I have no bars, no connection.
I go inside and find JJ using the landline in the kitchen, not his cell.
"Get off," I say, and when he doesn't do it fast enough, I yank the handset from him and start dialing.
Meg's goes to voicemail, and I swear softly, but I leave her a message, relaying the news.
Billy Ray has pictures of dead women plastered all over his cabin.
Worse, he also has some of two women who aren't dead yet.
Me and Meg.
21
Meg
The lack of sleep finally hit me.
I'm in my studio, Avery in front of me. I've placed the tissue depth markers on the cast and started layering various sized strips of clay by her haunting blue eyes, along her brow bone and jaw. Between the strips, the pale skull peeps out, intensifying the contrast of the darker clay.
As honorable as my profession is, I'm staring at something out of a freak show. No one, cast or not, should ever have to look like this. Half complete, bulging eyeballs and giant teeth that without flesh around them are menacing choppers ready to carve me apart. She won't always look this way, but at this moment I can't stand it.
Right now this girl is an art project.
Tragic.
A raging burn licks up my spine, searing my skin from inside out. I can't move. I want to, I know I have to, but my brain and fingers can't get their shit together and connect. I've suddenly forgotten how to sculpt, and it terrifies me.
I step back, draw a long breath of stale, closed-in office air.
"I'm being an idiot," I say.
Rational Meg knows it. Sleep-deprived Meg? Not so much. She loves poking the gremlins that wait, deep inside where that fire burns, ready to remind me of my fears, failures and disappointments.
Avery and her dead eyes being one of them.
My chest collapses, just a brutal crush of bone against my lungs.
I turn from her—I have to—and stumble from my office.
No air. I need air.
"Charlie!"
My sister. She'll offer refuge. Talk me from the ledge I want to throw myself off because this will never stop. Ever. There will always be cold cases and dead people. Young women, old men, children. A fucking marching band of skulls in and out of my studio, silently begging for help.
I reach the hallway and prop my hand against the wall. Air. The pressure in my chest is too much. Too constricting. My ears fill with some kind of quasi roar-whoosh that knocks me off balance and sends me wobbling. Irrational Meg begs for darkness, for the bliss of denial that’ll come when I pass out.
Please.
I don't fight it.
I need the break. Just a few seconds. Anticipating the plunge, I put my back flush against the wall and slide to the floor.
"Charlie!"
No answer. I shake my head. Stupid girl. I know she's not here. She's with JJ questioning Billy Ray.
The name douses the burning panic shredding me. He'll have answers and help us figure this out. Find this lunatic dumping young women along the Beltway. He has to.
I stare at the wall across from me and focus on Billy Ray as a potential lead.
The pressure in my chest eases and I squeeze out a short, choppy breath. Then another. On my third I fill my lungs, force myself to count to three as I exhale. My vision clears and the red slashes in the painting on the opposite wall come into sharp focus.
Rational Meg suggests I've just had the mother of all panic attacks, something not exactly foreign to me, but it's been a long time, fourteen months to be exact and I'd started to believe I'd licked that little disorder.
Work. That's what I need. To ignore my scattered thoughts and push through. When I finish Avery, I'll have that sense of completion I desperately need.
I get to all fours then rise to my feet, stumbling the short distance to my office. My eyes are on the back door and I take a second to think that through. Quiet surrounds me, nipping at the back of my neck because I'm alone in this office. Security system notwithstanding, we had a break-in. And an attack on Haley. We wouldn't let her stay here alone, but somehow it's all right for Charlie and me to.
I drag my gaze and peer in at Avery.
No.
Not Avery. A reconstruction of Avery.
Who am I kidding?
Time and again I get emotionally attached to replicas—not even the real skulls—of dead people. Those reconstructions might not all be in my studio anymore, but each enters with an energy attached that never leaves. The room or me. Those we can't identify—and as good as we are, there've been a lot—their souls stick around, latch on to me like a lifeline I can't give them.
Even standing in the hallway, if I look hard enough, I can see them, sense them pulling me back into my studio, my own personal hell, begging me to find them.
And bring them home. The pressure in my chest builds. It's happening. Again.
I can't do it. Not so soon after the last attack. I'll go insane if I don't get control of myself. Intellectually, I understand this and I'm grateful for that clarity of mind. Moving quickly, my eyes on the floor, away from anything that might intensify my panic, I step into my office, grab my purse and sketchpad and flat-out sprint to the back door. I'm alone and I know what I need.
Still, I give Avery a silent apology, promising I'll be better in a couple hours. After a visit to my happy place.
I lock the door behind me and use the remote on my keyring to arm the security system.
I hit the Beltway and chop the sixty minute drive to the Silver Tail River in half. I don't have time to mess around with panic attacks. I'm on a mission to get my mojo back. To sit on the ground and dig my fingers into earth, inhaling the loamy scent of soil.
I check my rearview, making sure I haven’t been tailed by whoever the psycho is messing with us. I even punch the gas and cross two lanes to get to my exit and let out a breath when I’m neither crushed by an oncoming truck or followed. I’m alone. Thank you.
After parking in my usual spot in the small gravel lot beside the kayak launch, I toss my purse in the back, hiding it under a jacket I keep there. Phone? I glance at the cupholder where I usually stow my cell. Empty. Dammit. In my rush to get here, I left it in my office. Nothing to be done about it now and berating myself won’t help. Instead, I
grab my supplies. Thirty minutes. That's all I need.
There are no cars aside from mine and as I glance around, I see no one. Perfect. I hop out of the van, lock it up and shove my keys in my jacket pocket. The babbling sound of water against rock immediately snaps my brain to a better place. A kinder, gentler one, as my sister liked to joke.
Good. This is good.
Thirty minutes and back to work I go.
I stride along the old dirt path formed from years of residents in my hometown trudging along. Two hundred yards ahead is the old shack—the she-shed.
As I pass, I don't fight the smile. It contributed to my love of the outdoors and I'd spent plenty of nights lying on the tiny front deck staring at stars with my family. Charlie had even secretly brought a few boyfriends to the shed. Even then, my sister was a forward thinker.
Me? This was my place. I wasn't about to share it with someone who’d probably break my heart. Looking back, my memories here only include happy, carefree moments and that's what I need now.
It's been years since I've been inside, but from the outside, I can see edges of rotting wood. Frankly, it's a miracle the thing is still standing. A testament to Dad's woodworking skills I suppose. If I had more time, particularly today when I could use a few moments to immerse myself in the joyful times of my childhood, I'd go in and see what kind of condition the place is in.
Next time.
I keep walking, my feet crunching over loose gravel along the path. There's a giant boulder just ahead that sits at the top of the river bank. That's my spot. I like to sit on the ground, my back propped against the boulder as the water laps below me. Heaven.
My version of it anyway.
I peer up at the sun and–yay, me—I’ve timed this just right. At this hour, it’ll shine directly on my rock, splaying its warm rays over me while I sketch.