‘Dench’s cabin,’ he whispered.
Knowing what had occurred in this place made its stains run much deeper – made them something the flames could never destroy. It was in the soil, the trees; vibrating through the air like lightning the moment before it strikes. It would be perfectly acceptable for him to take a photograph and walk away, but it would feel like he was abandoning those girls, after all they had gone through. He recalled Erin’s question. Some monsters are born into this world, while others are made by it. But how can you tell a child that? He went on, treading carefully.
Taylor circled the ruins first and noted the dirt drive with its fresh tyre tracks in each wheel rut. A row of barred basement windows were at ground level. He imagined Alison and Paris peering up through the dusty windowpanes, praying for deliverance, listening for their captor’s approach. A weathered tarp partially covered a generator and several jerry cans along the back wall. A narrow staircase led to an open door that hung crookedly on its hinges. He climbed the stairs, stepped inside the door and smelt the acrid memory of the fire in the timbers. The opposite wall had collapsed, a carpet of leaves peppering the charred floorboards, crunching underfoot. A stairwell to the loft climbed the wall on his right and also descended into the cellar. He peered over the edge; a shadowland of dim light below. Perfectly acceptable to walk away. But no … Each step creaked underfoot, threatening to break under his weight as he descended.
The stairs led to a narrow hall of damp stone; the floor was a roughly screeded cement, its low spots pooled with rainwater. The ground-floor timbers had collapsed in on the cellar at the far end, leaving access to just one of the doors on the right. It looked like a prison, the steel doors rusted where the paint had peeled. Taylor stood before them and noted the new padlock on the latch – locked, of course. He tried it anyway, then cautiously slid the narrow viewing window open, afraid of what he might see. But the room was empty, except for the chalk drawing of a Raggedy Ann doll on the opposite wall, just like the one Sister Moore had given him for Erin. He saw two steel-framed beds, thin mattresses rolled up at their heads, and a pool of dried blood between them. This was it all right; Alison’s last stand, refuge for Dench, and the primary crime scene where Sampson – and probably the three in the boat – were held and then killed.
Taylor took several photos and climbed out past the landing to the loft, where milky daylight strained through a dusty window overlooking the back of the cabin. That’s when the two mounds caught his eye, unclear until he forced the window open. Side by side in a small clearing, one was surrendered to the elements while the other had a makeshift cross at the head and was surrounded by a neat border of stone. Graves. He guessed Paris lay in the well-kept plot; suddenly feeling her presence nearby. But what of the other? Dench? And if Dench is dead, then who’s driving his Cherokee?
The scene kept presenting more questions than answers. Who buried them? Alison was too young at the time, and was found in a state of confusion; she was in no physical condition or mental state to have buried Paris. Did she come back? Was her claim of memory loss a lie all along? And if Dench is still alive, then who’s in that second grave?
He stepped away from the windowsill. Just like the children’s home, the place seemed to have an imprint of those who had come before; a shadow with no one there to cast it. Like the cellar, the loft was open to the elements at one end. The mist had now crept back into the forest, creating grey shadows of curious giants around the building. A brittle leather lounge stood askew beneath the broken loft window, one corner housing a rodent’s nest. Opposite was a sideboard, its tall mirror with a mildewed dust cover. He stood before it, one hand on a corner of the sheet. Listen to your instincts … He didn’t.
The sheet slid away to reveal the sideboard’s mirror, and Taylor stood staring at his own reflection – and at the familiar A, in what looked like rose-coloured lipstick. Alison …
He took a step closer and felt something underfoot. A well-used lipstick lay there, the same shade as the A on the mirror. Taylor bent to pick it up, then remembered the evidence protocol and fished out his handkerchief, wrapping the lipstick loosely to preserve possible fingerprints. He placed the bundle safely in his pocket and considered the mirror.
Why cover it?
Looking at his image, he tried to see what Alison might see when peering into her own eyes. Only herself, and yet, perhaps too much to acknowledge. Guilt? Remorse? Shame? What do you see, Alison? He reached out to touch the glass surface and glimpsed in the reflection behind him, a shadow of movement.
21
Everett stood leaning against the community hall windowsill, facing the burbling generator out back, his breath fogging the glass. He wrote Alison with his fingertip, amended the A to look like the strange symbol left at each crime scene, then cleared the condensation with a swipe of his palm. His gaze rose to the cloud-shrouded mountains that stood sentinel over the Reach. He had tried Taylor’s phone earlier but it had gone straight to message bank, no doubt due to the scratchy reception up there. The radio was out of range as well. Once again, the very elements seemed against him.
A series of knocks rattled the front doors. Everett glanced over his shoulder, then turned, staring blankly at the hall’s entrance. He didn’t want to open the doors; didn’t want to invite any more problems or roadblocks to the case. The knocking sounded again, and had a frailty to it – a frailty he could feel sympathy with. He took a deep breath as he walked across the creaking floorboards, held it a moment, then opened the doors.
Sister Adeline Moore stood at the stoop, the wind sweeping strands of grey hair across her eyes. ‘May I come in, Detective?’ She brushed the hair from her face. ‘I have some information that … that I need to share.’
*
Taylor felt rooted to the cabin’s floor, his eyes fixed on the reflection in the mirror. The dim shadow cast behind him grew in length, until a voice broke the silence, releasing the chill that gripped his spine.
‘This is the place, huh?’
He turned. ‘Jesus, Jaimie! I thought you were staying back at the camp.’
She stepped forwards, eyes fixed on the mirror and its simple message in lipstick. ‘Your half-hour was up … I got worried.’
Taylor stole a glimpse at his watch. She was right.
‘You were supposed to go back to town,’ he said, but was glad she hadn’t. It was best to be in places like this with company. He followed Jaimie’s transfixed scrutiny of the A, wondering what her thoughts were as she stared back at herself like that. ‘The symbol,’ he said, nodding to the mirror. ‘Alison wants us to know she was here.’
Jaimie clutched her arms around her shoulders and shivered. ‘I can feel her here.’
Taylor could feel her too.
A flash exploded from Jaimie’s phone camera and he flinched. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Thanks.’ He stepped back as Jaimie took more photos, then retrieved his own phone, scrolled down to find Everett’s number and noticed a missed call from the detective. Taylor’s finger paused above the call icon, eyes fixed on the red A. He heard Erin’s words again, like a wisp of wind behind the ear: Claire said that you need to be careful.
‘I know, sweetheart,’ he said under his breath, then tapped the call button.
*
Everett let Sister Moore inside and guided her to his makeshift office. ‘Please,’ he said as he pulled a chair back from the trestle table, ‘have a seat, Sister.’
Adeline Moore sat and fumbled nervously with her Longbeach pack.
‘Thank you,’ she said.
Everett’s phone rang. It was Taylor. Not a good time, but he had to take it. ‘Sorry, Sister.’ He pressed talk.
She dismissed him with a wave, clearly preoccupied with whatever she had come to see him about.
Although the reception was poor, Taylor managed to tell him about Dench’s cabin – the graves, the cellar and blood stains all supporting evidence it was their primary crime scene. Everett glanced at Sister Moore while
the ranger briefed him. She fidgeted with her hands as he tried to process Taylor’s report. The case suddenly felt fathomless, and here he was again, paused on the edge of the pit.
As if to remind Everett further how isolated he was, a gust of wind buffeted the doors, the lights dimming with a cough of the generator. Sister Moore seemed to notice the change in his demeanour, and frowned. Taylor’s voice had become background noise; a radio program not quite on the frequency. Another key to the puzzle was unearthed, and yet Everett had no resources to do anything about it. The detective sat opposite the nun and stared blankly up at the evidence board on the stage.
‘Okay,’ he told Taylor. ‘Come back down. We’ll discuss it further when you get here.’ He hung up and placed the phone on the table, his eyes fixed on its screen for a moment longer.
‘Everything all right, Detective?’ Sister Moore asked.
‘Just tickety-boo,’ he said, not even trying to mask the sarcasm. He gestured to her cigarette packet. ‘Feel free.’ He slid towards her the bowl he’d made his fingerprint powder in. ‘Ashtray,’ he said.
She gratefully lit her cigarette between trembling fingers, drew on it deeply, and then exhaled a stream of smoke from her nose. The hit of nicotine seemed to calm her.
‘Now, Sister, what’s this about?’
‘Alison and Paris,’ she said timidly. Then, louder, ‘They were never abducted.’
The statement was like a punch to the chest. It left Everett wondering if he had actually heard it. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘What I did, I did in good faith, Detective,’ she said with an air of desperation. She leaned forward. ‘I had an opportunity to make my brother’s gambling debts go away, and effectively save him from being killed by the hoods he owed money to. I also thought I was helping a childless woman and two little orphans.’ She drew on her cigarette again, ashed it in the bowl, and sat back in the chair, this time avoiding Everett’s eyes. ‘I didn’t know what Dench was capable of …’
Everett’s thumb fell on Archie’s watch – it was a reflex now – rubbing the glass face in nervous circles. He looked down at the white-knuckled pressure he was applying that matched the sensation in his gut. He didn’t know how to feel: mad at the nun’s original deception, or grateful for her turnaround in telling the truth. In the end, the detective lifted his thumb, afraid he might break the glass, and looked Sister Moore in the eye. Now that she had begun her confession, Everett didn’t want to scare her off.
‘Take your time, Sister.’
She composed herself, quickly wiping fresh tears from the corner of her eyes. ‘Dench approached me in 1994 with a proposition,’ she began. ‘He wanted to buy two of our children for his sister, who couldn’t have kids.’
When she met Everett’s stare, it was obvious she recognised the revulsion in his eyes. He tried to curtail his emotions. ‘Go on,’ he said softly.
‘Don’t be too quick to judge me, Detective,’ she continued. ‘That will be the Lord’s duty. I believed that Dench had his reasons for avoiding the correct protocols and told myself he and his sister were innocent; that he just wanted to speed the process up. When he offered me ten thousand dollars, I was blinded to everything. All I could think about was how the money could help my brother.’ She turned up her nose in disgust. ‘And Dench had done his homework, knew I’d be tempted.’
‘But that’s not exactly what happened … is it?’
‘No,’ she said despondently, focusing on the thin stream of smoke spiralling from her cigarette. ‘Turns out he didn’t even have a sister. The woman in his car the day he first put the proposition to me was just some kind of stand-in. I justified my actions by believing I could help them all; and I chose Paris and Alison because, at their age, it would be harder to find places for them. No one wants a ten-year-old foster child, Detective. They all want babies.’
‘I understand,’ said Everett, more as a prompt to keep her talking than as an endorsement. It worked.
‘It made sense. Dench wanted two girls. I thought that Alison and Paris’s bond was already established. The exchange was made outside of town, and the girls were given their traditional Raggedy Ann dolls and left in Dench’s Cherokee. I told them they would have a family and stay together. I’ll never forgive myself for that.’
Everett could only imagine. ‘But how did you fake the abduction at the weir?’
Sister Moore drew on the last of her cigarette and butted it out in the bowl. ‘A busload of squealing children is chaotic; it can be hard to see exactly what’s going on. I was in charge of the rollcall that day, so I marked them as present.’ She shook her head in mild amusement. ‘People see what they want to see, Detective. When I raised the alarm that Paris and Alison hadn’t returned to the bus that afternoon, some of the staff and children actually offered sightings: they’d last seen them at the weir, the water’s edge, the pump house. But the reality is, of course, they were never there.’
‘And you had no idea of Dench’s intentions?’
She glared at him. ‘Of course not!’
‘But when the truth emerged,’ noted Everett, ‘you had every opportunity to tell the authorities what had happened.’ He didn’t understand how someone like her, with that kind of religious background, could live with such guilt. ‘It’s been twenty-one years since Alison walked out of that forest.’
Sister Moore crossed herself. ‘I was devastated to realise what I had delivered those girls into.’ She clasped her hands in a knot. ‘When they found Alison, I had every expectation that I would have to disclose what happened, but the poor girl’s memory loss made me reconsider. I couldn’t change what had happened, but I could make the way forwards for her as smooth as possible. In the end, I considered her amnesia a blessing … for both of us.’
‘Why are you telling me this now?’ Everett asked. ‘The evidence is pointing to Alison as our Hoodoo.’
The nun fumbled for another cigarette, realised the pack was empty, and threw it on the table in frustration. ‘Something I read in the paper,’ she said. ‘All the victims’ Achilles tendons had been cut.’
‘Yeah. Common knowledge now.’
‘As I told you and that ranger, Detective, Paris was a … a chameleon, and very theatrical at times in choosing to be a different character on any given day. While it always seemed sad to me, sometimes it could be quirky and even amusing. But other days …’
‘What did you see?’
‘The two girls rarely played with the others, but one time I found Paris in a circle of children, telling a story that had them spellbound, and playing all the characters. She was so animated and sure of herself; prancing around the circle, making dramatic gestures, her voice changing with each person she was pretending to be.’
‘I thought you said Paris was reclusive?’ Everett asked. ‘Sounds like a breakthrough to me.’
‘To me as well, Detective.’ Sister Moore now clenched her hands into a ball. ‘It was a fairytale she was telling them – about a princess imprisoned by an ogre, and how the princess escaped. I thought it was wonderful until one of the children asked how the princess stopped the ogre from chasing her.’
The irony of the tale didn’t escape Everett. ‘I don’t believe in self-fulfilling proficies, Sister, but I can guess Paris’s conclusion of that tale.’
‘And you would be right, Detective. She sprang in front of that boy and, in a dainty little voice, said, “I cut his heels clear through to the bone.”’ She sighed, but looked like she had cast aside a great weight. ‘I’ve never forgotten it; it was so violent, so specific, and in such contrast with that little voice. And it struck me even more when I read that news story.’
‘Are you saying—?’
‘I’m saying I wish I could have seen Alison’s eyes in that hospital before child welfare took her away. She was sleeping when they asked me to identify her. Like I told you, her hair was shaved so it was very short. Her body was so emaciated, like a wilted flower, and her front teeth were missing, but �
� Alison’s eyes were a light hazel, Detective, like coffee and cream. Paris’s, however, were so dark, they were nearly black.’
‘Wait a minute … you think it was Paris who survived the fire, then stole Alison’s identity?’
‘Once I read about the Achilles tendons, everything fell into place. As I said, she was a chameleon. I now think she killed both Dench and Alison in that fire, with the clear intention of stealing her companion’s identity. Alison could never have done those things to those men, but Paris … the way she could change to fit her environment … she had a steel in her that Alison never had.’
A silence fell between them as Sister Moore came to terms with the weight on her being lifted through confession and Everett took that weight upon himself. He looked across at her, and she avoided his stare, glancing around at the hall’s interior. His job wasn’t to judge. It was to put together the evidence.
‘This isn’t the confessional, Sister,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to take a statement.’
‘Of course,’ she said. ‘I assume I’m under arrest for what I did.’
Everett thought about it. Even if he had a cell and facility to book her, what was the point? Sister Moore was there to clear her conscience. There to help with the case. This woman was not a flight risk. And the fact remained that until the ferry was back up and running, no one on the Reach was going anywhere.
‘I appreciate your help,’ the detective said calmly. ‘I know it was difficult for you to come here today.’ He reached across and patted her hand. ‘Go home, Sister. I’ll let LOC consider any charges later.’
She nodded, her shoulders dropping as if another weight had been lifted from them, but she then became distracted, focusing on Samson’s motorcycle against the far wall. She stood, stepped closer, and pointed to the fuel tank. ‘That symbol,’ she said. ‘What is it?’
The Reach Page 21