by Rose, Willow
"I’m glad I could be of help. Your mom has been out all day anyway."
"Where has she been?" I asked and put my feet up on the coffee table that my mom had bought for me because she said I couldn't have a house without a coffee table. I knew she would have a heart attack if she saw me put my dirty shoes on her expensive table, but I didn't care.
"Winter Park, visiting her girlfriends. They all live there now," he said. "Because of the gated communities and golf courses. And less risk of hurricane damage, they believe."
"Let me guess…she wants to go live there as well?" I asked.
"Well, naturally. The neighborhoods are far more well-trimmed, as she puts it."
"But you don't want that," I said.
"No. Of course not. I like it out here. I like the ocean breeze, and I like the surfers and the laid-back attitude. In there it's so…uptight. It's not for me. I need the ocean close. Makes it less unbearable in the summer too. I wouldn't last a day in there in the summer. Besides, I still have my business to attend to."
"You could do that in there," I said grinning, knowing that had probably been my mom's argument too.
"True. That's a lousy argument. But I am not going. End of discussion. If she wants to go see her friends in Winter Park, then she can do the drive."
"Sounds like something you guys can argue about for the next several years," I said.
My dad chuckled and got up. He leaned over and kissed my forehead. I pulled him into a hug, thinking about Dawn and all that she had been through. He put his arms around me. I closed my eyes and enjoyed being held.
"Don't give in to her," I said as he let go of me. "Ever."
He shook his head. "I won't."
I walked him out and then closed the door behind him, thinking I had been lucky with my parents after all. At least compared to Dawn. My mother was just coldhearted toward me. She had, after all, never laid a hand on me. I turned off the lights in the living room, then noticed something on the light carpet. I knelt and sighed, realizing it was some of Alex's green slime. It was deep into the carpet, and someone had stepped in it. It had left big marks all over the carpet and into the hallway. It was going to take forever to get out.
I sighed and decided that would have to wait till the morning, then walked up the stairs, and checked on the kids in their rooms before turning in. As soon as my head hit the pillow, I was sound asleep.
Chapter 63
"Mommy. Mommy! I got an award."
I am running through the house, holding the medal in my hand. The house is so quiet. It has been for months, ever since that day in Wal-Mart when Sydney was taken. It is fall now, four months into Kindergarten. I feel proud of myself.
"Look," I say and run into the kitchen, throwing my backpack on the floor as I go. My mom is standing in there, looking out into the backyard and the canal.
"Mom?" I say hoping to get her attention. "Look! I did the project all by myself."
She doesn’t turn to look at me.
"What's wrong?" I say.
My mother shakes her head, then looks down at the potatoes she is peeling. "I was thinking maybe we should grow some petunias out in the yard, huh? I bet that would look nice."
"Sure, Mom, but…I won an award. In school?"
My mother doesn’t look at me. She shakes her head while peeling the potatoes. "Pick up your backpack from the floor. It doesn’t go there. If you keep throwing it there, someone will trip over it."
"But…Mom?"
"Now," she says.
I stare at her back, thinking I can't remember when I saw her eyes the last time, or when I felt her kiss.
"Sydney has a doll in her room, the American girl doll, can I go play with it?" I ask.
It's the first time I’ve mentioned her name since that day. I haven't dared to, but I really love that doll. And now it's just in there gathering dust like all her other stuff. Every day, I walk to the door and open it, then look inside, but I never dare to go in there. A doll should be played with and not just sit there.
My mother's back turns curvy as she takes in a deep breath. The response comes promptly.
"NO!"
"But, Mo-om, that doll is brand new, and no one is playing with it."
My mom no longer pays me any attention. She shuts up like a clam and doesn't say a word to me, no matter how much I beg. She just freezes me out and, finally, I give up. I turn around and walk out of the kitchen, picking up my backpack on the way. My mom doesn’t speak to me for three days after this, and after that, only with short words without even looking at me. I tug at her dress, I yell her name as loud as I can, but she simply ignores me.
I sat up in bed and let the tears crawl down my cheeks. My pillow was soaked from me crying in my sleep. I felt so overwhelmed inside; I couldn't stop crying. For years, I had forgotten how my mother had shut me out back then. I knew she had, but I had forgotten how lonely it had made me, how inadequate it had made me feel. I guess I needed to put all that somewhere in the back of my mind in order to move on, in order to make it in life. But now that I was back in Cocoa Beach, it was like it had decided to pour out and completely overpower me. There was nothing I could do.
I went to the bathroom and found a box of tissues, then wiped my nose, remembering how I used to get on my knees in my old room and pray to God to allow me to go back in time so the kidnapper could take me instead of her, crying to him, asking him why it had to be me? Why did I have to survive?
It still made no sense to me.
Sensing how thirsty I was, I walked down the stairs into the kitchen and turned on the light. It was still very dark outside, and the clock showed only midnight. I hadn't been asleep for very long. I wondered if I was going to get any more sleep. The emotions from the dream still lingered with me and made me want to cry more.
I grabbed a glass from the cabinet when I spotted a figure outside my window, and I dropped it.
Chapter 64
"Matt? What the heck?"
He pointed at the front door, and I ran to open it.
"What are you doing out there scaring me half to death?"
The look in his eyes startled me, and I knew he wasn't joking around. Something was wrong.
"I came to see you," he said. "Then I spotted you in the window and thought, if I could get your attention, we wouldn't have to wake up the kids. Something's happened. Can I come in?"
"Of course," I said and stepped aside to let him in. He rushed to my kitchen and put down his laptop.
"Matt, you look awful," I said. "Can I get you something? A glass of water?"
He looked at me. "Do you have something stronger?"
"Wine? Whiskey?"
He nodded. "A scotch please."
"That bad, huh?" I asked and poured him a glass. I handed it to him, and he downed it in one gulp. Matt had never been much of a drinker, so I was very surprised to see this. A little frightened too, to be honest.
"Worse," he said and put the glass down with a grimace. The alcohol seemed to give him color back in his cheeks, but only for a few seconds. He opened the laptop and tapped on the keyboard. I walked up behind him, clutching my glass of water in my hand, bracing myself for something terrible.
"What is it, Matt?" I asked. "A new video?"
He nodded. "Yes. I was about to go to bed when I received it. It was sent to me directly. Just like last time. I’m beginning to think this guy has something against me personally."
"Or maybe it's just because he knows you're on the case. You have been on the news quite a few times talking about Sophie Williams' disappearance and the finding of her body. He might just have picked you because of that."
"Okay, but how do you explain this then?" he said and opened a video, then started it. I sat on a stool next to him and watched it with him. It showed a box made from wood. On the side of it, someone had painted the word ALONE.
Next, text appeared on the screen.
Loneliness. Divorce often leads to a profound sense of loneliness for the childr
en involved. As parents move into new homes and custodial parents get caught up in trying to make it through each day, children are often left feeling lonely and all alone. This child will often demand unusual amounts of attention from his or her parents. He or she might smile constantly and try to keep everyone happy, hoping to keep peace between the parents. Others might withdraw from friends and family or express anger in order to get attention. Some turn to goofing around or getting in fights to gain attention. Common to all of these is a feeling of isolation from the world.
The text stopped, and the video clipped to another picture, taken from inside the box. A young child was sitting inside of it, bent over like he was sleeping. The video sped up, and we could see him wake up, then start knocking on the sides of the box, hammering it, crying helplessly. As the video progressed, the child became more and more apathetic, and the hammering turned to knocking and a strained face as he called out. The knocking soon became scratching till the boy barely moved anymore.
Then, Matt stopped it.
"What…what the hell is this, Matt?"
"A boy, isolated from the world, slowly dying from his loneliness, is my guess." He rubbed his forehead. "If you look at the date in the corner, you’ll see that this has been recorded over a long period of time. Two months, it looks like."
"Has that boy been in that box for two whole months?" I said. "He must have fed him then."
Matt nodded, biting his nails. I had never seen him do that before. That was new.
"Matt?"
"There’s more," he said.
"Okay?"
"The boy. He's…he's my son."
Chapter 65
It took me a few seconds before the realization slowly sunk in. I kept staring at Matt while the thoughts fluttered in my mind.
"You have a son?"
Matt nodded, still biting his nails. "Elijah. He's eight."
"How…you never mentioned him?"
Matt's eyes were avoiding mine. I saw hurt in them. "I don't see him much. His mom has custody of him. It was all a mess. He was an accident—a one-night-stand. I was never really a part of his life. The last few years, she hasn't been letting me see him much."
"When did you see him last?" I asked.
"In April."
"But that was six months ago?"
Matt rubbed his forehead. "I know. I checked the database; she hasn't reported him missing."
I wrinkled my forehead. "That's odd. Have you called her?"
He nodded. "It was the first thing I did. She doesn’t answer."
I looked at the clock on my stove. It was past midnight. I grabbed my phone and put it in my pocket.
"I'll drive."
I woke up Olivia and told her she was in charge for a few hours while I took care of some work. She blinked a few times, then sighed.
"I thought you stopped all that."
"Yeah, you and me both, baby. But this is urgent."
Olivia gave me a look to let me know she understood it was important. Matt and I took off and soon drove out of Cocoa Beach.
His ex lived in Vieira, a town on the mainland about twenty-five minutes from my house. It was one of those newer neighborhoods that had shot up in the past few years. There was a big water fountain at the entrance, and the bushes and trees were nicely trimmed, and everything was clean and pretty, but all the houses looked exactly alike. Just like had they been cut out with the same cookie cutter. To me, it all came out as bland, and I knew I would suffocate if I lived in a neighborhood like this. That's what I liked about Cocoa Beach. No two houses were the same. It was messy and a little rough in places, but it had charm.
We parked the car outside in the well-trimmed driveway and walked up the lawn. I noticed that Matt's hand was shaking as he rang the doorbell. I sent him a comforting smile, but it didn't help.
No one opened the door, and he rang again. When nothing happened still, he opened the screen door and started hammering on the wooden door behind it. He was going to wake up the entire neighborhood, but I had a feeling he didn't care about that right now.
"POLICE. OPEN UP!"
A light was turned on in the house next door. I saw the blinds being pulled aside. There was going to be a lot of talking once morning came. No doubt about that.
It concerned me that no one still opened the door after Matt had been yelling. Since it woke up the neighbors, it had to wake up the woman inside this house too.
"Lisa?" he yelled. "I need to talk to you. Now," Matt yelled.
I gave him a look. "Could she be somewhere else?"
He shook his head. "She doesn’t have family around here."
"Friends?"
He swallowed. "Sure. She has a few."
I walked to a window and peeked inside, placing my face close to the glass. I couldn't escape the feeling that something was very much off here. Why hadn't the woman put out a missing person's report for her child? If he really had been in that box for two months, she'd had plenty of time to figure out he was gone. Unless the person making the video was just messing with us, and he hadn't been gone that long after all. Except this guy didn't seem to be messing around at all. Everything else he had done had been very seriously and very well planned out. He hadn't taken any shortcuts and had been planning this in very small detail for months, maybe even years. And so far, all we had been able to do was to play by his rules. It was time to change that up; it was time for us to get ahead, but how? So far, his next move had been impossible to figure out in advance. They had all come as surprise attacks.
"I see something," I said, then looked at Matt, concern in my eyes. My heart started pounding. "I see legs poking out from behind a couch. We need to get inside. Asap."
Chapter 66
I didn't have to say that twice to Matt. He kicked the door open, and we both went into the hallway, holding our weapons out in front of us. The sweet yet nauseating stench that met us made me feel sick to my stomach. I knew that smell a little too well…the sulfurous gas that a putrefying body gives off after having been dead for some time. It was similar to the smell of rotten eggs. I covered my mouth and nose with my sleeve. Matt did the same, gagging as he went along.
"Police!"
"It was in the living room," I said.
Matt entered to the right to clear the kitchen, then came back out and nodded.
"Clear."
We continued into the living room, scanning the room first, making sure no one was hiding in there. And that was when we saw her—a woman lying on the carpet by the couch. I turned on the light, and we walked to her. Matt gasped and clasped his mouth, then knelt next to her.
"Lisa," he whispered.
"Looks like blunt force trauma to the back of her head," I said and pointed at the pool of dried up blood surrounding her head like a halo. Flies and maggots crawled in her ears and eye sockets. Her eyes had been pushed out of their sockets, and her tongue was forced out of her mouth. That was also due to the gas and bloating buildup inside the body as it was decomposing. All the fluids and gas had leaked out of her body; her skin had ruptured and fallen off her bones.
"Nails and hair have fallen out," I said. "Which tells us she's been here for more than a month. My guess is that the decay has been slowed down by the fact that she's been lying inside air-conditioning. A good guess will be that she was killed on the day someone took Elijah, two months ago, but of course, we'll need the medical examiner's report to verify that."
Matt stared at her dead body, shaking his head, eyes wet. "Oh, dear God, Lisa. No."
"I am so sorry, Matt," I said. "I'll call it in."
With the phone against my ear, I walked outside to get out of the stench and be able to talk. A few neighbors had gathered outside their houses now to see what was going on. A couple from across the street was staring at me, holding onto one another, their faces struck with fear. As I hung up, I walked to them, trying to look reassuring.
"What's going on?" the woman asked, her voice shaking.
"Police invest
igation," I said.
"Did something happen to Lisa?" the woman asked, breathing in small gasps.
"I am afraid so, and I would like to ask you a few questions; can I do that?"
The husband looked briefly at his wife, then nodded. "Of course."
"Have you seen anything suspicious around here, anything out of the ordinary around Lisa's house? A car maybe? People hanging out there whom you haven't seen before?"
They exchanged a look briefly, then looked back at me. "No, not that we can think of," the wife answered. "We did talk the other day about how long ago it was that we had seen the little boy. We used to always see him riding his bike around in the cul-de-sac. But we hadn't seen the mother either, so we just assumed they were out of town or maybe just busy, you know?"
"We did talk about if they might have moved," the husband added.
"You didn't notice a smell?" I asked.
They looked at one another again, then the wife gasped. "The smell? Oh, yes…what that…? Oh, dear Lord."
She clasped her mouth with a whimper. Her husband pulled her closer. "We did talk about a strange smell in the neighborhood a couple of weeks ago but assumed it came from somewhere else. Maybe the sewers or the lake. We could never imagine…it coming from over there?"
I nodded. "We believe the crime may have been committed two months ago…"
"Two months ago..?" the wife said with a shrill voice. "But… but…"
"I need you to try and think back. Two months ago, did anything unusual happen around here? Any cars drive by that you didn't know?" I asked. "Anyone walk up to the house that made you wonder who he or she was?"
The wife pondered while the husband shook his head. "That’s a very long time ago. I don't think we…"
"Wait," she said and held a hand up to stop him. "We're talking back in August, right?"
"Yes?"
"That's when Daniel was there."
"Daniel who?" the husband asked.
"From the paper."
"I don't remember any Daniel from the paper," the husband said.