by L. T. Ryan
She pulled her hair back into a bun. He was less likely to notice her that way in a crowded space. She exited the bathroom, her chin tucked to her chest, and headed directly toward a self-check-in kiosk. Five minutes later a TSA agent scanned the boarding pass on her cell phone. Fifteen minutes after that, she was seated comfortably on the plane.
The drag of the day, and the week for that matter, caught up to Bridget, and she fell asleep shortly after takeoff. A patch of turbulence woke her, but only momentarily. She rose from her nap as they approached the runway. After departing the plane, she found her way to the rental car counter and secured a Taurus. At this point in the day it mattered little to her what she drove.
Bridget drove to Cassie’s house, navigating from memory. She took a wrong turn along the way, but quickly recovered.
She pulled up to the curb and shifted the car into park. What am I doing here? It was a curious decision, made in a matter of seconds, to return to see Cassie. She couldn’t think of a concrete reason why she returned. It was a feeling that gnawed at her throughout the flight back to Philadelphia.
Bridget waited until the sun sank below the horizon, then she opened her car door and stepped out. Her stomach and chest tightened as she stepped onto the walkway that led to the front door. She stopped and took a few deep breaths to steady herself. “Calm, calm, calm,” she whispered after each exhale. Feeling in control, she continued on.
The door opened before she reached the first step. Cassie stood in the open doorway and smiled. “Bridget, please, come in.”
Bridget climbed the steps and turned sideways to pass through the opening. The two women were eye to eye for a second. The way Cassie looked at her reminded her of the visit earlier that day, and she knew then that was the reason she had returned.
“I’m surprised to see you again,” Cassie said from behind her.
“I was just—”
“In the area?”
Bridget stopped, turned and smiled. “Yeah, something like that.”
“I was just sitting down to eat. Care to join me?”
“No, I’m okay.” Bridget paused. Her stomach knotted at the mention of food. “On second thought, I’ll have some.”
“Right this way, then.” Cassie led her away from the living room and into the kitchen. The table looked like something out of the ‘fifties. The chairs were sparkling red vinyl, and the legs of the table were chrome.
“This original?”
Cassie nodded. “Belonged to my grandmother.” She turned away, grabbed two plates from a cabinet and placed two slices of pizza on each. She set one plate down in front of Bridget and grabbed them each a bottle of water. “It’s homemade, organic.”
Bridget took a bite. The cheese burned her tongue and roof of her mouth. Despite that, she savored the taste. “Delicious.”
They next five minutes was filled with awkward silence and even more awkward stares between the two women. They didn’t speak until Bridget was halfway through her second slice.
“So what’s this about?” Cassie said.
Bridget shrugged, unsure how to phrase it.
“If it’s about me and Mitch, I can assure you there is nothing between us.”
Bridget straightened up. “Why would I care about that?”
Cassie glanced up at the ceiling and then back at Bridget. “The tension was, shall we say, thick.”
“Yeah, well, it wasn’t the kind of tension you’ve got in mind.”
“But it was at one point, right?” Cassie asked.
Bridget nodded. “Short lived. That’s all.”
“He’s only trying to help the girl, Bridget. That’s why he came down here.”
Bridget said nothing. She bit into her crust and tore like a lioness shredding the meat of a wildebeest.
Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “Touchy subject, I see. Look, you may not believe in me and what I do, but I can assure you I’m legit. This may or may not work out, I readily admit that. Regardless, I’ll do everything I can, in the event that I am able to.”
“Sounds like a politician’s speech.”
Cassie jerked back as if Bridget had just shot her.
“I’m sorry,” Bridget said. She dropped the last bite of crust on her plate and wiped her hands and mouth with a paper towel. “Look, I’m here because I can’t get the image of you staring at me earlier today out of my head.”
Cassie crossed her arms in front of her chest and shrugged.
Bridget leaned forward, placing her elbows on the table. “Why? Why were you staring at me like that? It wasn’t like it was a brief look, Cassie. You just honed in on me and stayed that way for a few minutes.”
Cassie took a deep breath, looked away, and said, “It was an old lady.” She shifted her gaze toward Bridget. “Your grandmother. She said, ‘tell her to stop trying to do everything.’” She looked away again. Her cheeks reddened.
“And you didn’t tell me. Why?”
Cassie said nothing.
“You were jealous, weren’t you? You have a thing for Mitch.”
“That’s absurd,” Cassie said. “Not only that, it’s completely unethical.”
“Isn’t not delivering a message to me unethical?”
“It wasn’t what you were there for. Besides, the read I had on you at that time told me you wouldn’t be able to handle it, or you’d accuse me of lying.”
Bridget did not respond. She raised her eyebrows as she leaned back in her chair. She’d upset the woman, and while she felt justified, she also felt guilty for having done so.
“I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “That was unprofessional.”
Bridget shook her head. “It’s okay. We all have our moments.”
“Wine?” Cassie rose and walked to the counter.
“Sure.”
Cassie uncorked a bottle of merlot and poured a glass for each of them. She set one in front of Bridget and then returned to her seat.
“I was twenty-four,” she said.
“Pardon?” Bridget said.
“When I received this…gift.”
Bridget nodded. “Go on.”
“It was stupid, really. We had no business being there.”
Bridget could tell this story would require a lot of assistance from her. “Being where? Cassie, just spit it all out. I’m used to people confessing.”
“It’s not a confession.” Cassie leaned back, eyes narrow and arms across her chest.
“I didn’t mean to offend you.”
Cassie took a drink. “It’s okay. This is uncomfortable for both of us. All right, I’ll continue. A friend of a friend had an idea to break into a cemetery. You know ghosts and all that.”
“Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil,” Bridget said. “I saw the movie.”
“Book was better. Anyway, so, yeah, we didn’t go to Bonaventure, but to Greenwich, which is an annex of Bonaventure and still open for public burials.” She paused to take a sip from her wine glass. “So there’s a group of five people and I’m tagging along. The only one I know is my friend Cara, and she’s real into this guy who was leading the expedition. I started to feel a bit shunned and I kind of wandered off on my own with a flashlight, reading the different tombstones.”
“Always a good time,” Bridget said, forcing a smile.
“Right,” Cassie said. “So, I come upon the grave of a woman who had died a few years earlier at exactly the same age I was then, twenty-four. I’m standing there, wondering how she died, was it an accident, cancer, when I recognize the name.” She bit her bottom lip for a second. “Lucille Whitehurst. That ring any bells?”
Bridget shrugged and shook her head.
“She’d been brutally murdered, stabbed to death, then dismembered. Her body was left in pieces along the riverbank, not far from where her remains were eventually buried in the cemetery.”
“Jesus,” Bridget said softly.
“Right? That’s what I’m thinking at the time. I get a hold of myself and turn to find my friend, but bef
ore I can take a step, someone has me in their grasp.”
Bridget felt her pulse quicken. She had a feeling she knew where the story was going.
“It was a man. He whispered something in my ear. To this day, I’m not sure exactly what, but I think it was something along the lines of, ‘What are you doing out of bed, Dear?’ I tried to scream, but it was like my vocal chords were paralyzed. A second later he had one hand over my mouth and the other across my chest. I remember feeling terrified that he was going to rape me. Relief washed over me when he pulled his hand away from my chest. That was short lived, though.”
Cassie’s eyes drifted away and she went silent. Bridget watched as the woman focused on nothing.
“What happened next?” Bridget asked.
“It’s funny, you know. To this day, I only remember the first time he stabbed me. They say he did it ten times, and I guess the scars corroborate that. At some point, I managed to scream. I guess that’s why I wasn’t stabbed forty times like Lucille was. After I yelled out, he dropped me on the ground. The flashlight had fallen and been kicked around. It shone at the headstone. The diffused light bounced back toward us. He hovered over me, blood on his hands and smeared across his face. His tangled, matted hair hung down. And he said to me, ‘Now go back to sleep.’ He took off and my friend and her friends showed up a few seconds later. I lost consciousness right after that. They say I died.”
“Did you?”
“I never saw bright light at the end of a tunnel or heard harps playing or anything like that, but I did see a woman who appeared to be about my age. I say appeared, but it wasn’t really like that. Hard to explain. She, I guess shimmered is the right word. Beams of light protruded from behind her. So maybe the light was beyond where she was, and she was blocking me from going to it? I don’t know, and honestly, I try not to dwell on it.”
“So they revived you, obviously. What happened next?”
“I woke up in the hospital a week later. They tell me it is a miracle I’m alive, and my recovery will take a few months, and I should seek counseling. I’m questioned and grilled. One of the cops had the audacity to ask what we were doing in the cemetery. Guess that’s his job, but, whatever. I get out of the hospital and the first thing I want to do is go visit the grave. They had put police tape around it. I ducked under it and knelt in front of the spot where I’d been left to die. The ground was still dark with my blood. I pulled out a handful of the stained grass and put it in a plastic bag I had in my purse.”
“You shouldn’t have done that, Cassie. The police might need that for evidence.”
Cassie held up a hand and smiled. “I’m aware of that now. I wasn’t thinking in such terms then. Anyway, let me finish. I’m kneeling in front of this woman’s grave, and I start to look around. I see this little boy. He’s maybe six or seven years old. He’s got on a green shirt and jean shorts. It’s fifty degrees out, so that seems odd to me. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile back. I get up and walked toward him. The closer I get, I can tell his face is dirty, and so are his clothes. I hear something off to my right. I turned to look, thinking maybe his parents were over there visiting a loved one buried in the cemetery. There’s no one there, though. When I looked back, the boy was gone.”
Bridget felt her pulse quicken again, and her chest started to tighten.
“I go home, tell my boyfriend at the time all about it. He’s freaked out, but I laugh it off. We go to sleep. Remember, this is the first time I’d been home. I wake up in the middle of the night. I can feel the breeze coming in through the window, so I roll over toward it to cool off my face. And it hits me here,” she pointed to her forehead, “and here,” she pointed to her chest, “but not here. The middle of my face, nothing. I opened my eyes and saw the little boy, kneeling next to my bed, green shirt, jean shorts, and his dirty face inches away from mine.”
Bridget thought about telling the woman she was crazy and storming out. She didn’t, though.
“Turns out the little guy needed my help. I met Mitch for the first time a week later. He can tell you the rest of the story if he wants.”
“Wow,” Bridget said. “The guy who stabbed you, did they ever find him?”
Cassie nodded.
“And he killed the woman in the grave, right?”
“Very perceptive, Special Agent Dinapoli. He was deranged, obviously. I looked a lot like Lucille. He stated that every few months he went to her grave to check up on her. I just happened to be there at the wrong time.”
Bridget glanced down at her watch. “Cassie, I’m sorry, I need to get going.”
“I have an extra room. You can stay here.”
“No offense, but I don’t think I’d sleep all that well if I did.” She rose and headed toward the front door.
Cassie got up and escorted her out. “I’m not going to give up on that little girl, Bridget. I promise.”
Bridget looked back and nodded. “Neither am I.”
“And don’t give up on Mitch,” Cassie added.
“I won’t if you don’t.” With that, Bridget got inside the rental and drove two blocks away. She pulled up next to the curb and grabbed her cell phone. There were no flights back to Philadelphia that night. Best she could do was a flight plan with three layovers. It would get her home by eight the next morning. She decided to skip the flight and drive back. It would take less time. So she picked up I-95 and headed north.
Chapter 49
Sam altered our course and drove to the Hollands’s neighborhood. Media trucks clogged the entrance while a couple of uniformed officers kept them at bay. They were faces I didn’t recognize, from another precinct I supposed. Sam pulled up to the checkpoint and we showed them our badges. They waved us through.
The neighborhood was eerily quiet. No kids out in their front yards taking advantage of the final minutes of daylight. The effects of a tragedy hitting so close to home, I thought.
We turned onto the Hollands’s street. Two more officers were positioned on opposite sides of the intersection. The Boss remained where I’d parked it earlier that day. Sam stopped the Chevy behind it.
“Since the Chevy is officially your car, I guess I ought to take the Boss for you,” Sam said.
I chuckled at the thought. “I’m suspended. Only authorized personnel can drive a city issued vehicle.”
He cut the engine and we waited in silence for a few minutes. I figured the same thoughts I was having also raced through his mind. For us, this case wouldn’t end until Debby was found and the men were brought to justice. The outlook, however, looked bleak. I feared that the case, and the little girl, would haunt me for the rest of my days.
“I’m going to go up to the house,” I said.
“I’ll join you,” Sam said.
We exited the vehicle and trekked up the driveway. At the halfway point, the door opened. Mr. Holland’s large frame blocked the opening. The lingering sunlight washed over him, giving his overall appearance a reddish tint.
“Detectives,” he said with a nod, crossing his arms. He didn’t appear threatening or intimidating. The man looked tired. Worn out by the whole ordeal. Who could blame him?
We stopped in front of the bottom step. “How’s Bernard?” I asked.
“Physically, he’s going to be okay. They set his arm and gave him a painkiller. Mentally, though? I don’t know. He’s pretty distraught, as are my wife and myself.”
“I can imagine,” I said. “We feel the same way.”
“Do you?”
The emotional impact of the words felt like an uppercut to my chin. “Yes, sir, we do. I’m not going to rest until we have that girl safe and sound.”
Mr. Holland straightened up and let his hands drop to his side. From the top of the stairs, he towered over us. “Then why’d you run off the other day? And then again today?”
Sam took a step up. “He was kicked off the case and his daughter was threatened. He took her away to get her out of harm’s way. Would you have preferred another child be
harmed?”
“Seems to me the best thing Detective Tanner could have done was stay around and offer to help.”
“It doesn’t work like that,” Sam said. “And today, you know what he did? He went down to Savannah to look up another lead.”
“Savannah?” Mr. Holland asked, unleashing his scowl toward me.
“And he did it on his own time,” Sam added.
Mr. Holland shifted, turning sideways, and I caught a glimpse of Debby Walker’s mother inside the house. She stood just outside of the kitchen with her gaze fixed in our direction. I wanted to push past the large man in front of me to speak to the woman. Her tears glinted in the light as they streamed down her cheeks. I deemed our presence as counterproductive.
“Sam,” I said.
“He could have bailed on that little girl after getting your son home, but he didn’t.”
“Sam,” I repeated.
“What?”
“We should go.”
“Yes,” Mr. Holland said. “You should.”
I understood the anger, as misguided as it was. That didn’t lessen the impact any further. While I didn’t expect the Hollands to drop to their knees and bow before Sam and me, I didn’t expect the mistreatment, either.
Sam stepped down and we both turned toward the street.
“Officers.” The small voice came from behind Mr. Holland.
I spun around and saw Bernard peeking through the doorway.
“Yes, Bernard,” I said.
“Have you found Debby?”
I glanced at Sam. His face grew grim. “Not yet, son.”
“Please don’t give up on her,” he said. Such powerful words for a small child.
“We’re going to do everything we can to bring her home,” I said.
Mr. Holland reached down and placed his hand on top of his son’s head. The hardened look on his face faded and his eyes watered over. He felt his son’s pain. I did, too.