CHAPTER 17
Downtown Twilight Creek consisted of Main Street, a dozen or so shops with slanted parking spots in front of them on one side, and the same setup on the other. There was one bank as you entered town, a tavern at the other end, and a traffic light midway through that served no other purpose than to stop traffic so that pedestrians could cross the street.
There were residential houses beyond the downtown core and more houses behind them.
“Could be a movie set,” Donovan said, waking up and checking the time. He’d slept for over four hours.
“You slept well.” Monica glanced over at him and smiled. “You obviously needed it.”
Turning his attention back to the passenger window, he watched the storefronts give way to residential houses, mostly postwar bungalows with big porches, perfect lawns, and colorful gardens. If there was a watering ban in Twilight Creek to preserve the town’s precious water levels, the homeowners on Main Street didn’t know about it.
They passed a Mobile gas station with the types of pumps that were meant to replicate the canister-style pumps from the thirties and forties. A young couple in a ’67 Vette with New York plates took pictures of their vehicle next to one of those vintage pumps.
Five minutes later, nature overtook all hints of civilization. Donovan tried to stay alert for wildlife—a deer would be nice, a bear even more of a treat—but he saw a large iron gate and a long paved driveway winding through the woods instead. Before he could open his mouth and ask what kind of resort lay on the other side of that gate, he saw the chiseled wooden sign for the Chappa Group.
“Hard to believe there’s a brewery all the way out here, isn’t it?” Monica asked from the driver’s seat.
Chappa was more than a craft brewery. It had a whiskey label, too. Its sommeliers imported the finest wines from all over the world, bottles that cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. The company also bred race- and show-quality horses and owned a handful of other businesses. Its lavish grounds were where Brenda’s cousin had held her wedding. And the woman who owned Chappa, she’d become an instant celebrity in Chicago when she bought a thirty-thousand-square-foot penthouse on spec, almost the same size as Donald Trump’s residence. At the time, it was the most expensive condo unit ever sold in Chicago.
“Can you smell that?” She opened her window a crack and inhaled the air that swirled through the cabin.
Watching her, Donovan did the same. “Yeast,” he said. “From Chappa.”
Monica nodded. “That’s how I know Roger didn’t hold us hostage in a building out here.”
“Do you know his last name?”
Chuckling, Monica brought both of her hands to the steering wheel while she shook her head. “Like I said, I don’t think his name is really Roger. It’s just that Roger is a lot easier to use in conversation than Lucifer.”
Noticing that the smile had disappeared from her face, Donovan stared out the passenger window once again. He watched the type of trees at the side of the road change five or so miles from the big gates to Chappa. They looked wilder, the brush around them no longer manicured and neat. These trees suggested they’d reached the end of the Chappa property, possibly even the end of modern civilization.
They drove another fifteen minutes, the wild forest giving way to the occasional field. It was at one of those fields that Monica glanced into the rearview mirror as if to make sure nobody had followed them, and then she slowed down, easing onto the gravel shoulder.
“What’s going on?” Donovan asked, sitting straighter and glancing back over his shoulder. He expected to find the Mustang behind them, but all he saw was the empty regional highway that stretched out for an eternity.
“You see that gate up ahead?” She pointed out the windshield to a gate that belonged in a farmer’s field. “When I stop this car, you’re going to get out and swing it open so we can drive through that field, okay?”
Nodding, Donovan waited for the car to stop before unlatching his seat belt, jumping out of the car, and hurrying to the gate. He noticed there was a chain that had been wrapped around a wooden post to keep the gate shut and aligned with the wire fence, but there was no lock. After unraveling the chain, Donovan pulled the gate open, allowing the Impala to drive through onto the wide-open field. There were tire ruts, barely visible through all the growth.
The passenger-side window lowered, and Donovan noticed that Monica was leaning across the center console, pale faced and a little nervous. “Lock it up, just like you found it, okay? Otherwise, someone might know we’re here.”
He did what he was told before getting back into the idling car.
The ride through the field was slow, thanks to the bumps, potholes, and whatever else kept the car bouncing along. Monica explained that she’d walked down this path. “It’s how I escaped.”
Donovan didn’t press for details.
When they reached the trees, he expected they would be walking the rest of the way to the grave site, but Monica maneuvered the car through a narrow opening. He could hear the branches and leaves scraping across the car’s doors and roof.
“Should we walk?” he asked as they came close to sliding through some mud and hitting a tree.
“Almost in the clearing,” she said, and sure enough, through the dozen or so layers of trees before them, he saw a clearing.
Monica worked the Impala expertly, hitting the brakes more than the gas, and they eventually emerged onto a gravel patch. There were four run-down cabins on the periphery of the patch. To Donovan’s city-tainted eyes, it looked to be an old hunting or fishing camp. A little farther on, a still lake reflected the sunlight.
“It’s almost beautiful, isn’t it?” she asked, and her voice seemed to sigh.
Donovan watched those four cabins. He saw the graffiti, the smashed windows, the boarded-up entrances on three and the flimsy door on the fourth.
“It’s okay, we’re safe here,” Monica said, nudging him so he would turn his attention to her. And once he did, she lifted the front of her shirt to reveal a handgun tucked into the front waistband of her pants.
Donovan figured he’d gasped, because Monica chuckled.
“Relax. I’ve had it with me each time I went to your house.” She gave a curt smile. “I didn’t know how you’d react once I told you that I was Lizzy’s last friend.”
Before he could respond, Monica pulled on her door handle and got out of the car. She stretched and seemed to derive some form of pleasure from breathing in long sucks of fresh air.
At last, Donovan got out of the car. His entire body ached, so he stretched as well. Monica walked past the front bumper, her footsteps crunching the gravel. Once she reached him, she surrendered the car keys.
“I’d lock it, just in case.”
Agreeing with her recommendation, Donovan hit the lock button on his key fob twice, the second time causing the horn to toot and send an echo through the trees. A flock of birds stirred and took flight across the lake.
“Follow me,” Monica said, all business and matter-of-fact objective even though they were heading into what Donovan expected to be a place ripe with terrifying memories for her. “It’s a bit of a hike.”
After all the walking he’d done between the Apple Store and Second City branch yesterday, Donovan was a little sore. He had to work hard to match Monica’s pace, his eyes watching where her boots stepped, avoiding loose rocks and the wet, muddy patches between them. He was happy he’d decided on two layers for his upper body; every so often, he’d find himself swarmed by mosquitos.
Once Donovan felt comfortable with the hike, he started paying attention to his surroundings. He realized they’d climbed a few subtle inclines and were now twenty feet or so above the waterline. If he glanced back, all he saw was the thick forest, and he could no longer see the clearing where they’d left his Impala. If he stared forward, all he saw was the sway of Monica’s hips in her tight-fitting jeans and the wild, free nature surrounding them.
They hi
ked for what felt like an hour, but it was likely half that. A glance down at the water told Donovan that they’d climbed another fifty feet. But up here, there were clearings and lookouts; the view was spectacular. A little deeper into one clearing, they came across an abandoned fire pit.
Monica raised her arm and pointed through some thick bush at a tree with a strange carving on its trunk, a scar that had aged over but never completely healed.
“She’s over there,” she said, and Donovan’s heart stopped. Monica glanced back at him. “Are you okay? Are you ready?”
He nodded that he was. Part of him questioned how, even before Monica said it, he’d known that the tree with the marking on it was where his daughter’s remains had been buried; the way Monica had pointed in that direction, there were six or so others with unique characteristics that could’ve just as easily marked Elizabeth’s grave, but this one stood out. In the same way Amelia had known she would never see her daughter alive, Donovan felt that his baby girl’s spirit was pulling him, as if by way of an invisible string called love.
Stepping forward through the overgrowth, Donovan choked back the tears. Each cracking branch underneath the weight of his footfalls reminded him that he was alive. Elizabeth wasn’t. This wouldn’t be the reunion he’d hoped for after all these years of praying that she’d somehow survived her time in captivity. This wouldn’t even be goodbye, would it?
As he reached the tree, Donovan noticed that the brush had grown over the slight mound where his daughter had been buried.
“That’s it. That’s where Roger buried Lizzy.”
Donovan spun around, noticing that Monica had somehow crept up behind him. She had tears in her own eyes, clearly disturbed about being here (again?) and being so close to his daughter and possibly more death. The night she escaped was supposed to be her last on earth, wasn’t it?
Not wasting time, Monica stepped around him and began tearing at the overgrowth, ripping away twigs and roots and leaves and branches, tossing them aside like rubble from a collapsed building.
“Let’s get digging, Mr. Glass,” Monica said, glancing over with her puffy eyes.
Taking a deep breath, Donovan reached forward and pitched in.
CHAPTER 18
His fingernails were torn and bleeding by the time he scratched across the first cluster of human bones. Snapping his hand against his chest as if the skeletal remains had been electrified, Donovan noticed how Monica glanced over. But she didn’t stop digging. In fact, she pushed him aside and dug harder, her own fingers torn and bleeding as if she were searching for her own daughter’s remains.
One piece at a time, Monica extracted Elizabeth Glass’s cadaver. With his jaw hanging open, Donovan watched as the young woman worked with the careful finesse of an archaeologist. She dug up a dozen important pieces of evidence—what looked like a shin, both femurs, a forearm, a rounded rib, a few other unidentifiable bones—before stopping, falling back onto her ass, and covering her face.
“I’m so sorry, Mr. Glass,” she said, sobbing. Her tears washed away some of the dirt on her fingers. “I’m so very sorry.”
Reaching over, he squeezed her shoulder. He hated to hear the pain in her voice, but he reminded himself that today’s expedition could still be one big setup. When Donovan turned his attention back to the grave, he saw a couple more edges poking through the earth. Trying to mimic Monica’s movements from earlier, he brushed at the ground and began to see that the bone belonged to Elizabeth’s cranium. Not wanting to cause damage, he brushed the raw pads of his fingertips across the dirt, slowly revealing more and more of the structure that had once formed the foundation of his daughter’s face.
As more bone revealed itself, he began to see Elizabeth in the dirt; her forehead and half of her eyes, while her nose and mouth were still underground. In his imagination, she tilted her face upward, smiled at him, and said, “Hi, Daddy. Please don’t cry; you’ll embarrass me in front of my friend.”
A chuckle escaped, and he stopped brushing the dirt away. “It’s really her,” he said.
Turning his attention to Monica, he saw how she was staring at him with a studious uncertainty, one eyebrow raised. She seemed to be questioning his sanity, and he couldn’t blame her.
“That’s my Elizabeth.”
Monica nodded. If her facial expression could speak, it would start with Duh. “I know.”
Wiping his shirtsleeve across his cheeks, Donovan stared at Monica with a big, stupid grin on his lips. “Thank you,” he said. It hadn’t been a scam after all. She’d brought him to Elizabeth’s grave, just like she’d promised. “Thank you.”
He went back to clearing the dirt away from his daughter’s cranium, starting on the eye sockets, when he felt Monica’s hand on his shoulder this time. She wanted him to stop, he saw when he looked up at her. But he ignored the plea in her eyes and continued. This time, she grabbed his forearm and squeezed more firmly.
“I want to—”
“No,” Monica said, her voice semi-threatening. “She didn’t want this, Mr. Glass.”
Blinking hard, he moved his attention to the grave. Instead of his daughter’s young face, he saw the skeletal structures for what they really were: human remains. Turning his attention back to Monica, he opened his mouth to ask why, but she cut him off again.
“That’s what I’m sorry about, Mr. Glass. I shouldn’t have brought you here. This wasn’t part of my deal with Lizzy. You and I both know that she wouldn’t want you seeing her like this, finding what’s left of her in an unmarked dirt grave.”
He glanced up at the scar in the tree trunk before lowering his attention back to the half-buried skull in the dirt. That was when he noticed the hand structure, mostly buried except for the fingers. Those fingers were so tiny, he caught himself wondering how old she’d been when she was buried here. Elizabeth should be as old as Monica, a year or two older in fact, but the size of her fingers said she couldn’t have been older than eleven or twelve when she died.
Eleven or twelve.
Swallowing the lump in his throat, he made a quiet promise that he wouldn’t cry and embarrass his daughter in front of Monica. So he simply nodded, reached into the grave, and placed his hand on the skull.
“I miss you, monkey,” he said, feeling the warmth of fresh tears push through to the surface. He moved his fingers to the skeletal hand structure, not even flinching when part of a fingertip broke away and rolled deeper into the grave.
Monica’s grip tugged at his shoulder. “Let’s go sit over there. Nice view of the lake, Mr. Glass.” She practically lifted him to his feet like she had the day they first met, when he’d collapsed at the front door, and then slid her shoulder under his arm once he was standing and guided him toward the lookout area.
Helping him into a seated position, Monica asked if she had to worry about him jumping over the edge of the ravine. Donovan shook his head. There were too many unanswered questions in his head.
And he still hadn’t met this Lucifer character that operated under the alias of Roger.
CHAPTER 19
Seated on the ledge overlooking the water with Monica next to him, Donovan wondered how his daughter and her killer had stumbled upon this spot. Had she been alive, or already dead? If she’d been alive, had she been afraid? Had she wondered where he was, her father, her childhood hero, or had she assumed he’d given up on trying to rescue her?
A couple of times he opened his mouth to ask the question, but he just couldn’t summon enough strength to push the words out.
With her back curled, Monica hunched forward over her lap and played with the occasional pebble in the dirt, her fingers no longer bleeding from digging up Elizabeth’s grave.
“You can still smell it,” she said, half mumbling next to him as she inhaled a long breath of air. “The yeast or whatever it is from Chappa.”
Donovan sucked in a long breath as well. The dank scent that had been so prevalent as they’d passed the Chappa property was now faint but d
efinitely present.
“That’s how I know we weren’t kept here, not in this area,” Monica explained. “I’ve searched as much as I could, ever since my escape. But there’s nothing out here.”
Clearing his throat, Donovan swallowed his emotion and tried to get back to reality. “You said it was a dungeon. A room underneath a garage.”
“Yes.”
“A garage like mine is pretty small. It would be easy to hide an outbuilding like that in a dense forest like this.”
“Yes. But I’d know if it was out here.” She glanced over her shoulder toward the grave site where the skeletal remains were. “The same way you knew those remains were your daughter, I guess. Except I’d recognize the terrain, the smells, and the sounds, you know?”
Donovan nodded. He knew. The same way, as a kid, he could close his eyes and know the difference between his bedroom and the dentist’s chair, simply from the smells, sounds, and environment.
“This wasn’t part of my promise to Lizzy,” Monica said, watching him. “And being here isn’t easy for me, either. I’m sorry she’s gone, Mr. Glass. I know how much you loved her. The way she talked about you and your wife, it was obvious to me that Lizzy was loved more than any other girl in that place.”
Glancing over, he saw that Monica’s puffy eyes weren’t crying. She was a survivor. She’d escaped the horrors of captivity.
“The best I can figure out, Mr. Glass, was that Roger disposed of us once we reached a certain age. The types of things we were forced to do, the people that did those things to us, they were meant for helpless young girls that couldn’t defend themselves. Once we started getting stronger, once we hit puberty, it was time to get rid of us.”
What a sad waste, Donovan thought, looking at the quiet, still lake. From this height and distance, it had become a murky mirror, reflecting the treetops, the clouds, and sky.
The Last Friend Page 9