The Last Friend

by Harvey Church

  CHAPTER 36

  The last time Donovan had been to his daughter’s unmarked grave, he’d felt overwhelmed with emotion. Part of it had been the excitement and danger of having allowed a young, armed woman to not only take his money and car but lure him out to these backwoods where a gunshot or two wouldn’t be heard by another soul. If a gunshot happens in a forest where nobody hears it, did that gunshot ever happen at all?

  Driving halfway across the rough terrain, Klein stopped the car a good fifty yards before reaching the forested area. He suggested they get out and walk the rest of the way, because it was too muddy from the recent rain. “We’re lucky we’ve made it this far.”

  Donovan nodded out the windshield. “It’s quite a hike.”

  Shrugging, Klein grabbed another cigarette and pressed it between his lips before kicking his driver-side door open. “I’ve got nothing but time for a fifteen-year-old missing girl case, Donny. Now let’s get moving.”

  Taking a deep breath, Donovan stepped out of the car, surprised by just how tall the grass and shrubs were. He couldn’t see the road from where he was standing, but he realized that Klein had been telling the truth about the wet earth. There was so much mud that the bottom three or four inches of the Ford’s tires were submerged in it, all the way to the rim.

  “Are you coming?” Klein asked, already a dozen paces ahead.

  Donovan caught up. Although Agent Klein was careful to blow his cigarette smoke in the opposite direction, the wind found a way to slap it back into Donovan’s face.

  Donovan didn’t have to tell Klein where to go; the federal agent was smart enough to just follow the tire ruts through the forest. But when they reached the clearing where the hunting cabins had been built next to the lake, Klein stopped and shot him an inquiring gaze.

  Pointing up the hill, Donovan said, “It’s up there.”

  Klein was interested in the cabins, though. “Let’s have a quick look down here first,” he said, reaching into his jacket and withdrawing his service handgun.

  Donovan watched him rack a cartridge in place and flick off the safety, which told him that the experienced federal agent didn’t find this space as calm and relaxing as Donovan had when he’d been here with Monica last week.

  “Stay behind me,” Klein said, his voice low.

  Obeying the other man, Donovan followed him up the steps to the first cabin, the one where the boarded-up front door had been broken away. Klein used the door frame as a shield before chancing a quick glance inside. When he pulled back, he winked at Donovan.

  “All clear,” he said, and then entered the cabin.

  It wasn’t so much a cabin as a single, small room, probably two hundred square feet in total. The carcass of a bunk bed had been toppled over, and in the middle of the cabin was a barrel that had been used to contain a fire. The walls were sprayed with graffiti and other substances.

  “That’s blood,” Klein said, nodding at a blob of dark matter on the wall underneath the boarded-up window.

  “That’s gross.”

  Klein stepped deeper into the cabin and kicked at some of the debris, and Donovan noticed the condom wrappers. The sight turned his stomach, because if this was where Roger had brought Elizabeth and, years later, Monica, the intention clearly wasn’t to host them over a campfire and sing “Kumbaya.”

  “Nah, that’s disgusting,” Klein said, using his foot to move a rust-stained piece of fabric out of his path. The rust was clearly blood, a lot of blood. “Doesn’t look very old, does it?”

  At last, Donovan couldn’t stomach it anymore. Turning away, he hurried outside through the open door and dropped to his knees in the gravel area where Monica had parked his car the last time they’d come here. He leaned forward and dry-heaved until Klein stepped out of the cabin and walked to the next one.

  Klein tried each of the boarded-up doors, and then glanced inside through the windows, most of which were broken and replaced with plywood.

  “See anything?” Donovan had asked from his knees each time Klein glanced inside a cabin.

  And each time Klein answered, it was the same thing: “Empty.”

  After the last cabin, Klein hit the safety and pushed the gun back into the holster inside his jacket. Donovan got back to his feet and noticed how Klein hadn’t removed the clip of ammunition, which suggested the agent wanted to remain ready for anything.

  “I’ll follow you,” Klein said, motioning toward the hill. “Now that you’re feeling better.”

  Obliging, Donovan retraced his steps from last week and led the agent to the top.

  * * *

  Seeing the tree with the odd marking carved into its bark caused Donovan to pause. He heard Klein stopping behind him, too, and then he detected the familiar sound of the agent reaching into his cigarette packaging, followed by the hiss of the butane lighter.

  “That tree, is that it?” Klein asked, his words stunted as he held the cigarette smoke in his lungs before releasing a long, meditative breath.

  Donovan nodded. The emotions were different this time. Instead of overwhelmed with sadness, he felt anxious. At peace, but anxious. “The, uh, overgrowth needs to be cleared away, but yes, that’s it. The dirt should still be fresh from when I was here last week.”

  Klein stepped past him, walked up to the tree, and started clearing the brush and twigs and other natural concealers. It didn’t take long; once he finished, he looked down at the fresh dirt for a few seconds before looking at Donovan.

  “You’re going to help with this, Donny.”

  “Where’s the shovel?”

  Klein raised his hands and seemed to study them.

  Taking a deep breath, Donovan joined him at Elizabeth’s shallow grave. He lowered himself to his knees and began scooping the soft earth away. Unlike the last time, he wouldn’t have bloody fingers because the ground hadn’t been packed tight.

  After Donovan scooped a few handfuls, Klein dropped to his knees and helped him. The only difference, Donovan noticed, was that Klein had snapped a pair of heavy-duty latex gloves over his hands.

  “Don’t want to get your hands dirty?” Donovan asked.

  Klein shook his head. “Nah, it’s more about not contaminating any evidence with my DNA.”

  “What about me?”

  “We already know you’ve been out here.”

  When he noticed Donovan’s curious stare, Klein elaborated. “And in the off chance I have to call in the big guns to do a full sweep, I’d also be stupid to make it look like I helped you dig up her bones.”

  A little discouraged by Klein’s disbelief, even after Donovan had presented him with DNA-proven evidence that his daughter’s bones were here, he dug a little faster and harder. And then he felt it: something hard, something that wasn’t dirt. They were roughly nine inches into the soil, a little shallower than Donovan remembered, but he knew what he felt.

  “I’m there,” he said to Agent Klein, who backed away and leaned on his legs.

  “I’ll sit back while you dig the rest of it up.”

  Nodding, Donovan went back to work, raking his fingers carefully across the soft earth where he’d felt that different texture. After a few passes, he exposed the tip of his shirt’s cuff. And then he remembered.

  He turned his attention to Agent Klein as he tugged on the shirt’s sleeve. “I reburied her bones with a shirt,” he said. “Elizabeth always liked sleeping with one of my shirts or sweaters, always wanted me to wrap the arms around her.” When he pulled the shirt out, he noticed something crazy, something beyond bizarre.

  There were no bones inside the shirt he’d pulled from the grave. In fact, there were no bones inside the shallow grave at all.

  CHAPTER 37

  While Agent Klein and a one of the three forensic response technicians worked on Elizabeth’s grave, Donovan stood at the lookout and watched the other two technicians plant flags throughout the forest. He’d confused his numbers at thirteen flags and had stopped counting. Still, the technicians were
using some kind of fancy technology that reminded him of a metal detector, and every six to nine steps they took resulted in another flag getting stabbed into the earth.

  A lot of victims had been planted here. Not just Elizabeth Glass but well over a dozen or two, maybe even more.

  Whenever Donovan felt his knees tremble or like he might break down or get sick, he turned his back to the quiet and methodical activity in the forest. Hoping to drown out the horror, he stared out at the nearly flat surface of the lake below. The peaceful view inspired some kind of hope. All of these girls, whose young and innocent faces continued to occupy missing person posters across the nation, would finally go home. Their parents and other surviving relatives would get the closure they needed. Not the ideal outcome, but closure nonetheless.

  “You know how this looks, don’t you?”

  Agent Klein’s voice startled him. But once Donovan heard it, he could smell the cigarette smoke, and he wondered how come he hadn’t noticed it earlier.

  “Your shirt in that grave . . .” Klein shook his head. He sucked another drag out of the cigarette. “The lab will try to find traces of . . . well, they’ll see if they can find anything that can support your claim that Elizabeth’s remains were in that grave.” Klein looked back over his shoulder. “Shit, Donny, this is one hell of a mess out here.”

  Through his clenched teeth, Donovan repeated what he’d said a hundred times already today. “I wish you’d gone to Barney’s yesterday, Mike. Monica could’ve—”

  “There’s no missing persons record of a Monica Russell,” he said, interrupting him before indulging in another puff. “None.”

  Although he chuckled, Donovan found no humor in these circumstances. He brushed a hand through his hair and looked out at the lake again. “And you and I both know why that is.”

  “Why? Because Monica Russell is the girl’s post-escape alias?” Klein gave a clueless shrug. “Explain this to me one more time, Donny. Because I don’t know of any other survivor—or any survivor in this case,” he said, waving his arm over the landscape of flags that identified all those graves. Donovan could see that Klein was getting worked up, the vein along the side of his neck bulging, pushing to the surface. “I don’t know anyone who wouldn’t run straight to the cops. Not because she wants to play tattletale, but because she has no other option. And after a few years?” He shook his head and inhaled a long puff of smoke, closing his eyes as if searching for his quiet place. When Klein released his breath, Donovan half expected to hear him say “Namaste.”

  “Donny, this girl you keep describing, she wasn’t a victim.”

  “She was,” Donovan said with an insistence that surprised both of them. Even one of the techs, the one holding the flags in his hand like a bridal bouquet, glanced over. “She knew stuff about Elizabeth that only someone locked up with her for years would know.” He wanted to add that he wasn’t crazy but knew that saying those words would suggest otherwise.

  Klein kept shaking his head. “The injuries she sustained, she couldn’t have recovered without medical attention.”

  Pressing his lips together, Donovan glanced out at the water. A soft breeze had rippled the surface, and he followed the mild waves outward, toward the shore, toward the hunting camp. He remembered all the dark and hardened blood in that first cabin, the stains underneath the window, the rust-stained piece of fabric that Klein had moved aside with his foot.

  He wanted to mention that blood to Klein, but he couldn’t. If he mentioned that Monica had borrowed his car a couple of nights ago and returned it yesterday, her pants, arms, and shirt soaked and stained with blood, Klein would want to see his car. He would find that there were fresh tread marks from his very own tires in the muddy ruts from the road, through the forest, and even down below in front of the cabins.

  What kind of blood does a girl who doesn’t exist bleed? he might wonder out loud. Why is your shirt buried in an empty grave, Donny? Did you drive out here with a girl? Did you try to kill her? Is that her blood in the cabin? Will I find fibers, DNA, or any other evidence that will put you inside that cabin? Oh, right, you were inside that cabin, just today, weren’t you?

  “No, it doesn’t look good,” Donovan said, mostly mumbling to himself. Except Klein heard it.

  “No, it doesn’t. Not when you came to me with one of your daughter’s bones.”

  “From that grave,” Donovan said, pointing to the empty grave where he’d found his shirt.

  “That empty grave.” Klein finished with his cigarette and dropped it onto the ground, smothering it with his foot. “Which begs the question: Where are your daughter’s remains, Donny?

  * * *

  The late-night ride home was a quiet one. Every ten minutes or less, Klein opened the windows and lit up. For the most part, Donovan tried to hold his breath while the highway’s dark evening air assaulted his face and forced his eyes shut.

  He wondered the obvious: Who was Monica Russell?

  But more than that, he wondered if she even existed. The more he thought about it, the more he began to convince himself that she’d been a figment of his imagination. After all, nobody had ever met her. And while Leo Fletcher had expected a text from Donovan once he found her, Donovan couldn’t forget that Leo was a little psycho himself and would likely claim to not know her if he were ever cornered by Klein and his colleagues. After Leo had picked her up at Barney’s following Donovan’s text yesterday, Monica could very likely no longer exist . . . even if she weren’t an imaginary friend created by Donovan’s trauma.

  When the car’s windows shut, killing the wind blowing straight into his face like a fire hose, Donovan reached into his pocket and navigated his phone’s browser to Facebook. Tapping inside the search bar, he saw that his previous searches included Monica Russell, so he touched her name. While the browser took its time to load, he began to feel a little better about his sanity.

  But then the browser stopped thinking.

  And according to the message on the screen, that user did not exist or had deleted “their” profile. Although the poor grammar was worth mentioning, Donovan clicked the circular arrow in the browser bar that would refresh the screen.

  Same result.

  Going back to his main Facebook screen, he tapped the search bar and manually typed in Monica’s name, even though the suggested name kept appearing right below. When he pressed return, the screen displayed a dozen other Monica Russells, but not the one he knew. His Monica had deleted her profile to make it look like it never existed!

  “Everything okay over there, Mr. Social Media?”

  Turning his attention to Klein, Donovan noticed that the federal agent appeared genuinely concerned.

  “All good,” Donovan said, his voice high pitched on account of his dry throat.

  “What I don’t fully understand,” Klein said, watching the road ahead, “is that this girl shows up. Says she knew your daughter. Gets you to take out ten large, not once but twice. Same amount of money the Wayne County sheriff found on your person six years ago in Detroit.” Klein glanced over at him but just for a second, as if seeing if he was following along.

  He was.

  “She brings you all the way out to Twilight Creek to show you . . . what, exactly? An empty grave? An empty grave where you buried the shirt you were wearing? And the whole time, none of the other graves are even mentioned.”

  Donovan tried swallowing, then swirled his tongue through his mouth in an attempt to awaken his salivary glands. “She told me that the night she escaped, there was a grave that had been dug for her.”

  A half chuckle escaped from Klein, but by the time the car entered the flood of light from the next streetlamp, the federal agent’s face had returned to its natural insipid state. “This girl that not only survived near dismemberment but a night in the woods and some unknown self-treatment of some bizarre sort?”

  Donovan looked out the window. “You saw the blood in that cabin.” He’d seen it, too. It wasn’t a decade or so old�
��no chance. “Bad things happen there.”

  “I have to say, Donny, I’m a little worried about your mental stability.”

  Donovan allowed a nod. He hadn’t slept in over twenty-four hours. And despite the evidence to support it, he was also starting to think his mind had created an imaginary friend named Monica Russell. So yes, he was a little worried, too.

  “So let me ask you something, okay? If this girl hadn’t shown up out of thin air, how would you have ever come upon that camp?”

  Sighing, Donovan placed his head against the back of the seat. He stared at the ceiling. “I don’t think I would have.”

  “Come on,” Klein said, the good-cop act very transparent. “Somehow, you found that spot, right?” He paused, and Donovan sensed that he wanted to light another cigarette before they entered the thick of Chicago traffic. “There’s something out there, something from your past.”

  Shaking his head, Donovan said, “No, nothing.”

  “A million lakes in that area, you never rented a cottage for a nice summer vacation during your summer off?”

  “Nope.” He’d been to Twilight Creek once. Brenda had invited him to a family event there, a cousin who was getting married, but that had happened after the suicide, which was long after Elizabeth’s abduction.

  In the driver’s seat, Klein grunted. “You know, Chappa imports espresso beans. That place you and Elizabeth used to go to on the weekends, I bet they use Chappa’s beans.”

  Donovan shrugged. “I guess it’s possible.”

  “Maybe you made a day trip out to the Chappa resort, huh? Is that what links you to the region, Donny?”

  He shook his head again. Outside of the wedding, which was unrelated and none of Klein’s business, he’d never been to Chappa.

  “You’ve had fifteen years of dwelling on this stuff,” Klein said, reaching for a cigarette. “Fifteen years, and that’s all you’ve got. There’s no sentimental reason that might’ve led your own personal investigation back to Wisconsin?”