Carlene Thompson

by Black for Remembrance (epub)

  "No, Chris, I don't want…"

  "You either go with me, or I tell Ames."

  "Dammit, Chris!" Caroline glared at him. "All right." The phone had rung again, and Caroline heard Detective Ames speaking in the other room. "But hurry. We have to get out of here without her knowing."

  They got up quietly from the table. Chris slipped out the kitchen door while Caroline took her jacket off the coat tree and looked at George, who had skittered up to her dragging his leash. "No, you can't go," she whispered, jerking the jacket over her sweatshirt. The dog stood on his hind legs, placing big paws on her shoulders. He was so strong, so protective. "Okay," she said. "I guess you've shown you're better at finding Melinda than anyone."

  "Mrs. Webb, where are you going?" Detective Ames said, coming into the kitchen just as Caroline was dashing out the door. "Mrs. Webb!"

  Caroline ignored her. Chris was already revving the jeep and she clambered in with George.

  "Caroline, this is not a family picnic!" Chris snapped. "You and the dog?"

  "He's got a better nose than you or I have. Now get going before Ames shoots the tires or something to stop us."

  They roared out of the driveway, leaving Detective Ames staring after them.

  The roads were almost deserted so deep into the night and the trip seemed to take forever. Caroline kept telling Chris to drive faster, but when they finally pulled off the highway into the wildlife preserve, she had a sudden quiver of misgiving. Tina had a gun. She was capable of anything. Maybe they shouldn't have come. Maybe they should have left it to the police. Then she thought of Melinda—alone, possibly being tortured, and her misgiving vanished.

  The starless night was so dark that at first she had trouble picking out the silhouette of the brick boiler house rising three stories against the depthless sky. When she was a teenager the deserted area had been the place for area teenagers to park, and more than one ghost story had been spun around the crumbling buildings where dynamite had once been manufactured. Of particular ghoulish interest had been the huge, echoing boiler house. Someone was always prowling around in there at night looking for vampires, werewolves, or other indescribable monsters. For a while the old building was strictly patrolled to keep out intruders. But as time passed surveillance slackened, although Caroline knew the place was not the popular attraction it once had been.

  "Let's try the boiler house first," she said to Chris.

  "Isn't it kind of obvious? You know there's a whole network of tunnels under the preserve, not to mention all those little buildings where dynamite is stored."

  "Chris, she said I knew where she was. I don't think she'd expect me to find her in a maze of tunnels. Besides, those storage houses are locked."

  "Locks can be broken."

  "Chris, the boiler house. Please."

  Chris pulled off beside the main road and stopped the jeep. They couldn't risk Tina hearing the engine or the crunch of tires on the gravel road running beside the boiler house. Before they climbed out, Chris reached under the seat and withdrew a gun. "It's my old .38," he explained, and Caroline remembered he was an expert marksman. His deadly skill had always seemed a contradiction of his artistic personality—maybe that's why she had forgotten about it over the years.

  "Do you always carry that around with you?"

  "Only since I got shot. Let's go. And you stay behind me."

  Quickly she and Chris and George emerged from the jeep and silently crept toward the hulking old building. George began to growl low in his throat as they drew near. "Please don't bark," Caroline whispered. As if understanding, George subsided, although he strained at the leash through the overgrown lot separating the boiler house from the road. He headed straight for a window while Caroline and Chris struggled through a tangle of dead honeysuckle vines that cracked beneath their weight and dragged at their ankles, almost throwing them down.

  When they neared the window, they saw a faint glow. "It's a fire," Christ murmured.

  "Oh, God. Sometimes she sets her victims on fire."

  "Don't think about that. It's probably a fire for warmth."

  As they crept up to the window, Chris withdrew the gun from his jacket pocket and pushed Caroline down. "For all we know, Tina's standing right there looking out at us," he whispered. "Stay low."

  Caroline closed her eyes while Chris crawled forward and peered in the window set low in the wall. Breath hissed in his throat. "Tina's in there."

  "And Melinda?"

  "I don't see her, but most of the building is dark. I can't see much of anything except Tina sitting in front of a small fire, staring. But Melinda is there, Caro. She has to be."

  "What'll we do?"

  "Just what they do in the movies. Take her by surprise."

  Almost before Caroline realized what he was doing, Chris had picked up a big rock lying near the brick wall. With all his strength he crashed the rock through the window. Barking wildly, George hurled himself into the room, and as Chris followed, gun aimed, Tina stood up and screamed. It was a shrill nightmarish sound Caroline would never forget.

  "Where is she?" Chris shouted, his voice echoing in the cavernous building as Caroline crawled through the broken window. "Where's Melinda?"

  "Mommy!"

  Caroline's head jerked to the right. Somewhere in the shadows was her daughter. George tensed to run in her direction, but Tina shouted, "She's wired with dynamite!"

  Caroline froze "You're lying."

  "No—I'm not. There's lots of dynamite stored out here. All you need is forty pounds of pressure to detonate it, and I have a detonator. I stole it from a Burke Construction Company site. Wouldn't Pamela have gotten a kick out of that?"

  Melinda's voice, high and tearful, floated out of the darkness. "It's true. There's wires on me and Joy." George lunged, but Caroline held his leash firmly.

  Chris's eyes narrowed. "Unwire them, Tina."

  Tina looked back stonily, her beautiful face haggard and somehow different in the flickering light of the fire. "No."

  "If you don't unwire them, I'll kill you." Tina stared at him, and Chris pointed the gun at her chest.

  "No, don't shoot!" Melinda shrieked. "That's Hayley, your little girl."

  The gun quivered in Chris's hand.

  "What's the matter, Daddy? Don't you recognize me?" Black waves washed across Caroline's vision as she heard a little girl's voice come out of Tina's mouth. Hayley's voice.

  "Hayley is dead," Chris said firmly. "Her body was found nineteen years ago."

  "You mean a body was found nineteen years ago." Tina stepped forward, nearer the fire. "The body of a six-year-old girl, burned, missing her head, and beside her my locket with your pictures inside."

  Caroline closed her eyes. The type of necklace found on the body was a detail the police had never made public. She took a deep breath and tried to speak, but nothing came out. She thought she was going to faint again.

  "You're Tina Morgan," Chris said hollowly. "You're Tina Morgan who disappeared from Indianapolis almost twenty years ago."

  "I knew Tina. Just for a little while. Just until…" She trailed off, staring at them emptily.

  "Just until what?" Chris asked.

  "I'm keeping Tina alive. She's alive inside me. I guess in a way I am Tina. Sometimes I forget that I'm not." She shook her head slightly, as if clearing it. "But I don't always forget."

  Caroline had started to shiver. "You say you're really Hayley."

  "I'm both now."

  "I see." She swallowed. "Were both of you taken by the same person?"

  "Oh, yes."

  "Who?" Chris demanded.

  "Garrison Longworth."

  "Now I know you're lying," Chris said. "He was in Italy."

  Animation returned to Tina's face. She smirked. "Oh, was he? I suppose you took Harry Vinton's word for that and let it go." Tina now spoke in an adult voice. "He came home that summer because he'd flipped out. Probably did something to a little girl over there and his wife left him. He was a
shamed and he wanted his presence at the mansion kept a secret. Mommy was gone all day, you were busy painting—neither of you ever saw him. But I did. He played with Twinkle and me, but he said it was a secret. It was all a secret." Her cocky expression faded.

  "And then he tricked me. He dressed up like Twinkle and he took me and hid me up here in the tunnels. Millicent knew he had me, but she didn't do anything. Not even when I begged. I guess Harry Vinton figured it out, but they paid him to keep quiet. And Pamela saw me. When Garrison was leaving town with me, she saw me in his car. But she didn't do anything. She just walked away."

  Caroline and Chris stood rigid, gazing with shock at the young woman in front of them. At last Chris said in a flat voice, "You-cannot-be-Hayley."

  She smiled. "Why not, Daddy? Because I don't look like your little girl? Well, I'm all grown up now. My hair is dyed and I wore colored contacts. But I don't have them in now, and if the light weren't so bad in here, you'd see that my eyes are blue, just like yours."

  "They are," Melinda called. "I saw them."

  "You shut up!" Tina snarled.

  Her sudden anger frightened Caroline even more. She had to keep Tina's mind off Melinda. "Whose body was found and identified as yours?"

  "Tina Morgan's, I guess. Garrison picked her up in Indianapolis. I remembered the name of the town because it sounded like Indians lived there. That's what I thought, even though I didn't see any. Anyway, he picked her up one night. Said he would take her for ice cream. Then he said she was just an ugly little girl. Not pretty like me. Not worth keeping." Her voice quavered. "But I thought she was pretty. I liked her."

  Tina seemed to choke, then she regained control and went on. "He said he was bringing us both back here to my house. I was so happy. But he only brought us back to the area so he could murder her.

  He made me watch him kill her out in the woods. He cut off her head and burned her up, all because nobody would help me. If any of them had told about me, he wouldn't have hurt her. She died because of me. Because of them. Pamela. Millicent. Harry Vinton. Garrison."

  Tina's face worked. Tears glistened in the firelight. Her stomach plunging, Caroline realized she really was looking at Hayley. With a mixture of elation and horror, she thought, She's my little girl. And she's a murderer.

  "Garrison said I should see violence because the world is full of violence," Hayley continued. "He also said I should see what would happen to me if I tried to get away. But it was so awful. She screamed and screamed. There was so much blood. Her head…the fire…" She shivered, then she smiled. "Do you know, even Millicent thought it was me he killed? He didn't want her to know the truth. But she wouldn't have told on him anyway. She was crazy, you know."

  "But there was an autopsy," Chris said faintly.

  Hayley shrugged. "She was a child. No head, no teeth. Burned. No fingerprints. Right age. My necklace."

  "But the blood type was the same," Chris persisted.

  "I've thought about that. That's the only way they could have told the other girl wasn't me. Either she happened to have the same blood type or Harry Vinton paid a pathologist to say she did. Some people will do anything for money."

  How matter-of-fact she sounds, Caroline thought numbly. How frighteningly matter-of-fact.

  "What happened after Garrison killed the little girl?" she asked, stalling for time, wondering how in the world they were going to save Melinda, Joy and Hayley.

  "Garrison took me to California. He told me my parents didn't want me anymore. If they'd wanted me, he said, they would have come looking for me. But you didn't."

  "Yes, Hayley, we did," Caroline cried. "We even hired private detectives to look for you after your body had been identified. But there wasn't a trace."

  "So you say. Anyway, gradually I began to forget about this place, although I never completely forgot you and Daddy. Sometimes I thought I must have dreamed you. All that seemed real was Garrison." Again the choking sound. "He hurt me. He hurt me so much."

  Caroline felt a wave of nausea as she thought of her beautiful child in the hands of a sexual pervert. "I'm so sorry," she whispered.

  "I was so confused," Hayley went on, almost to herself. "He bought me things. He took me places. He taught me. He said that's how a real lady learned—from a tutor. That's how I know so much about interior decoration. He bought books and books on antiques and porcelain and crystal for us to go over. But he hurt. And the older I got, the more I hated him for hurting. He always said it was the price I had to pay for his taking me in when my own parents didn't want me, but I knew it wasn't right. He never let me out of his sight. He never let me watch television or listen to the radio. But he did let me keep Twinkle." She glared at Caroline. "And you put Twinkle in the trash! I drove past your house every night and one night I found Twinkle with the garbage!"

  So it really had been Twinkle Caroline had found in Melinda's room, not Lucy's doll. Caroline had known she was right. "I'm sorry about Twinkle," she said. "It was a mistake."

  "It doesn't matter. I got him back."

  Chris had lowered his gun, and Caroline saw that his hand trembled. So he believes her, too, she thought. He knows he's looking at his daughter. "How did you get away from Garrison?"

  "We'd moved. We did that a lot, I guess so people wouldn't get to know us and get suspicious. We were in Maine—this really deserted place. It was miles and miles to town, and Garrison never let me go there. Besides, I knew what would happen to me if I tried. But one night he…he really hurt me. Worse than ever." Caroline shuddered. "I don't know what came over me," Hayley said dreamily. "I just ran in the living room and picked up a poker from the fireplace and started beating him. I thought I'd killed him. I meant to. Then I got Twinkle and the car keys and all the money he kept in the bedroom and took off. I was only fourteen. I ran the car into a tree halfway to town and had to walk the rest of the way. Then I got a bus. I went to New York. And I became a working girl, as they say nowadays."

  "At fourteen?" Caroline gasped.

  Hayley cocked an eyebrow. "Lots of men like young girls."

  "I can't believe all this," Chris said.

  Hayley looked at him fiercely. "Who else would have Twinkle? Who else would have known 'treats or tickles'? I really scared you with that one, didn't I, Mommy?"

  Caroline's mouth had gone completely dry. Her voice scratched. "Yes, Hayley, you did."

  "And in the storeroom, too. Lucy was so wrapped up in what she was doing, she didn't notice I'd slipped away for a minute when I saw your car pull into the parking lot."

  "That was very sneaky of you."

  "I know. And how about me getting that job with Lucy in the first place? You see, I started remembering everything a few years ago, but I wasn't going to do anything about it. I thought you didn't want me, and I had a boyfriend and a little girl I loved, so I didn't need to find you. But then Valerie died. And then he left me. After all, I was just a former prostitute. He didn't think he owed me anything. And I knew if you'd tried to find me so long ago, or if Millicent or Pamela had told what they knew, none of it would be happening. So I decided to come back here to make everything like it should be. But I had to be clever. I got the key to your new house, Mommy. Then you had the lock changed, but when your husband called you about Daddy getting shot and you ran upstairs in the store, I got your new key out of your purse and traced it to have a copy made. And I watched everyone. Everyone. I was only surprised about Garrison. I couldn't believe he'd come back here. But I was glad because it meant I got to kill him."

  She had stepped closer to the fire and her blue eyes sparkled with febrile light as her hand clenched. "But he did it again, you know? He got away from me one more time. I never did get to kill him like I wanted to."

  Caroline tensed. Were those tires on gravel she'd heard outside? Had the police followed them? Hayley didn't seem to notice anything, though, and Caroline asked quickly, "What about the cemetery guard?"

  Hayley gasped and looked up, as if she were seeing him.
"I was getting the flowers off Pamela's grave. And suddenly he was there. He threw me down on the ground. He started trying to take my clothes off. Ripping them. He slapped me. My wig—my Twinkle wig—he tore it off and laughed. And I kept fighting and I got his gun and I shot him." Her teeth clenched. "I wish he'd died, too. But there are things worse than death. I know."

  Caroline wanted to cry and scream and run all at the same time. "Hayley, I'm so sorry about everything that's happened to you," she said softly. "Especially about Valerie."

  Hayley's face crumpled. "I had a little girl. She was the only person who ever loved me. And she died."

  Caroline took an infinitesimal step forward. Hayley raised a gun that had been hidden in the folds of her full skirt and pointed it at her. "You don't want to shoot me, Hayley."

  "No, but I will."

  Caroline pushed down her fear, forcing herself to speak calmly. "Hayley, Valerie wasn't the only person who loved you. Your father and I loved you."

  "So much that you stopped looking for me?"

  "I told you—we didn't stop looking for you."

  Hayley eyed them coldly. "I do not believe you."

  "It's true." Now she heard it distinctly the sound of someone moving beyond the broken window, feet snapping dry vines. She was closer to the window than Hayley, who still didn't seem to hear anything, but she spoke louder to cover the sound. "I always felt you weren't dead. I should never have stopped looking for you."

  "No, you shouldn't have," Hayley said viciously. "And you shouldn't have had more kids to take my place, especially another little girl."

  "Hayley, darling, this isn't Melinda's fault," Caroline said, moving forward a little. "You can't punish Melinda for our mistake."

  "Mistake? You call what happened to me a mistake?"

  "It was my fault." Chris's voice sounded a hundred years old. "This was all my fault. If I hadn't left you alone on the hill that night…"

  "But you did, didn't you? That's why I shot you. For punishment. But I didn't mean to kill you. If I'd meant to kill you, I would have." Hayley's twisted smile reappeared. "Ask me why I didn't kill you."