by H. P. Bayne
Dez’s neighbour Emily Crichton had proved a godsend, she and Pax having taken to each other from the start. She’d become both dog sitter and counsellor for Sully, more than eighty years of patience, wisdom and pluck wrapped up into one small, unassuming form.
She beamed, as she always did, when Sully appeared at her door. He hadn’t planned on going inside, but he ended up there anyway, sitting at the table while she brewed him a cup of tea.
“You seem out of sorts,” she said, once the tea was poured and she’d joined him at the table.
“I’m okay. Just thinking.”
“If there’s anything you want to talk about, you know you can trust me.”
His eyes snapped to her face, and he realized he’d given a lot away in one inadvertent move.
“There’s something you’ve been hiding, something you’ve been keeping to yourself,” she said. “It’s eating you up inside, isn’t it? I’ve lived a lot of years, Sullivan, and I’ve known a lot of people with secrets. I recognize it in you as I recognized it in them. You don’t have to tell me, of course. Just know you can trust me to hold onto anything you want to say.”
“Even if it concerns Dez? I can’t ask you to keep something from him. I know you care about him too.”
“I most certainly do. Tell me this for starters. Has he done something wrong, something that could get him in trouble?”
“No, nothing like that. He hasn’t done anything wrong. And I want to keep it that way.”
“You’re worried if you tell him, he will do something bad?”
“Yeah, that’s what I think.”
“Perhaps you aren’t giving him enough credit. He can be a little intense, but he is a very good man. And he has you, after all, to guide him when he goes a little off course.”
“I don’t know if I’d be enough. Not for this.”
Emily leaned forward and smiled, bringing her fingers to rest atop Sully’s. “You know, if you don’t give me some idea what you mean, I can’t really give you any advice. I would like to help if I can. You don’t have your birth mother, after all, someone you might have gone to for advice were she still alive. If I’d been able to protect her at the end, the way I should have….”
Sully turned his hand so he could take Emily’s fingers in his. “It wasn’t your fault, what happened to her. Lucky made her own choice, and I’m probably alive because of it—and because of you. You gave her the power and the ability to make that choice. That’s what was important right then. Anyway, she didn’t die at Lockwood. She got out because you and Ben helped her. In the end, she was betrayed by her own family. What happened to her is their fault, not yours. The people who were supposed to love and protect her ended up murdering her. You couldn’t have known that, and you couldn’t have done anything to prevent it. Don’t put that on yourself. You don’t deserve it.”
Emily’s fingers grasped his. “Your mother would be so proud of the man you grew up to be. You’re a compassionate and wise soul, Sullivan. Not many with your life experience could say the same. That you haven’t given in to anger and bitterness says so much about you.”
“It says more about my family. I am who I am because of them, because of the Braddocks. That’s why I have to protect them.”
“From someone else? Or from themselves?”
Sully looked away. The reply was there on the tip of his tongue, waiting to be spoken aloud—if only he could trust enough to do it. This was the woman who had broken into her own workplace under the cover of darkness to rescue the teenager and her newborn. If he couldn’t trust her after all of that, who could he trust?
The words were out of his mouth before he completely finished thinking them through.
“From each other.”
Emily said nothing, a silence settling over the table as those words hung there between them. And yet there was no shock in the silence, merely the sense she was patiently waiting for him to come to her with the explanation. He could back out now. It would be easy to invent an excuse; he had somewhere he needed to go, after all, a job he needed to do to help Lachlan and Dez with their investigation.
But the idea of sharing this painful secret, of ridding himself of part of its burden, kept him rooted to the chair.
Like a dam bursting, the three words he’d already spoken led to more.
“One of the Braddocks is responsible for the deaths of two of his relatives: our dad and Dez’s little brother, Aiden. He drowned Aiden when he was five, and he killed our dad when he found out about it. Then he tried to kill me, and when he failed, he had me committed to Lockwood.”
“Who is this man?”
Sully met Emily’s eyes at the question. Again, he saw no surprise there, only sorrow.
“I’m scared if I tell you, it could put you in danger.”
“Only if I act on it. At my age, that’s hardly likely.”
Sully smiled, but thinking through his answer wiped away all amusement. “My uncle. Lowell Braddock.”
The words left his mouth, and a weight left his shoulders. Until he’d said it out loud, he hadn’t fully recognized how heavy a load he’d been carrying.
“I’ve never met him,” Emily said. “But Dez has talked about him.” An apologetic smile crossed her face. “He cares a great deal for him, I think. But there’s anger there too.”
“I think he’s holding a bit of a grudge over what Lowell did to me, committing me to Lockwood, I mean. Dez doesn’t know anything else. I’m scared if he did, he would act on it. Aiden’s death has plagued him his whole life, and he was nearly destroyed when Dad died. If he knew Lowell was the one behind it, he’d insist on confronting him, and I don’t think I’d be enough to stop him. And I’m terrified a confrontation would end with one of them dead. Lowell already killed Dad; he wouldn’t think twice about doing the same to Dez. But if Dez got the upper hand, he’d probably end up going to prison, maybe for the rest of his life. I know he’s got a right to know what happened to his family, to our family, but I can’t see a way to tell him and keep him safe at the same time.”
“I think I understand what you mean,” Emily said. “He is, most certainly, extremely protective of the people he cares about. But perhaps you aren’t giving yourself enough credit. It might be you could stop him, should he try to do something regrettable.”
“That’s the problem,” Sully said. “I can’t make a decision like that—I can’t risk my brother’s life—over a ‘might.’ ”
They talked further, close to half an hour. But while Sully left feeling lighter, he still had no idea what to do.
He would have to wait for an opportunity, a sign even, pointing him toward the answer. If it never came, if he dealt with Lowell before sharing the truth with his brother, he knew Dez might never forgive him. But of all the three outcomes, this one at least ended with Dez alive and safe. Even if Dez severed all ties between them, at least Sully would know his brother was in a position and a state of mind to make that choice. In the end, that might be all Sully could ask for.
Grateful for a task to occupy his thoughts, Sully left Pax with Emily and made his way toward the Riverview library.
Located in a grand stone building, the library had stood at this spot since soon after the city was established in the late eighteen hundreds. It had kept itself going with a combination of city funds and creative programming, as well as a film theatre built into the basement in the nineteen sixties.
It was frequently a hub of activity in the poorer Riverview neighbourhood, the only place many of the area’s less fortunate could access the Internet. It was rare to be able to find an unused computer, and today was no exception.
If there was one benefit to living in an area as run down as Riverview had become, it was that Sully didn’t stick out suspiciously as he made his way to the library with his hood up, long hair and beard marking him as something other than a college student here to work on a term paper. He had no choice but to try to conceal his face; he was well aware security cameras had b
een installed at various locations throughout the building.
Uncertain what he was looking for, Sully approached one of the librarians working behind the main desk. She appeared to be in her thirties, and he was relieved to find no evidence of anxiety on her part as he stepped up to her.
“Can I help you?”
“I’m hoping to research an event I believe happened back in the nineteen twenties. I don’t know when exactly, but I’m thinking it was probably in the paper at some point.”
“You want the history room,” she said. “I’ll take you down there and show you how to use the microfilm system.”
She emerged from behind the desk, and led Sully out of the main room and down a hall. A reading room was to the right, and a door marked History Room stood closed and locked to the left. The librarian turned a key in the lock, flicking a light switch once inside.
The room was lined with shelves containing various local books, the kind containing family histories and reminiscences about communities’ past businesses and events. Another shelf marked “newspaper archives” contained a large number of boxes Sully guessed contained the microfilm mentioned by the librarian.
“We’ve been working to get all of our newspaper archives scanned and entered onto the computer system, but it’s a hard slog. For many years, we had two daily newspapers in Kimotan Rapids, as well as a weekly Trader. We also stock copies of past papers for nearby communities. You mentioned the nineteen twenties?”
“I’m not completely sure. It’s just a guess. Doesn’t help much, I imagine.”
The librarian smiled. “Not much, unfortunately. Maybe we could narrow it down. If you tell me exactly what you’re looking for, I might be able to help.”
“It’s going to sound weird.”
“Trust me, I’ve probably heard it all.”
“I’m trying to track down any stories that might provide some background to the whole Faceless Flo story.”
The woman chuckled. “If I had a nickel for every time I heard that. It’s a common request. Plenty of people are interested in local ghost stories. I can tell you we haven’t been successful yet in locating anything in our records about a Flo or a Florence who was murdered or went missing in the twenties. I’ve helped students, skeptics and ghost hunters alike search through papers for both Kimotan Rapids and Loons Hollow.”
“Loons Hollow had its own paper?”
“For a while. It didn’t last long. With the town dying, it didn’t have the subscribers or the advertisers to sustain itself.”
“Mind if I have a look anyway?”
“Suit yourself. Give me a minute to turn the machine on, and I’ll help get you started.”
Sully had used a microfilm machine once in high school for a history project, so the current lesson acted as a simple refresher. The librarian took her leave, giving Sully some space to himself.
Finding no sign of a camera in here, Sully lowered his hood and pulled his hair up into a knot, keeping it out of his eyes as he worked. The librarian had pointed out the shelves containing the papers from the decade in question, and Sully headed first for the Loons Hollow editions.
With no real idea where to start, he selected a roll at random and fed it into the machine.
Within less than an hour, a headache had started, his brain dizzy from the super-fast scrolling on the screen.
So far, the librarian was right. Sully had been hoping maybe the others who’d come here looking for evidence of Flo had simply given up, faced with the magnitude of the search. A decade’s worth of daily newspapers for two communities amounted to a mammoth task, after all.
But while Sully credited himself with more tenacity than many people possessed, even he wasn’t sure he was up to this. He’d only made it up to March of 1921, and he was already itching to get out of there. How he was going to make it through nearly nine more years was beyond him—especially since success was reliant on the legend being correct that someone named Flo or Florence had been killed during that decade. What if she died the decade prior, or later? Short of getting himself a full-time job at the library, there was no way he’d have the time or ability to go through each and every one of the microfilms.
He replaced the roll anyway, pulling down the next one on the shelf. One more roll, one more failure. Nowhere did he see any mention of a young woman who had gone missing or been killed.
Pulling the roll from the machine, Sully groaned. More rolls awaited him in the box, and in many others.
Interlocking his fingers over the crown of his head, he stared at the collection of boxes. Somewhere inside one of them, the answer might be waiting for discovery, a Holy Grail for ghost hunters. And here he was, one of the only people who might be able to do something to help Flo or the men she supposedly targeted, and there was little he could do.
Desperation had him speaking to an empty room. “I could use the help here, if anyone’s listening.”
It seemed no one was. If he’d been hoping for divine intervention, he was left sorely disappointed. Letting his breath out in a heavy sigh, Sully decided to sort through at least one more year’s worth of microfilm before calling it a day.
He chose the next roll and moved back to the machine.
About to sit, a crash snapped his attention back to the shelves.
He spun in time to see the contents of a fallen box spill out across the floor, one roll of microfilm coming to rest against his toe.
“The hell?” he muttered. It was possible he’d dislodged the box while he was exchanging the rolls from the one below it. But maybe it was something else.
He had the sense of a presence, of someone in front of him, near the shelves, but he could not see the ghosts. Moments like this underlined the limitations of his ability. Because only homicide victims were visible to him, an entire world of spirits was unknown to him.
Back in high school, Dez had refused to come to this library because of chatter about the Phantom Librarian—reportedly Prue Longquill, a beloved employee who spent more than two decades working here until she passed away from cancer in the nineteen eighties. Since then, rumours swirled of a presence that helped people find their books by knocking them off shelves or making them appear on nearby surfaces.
Most people laughed at the stories. Sully was pretty sure he’d just met her.
“Thanks, Ms. Longquill,” he said, peering into the apparently empty space before him.
Hoping he was right in his assessment, Sully returned the roll he was holding, and placed the spilled microfilms back into their box, sorting them by date—all but the one that had fallen next to his foot. That one he fed into the machine.
It was indeed the Loons Hollow Sentinel he was looking at, editions from the late part of 1927. He scrolled more slowly this time, eyes scanning each page in search of the clue Prue Longquill might have been trying to impart.
He found it in an October edition, a story bearing the headline “Search on for local woman.” There wasn’t much to the story, just a couple of paragraphs. But it was enough to get him thinking.
A search began on Sunday morning for Sarah Marquill, daughter of Joseph and Catherine Marquill of Loons Hollow. Sarah, known to family and friends as Sadie, is said to have left home for a walk on Saturday evening, but didn’t return. An overnight search by family failed to turn up any clues as to her whereabouts. By Sunday morning, the search grew to involve numerous members of the community and encompassed both the road leading to town and the woods surrounding it.
Police have been notified as has the local forestry service.
Sully’s heart thudded, a familiar excitement at the discovery of a likely answer. It was no wonder no one had ever uncovered the true story behind Faceless Flo. They’d been looking in the wrong place. One of the facts lost to time was the woman’s actual identity.
The name of the woman on the road wasn’t Flo. It was Sadie.
7
Thomas and Rose Debenham owned a home on the twenty-second floor of one of the rit
ziest condo towers in Kimotan Rapids’ downtown core.
The suites were large, only four per floor, making each a corner unit. From the outside, it looked as though each property boasted floor-to-ceiling windows, and that was the first thing Dez noticed upon being granted admittance by a housekeeper to the Debenham suite.
It was bright—too bright, come to that. Custom blinds had been fitted to the windows in the large living room, but the shades were up, allowing in much of the midday light.
“I’ll get Rose for you,” the housekeeper said. Her accent identified her as having come from a Spanish-speaking country, and Dez was left to hope the woman was being properly paid.
The housekeeper didn’t return; the door through which she’d disappeared opened instead to reveal a woman who looked to be in her late sixties or early seventies. Her hair was well-done, immaculate even, not a curl out of place. She’d put makeup on, but the pull of exhaustion weighed down her features nonetheless.
Although it was clear she was tired, there was nothing weak in her handshake. Firm fingers gripped Dez’s, giving his forearm one solid shake before releasing him.
“I’m Rose Debenham,” she said, her voice as strong as her grasp. “You’ll have to forgive my husband. He isn’t up to receiving anyone today. I believe Carlene told you about his health situation. He has bad days and good days. Today isn’t so good.”
“I’m sorry to hear that, ma’am,” Lachlan said as Rose indicated for them to sit, taking a plush chair for herself. “As your daughter-in-law no doubt made you aware, my name is Lachlan Fields, and this is my associate Desmond Braddock. We’re private investigators, and we’ve been asked to look into your son’s disappearance. I know this isn’t an easy time for you, nor is it an easy topic of conversation. But, if we can, we hope we might be able to shed some light on this. Maybe we could even find him, if things go our way.”
“I understand why Carlene is doing this,” Rose said. “But I made my peace with Lonnie’s disappearance some time ago. I don’t think Carlene ever did. She had to raise their children without their father, and it’s a hard thing to have to explain to little ones. Some people need closure to get on with life. I suppose I’m more worried about what closure will mean. As it stands, I can imagine the utter worst, or I can try to picture the best possible outcome for Lonnie. There have been days I’ve tried to think of him being holed up on a desert island somewhere, content and stress-free. It may be unrealistic, but I’m sure it’s a lot better than reality. I understand most parents need closure. I’m just not sure I’m one of them.”