by Jana DeLeon
He headed up to the cab. “Thanks for the help.”
Old Joe nodded. “I figure if a man who carried a badge as long as you needs to sneak out of his own home, then that’s serious business.”
Harold nodded. “The most serious kind of business. You’re going straight to Mississippi, right?”
“Yep. My son is expecting me. The bait shop is closed and goes on the market next week along with the house. I packed up everything personal this morning and sent it off in a U-Haul. I ain’t got no reason to be seen around these parts again, so don’t you go worrying about anybody tracking me down. “’Sides, my son’s got plenty of ammo and a bit of a temper.” Old Joe grinned.
Harold shook his hand. “Good luck to you, Joe.”
“You too. Don’t let me see you on one of them damned true-crime television shows, all zipped up in a plastic bag. That would piss me off.”
“Me too.”
Harold patted Old Joe’s truck as he drove out of the parking lot. Then he grabbed his duffel bag and headed for the small prop plane sitting on the private airstrip in the middle of a field. The pilot greeted him as he walked up.
“Uncle Hal,” the pilot said. “You ready?”
Harold nodded. “I’m as ready as I’m getting.”
“You gonna tell me what all this is about?”
“Not just yet. You’re going to have to trust me on this one.”
“Of course. But if there’s something I can do…I mean, to help with whatever…”
“There is something.”
“Name it.”
“Don’t tell your mother.”
His nephew grinned. “Neither one of us wants that kind of grief.”
Jackson parked in front of Shaye’s apartment and deliberated whether or not to knock. It wasn’t too late to visit a friend, but time had moved beyond the casual drop-in range. Still, he needed to talk to Shaye about everything that was going on and he preferred to tell her himself. Hearing it from Corrine would make him look and feel like a coward, and he wanted no part of that. Resolved to the task and the time of night, he climbed out of his car and heard a scream from Shaye’s apartment.
He pulled out his gun and bolted for her front door, then began pounding on it and yelling her name. No way could he break it down. The door was solid steel construction with a wood overlay. The windows had bars on them. Short of calling the fire department or running his car through the building, there was no way he was getting inside.
He yanked out his phone and was just dialing 911 when the door opened and Shaye peered out at him through a crack. Her face was devoid of color and her eyes were wide with fright.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Are you all right? Let me help.”
What if someone was inside with her? What if they were holding a gun on her? Could he shove the door open and apprehend the perpetrator before he got off a shot?
All those thoughts ran through Jackson’s mind, and every millisecond of hesitation from Shaye allowed time for another question to spool into the reel. It seemed like forever, but was probably only a couple seconds before she removed the chain on the door and stepped back to allow him to enter.
Jackson walked inside and glanced around, wondering what the hell was going on. The apartment was completely dark. The blinds and drapes completely covered the windows, blocking any light from the streetlamps that might attempt to creep in, and not a single overhead light or lamp was turned on. For someone who slept with lights on, it seemed an incredibly odd situation.
Shaye didn’t speak at all, but trailed through the front room, which served as her office, into the kitchen. Jackson followed her and drew up short when he saw the candles on the floor, their flickering flames the only source of light in the otherwise dark room. Shaye turned on the kitchen lights and he got a better look at her. Something was definitely wrong. First off, she was wearing what appeared to be old-timey-looking lingerie. Granted, he had no idea what her normal sleepwear was, but somehow, this didn’t fit the mental image he’d constructed. She reached for one of the candles on the floor, and he saw her hesitate before lifting it. Her hand shook as she put it in the sink with another candle, and he grabbed the remaining two and placed them with the others before blowing out the flames.
“Maybe you should sit down,” he suggested. “I’ll fix you something to drink.”
She nodded and moved around the kitchen counter to sit on the couch. He opened her pantry and pulled out a bottle of whiskey. He fixed her a stiff shot of the whiskey and carried that and an iced tea into the living area. He placed the iced tea on the end table beside her and handed her the whiskey. She took a big drink and closed her eyes. He could see her chest rise as she took in a deep breath and slowly blew it out. She opened her eyes and took another drink before looking at him.
“Thank you,” she said.
“Did something happen?” he asked, and sat on the coffee table in front of her. “I’m always here to help…I just need to know with what.”
Her expression shifted from exhausted to grim. “I was stupid,” she said.
“I find that hard to believe,” he said.
She gave him a rueful smile. “You’re great for my ego, but it doesn’t change the facts. I did something reckless and I wasn’t ready for the consequences.”
He thought about the dress and the candles and none of his conclusions were logical or good. “Can you tell me what happened?”
“I was trying to remember. I have these dreams that seem so real, but since I have no conscious memory of my past, I could never be sure that the dreams were really glimpses of my past.”
“But you think they are?”
She nodded. “There’s things in them—like my ankle that aches when it rains and some of my scars—that correspond with injuries I have. I know my mind could be creating fiction and bringing my reality into it, but that’s not how it feels. I don’t know how to explain it, but I’m certain my dreams are trying to show me what happened.”
“If you feel strongly about it then you’re probably right. I don’t pretend to know stuff about the brain like Eleonore does, but what you’re describing sounds reasonable to me.”
He frowned. But where did the dress and candles come in? And what did they have to do with her dreams? He wanted to ask, but he knew how much weight Shaye was already toting with her biological mother being found and her name in the Clancy journals. She was the strongest woman he’d ever met, but everyone had a breaking point. The last thing he wanted to do was be the final straw—the one statement or question that pushed her back into the shadows.
But he couldn’t help her if he didn’t understand what was going on.
“The candles and dress,” he said. “Are they part of the dreams?”
“Yeah. In the worst of the dreams, I’m wearing a red dress and surrounded by a bunch of black candles. I’m tied down on a stone altar and a man approaches and other people are huddled in the background. In the dreams, all their faces are blurred. The man steps up to the altar and pulls out a knife. He cuts my chest with the knife and licks the blood off of it.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. “Sometimes I wake up then. Sometimes I don’t wake up until he pulls the dress up.” She looked directly at Jackson. “I never wear red and just the sight of candles is enough to send my pulse racing. I have flashlights and kerosene lamps in my house in case of a power outage. So does Corrine. I won’t eat dinner at certain restaurants because I know they light the dining area completely with candles at night. I’ve been known to leave charity events that do the same, pretending I’m ill.”
Jackson’s chest constricted as she talked, empathy and anger warring inside him. No one should have to live with such things. No child should have to endure them.
“I wouldn’t call that pretending,” he said.
She relaxed a little. “No. I guess it’s not.”
Now that Jackson knew about the dreams, he could make an educate
d guess as to what Shaye had been doing and why she said it was stupid.
“So you put on a red dress,” he said, “lit the candles, and lay down on the floor, hoping you’d remember.”
She nodded. “Stupid, right?”
“I was going to say brave.”
A flush crept up her neck and she looked down. “I’m not brave. I’m broken.”
Jackson reached over and put his hand on her arm. “We’re all broken. Some of us are just in more pieces. It’s how we handle it that makes us brave, and from where I’m sitting, you’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”
She looked at him again and he could see the disbelief in her eyes, but finally she managed a small smile. “You believe that,” she said. “You have a lot of positive attributes, Jackson Lamotte, but the thing I love about you the most is your sincerity. It’s rare that someone can always tell exactly where they stand with another person, but you don’t have an ounce of guile in you, do you?”
“When it comes to police work, yes. But when it comes to relationships, no.”
Especially when it comes to you.
He didn’t say it, but it was right there at the forefront of his thoughts.
“Did you remember?” he asked.
“Yes,” she answered, her voice barely a whisper. “It was just like my dreams, except this time, I saw his face.”
His pulse quickened. “You can identify him?”
She shook her head. “He wore a mask. A horned goat.”
No way in hell would he ever admit it, but the image in his mind creeped Jackson out. No wonder she’d screamed.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t imagine how horrifying that was.”
“I suspected something along those lines. Eleonore isn’t willing to jump completely on board with my theory yet, but I think I’m right.”
“Right about what?”
“It was ritualistic abuse.” She held up a hand before he could reply. “I’ve read the FBI study and I know all the facts of other cases, but that doesn’t change the facts here. Black candles, a red dress, a stone altar, and all the cuts on my body. The brand—”
“Wait,” Jackson interrupted. “What brand?”
He’d been through all the medical records in her file and none of them had made mention of a brand.
She frowned. “I thought you read my file.”
“I did. There’s nothing about a brand in there.”
“That’s strange. I know it was documented in my medical records. I have a copy of the records myself.”
“Maybe it wasn’t scanned in when the department converted everything to digital.”
“Maybe not.” She rose from the couch and turned around with her back facing him. She pulled the gown up over her hips and up her back.
Jackson took one look at the pentagram on her midback and felt his stomach roll.
“It’s been treated with lasers more times than I can count,” Shaye said as she dropped the gown and sat back down. “But they can’t remove it. It used to be worse. I had the protruding skin surgically removed. It’s better now. At least I can’t feel it when I lean back.”
“I am so sorry.” He struggled for words but couldn’t think of any that would properly express everything he felt. “I…I can’t even imagine, but I see why you feel it’s ritualistic.”
“You think I could be onto something?”
“Do I think there’s a satanic cult operating in New Orleans—I suppose anything is possible, but it’s more likely it’s one insane person.”
“Except there are other people in my dreams. I didn’t see them today but if we assume my dreams have been recall, then there were other people involved.”
Jackson shook his head. It was bad enough to assume one demented, evil individual was still loose on society, but if he had coconspirators, that opened things up to a whole different level of horror.
“If I hadn’t screamed,” Shaye said, “I might have remembered more. I should have been better prepared. I knew what might come out of this, and I rushed into it without preparation. I think I was afraid if I took time to think it through, I’d change my mind.”
“I can see that, but even if you’d waited, what possible preparations could you have made for something like this?”
She frowned. “I don’t know. Video, for one. At least if I said something during the recall, it would be recorded.”
“Do you think you said something that you don’t remember?”
“No. I didn’t have any lapses in recall. I’m sure I didn’t say anything.”
“Then it wouldn’t have made a difference,” he pointed out. “Look, I’m sure you could have done yoga or had a stiff drink or any of a dozen things to try to calm down, but I don’t think they would have done a bit of good once you were on the floor. I can’t imagine what would have, so stop chiding yourself. You did it to get answers and you got some. Not everything you were looking for, but it’s an important start.”
“Yeah. I guess so.” But she didn’t sound convinced.
“You remembered something from your past. Have you even thought about how huge that is?”
She stared at him for several seconds, then he saw a tiny flicker of excitement. “I guess I hadn’t thought it out. What if this opened the door for my mind to release all those things it’s been holding back? If I could remember how I escaped that night, I might remember where I escaped from. We could find him. We could find the man who bought me.”
It was hard to contain his emotions at what this breakthrough might mean to Shaye and to the investigation, but Jackson knew that the return of Shaye’s memory probably came at a huge cost. Her medical records told part of the story that her mind couldn’t, and it was dark and evil. If seven years of torture and abuse flooded back into her memory, could she handle it? Corrine’s love and Eleonore’s expertise still had their limits, although Jackson had zero doubt as to their commitment to Shaye.
“I think you need to take things slowly,” Jackson said. “You only got a quick glimpse of the past and it was bad. If it all comes racing back in…”
“I can handle it,” she said. “I know it doesn’t look like it, but this was a wake-up call. I’ll be prepared for it next time.”
Next time? He should have known her experiment wouldn’t end here. Shaye had spent years deciding whether or not she wanted to pursue remembering, but now that she’d made up her mind, there was no putting on the brakes. The discovery of her biological mother and Clancy’s records had only upped the ante.
And she didn’t even know about her captor’s recent purchase.
Jackson knew he had to tell her. If she heard it from Corrine, she’d be mad at him for withholding the information, and the last thing he wanted was for Shaye to get angry with him and cut him out of her life. She needed people around her she trusted. People who would have her back no matter where the chips fell, and he was one of those people. But he wouldn’t be for long if she felt she could no longer trust him.
Still, now wasn’t the right time. She needed to calm down. To clear her head of the thing she’d just done. To get back into private investigator mode, thinking logically and impartially about information. As impartially as a victim could be, anyway.
“Promise me,” he said, “that you won’t do this again unless I’m here.”
“You don’t have to do that,” she said, but he could tell she wasn’t exactly opposed to the idea.
“I just want to see you in your nightgown,” he said, “although skimpier and blue is more to my taste.”
She smiled. “The only blue I sleep in is a blue T-shirt. It is shorter, though.” She rose from the couch. “And now that you’ve mentioned clothes, I think I’ll go put on something normal. This makes me feel…I can’t even describe it.”
“I recommend a hot shower and a change of clothes.”
She nodded and started to say something, then hesitated. Finally, she said, “Will you stay for a while? I mean, unless you’re working or
already had plans. I don’t want to hold you up, but we haven’t talked in some time, so I thought we could catch up.”
“Unless I get a phone call, I’m officially off the clock, and my only plans were dinner. Are you hungry? Because I’m starving.”
“Always. There’s a great Chinese place that delivers. The menu is in the drawer next to the sink. Get me crab Rangoon and chicken fried rice. You like Chinese food, right?”
“You had me at crab Rangoon.”
She headed for the hall, then stopped and turned around. “Thanks, Jackson.”
He nodded and she slipped through the doorway and disappeared down the hall. A couple seconds later, he heard a shower turn on and he rose from the couch and headed into the kitchen to find the menu. He placed the food order and opened the refrigerator, figuring Shaye wouldn’t mind if he helped himself to something to drink. He pulled out a cold beer and then noticed a Tupperware container on the cabinet that held round items that looked suspiciously like cookies. He pulled the lid back and sighed when he saw the same cookies he’d had earlier at Corrine’s. Unable to help himself, he grabbed a couple out of the container and headed back to the couch with the beer and cookies. He located the remote and turned on the television, determined to find something to watch that didn’t have any news coverage. The day had been grim enough already. He didn’t need to be depressed even further with all the evil in the world.
As he flipped through the channels, he thought about what Shaye had done. It was definitely outside the box, but he had a keen appreciation for creative solutions. Most importantly, it had worked. Not only had she determined that her dreams were most likely glimpses of her past, she’d forced her memory to give up one of its closely guarded secrets—the mask.
It might just be the tip of the iceberg.
He only hoped she was ready for the meltdown.