by Gerri Hill
Billy nodded and let out a heavy sigh. He rubbed his forehead back and forth. “I think I’m going to need a beer. You?”
She shook her head. “No thanks.”
He flagged down their waiter, who took the time to remove their plates.
“So how did it happen? I mean, you know, you two sometimes acted like you didn’t even like each other.”
“We did pretend that was the case, didn’t we?” She looked down at the tablecloth, wondering how much to tell him. “About six months before we left for Hoganville…you remember this case we had? A family was held hostage. The guy set them on fire. He—”
“Oh, God, yeah. With the two kids?”
“Yes. That one. Well, with cases like that, we all know CJ’s MO.”
Billy laughed as the waiter brought his beer to the table and topped off Paige’s water glass. “Yeah. Hit the bar and show up the next day wearing the same clothes. Sex and tequila.” He frowned. “That hasn’t happened in a while.”
“I would hope not.” She took a sip from her water. “Anyway, that night, after that case, I…I didn’t want to be alone. That night, I needed someone. And I knew CJ did too. So I went to the bar.”
His eyes widened. “You slept together then?”
She nodded. “I went to her apartment.” She took the napkin that was still in her lap and twisted it in her hand, remembering that night. “I left before dawn. We both got to work that morning and we didn’t say a word. In fact, we avoided each other for several weeks. We never said a word about that night.”
He nodded. “Yeah, I remember there was a time there when you two didn’t talk at all.”
“I know. And things eventually got back to normal with us. But we never once mentioned that night. So when we were thrown together in Hoganville, there was a history between us. And there was always an attraction,” she admitted. “The teasing, the flirting…it was a game but there was still an underlying truth to it. There in Hoganville, the attraction was impossible to ignore. Everything just sort of blended together—the roles we were supposed to play and what was really happening between us—and we no longer were just pretending to be lovers.”
He nodded slowly as he drank from his beer. “So…so what about this guy that your mother introduced as your fiancé? Seth, I believe she said his name was.”
Paige nearly blushed. “I’m not exactly out to my mother. Seth and I, well, it was convenient for us to pretend to date. It kept both of our families out of our personal lives.”
“So you’re not really engaged then?”
Paige laughed lightly. “No. Only in my mother’s eyes was there ever the possibility of a wedding.”
“So then with CJ, is it serious?”
“We haven’t really talked about that.”
“What about you? Are you in love with her?”
She held his gaze. “I sometimes think that would be a very dangerous thing…to be in love with CJ Johnston. Don’t you?”
He shrugged. “The old CJ, sure. The one who got her relief with one-night stands at the bar, the one who coped that way.” He shook his head. “But I don’t think that CJ is still around, is she? I haven’t seen her.”
Paige realized her smile was one of relief. “No, you’re right. That CJ hasn’t been around in a while now.”
“So? Are you in love with her?”
Paige nodded. “Madly.”
And later, she realized just how madly when a sleepy-voiced CJ answered her phone.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t think you’d be in bed already,” she said, double-checking the time.
“No, it’s okay. Ice and I went out for beers,” CJ said. “I crashed when I got here.”
“Where are you?”
“On your side of the bed, smothering your pillow,” she said around a yawn.
Paige smiled, picturing CJ doing just that. “Okay. Go back to sleep, sweetheart.”
“I love it when you call me sweetheart,” CJ murmured.
Paige smiled again, feeling a pleasant tightness in her chest. “Goodnight,” she whispered.
“Goodnight, baby.”
Chapter Twenty
“I say we talk to Deputy Brady first, then go to the house,” Ice said.
CJ nodded. “Yeah, okay. I’m not looking forward to going to the house either, you know.”
“But you’re going to check the inside and I’m going to check the outside, right? I mean, you’re not going to want me inside with you, are you?”
“Oh, sure, baldy. Leave me inside with the ghost all by myself. That sounds fair,” she said sarcastically.
“I’m just saying.”
“Look, whatever thing I felt in that house…well, I don’t know what the hell it was but come on…ghosts?” She shook her head. “I know I said that it felt real, whatever it was. But I can’t—not if I want to keep my sanity—say it was a ghost.” She wasn’t sure if she was trying to convince herself or Ice. “Maybe my imagination got the best of me. So I want to go back there with a clean slate. And an open mind.” She glanced at him quickly, then looked back to the highway. “If you don’t want to go inside with me, that’s okay.”
“I don’t know why we need to worry about the house anyway,” he said. “They found nothing in there fourteen years ago. And the boy, he was left outside on the grounds. The house wasn’t disturbed.”
“How do we know the house wasn’t disturbed? We weren’t in it long enough to find out.”
“The lock was intact,” he reminded her.
“It’s a big-ass house. Did we check every window on the ground floor? The windows aren’t boarded on the second floor. Is there a tree close by where someone could have climbed up and gotten inside?”
“CJ, if the dudes hit the boy with a car and dumped his body, why the hell would they break into the house?”
“I don’t think the house is significant in this case. But it could possibly have been fourteen years ago.”
“Why? The case file says the house was undisturbed.”
“It said it appeared undisturbed.” She slowed as they approached their exit in Cleveland. “Think about it. At first, you just have your local LEOs working it. They would all have heard the rumors that it’s haunted. You think they’re going to go over it in detail? Then they hand it over to the FBI. They’ve read the original report: haunted house. They talk to the locals in Shady Pines: haunted house. So what do you think they’re going to do?”
“Take a quick look inside and call it good,” he said.
“Exactly.” She turned right, then stopped as the light turned red. “And I still haven’t read the entire file. Have you?”
“No.”
“Maybe we should start at the beginning.” She went through the intersection when the light turned green. “The Sheriff’s Department had the case until the third boy went missing, right?”
“Yeah. I think they found Paul Canton’s body the next day. That’s when the FBI took over the case.”
“And one more boy disappeared. What was his name?”
“Simon something, wasn’t it?”
“Bradley Simon,” she said, remembering. She pulled to a stop in front of the Sheriff’s Department. “Why don’t we pull their file on it?”
“Couldn’t hurt,” Ice said as he got out. “By the way, Brady didn’t sound too thrilled that we wanted to check on his progress.”
“That’s assuming there is progress,” she said. “We gave him next to nothing, Ice.”
“I know. I just don’t like the dude.”
He walked over to the reception desk and held up his credentials. CJ did the same.
“FBI,” he said.
“Yes. I remember you from the other day. You looking for Brady?”
“Yes. Is he in?”
The man motioned with his head. “Down the hall.”
CJ followed Ice as he seemed to know where he was going. He stopped at the third office down and knocked on the open door.
“Well, well, the F
BI returns. You got a different partner, Freeman?”
Ice glanced at CJ. “Special Agent CJ Johnston.”
The smile left Brady’s face. “Oh yeah. The drug bust,” he said dryly.
“You’re welcome,” CJ said with a smirk. “Always glad to help.”
“We were this close,” he said, holding his thumb and index fingers together, “to raiding the place.”
“Sorry I beat you to it.”
He leaned back with a sweeping motion at his two visitor’s chairs. “What can I do for the FBI today?”
CJ and Ice both took a seat. CJ decided to let Ice take the lead. He had a history with Brady, she didn’t.
“Any luck finding a car?”
Brady laughed. “Oh, yeah. Thanks for the tip. Dark, two-door car, possibly a sports car of some type. Sure, we’ve got about a thousand possibilities.” He leaned toward his desk and picked up a pen, twirling it around in his fingers. “Besides, you really believe all that? Somebody hit the kid on the forest road and hauled off the body?”
“Why wouldn’t we?” CJ asked.
“Because you’re hearing it…what? Thirdhand? Besides, most of those kids don’t even speak English. The fact that they fed Thompson some bullshit and you’re running with it is crazy,” he said. “Say we find a dented-up car? Then what? We got no witnesses.”
Ice nodded. “I know, man. It was all we got. At least it was something.”
“Look, I’ll go out and talk to Thompson. Maybe, just maybe, he can get some of those kids to talk to us. If we get something firsthand, something more concrete than a dark car, then maybe we can do something.”
“Did you go out to the forest road?” CJ asked.
“Sure. Took a drive out there this morning. I drove four miles up. Thompson’s property borders the road for maybe a mile, probably less. Nothing out of the ordinary. No skid marks in the dirt.” He shook his head. “Besides, we had rain three days after we found the body. Any marks would have been washed away.”
“Well, if you could find out more from Thompson, that would be great,” CJ said. “Exact location, perhaps.”
“Yeah, sure. I’ll go talk to him.” Brady sat up closer to his desk and grabbed a stack of papers, straightening them. “You drove all the way up here just to have this chat?”
“No. We’re working on something else,” Ice said.
“The cold case still?”
“We need the file,” CJ said. “The original one, before the FBI took over. You know the one?”
Brady nodded. “Sure do. I remember it well. I was out there.”
“You worked the case?” Ice asked.
Brady laughed. “I was green behind the ears back then. They didn’t let me do a whole lot. Had the whole town freaked out, I’ll tell you that, even if it was at some trailer park.” He looked at Ice. “You find anything in that house?”
“No. We’re going back today.”
He shook his head. “Man, I used to be scared of it. When I was a kid, we lived down on Morgan Cemetery Road, about ten miles or so west of Pecan Grove. Rode the school bus past that house every morning.” He glanced at Ice. “They say some people hear voices. Screaming and such. Some of the high school kids go out there at night, wait for a full moon, dare each other to go up to the porch.” He lowered his voice. “Some say they saw shadows of people in the windows.” He grinned. “Hell, I wouldn’t set foot in there.”
“We don’t expect to find anything,” CJ said. “Our boss just wants us to take a peek. Cold case, fourteen years old, doubt anything new will pop up. We’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”
“Oh, I always enjoy working with the FBI. Learn something new every time.” He stood up. “Let me see about fetching that file for you.”
* * *
“So you’re right. He’s a prick,” CJ said as she headed toward the Wicker house. “But we got the file.”
“Yeah, he’s a prick,” Ice said. “He’s a little too arrogant for my liking.”
CJ was quiet for a moment, then spoke what was foremost on her mind. “A lot of people have comments about that damn house, don’t they?”
“Yep.”
“Notice how it’s all secondhand, though? Even Lizzie. ‘They say,’ or ‘some say.’ Even the lady we met at the trailer park office. What was her name? Brenda? She said the same thing.” CJ glanced at him. “Not a one of them have firsthand knowledge of anything.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying, rumors can be rumors, handed down over the years. But if no one—not ever—actually saw or heard something, then the haunted house thing is going to be more of a joke. Like stories told to little kids to scare them. And then they tell the next group of kids and so on.”
“I don’t get your point,” Ice said. “You said you heard something,” he reminded her.
“I know. What I’m saying is, for this thing to have been kept alive all these years, then someone had to have seen or heard something at the Wicker house. Someone had to have been in the house and witnessed it.”
“What about the Underwoods?”
“Well, Lizzie said that the wife was so spooked living there that she refused to go upstairs. But again, Lizzie heard that from someone.”
“Okay, CJ. But what’s your point?”
“Hell, baldy, I don’t know. Maybe I’m just trying to justify what I heard, what I felt, you know. If there was someone else who had the same experience as me, someone firsthand, not just some story that was passed down, then maybe I could reconcile this as the truth.” She smiled, but it was forced. “Because right now, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced I’m losing my mind.”
“So maybe today, you go in there, you don’t hear anything, you don’t feel anything. It’s just a house. An old house that nobody’s been in, and we can say it’s undisturbed and go on. And we won’t have to ever go back again.”
She turned onto Morgan Cemetery Road and soon passed Shady Pines Trailer Park. She could feel her apprehension growing as they got closer to the Wicker house. Her pulse was pounding in her ears by the time she pulled up to the gate. Ice got out and opened it, and she pulled inside, her hands tight on the steering wheel.
“Look, no offense, baldy, but I sure wish Paige was here.”
He laughed. “Oh, I’m sure you do.”
“She would at least come inside with me.”
His smile vanished. “I told you, if you need me to go inside with you, I will.” He took a deep breath. “I mean, I’ll at least stand by the open door.”
“There’s not a guy with a chain saw in there, you know.” Then she grinned. “Lizzie said he used an ax.”
The color faded from Ice’s face. “Very funny.”
She got out. “Just trying to lighten the mood.”
“Well, it’s not working.”
She stood near the truck, her gaze traveling over the windows, hoping—praying—she didn’t see any shadows moving about.
“It’s so quiet here,” Ice said.
“Yeah. Like…like nothing’s here. No birds, no squirrels, nothing.”
“And the trees around the house,” he said. “All dead.”
“It’s like a dead zone,” she said.
“Damn creepy,” he said. “They’re like guards or something.”
“I know what you mean,” she said as she moved closer to the house.
He followed her up to the porch. “So what’s the plan?”
“Billy checked the kitchen area and Paige took the den. I made it to the second-floor landing,” she said, trying not to think about her first trip inside. “If someone broke in, used the house as a holding place for the boys, it stands to reason it would be on the first floor.”
“I still think if they went through the house fourteen years ago they would have found something,” he said.
“You’d think, right?”
“But we’re going in?”
She didn’t know what good it would do to have him standing gua
rd at the door. “Why don’t you check all the windows on the first floor? See if there’s anyplace where someone could have gotten in.” She looked around. “I’d say from the back where they couldn’t be seen, but it’s so grown up around here, you can barely see the house from road.”
“Yeah, okay. I can do that.”
She smiled at the relief she heard in his voice, but her smile faded as she turned to the door. She paused. Paige and Billy’s flight would be landing soon. After they briefed Howley, they would be on their way out here. Maybe she should wait. There was safety in numbers, after all. But no. That would be late afternoon. The shadows would be long. The days were getting shorter and shorter. Dark came earlier here in the deep woods. So she walked up the few remaining steps to the door. She realized her hand was shaking as she tried to fit the key into the lock.
She heard Ice’s footsteps fading as he walked away from her, the old porch boards creaking under his weight. She turned, almost calling for him to come back, but he rounded the corner out of sight.
“You’re being ridiculous,” she muttered as she pushed the door open.
The dank smell of the house was almost familiar. Her eyes immediately flew up the staircase, halfway expecting to see…something…there waiting for her. Instead of taking the stairs, she took the short hallway to the left. It was the direction Billy had gone. The beam of her flashlight bounced around the walls, the floor, looking for anything that was disturbed. There were smudges in the dust where she assumed Billy had walked. She rolled her eyes as she realized he had only taken a few steps inside before retracing his route. She went farther in, finding herself in the kitchen. It had obviously been remodeled over the years with somewhat modern fixtures in the sink. The stove, however, appeared ancient.
She paused. Listening. Waiting. She was a bit surprised that she felt nothing in there, heard nothing. Perhaps it had been her imagination after all.
Past the kitchen was a closed door. She went to it and turned the handle. It was locked. She tilted her head, studying the doorknob. It was obviously locked from the other side.