Lies Come True

by Emerald O'Brien

  Noah pulled out the police sketch from Avery’s file, and compared it with the police sketch of Fiona Wolfe’s description of the masked man.

  There were undeniable similarities.

  Both masks had a wrinkly white base, and the circles around the eye holes were dark. The differences were also clear. Avery’s sketch did not have blood marks smeared across the mask as Fiona had described just days ago. The only way Noah could think to describe it was in Fiona’s sketch, the man was wearing the mask. In Avery Hart’s, the mask and the figure was one in the same.

  He grabbed his cell phone and hit the fifth number on speed dial.

  “Noah, what’s up man? Everything okay?”

  “Hey Owen, I know it’s late.”

  “Actually, it’s early. Almost four AM.”

  “Shit, I’m sorry.” Noah looked at his watch, “Did I wake Missy?”

  “Naw, she’s used to it. What’s up?”

  “I know this is going to sound out of left field, but a girl from one of Jacoby’s old cases called in the other day. She said she wanted to speak to him about the mask from the case you’re on now, and how it might be related to a case of hers you were on ten years ago.”

  “You’ve got my attention.”

  “Avery Hart. Ring a bell?”

  “You’re taking me back, man.”

  “She was attacked by someone wearing a mask. Fell over a ledge into Crown River.”

  “Yeah, I remember.”

  “She thinks the mask is the same one that was used to attack her.”

  There was silence for a moment.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah, so I took a statement from her, and I passed it on to Ethan, but I saw your name on the file. I wanted to just run something by you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Now that I’ve told you what I’m calling about, and I know it was a long time ago, could there be something to this theory?”

  “You’re asking if I think there are similarities.”

  “Just what are your thoughts in general?”

  “Well, I remember she was traumatized. What kid wouldn’t be? I don’t remember all the details of what she described, but I remember the mask. I hadn’t linked it to our perp though. I’d have to see the sketches.”

  “I called Jacoby, and he told me the girl is crazy, told me not to waste my time.”

  “But here you are calling me at four in the morning, asking me general questions.”

  “I’m sorry; I just thought you might…”

  “I’d have to see the sketches, and I’d have to see the girl again. It’s been ten years Noah, did you really expect me to remember…”

  “You’re right. I’m sorry I’m wasting your time now.” Noah rubbed the back of his neck. “It was a bad idea.”

  “I’ll see her.”

  “You will?”

  “Yeah. Listen, I’m swamped with backed up paperwork, but I think there’s a reason you’re not giving up, even when old man Jacoby told you to drop it.” He chuckled, “If you want to pick my brain, just set up an interview with her, and let me know. If you decide it’s not worth it, that’s cool. God knows I’ve got enough on my plate.”

  “Alright.”

  “Alright you’ll set it up?”

  “Leave it with me.”

  “If there is a chance that it’s connected… I mean, even a small one, it might be critical. I was at the first crime scene Noah. Tamara Sweeten. I saw what that bastard is capable of. You said you gave the file to Ethan?”

  “Yeah, few hours ago. He didn’t seem that interested.”

  “He’s just busy. Let me know if you want to take it further, even if Ethan doesn’t. Maybe I can help.”

  “Will do. Thanks.”

  “No problem, see ya.”

  Noah put his phone down, and looked out his living room window into the darkness.

  If Jacoby was right, and he was most of the time, Noah was taking a huge gamble on pursuing Avery Hart’s case instead of his own, but he wasn’t ready to let it go.

  When he woke, he made a call.

  Chapter 7

  When Avery ended the call, she darted to her room, and threw on a pair of jeans. She took time to put on some mascara, and as she did, her mind and her heart raced.

  Inspector Cotter asked her to go back to a place she avoided at all costs. A place she became the person she was.

  When push came to shove, her curiosity outweighed her fear, and she agreed to meet him at the place where she ventured into the woods ten years before. She had been past the forest multiple times on her way to and from school since then, but she never went into the woods. Even when Josh would kindly ask her to come fishing with him, Josh who rarely asked for anything from her, and she would always refuse.

  You gotta get back on the horse, he’d say, but Avery knew it wasn’t the horse that scared her. She had been swimming several times since that day in pools and lakes. The water never bothered her. It was the thing that chased her over the edge that she couldn’t stand the thought of.

  When she arrived at the spot, she parked her car, and waited. No other cars were parked on the road, and she realized she was early. The sun was high in the sky, birds chirped, and a soft breeze blew through her window.

  She wondered how far he would make her go, into the woods and into her memories.

  After the first few times she told Jacoby and the accompanying officers in the hospital what had happened, it felt like everyone had changed the story for her, into something that felt right to them. The truth was still inside her, but the story she told since the end of her therapy sessions was different.

  She flipped her visor down, pouted, applied lip gloss and threw it back in her purse. She remembered the day Sadie helped her pick just the right colour for her skin tone. She trusted Sadie for more than just makeup tips.

  Sadie knew the truth about her attack because she was there for her through everything. Everyone else got the ‘new’ version of the story. She wondered what version she would tell Inspector Cotter when she saw him pull up behind her.

  “Sorry I’m late.” He called as they got out of their vehicles and met on the sidewalk.

  He wore plain clothes, jeans and a long sleeved shirt, and she wondered if he was on the clock.

  “No, I’m early. Thanks for meeting with me.” She glanced toward the tree line. “Can I ask why you wanted to meet me here?”

  “I wanted to get a better handle on your case. I read your file, and handed it in to the inspector on the case. I know you’ve been through this with the police, but I’d like to go through it with you if you’re still up to it?”

  Avery turned toward the trees. Until that moment, she felt like there was no backing out, but Inspector Cotter gave her the opportunity to turn around.

  “Let’s just go for as long as you’re comfortable.” He said, and his warm eyes seemed to look straight through her.

  She nodded, waved him off with a smile, and took her first steps toward the forest. She wondered if he thought she was fragile, as he fell in step behind her.

  He cleared his throat. “So, do you have anywhere else you have to be today?”

  “I’ve got a class at one.” She let him fall in stride beside her, though the path began to narrow.

  “Oh, we should have plenty of time then. I don’t want to rush it.” he stopped, held out his hand, and let Avery go ahead of him. “What class are you taking?”

  “I teach actually. Photography 101 over at the college. It’s just a course, not a program.”

  “So you’re a photographer and a teacher?”

  Avery was sure he was trying to distract her, and make her feel more comfortable, but her legs still shook beneath her.

  “I am.”

  “So you have one of those dark rooms at home?”

  Avery laughed. “No, I wish. I live in an apartment, so I don’t have the space. It’s all sent out. Everything I do is digital.”

  They walked for ano
ther minute.

  “Start anytime you’re ready. Just take me through that day.”

  Avery kept her eyes on the ground to watch her step. The dirt and leaves beneath her feet were soft after the recent rain, and the whole forest smelt earthy. She pulled all her hair over her shoulder and held it in her hands.

  “I was walking home from school alone. I didn’t know anyone here yet. I thought I was taking a short cut by going this way, North West, toward my subdivision.”

  “What time was that?”

  “School day ended just after three. It was probably after four when I realized I was lost and the sun was setting. I remember it wasn’t dark, but with the shadows from the trees, it was hard to tell where I was going, and where I’d already been.”

  “Was it cold?”

  She glanced behind her, surprised at the question. “A little. It hadn’t been during the day, but it was getting chilly.” The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, and she rubbed her hand over the goose bumps on her arm. “I took out my cell phone to call my mom, but there was no reception.” Avery stopped.

  “Do you know where you went next?”

  Avery shook her head.

  “That way.” He pointed north. She looked in the direction, and began to walk. “You hear the sound of water yet?”

  She shook her head. “I was going a bit faster than this. I was panicked.” They picked up the pace. “It must have been around here.”

  “What?”

  “When I heard it coming toward me.”

  A soft breeze cooled the back of her neck, she released her hair from her fists, and draped it over her shoulder.

  “Okay, just stay in that spot and close your eyes.”

  Avery closed them. “It was like it came out of nowhere. All of a sudden, it was running at me.” Her eyes opened, and Inspector Cotter stepped in front of her. The closeness made her heart beat faster, but she didn’t want him to move away.

  “What did you see? Close your eyes.”

  She looked up at him and sighed. The smell of his cologne was intoxicating.

  “You don’t have to close…”

  She closed her eyes and caught her balance as she rested her hand on his arm. When he didn’t move it away, she tried to remember.

  “It was a long way away. Maybe thirty feet. By the time I was running, it was less, but when I saw it…” Avery closed her eyes tighter.

  “You’re doing good.” His gruff tone was amplified with her eyes closed.

  She could listen to his voice all day.

  “It was something that didn’t look human running toward me.” She opened her eyes and stared at the ground.

  She let it go. The secret she kept that sounded absurd to everyone else.

  She looked up at him, and waited for the realization that she was crazy to wash over his face.

  He looked down at her and kept eye contact. “Alright, so you ran?”

  Avery took a deep breath, let go of his arm, and began walking in the direction he pointed toward.

  “I was running, and I was pretty fast, but they were too. I kept looking behind me.” She ducked under a tree branch she couldn’t remember before. “Are you sure this is the way?”

  “The place you were found isn’t far off.”

  “So I kept looking behind me, and I could see this white face, and these dark eyes.” Avery felt a chill again and stopped. “There was this sound, rustling leaves, and it got louder and louder as it came towards me. But then it wasn’t as loud.”

  “How so?”

  “I don’t know. It was like people running towards me, and then it stopped, but I never saw anyone else.”

  “This isn’t in the report.”

  “I didn’t remember it until now.”

  “So there might have been more than one person here? You’ve said ‘they’.”

  Avery shrugged, and looked around until she noticed something.

  “There.” She pointed. He followed her to a small clearing. “I ran through there, just before I went over.”

  They stood in place, and looked in the direction they’d been walking. The clearing led to more trees, and then a drop off. The fact that there was a ledge seemed so obvious to her that she couldn’t believe she missed it.

  “I wasn’t looking where I was going because it’s so flat here, and because…”

  She stood in silence and turned to the ledge. She expected him to say something, but when she turned around, he was looking at the ledge too.

  Maybe he didn’t hear me before.

  The wind blew gently through her hair, as if to calm her, and she gathered her courage.

  “Because I thought a monster was chasing me,” she blurted out, “but I couldn’t be sure. I couldn’t help myself. I had to look back and see what it was.”

  “And now?”

  “I know it wasn’t a monster, but the face, it was so real. I call it a face. I know it was a mask, but it was scary. I was terrified.”

  He looked from the ledge back to her. “Do you want to go now?”

  Avery turned and walked toward the ledge. She passed the clearing, and turned to see the inspector still standing where they were.

  “You can come.”

  He studied her for a moment before he walked toward her and she waited for him. “I just didn’t want to…”

  “Interrupt my train of thought?” She looked at him, and he stopped beside her. “You thought I might have a break through? That this trip down memory lane would help you decide if I was legit or not? What?” As soon as the words left her mouth, she wished she could take them back.

  He flinched, but shook his head, and looked out to the ledge only a few feet away.

  “I didn’t want to follow behind you so close to here. I didn’t want to scare you.”

  Avery looked down at the ground and cleared her throat. “Oh.”

  “Listen, I wasn’t expecting anything from this. I just wanted to get a better handle on the case, alright?”

  “This is where they stopped. I kept going but they stopped right here.”

  “So about six feet from the ledge?”

  Avery nodded and took another step toward it. “It doesn’t look as high as I remembered.”

  “It’s pretty high. You fell roughly fifteen feet.”

  “It felt like I was falling forever.” Tears came to her eyes again, but instead of brushing them away, she let the wind dry them before they could fall.

  The wooded area was lush beneath them, and Avery listened to the river below. The trees were various shades of green, but that September, they had started to change colours. There were other things that made their trip into the woods different from her last, but the thing that kept her there was the feeling of safety.

  “You must have been scared.” He stepped beside her and looked down.

  “I was.”

  I’m not with you.

  He stepped in front of her and touched her arm to guide her away from the edge.

  “It’s lucky you only broke your arm.”

  “I wasn’t scared of drowning, or hurting myself.”

  He studied her, but she focused on the ledge.

  “Of falling?”

  “I was scared that whatever it was, whatever was chasing me, would follow me right over the edge.”

  Chapter 8

  As they walked back through the woods, Avery was quiet. Noah wanted to say something to fill the silence. He thought about making small talk, but he didn’t want to make light of the situation. He wanted to get to know her more, but the situation made things awkward, and he knew he had to be professional.

  Even if he had suggested their meeting off the clock.

  “I think the fact that there could have been two people here points to the conclusion that this isn’t related to the case you saw on the news. There’s also the possibility it was just the one person who came after you. Point is, the mask could have been something both of them bought, but our killer made his look differen
t. Unique.”

  “With the blood?”

  “Yeah,” Noah had heard the killer smeared the blood of his first victim, Tamara Sweeten, on his mask, but it was just a rumor around the department, “and maybe a few other things. I think I understand what happened here as much as I’m going to anyway.”

  “That’s funny.” Avery almost laughed.

  She tossed her hair over her shoulder and shook her head.

  Noah turned back to her. “What’s that?”

  “I think this is the first time anyone’s really tried to understand what happened to me, aside from my best friend.”

  “Well the police file suggests they did an in depth investigation. You don’t feel they did?”

  “Oh no, they sure did. They questioned me again and again. I did the police sketch, and they interviewed my family, as well as some of the people who live by the woods. They questioned Josh almost as much as they questioned me.”

  “So?”

  “So no one ever really listened to what I said. They did the first time, but after that, they just heard what they wanted to hear, and the rest they made up. I was chased by some hooligan, obviously their words, in a mask. Someone was playing a joke on me, and it went too far. They determined the person stopped short of the ledge because they never meant to drive me off of it.”

  He stopped walking, but she continued past him. “Wait, you think parts of this investigation were made up?”

  “No,” Avery sighed as they reached the tree line. “I think they thought I was the one who got it wrong. That my account was some sort of fabrication that they needed to breathe some reality into. There was no evidence of an attacker at all, and I used to wonder if they even believed me about that. Jacoby pretty much suggested I needed professional help. That’s why I worried I made a mistake calling you.”

  They walked to the sidewalk, and when he turned to face her, he noticed she finally met his gaze with a smile.

  “But you’re glad you did?”

  She nodded.

  “I’m glad you called, Avery, I mean initially. I’m not saying this is connected to the case at all, but there’s still a chance it might be. I feel confident that the inspector in charge will be able to determine if your information is helpful.”