by Jo Macgregor
Eventually, driven by caffeine deprivation, I went downstairs, wincing with every step. My father was already at the kitchen table, hollow-eyed from lack of sleep and hunched over a cup of coffee. I was pouring myself one when the kitchen telephone rang. I hesitated, both needing and dreading to hear the news, then picked up the receiver with an unsteady hand.
“Hello, dear. It’s me.”
“Mom? Mom, is that you?” I asked.
My father stood up, his eyes wide and a hand over his heart.
“Yes, dear, it’s me,” she said.
“Are you okay?”
“Safe and sound in one piece!” she said, sounding tired.
My father snatched the phone and began asking questions, while I sagged into a chair, blowing out a long breath and wiping a trembling hand over my eyes.
A few minutes later, my father hung up and turned to me. “She’s safe.”
“How? Where?” I said weakly.
“Seems he just let her go, and a motorist found her this morning, walking along the highway outside of Hardwick. She said something about giving her statement — I don’t know if she already has or if she still needs to — and then they’ll bring her back to Pitchford.”
We stared at each other for several moments, saying nothing, communicating everything, and then we embraced, crushing each other tightly as we sobbed our relief. After an interminable ninety minutes, Ryan’s car pulled into the driveway.
“They must’ve taken her to the police station,” I said as I bolted to the front door. Outside, I ran to the car and hugged my mother, where she still sat in the passenger seat, telling her that I was sorry, that I loved her, and that I would be a better daughter in future.
“Goodness gracious, dear. Let me get out of the car before you drown me in tears!”
I helped her out, noticing the smears of dirt on her pale face and the circlet of bruises around her frail, blue-veined wrist. Still apologizing, I clung to her, needing to feel the solidity of her small frame in order to believe that she was truly home and safe. She patted me on the back, reassuring me that it wasn’t my fault and comforting me like I was a little kid. I dashed my tears away, feeling bad. It wasn’t her job to console me. I’d studied the circle of support. Compassion and reassurance were supposed to flow to the victim. I stepped back as my mother was swept up into my father’s embrace, and I watched him gently escort her inside the house.
“Thank you,” I told Ryan.
“Don’t thank me. I had nothing to do with it.” He looked grumpy at the thought.
I followed my parents into the living room, where my father settled my mother comfortably on the couch after brushing the spilled crystals from last night onto the carpet. Before he covered her legs with a blanket, I saw that her knees were scraped and bruised, and a scabbed scratch ran the length of one calf. She was missing a shoe, and her bare foot was wrapped in a bandage.
“Do you want a drink?” I asked. I knew I did.
“A cup of tea, please, dear. With two spoons of sugar.”
“I’ll get it,” my father said and disappeared into the kitchen, where I suspected that he would have a good cry.
“Are you all right, Mom?” I asked. “Really all right?”
“Of course I am,” she said. “Just a bit scratched and bruised.”
“Did he hit you?”
“No, no. Nothing like that. But he did push me out of the car, and it was rolling at the time, though only slowly, so I got a little banged up. Goodness me, what a night!”
My father returned and tenderly wiped her face clean with a damp washcloth. He pressed his lips against her forehead and held the contact until the kettle whistled in the kitchen. “Tea,” he said and left.
“So he just let you go?” I asked my mother.
“Well, no. I talked him into it, or should that be out of it? I explained how he was stacking up some very bad karma by picking on an innocent old lady, and told him he needed to think very carefully about his actions because he was under the baleful influence of Mercury in retrograde, although, to tell the truth, I don’t actually know if Mercury is currently in retrograde, and I certainly couldn’t be sure last night because my head was all in a muddle with worry. Anyway, I must’ve gotten through to him because when I began telling him about Saturn, that’s when he opened the door and shoved me out.”
I exchanged a glance with Ryan, feeling a hysterical and entirely inappropriate urge to laugh.
“He even tossed my purse and shopping bag out after me and then roared off, leaving me in the absolute middle of nowhere! I was shocked because until he started the senseless rambling, he’d seemed like a nice enough man. But really, he was a wolf in sheep’s skin.”
“Clothing,” I said absently.
“What’s that, dear?”
“It’s ‘a wolf in sheep’s clothing.’”
“That can’t be right, dear. Sheep don’t wear clothing.”
“They don’t wear skins either,” I said irritably. Crap. Fifteen minutes in, and I’d already broken my resolution to be more patient with my mother.
“Like a wolf in sheep’s wool then,” she said.
My father brought in a tray with a cup of tea, a plate of cookies, and the two amber bottles containing my mother’s medications. When she took her cup, it rattled on the saucer. She was putting on a great show of bravery, but clearly, she was more affected than she wanted us to see.
“What did you do then?” I asked her.
She took a long sip, sighed, and said, “Nothing I could do. I was on a dirt road with no buildings or lights in sight and no idea which direction to go. So I just found a tree and went to sleep under it, wrapped in my lovely quilt that I bought at the convention.”
“Oh, Crystal,” my father said, his face pinched with distress.
“Yes, it wasn’t the most comfortable night I’ve ever had.” She took another sip of tea. “But morning always comes after the darkest dark, and when it did, I used my quartz necklace to divine which way to walk. When I got to the main road, I flagged down a car. The lovely driver, a nurse on her way to her morning shift, took me straight to the police station, and everything happened rather quickly after that. Everyone was so kind.”
She finished her tea. My father immediately poured her another and urged her to eat a cookie. Color was returning to her cheeks, though her face was still drawn with exhaustion.
“Can you tell us what he said, the man who kidnapped you?” Ryan asked.
“At first, he didn’t say much. We drove around for what felt like hours while it grew dark, but I think it’s fair to say I did most of the talking.”
That, I could easily believe.
“After a while, he told me to button my lip. And he said it so fiercely that I really thought I ought to. Then we drove around in silence for a while, but I could tell he was very upset, and eventually, he started muttering to himself.”
“What did he say?”
“Nothing that made much sense to me. Duty and punishment and whether it would spoil it to kill me.”
My father pushed the plate of cookies closer to her. “Spoil what?”
“Spoil the fantasy,” I murmured.
“I thought I might be toast there for a while,” my mother continued, “but Michael was protecting me, of course.”
“Michael?” Ryan asked, surprised by this mention of a new person.
“The archangel, dear,” my mother explained kindly.
“Ah, I see.” Ryan, bless him, kept a perfectly straight face.
“And he granted me a miracle, too, now that I think about it! Oh dear, I clean forgot to tell the nice police officers in Montpelier about it.”
“About what?” I asked.
“That I got something of his!” From the depths of her bra, my mother drew out a small object and held it up for us to see. I gaped at the black-and-gold class ring between her thumb and forefinger.
“How the hell did you get that?” I said.
“It
was dangling from a chain on the rearview mirror in his van. When he started pushing and shoving me, I grabbed whatever I could to hang onto, including the mirror. The chain snapped, and it came off in my hand. Maybe you can get fingerprints off it?”
I glanced at Ryan, who cocked his head in a way that said he thought it was unlikely. Whatever prints might have been on it, they’d be smudged after her handling of it and a night spent nestled against her bosom.
“Give it here,” I said. A lab might not get anything off the ring, but maybe I could.
– 45 –
I held the black-and-gold ring between my palms and closed my eyes. Darkness yawned like a hungry void, beckoning me into its endless hollow. Fighting the heaviness constricting my chest, I drew a deep breath and moved forward into the foul abyss.
There’s light, but it’s shady.
Daytime in the woods.
In the distance — a blurry outline of buildings with a faint smudge of red.
A man grunts. He stands behind another man, arms wrapped around him. A macabre embrace.
He drags the slumped torso backward. It’s a dead weight. The head lolls facedown on the bloodstained shirt, and the heels rake twin trails through the mud and leaves.
In a place of deeper shadows, a shallow trench lies waiting in the earth, and a shovel rests against a tree trunk.
He slumps to his knees and shoves. The body topples into the grave, landing on its back with a dull thud. The man pants, catching his breath, then heaves the legs into the hole too.
The muddy, bloody face gapes blindly at the trees and sky above.
You shut your mouth, the man says. But the corpse does not obey.
He grabs the shovel and slams it under the chin. Teeth click together, then the jaw falls open again.
The man curses, leans across, and wrenches a button off the dead man’s bloody shirt, and jams it into that yawning mouth. You’ll stay buttoned up for good now, he rasps.
He stands and shovels dirt, covering the face and the bloody smile across the throat.
He feels calm. He made the problem go away.
Gasping, I clawed my way back to the light and to the present.
“Larry did kill the Kehoe boy. He killed him and buried his body in the woods by that farm in Crowbury!”
Ryan stared at me with wide eyes. “You saw it?”
I nodded. “It made his ‘problem go away.’” I sketched air-quotes around the words.
“He said that to me too,” my mother said unexpectedly. “I remember now. He was muttering about rules and vows, and saying he’d make the problem go away and then he’d be satisfied and proud of him.”
“He?” I said. “He, who?”
“I don’t know, dear, do I?” she replied and yawned widely.
“Can we just go back to his vehicle for a moment? Did you manage to see what kind of van it was?” Ryan asked my mother.
“A white delivery van, but don’t ask me the make or model or registration number because as I told the police, I don’t know. I did see that it had angels on the side,” she said, sounding proud of her observational skills. “Of course, as soon as I saw those, I knew I was under divine protection and I’d come out of it in one piece eventually.”
Ryan made a sound of surprise, and a strange expression crept over his face. “I’ve seen that van before,” he said.
“What?” I said, stunned. “Where? When?”
“You’ve seen it too!” Ryan told me. “It was parked outside that store, the second fabric store we went to, the one in Halliwell. Remember?”
I did. “Heavenly Haberdashery!” I gasped, seeing again the white van with floating cherubs twirling ribbons on the side. “But that means … that means …”
“It means we saw him too. Yeah! Our focus was on the storekeeper, but he was there. He was the delivery man in the uniform and cap, dropping off the flyers advertising the convention where he was due to give a presentation on buttons.”
“Of course!”
I’d assumed the killer might have worked in a fabric store, but he could just as easily have gone into a business that supplied those stores with what they needed. It would keep him mobile, traveling the highways and trawling for victims. Hadn’t I read how psychopaths got restless and loved to drive? Even the FBI’s original profile had said that their unknown suspect might be something like a trucker or travelling salesman. I’d been so blinded, so stupid.
Ryan stood up. “That store, what was it called?”
“Sew Pretty,” I said, still reeling from the realization that I’d practically bumped into Johnson before the conference. “Spelled S-E-W.”
“I’ll call the FBI Montpelier police and give them a description of the van,” Ryan said. “Maybe they can get more information from the store about their haberdashery supplier.”
He went outside to make his calls, and I turned back to my mother. “Larry — Lawrence Johnson, the man who kidnapped you — did he say anything about where he was headed? Did he mention where he lived?”
My father said, “That’s enough, Garnet. Can’t you see how tired your poor mother is? She needs to rest.”
“I’m sorry, Mom. I really am,” I said earnestly. “I know you’ve probably already answered these questions and you must be worn out, but this man is a killer, and he’s due to kill his next victim tomorrow.”
My father pressed his lips together angrily, but my mother patted his hand. “Let her ask her questions, Bob. I’d like to help.”
“Could you see where you were going, where he was driving?” I said.
“No, I didn’t have my glasses on and didn’t want to try to get them out of my purse in case he thought I was reaching for a gun! I can only thank the goddess that when all was said and done, I’m a woman.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, just before he threw me out of his van, he said, ‘Real men don’t hurt women.’ Just like that!”
“But real men do hurt men?” my father asked, sounding outraged.
“It’ll be one of his rules,” I explained. “That he only kills gay men.”
“I need to visit the bathroom,” my mother said.
My father insisted on accompanying her, and not knowing what else to do, I made a pot of coffee and another of tea. We were all drinking fresh cups when Ryan returned to the living room, looking puzzled.
“Did you get ahold of Singh?” I asked.
“Yeah. They’ve got addresses for Johnson’s house and business in Concord, and they’re going to descend on both places simultaneously, even though he probably won’t be going near either, now.”
“Any other developments?” my father asked.
“They lifted fingerprints off the podium and microphone and from Johnson’s stall at the convention,” Ryan replied. “And they checked them against the IAFIS database.”
“They got a hit?” I guessed.
“There’s a Lawrence “Larry” Johnson in the system. Seems your lodger was arrested for credit card fraud in New York in 1994.”
“Yesss!” I punched the air in victory.
“I’m not surprised to hear he was a crook too,” my mother said.
“But there’s a problem,” Ryan continued. “The prints on file for Lawrence Johnson don’t match the prints of the man who lectured on buttons at the convention. Those prints got no hits in the system.”
“I don’t understand,” I said, feeling deflated. “How’s that possible?”
“Could be an error at the lab, I suppose. It was a rush job. They’re going to check again.”
“I hope they find him soon,” my mother said. “Judging by last night, he’s not right in the head and likely getting worse by the minute. Good gracious, but he was agitated! Sweating badly and slapping his forehead over and over again. Which, I don’t mind telling you, I really didn’t think he should’ve been doing. Not when he already had that dent. So I told him—”
“Dent? What dent?” I demanded, feeling suddenly c
old.
“A little hollow, just here.” My mother touched the hairline on the right side of her forehead. “I saw it when his cap came off.”
– 46 –
My mouth fell and my scalp tightened. Had I gotten it all wrong? Again?
“Garnet?” Ryan asked.
He didn’t understand the significance of what my mother had just said because I’d never told him about the dent. I’d forgotten all about it until now. Saying nothing, I stared down at the ring in my left hand. It lay on top of the old silvery scar that was my reminder of the day I’d searched for Colby, the day he’d turned up dead. I scooped up a handful of the crystals from the carpet and, holding them in my right hand, closed the fingers of my left around the ring. I shut my eyes and bent over my hands, doubling down on my efforts to see more.
When the image of the man and the corpse returned, I pushed my mind back beyond it, further into the past, deeper into the silent darkness.
Thin early-morning light.
A man in stained overalls slouches against a red barn wall, sucking on a bottle of beer and eyeing the younger man who stands before him, twisting a hat in his hands.
I have a fair idea what must of happened, the slouching man says. It came to me last night. I’ve been asking your mother for the deed to this place. But she says she doesn’t have them, and I believe her. I know she’d give them to me if she had them. Hell, she’d give me anything I asked for. He smirks.
The younger man grips the hat tighter, his white knuckles standing out against his dirty skin.
She said there was some hold up with the old man’s estate, that she was waiting on the death certificate from his family in New Hampshire. So I volunteered to drive up there and go get it. Helpful, like. Next thing, she’s mighty upset and begging me not to go. So I got to thinking, why would that be? And you know what I came up with?