Carved in Darkness

by Maegan Beaumont

  “It’s starting again, isn’t it?”

  The question came out of nowhere and stopped her retreat mid-stride. “Don’t be ridiculous, Val. I’m fine.”

  “Ridiculous? I’m being ridiculous?” Valerie stared at her. “You know what’s ridiculous? That after all this time, you still feel the need to lie to me—or think you can with any degree of success.”

  “I don’t have time—”

  “How long have the nightmares been back? How long before you convince yourself he’s found you?” Val straightened and began to pace. The question was a good one. She’d been working herself there for the past few weeks, making slow and steady progress toward an inevitable breakdown.

  “I’m fine. No nightmares. No crazy paranoia. There’s nothing to worry about.”

  “You’re a liar. I heard you last night—up the stairs, down the stairs. Back and forth in the hall. How many times did you check on the kids? Four times? Five?”

  Seven. “Val—”

  “Happy birthday.” Val walked out without a goodbye.

  It was October first. Not only was it the fifteenth anniversary of her kidnapping, it was also her thirty-second birthday.

  Five

  The lot was nearly empty when Sabrina arrived at the station. She scanned the cars as she pulled into an empty space. Strickland wasn’t there yet. Thank God. Aside from a few early birds straggling in to catch up on paperwork, she was alone.

  She sat down at her computer and clicked the icon linked to what she referred to as the Dirtbag Database. Typing in the name Michael O’Shea, she selected Texas from the list of states provided. Within minutes, his picture popped up on her screen.

  This was the boy she remembered. Vacant gray eyes stared out at her framed by dark, unkempt hair that looked like it hadn’t been washed in weeks. Sallow skin stretched tight over a thin face. This kid wasn’t tough or angry. He was an emotional void.

  She tore her eyes away from the picture on the screen and scrolled down, scanning the list of offenses littering Michael O’Shea’s juvenile record. Loitering. Vandalism. Unlawful entry. Robbery. Assault. Each was worse than the last, culminating in a missing person report, filed by his foster mother when he was fourteen. He’d run away and stayed gone for over a year before being found and brought home.

  Continuing to scroll down, she grew more and more puzzled. It was like the second half of his story had been lost. Where was the continuing string of crimes, growing steadily worse, until it ended in felony assault or rape? Where were the adult convictions, the prison terms he must’ve served? She scrolled up the page, searching carefully for what she was sure she missed, but there was nothing. It was as if he ceased to exist.

  You’re wrong about him. He changed after Frankie was born, though most folks didn’t care to notice. He loved his sister.

  As soon as the words popped into her head, she dismissed them. Lucy was too soft-hearted. She saw the good in everyone. Even when it wasn’t there.

  The absence of arrests meant nothing except that he’d gotten better at hiding his crimes. That didn’t make him innocent; it made him smart.

  “Who’s that?”

  Minimizing the window, she turned to find her new partner standing so close she could’ve reached out and touched him. He was holding two large to-go cups, and he offered her one. It’d become tradition for the last partner in to bring the other coffee. Strickland had been bringing her coffee every day since they’d partnered up a few months ago.

  She took the cup and shook her head “No one.” Taking a drink, she churned over everything she’d ever known or possibly forgotten about Michael. His foster parents died when he was seventeen. Both had been killed in a head-on collision, leaving him and his sister, Frankie, all alone. True to form, Michael dumped her off on an aunt and uncle and took off and … he’d joined the Army. Maybe she could request his service records.

  “I thought we liked the Tillman kid for the Weston case,” he said, referring to the double homicide they were working.

  “We do. We’re still waiting on the warrant to search his apartment. It should be in by this afternoon—wait. What are you doing here?” It was way too early for her partner to be in already.

  “This is it, right? Your last day on SWAT? The last day I have to ride solo so you can go play cowboy with that troop of primates you call a team?”

  “They’re good guys.” For the most part.

  Strickland smiled. “I’m sure they are … anyway, one of us should be here in case the warrant comes in earlier than expected.” Strickland tipped his chin toward the computer screen. “Who’s the lowlife?” He wasn’t going to let it go. His tenacity was the best, worst thing about him. She took a long drink from the coffee cup and avoided making eye contact.

  “Just some punk that’s been calling Riley a lot lately. He wants to take her to homecoming.” She thought of her little sister. At sixteen, she was beautiful enough to get plenty of male attention. What would she do if Riley brought someone home like Michael O’Shea? Murder came to mind.

  Strickland gave her an odd look, followed by a boyish grin. “Please tell me you said no,” he said in a conspiratorial tone she’d watched loosen the tongue of dozens of witnesses.

  “I was trying to keep an open mind but now it’s a definite hell no,” she said, making the lie up as she went along. Hopefully all he’d seen was the picture and none of the dates attached to the arrests. Pretending to get busy with paperwork, she continued to chew on the problem. She needed probable cause to request Michael’s service records. No way could she get hold of them without raising questions. Another dead end.

  She was suddenly angry. In the space of a few hours, her carefully constructed life had spun out of control, and the lies she’d built it on were on the verge of being exposed. Taking a deep breath, she weighed her options.

  First things first, she had to figure out where Michael had been for the past fifteen years. Getting his service records through the department was out of the question, but there might be another way. Nickels, her old SWAT teammate, had been in the military, maybe he could help—

  “What’s goin’ on with you? You’re jumpy as hell.” Strickland took a seat at his landfill of a desk and kicked his feet up on its top. Papers and wrappers he didn’t seem to notice hit the floor.

  “Nothing is going on. You gonna pick that up?”

  “I need to start sneaking you decaf,” he said, barely giving the clutter a passing glance. She laughed and rubbed a hand over her face.

  “Bringing me caffeine is the only thing keeping you alive at this point.” She stood, needing to get away from Strickland until she could get herself together. He was a rockstar interrogator in a rumpled suit and a twenty-dollar haircut. His Average Joe persona disguised a brain that could pick you apart without you even knowing it.

  Her desk phone rang, and she practically dove for it.

  “This is Vaughn,” she said, but her relief was short-lived. She could practically feel the color drain from her face. It was her SWAT sergeant, Richards. He wanted to see her. Now.

  Dropping the phone in its cradle, she turned away from her desk.

  “Where you going?” Strickland got a good look at her face and sat up, his feet pulling a styrofoam take-out box off the desk on their way down.

  “Richards wants to see me before the briefing.”

  “You think it’s about what happened with Sanford?” Strickland looked worried.

  She thought about Officer Steve Sanford. It was a safe bet that whatever Richards wanted to talk to her about involved him.

  A little over a month ago, her SWAT unit participated in a drug raid on a house Narco had under surveillance for months. Once the door came down, bangers and crackheads scattered like roaches. Sanford charged in, chasing his quarry into a bedroom. He grabbed the kid’s ankle while he was trying to shimmy his way
under a mattress and pulled him out of hiding. When Sanford dragged him clear of the bed, the kid came up with a 9mm and got off a couple rounds.

  Hit in the chest, Sanford was knocked on his back. The kid must’ve realized he was wearing Kevlar because he stepped up on him, intent on finishing him off with a round to the head.

  She saw it all happen, kneeling in the doorway, handcuffing her catch. Sure she wouldn’t be fast enough to stop what she knew was about to happen, she pulled her gun and fired. The kid went down, dead before he even hit the floor.

  She knew Richards’s call was about what happened with Sanford, but it was more than that; it was about what she’d failed to do as a result. Psych services were mandatory for officer-involved shootings within thirty days of the incident. The raid had happened five weeks ago, and she’d failed to attend her sessions.

  “I don’t know. He didn’t say.” She evaded his question, not wanting to admit she was more than likely going to be taken off active duty. She left her desk and headed downstairs, in the general direction of Richards’s office.

  Finding Nickels and asking him to help her track down Michael’s records was more important than getting yelled at over her lack of follow-through. She briefly considered ignoring the call, but only for a moment.

  Ignoring Richards would only make things worse. If she got fired, she’d have zero resources in tracking Michael down. Her best bet was to go see Richards and throw herself on her sword, make excuses he would know were bullshit, but he might accept them if they sounded plausible enough. Hopefully she’d be able to get out of his office without a suspension around her neck. After that she’d find Nickels and ask for his help in figuring out what Michael O’Shea wanted from her after all these years.

  Six

  Michael tossed the binoculars on the bed and started to pace the length of his rented room. He’d watched her get ready for work, strap on her guns, and rush out the door, intent—he was sure—on finding him. He wasn’t worried though. Finding him would be impossible. Even for her.

  Shooting a glance at the unopened bottle of Glenfiddich on the dresser, he felt a twinge, wanting nothing more than to drown himself in it. He’d been carrying the same bottle with him for over a year now. He hadn’t drunk a single drop. Not since the day Lucy told him the truth about her granddaughter.

  He’d come home the moment he gotten the call from his Aunt Gina—Mikey, you’ve got to come home. Frankie’s missing—just dropped his life and hopped on a plane. After nearly three weeks of round-the-clock search parties and sleepless nights waiting for the phone to ring, they found her. She was in the woods along a stretch of Route 80, propped against a tree not more than ten yards from the road. It was a spot they’d searched a dozen times.

  After that, he’d stayed drunk for days. Every morning he woke with a black hole in the center of his chest growing bigger by the second, an eight-man demolition crew inside his head seemingly intent on tearing his shit down from the inside out, and a liver that begged for mercy. He’d reach for the bottle and start drinking.

  Days stretched into a week before the call came from the coroner, telling him Frankie’s body would be released for burial. He muttered a thank you and snapped his cell in half. Frankie was all he’d had left, and she was gone. Her funeral was the next day, and he was seriously considering eating a bullet afterward. Until then he planned to keep drinking.

  The banging grew louder and louder, until he was sure one of those hammer jockeys inside his head busted through his skull. No, wait. Someone was at the door. He didn’t even bother to peel his face off the mattress. “No housekeeping,” he shouted but the sound was muffled by the mouthful of sheets he was chewing on. He turned his face to the side. “Go away.” The external banging stopped. The internal hammering picked up the pace—his punishment for yelling so close to his own ears. Swiping the near-empty bottle off the nightstand, he finished it off. He managed to roll himself over to eyeball its replacement on the dresser.

  The banging started up again, louder than before, like someone was going at the door with a sledgehammer. “What the fuck … ” Somehow, he found his feet and lurched his way across the room and wrestled the door open. He hadn’t seen the sun in days, and it greeted him with a stiletto to his eyeballs. Shit. Squinting, he raised a hand to block another attack. “Look, you can take your clean towels and shove ’em up—”

  He opened his eyes just wide enough to see Lucy Walker standing on the thin stretch of sidewalk outside his no-tell-motel room door. She looked pissed, and she was holding a tire iron like she was Babe Ruth swinging for the fences. Confused, he looked past her for dancing bears or polka-dotted elephants, maybe a fish riding a bicycle, because this had to be some sort of psychotic break. “Are you real?” he said but didn’t expect an answer. Chances were he was standing in his doorway talking to an unmanned housekeeping cart.

  “I got your number from Charlie. He said he just talked to you, so I called but you didn’t answer.” Charlie. Good ol’ Charlie, the town coroner slash funeral director. He and Charlie went way back. Charlie’d been the one to call him when it was time to bury his parents. He hated Charlie.

  “Yeah, I broke my phone … look, I’m a little busy. Come back tomorrow.” After I’ve given myself a .40-caliber lobotomy. Ignoring him, she used the business end of the tire iron to push him out of the doorway, back into the blessed dark. She followed, shutting the door behind her.

  Clicking on the bedside lamp, she used her tire iron to root around in the pile of dirty clothes at the foot of the bed. She unearthed a pair of boxers and hooked them with her magic wand.

  “Here.” She held them out to him, and he stared at her for a second or two before he remembered. Oh, yeah—he was naked. No need to get dressed when you had no plans to go anywhere, and really, pants were a chore he could do without. Taking the boxers, he sat down on the bed. The effort at modesty turned the room into a Tilt-A-Whirl. He replanted his feet on the floor and his elbows on his knees, breathing through the spins until they subsided.

  “Hand that to me, will ya?” he said, flinging his arm in the general direction of the dresser. Glancing in the direction he’d indicated, she saw the bottle. Her frown deepened into one of disappointment and concern.

  “I certainly will not.”

  Fine. He struggled to stand, but she pushed him off his feet with that freakin’ tire iron again. He went down and kept going. Sprawled out on the bed, the spins hitting him again. “What do you want?” Just say it and get the fuck out. He was a disappointment … Sophia and Sean would be ashamed of him … what would Frankie think. Nothing he hadn’t been saying to himself for the past decade or so. Still, he wasn’t sure he could handle hearing it right now, but she didn’t say any of that.

  When she started talking, he became sure he was having some sort of psychotic break. She couldn’t possibly be saying what he was hearing.

  She told him Melissa, her granddaughter—the one who’d been murdered years ago and a thousand miles away—was alive.

  He had no idea what any of it had to do with him, and he didn’t care. He just wanted Lucy to leave so he could get more blind drunk and hopefully pass out again.

  “Look … it’s been a really long day. I just want—”

  “Drinking yourself to death is gonna have to wait. Aren’t you listening to me? Melissa’s not dead. When they found her, she was damn close, but she managed to pull through. She’s living in California. She’s a police officer,” she repeated when all he did was stare at her.

  Melissa was alive? She was a cop?

  “What are you saying? What does this have to do with Frankie?”

  “I’m saying my granddaughter survived what that man did to her, and I’m saying he’s the same man who killed your sister,” she said plainly, pacing his room in tight circles while her fingers twisted together in an endless series of intricate knots. “I know it sounds crazy, but
it’s true. She’s alive.” She was babbling so fast he could barely track what she was saying. “She always knew he was from here. He followed her to Arizona when she ran away. After Tommy. I always thought maybe she was wrong. I mean, who around here would do such a thing? I never told her so because I didn’t want to upset her, but what happened to your sister proves she’s right.”

  “How?”

  Lucy sighed and sat on the bed, next to him. “I saw what he did to Melissa. From what I hear around town, it sounds like he did the same things to Frankie.”

  It had taken less than a week for the police chief, in his infinite wisdom, to decree what had happened to Frankie was the work of a transient just passing through. Popular opinion latched onto this idea and held on tight. Frankie’s case was closed before it was ever really opened.

  He took a long look at the bottle of scotch beckoning him from the dresser. She was right—drinking himself to death would have to wait. “Tell me everything you know.”

  Lucy knew a lot, but the information came at a price. She wanted him to go to California to watch over her granddaughter, and she wanted him to do it sober. He agreed to watch her, protect her if needed, and he agreed to do it dry. Nearly a year later, he had every intention of keeping his promises.

  He’d watch her. Get to know her, so to speak. Find her soft spots. When the time was right, he’d approach her and exploit them. He’d convince her to go back to Jessup with him, to help catch the man who raped and tortured her by making her survival public. If the man who killed his sister knew Melissa was still alive, he’d make a play for her—Michael was sure of it. He’d persuade her to help him, and if persuasion didn’t work, he’d have to get creative.