“I know, but I have to talk to them. I’m not going to just sit here and wait. I need to figure out what’s going on and, at a minimum, I need to talk to this Calhoun guy. He’s probably next.”
“Did Agent Leas say anything about him?”
“No, nothing. I didn’t learn that till I read the file. But you know what I’m saying.”
Pouring another cup of coffee, she continued. “Yeah, and as much as I hate it, I tend to agree. Let’s get this fucker.”
“Mom!” Billy was now seated next to Cole, playing some kids’ game on his iPhone after Cole had turned off the signal to avoid any one of his immature friends’ texts from flashing across the screen. One friend in particular had a certain proclivity for sending random internet photo discoveries that Cole believed a child should never see.
He cocked his head in feigned shock. “Language, woman.” Cole was mocking Ava who, like all Southern ladies were taught, didn’t cuss, and had utterly failed to pass that on to her daughter.
“Uh, you started it, insulting my frail female sensitivities with your harsh language, dear sir.” Jackie fanned herself with an imaginary fan and batted her eyes.
“Lord, what I would give to see you in hoop skirt.”
“If I keep it up I’ll be as big as a hoop skirt.” Jackie looked down to her stomach.
“Woman, you are crazy. What are you, maybe one-thirty? You look amazing. I’m sure all the sugar daddies are lining up for you. In fact, didn’t you tell the biddies yesterday you had a date tonight?”
Walking over toward the built-in kitchen desk, Jackie said, “I’ll need to cancel that. I have an investigation and it’s important. I’m going to shower and get dressed. When I get to work I’ll pull everything I can on that Calhoun kid and let you know.” Pausing, she added, “Cole, when you see them, please…please remember they were doing only what they thought…what they were told was best.”
Cole looked up from his empty plate with a pensive face. “I know…I do. And I promise I won’t yell at them. But I have to know. And more importantly…I need to get them somewhere safe. I’d ask you to get out of town but I really don’t feel like getting shot by you. My card is already full.” Cole flashed a smile at Jackie as she grabbed a cell phone off the desk and walked up to her room.
CHAPTER 46
“COLE, WE THOUGHT it best not to tell you about your mom, about how she died. What would have been the purpose? It was horrible enough that she died, but…but to tell you she died…was murdered, trying to protect you… Well, that just didn’t seem the best way to have you remember her. She went through horrible things to save you and that other boy.” Cole listened while Ava trembled with overflowing emotions that boiled over and caused her words to sputter. He’d dropped the bomb within minutes of arriving at the house. Between the tears, she was trying to justify the impression he had always been left with, that his mother had died in an auto accident when he was two years old. The truth splintered off from there.
Cole’s meeting with Leas had torn that story wide open like the violent pop of a bag of chips, leaving the flakes of Cole’s childhood flying in multiple directions. The residual effect of this revelation was almost as frightening as being hunted. He could no longer trust his memory. For as long as he recalled, if he saw it in his head, it was true. No ‘if’s, and’s, or but’s.’ But now…he was scared to trust anything he saw in his mind. It had betrayed him.
Libby Mouzon was a single mom, Cole’s father having disappeared as soon as the news of pregnancy hit his lap. According to the files supplied by Leas, sometime after Cole’s birth, his mother took a job as a housekeeper and sitter for the Calhoun family, including taking care of Mark, their only son at the time. According to the final police report, on March 16, 1982, she left to take Mark to kindergarten but never made it. The car was found abandoned off Rifle Range Road, everyone missing. Witnesses described seeing a car that matched the description of hers pulled over, an officer at her window. No officer could ever be identified as working the area, much less issuing a ticket.
Using the coroner’s report and limited evidence, the police had pieced together the next few days of Cole’s life, which read like a bad dream.
CHAPTER 47
LIBBY MOUZON LOOKED at her baby boy Cole through her rear-view mirror. She smiled as if to say, ‘How you doing, Buster?’ as he played with his Cheerios, seated in his car seat. Mark Calhoun was seated next to him in the back seat, coloring in an old Disney coloring book, faded from sitting in the rear window of her wood-trimmed, red Ford Country Squire station wagon. “Good morning, Officer. Can I ask why I was stopped?” Libby knew she had been speeding down Rifle Range, but if she delivered Mark Calhoun late to kindergarten one more time, she was going to be fired. Playing coy worked well for her in these situations.
“License and registration please.” The thin-faced man with a salt and pepper beard stared down at her. His uniform was wrinkled and worn. Libby bent over, popped open the glove compartment and started digging for the registration. Shit. From the passenger’s side mirror she noticed the officer admiring the view of her bent over, then looked to the back seat and grinned at the boys.
“Here you go, Officer.” He inspected the materials the peroxide blond had just handed him for just seconds. “I’ll need you to step out of the car, if you don’t mind.”
“Are you sure about this? I mean, what did I do?” Frustration entered Libby’s voice.
“Ma’am, just step out of the car, please.” Libby clasped the car’s interior handle and took a quick look back in the mirror to see that the kids were safe as she opened the heavy, squealing door. It closed with a heavy latch. “Ma’am, did you know your license was suspended?”
Libby looked down at the documents in his hand, shocked. “What? When? That can’t be possible.”
“Ma’am, I’m going to have to arrest you. You can clear it up at the station. But I can’t leave you on the road with a suspended license.” He reached behind his cuffs as she protested.
“Please, please… my house is just a few miles away. My kids, I can’t leave them, what will I do with them? I can clear this up if you will just give…”
“Ma’am, place your hands behind your back.” Tears fell off Libby’s sunburned cheeks as she looked at the two boys in the back seat, Cole still playing with his cereal. The officer moved her quickly into the back of his sedan. She watched as he reached his hands through the driver’s side window, still rolled down from the stop, and pulled up the latch to the back door.
“Hey buddy, we are going to move ya’ll to my car, okay? That’s right, jump on out.”
Mark stared at Libby as the door was opened and he was pushed into the backseat. “Miss Libby, are you okay? Why are you sad?”
Trying hard to not show her panic, “Oh, baby, I’m okay. It’s going to be okay. I promise.” Mark slid in next to Libby and looked back at Cole, still in the back of the wagon. He joined them moments later, still in the car seat, giving his mom a large smile. She forced one back.
The navy sedan was driven several miles before Libby looked up and immediately noticed something was wrong. The police station was in the center of town, in a mostly commercial area. But all Libby saw were residential homes zooming by. “Where are we going? This isn’t the way to the station. …Hey, do you hear me? Please answer me!” His only response was to speed up. Libby looked out the window to the occasional person on the sidewalk. What was he doing? She looked down at the two boys at her side. “Officer, please tell me where we’re going. You are scaring the kids. Hell, you’re scaring me.” He remained silent, turning onto a wooded lot. From the look of the white sand drive, it was along the marsh. Libby started pleading. “Please sir, stop the car. Please.” The tears had returned as she pled for the officer to stop, gathering in thick streams across her face. The car came to a stop in the middle of some forested lot with a small dark brown painted cabin.
Libby fought, screaming, yelling, as he dragged her by h
er cuffed hands through the sandy soil into the cabin. The boys would come easier…anything to be close to the safety Libby represented. Mark and Cole had picked up on the horrified energy pouring out of her and started to cry. Mark asked for his mom, prompting Libby to attempt to hold back her tears, but they continued to break through in small explosions of emotion. “Shhhh, shhhh, it will be okay. It will be okay.” But it wouldn’t.
CHAPTER 48
FROM THE MEDICAL report, Libby was cuffed to a cot in the corner of the square cabin and raped over and over again as the boys were tied in the corner, left to watch. The ragged lashes on her back, buttocks, and legs told of routine whippings by what was later identified as a horse crop.
The boys were branded at some point, like cattle. Libby would have to watch as they were burned, left to scream for her help.
On the night of their escape the captor had apparently left, supporting the police’s theory later that he lived somewhere nearby, coming to the cabin during either the night or day for his next session of torture. It was then that Libby slipped her left hand free from the cuffs, but not without removing most of the skin and leaving the hand dangling limp, broken. From the looks of the rope found in the cabin, she broke a coke bottle and slowly cut through the children’s ropes. From there she had apparently made it the half mile through the marsh, carrying the boys until she collapsed in a thicket of trees and palmettos surrounded by marsh…
It was unclear how long they had been hiding under the palmettos and sea wind-beaten pines of the hammock, but when found, Libby was dead, Cole and Mark holding her as though they were taking a peaceful family nap. Cole was unconscious from dehydration, but stable. Mark was weak, but alert and calling for help. They had been missing five days before being discovered by MeMe’s sons.
Cole’s mind ran crazy with the imagery of the report when he read it. It pieced together the horror of his childhood, over a month-long investigation that never resulted in an arrest. They had no leads. The fake officer had disappeared as quickly as he appeared. There was DNA, but it was a dead end, no match.
From what Agent Leas had told him during their meeting, the Charleston abduction was one of four that were too similar to be anything other than the act of one killer. The dates of the missing suggested Charleston was the first. The other abduction, in White Plains, Fort Worth, and Vegas, matched in every detail—a police stop, disappearance, and ultimate death. In each one, the children had been left to live, to bear the mark of their captor and endure the grief of the torture and death of their parents. Libby had escaped, only to die in the marsh…having sacrificed her life to save them. The other parents didn’t fare as well. Leas had shared their police reports, too. Burnings, bleedings, and strangulation were the intended deadly climaxes for Libby, based on the others’ ultimate moments.
He closed his eyes to try and black out the pain of what he had just learned. Whoever it was seemed to have decided the children were ready to be killed. He had no idea who was after him, but he knew he was next.
CHAPTER 49
THERE WERE TEARS, lots of tears, at the Mouzon house. Cole had explained it all. He was unemotional and almost cold in his rendition. It wasn’t from anger or distrust. Rather, he was locked into that side of himself that handled everything matter-of-factly, with steely precision. He knew that this probably made his parents’ concern and pain worse, but he couldn’t help it. He tried to assure them that he wasn’t upset, that he just needed to understand and figure everything out as fast as possible before something happened to him, or worse, his family.
His mom couldn’t get much out. Randall was silent, very silent. Just years before, this would have been a warning for a drunken rage brewing. The quiet made Cole uncomfortable at the prospect. Like the silence of the eye of a hurricane, such quiet meant you better run and seek cover because hell had arrived on earth and all would be in its path. He had never blown up beyond yelling at his children or wife. But he still clearly recalled his father exploding on the poor guy who refused to move from in front of Cole and his siblings one Fourth of July on the old Pitt Street Bridge. Randall had made sure they got there early for the Charleston harbor fireworks. When a latecomer took up post directly between them and the show and refused to move when asked. Pop—the man was down with one punch, leaving his wife to pull Randall off of him. Ava’s only response was, “What will the neighbors think?”
“Well, I can tell you this, Rambo Momma isn’t going anywhere. I will take that man out if he messes with one of my babies again.” Cole had just instructed his parents to go down to Fort Myers and stay with Ava’s sister and Henry. They begrudgingly agreed, but Granny was being a harder sell.
“Dammit Mom, we are going and that will be the end of it.” Randall broke his silence. Granny mumbled under her voice some words probably best not heard.
Cole intervened to quiet both sides. “Leave me the keys and I’ll check in on the place. I’ve called work and told them there’s a family emergency. They didn’t ask any questions.”
CHAPTER 50
“COLE, BABY, COME help this old lady pack for this forced trip.” Granny gave a sly look at his father as Cole extended his elbow to her to assist her to her apartment. Walking outside with her on his arm, the memory of Jackie’s wedding and escorting his grandmother down the aisle flashed before his eyes. At the time he could think of no happier moment for his sister. But he knew now that image was a fraud, with Billy’s father having slept with one of caterers just moments before the vows. The drugs would be revealed to his sister for the first time that night, the same night she would be introduced to his open hand when she objected. His sister’s constant strength was put to the test over the next few years, but as always she came out the victor. He admired that ability in her, to survive.
Cole pushed off the thoughts of his sister to ply his Grandmother for information. “So, it said…the report said that MeMe’s boys found me?”
“Yeah baby, she deployed those boys like an army when she learned what happened. They walked more marsh and forest than all the police involved. They were on a mission. Man, that woman was good.” Granny chuckled to herself. “No one was going to mess with one of her boys.”
Still walking alongside his grandmother, Cole looked down at her. “How did they know where to look?”
Granny stopped to respond. “Hon, her people have been here as long as ours and probably worked most of it at one time or another. They just knew the best spots.”
They started walking again as Cole said, “I haven’t seen MeMe in forever. Is she even still alive?”
“Well, last I heard they were still on that property next to ours, off Rifle Range and Porchers Bluff.”
Cole sat down on the edge of his grandmother’s bed and looked off, outside the back window of the open room. He would need to visit MeMe and find out what she knew.
“Hand Granny that luggage over there in the closet.” Inside the small separated apartment his father had constructed on the property several years ago in anticipation of Granny’s need for closer care, Cole couldn’t help but think it looked a lot like her place in town. Same furniture, same decorations, same musky smell of dank, old places. It was just all in one square room with a small kitchen in one corner, a bed in another and a makeshift living room making up the rest.
THERE WERE ROOSTERS everywhere, as though a traveling rooster salesman got rich unloading his entire stock on his grandmother. She had always been a collector, but in this small space they seemed to stand out more than he recalled. The entire reason he went to the University of South Carolina was because his first exposure to anything college-related was his grandmother’s black coffee mug with a chipped, gold-leaf gamecock embossed on one face. It took him several years just to figure out the image was that of a fighting cock and not some Japanese emblem.
Peering over the collection, he noticed what appeared to be a new addition. Bright red, with some white and black streaming feathers painted on the ceramic body, the bird
looked fierce and intimidating at almost two feet high. The cockscomb alone added five inches.
“Looks like you got a new one, Granny.” She glanced over and back to Cole. “Yeah, QVC was having a sale one night and he’s a big one, and I thought ‘a house isn’t a home without a big ‘ol cock in it,’ so I ordered him. Who knew cocks came delivered with free shipping.”
Cole about choked on his laughter, attempting to shake off the imagery that had just flooded into his head. Granny was never one to hold back, something that scared the shit out of him in public or social settings. He could still recall her breaking into a safe sex lesson during a kids’ sleepover she hosted. His friends loved it. Their parents, on the other hand, couldn’t figure out what they were more pissed about—that she demonstrated the best way to apply condoms on a banana or that she handed out Playboy and Playgirl, because Granny didn’t judge, for illustrative purposes. Later she would confess she’d planned it all just for her own entertainment. A clever old lady.
Leaned over head deep into her luggage trying to shove some type of nightgown in, Granny said, “Cole, can you promise this old lady something?”
Cole cocked his head like he had seen Dixie do every time she struggled to understand what he was saying. “Of course Granny, what you want?”
Dissatisfied with her packing, Granny walked over to Cole and sat beside him. As her hand smoothed out a wrinkle in the pink rose pattern of the duvet, she turned to him. “Baby, you know everything is going to be okay, right? I mean, we have had some crazy times in this life and you have more than any in this family. But we’re strong people, Cole Mouzon, and you are the toughest. When your momma Libby died, this family pulled together to protect and nurture you. You was in horrible shape. Don’t be mad at Ava or Randall for not telling you what happened. We all agreed that it was better you know how wonderful your momma was and not how horrible her death was.” Cole had only seen his Granny cry once and that was when Poppa died fifteen years ago. Otherwise, the woman was steel. In this moment, that steel was flimsy. Her eyes went moist as she continued. “Baby, I don’t know why…how you survived. But you did, and you will again. Just promise me that you will call me when you get whoever it is that did this to your momma.”
The Trees Beyond the Grass (A Cole Mouzon Thriller) Page 16