The Haunting of Rachel Harroway- Book 1

by J. S. Donovan

  “Hey, Peak. Give me hand.”

  The detective reached his arms into the upper portion of the shelf. A moment later, he let his feet fall flat, and he held a dusty, unlabeled file box in his hand.

  Rachel removed the lid. Inside was a single, unmarked file. Curious, she withdrew it and opened it on the table top. Inside were copies of the original Missing Persons reports of Dakota, Louise, Kensie, Heather, Cara, Tiffany, and Amber. The documents were stained with droplets of coffee and faded yellow with age.

  “These look like Fiedler’s files.” Peak asked. “I thought you said that the cop was paid off to destroy the case files.”

  “This must be a remnant.”

  They flipped through the few hand-typed reports within. Much of the information was botched by White Out, including names of suspects and locations. Amidst the uncompleted sentences, one line stood out. On _____, 19__, I discovered a _____ two miles outside of ____. Inside, there were [The next three lines were removed]. I believe this is where _____ stored his mementos.

  “Mementos? If he’s referring to the items owned by the victims, Fiedler must’ve known that without a doubt, the missing girls were murdered.” Peak said. “The police chief at the time would’ve read these reports, too. Who else could be involved with the cover up?”

  “I don’t know,” Rachel replied. “We can’t tell anyone about this though. Not until we have solid evidence.”

  “You’re right.” Peak concurred. “The Baptist church could be the location that Fiedler blacked out.”

  “I’ll give him a call when we get back,” Rachel said. “There’s a chance that our killer could be inside, and I don’t want to spook him.”

  “If someone in the force is still working with the Roper and, that’s a big if, they would already know that we’re looking for a chapel. We didn’t hide that fact very well,” Peak reminded her.

  “Keep your gun close, then,” Rachel said, sealing up the file box and looking at the security camera in the corner of the room. “God only knows what we’ll find.”

  Driving in the police issue 2005 white Chevy Impala, Detectives Peak and Harroway traveled the few miles outside of town to Whiteside Cove Road, keeping a lookout for any trails that split off the main path. Farther north, through a road blocked in by thick foliage, they found a dirt path wide enough for a car. The Impala bumped over the dirt and weeds flanked by rhododendrons bushes, oaks, and other local flora until reaching a small clearing where bees buzzed and wildflowers spotted tall bushes.

  Spritzing herself with bug spray, Rachel stepped out of the Impala and kept the top button of her pistol holster unbuttoned. The clearing seemed to branch off into another car-wide road, but it was far too overgrown to drive her car through.

  In silence, Rachel and Peak marched over weeds and avoided thorns jutting from the earth. Under the afternoon sun, bugs buzzed and birds sang, leaves rattled together and bushes swayed. The place was alive, wild, and untouched by man. Its lush greenery blossomed at an elevation of four thousand feet surrounded by towering vistas under the breeze of perfectly cool winds. It’s no small wonder why people lived in Highlands. It’s why Rachel and Brett moved there.

  She wondered what her ex-husband was doing now while she was pursuing a killer’s hideaway. Photography and blogging with his younger, artistic wife, Rachel guessed. It was probably better they were separated now. Those last two years of marriage, after Rachel discovered the Gift, were hell for both of them. They turned from passionate lovers buying an old house together to strangers who wouldn’t even share the same bed. If Brett was more accepting of the Gift and Rachel’s self-proclaimed calling to help the lost, perhaps the marriage wouldn’t have exploded. But the same could be said about herself, that if Rachel was willing to put the Gift second to the marriage, they might have resolved things. In the end, both parties shared the blame. How could she expect her husband to change his mind if she wouldn’t change her own? That was the greatest tragedy of the marriage, and it was one Rachel didn’t realize until almost two years later.

  Rachel and Peak walked a few miles. Rachel’s tucked-in grey shirt clung to her with sticky sweat, and prickly seeds and leaves clung to her leather jacket. Peak’s navy blue windbreaker shared the same fate. He’d loosened the black tie around his neck and unfastened the top two buttons of his ashen button-up.

  “Say that you really see the dead,” Peak broke the silence while panting lightly. “What happens if you kill someone? I know that Glock 22 you have holds forty caliber rounds. That’s murder bullets. Have you considered what the Orphan would do if you took his or her life?”

  Rachel swept aside a branch that might’ve hit her face. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t have any answer. I’d assume they wouldn’t be pleased with me. Thus far, I’ve yet to fire the gun in a real-life scenario since I joined the force. Finger crossed, I won’t need to. But, if my life or someone else's life is at stake, I believe that I’ll shoot to kill. No use risking that the perp would get up after the first shot.” Wiping her brow, Rachel smiled at him. “So, yes, Detective, that’s why I use the forty caliber murder bullets, unlike the teeny-weenie nine millimeters in your Glock 19.”

  “Those teeny-weenie nine millimeters have gotten me out of more trouble than I can remember,” Peak replied. “If there’s such thing as luck, this gun is my four-leaf clover. Had it in police academy, had it for four years undercover with the Aryan Nation, and had it as detective. Never failed.”

  Through the dense thicket of trees, there was a building. Rachel drew out her pistol and held it low in both hands. Peak mimicked her, flipping off the safety of his handgun and keeping his finger away from the trigger. Quietly, they slipped off the wide trail and zipped through the trees, keeping their heads down and eyes peeled for any movement. Their journey ended at a line of bushes that formed a natural fence around the decrepit church.

  The building stood a story and half tall with a peaked roof and a cross-less point at its front. The walls were made of unpainted, aged wood and the entire structure leaned a few inches to one side. The windows were cracked and the front door was shut. There was no light inside other than that of the sun. On the back of it was another wide trail, much clearer of bushes and weeds than the one the detectives had followed.

  Rachel and Peak took a few moments to familiarize themselves with the area. From all visible accounts, the chapel was empty.

  “I say we go for it,” Rachel suggested, peering through a break in the line of bushes.

  Peak nodded and, taking deep breaths, they both exited the line of bushes with their guns raised. Outside the sounds of nature, the place was serene and quiet. Rachel approached, looking upward at a flock of frightened birds flying away from the roof.

  “Clear left,” Peak said behind her.

  “Clear right,” Rachel replied, confirming there was no one on the right.

  They met up near the front door, each taking one side of the frame. Rachel tried the knob. “Locked.”

  “Step back,” Peak commanded and slammed the heel of his boot into the door’s face. With a loud crack! it flung open, and an overwhelming sense of dread crushed Rachel.

  She grabbed Peak’s upper arm before he entered. With a crinkled brow, he glared at her.

  “This place…” Rachel whispered as the wind whistled. “There’s something evil here.”

  Peak hesitated, looking around the wide church room. Pews scattered the floor, some upright in their proper place and other flipped on their backs. Rays of dust-filled sunlight streamed through the windows and created blocks of light on the rickety wood floor. There was something in the far back of the room where the pulpit resided: two tattered red curtains hung up by rust rings on a high set corroded steel bar that ran the width of the room and allowed the curtain to separate the altar from the pews.

  Peak leading, they stepped inside. Rachel’s heart raced. Some invisible force pulled at her, wanting her to approach the closed curtains, to see what lay beyond it.
Everything in her flesh screamed at her to turn back and run, but the tugging persisted, taking her deeper into the condemned church.

  Her skeptical partner kept forward through the center aisle of pews, the floor creaking with every step. Rachel followed behind, passing through the torrents of light spilling through the fractured glass windows. Soon, the dusty red curtain was before them, thought it was not as dusty as they had thought. Some had been shaken away, and partial handprints rested at the intersection of the double curtains. Keeping his gun in one hand, Peak parted the curtains, revealing…

  Shoes, sized for various females’ right feet and nailed to the back wall under a suspended cross. Beneath every shoe was a yearbook photo. A running shoe above the portrait of the athletic Louise Richards, a slip-on from the rebellious Kensie Herd, a faded moccasin from the tall and gorgeous Heather Lee, a woman’s loafer from the studious Cara Dummer and an identical match from her twin sister Tiffany, a Converse above the freckled, redheaded Amber Catiline, and a leather boot for Dakota Mulberry. Below Louise's image was a blue and white sneaker above the photo of Maxine Gunther, whose eyes squinted when she smiled joyously.

  Rachel cursed under her breath. News article cut-outs from the seventies were laminated and tacked to the wood, alongside the Missing Persons’ poster for each victim. There were a number of polaroid photos too, showing off seemingly random parts of the woods. One caught Rachel’s eyes. The picture of the stream where she first looked upon Dakota’s skull.

  Rachel ogled at the Roper’s trophy den. “Is this what Fiedler saw when he wrote his report?”

  “Could be.” Putting on his glove, Peak pulled up the tongue of each shoe, looking for anything off-kilter, written or hidden.

  “Let’s wait for Forensics. This place could be a DNA gold mine.”

  “True,” Peak said, looking at the box with determination. “Nonetheless, if the police had been bought, we should dig deeper.”

  Rachel studied the nearby door and the metal hook next to it. Is that where he hangs his rope?

  Suddenly, the hairs on Rachel’s neck and arms stood up. “I feel something.”

  “An Orphan?” Peak asked.

  A patter reverberated off the chapel’s high walls and peaked ceiling. Rachel took out her gun and peered through the part in the dusty curtain.

  8

  Men of Power

  The eight Highland girls stood between the pews, glaring at Rachel. Their faces, of course, were black and bloodless, a strong juxtaposition to the rest of their pale bodies. Rachel kept her gun up for any unwanted visitors. Peak joined her on the other side of the curtains.

  “What is it?” he asked.

  “The girls. They’re back.” Rachel said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Suddenly, the girls charged Rachel, running through her and pushing against the crimson curtain. Rachel guarded her face but felt nothing but cold wind when each body smashed through her own. She twisted back to the pulpit area.

  Gone.

  Rachel looked around the empty room.

  Snap!

  The cord suspending the cross snapped and smashed into the wooden floor. Peak pulled Rachel back just in time to keep her from getting crushed.

  “This place is coming down,” Peak said.

  Rachel, heart racing, pried herself out her partner’s grasp. Are the Orphans getting stronger? That was a troubling thought. She studied the room and the fallen cross. She looked left and right, up, down, forward, and back for anything that the Orphans were trying to show her. At the back wall, one of the wooden planks that made up the building was lopsided. Rachel wandered over and pulled it open with her fingertips. Inside was a black metal box. Polished and glossy, it didn’t match the rest of the dusty surroundings.

  Rachel didn’t touch it. “Let’s make the call.”

  “Sure?”

  “Yeah. Before anything else falls apart.”

  Peak fished his cellphone out of his pocket and made the call.

  The police wandered through the church, awestruck by their finding. Camera strobes flashed on the cutout of each of the eight dead girls and their shoes nailed upright via the sole. The newspaper cutouts and laminated Missing Persons poster were taken into special consideration. It took three people to lift the neck of the cross high enough to extract the crushed podium. Inside was the black lockbox with a dent down its front. Forensics used black lights on the area, finding old chlorine stains on the floor of the main room. It hid the presence of blood, most like. No fingerprints were recovered from the surfaces of the steel box. A partial one had been recovered on one of the pews, but the dusty handprints on the curtains seemed to be the work of someone wearing gloves.

  Peak took the black box and rested it on the trunk of the car. He used an auto picker lent to him by one of the cops and got the box open within a few minutes. Inside were old action figures, athletic medals, and two fading photographs from a Polaroid camera. The first showed three young boys, around nine years old, standing in front of the creek with hands in their pockets and a bucket of bait at their feet. The next photo showed the same three boys, arms around each other’s shoulders and smiling cheerfully. They donned high school caps and gowns. Rachel and Peak immediately recognized them. Tristan Ball: Parks and Recreation director, Al Jacobson: town Treasurer, and John Parkman: Mayor of Highlands, North Carolina.

  “It’s one of them,” Rachel whispered. “One of these three men is the Roper.”

  “We need to keep this between those we can trust,” Peak said, scanning his vicinity for any eavesdroppers. “All men can be bought.”

  Rachel pondered for a moment. “What about McConnell?”

  “There's a Good Ol’ Boy network in the South,” Peak explained. “Judging by how these men inherited their positions, it’s present in Highlands. Whether or not the other Good Ol’ Boys know who the Roper is, they’ll look out for their own. We should be prepared that anyone could be in on it.”

  “I…” Rachel waited until a forensic analyst passed by before finishing. “I don’t feel right leaving McConnell out of this. Without the police backing us, we’re not going to be able to interview these guys. Heck, they may even try to get us disqualified from the case if we go rogue.”

  Peak stuck his hands into his pockets and looked up to the clouds. “Whether we tell the cops or not, the officials will find out soon. We desecrated the Roper’s sacred ground. If I were him, I’d be furious.”

  “More reason to show our hand,” Rachel said. “If he makes an attempt on our lives, it will further support our case that one of these three men is our killer.”

  Detective Peak crinkled his brow and sighed. “Fine. But we tread carefully. I have a daughter, remember.”

  Rachel twisted around and asked a forensic specialist for his black light. Suspiciously, he complied. Rachel waved the light over the front and back of the photos, pinching them by their far corner. Clean of fingerprints. The killer was thorough. While she returned the black light, Peak secretly pocketed the photographs, leaving the rest of the box to the forensic unit.

  Lieutenant McConnell paced through his office, thumb and finger massaging his chin. Eventually, he stopped and turned his intense eyes to Rachel and Peak seated before his desk. “The Mayor? Seriously?”

  Lips pursed, Rachel nodded.

  McConnell folded his fingers around the top of his black leather office chair. “I’m making a press release in the next two hours. Any indication that the Mayor is a lead suspect in a case wouldn’t go over well with the people, or us.”

  “It’s Parkman, Ball, and Jacobson,” Peak corrected, arms crossed over his chest. “And the rumor will get out eventually.”

  “We nip the issue in the bud and bring them all in for questioning,” Rachel suggested. “If they have alibis for the night of Maxine’s murder, we mark them off the list. If not, we keep a close eye on them. If they have their hand in law enforcement, we must assume that they’ve already heard
about the church and must not give them any time to bury the evidence.”

  “There’s no evidence to bury,” Peak added. “The place was spotless.”

  “Hand in law enforcement?” McConnell ignored Peak’s comment. “Highlands isn’t some corrupt metropolis, Detective Harroway. Our officers are good men and women with morals and integrity.”

  “I’ve been in this position for eight years, I know,” Rachel replied. “But only a few decades ago, seven murders were buried. I do not want to see history repeat itself.”

  McConnell’s intensity softened and he let out an exasperated sigh. “Bring in Ball and Jacobson first. If we still aren’t sure, we’ll talk with Parkman.”

  Peak stood from his chair. “Roger that.”

  McConnell picked up a photo of his son. “Let’s pray to God that we can administer justice swiftly and put this case behind us. Forty years or not, the death of youth will not be tolerated.”

  Rachel had an idea. “We should consider a fourth suspect, too.”

  McConnell and Peak turned to her with inquisitive expressions.

  Rachel tapped her finger on the picture of the high school boys. “Our photographer.”

  From their desks, Rachel and Peak made some phone calls. Rachel contacted Albert Jacobson while Peak got ahold of Tristan Ball.

  “Al speaking,” Jacobson said on the other end of the line. Rachel imagined his smug smile from the honor society photograph.

  Rachel introduced herself and went for the jugular, as they say. “We suspect your involvement in the Maxine Gunther homicide and would like you to come down to the station to answer some questions.”

  Jacobson chuckled dryly on the other end of the line. “John put you up to this?”

  “I assure you this is no joke, Mr. Jacobson. We want to know where you were the night of Maxine Gunther’s murder.”

  Jacobson quieted. The line lingered for a moment. “I have an alibi.”