by Glen Krisch
“What is it? What’s so funny?” I asked.
“After a few of these trips, the ferry line had gone up for sale.” He wiped his eyes and got himself under control. “For some reason, between owners there was a two to three week gap when it wasn’t running at all. Something tugged at me—all the way from my balls to my brain—something wanted me to come back to Michigan, even though I had to drive through the armpits of Illinois and Indiana to get there.”
“I want to know … no, what I need to know, Edgar, is: why did you come to Little Whisper Lake? Of all the places for you to stalk your victims … you came to my backyard.”
Edgar laughed again, but now more subdued. “This is for your book, right? This is the $64,000 question you need answered to sell your half-million copies?”
“Your lawyer explained my book, who I am. But if you tell me the truth, the honest to God’s truth, and you don’t want me to write about it … I won’t. Just tell me the truth.”
“If you can’t answer that question, it’d kill your book, right?” Edgar rubbed the stubble on his chin, contemplating. Teasing. Measuring my desperation.
“I suppose it might. But I don’t care about any of that. I just … I need to know.”
“Okay … okay … fuck it. You want the truth?” Edgar leaned in until his manacled hands pulled taut against the metal ring in the table. His eyes flashed madness, for a second or two at most. In that flash, I saw his true nature, the vile beast that would awaken to destroy the lives of children. But then it was gone, and he once again regained his composure. He settled back against the metal chair, back to stasis. He shrugged. “I got lost.”
He again started to laugh. His eyes teared up and he slapped the metal table separating us. A corrections officer peeked through the window in the door. I gave him a nod to let him know everything was fine.
“I got fucking lost. That’s the whole and honest to God’s truth. Bad luck all around, I suppose. That’s how I landed here.”
“And Breann?” I hoped he would take my hook and run with it.
Edgar stared at me, not blinking. I’ve never felt the chill of evil so close before, so resolute and alive as that moment. We stared at one another long enough for me to taste my own sour breath idling on my tongue.
“So the day I got lost, got all turned and twisted in circles after leaving the highway north of Muskegon, I come across your Little Whisper Lake. So quaint, so charming. And that’s when something spoke to me.”
“What does that mean? Like voices?”
“Yeah … no, not really. It was more than voices. More like God, if you believe in that sort of thing. Just something … something not-of-this world. Like a … a dark presence, comforting even. It guided me, both deep inside me, but also from outside … from nature. If that makes any sense. It’s like the voices were in my ears and in my heart at the same time, like a church chorus. And the voices led me to the beach and the rutted little road. And that’s when I first saw the three little girls building their sand castles, looking like pieces of sugar candy glistening in the sun.”
“Bastard,” I whispered, unable to hold my tongue.
Edgar shook his head, as if he understood something I would never be able to grasp. “This guiding hand, this dark presence, it gave me a choice. Pick one. But I could only have one. So I studied like I always did. The tall blonde girl—”
“Leah. My granddaughter.” I felt ready to vomit, hearing him so flippantly mention her as if she were a ribeye at the grocery meat counter.
“Yeah, she didn’t have certain qualities that tickle my fancy. She seemed like she’d smile all the goddamned time, even when she’s in pain. That girl had a spirit, a glow.”
I imagined Leah. The traits he’d used to eliminate her from being a potential victim were also what made her so special to me. To Francie. Her lively spirit had unknowingly saved her life.
“That left me with one of two choices, and my God, it was a tough one. I damn near took them both. But two at one time would be a hell of a lot more complicated than just doubling my efforts. One is controllable. Two … two is chaos. So, I had to choose.”
“And that’s why you stayed, why you remained near the lake?”
Edgar chuckled. “I was torn, mister. Just miserable about the whole thing. I even went as far as scanning the local want-ads to help extend my stay. If I could avoid making a decision, I couldn’t make the wrong decision, right?”
He paused, as if I might answer his question, or understand his twisted mind.
“But you saw me one day.” He gave me a knowing smirk, a little nod.
I swallowed against a lump in my throat. “Yeah. In the blue van.”
“Let me ask you a question. Was that the first time you noticed me?”
I hesitated but saw no reason to lie.
“Yes.”
“Unfuckingbelievable. That one time you see me … it put me on your radar, right?”
I nodded.
“It was enough. In my gut, I knew.”
“That’s all it took? When I’d already been inside your house?” He waited for my reaction. I kept everything in check, everything but my eyes. He nodded, satisfied at my rising anger. “So all those times I crept into your house, every time I rifled your drawers, your personal belongings … you never once suspected a damn thing?”
I glared at him, dug my nails into my palm until I risked bloodying them.
“So no one even noticed a missing pair of panties—”
I slammed my palm against the table and stood, the scraping of the metal chair amplified by our close confines.
“What? Did I say something … did I offend you, Pierce?”
“I asked you about Breann. You don’t need to see if you can make me squirm.”
“But I do! I really do. You see, I’m just explaining things. I had to be thorough or I might make the wrong decision. In my eyes, you don’t fuck around when life or death are at stake. And that’s exactly what this was—life or death.”
“Get on with it, or we’re done here.”
“You look a little green. Are you feeling okay?”
I grabbed my tape recorder and pad of paper. When I was halfway to the door, he called out for me to stop.
“Okay. No more bullshit.” Edgar sounded a bit desperate. “You’ve been patient, more than patient, and I’ve been dragging this out. You wouldn’t believe how few people want to chat behind bars.” Edgar let out a long breath. His eyes steeled, narrowed. “Your girl, your Krista … what it came down to is she didn’t suit my needs. There was too much innocence there. Too much love. From you. From her to you. Breann, on the other hand, was a lonely soul. In many ways, she was like Krista, but love was lacking in her life. And it made her so incredibly … seductive … to my guiding hand, the dark presence.
“As I neared my decision, I started taking more risks, trying to figure out which would be my prize. It all made sense after I spent a night under Breann’s bed. I’d crept in when her family was out on their back porch grilling burgers …”
Edgar paused, as if re-experiencing the fateful night. He blinked, his eyes distant. “I’ve never told this to anyone. Not my lawyer, the shrinks. Nobody.”
I wasn’t about to thank him. I came close to getting up and leaving anyway, but there was still something I needed to know, something beyond why he had decided to take Breann. The police had never recovered her body. If I could get that information from Edgar, I could chuck the rest of my book. I would do anything to bring the McCorts some peace.
“Breann’s parents got into some argument. I didn’t know what about, but it sounded serious. Slammed doors. A glass shattered against the kitchen wall. That sort of thing. Soon enough, Breann came to her room, crawled into bed just a few inches above where I hid. And she began to cry. It was so fucking heartbreaking, yet beautiful. It’s what sealed
the deal. Her cry was the saddest sound imaginable. And you can put this in your book—I don’t give a fuck—but it gave me the rock-solidest hard-on in my life. Just the utter aloneness of that girl … it about broke me. I damn near took her right then and there. But I had to wait. Like a good boy.”
Even though I felt sickened, I managed to say, “So, where did you take her? Where is she now?”
“She thanked me near the end.”
“I don’t need to know this.”
“But it’s important. She thanked me for showing her mercy, for ending her suffering.”
“Where is Breann?” I pressed.
“I will describe how to find her.”
“What do you mean?”
“Open your pad of paper. Take out a pencil. Draw what I tell you.”
“Draw? What, like a map?”
“Exactly like a map! And at the end of it, you will find a treasure!”
My hands shook as I opened my notebook. I drew to the best of my limited ability what he told me: the beachfront, the surrounding woods, trails I was never privy to until described to me by Edgar Jenkins …
The page quivered between Krista’s thumb and index finger as she read a notation at the bottom of the page:
[ Insert map following this page ]
Krista turned the page but didn’t see a map. The following pages described how the jailhouse interview ended. It was brief and didn’t reveal anything of substance. She flipped through the subsequent pages, then to the bracketed notation about the map. She sighed in frustration; the truth was taunting her just outside her reach.
“Honey!” Neal called out.
Krista looked up to see her husband jogging across the sand.
“There you are!” he said, short of breath when he reached her. “Have you seen Clara?”
“No, I haven’t. She’s not back yet?”
Neal shook his head, his gaze scanning the beach and distant trees. “It’s been almost four hours. Can you believe it, our daughter out there for four hours?”
“Should we go look for her?” she asked.
“I don’t know. It’s still early. I say we give her another hour or so,” he said, but still looked worried. “Now I’m kind of wishing we’d given her a cell phone.”
“Me too. I’m just not used to her being so adventurous.”
Neal wrapped his arm around her and they started back for the summer house. “This is going to take getting used to. Is that Poppa’s book?”
Krista nodded.
“Is it any good?”
“I … I don’t know. It feels … salacious. Not the book, I guess. More that I’m reading it.”
“That’s just because he doesn’t know you’re reading it. Are you learning anything important?”
“Yes. I shouldn’t have stayed away. If not for Breann, for Poppa.”
“Well, why don’t we see if he’s up for company?”
She rested her head on his shoulder and squeezed his waist.
“Sounds good.”
They cut across the sand as the sun dipped toward the trees. She glanced over her shoulder at the weedy gravel on the side of the road. She had no way of knowing, but she would bet good money that Edgar had snatched Breann from that very spot.
“There’s one thing I need to do first,” she said.
“What’s that?”
“I need to speak to Nan.”
“Okay …” Neal said, somewhat concerned.
“Can you make me some tea? I need a minute alone with her.”
“Of course.”
When they reached the back stairwell, Krista veered toward the secluded alcove where Nan was buried.
CHAPTER 22
After tumbling down the hill, Clara finally came to rest on her shoulder. The fingers of her left hand began to wiggle, pinned beneath her, and as she struggled to breathe, she flexed her arm until she rolled over to her back. She sucked in a deep breath, relieved she felt no acute pains.
The sky had darkened during her fall. The bruised air carried flecks of light—no, not light, but dust, bits of dust caught in the tumult—swirling and bobbing before jetting away. Her thoughts were muddled, and this scared her more than the fall itself. She didn’t dare move, not with night falling. Not with what the darkened stretch of wilderness had in store for her, a stranger in its midst.
The world felt unsteady beneath her. She blinked heavily, her stomach stirring with nausea, her every limb battered and abused. The worst part: she was utterly alone. But not just that—she had totally failed. Poppa would never have his question answered. His faith in her had been misplaced.
After closing her eyes, she didn’t bother to reopen them. Her lower lip quivered. Tears ran down her cheeks as she gave into both the emotion and the physical hurt she’d just endured.
She didn’t know how much time had passed when the sounds of the two girls brought her to her senses. And they were near, so incredibly near.
Clara strained to open her eyes, but tears had crusted against her eyelids.
“See, she’s not dead,” one girl said.
“Yeah,” a voice replied, and Clara felt a nudge to her ribs. “I guess you’re right.”
“Hey …” Clara rubbed the heels of her palms against her eyes.
A redheaded girl stood closest to her. She had her foot raised to give Clara another nudge. Her canvas shoes were muddied, but patterned underneath with pink flowers.
“It’s her,” the other girl said. “You know, the kid I told you about?”
Clara blinked several times, her vision coming into focus. Warily, she sat up at the waist. At least her nausea had gone.
“Easy now, Clara. That was some tumble you took.”
Clara pressed her hands into the dirt on either side of her.
She knows my name.
“A big stupid tumble, you ask me.” The redhead wrinkled her nose. “You were so loud we thought you were a bear crashing through the woods.”
“A bear?” Clara’s thoughts were still a jumble.
She laughed and her vision again dimmed. When it solidified, the other girl, a dirty blonde with intense green eyes, kneeled down so they were nearly nose to nose. She stared at Clara expectantly. Though she felt an immediate recollection, her brain wouldn’t process the information properly. She knew this girl. Heck, the girl knew her, having already mentioned her by name. And yet … and yet she couldn’t place her name or how she knew her.
The blonde girl gasped. “You have blood in your hair.”
Clara froze, as if the girl had instead mentioned a spider.
The girl peered down at her scalp and probed near the wound with a light touch. “Don’t worry. It’s not so bad. A goose egg, all right, but the bleeding’s pretty much stopped.”
“You’re the girl …” Clara pulled together the threads of her memory. “You’re from the other side of the lake, right?”
“Yeah.” The girl’s voice deflated on that single syllable. She looked away, toyed with the purple flowers braided into a bracelet around her wrist.
The redhead barked out a snarky laugh before something near Clara’s feet drew her attention. “What’s this?”
The girl picked up Poppa’s map.
“A map. Kind of like a treasure hunt—oh, my God, you’re Melody, right?”
The puzzle pieces came crashing together: Poppa’s first adventure, picking Nan’s favorite flowers, finding Melody in the field of purple blossoms, and then waiting out the storm with her under the tumbled-over tree. How could she not remember her until just now? Not once, not even in passing, had she thought about Melody since they’d split up that afternoon.
Melody’s eyes softened. “Yes! So you do remember.”
“Of course I do!” Clara tried covering up her faulty memory with enthusiasm. “I ju
st … you know, I hit my head. Those are the flowers from the field, aren’t they?”
Melody nodded.
“They’re beautiful.”
The redhead scoffed and rolled her eyes. “Geez …”
Melody ignored her friend and turned to Clara. “Thank you.” She smiled and extended her hand to Clara and helped her to her feet. “Are you okay?”
“I …” Clara’s vision wobbled, but only briefly. “I think so.”
“I can’t believe you didn’t break your neck.” The redhead tipped her head to the side and made a cracking sound. “Seriously. You must have flip-flopped like a hundred times.” The girl looked from Melody to Clara and then back again. She ran her tongue absently across one of her front teeth, which jutted out more than the rest.
“Guess I’m just lucky.” Clara held out her hand. “Can I have that back, please?”
“Well …” The girl clutched the map to her chest. “I suppose.”
She looked unsure how she would respond to Clara’s demand. After a few tense seconds, she handed it over to Clara, who smoothed it as best she could.
“I better get back,” Clara said. She hefted Poppa’s satchel until the strap sat on her shoulder properly before starting away from the girls. “My mom’s probably wondering where I am. She worries a lot.”
“So what did you find?” the redhead asked.
Clara looked back at the girl. “What do you mean?”
“At the end of the map. It shows a pile of rocks or something at the end of it. You said it’s a treasure map, so what’s the treasure?”
“I don’t know. I fell before I could find out.”
“And you’re just going to go home?”
“Of course she’s not!” Melody said. “We’ll help you. I bet it’s not far.”
“Really, my head …” Clara just wanted a good excuse to go back to the summer house.
“Maps are only made to lead you to something important,” Melody said. “You can’t go back now.”
Clara looked back up the way she had fallen, realizing how dangerous a fall it had been. She could have broken her neck. And the sky wasn’t nearly as dark as she’d thought it was.