by Blake Pierce
For a moment, she felt like she was falling.
What are you doing? What the hell are you doing here?
The room looked much bigger without any furniture. Without the bed in the center, the anchor to all of her nightmares, it felt like a chasm.
Still, it was unmistakably her parents’ old room. There was the small dent from the bedside table on her mother’s side of the room, the tacky ceiling fan in the center of the ceiling, and, of course, the faint maroon splatters on the carpet that had never come up. She slowly walked into the room and stood under the ceiling fan, directly where the bed had once been. She breathed in deeply and managed to not choke on the smell of dust, mold, and neglect.
The business card for Barker Antiques had been found in her father’s pocket, just as it had been found in Jimmy Scotts’ pocket. As she stood in the room, she wondered who had given it to him, where he had picked it up. Where exactly on this carpet had the person stood?
With no idea that there were tears in her eyes, Mackenzie went to the floor on her knees. She looked to the old dried blood splatters on the floor.
Something seemed to stir inside of her, almost like a snake shifting under a rock. Whatever it was, it seemed to wrap around her heart and send its tendrils all throughout her body. Any hint of sadness she had at revisiting this house was stamped out, replaced by what she slowly realized was a creeping sort of anger.
It made her feel nasty. It made her feel dark.
And maybe that was what she needed.
I hate this house, she thought. Maybe I always did and just never understood it.
She got to her feet and walked to the window that had, at one time, sat above her mother’s bedside table. She looked out to the overgrown yard, the mostly dead tree standing just beside the driveway. This whole scene, just like this house, looked like something out of a muted black-and-white film.
It looked like something straight out of the past. And that’s exactly where it belonged.
Out of nowhere, Mackenzie made a fist, drew it back, and punched the bedroom wall. Her fist went through the plaster and she was nearly ashamed that it felt so good. She pulled her hand out and found some of the skin peeled back. A tiny dot of blood sprang up in the plaster dust.
She took one last glance around the room and then walked toward the door. She didn’t bother giving one last glance as she walked away.
The punch had been immature, sure. But now as she walked away from the room that had haunted her for so long, some part of her felt like she was finally leaving it behind her forever.
She slowly scanned the room, seeing the place through the eyes of someone who had, until about ten seconds ago feared it. Now it was nothing more than a ghost that had followed her, coming full circle back to where it had started to haunt her.
She tried to see the room through the eyes of a stealthy killer rather than the scared little girl who had found her father dead on the bed. It was a small room, made even smaller by the bed that had once been in it. According to the reports of the newest case, Jimmy Scotts’ wife had been in the house when he had been killed.
Mackenzie reached way back into her past and recalled that everyone had been home the night her father had died. She and Stephanie had been in their separate rooms. Mackenzie had been getting ready for bed, reading a chapter in Ramona the Pest. Their mother had been asleep on the couch, passed out with a bottle of cheap wine at her feet and the TV playing soundlessly in front of her.
Mackenzie had heard the shot but hadn’t realized what it had been. It wasn’t until she thought she’d heard another sound that she got up to investigate.
What sound?
She stood there, frozen. Had she managed to somehow tuck this away, not wanting to think about it? Had revisiting this damned room unblocked it? Had it—
What sound, damn it?
Footsteps. She’d heard footsteps. And then the front door opening and closing quietly.
That’s when she’d put her book down and gone out into the hallway. She’d gone straight to her parents’ room, wanting to tell her dad that she thought someone was in the house…or someone had been in the house and then snuck out.
But the sight of what she had seen had locked that down and, she supposed, sent it spiraling into some subconscious hell.
Oh my God, she thought. Someone came right into the house and did it. And Mom…she was on the couch asleep at the time…passed out and probably drunk and—
Just like Jimmy Scotts’ wife.
There was a connection there, a looming dark reality that she could not quite make sense of. There were far too many similarities to be a coincidence.
Does she know? Does Mom know? Did she—
“No,” she said out loud.
But the thought finished itself in her head anyway: Did she have something to do with it?
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Peterson was waiting for her at the car, sitting on the hood and looking out to the dried up cornfield further out in the distance behind the house.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah, I’m good,” Mackenzie said. “Thanks for bringing me out here.”
“Sure. Is there anywhere else you need to go?”
“No, I don’t think so. I guess I need to get a flight lined up back to DC.”
“Seems like a wasted trip,” Peterson said. “Are you sure there’s nowhere else I can take you?”
There was another place she had in mind, but she didn’t see the point. It was a field from her past, the same field she had not been able to watch (but she had heard) her father put an injured rabbit out of its misery. Eerily enough, it had never been the rabbit that she kept thinking of, but the kite she had dropped.
Seeing that image in her mind nearly made her request that he take her there. It was a chunk of private property about fifteen minutes away—a place her family had used for picnics and countless games of catch.
But much like the bedroom she had just left behind, she knew that it was time to leave the field and all things associated with it.
“No, I’m good. Could you just take me back to my car? I think I’m just going to check into a hotel somewhere near the airport.”
They drove in absolute silence for the better part of half an hour. She could tell that Peterson wanted to say something but was resisting the urge. Apparently, though, thirty minutes was his limit when it came to silence.
“So…this trip out here…was it like an exorcism of sorts?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, you flew all the way out here to look at a recent crime scene and then a house that hasn’t been occupied in at least fifteen years. You got nothing for your trouble and now you’re heading back.”
“Honestly, I didn’t expect to find anything concrete,” she admitted. “But what you showed me with the business card…it opens up a whole new level of things. And I don’t have nearly enough time to properly investigate. I have to be back in DC tomorrow and it’s already two thirty.”
She kept the heart-wrenching revelation she’d stumbled across in the house to herself. It was, she thought, something she would hold close for as long as she could.
“You’re okay with the feds stepping in and taking it over?” Peterson asked.
“I wouldn’t say that I’m okay,” she said. “But I guess I’ll have to deal with it.” What she didn’t tell him was that she was already trying to think of some creative ways to ensure she stayed in the loop on the case once it landed in the lap of the FBI.
“I’ll try to stay in the local loop down here as well,” Peterson said.
“That would be nice. Thanks.”
“So…how do you like the bureau as opposed to the detective beat down here?” Peterson asked.
“I like it. I think it’s what I was always meant to do.”
“It’s not too stuffy?”
“It seemed like it at first…especially with going through the academy. But it’s definitely been worth it. I
mean…nothing is going to provide the freedom of being a private investigator, I suppose.”
He smiled and looked at her with a mischievous wink. “It is sort of a glamorous life.”
She was reminded of how good-looking he was when he looked at her like that. Where the hell had men like him been when she’d been wasting her time with Zack?
They went quiet again. Mackenzie looked to the scrape on her knuckles from where she had punched through the bedroom wall. She thought about how the house had deteriorated and felt freedom in it. The place that had haunted her nightmares for so long was not the daunting and horrifying place that was haunting her so badly. It was gone to ruin and looked sad. Maybe now that she had faced it, it would lose its power over her. Maybe now that she had unlocked the one secret it had been hiding from her, she could finally leave it in the past.
The ride back to the Starbucks where they had met six and a half hours ago seemed to be over far too quickly. Her thoughts had busied her, as had her weird almost unusual attraction to Kirk Peterson.
“You going to just sort of lay low for a while before going back?” Peterson asked.
“Yeah. I’ll book a flight as early as I can in the morning. Seven or eight hours of solid sleep in an isolated room with nothing to do might be just what I need.”
“Maybe a drink would help,” Peterson suggested. “Maybe a drink with a certain private investigator?”
She considered it for a moment. What would be the harm?
The harm, she thought, is that visiting your old house has taken you to a pretty dark place—and you don’t need to layer that with alcohol and lust.
“Thanks, but no,” she said. “I truly do appreciate your help, but I think I just need to rest. This sort of…I don’t know. The whole day took it out of me emotionally.”
Peterson nodded, clearly disappointed but not saying as much. “I get it,” he said. “But hey…I meant what I said. I’ll keep an ear out down this way and reach out if anything develops. I’m sure your old friend Porter will do the same.”
“Thanks, Peterson,” she said.
She got out of the car and walked to her own, two spaces over. When she turned back, she saw that he was still looking at her. He was looking at her in the same way Harry sometimes looked at her—or, from time to time, the way Ellington looked at her.
Appreciating the attention, she got into her car and headed back toward the airport. She knew, though, that sleep would be a while off. Peterson had mentioned a drink and it was suddenly all she could think about. Perhaps just a few drinks in a hotel room by herself wouldn’t be as potentially harmful as heading out to a bar with a gorgeous PI.
As she approached the airport, she kept her eyes open for hotels that didn’t look like total dumps. If she was going to waste a night doing nothing more than getting better acquainted with her thoughts and theories on the Little Hill case (and, let’s be honest, her father’s as well), she could at least spring for a nicer room.
As she was scanning for a motel that didn’t look like a roach trap, her cell phone rang. She read the name in the display and her shoulders sank. It was Bryers. And if Bryers was calling, there was probably bad news.
“Hey, Bryers,” she said. “Miss me already, huh?”
“I do, actually. But that’s neither here nor there,” he said. “I hate to do this to you, but I need you to get back to Strasburg on the double.”
“Why?” she asked, her heart thumping.
He cleared his throat and as a long pause followed, she knew it could not be good.
“Someone’s gone missing in Little Hill State Park.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
Even after bumping her flight to a red-eye departing at 12:15 a.m. with a brief layover in Chicago, Mackenzie still didn’t land in Dulles until after 9:10 the next morning. She beat out McGrath’s forty-eight-hour allowance by almost a full eight but still felt late and as if she were holding up the case.
Bryers met her at the airport and filled her in quickly as he sped through the stream of traffic leading into DC. Bryers, however, was able to avoid the more clogged traffic as he got off on the interstate and once again headed back to Strasburg.
“Yesterday afternoon, one of the park rangers was patrolling the roads and happened to come across a parked car just off the road not too far from one of the maintenance roads at the northern end of the park. He followed a few slight disturbances in the foliage but could find nothing. There were some jumbled footprints but nothing we could use. Any other day, they wouldn’t have thought twice about it. But given the circumstances, they looked into it pretty hard. We’re expecting the State to have a helicopter out to the park for better aerial coverage by the end of the day.”
“So who’s the missing person?” she asked.
“They checked the plates on the car and found that they belong to Brian Woerner, twenty-five years old. A Strasburg resident. His house is actually a little less than half a mile away from the park.”
“So he snuck into the park?”
“Seems that way. Only there was very little sneaking. He just knew the back roads and the old cutover roads. And that’s if he went into the woods at all. But it certainly seems like he did. Clements and his guys checked Woerner’s house and he wasn’t there. We then checked with his family and no one has seen him for about two days. So right now, we’re assuming he’s the next victim.”
“Shit. Bryers, I’m sorry I missed all of it.”
“No big deal. We just don’t have much time now, so you and I are headed straight over to his mother’s house to get some information. She’s already been told that her son is missing, so the hard part is over.”
Mackenzie understood the sentiment behind such a comment, but she had no illusion of thinking the hard part was over. In fact, she couldn’t help but feel that they had landed right in the middle of the hard part and now had to find their way out.
***
Wendy Woerner was understandably nothing more than a shell. It had been less than twenty hours since she had been informed that her son was missing and could very well be involved in a series of murders that had occurred in the area recently—murders she knew were attributed to what the media was labeling the Campground Killings.
When Mackenzie and Bryers took a seat in her living room, it was Brian’s sister that responded the most to them. She was eighteen and, while it was clear the news had also taken its toll on her, she was doing her very best to stay strong for her mother.
The sister’s name was Kayci and when she offered them coffee, Mackenzie accepted. She had not slept at all on the trip back to Dulles so she was only going on about six hours of sleep or so over the last two days.
“Does your brother make a habit of spending time out in those woods?” Mackenzie asked. She was very careful to use words like does rather than did. Using the past tense when the fate of her brother was not yet known could be very bad.
“Not that I know of,” Kayci said. “As a matter of fact, he’s not really the outdoorsy type.”
“So it’s safe to say that it was surprising to hear that he’d been out in the park?”
“Absolutely.”
“When was the last time you spoke with him?” Mackenzie asked.
“Two days ago,” she said. “He asked if I wanted to catch a movie with him. He doesn’t have much of a social life so he relies on me as a friend most of the time.”
“So he’s something of a loner?”
“Yes, but by choice. He always shuts himself up in his house and stays online all the time. He has this blog that he basically lives for.”
“What sort of blog?” Mackenzie asked.
Kayci rolled her eyes and smiled in remembrance of her brother. She pulled out her phone, typed in something really quickly, and then handed it to Mackenzie.
“That’s his blog,” she said. “He’s a conspiracy nut. He got a Kickstarter campaign going to start a podcast but it never went through.”
Mackenzie sc
rolled through some of the entries. There were articles Brian had written concerning the Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, MK Ultra, and a recent attempt to infect the American population with a flu bug through local water sources.
A thought occurred to Mackenzie as she handed the phone back to Kayci. “Do you know if he keeps notebooks or files on stories he plans to write?”
“Tons of them,” Kayci said. “He keeps them in moleskin notebooks. Mom actually has a few here; she went over there to do her own searching this morning and—well, it ended sort of badly. She brought a few of them back here.”
“Could I see them?” Mackenzie asked.
“Sure. One moment.”
Kayci got up and stepped into the adjoining room. When she left, Mackenzie took a moment to study Bryers. He looked dazed and very tired.
“You okay?” she asked.
He nodded but said nothing. He was not very convincing at all. She wondered if he was a little pissed that she had not been here when this part of the case had come to light. She wanted to press him a little more but by then, Kayci had come back into the room.
As she handed Mackenzie a pile of four notebooks, Bryers coughed behind her. There was a hollow sound to it, like a deep bronchial cough that had no phlegm to bring up.
As she flipped through the notebooks, Mackenzie hit pay dirt almost right away. The notebook on top of the pile was clearly his most recent, as the last entry inside of it was dated two days ago—the day she had left for Nebraska. There was only one note for that day, penned in an urgent and slightly sloppy print.
It read:
Heavy police presence at Little Hill State Park, complete with drones. Why? Missing persons, some weird state mandated research? Local news HAS said a body was discovered out there recently but doesn’t give many details. What gives???
“Have you read this notebook yet?” Mackenzie asked.
“Yeah, I leafed through most of them,” Kayci said. “But he was always like that…suspicious of the government. Why? Do you think the latest entry means something? I guess it would explain why he would have gone out there to the park.”