The Girl and the Black Christmas

by A J Rivers

“That’s you and Julia. I have five more of these stills if you don’t believe me. There’s also the actual video footage. Now, there’s no audio. But it doesn’t take audio to see that the two of you are in a very not-festive conversation. In fact, it looks as if you’re screaming at each other. What’s going on here?”

  The professor keeps staring at the picture, her jaw set. Finally, she lets out a sigh and slides the picture back across the desk towards me.

  “Look, this is pretty embarrassing for me to talk about. It’s not something I’m proud of, and I would really like to just put it behind me. But since you insist on digging it up and seem to think that this indicates in some way that I had something to do with her disappearance, I will tell you. You asked me about the rumors that I was seeing one of my TA’s. I was,” she says.

  “But you denied it,” I say. “You said they were just rumors.”

  “Of course I did. I was standing right there with my partner. Who, by the way, I’ve been with since before this incident. So, as you can imagine, I don’t want information about a brief and completely ridiculous indiscretion becoming public knowledge. Once the rumors started getting more pervasive and it seemed we were going to get found out, Timothy and I broke things off. I realized how absurd I was being. I was a grown woman, and he was young enough to be my son. Besides, I was in a strong relationship with a wonderful man, and I didn’t want to compromise that. I would think you would be able to commiserate with me,” she says.

  “So, why the fight?” I ask. “What does Julia have to do with any of that?”

  Professor Murillo sighs and pushes herself up from her seat to walk over to the coffee maker on the bookshelf at the edge of the office.

  “Before coming to my senses, I was extremely wrapped up in my relationship with Timothy. I guess any woman getting that kind of attention from such a young and attractive man will go a little out of her mind. I was jealous and possessive. Some of the rumors had shifted and became that Julia and I were seeing the same man. More accurately, that I was being manipulated for grades and paid teaching assistant hours, while he got what he really wanted from her. He completely denied it. He pointed out that she’d manufactured a relationship with another TA at her first college, and that this was just par for the course for her. But I saw them together a couple of times and it just pushed me over the edge. So, I confronted her about it. It was embarrassing. It was out of line. And I really regret doing it. Is that satisfying enough for you?”

  “I have another question,” I say.

  She takes a sip of her coffee, and her shoulders drop under another sigh. “What is it?”

  Sifting through the other images in my hands, I pull out another and hold it out to her. “Julia was there that night bringing a little girl to see Santa. There are a couple of images in the footage that seem to show her talking to someone, but the other person is never visible. Do you know who this little girl is?”

  Murillo takes the picture from my hand and stares down at it for a second, then hands it back, shaking her head. “No. Did she have a sister?”

  “No.”

  She shrugs. “I have no idea. When I saw her, she was coming out of that store and she didn’t have a child with her. I’m sure you saw on the footage that we met up right outside the store, talked, and then I walked away, leaving her there.”

  It’s an accurate description of the footage and I nod. “Thank you.”

  I start out of the office and she calls after me. “You don’t need to talk about this to anyone, do you?”

  I don’t even dignify that with a response.

  Getting back out to my car, I call Sam. He answers wearing his uniform and it looks as if he’s on a call.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to interrupt you.”

  “It’s fine,” he says. “Just more training with the new officers. Did you talk to Murillo?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I just got out of her office. Turns out, she was lying about sleeping with a teaching assistant, and she thought that Julia was sleeping with the same TA. She was just jealous and confronting her about that. I asked her about the little girl, and she didn’t know who she was.”

  “I’m sorry you hit another dead end,” he says.

  “Not a dead end. Just a detour. I’m still going to figure it out.”

  I pull away from the curb and drive away.

  “What are you doing now?” he asks.

  “I want to go to the store where Samantha Murray was found. When I was talking to Jeremy, he named the neighborhood where he followed Julia. I looked it up, and that neighborhood and the store are pretty close together. I want to see how the two are connected. The night that Julia wrote about seeing him is the same night she apparently borrowed that scarf. I want to see how they all fit.”

  Getting to the spot where the abandoned store once stood takes driving a few minutes off campus. It’s one of the areas of the city that was largely abandoned and rundown thirteen years ago but has undergone some revitalization since then.

  I find the address that was once the store where Samantha Murray’s body was discovered, then use my GPS to find the easiest route to the street Jeremy described. It’s a historic neighborhood filled with houses rather than the apartment buildings common in other areas surrounding campus. It’s not far from the store, but the confusing layout of the roads makes it a longer drive than expected.

  As I drive past a small park full of little children so bundled in coats and hats and mittens they can barely move as they play, I notice red and blue lights flashing down the street. Pulling up behind the row of police cars, I see a forensic van.

  Badge in hand, I get out and head for the nearest officer, getting to him just as a gurney with a body draped in a sheet rolls down the sidewalk toward a waiting ambulance.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  “Her name was Marissa Francisco. She was found by her husband in the driveway, shot twice. The killer must have used a silencer because no one in the neighborhood heard anything. The piece of coal was found in her hand as if she’d picked it up right before she was killed.”

  Sam wraps his arms around me, pulling me close. As soon as I called him and told him there had been another murder, he took off and came to me. I argued with him, but he insisted he wasn’t staying in Sherwood when this was going on.

  “Did you play the voicemail for the police?” he asks.

  I nod. “As soon as I heard her name.”

  I take out my phone and put it on speaker so Sam can hear the message again.

  “I’m calling for Emma Griffin. This is Marissa Francisco. Please call me back. There are some things I think you need to know. It’s about Julia.”

  “That house is in the neighborhood near where Samantha Murray was found. The night she died, she told her friends she was going to a networking gathering at her professor’s house. I remember one time running into Julia at the bus stop right outside that neighborhood. It must have been the same stop where she saw Jeremy. I asked her what she was doing there, and she told me she was just at her professor’s house. Then she said it was for a networking event.”

  “How do you remember that?” he asks. “It was at least thirteen years ago.”

  “Observing is what I do, Sam. Remember, this was right after my father disappeared. I was latching onto everything that seemed unusual. That night, she was trying to act as though everything was fine, but she was crying. It was early in the semester.”

  “So, maybe Julia and Samantha went to the same types of networking events?” Sam muses. “A professor can’t have all of his or her students in the house at the same time. They would need to do small groups.”

  “Of course. But Samantha and Julia didn’t study the same things. You’re not going to end up being invited to the home of your general education course teacher. It’s going to be someone from your major. Someone with whom you’ve made a connection. They wouldn’t have the same professors.”

  “So, maybe Julia wasn’t act
ually at a networking gathering,” Sam says.

  “Then why was she there?” I ask. “And what did Marissa know about her?”

  Sam finds me sitting up wrapped in a blanket with Julia’s day planner in my lap at 3:00 the next morning. He emerges from the bedroom rubbing his eyes and comes to stand in front of me.

  “Babe, you should get to bed. It’s late,” he says in a sleepy voice.

  “I know. I can’t sleep. I keep going over this, trying to figure out what I’m missing. There has to be something.” I point to the date she borrowed the scarf. “This is when she lent her car to Lynn. It says ‘he’ didn’t give her a ride. The references to this guy throughout the whole calendar bounce around so much. There are times when it sounds as if she really loves him and she’s longing for what they used to have, then there are times when it sounds as if she can’t wait to get away from him and she talks about how dismissive he is.”

  “This one makes it sound as though they were hiding their relationship,” Sam notes, pointing to a note about his pretending not to know her on campus.

  “It seems she had a lot of that going on in her life,” I say. “But the one at her old school wasn’t real.”

  “Maybe this one wasn’t, either,” he suggests.

  Before I can answer, we hear a shuffling sound on the front porch. Sam immediately darts for the door, while I go for the front windows. There’s no one on the sidewalk or street, but a burst of light from behind the house says someone ran in that direction.

  I turn around and see the door standing open. Sam walks back inside, shaking his head.

  “By the time I got to the other side of the yard, whoever it was disappeared. You should look at this.”

  I go to the door and look out on the porch. A small box wrapped in plain brown paper with a red bow is sitting in the middle of the porch with a note attached. The heavy parchment cut out in the shape of a tag reminds me of the notes from the Advent calendar.

  “It has my name on it,” I say.

  “Who drops a Christmas present off at 3:00 AM?” I ask.

  “I highly doubt it was Santa Claus. Do you have your phone on you? Take pictures of it before we bring it inside.”

  Sam snaps a couple pictures, and I pick up the box. Bringing it inside, I set it on the table and get a pair of scissors to cut away the bright red ribbon. Using the tips of the scissors, I pop open the flap and move the paper aside so I’m touching the wrapping as little as possible.

  Opening the box reveals a mound of tissue paper. The smell coming up from it makes my stomach turn. Sharp and sweet at the same time, it’s not an odor I would ever want to smell coming from a gift. I push the first layer of tissue aside with the tips of my scissors and reveal another layer darkened with blood.

  “Sam,” I say. “Call the police.”

  Within a few minutes the police are in the house, looking at the severed hand from the box. A note found inside, dappled in blood, sits on the table.

  Bring her back, Emma

  * * *

  “What is that supposed to mean?” one officer asks. “Bring who back?”

  I shake my head, my arms wrapped tightly around me. “I don’t know.” I look over at Sam. “Something’s changed. There was no door. No three days. Something happened.”

  “Do you know who this belongs to?” another officer asked.

  “I can’t be positive. But if I had to guess, I would say Julia Meyer.”

  A crackle comes over the radio, and the officers step aside to call in. Sam steps up closer to me.

  “Emma, that hand is fresh. It’s not from someone who died thirteen years ago,” he says.

  “No. It’s not. It also has every bone crushed.”

  The officers come back. “There’s been another call. You might want to stay by your phone. It could have something to do with this.” He looks at two of the other officers. “Stay here. Forensics is coming.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, following the officer to the door.

  “Hunters just found a woman in the woods.”

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  We run into the emergency room and an officer comes toward us, holding both hands up to try to stop us from storming in.

  “Where is she?” I ask.

  “The ambulance hasn’t arrived yet. The woods are almost an hour away from here,” he says.

  “Then why are they bringing her here?” Sam asks.

  “Her condition is severe,” the officer says. “This hospital has the best trauma department available. I have to warn you, the first responders aren’t optimistic. She seems to have been out in the elements for several hours. Maybe even up to a day. Very little clothing. She is undernourished and dehydrated. With the snow and her injuries, it’s not a good situation.”

  I pace back and forth as I wait for word that the ambulance is arriving in the emergency bay. When it does, I run to the door to watch it come through. The First Responders and the trauma doctors from the hospital run by with the gurney so fast it’s a blur. I can barely see her, but it processes before the officer even comes up to me.

  “Emma, it’s not her,” Dave Evans says.

  I remember Dave as being one of the officers assigned to the task force that watched my house while I was being stalked by Jonah. He looks at me with sympathy in his eyes, but I shake my head.

  “What do you mean it’s not her? How do you know?” I ask.

  “She’s too young,” he says. “A teenager.”

  “Her hands,” I say.

  “Both are intact,” he says. “She had no identification. She has barely anything. She’s in nothing but a torn t-shirt and a bracelet.”

  “A bracelet?” I ask. “What kind of bracelet?”

  “Silver,” he says. “An ID bracelet type of thing. One of those that was popular a while back.”

  “Can I see her when they’re done working on her?” I ask.

  “Emma, you know I can’t let you do that. Until we’re able to identify who she is, she can’t have visitors. And I’m going to ask you not to mention the bracelet to anybody. As of right now, I’m considering this a crime investigation and that’s a piece of evidence that I want to keep confidential,” Dave says.

  “I have to go. You have my number, and you have Sam’s number. If you find out anything at all, you call us immediately,” I tell him.

  “I will,” he says. “But, Emma, it isn’t her.”

  “Call me,” I repeat.

  I run out of the hospital with Sam close behind me. I jump into the car and he’s barely in his seatbelt when I tear out of the parking lot.

  “What’s going on?” he asks. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to the house to put on better clothes,” I say.

  “So we can wait in a hospital?” he asks.

  “No. So we can go into the woods,” I say.

  We get to the house, and I layer on leggings under jeans, then several shirts before putting on my hat, gloves, and coat.

  “Are you going to tell me what’s going on?” he asks as he puts on the heaviest clothes he brought with him.

  “We’re going to the woods where they found her,” I explain. “And we’re going to search.”

  “It’s dark, Emma,” he says. “And well below freezing.”

  “And she was out there in a t-shirt. Which means Julia might not be much better off, not to mention the others he might have. The woods are almost an hour away. It will be sunrise soon.” I look at him seriously. “You can stay. You don’t have to go with me.”

  “You know I’m going with you.”

  I let out a breath. “Thank you.”

  I didn’t sleep last night, but I’m wide awake as we drive, following the directions Sam got from one of the responding officers.

  “Do you know anything about these woods?” he asks.

  “I know of them. I’m not especially familiar with them, but I’ve been there before. It was a really long time ago. This is where a lot of kids from the school will g
o to hike or camp during breaks or on weekends.”

  “If it’s that popular, how could anyone be hiding girls?” Sam asks.

  “In the middle of the winter, there aren’t as many people going out and doing things like this. Besides, there are whole sections of the woods that are essentially wild. There are no established campgrounds and trails. It’s a lot of land,” I say.

  “We’ll do our best,” he says.

  We don’t make much progress in the woods. The police have set up a barrier and are searching the area inside it, where they found the girl. Sam and I are able to stand outside the line and look around, but the scene gives us almost no information.

  We’ve been trying to get any information we could and then convince them to let us search, when I get a call from Dave.

  “They have her stabilized,” he says. “She’s not awake, though. They’re keeping her under for a while to let her body heal.”

  “We’re on our way,” I say.

  Sam and I drive back to the hospital as fast as we can, and I walk straight up to the detective standing in the hallway.

  “What happened to her?” I ask.

  “Emma Griffin. I should have known you would be hanging around,” he sneers. “I heard the guys were at your house before we got the call about the girl.”

  “Cut the bullshit, Victor. What happened to her?”

  “You know I can’t tell you that. You aren’t on this case and as far as I know, the FBI is not involved.”

  He starts away from me, but I’m not going to stop. “What about the bracelet she was wearing?”

  Victor turns to face me, his expression stern. “You were told that piece of evidence is being held in confidence. I’m not going to share any information about it with you.”

  “What if I already know?” I ask.

  His eyes narrow. “What do you mean?”

  “If I’m able to tell you what that bracelet says, will you tell me about her?” I ask. He doesn’t look convinced, so I step up closer to him. “Does the bracelet have an inscription on it? On the underside of the plaque? The top has a pearl. That’s Julia’s birthstone. But the underside has an inscription, doesn’t it?”