99 Souls

  “What is it?” Jim asked.

  “That’s who took my son.” She didn’t know why she’d felt that she needed to tell the story now, but she was glad she had. Who knows how long that connection might have gone unearthed otherwise.

  “Who?” Jim asked.

  “The man I slept with that night.”

  “What? Why didn’t you tell the police about him before?”

  “I don’t think about him anymore. Besides, I never gave him my real name. He slunk out of the hotel room without asking if he could even see me again. I can’t imagine how he could have found me.”

  “But still...”

  “Seriously, Jim. I don’t know how he did it. I just blocked him out. Matthew was his father, as far as I was concerned. I couldn’t even remember what he looked like until just now.”

  “Did he know? Matthew?”

  The waitress with red hair and a Southern drawl returned before Sarah could answer. “Here ya’ll go.” She put the burger in front of Sarah and the salad in front of Jim. Then she studied the placement of the meals with a puzzled expression. Smiling big, she exclaimed, “That’s not right. Oh, my!” She switched them, glanced over at the TV before walking away, and made a passing comment on how great Tom Lawrence’s hair looked. “Just like it’s painted on.”

  Sarah and Jim glanced at the TV, not really paying any attention it... until the reporter mentioned them by name.

  Chapter 30

  BRANDON GATHERED HIS COURAGE. The bad man would find him soon. Don’t be a chicken. He had to run.

  He bolted out of the cabinet underneath the sink. From the kitchen to the living room, he ran. There on the couch sat Felicia, sipping a tea. He also saw, just around the corner, one old leg sprawled out on the floor.

  He needed no time to process this. Didn’t even slow down.

  Footsteps scurried down the stairs. “Brandon!” The voice sounded far away under the wave of fear that washed over him.

  And then, just when he was at the threshold of the door, just before he reached the dead body—the body that looked more asleep than dead save the blood around her, the old woman who had been so kind to him, who had given him hope—just when he slowed a little to get around her, the bad man grabbed him by the back of his pajamas.

  Brandon struggled. He screamed.

  The bad man yanked him backward with such force that Brandon was lifted from the ground. He collided against the chest of the bad man, who wrapped one arm around him to hold him in place.

  “Why are you fighting me?”

  Brandon squeezed the man’s arm, trying to push away. He kicked and squirmed. “Let me go!”

  The Felicia imprint on the couch continued to sip her tea, oblivious to the madness happening in her foyer.

  “Why are you doing this? Let me go!”

  “You will understand. It has to be this way.”

  “Nooooooo!” As Brandon screamed, the water glass on the coffee table exploded. Shards pierced through the ghost of a ghost.

  The bad man reached up and touched Brandon on the forehead.

  Everything went black.

  Chapter 31

  FROM THE TV MOUNTED TO THE WALL in the diner, and on TVs across the state, Tom Lawrence gave a quick update on the “God is Blind” murders. The report consisted of nothing more substantial than additional egghead theory and “no new leads.” Then, transitioning with a colorful quip on crime in general, he announced that Sarah Winslow and Jim Rossin were fugitives “wanted for questioning in connection to child abduction and possible murder.”

  Sarah and Jim stopped talking and turned their attention to the screen.

  “It’s really a shame,” said the red-headed waitress to someone at the bar.

  “They have been on the run since last night,” Tom continued.

  “What do we do?” whispered Jim.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you see them,” Tom said, as their photos appeared to his right, “contact local authorities immediately.” Sarah recognized both hers and Jim’s from Facebook.

  The waitress glanced from the TV screen to their table. Her pupils dilated and she whispered something to a man in a brown leather jacket sitting at the far end of the bar.

  “We have to get out of here,” Jim said.

  “Right now,” Sarah agreed.

  They stood. Jim dug a twenty out of his wallet and dropped it on the table.

  The waitress was not the only one to identify them. Other patrons looked and looked away. They tried not to make eye contact.

  Sarah and Jim were about to head for the door when the man at the end of the bar got to his feet. As he did, his jacket shifted just enough to reveal a badge.

  “Not this way,” she said. “Come on.” She dashed down the back hallway into the men’s room.

  “Ms. Winslow, stay where you are!” shouted the cop.

  Jim ran, too.

  “Mr. Rossin!”

  AFTER FOLLOWING HER INTO the restroom, Jim locked the privacy latch on the inside of the door. Thank God for small favors, he thought. But he said, “That’s not going to keep anyone out for long.”

  “This is the backup plan you were talking about?” Sarah said, pointing to a narrow window six feet off the ground.

  Someone tried to yank the door open. The cop in the leather coat, no doubt. He pounded on the door. “This is the police. You got nowhere to go. Come out with your hands up.”

  Kneeling in front of the window, Jim interlocked his fingers and cupped his hands into a stirrup. “Up you go.”

  “How are you going to get out?”

  “I’ll follow you.”

  Bang! A foot against the outside of the door. The latch shuddered and rattled.

  “Get going!” he demanded.

  Sarah hoisted one foot into his hands and grabbed the window sill. As he lifted her, she pulled the window open and tunneled through.

  The cop continued kicking the door. The latch was holding, but not for much longer.

  Sarah fell through the open window. “You all right?” he shouted.

  “I’m fine. Come on!”

  He grabbed the window frame and pulled himself up. He got both elbows on the sill. As he inched forward, trying to gain leverage so he could push himself out, he slipped back into the bathroom.

  “Jim! Hurry up!”

  The officer continued to kick the door.

  Worried he wouldn’t make it out before the door finally gave way, Jim pulled the pay-per-use cell phone from his pocket and tossed it out the window. “Take this. Just in case.”

  “Just in case what? Get out here!”

  He made another go at hoisting himself up and out. Elbows on the sill again. A few more inches this time.

  Finally, the latch broke. The door flew open and the cop entered, gun drawn. “Get down from there and turn around slowly.”

  “Go. Run,” Jim said to Sarah. “Find Brandon.”

  From his vantage point, he was looking down at her. She was standing back from the window on the edge of the parking lot. A narrow strip of brown grass separated them.

  Sarah’s face contorted with lines of worry and sadness.

  Jim slid back down the bathroom wall, raised his hands, and turned around.

  Chapter 32

  MOUTH HANGING OPEN IN SHOCK, Sarah was unable to move. She heard the officer read Jim his rights. Time slowed to a crawl. She was alone. Completely alone.

  Over the last day, Jim had been her entire support system. He had given her hope. He had been a part of her life before her son was taken, and his loyalty through this dark time had seemed a promise from the Heavens that the world would soon return to normal.

  Suddenly, Father Time let his thumb off the second hand and wound the clock of life forward at breakneck speed. If she stayed frozen outside this bathroom window much longer, they’d both go to jail. Jim had tossed her the phone. She knew that he had the phone number on a scrap of paper in his pocket. They’d written it down before they
left the motel in case they had to separate for any reason. He’d call if he could.

  Thinking quickly, she considered her options. Jim had the car keys and she knew nothing about hotwiring a car. Maybe if she had the time, and a little luck, she could spark the right wires under the steering column—but she seemed to be out of both.

  She looked around. The diner was in the middle of an urban sprawl, backed up to the small St. Vincent Church, and sandwiched between a CVS and a Sally Beauty Supply. How many of these businesses had a TV turned to the news right now?

  She ran to the road, pausing only a second to look over each shoulder. There was an intersection nearby. If she hurried, she might be able to get far enough from the diner to avoid being spotted by the cop when he led Jim out to his car.

  When she reached the intersection, she turned right and ran only a little farther before she stopped again to consider her plan. She was sure someone inside had called for backup. Probably the cop, possibly the waitress, maybe even a few of the diners. Regardless of who called, more police would show up soon. She had minutes, maybe seconds, to get out of sight.

  She considered stepping into traffic, forcing a car to a stop, and dragging the driver from behind the wheel. But she’d find herself handcuffed to a hospital bed if the driver didn’t see her. Even if he did, there was a greater chance he’d call her crazy, shoot her the bird, and drive on before she could manhandle him from his car.

  There’s always another option, she told herself.

  Then she saw it. Across the street and two blocks down, a bus was headed her way. The cement post marking its next stop was on the other side of the street.

  She waited, looking this way and that for traffic to clear long enough to cross. After she had, she turned her back to the street as a cop car whizzed by on its way to the diner.

  The bus stopped. She boarded, smiled nervously when the driver made a comment about the weather, and took a seat. She felt a little safer when it started moving.

  Jim was on his way to jail, and it was her fault. Maybe her son’s kidnapping was somehow her fault, too. If she hadn’t had that affair, maybe Matthew would still be alive. That was the part of the story she hadn’t told Jim.

  If she could take a do-over on the last ten years, there were so many things she’d change.

  Chapter 33

  WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT FELICIA’S gingerbread house, Mark and Les saw a single black-and-white parked by the curb in front. Police tape, stretching from one post to the next along the wrap-around porch, was a telltale sign that today this house was more than just a home. Today, it was a crime scene.

  After parking nose-to-nose with the cop car, Les made a beeline for the driver. She flashed her badge and spouted her credentials. “What’s going on here? Did you find a boy inside?”

  The officer was by the open passenger door of his car, filling out paperwork. He gave her a once-over, breasts to heels to breasts. She was used to this sort of appraisal, though his expression was not like those that normally accompanied that look. Something was wrong, maybe terribly so.

  “Did you find a boy?” she repeated.

  “No, ma’am. No boy inside.”

  Relieved they weren’t about to encounter Brandon’s dead body, she thought about her own son—how she would feel if he were missing, how lucky she was that he was safe.

  “Got an old woman laid out in the doorway, though,” he continued, as Mark walked up beside Les.

  “Where’s your partner?” Mark asked.

  “Taping off the back of the house. You going in?”

  “We are.”

  The officer nodded, grabbed a clipboard from his car, and handed it to Mark.

  Any officer who planned on crossing the police tape was required to sign in. It was one of many procedures intended to preserve the chain of evidence. After they were done, Mark returned the clipboard, then grabbed Les’s forearm and gave a gentle tug, indicating that they take their conversation elsewhere.

  As they crossed the yard toward the house, Mark said, “You know what that means, right?”

  “When are you going to realize I’m more than just a nice pair of legs?”

  He put his hands on his hips and sighed. “You got a nice pair of tits, too. Come on, let’s go have a look at the body.” He walked toward the house before Les could find the words for a witty retort. Perhaps something about his disheveled appearance or inability to quit smoking. Let it go, she told herself. She had more important things to worry about.

  She followed him up the steps, ducked under the police tape, and stopped beside Mark in front of the open door. The old woman was sprawled out before them. With the blood from her head wound seeping into her red house dress, she looked as if she were peacefully adrift a crimson sea.

  As they stared down at her, a forensics van pulled up and parked on the street behind them. More cops showed up. So did a medical examiner.

  “He must have done this with his bare hands,” Mark said.

  “What do you think this guy wants?” Les asked. “He hasn’t called for a ransom. He hasn’t killed Brandon, at least as far as we know. He’s got to want something if he’s keeping Brandon alive.”

  “Don’t know.”

  “He can’t be far. If Brandon got away from this guy once, he must have done it on foot.”

  “Agreed,” Mark said.

  As the forensics team moved into the house, Mark stopped one of the men with a nod and a “Hey,” and asked to be notified should they find anything useful.

  “Will do.”

  Then Mark and Les returned to the street and instructed the officer there to canvas the neighborhood. “Call in all the support you can. We need to do this quickly.”

  Chapter 34

  JIM WAS FINGERPRINTED, PROCESSED, and placed in a holding room with perhaps two hundred other men and, in one segregated corner, a dozen or so women. He dared not dwell long on their crimes: rape, assault, drugs, robbery? He didn’t want to know.

  Except for five empty visiting rooms, where guests could speak to their loved ones through an inch of bulletproof glass, the holding room appeared to occupy the entire basement floor of the downtown police station. Fluorescent lights. Dingy, yellow walls. The place was depressing, perhaps by design.

  The men around him sat on metal benches positioned end-to-end and back-to-back in U-shaped patterns. They preached to each other of their innocence and compared notes on the prisons they’d visited over the years. “Silence” was the rule in this basement purgatory, but as long as the men didn’t get too loud, the guards looked the other way.

  “Have you been to Forsyth County Jail before? Now that place there’s got some good grub.”

  “Aww, man, that place ain’t nothing. Not compared with... uhhh...”

  “See. That’s right. You can’t think of no better place than that, can ya? That’s right. Best grub of any place.”

  “Okay, okay. But the beds are shit.”

  “I ain’t talkin’ about no beds. I’s just talkin’ ’bout the food, man.”

  Around and around it went.

  In this neighborhood, the criminals were not just inside these walls. Outside, young girls sold sex while drug dealers discreetly hocked their goods in dark alleys. The irony of criminal activity surrounding the jail while Jim sat inside, innocent, was not lost on him. He wanted to blame Sarah for getting him involved. If she hadn’t called him from the grocery store, if she hadn’t run to begin with...

  But who was he kidding? He’d have helped her, anyway. He’d been in love with Sarah for over a year. After she’d rejected him, he’d hidden that love under the guise of friendship, tried to stomp it out with reason, denied it late at night as he stared up into the dark from his bed, but still it grew. He worried about Brandon and worried about what Brandon’s death would do to her.

  Payphones were located between the benches so that the accused could call their lawyers, their bond companies, and their pimps to let them know they’d be late to work. E
veryone was entitled to at least one phone call. Here you could make as many as you wanted. The law didn’t say, though, that any of them had to be free.

  Periodically, Jim glanced over at one of the phones, trying to decide whom he should reach out to for help. But as it stood, he didn’t know if he’d be granted bail. What could anyone really do?

  After half an hour, two officers entered and called thirty or so names. The men lined up and were escorted through a door in a far corner of the room. In his mind’s eye, Jim saw them shackled, loaded onto a bus, and taken somewhere scary.

  Would that happen to him? Or would he be left here until a judge could see him for an arraignment? He didn’t know how the process worked. No one had told him anything.

  Another half an hour passed. A different guard entered through that same far door. This time, just his name was called.

  Being singled out could be really good or really bad. Considering how his day was going so far, Jim expected the worst.

  Chapter 35

  BRANDON AWOKE IN A DARK PLACE. His eyes popped open and his hands reflexively tightened around the seat of the wooden chair on which he found himself. His feet dangled over the side.

  His brain went into overdrive, shifting his gaze from one foreign object to the next in a subconscious effort to assimilate all of these unfamiliar things into something meaningful.

  He saw a steel monster breathing fire from between its grated teeth, cinderblock walls, a dusty cement floor, a bare bulb burning overhead, a wooden worktable with buckets underneath, a steel bookshelf, dozens of painted ceramic dolls... and the bad man. He was here, too.

  This was his basement, Brandon realized. Brandon had been in his mom’s basement and it looked very similar, only with boxes and cobwebs. The bad man was also sitting in a chair, his cattycorner to Brandon’s. He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and clasping his hands.

  Brandon had been free. He’d gotten away. It wasn’t fair! He wanted to cry, but he didn’t. He wasn’t going to be a wimp.