by Jim O'Shea
“Absolutely.”
“Do you have that Bible in front of you?”
“It’s in my lap.”
“Go to page one…no, let’s say page 150.”
It only took seconds.
“OK, got it.”
“Page forward, and tell me if you see anything unusual.”
A few seconds of paper rustling over the phone connection was followed by Mard’s voice. “A page was ripped out in chapter twenty.”
Hunter gulped. “What page?”
“It looks like it would have been…hold on. OK, the pages jump from 161 to 164 so…the missing one would have had number 162 on the front and 163 on the back.”
The world outside the car blurred suddenly and Hunter slumped over the steering wheel, barely able to hear Mard asking him if he was OK. He drew in as deep a breath as he could manage, and spoke in a steadier voice than he would have thought possible. “You can go home, Kimberly,” he said softly.
“Excuse me?”
“I’ll be there soon, and I’d like you to be gone when I arrive.”
“I don’t understand. What—”
“Officer Mard…” His voice cracked, and he was forced to swallow a thick lump in his throat. “There’s no need for you inside the home anymore, Kimberly. I’ll let the surveillance team know you’re leaving. You’re free to go home to your family.”
Hunter ended the call and rolled down the car’s window to let in cold air, struggling to contend with a notion that was somehow impossible to believe and deny at the same time. A strange part of him, the illogical part he kept hidden deep within his soul, had been hoping and praying the Ginger Killer was a phantom, a ghost who would one day stop killing and slowly disappear into the annals of crime. But the Ginger Killer did not disappear…and was neither man nor ghost.
She had been flesh and blood all along.
34
Libby was wrong.
Apparently, she did own a Bible, as evidenced by her name printed neatly inside the front cover in what looked like her own handwriting. She had no memory of receiving the book, but it made sense she would have one as the daughter of a preacher. What didn’t make sense was how the large, leather-bound volume had found its way to her living room coffee table.
A warm bath was in order, so Libby had excused herself from Officer Mard and tried to slow a rapid heartbeat while climbing the stairs to the second floor. Logic had always been an important part of her fabric, woven into her day-to-day existence, but now simply sifting fact from fiction had become a challenge.
She changed into a thick robe and had just dropped bath beads into the first few inches of hot water when she heard a light knock on the bathroom door. She pulled the door open a few inches.
Mard stood in the hallway wearing her coat and with an odd look on her face. “I’ve been sent home, Ms. Meeker.”
Libby yanked the robe tighter around her waist. “Excuse me?”
“Detective Hunter will be here in thirty minutes and asked me to take the rest of the night off. I’m not sure why, but he assured me you are in no further danger. Would you come downstairs and lock the door behind me?”
Libby followed Mard down the stairs asking questions, but the Tooele officer either had no answers or refused to give them. Detective Hunter had simply requested she leave, saying he would be there shortly to take over. She thanked the veteran police officer, fastened the lock and deadbolt, and watched her pull away, leaving the street empty.
Libby returned to the bathroom and with Hunter less than a half hour away, decided on a quick shower instead of a bath. Ten minutes later she returned to the living room in sweats, snatched the mystery Bible off the coffee table, and was about to settle in on the sofa when she noticed a tiny object out of the corner of her eye on the floor near the hallway to the kitchen.
The Bible hit the floor with a thud.
Libby approached the object carefully, knelt, and picked up a small, irregular-shaped piece of wood. While her brain pondered how a puzzle piece could have made it down from the spare bedroom, she noticed another one a little closer to the kitchen. Confusion morphed into fear at the sight of a third piece a little further down the hallway.
Wasn’t this the part of the movie where the foolish teenager ignores the obvious opportunity to flee and decides to probe further?
Libby picked up the two additional pieces and then noticed a fourth just inside the kitchen and three more on the floor next to the table. All seven had darker coloration that the previous pieces, but were identical in every other way. When she lifted her gaze, she could only stand and stare. The assembled jigsaw puzzle now rested on her kitchen table, still featuring the empty gap on its right side.
She was confident the pieces in her hands combined with the ones on the floor would complete the puzzle and was about to prove it, when a familiar sound emerged from beneath her feet. At first it was just a creak but was quickly followed by a noise not easily attributable to shifting wood and stone—then by the unmistakable sound of footsteps coming up the stairs.
Libby slunk back beside the refrigerator as her heart raced. The house turned silent once again and she was beginning to think her mind was playing more tricks on her when she heard a woman’s voice—singing. Not only was it a familiar song she recognized from her father’s church, it was coming from a very familiar voice.
“Amazing grace, how sweet the sound.” The words were melodic, rising from up the stairwell. “That saved a wretch like me.”
The house became still, so Libby stepped out from beside the refrigerator and toward the basement stairs. She was stopped in her tracks by a distinct sound. Three taps followed by a brief silence. Then, as if searching for just the right note, two additional taps that struck a chord of absolute terror.
The puzzle pieces fell from Libby’s hand and the house fell silent again. She was beginning to think she’d imagined the sounds when they came again, this time a little louder.
Three taps, a pause, then two more—followed by a female voice that sounded eerily familiar. “Olly olly oxen free.” The voice had an oily tinge, but otherwise sounded exactly like Libby’s—and Melissa’s. The words were also theirs, but from so many years ago.
When a petite, red-haired woman stepped from the shadows into the stark kitchen light, a fear unlike anything she’d ever experienced gripped Libby. Not merely a passing chill, but a bone-jarring terror that quickly metastasized throughout her entire being.
The woman was dressed in white jeans and white collared shirt, and bore the exact same face Libby had seen in her own bathroom mirror just minutes before.
Libby couldn’t afford to be delusional, that was reserved for her mother’s side of the family and the clinically insane. Despite the fact that Melissa Meeker was dead and buried, Libby now stared at her flesh and blood sister—two realities that could not exist in the same universe. Her sister’s remains had never been positively identified, and she now knew why. “Melissa?” Libby’s voice was barely audible.
The mysterious figure shook her head back and forth. “Close…but no cigar, Elizabeth.” She struck a sultry pose. “Don’t you think I look pretty good for someone who doesn’t exist?” The woman placed a brown leather bundle Libby recognized from her parents’ garage on the table and gestured toward a kitchen chair with a flick of a large knife, which had suddenly appeared in her right hand.
As Libby stumbled toward the chair, the woman pulled back the bundle’s top flap, revealing Grandpa Meeker’s old revolver.
“Thanks for finding this for me, Elizabeth. It’s a bit crude for my tastes, but I can see it coming in handy down the road.”
Libby staggered into the chair, her mind a confusing whirlwind of thoughts and images. Was it really Melissa, or was she suffering from the inherited malady of her mother and grandmother again? If so, how could she possibly know? She tried to steady herself while the chair’s wooden legs shook beneath her.
The mysterious woman was Melissa’s mirror i
mage, and therefore Libby's also; but at closer range, the twin green eyes were different—like passageways to a much darker place. The woman sat down across from Libby, rested her elbows on the table, and leaned forward. “Are you familiar with the Old Testament?”
Libby didn’t respond. She couldn’t.
“More specifically, Ezekiel chapter thirty-four or perhaps Numbers fourteen?”
Libby’s teeth clenched.
“There are other verses like those two.” The woman laughed but it was heavy and crooked. “They all refer to the same thing, Elizabeth. The sins of the father. I think the rule should apply to mothers and grandmothers and siblings as well. Don’t you?”
Libby could only sit and stare.
“It is very clear that retribution for the sins of the father shall be carried forward upon their children and their children’s children.” The woman pointed down the hallway toward the living room and spoke in a sing-songy voice. “Your own Bible tells me so.”
Libby tried to speak, but was only able to manage disconnected syllables that might have been the start of words—she had no way to be sure. She steadied herself, swallowed the lump in her throat, and then managed to stammer full ones. “Why don’t you start at the beginning? Pretend like I don’t know who or what you’re talking about.”
For a long time, the woman stared at Libby’s face, as if trying to memorize the combination to a safe. When she did speak, her words were slow and deliberate.
“Thirty years ago, there was a young married couple living in Tooele, Utah. A preacher, his wife, and twin red-haired daughters. Stop me if you’ve heard this story before.”
A cold tingle worked its way up Libby’s arms to her shoulders.
“The truth, however, was much more interesting,” the woman said. “Or perhaps appalling, depending on how you look at it. This family actually had a third daughter.”
Libby lurched backward, as if hit by an invisible punch. She pushed up from the chair with shaking arms. “Are you trying to tell me you’re my sister?”
The woman flipped the large knife to her left hand and then thrust the palm of her right in Libby’s face. A still oozing wound ran from just below the little finger to the base of the thumb, and pooled blood from her palm traced a crimson line down to her wrist. “We’re blood sisters, Elizabeth. Trust me.”
Libby’s stare was interrupted by a sharp thud, and when she looked down at the table, the knife stood upright and quivering. Its blade had been thrust through the laminate top into the underlying wood, and it glistened in the overhead light.
“You’re…” Libby’s tongue thickened. “You’re the Ginger Killer.”
The woman offered up a sardonic grin. “Don’t you find it ironic that the big, bad Ginger Killer is actually a petite woman just like you? And more than ironic…your flesh and blood sister?”
Libby slumped back into the chair, her heart beating like a jackhammer.
“I think you will find my story quite fascinating. Listen carefully, as it is rather complex.”
Libby had no choice in the matter. All she could do was sit and stare.
“The third Meeker girl, yours truly, was perhaps not as perfect as the first two,” she began, “because her sisters conspired against her while still inside the womb. Marilyn Meeker’s umbilical cords were lifelines for you and Melissa, but for me they were a hangman’s noose—the result of two selfish little girls twisting and turning inside our mother’s womb, each vying for position and favor.”
When the woman exhaled slowly, it was like steam released from a dormant volcano…deep inside which surely raged fires of something Libby could not comprehend.
“Now here’s where it gets complex, Elizabeth. This third little girl was born in secret, even to her own parents, and shipped off to live a virtual non-existence with a cruel couple in about as far of an out-of-the-way and horrible place as you can imagine.”
“That couldn’t…” Libby closed her eyes and tried to unclench her fists. “How is any of that possible?”
The woman tilted her head. “Are you aware of the specific circumstances surrounding the night of your birth?”
Libby nodded as Dr. Lambert’s story replayed in her head. “I was told there was a bad accident north of town and all medical personnel at the hospital were forced to help in the emergency room. My grandmother actually delivered Melissa and me.”
The woman held her hands up as if in prayer. “Ultrasound had not yet made its way into Tooele at that time,” she said calmly, “and the doctor told Nicholas and Marilyn to expect twins based on the sound of multiple heartbeats in the womb.” She bent her lips into the shape of a smile. “To his credit, he was only off by one.”
Libby wiped a line of beaded sweat from her brow.
“Mother’s insides must have been like spaghetti, because when the two of you were pulled from the confines of her womb, your umbilical cords tightened around my neck like a noose. While I waited, being strangled by the same organ that had sustained the three of us for nine months, you and Melissa were attended to. Everyone’s focus was on the beautiful twins, not on the unexpected arrival of a third baby girl no one yet knew existed.” She leaned back in the chair and pointed her thumb at her chest. “That would be me.”
“How…” Libby’s throat tightened. “How is that possible?”
“Mother’s cervix failed to dilate sufficiently that night, and the doctor assigned to maternity, himself an Apache, was around just long enough to resolve the issue by injecting her with a syringe of synthetic prostaglandin before rushing to the E.R. However, he neglected to provide her any relief for the pain, and as a result, the delivery was agonizing. Mother mercifully passed out from the pain after the second baby. You were conveyed from her womb to the land of the mouth breathers.”
Libby struggled to keep oxygen flowing from her own mouth into her lungs.
“Father left the delivery room to provide the post-natal care you and Melissa so desperately needed—he, like his wife, unaware of the existence of a third daughter—or that yours truly was in much more dire straits. That’s where Grandma Pearl comes in.”
“That makes you a survivor,” Libby stammered, as something between fight and flight welled up inside her. “But it didn’t beat you. You—”
“Enough!” The woman slammed her fist on the table. “There will be plenty of time for groveling.” She intertwined her fingers on the table and took a deep breath. “Grandma Pearl recognized how taut the umbilical cords stretched when you two were born, and suspected there could be something else going on inside her daughter’s womb. Fearing the worst, she said nothing but stayed behind to tend to Marilyn as Nicholas cared for you two in another room. She delivered me eleven minutes later with no one the wiser. Here’s another little tidbit you might find interesting.”
The woman extended her left hand toward Libby, revealing a ring on her index finger that looked familiar. It was cast in silver and featured a raised emblem in the shape of a crab, one Libby recognized as the symbol for the constellation Cancer.
“I was born nine minutes after midnight,” the woman said, “which meant my birth date wasn’t June 20th like you and Melissa. I was born on June 21st, the first day under the Sign of Cancer.” She pulled her hand back and clasped it with the other in her lap.
“Why all the secrecy?” Libby asked. “Why didn’t G-Ma just tell everyone?”
“I’m glad you asked.” The woman smiled. “After freeing me from the fleshy hangman’s noose, Pearl breathed life into my tiny lungs that night. As the story goes, the very moment I took my first breath a coyote proclaimed my glorious birth to the animal kingdom. However, when another of the same species did not echo the call that night, it was a big deal to Pearl. That is why I was set apart.” The woman frowned and her eyes turned inward, as if her brain was processing something unpleasant. She shook her head and returned her gaze to Libby. “After wrapping me in a black shawl she wore to the hospital, Pearl spirited me away to the parking
lot without anyone the wiser, at least not until she informed her daughter many years later.”
“Mom tried to tell me something about my sister before she died,” Libby said. “I assumed it was about Melissa.”
“You know what happens when you assume, Elizabeth.” She wagged a finger at Libby. “As you know, Pearl was Choctaw and a believer in all things spiritual. When the old woman combined the silly coyote episode with the fact there was something in my infant eyes that troubled her, my fate was sealed as far as she was concerned. Fortunately, Pearl didn’t have the guts to take my life that night, or I wouldn’t be here right now telling you my story.”
“G-Ma was a kind and loving woman,” Libby said. “I can’t imagine her harming anyone, much less an infant.”
“Believe what you want.” The woman shooed Libby’s words away as she would a pesky fly. “Pearl located my adoptive parents through a medicine woman in Wyoming, but before releasing me to my new family they imprisoned my soul in what could only be described as a magical jail cell. According to Pearl, it was the condition upon which the Tarmans accepted me.” The woman paused and crossed her arms over her chest. “Lucky me.”
“The zodiac box,” Libby said. “I have it upstairs if you would like to—”
“I have no need for that nonsense.” She pulled the knife out of the table top and pointed it at Libby. “What’s important is what Pearl believed, not some silly talisman. Damage to my brain from the lack of oxygen was not the only thing that troubled her. Thanks to all her Native American hocus-pocus, she also feared a more serious corruption of my soul—one that she said came into this world from a much darker place. Pretty dramatic, wouldn’t you say?”