Текст книги "Shattered Secrets"

Автор книги: Karen Harper

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Текущая страница: 18 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

“Yeah, I want to call her. You know my motto—any clue will do. Anything. Vic, Tess has vanished into thin air.”

Vic read Gabe the phone number, then said, “I’ll go into New Town to look for her. Leave Peg on the phones here. Don’t panic, okay?”

“Aren’t you worried too? Instead of New Town, how about you drive out to my place, then hers?”

“Because I drove her this morning—remember? She doesn’t have a car.”

“But maybe she had someone take her out to get it, since you and I were gone. It’s a long shot, but—”

“Okay, sure. Stay in touch.”

Stay in touch. Gabe felt haunted by the past. What he feared most in all this was losing Tess a second time.

* * *

It was just after dark when Miss Etta returned to the book barn, gave Tess another shot—this time in her upper arm—and cut the bonds around her feet. “That drug is for people, not an animal drug, and doesn’t take long to work, believe me.”

She pulled the gag from Tess’s mouth. Tess gasped for air and moved her tongue, trying to get some saliva going so she could speak. She had to talk this woman out of whatever her warped brain had planned. And facing Miss Etta’s mother, whom she recalled now as scary and sadistic, would be a trial too. Why was Miss Etta, at her age, still so completely under her mother’s thumb? Tess remembered how Sybil Falls had demanded hugs and kisses and complete obedience or Miss Etta would beat her as the old woman called her bad and evil. Was there some strain of dementia in this family, or had the entire world gone mad?

But then a thought hit Tess. She’d been just about ready to tell Miss Etta that Gabe knew about Dane’s drug source and that he’d found a list in Dane’s house of who bought drugs from him. She was hoping the lie would scare the woman, but suddenly realized it might make her move quicker to get rid of her—maybe put her out in that graveyard with Jill.

But, especially since Miss Etta didn’t know how much of a dose to give an adult and was worried Dane had been giving her weaker doses, Tess wondered if she could pretend to be under the influence of the drug and wait for her chance to stop this woman? If it was the drug she and Gabe had researched, she knew it made a person cooperate with a doctor’s commands. Maybe she could shove Miss Etta, hit her—something. Mama Sybil must be frail, wheelchair-bound, a paraplegic, so, unless they had more old pistols loaded here, Tess hoped she’d have a chance. She had to fight the effects of the drug, keep telling herself that she could get away from this woman, only pretend to obey her, to stay alert. But she had to find and save Sandy too.

“Upsy-daisy, little Teresa,” Miss Etta said, and helped her to her feet. Tess gasped. Upsy-daisy, just like the word smackings, triggered a flood of terrible memories. Tess longed to shake off the woman’s hands, but, pretending to be just a bit slow, she let Miss Etta lead her from the book barn. They shuffled past the bookmobile, across the dark yard, up onto the porch and through the back door of the big frame house. Though her hands were still tied behind her, she was desperate to flee. She only felt a bit groggy and thought she could do it. But she had to keep telling herself to comply with this woman’s orders until she could find Sandy.

Miss Etta led her up a set of back stairs that must have once been used by servants. How familiar the house seemed. Her ankles burned, and her legs were sore from being tied so long. Her cut wrist pained her. She had to pretend to be subdued, out of it. Her thoughts rampaged when she needed to keep calm.

If Sandy was upstairs, how Tess wanted to comfort the girl. If only Gabe would realize who had taken her, what had happened. Tess tried to recall what she’d said to Peggy when she left the sheriff’s office. She’d been on the phone with that call about a raccoon bite. Tess couldn’t remember if she’d told Peggy that she was going to the library or not.

Gabe would kill her for walking into a trap—if Miss Etta didn’t kill her first.

29

Gabe took Sandy Kenton’s mother aside in the church parking lot being used as the base, where scores of volunteers had fanned out for the search. Some were already reporting in—that they’d found nothing.

“Lindell, I need to tell you something.”

“You’ve found her?” she demanded, grabbing his arm.

“No, though we keep eliminating possibilities. Tess Lockwood’s gone missing. I just wanted you to know that my deputy and I notified the groups before they left to look for Tess too. I know you’ve talked to her lately. Any unusual hints about where she could be?”

The woman’s face went blank for a moment. She’d aged so much in the six days since Sandy disappeared. Stringy hair, no makeup, the ravages of little sleep. The torment of not knowing what was happening to her only daughter—if she was still alive.

“Tess?” she asked, her voice shaky. “Like, the kidnapper’s taken her again? An adult this time?”

“Around noon today, she walked from the sheriff’s office to the library, left there and disappeared.”

Her eyes widened. “Oh, no! Oh, no, no!” She lifted her clasped hands to her mouth, clenching her fingers. “But wouldn’t that mean the same person who has Sandy and Jill wants to harm her—shut her up? Gabe, I know you’ve lived and breathed this.”

“I– Yes, all over again, times three.”

“I hear Tess is special to you. Don’t look so surprised. This is Cold Creek, you know. Word gets around. I felt close to Tess the few times we talked. She helped me so much, not only that she came back, but just that she understood my pain. We have to find her and the girls.”

“You and Win did a great job with the TV plea you made,” he said. “It’s been running on most channels, some nationwide.”

“So the mayor told me. You know, Tess said she’d thought of running home to Michigan, but there was more than one reason to stay here now. She said she had to help you, stay close to you.”

Tears stung his eye. “Thanks, Lindell. She hadn’t put it like that to me. I’d like to keep her here, but all this has to end. I need to find her—and Sandy—fast.”

He touched the brim of his hat and started away, but she grabbed his elbow. “Maybe they’re together. Sandy, Tess and Jill. I’d like to think that. Tess helped me, and I’ll bet she could help Sandy too.”

“Hold that thought. I’ve got to get back to the search. You’ll be the first to know anything,” he told her and headed toward his vehicle.

He got in, started the engine and pulled away. He was so focused on Tess he’d forgotten to tell Lindell that the Ohio State Highway Patrol was going to fly a chopper over local wooded areas using FLIR, heat thermal imaging. Vic was keeping him updated on any tips or other information that came in on the sheriff’s phone lines or reports from searchers in the field. In the field—the standard cop term almost made him laugh, but this time it was literal.

* * *

“Hitchetty-hatchetty, up we go,” Miss Etta recited as they climbed the back stairs, passed the door to the second floor and kept going toward the attic. Tess was convinced Miss Etta sometimes believed Tess was Teresa, a little girl again.

She had hoped that would help to get the woman off guard, but the librarian from hell had outsmarted her again. She held a cocked antique pistol pressed tight to her ribs as they climbed. “As you know I have not one moment’s hesitation about using this!” she’d said, and had given Tess a lecture about the gun’s pioneer history. Tess’s heart nearly pounded out of her chest and not from the exertion of the climb. What if that old gun went off? It was aimed right at her heart.

Miss Etta chattered nonstop about next to nothing until she said something that put Tess on alert. “I swear I’m going to have blisters on my hands from all that digging. It’s been a while since I dug that much, and my shoulder and back muscles are aching like the very dickens. Interesting that one of the greatest writers in the English language had a last name that’s a euphemism for the word devil. That’s Charles Dickens, my dear, but he did have a mistress and was unfaithful to his wife, so he wasn’t lily-white. Your father wasn’t either.”

However much Tess wanted to scream at this woman, she had to try to convince her the drug had made her dopey. “He’s gone,” she mumbled.

“Yes, I know, and that is sad for you Lockwood girls that he’s so far away, but perhaps best he’s out of your lives. In the old days, you know,” she rattled on, “these servant stairs were important. The maids and kitchen help slept on the top floor and needed to go up and down without being seen by the family. Speaking of Dickens, servant stairs are very Victorian. Well, times have changed and even my family doesn’t have an ‘upstairs, downstairs’ lifestyle anymore. And this is hardly Downton Abbey.”

Tess tried to ignore all that and desperately looked for her chance. She concentrated on what she’d say when she saw Sandy Kenton, the treasure for which Gabe had searched so hard. She was excited that the most recent drug that had been injected into her arm wasn’t making her particularly groggy.

Tess prayed she’d be able to keep her head in this. She counted the turns of the stairs, lit by only a ceiling light on each tiny landing. The steps were narrow and steep. Coming down, she could easily fall, especially if she was pulling a child behind her.

“Now, Teresa, I expect you to apologize to Mama Sybil for running off the way you did, when you knew she loved you. It hurt her terribly. Hurt me too in more ways than one. I’m going to leave you with her and Sandy while I finish something outside, but it won’t take me long, and then I’ll be back. You, of course, will be tied, and Sandy will be on Mama Sybil’s lap. Finally, she’s learned to obey. Spare the rod and spoil the child, you know. You learned that much slower than Sandy. You were quite an independent little miss when you first came to live with us.”

Again, Tess had to force herself not to answer back, to tell this demented woman off. It made her sick to her stomach, but she murmured only, “Yes, Miss Etta.”

“Actually that old saying, Spare the rod and spoil the child, only takes its inspiration from the book of Proverbs, but verbatim it goes way back to a poem called Piers Plowman in 1377, and then the adage showed up in another poem in 1662.”

Tess wanted to scream. This seemed a nightmare from which she must surely wake. She longed to tell this woman her trivial knowledge was nothing—nothing!—because she was a monster. But she had to hold herself together. At least Mama Sybil would be in her wheelchair, and she should be able to overtake her when Miss Etta went to finish her business. Of digging graves? Even if Miss Etta locked them in, even if she tied Tess, surely, with Sandy’s help—if she wasn’t drugged—she’d be able to get away, break out, rush downstairs with Sandy, or at least get to a phone in the house to call 911. She’d bet her life—which was probably what she was doing—that this house had a landline, maybe with an old dial phone.

The other thought Tess had as they reached the chained attic door was that she was still terrified to face that horrible old lady again. If Mama Sybil had a pistol too, would she be risking a bullet to the brain, like Dane?

* * *

Even after all the negative reports came in from the volunteer teams, Gabe had exhausted himself searching. He was running on sheer adrenaline, guts and fear. He’d explored Tess’s house, attic to cellar, and about jumped out of his skin when his flashlight had illumined a dummy on the floor of the basement. He remembered that Grace had done sewing and alterations to earn extra money before they moved to the Hear Ye compound. It was an old dressmaker’s mannequin, but it had looked like a woman on the floor at first.

He was so desperate that he had requested another search warrant, this one for Bright Star’s compound. He was afraid he was getting to be persona non grata with the judge, but he didn’t care anymore. Not about his health, his job, his life—he just wanted to find Tess, Jill and Sandy safe. Had someone taken Tess off Main Street outside the library?

He drove to the burned-out site of Marva Green’s old house and searched the back buildings again. Nothing but trash, owls and rats. He sat down on an upturned tin tub and tried to think about where else he could search.

He decided to go back to the office, make that call to the church woman who had counseled Tess. His hope was that maybe she’d kind of debriefed little Teresa and could shed new light on what happened all those years ago. He remembered his father saying that Tess’s mother thought it best if no one mentioned the horrible experience, but just tried to go back to normal. Normal? Nothing had ever been normal again.

* * *

Miss Etta unlocked the padlock on the chain holding the attic door closed, and it rattled as it uncoiled itself. Tess was tempted to shove the woman down the stairs, but that pistol could go off. And would it endanger Sandy if she was with Mama Sybil on the other side of that door? If only she could get her hands untied like her feet.

Tess steeled herself for what she’d find within, but she also realized that, if Miss Etta locked them in again, they weren’t getting out of this chained door without an ax.

With the pistol still pressed to her side, Tess shuffled into the dim attic. She scanned the length of it, built with a long center section and two wings. A small bed under the eaves, a few toys—and another Mr. Mean leaning against the slanted wall under the eaves. Two bare lightbulbs dangled from the ceiling. Old hump-backed trunks were stored here. Stacks of old-fashioned hat boxes, several old, cracked paintings, bedsprings and a headboard, all suddenly, horribly familiar.

But why would Miss Etta keep her mother up here? Those stairs must be close to impossible for a crippled person in a wheelchair. It was chilly here too, so wouldn’t she keep her mother downstairs? Tess recalled that it was the first floor where she’d been forced to climb onto the old woman’s lap to be cuddled and petted—and held down to be beaten when she disobeyed, all under the watchful eye of a stag head mounted over the fireplace mantel.

As Tess’s eyes adjusted, she saw Mama Sybil at the far end of the room sitting slumped in her wheelchair. And Sandy—she was alive!—sat in her lap.

Miss Etta prodded Tess closer with the gun still in her ribs. Her first instinct was to comfort Sandy, who, thank God, turned her head and moved one leg to show she was alert. She must be drugged or too terrified to speak.

Miss Etta prodded Tess. “Apologize to Mama Sybil for escaping!” She stopped Tess about ten feet from Mama Sybil. “Get on your knees and tell her you are very, very sorry!”

Tess dropped to her knees with the pistol now pressed to the nape of her neck. Before she could speak, a deep voice behind her spoke. “Is this our Teresa come back to us, Etta?”

Tess gasped and jerked.

Sandy stirred on Mama Sybil’s lap and sniffled.

“I’m sorry I ran away, Mama Sybil,” Tess said. “Can I come closer?”

“All right,” the voice from behind intoned. “But you behave or else.”

Miss Etta was speaking for her mother. Tess thought maybe the old woman had suffered a stroke and couldn’t talk.

“On your knees, forward,” Miss Etta said, in what Tess recalled was a perfect rendition of her cruel mother’s voice.

Tess scooted forward. She forced a smile at Sandy and mouthed reassuring words. Sandy, hello.

Then she gasped. There was no woman holding Sandy. She—it—had no face except an enlarged photograph of Mama Sybil with stuffing behind it and a nylon stocking pulled over it to which a white wig was tied or sewn. The body was maybe wood sticks, like a scarecrow, wrapped with cloth, or stuffed, with fake arms and legs. The gown was old-fashioned and smelled stale and musty. A crocheted afghan was over the legs clear down to a pair of old black, laced shoes. It was so grotesque, yet so real from a distance, that Tess felt she’d been punched in the stomach. She almost screamed.

“She’s not...not there!” she cried. “Is she downstairs? Did she die?”

It was the wrong thing to say. The blow to her head was hard. It stunned her. She heard the child squeal. And then she hit the floor.

30

Tess felt a small, gentle hand brushing her hair from her face. Her head hurt horribly. Where was she?

Then she remembered. She opened her eyes. Sandy Kenton was bent over her, her little face wet with tears.

“Is she gone?” Tess asked.

“Miss Etta carried Mama Sybil downstairs to put her to bed. She said Mr. Mean would hurt me if I talked to you, but I just want to ask one thing.”

Tess groaned and struggled to sit up. Her hands were still tied behind her back and her feet were bound again. Only Sandy’s hands were tied, but the girl was tethered to the empty wheelchair, which she’d dragged close enough to reach Tess.

“Ask me,” Tess said, trying to sound calm and quiet when she wanted to sob and scream. “I’m your friend. My name is Tess.”

“Do you know my mommy?”

“Yes. Yes, I know her, and she wants you to come home.”

“I can’t go home. I can’t even say it or Mr. Mean—”

“I know because they kept me here too once, but I got away from them and Mr. Mean and went home to my mommy. And you can too, if you help me.”

“But Mama Sybil is my other mommy now.”

“Mama Sybil isn’t real. Have you seen her walk and talk since you’ve been here?”

“No, she’s always like that, a big doll. But I have to say she’s real.”

“Sandy, turn your back to my back and let me try to untie you. Then you untie me so we can both go home. Your mommy and daddy want you to come home with me. Come on now, turn around back to back, okay? We might not have much time.”

“We don’t. Miss Etta said soon you are going to go to sleep with someone named Jill and some pioneer people, her family.”

Tess steeled herself to stay calm. Jill really was dead and buried out back. “Okay, good job, Sandy,” Tess said, as the child got close enough that she could begin to fumble with her ties. But her own hands were bound so tight she couldn’t grasp a cord to loosen Sandy’s. Maybe she should have studied the knots before trying to undo them. At least Sandy’s hands were small and sweaty and not tied quite as tight as her own.

As she tried to loosen the girl’s ties, Tess spoke to her about the two searches for her, told her that the police would give back the Barbie doll she left behind. Tess fought the worst headache she’d ever had and prayed that Etta Falls, who must be digging another grave, would not come back in time.

Finally she managed to free one of the child’s hands, and then they both popped free.

“Sandy, turn around and see if you can untie my hands.”

“I have scissors I cut out paper dolls with, but they don’t have sharp points.”

“Yes, get them. Try sawing at my ties. Hurry, please.”

“But they’re in the corner with Mr. Mean.”

“Mr. Mean isn’t real, and I won’t let him hurt you. Let’s run away from here and go see your mommy and daddy! Hurry, honey, please!”

She scurried away but was back fast, sawing away at Tess’s wrist bonds. “Miss Etta shoots her old guns out in back sometimes. I hear them go bang!”

Tess tried to stretch the ropes as the girl cut and sawed. Her hands were completely numb. She heard the slam of a door downstairs—surely not the gunshot Sandy had mentioned. Miss Etta must be back in the house.

“Sandy, never mind that. Try to cut my leg ties. Hurry. Saw at them while I stretch them,” Tess urged the child as footsteps echoed on the stairs. Tess knew this sort of scissors well, good only for cutting colored construction paper. This wasn’t going to work.

“Listen to me, Sandy. I want you to go over behind the door Miss Etta will come through. Hide behind it and keep really quiet when she opens it. I’ll do something to get her attention, and then you run down the stairs and outside. Can you open the downstairs door if it’s locked?”

“It’s dark outside.”

“But if we can’t both run, you have to get away. That’s what I did and someone found me, took me home to my mommy. Can you do that?”

“I don’t want to go without you. Miss Etta said you and me can be next to her pioneer family. I don’t want to be there alone.”

Tess was not only panicked but furious. She yanked at her fraying bonds in a frenzy. The footsteps stopped and Sandy kept cutting. Maybe Miss Etta had gone to the second floor to visit her mother, if she was an invalid. But Tess had the surest feeling Sybil Falls was dead. Miss Etta had probably buried the old woman out back and told no one. She couldn’t bear to let the past go and tried to hold on to it any way she could.

Suddenly the ties around her legs gave way! Jumping up on numb feet, Tess stumbled like a drunk, almost lost her balance. Pulling Sandy tight to her, they huddled together behind the door.

“Listen to me now, honey,” Tess whispered. “When she opens this door, don’t hold on to me. I’m going to hit the door back into her. Maybe knock her gun away, maybe even push her down the stairs. Then I’ll get on my knees and you get on my back like playing horsey.”

Wide-eyed, the child nodded solemnly.

“Okay, then. When we play horsey, you try to wrap your legs around me. But if you can’t because of my tied hands, you just stand on the ropes between my wrists. But there is just one rule. When you put your arms around me for the ride downstairs and outside, don’t grab my neck so I can’t breathe. Okay? Promise? And—if I fall, or something bad happens to me, you run fast away from here and hide in the cornfield until daylight when a car comes by. Make sure Miss Etta doesn’t find you.”

“I’m afraid of cornfields at night. Scarecrows can be in them.”

“I know, but don’t let her find you again. If you see a car going by, you yell your name to them, say that they should call the sheriff. Okay? Promise?” she repeated as the footsteps sounded on the stairs again.

Making a little X on her chest, the child whispered, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

* * *

Gabe thought Melanie Parkinson’s voice was calm, almost soothing. He was sure she must have been a comfort to little Teresa years ago. Had his father even known the child had been counseled at church? That information was never recorded, and he wondered if it could have been some sort of help.

“I’m asking you to think back twenty years to the Lockwood kidnap case,” he said to Mrs. Parkinson after he explained the situation.

“The so-called Cold Creek kidnapper. Yes, I remember the events and little Teresa Lockwood well. She’d been brutalized and terrified, so much so it had changed her personality. Inward, shy, afraid, when her mother said she’d been so bold and outgoing before that.”

“What would help me now,” he said without explaining Tess was missing again—it pained him to even say it—“is if you can recall anything specific she might have said about the place she was held or the person who held her. Anything!”

“Yes, all right. Several of her drawings we did for therapy were of a room with a deer head on the wall and a huge, oversize window. I assume she was wishing she could have gone out it, or that might have been how she actually escaped, because she was iffy on that. Out the window, she drew small gravestones.”

“She recently recalled that view. Anything else?”

“She once drew a scarecrow and then crayoned through it with near violence. Oh, and for such a young child, I think she referred to the cemetery once as a pioneer cemetery.”

Gabe sat up straight. He knew of only two in the area, one in the very back of the Glen Rest Cemetery outside town, but the only place Tess could have seen that from was the caretaker’s house. Clemment Dixon was surely no kidnapper, and he’d been in the hospital in Chillicothe when Tess was taken. And the other such cemetery—a little, old, one-family graveyard—was behind the Falls house on Blackberry Road.

A chill raced up Gabe’s spine. It didn’t seem possible and yet... The library was just two doors down from the shop where Sandy had disappeared. That old rattletrap of a bookmobile was always parked out back. Tess recalled the sounds of trains and the waterfall...but that cemetery was the thing.

“Sheriff, are you there? I just thought of something else. Teresa’s mother told me she didn’t like to read, didn’t like to be read to, but several of her drawings had rows of books on shelves lining the walls and—”

“Thanks, Melanie. You’ve been a big help, maybe more than you know. I’ll call back later.”

Disconnecting his phone, he leaped from behind his desk. It couldn’t be, and yet it made horrible sense. “Peg,” he shouted as he ran down the hall, strapping on his gun belt. “Call Agent Reingold and Jace. Tell them no lights, no sirens, park on the road, but they need to meet me at the Falls house on Blackberry Road.”

“But I didn’t get a 911 from her—”

“Now!”

* * *

Tess heard the chain rattle loose on the other side of the door. Sandy was holding on to her, but it was too late to remind her not to cling to her when Miss Etta stepped in.

The door opened. “I’m back,” she sang out. Tess could see her through the crack between the door and the frame as it opened, as the librarian stepped up to their level.

Tess threw herself against the door. It slammed shut. She heard the woman scream, bounce down the stairs, but how far? And what about the gun?

Tess turned her back to the door, grabbed the old knob, twisted it and opened the door. Miss Etta lay on the second-floor landing, looking stunned. In the dim stairwell, Tess couldn’t tell if she had the pistol or not, or even if she was conscious.

“Get on my back,” Tess told Sandy, bending down. “Horsey time.”

The child obeyed. She was heavier than Tess had expected. At least she could stick her skinny legs between Tess’s ribs and her tied arms. Trying to flee, desperate not to fall, Tess started down the steps just as Miss Etta moved, tried to right herself.

Tess kept going. The woman had the pistol, raised it and pointed it. They would never dodge a bullet in this narrow space. At least Sandy was behind her, so Tess would take the shot, but that could still leave both of them buried out back.

Scraping her shoulder along the stairwell wall, Tess rushed toward Miss Etta, tried to brace herself with the extra weight behind her and kicked at the woman. The pistol went off, but the gun fell to the floor. Tess waited for the pain but felt nothing. Leaning against the staircase wall, she kicked at Miss Etta again to get her out of the way, then edged past her and fled.

Down, turn, down, turn. No doubt the back door would be locked. It was, but the old skeleton-type key was in it. “Get down, get down!” she told Sandy. “I have to turn that key so we can get outside.”

She nearly dumped the girl on the hall floor, turned her back and fumbled with the lock. But she heard footsteps on the stairs. Miss Etta could still have the gun, or did those old ones only have one bullet?

Her hands behind her back, Tess twisted the key, then the knob. The door opened. Sandy clung to her waist. The storm door was locked, a small sliding lock.

“You come back, you bad girls!” Mama Sybil’s deep voice came from above. “I’ll have to smack and shoot you both!”

Please, Lord, Tess prayed. Please get us out of this madhouse!

She was going to kick out the glass. No running into the house, where Miss Etta could trap them. Tied like this, there was no way she could use a phone or get out another door. She was going to leave this place forever, one way or the other. Miss Etta’s footsteps and Mama Sybil’s voice came closer. Sandy started to wail. It almost took Tess back twenty years, but she fought the fear. She heaved her shoulder into the glass, but bounced back. She had to get Sandy away, run into the safety of the cornfield...

Miss Etta, bloody and disheveled, stumbled down the last few stairs. It looked like another pistol in her hand as the woman bounced off the wall and almost fell. She raised the gun, pointed it at Tess and fired—but the only sound was a click.

Tess turned to the glass door, lifted her foot and kicked repeatedly at it. It cracked, crunched and finally shattered, leaving only the frame. Miss Etta righted herself, came closer and grabbed the screaming child, but Tess shoved and elbowed her away.

“Get outside!” Tess screamed at Sandy.

“I have more guns!” Miss Etta said, in her own voice. “I’ll get my other guns!” She didn’t run back upstairs but down the hall.

When Sandy seemed frozen in fear, Tess stepped through the opening, then said, calmly, quietly, “Sandy, come out now. We are going to see your mommy.”

The girl shuffled to the door. “It’s dark and if I run away, Mr. Mean will get me.”

“No, Mr. Mean is in the house, and he will get you if you don’t come out! Take a big, big giant step out. We are going home!”

The child finally obeyed. Tess yearned to be able to lift her, hold her, but there was no time to even get her on her back again. Tess looked behind them. Miss Etta stood silhouetted by the inside light in the open, broken door, holding another pistol. Tess and Sandy ran toward the field behind the graveyard with its old stones like broken teeth.

The cornfield was a sanctuary, instead of a site that would have terrified her just a few days ago. They’d made it only a few rows in when the entire area seemed bathed with light.

“Police! Don’t move! Put that down, Miss Etta!” Gabe’s voice shouted.

There was a gunshot. More men’s voices.

“She shot herself!” Gabe cried out. “I’m going into the house to find them!”

“Gabe!” Tess shouted. “Sandy and I are here in the field!”

With the child clinging to her waist so hard she had to drag her, Tess walked from the shelter of the cornfield, feeling free for the first time since she could remember. Three big beams of light lit her way, almost blinded her, but she saw Gabe, Vic and Jace Miller, guns drawn. Tess walked right into Gabe’s crushing embrace. “Jill?” he asked.

“Dead, I think. The cemetery—not sure who else, but I bet you’ll find Sybil Falls there too, when no one knew she was dead. Miss Etta was digging my grave.”

He cut Tess’s ties, then kneeled to look at Sandy with his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll take you home,” he told the child. “Your mother and father are going to be so happy.” He stood and looked at Tess, lifted his hand to finger the huge, tender scab on her head. “Maybe we can be happy too,” he whispered before he turned back to Vic.