by L V Gaudet
The little girl who had been outside comes into the kitchen, looking up at her hopefully. “Can I have a cookie?”
“Yes,” she says absently.
Kathy joins her in the kitchen, standing to the side awkwardly and feeling lost.
Cassie looks at her.
Kathy clears her throat, not sure she can trust her voice. “Jane-.”
“It’s Cassie.”
Kathy nods, looking down guiltily.
“Back at the McAllister farm, you didn’t come with us,” Cassie says. “You could have escaped. Instead you stayed. Why?”
“I-I don’t know. I just couldn’t I guess.”
“Did you have a chance to stop him? Before he came after us?”
Kathy can’t meet her eyes. She nods so slightly it’s almost imperceptible. She tries to swallow the lump growing in her throat and can’t. She feels like it will choke her. That might be a good thing right now.
“He killed her. Connie. When he caught up to us, he grabbed her and shook her like a dog shakes a damned rabbit. He was like a wild animal.”
“I-I’m sorry.”
“You stayed with him. You went with him. Did you protect him too?”
Kathy nods, a tear rolling down her cheek, followed by another. “He-he won’t hurt me.” Her voice is small. “He won’t hurt you either. You are his sister. You know that, right?”
“So Sophie tells me.”
“Do you remember your father?” Kathy looks at her finally, her eyes looking red and bruised with the pain filling her heart.
“Yes and no. I have a few vague memories of the man Aunt Sophie says raised me, the man who brought me here, Jason McAllister. I have no memories of my real father.
Sophie told me what happened. Everything. She offered to help me find my real father. She said I could go back, reunite with him and live a normal life.”
Kathy nods. “What are you going to do?”
Cassie looks at her curiously.
They turn at the sound of the door opening, footsteps and voices.
“Kill him,” Cassie says softly, her face calm and placid.
Kathy looks at her quickly. Which him? Her attention is drawn back to the approaching people.
“That’s Jason’s truck,” Michael says.
“Who is that with him?” Sophie asks.
Michael squints to see in the distance. “It looks like a kid.”
“Not another one.” Sophie’s tone is annoyance.
They wait for the truck to reach them and stop. Jason gets out, the boy climbing out the other side.
The runaway, Billy the Kid, looks around curiously. He eyes Michael and Sophie warily.
“They won’t turn you in,” Jason says.
“Another stray pup?” Sophie complains, shaking her head with disapproval. “You know they don’t approve.”
“I couldn’t leave him. He wasn’t safe.”
“From them? That’s your own doing.”
“That’s what I thought too. Turned out a wack job lives across the street. He is obsessed with the kid. He had him locked in a trunk like a coffin.”
Michael is eyeing Jason warily.
Billy studies his surroundings, pretending he doesn’t hear. It’s usually safer that way. The dog trots up to check him out and he pets him idly.
“If he’s not on their radar, he’s safe with us.”
Sophie softens imperceptibly. “What’s his name?”
“He’s going with Billy.”
“Billy, do you like cookies?”
Billy shrugs, not looking at her.
“Let’s go in for tea.”
Michael goes in first, feeling a rush of worry and the urge to protect both Kathy and Cassie.
Billy follows, scouting out escape routes as he goes.
Sophie and Jason come in together last.
“You’ve made a pretty big mess of things,” she says.
“Yes, I have.”
Sophie nods towards Michael ahead of them. “Anderson called me in to clean up your mess.”
Jason nods. “I suspected that might happen. I came to clean it up myself.”
Sophie pauses, making him stop, looking up at him.
“I’m taking David home,” Jason says.
Her eyes flash understanding. “The girl too?”
“Depends how much she knows.”
Sophie shakes her head, leaning in. “It doesn’t matter. We’ve moved past that. They want the whole mess cleaned up.”
“Including me.”
Sophie nods. “You have both become liabilities.”
They walk on, catching up to Michael and Billy stopped at the kitchen doorway. They stop, Jason joining Michael, both staring in surprise. Billy edges towards the hallway wall, looking for a clear path in case he has to run.
In the kitchen, Cassie is staring at Michael with the guarded look of a rabbit facing the wolf. Her breath is coming in short quick breaths, her stance defensive. Kathy is staring at the other people in the kitchen in confusion. She turns to look at Michael, meeting his eyes with uncertainty, and blanches with fear when she sees Jason behind him.
“You’ve always been a hack, coming in the most obvious way when you could have come in unseen,” William McAllister growls, stepping forward. He almost smiles at the looks of shock on Michael’s and Jason’s faces.
He turns to Sophie. “You invited them?”
“No, they just showed up.”
William scowls and grunts. “That’s going to make this harder.”
He gives Michael and Jason a hard glare. “Bloody fools better behave themselves or I’ll put them down myself.”
Behind him the elderly Anderson, once a man who evoked fear in Jason in his youth, is fussing over two elderly women.
“Mom, Dad,” Jason says in shock.
Marjory turns, her face fluttering to confusion and then a smile. She pulls away from Anderson to shuffle over to Jason and hug him.
“We don’t have time for reunions,” Anderson snaps gruffly. “That damned detective is on his way, Jim McNelly.”
“We’re already packed,” Sophie says. “We were just waiting for you to show up.”
Anderson nods. “Let’s go.”
Michael, Jason, and Kathy follow in confusion as they all file out of the house.
Michael and Jason look towards their trucks.
“Leave them,” William snaps, “they know what you are driving. You got anything; toss it in the back of the truck.”
They see the truck now, parked on the side of the open garage, half hidden from view by a large tree. It’s an extended cab, newer. It will blend in well with the other vehicles on the road. They go to their trucks, grabbing the bags and tossing them in the back.
Anderson pulls a car out of the garage and William starts ushering the old women to it.
Michael stops Cassie on the way to the car. His eyes burn with a desperate need.
“What happened to you after,” he pauses. After I killed you. He can’t say it. He hopes she was too young, that she remembers nothing. “When we were kids, after the farm, where did you go?”
“I don’t want to talk about it right now.”
She gets in the car, leaving him standing there staring after her.
“We need to go,” Jason urges him on, steering him to the truck with Kathy.
“What do we do now?” Cassie asks. They are crammed together into three vehicles, following each other like a mini convoy. She is in the vehicle with William and Marjory McAllister, Anderson, and the surprisingly keen old Mrs. Bheals, former resident of the Bayburry Street Geriatric Home.
“There is only one thing we can do,” Anderson says. “We keep hiding the bodies.”
41Gone
The ancient brown Oldsmobile creaks and groans and rattles as it rolls over the driveway into the farmyard. It rolls up to stop in front of the house, the engine stuttering as Jim shuts it off. It starts ticking almost immediately as it begins cooling down.
&n
bsp; “Looks pretty quiet.” Lawrence looks around.
“Let’s see if anyone is home.”
The doors growl and squeal on their hinges as they get out, the car rocking from the released tension on the springs with McNelly’s weight lifted out.
They mount the stairs and knock on the door, listening. There is not a sound from inside. They wait, knock again, and exchange a look.
“Someone might be hurt inside.”
“Could be. We do have reason to suspect two serial killers are in the area, headed for his location.”
Jim tries the door. It is not locked.
“Country people, they never lock their doors.”
They go inside and look around. At first everything looks normal, like the residents may have simply gone out for the afternoon.
The go into the kitchen. They see the teapot and Jim walks over to it. He feels the outside. He looks at Lawrence.
“It’s still warm. It looks like we interrupted tea.”
“They knew we were coming,” Lawrence says.
“Let’s keep searching.”
They move on to the bedrooms, splitting up to search.
“Jim!” Lawrence calls from another room.
Jim follows his voice to another bedroom.
“Check it out.” He points to the closet shelf.
There is a clear difference between the thin layer of dust at the edge of the shelf and a dust free space on the shelf. It would fit a suitcase.
“Damn,” Jim mutters.
“We missed her,” Lawrence says.
“We missed them,” Jim corrects him. He pulls out one of the dresses hanging on a hanger. “This is not the same size clothes that are hanging in the other bedroom. There were two women living here.”
“Kids too. Looks like a boy, maybe ten, and a girl, younger.”
“That’s not all.”
Lawrence looks at Jim curiously. Jim holds up a comic book. Billy the Kid.
“I found this downstairs. This was at the rooming house, in Jason McAllister’s room.”
“So, you think this is where Jason McAllister went.”
“It makes sense. Who can you trust more than family?”
“If you are right, that puts Jason and Sophie McAllister on the run with Michael Underwood and Jane Doe, aka David and Cassie McAllister.”
“The unsolved kidnapping of Brian and Stephanie Downey is solved, but we’ve lost them again. That case isn’t closed yet, and neither is my case on Michael Underwood.” Jim’s jaw works, his lips puffing out his moustache in thought.
“So where do we go from here?” Lawrence is still bothered by the sense of foreboding he felt. His dream of this place was no dream. It looks exactly like it did only he has never been here before.
“I think I’ll be taking a little vacation.”
Lawrence looks at Jim in surprise. “You’ve never taken a vacation.”
“I have a lot of time banked, maybe enough to find Michael, or David, or Brian, whatever I should call him. I’m going to find Michael Underwood no matter what it takes.”
Lawrence nods understanding. “I can work from the road. Most of my stories are there.”
Jim frowns. “You are still chasing ghosts, aren’t you? He didn’t leave you his files, you inherited his obsession.”
“I guess we both have our own obsessions then. I have a feeling they’re tied together more closely than we think.”
“So when we get back, we follow our leads and see where it goes.”
“You might just find your ghost,” Lawrence says quietly, “whoever killed your wife.”
A chill runs down Jim’s back. Suddenly he has the feeling Lawrence knows something he isn’t telling him. “Let’s get out of here.”
END
Killing David McAllister
Book 4: The McAllister Series
Part 1
Safety
1Promises
“Did you mean what you said? That you are going to kill him?” Kathy asks, looking at Cassie.
Kathy still feels the shock. It fills every fibre of her being, numbing her and pushing the world away to some distant place. She feels like she is trapped in a bad movie.
“Did I mean what?” Cassie does not look at her. She can’t. Every time she looks at Kathy she is filled with anger.
“At the farm; you said you are going to kill him. Did you mean it?”
“I meant it.” Cassie glances at her and quickly looks away.
Kathy swallows, thinking.
Do I ask? What will she do, kill me? Isn’t that what I want? To die? To get this all over with? The only way out of this is death.
“Who did you mean?” she asks, hesitating. “Which one of them are you going to kill?”
“Does it matter?”
Kathy feels nauseas. I don’t know who I want it to be, she thinks.
“I feel like this is unreal,” Kathy says. “I thought you were dead.”
“I’m not. No thanks to you.”
“That’s harsh.”
“You deserve it.”
Kathy’s throat constricts and her eyes burn with the tears that threaten to come.
“It’s time to go.” The voice has the raspy tremor of age.
They look up at Anderson’s intrusion. Kathy is anxious he somehow knows what they are talking about.
Cassie gets up and walks away without looking back.
Kathy watches her go. “She hates me,” she says softly.
“She has good reason to,” Anderson says.
He reaches one age-gnarled hand down to help her up.
She reaches up, taking his hand and letting him help her up, surprised at the strength in his withered muscles.
They walk to the vehicles together, where everyone is waiting.
Anderson moves to walk next to William.
“We have to drop off your Mrs. Bheals somewhere at the first chance,” Anderson whispers to him. “We have too many people involved in this already. I don’t think I can do anything for that woman David brought, but we can get rid of the old woman before it’s too late for her.”
William nods.
“I couldn’t leave her there. You saw the place. What it’s like; the patients. She doesn’t belong there. There is nothing wrong with that woman’s mind. I don’t know why she was in that place.”
“Family probably wanted to put her where she can’t trouble them,” Anderson says. “It happens when you get old.”
“What about the kid?” William asks, his eyes shifting to look at the kid following Jason.
“I don’t know. I have to find out.” Anderson’s face is grim.
I don’t want to tell them the kid is probably going to have to be disposed of, he thinks. But, William probably already knows that.
2Open Doors
Jim McNelly is sitting at a small battered table in a very unpleasant run-down motel room. The ugly wallpaper has stains he would rather not try to identify. The carpet is a worn down shag that never should have happened, and the décor a nineteen thirties thrift store match. The room has a decidedly disagreeable odor reminiscent of the curious stink of death.
His cell phone rings.
“McNelly,” he gruffs into the phone.
I pulled some strings and got those DNA samples pushed through.”
Even distorted by the bad connection, Beth’s voice is a ray of sunshine in the dreary room.
“Beth, I could kiss you right now.”
“Jim, that’s sexual harassment.”
She is teasing, of course. Beth knows he does not mean it as anything more than a metaphor to express his thrill at the news.
“Save it for internal,” he jokes back. “What are the results?”
“We have confirmation,” Beth says. “The match came back. There is a ninety-nine point six percent chance Donald Downey is the father of the Jane Doe.”
Jim blinks back the tears that suddenly come to his eyes. He feels stupid for it, even with no one here to witnes
s it. He swallows. His voice has just the hint of a tremor when he speaks again.
“What about the other one?”
The silence waiting for Beth to respond is torture. Finally she speaks, hesitantly.
“Michael Underwood is Donald Downey’s son.”
The rest of her words come from far away, hollow and empty while Jim’s world drops out from under him and he stiffens with a slow smouldering anger. Her voice grows more distant with each word.
“Michael is Brian Downey. Jim, you did it. You solved the cold case of the disappearance of Brian and Stephanie Downey. I don’t know if we will find anything confirming if they are also David and Cassie McAllister.”
When he does not respond, she says his name into the silence of the phone, waits, and repeats his name.
“Jim.”
“Jim.”
“Jim.”
He snaps out of it, shaking off the shock enveloping him to focus on the phone call again. The shock is as pointless as the crimes he investigates. He knew it was coming, the DNA would confirm what they already know, but hearing that confirmation is still jarring.
It’s not closure, he thinks. There will be no closure. Not until I find Michael Underwood and take him down.
“Beth,” he manages into the phone.
“Jim, if you can find Jason McAllister and get him to confess, or get Michael to give you a statement, you will have this. You will have Jason McAllister on kidnapping Madelaine Downey and her children, and the murder of Madelaine Downey.”
“Have you had any luck tracing any of them?” Jim’s voice still has an edge to it.
“No. Sophie and William McAllister have vanished off the grid. There has been no action on their bank accounts and credit cards.”
“You aren’t telling me something. I can hear it in your voice. What are you leaving out, Beth?”
Jim is met by silence.
On the other end, sitting at her desk in their shared office at the small precinct, Beth’s red-nailed fingertips go nervously to her mouth. She starts chewing her lacquered nails, a habit she never had before.
The discovery of a massive multi-generational hidden graveyard in the woods brought out a host of new nervous ticks for her as new revelations are revealed.
