6th Sense

by Kate Calloway

  "Can you pull yourself up?" I asked, feeling my arms tremble against the weight.

  "I'm trying!"

  "Just inch yourself over, like on the monkey bars!" I yelled. "That's it! I'm right behind you!"

  Slowly, hand over hand, Maggie and I worked our way sideways toward the bank of the river. By the time we reached safety, we both collapsed in the mud.

  An eternity passed before our breathing became less ragged and we were able to sit up. Suddenly, Maggie reached over and grabbed my arm. "Did you hear that?" We were both trembling, more from exhaustion than the cold, I guessed, though if we didn't get out of our wet clothes soon, we might need to worry about hypothermia.

  "Hear what?" I asked, straining to hear past the roar of the river.

  "That," she said, looking at me oddly, cocking her head.

  "Yeah. I think I did hear it." I got to my feet and Maggie stood up beside me on wobbly legs.

  "It sounded like someone laughing," she said.

  I felt my pulse quicken. "That's funny. To me it sounded like a little girl crying."

  We looked at each other and a shared shiver ran through us. It occurred to us both that Buddy had just sent us her own peculiar good-bye.

  "Cass, about what I said back there. About Diane. I shouldn't have done that. I was out of line and —"

  "Maggie. Be quiet. You're smart and you're beautiful and I love you, but sometimes you talk too damn much." I pulled her to me and covered her lips with mine.

  Epilogue

  It was Sergeant Grimes, of all people, who found us. I never thought I'd be happy to see the s.o.b., but I suppose the same could be said for him. We actually hugged, before common sense kicked in and we remembered we hated each other.

  Maggie and I gave our depositions, doing our best to keep Martha out of it. There was no point in jeopardizing her career. Harold Bone was let go and an all-points bulletin was put out for Buddy. That was before they found her kayak downstream, battered and broken, lodged in an outcropping where it had come to its final rest.

  Though they searched the river for days, using dogs and dragging the bottom where they could, her body was never found. She was unofficially thought dead, but her case would stay open until her remains were found.

  Maggie had been afraid of how the group members might handle what Buddy had done, but surprisingly, it had brought them closer together and the group was going strong. We decided not to mention my role in the whole thing and I simply dropped out of the group.

  "I still don't get the Z thing," Grimes said to me during our last discussion on the matter. We were in his office, Maggie on one side of me, Martha on the other, though she was keeping pretty quiet. Grimes had gone over the conversations he'd recorded until he was blue in the face, though he knew he could never use them in court, if it ever came to that.

  I thought of my last e-mail from Todd Pal. He'd finally found the link we'd wanted: a suspected child-beater who'd died in a house fire. She hadn't shown up in the initial search of rural areas, but when he expanded the search to include cities, he'd found Thelma Moore right smack dab in the middle of Austin, Texas. I thought of the slightly Southern lilt in Buddy's speech and felt sure he'd found Buddy's mother.

  Todd, who'd become consumed with curiosity over the case, went above and beyond the call of duty, and his summary was enlightening. According to the local sheriffs records, no one knew whatever happened to the woman's daughter. At first they thought she'd died in the fire, but her remains were never found. Since no one had seen the kid in years, including neighbors and school officials, there was speculation, based on early child-abuse reports, that the mother might have killed her and buried her somewhere on the property. They'd brought in dogs, hoping to unearth a child's grave, but the effort proved fruitless and they abandoned this theory. One neighbor said she thought the girl had gone to live with a relative, but an exhaustive search revealed no next of kin on record.

  The fire and subsequent burning death of Thelma Moore was finally ruled a suicide and the case was closed. Buddy, the forgotten child, had gotten away with the perfect murder.

  I hadn't shared this information with anyone else and I wasn't sure why. Maybe if Grimes had Buddy's real name, he could trace her somehow. If she was still alive. It might save the lives of others down the road. The lives of other abusers.

  "You think maybe her last name's got a Z in it?" Grimes was asking.

  "I guess we'll never know," I said. "I think she fancied herself a modern-day Zorro. Out there righting wrongs, giving the bad guys a taste of their own medicine."

  "Hmph," Grimes mumbled. "It just don't make any sense."

  But in a way, it did.

  Maggie shot me a knowing look and Martha, glancing up, caught it. I smiled innocently at Martha and reached over to squeeze Maggie's hand.

  "Not in here, you don't. Get on out of here, all three of you. Cripes. This whole damn town's run through with lesbos."

  We left, laughing, and walked out into the afternoon sunshine.

  "Tina says if you come over for dinner tonight, she'll cook Italian." Martha's eyes were dancing. "Unless you two have other plans."

  "Maybe a rain check?" Maggie said. There was no mistaking the husky tone of her voice, and I didn't have to be psychic to know what she had in mind.