by Edwin Dasso
It took all the strength she had to lift her hand. She reached for him but something, a cuff, a band, something held her back. Oblivious to her struggle, Noah continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
“I found the cat down here, cowering under some boards. He was in bad shape. One ear ragged, nearly torn off. Why do things like that always happen to cats? People and animals hurting them. Anyway, I tried to pull him from his hiding spot. The way it yowled.”
Noah’s jagged, inhuman laugh sent a spike of terror drilling through her. She fought to pull in a breath.
“I grabbed hold of the cat. Claws as sharp as razors. It was tiny. Fragile. Its rib bones were so close to the surface, I could have crushed it in my hand. But I liked holding the cat, you know? Liked petting its soft fur. I kept it in a box. Down here. Fed it scraps of food every night. It was all going so well until he…”
Noah’s voice caught on the word. Eden flinched in horror. An instinct. As if she knew what came next.
“My father knew about the cat. The next night after dinner, he was waiting for me. I was sneaking out to feed the cat, but he’d gotten here first. He had a hammer.”
No. No. The voice inside Eden’s head screamed with all the rage and pain of a child whose father had done something unthinkable. He destroyed the one thing his son cared about, and in doing so, he’d turned his boy into a… monster.
“So sorry…”
Eden reached for Noah again, but her arms refused to move. They hung heavily by her sides like bands of lead.
“My father was right,” he said. “The things we love destroy us. Like you.”
Noah turned toward her. She recoiled from the sight. A scream caught in her throat. Black pools of nothingness filled the space where his eyes should have been. The skin on the right side of his face was torn back, revealing ragged sinew, bleached bone, and a shattered line of teeth. Noah sunk back into the inky pit of darkness and was gone.
It wasn’t real. A nightmare. A vision.
“Noah please,” she whispered. “Please… come back… Don’t leave me… I’ll…”
Die here alone.
If Noah came back, she’d go to California with him. She would. And this time, she’d be good. This time she wouldn’t…
Say a word. Noah, please.
But he was gone. Hot tears leaked down her icy cheeks as the silence settled over her like fog. She sank back into the haze. She was so… Tired.
Eden. Wake up, baby girl.
The voice inside her head had morphed. And it was her mother calling, just like she had when Eden was late for school.
Get up.
Her mother wouldn’t stop nagging until she did as she was told. Eden gathered her strength and somehow, somehow, she struggled to her feet. Trembling. Weak. Her hands were wrapped around something cold, hard. The rough shape of it scraped her palms. A pipe. She was bound to a pipe.
Pull.
Eden obeyed her mother’s command. She shifted her weight back on her heels, her hands laced around the pipe and pulled.
Harder, Eden. Come on.
“Can’t.”
Put your feet against the wall. Do it.
It was impossible. Hopeless. But she had to try. If she gave up now, she was as good as dead.
Eden clenched her teeth. Rallying her remaining strength, she put her arms, her back, her will into it, pulling as hard as she could, until her arms screamed as if they might be ripped from their sockets. Until she couldn’t stand the pain. Until…
Until something gave.
The pipe crumbled beneath her palms. Eden pitched backwards and slammed into the ground. A starburst of pain exploded like fireworks behind her eyes.
And then the veil of darkness descended once more.
28
With separate teams already combing through Hall’s Portland apartment and the Roberts’ house, Lacey focused on Noah’s background. His family. According to his employer, Hall’s grandparents were listed as his next of kin. Isaac had died a few years ago and his wife, Martha, was living in a nursing home in Pensacola, Florida. She was suffering from dementia. Hall’s mother wasn’t an easy woman to track down. Lacey ran through a labyrinth of last names, ex-husbands, former addresses, and disconnected lines. Hours of dead ends until she finally found a current number and dialed.
“I thought I told you people to stop harassing me.”
Joanna Lansing had the ancient, raspy voice of a chain smoker. The volume and pitch of the angry greeting made Lacey wince. She pulled the phone away from her ear.
“Ma’am, I’m Officer James with the Sweet Home police department. It’s about your son, Noah.”
Two beats of silence passed before Joanna spoke.
“I have nothing to say about him.”
The abruptness of Joanna’s blunt response sent Lacey’s thoughts into overdrive. As a cop, she’d met with bereaved families before and understood that everyone dealt with shock and grief in different ways, but there was a cold metal beneath Joanna’s tone that rendered Lacey momentarily speechless.
She didn’t sound like a grieving parent. She sounded angry. Was it possible that no one had informed her of her son’s death? As a parent, the death of a child was the most excruciating loss a human could bear. Her gaze strayed to the photographs of her own children pinned to her cubicle walls, and she understood that if something were to happen to either of them, as strong as she was, it would destroy her.
A lump of emotion swelled inside Lacey’s throat. Turning away from the family photos, she refocused on the task at hand.
“I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, Ms. Lansing, but Noah has died.”
“So? What’s that got to do with me?”
The callous remark stunned Lacey. After a moment’s hesitation, she cleared her throat and continued. “I was hoping you could help.”
“With what? I haven’t set eyes on Noah since he was twelve-years-old.”
What kind of mother abandoned her own child? Lacey dismissed the thought as soon as it surfaced. It wasn’t helpful. Worse, she knew that every family’s circumstances were different. Mental illness. Addiction. With her own marriage on shaky ground, Lacey knew there were so many ways in which families could be driven apart.
“So after that, where did Noah go?”
“After Kevin was killed, my parents took him.”
“Wait. Kevin? Noah’s father? How did he die?”
Joanna blew out a breath. “You cops. You’re all so fucking useless. Kevin was murdered and there was no way I was raising that boy on my own. Not after—"
“After what?”
“What’s it matter? Noah’s dead. There’s nothing I can help you with, lady. Don’t call back.”
Dial tone buzzed on the other end of the line and Lacey hung up the phone. What must it have been like for Hall, essentially losing both his parents within a matter of weeks? His father was murdered, and he’d been abandoned by the one person who was supposed to love him most.
She thought about the hell Hall must have gone through, how it must have changed him, turned him into someone capable of doing terrible things.
He’d kidnapped Eden. He’d executed an elderly couple in cold blood. He’d killed a cop—Spencer. There was nothing she could do to change the tragic circumstances of Hall’s life, but if there was even a remote chance that Eden was still out there, alive, she had to find her.
Her personal cellphone rang. Lacey checked the display. Her stomach sank when she saw who it was. Caleb.
He had interviewed for the new job yesterday and was probably anxious to share his elation at how well things had gone, oblivious to everything Lacey had dealt with in the past twenty-four hours—something he would have known if he’d cared enough to sacrifice an hour of sleep to listen to his wife.
With every fiber of her being, she wanted to ignore the call, but she knew that avoiding the problems in her marriage wouldn’t solve a damned thing. Lacey rose from her desk and headed to the relative privac
y of the locker room where she finally answered.
“Hey,” Caleb said. “Sorry about last night. It was late and—”
“Whatever, Caleb.”
“You’re upset.”
There was no trace of humor in Lacey’s laugh. “Figured that out all on your own, did you?”
“So, this is how you want it to be?”
She hated how easily Caleb was able to spin the situation on its head and make her out to be the bad guy.
“There was a shooting at the police station yesterday.”
After a moment of shocked silence, Caleb spoke. “Oh, my god, Lacey, are you okay?”
“Spencer’s dead. I was there. I saw everything.”
“How did it happen?”
“It doesn’t matter how it happened, Caleb. The point is that when I called you last night, I needed to talk to my husband, and you weren’t there. You’re never there.” Lacey didn’t want to cry, but she couldn’t stop the tears from filling her eyes. “We’ve been trying to make this long-distance thing work, but the truth is Caleb, it doesn’t. We both know it. We’ve known it for a long time.”
“What are you saying, Lacey?” Caleb asked in a tight voice she barely recognized.
It wasn’t anger Lacey felt as she sat alone on the end of the bench, wondering how her marriage had come to this. She loved Caleb. Maybe she always would, but she needed more. She needed someone who was there to support her, someone to laugh with, to hold her when she was scared, someone to share her life. Years of separation had strained the fabric of their relationship until it was threadbare. There wasn’t enough strength left to hold. She could no longer pretend.
“I think it’s time we talked about ending things.” Lacey ran her palm over her cheeks, wiping the tears away. “I have to get back to work.”
Lacey hung up. She was shaking all over, barely able to process what she had just done. She hadn’t planned it. The words had just spilled out like they’d been waiting to be said. Rising from the bench, she walked past the row of lockers to the back of the room toward the sink. She splashed some water over her face, not wanting her colleagues to see that she’d been crying.
Lacey arrived at her desk at the same time as Rebecca. Rebecca carried a vase overflowing with red and white roses and a padded shipping envelope.
“Look what arrived for the anniversary girl.”
Lacey shook her head, avoiding Rebecca’s smile. The timing couldn’t have been worse. There were five red roses in the vase and five white ones, one for each year of her marriage. The sight of the flowers, so lovely, opened a fresh wound in Lacey’s battered heart.
“Why don’t you keep them up front. Brighten up the place.”
Rebecca’s smile faltered. “You’re sure?”
Lacey nodded. Rebecca set the padded envelope on Lacey’s desk.
“Okay, hon. But here, you should take the card.”
Without reading it, Lacey tossed the card on top of the shipping envelope. She sat down behind her desk and rubbed her burning eyes. She couldn’t think about any of this now. Desperate to focus on something else, she decided to search for the police report on Kevin Hall’s murder.
Details were sparse. Kevin Hall was on his way home one stormy November night, when he was attacked and bludgeoned to death. Noah’s parents lived on a lonely stretch of road outside Cascadia. He’d gotten a ride as far as town and walked the last mile home alone. At the time of his death, Kevin was working as a carpenter. His driver’s license had been suspended thanks to a DUI.
The case was closed as a robbery gone wrong. The death of a spouse would be hard on any family, but what was it about her husband’s death that caused Joanna to abandon her son? It was the kind of information that didn’t make it into the police reports.
Lacey found the name of the investigating officer.
Detective Gavin Miller had retired from the force seven years ago. She found his number and gave him a call.
“Miller,” he answered the phone tersely, the same way he had probably done for thirty years.
“Detective Miller, I’m Officer Lacey James from the Sweet Home police department.”
“What can I do for you, Officer James?”
He was speaking loudly, overtop the road noise and Lacey figured he was probably in his car, driving.
“I’m following up on a murder case you worked. Kevin Hall.”
“Guy walking home from work. Nasty business, that one.” Lacey heard the vehicle slow, and the click of the blinker turning on. “Now’s not a good time. I’m on my way to an appointment.”
“Do you have time later today? I could call you back.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Miller said. “How about we meet at the Underdog on West Oak in Lebanon. Say three o’clock?”
“I’ll be there,” Lacey promised.
29
Gavin Miller looked more like a retired college professor than an ex-cop. He had a thin face with silver wire-rimmed spectacles that lent him an academic air. He wore a navy wool coat with a red cashmere scarf. His keen brown eyes spotted her the moment he walked in.
“Officer James?”
“Thanks for making time for me, Detective Miller.”
“Please, call me Gavin. I’ve been away from the farm a while now.”
“I believe I owe you some coffee,” Lacey said, rising from her chair and gesturing toward the counter, but Gavin shook his head.
“Sadly, my doctor made me swear off caffeine. Bad ticker. I still like the smell of it though. Why don’t we take a seat and you can tell me why we’re here?”
He sat across from Lacey and gestured for her to begin.
“Right,” Lacey said. “So, according to the report, Kevin Hall was attacked on his way home. A robbery.”
“His body was found inside an abandoned house, not a quarter mile down the road. There were signs of squatters in the place, although that night, we didn’t find anyone in the area. So what’s the interest in Hall now? Did you uncover something new?”
He fixed her with a curious gaze and Lacey shook her head.
“You’ve seen the news about the double murder near Green Peter Lake?”
“The elderly couple. Hell of a thing.”
“We suspect that Kevin’s son, Noah Hall, was responsible for their deaths.”
Gavin’s expression turned grave. He ran a hand over his face. His thumb rasped thoughtfully against the faint stubble on his jaw.
“The kid, huh?” He shook his head. “You see things in this job that defy the imagination.”
“I was curious about the family. I spoke to the mother—”
“Yeah, she was something,” Gavin said. “All my years on the force, I never saw a wife who handled the news quite like that. Stoic. Her apparent lack of emotion made me question her involvement, but her alibi checked out. I even looked into their finances to see if she could have engineered the killing—you know, hired someone, but they both worked blue collar jobs. Every penny was spent by payday just to keep the family afloat.”
Hundreds of families in the area fit that description, hovering either just above or just below the poverty line. When the logging industry died, the towns in the area suffered. Those who could, moved out. Others, like Lacey’s family, stayed. Caleb had joined the military to get away from the desolation and hardship he had grown up with. He craved city lights. It was just his luck to fall for a small-town girl.
“When I told her that her son had died, she didn’t seem to care.”
Sadness tugged at the corners of Gavin’s mouth. “As part of the investigation, I dug into the family dynamics. No domestic abuse calls to 911 but the kid had a long history of accidents, the kind you suspect aren’t really accidents at all. One particularly nasty incident landed him in the hospital with a shattered arm. The doctors believed that the father beat him, but the mother denied everything. That kid spent a week in the hospital, which was seven days longer than his father spent in jail. But without evidence…”
Beneath the wool coat, Gavin’s shoulders shrugged. He breathed out a weary sigh.
“No one saw anything, or said anything?”
“We empower teachers, doctors, the professionals that surround a child with the ability to report suspected abuse, but it’s often overlooked. The smart kids, the quiet ones, are able to hide their distress.”
“You spoke with Noah?”
“Yeah. Quite bright, as I recall.”
“Did you…” Lacey hesitated, knowing that her next question strayed away from fact, but was something she’d regret not asking if she let her head make the decisions. “Did you get a feeling about him?”
“Can’t say I did, but then, whatever I might have noticed about the son was overshadowed by my suspicions about the mother.”
Lacey sat back in her chair and encircled the takeout cup of coffee with both hands. The lack of emotion Joanna displayed at the time of her husband’s death fit a pattern starting to form inside Lacey’s head. Lack of empathy. Multiple marriages. Charges of petty theft. Fraud. She fit the profile of a grifter, and maybe even a sociopath.
“I’m not sure there’s anything more I can add that would help you, Officer… Lacey,” he corrected himself with a gentle smile. “If you’re right, and Noah is responsible for the murders, it’s a sad ending to a family marked by tragedy. Probably not the last one you’ll see in the course of your career. There are too many people that need help, and try though we might, some will fall through the cracks. You can’t save them all.”
Lacey stared out the window at the blustery day. Though it was still afternoon, the days were growing shorter, and the thick clouds crowding the sky choked out the fading daylight. It would be dark soon. The gloomy weather echoed her somber mood, and part of her wished she hadn’t gone into work yesterday. If she hadn’t gone to work, she wouldn’t have picked up the burglary call and maybe Spencer would still be alive.
But that was wrong. If they hadn’t caught Hall, they wouldn’t have uncovered his connection to Eden. And she was still out there.
