William’s reddening was obvious even on his tan face. He smiled. “Thank you for helping us.”
Lacey sat there stupefied for a long moment. She wanted to find Brian, to get herself out of this dangerous town, and to ensure Ginny was alright, too. But what about Raven Hills? Was this new mission a way to help the entire town? For too long had Raven Hills hidden in a dark cloud of bad luck and secrets.
As Lacey replayed William’s words in her head, walking up to the entrance of Saddle Inn, she realized there was something else forming within herself. Something that made her more determined than ever.
Raven Hills had sat in the shadows for too long, accepting and hiding a strange evil that claimed residents’ lives and kept the rest of them prisoners of their own existence.
It was time Lacey helped them all.
The next morning, Lacey woke up stiff, bruised, and in desperate need of some ibuprofen. The last few days had proven to be tough. She wondered if the money Pert offered her in exchange to come here was worth all of the trouble she’d found in Raven Hills, and the answer shocked her.
It wasn’t about the money anymore.
This had become more personal, way more personal than paying off some student loans and the laptop she’d charged on her credit card. She felt the incredible weight of losing what was truly important in life: lives, not overdue payments.
She got up and took a long hot shower, noticing the trail of bruises she had acquired in the forest.
The Davidson Forest.
That reminded her that she’d need to get the land survey for Raven Hills and find out more about the Davidsons’ property. It was time to find out exactly what waited on that godforsaken piece of land.
Half an hour later, she gulped down a hot cup of coffee and a croissant, then headed down the center of town to the county records office. Her eyes were peeled and appraising every corner and passerby. She expected the strange, manic panther to jump out at her from behind a tree, snarling teeth bared and all. She didn’t see the panther anywhere, but she did find Lieutenant Bennett leaving the steps of the county records office.
“Miss Shaw,” he greeted with a nod.
“Morning,” Lacey said.
“What brings you here today?” He leaned back on his heels and tucked both hands in his pockets.
Lacey contemplated lying, since she knew Bennett frowned upon her meddling with the town’s business. Still, a new wave of defiance told her she didn’t want to hide anymore. She had a purpose here in Raven Hills, and despite Bennett’s stubbornness to help the town fight—well, whatever it was fighting—she was willing to stick around and get to the bottom of things.
“I’m getting a land survey for Raven Hills,” she admitted, her eyes leveling Bennett.
“For what?”
“To learn more about the Davidsons’ property.” She paused, hoping to catch a reaction of any kind from the older gentleman’s face. He simply looked back at her, contemplating her as closely as she contemplated him.
“What do you need to know about the property?” he asked, brows pinching together. “It’s just a piece of woodland.”
“Right, woodlands that have an old mine sitting on it, some strange wildlife, a swamp where Paul Martinez’s body may be waiting, and where Brian Ovelli may have been killed.” Lacey crossed her arms and tugged her chin up at the man, feeling liberated at saying her nagging fears out loud.
Lieutenant Bennett stared back at her with a slack jaw. “What in the name…”
“Let’s not beat around the bush anymore, Lieutenant,” Lacey interjected. “There’s something wrong in Raven Hills, and you know it. How do you explain the strange deaths? The missing people? And Paul Martinez’s death…why haven’t you dragged the swamp? Have you seen the video evidence of the day he went missing in the woods? Of course you did. But what have you done about it?” Lacey took a big inhale, stopping herself from saying more. Sure, it was a great relief to finally stand up for her suspicions, but she didn’t need to get herself too riled up. In fact, she needed to keep her cool and her wits together if she was to get down to the bottom of everything.
Lieutenant Bennett wiped a hand against his brow and expelled a sigh. “We know how to do our job here, Miss Shaw.” His tone seemed more resigned than angered. “Trust me, we know what we’re dealing with.”
“Really?” Lacey asked, stepping closer to him. “Then what are you dealing with exactly? And how are you dealing with it? To me, it seems you’re not willing to face the danger lurking in Raven Hills.”
“Some things are too complicated to explain,” he countered. “Besides, there was no evidence of foul play in Martinez’s case. The man simply tripped and passed out. We searched for him but never found him. We believe he just left on his own accord.”
“You don’t really believe that,” Lacey argued. She hadn’t known Bennett for long but the man seemed intelligent and with some street smarts. He hadn’t been a policeman all of his life just to believe nothing unusual had happened in the forest.
“Why did you lie to me about Brian not being here?” Lacey asked, frustration growing in her tone, bringing the topic to Brian.
Lieutenant Bennett looked down at the ground. Lacey tried to read his features. Was it regret? Fear?
“He left town, I’m sure. There’s no evidence of anything happening to him,” Bennett said finally, stubbornness returning to the seasoned detective’s face.
“Then you admit that Brian was here?” she pressed.
Bennett remained silent, his steel gray eyes looking past Lacey.
“Fine,” Lacey exhaled in an exasperated sigh. “Keep your secrets. But I warn you. Time is running out and soon, I will expose those secrets and make sure I set things right.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Lacey pored over the land survey map stretched on the table in the Saddle Inn lobby.
She took a sip of her coffee, her bones still achy and in desperate need of more sleep, yet she mustered all the energy she could get.
Her finger traced the land survey. The map showed two large easements, one on the north side of the town, the other on the southwest. The center of town was outlined in an uneven rectangle, with Route 39 snaking around the perimeter of Raven Hills and curving westward of the wooded area that made up the Davidson property.
Except, it wasn’t the Davidson property after all.
Lacey blinked fast, reading the word Haas written on the property lines. Indeed, the large patch of woods highlighted the area of the Davidson Forest, and Lacey even located the mine sitting on the northern side. But why did the map show the name Haas instead of Davidson?
Diddie walked in through the lobby, a newspaper in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. Lacey wondered how in the world the woman could keep Saddle Inn alive when she was the only guest lodging here.
“Diddie, you have a minute?” Lacey called out, looking up from the map.
Diddie took a long sip of her coffee. “Lots to do this morning, dear. But what do you need? Is the A/C in your room out again?”
“No, no, the air is fine, thank you,” Lacey replied, thankful that two nights ago Diddie had repaired the unit before she’d died of a heat stroke. “I have a question about the Davidson property.”
Diddie cocked a brow at Lacey, looking up from the newspaper. “What about it?”
“I have a land survey here,” Lacey pointed. “And it says Haas.”
“Oh, that’s right,” Diddie replied, and took another swig of coffee. “Technically it belonged to the Haas family.”
Lacey contemplated this for a moment. The Haases were one of the original settlers in Raven Hills. She thought back to the library and the old book sitting inside a glass case, which had belonged to the family.
“Why do you call it the Davidson property then?” she asked.
“Morgan Haas married Jonathan Davidson in the late eighteen hundreds, thus the property passed down to Jonathan as a marital asset. Rumors say that Jonathan only married Morg
an for her wealth. The Haases owned and operated the copper mine since the late seventeen hundreds. Friedrich Haas was one of our original settlers. Upon his arrival here from Germany, he discovered a copper deposit right here in Raven Hills.
“Soon, he was making a small little fortune for himself and passed it down to the next generations.”
Lacey nodded as she scribbled down this info in her leather journal. “So Morgan Haas was the heiress of the family’s fortune, but once she married Jonathan, the name of the property was changed to his?”
Diddie nodded and leaned against the front counter. “That’s right. Jonathan took ownership and operation of the mine, and over time the property and all on it came to be known as the Davidsons’.” She shrugged. “That’s the way things went back then. The man owned everything even if he hadn’t created the wealth himself. I guess he was a lucky son-of-a-what for marrying into that family.”
Lacey thought for a long moment. “I don’t know much about the Haas family. I’ve seen their book in the library before, but there are no living relatives left in town?”
“No, none left, but we owe much to the Haas family,” Diddie replied. “They put this town on the map, basically. And in those early days of settling here, they employed many of our ancestors, giving them jobs and a much-needed chance to thrive.”
“It’s kind of sad Morgan and Jonathan didn’t have children to pass down their great fortune to,” Lacey sighed and leaned back into her chair.
“Oh, they had a child,” Diddie replied. “But she disappeared—although we figured she probably died—in that horrific incident long ago.”
Lacey looked at Diddie, eyes narrowing. How come during her research and interviews she hadn’t come across a terrible case regarding a Haas member?
“What was the child’s name?” she asked, her mind reeling.
“Jane Haas,” Diddie answered. “Who eventually married and became Jane Dearing.”
Lacey rushed through Bennett’s office, ignoring his assistant’s shouts trailing behind her.
Barging into his office, she threw the land map of Raven Hills on his desk.
“It’s time to ’fess up, Bennett!” she yelled, her hands tucking on her hips.
“What in God’s name!” Lieutenant Bennett eyed her with surprise, then looked down at the land survey she had plastered on his desk.
“Jane Dearing!” Lacey announced.
“What?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Everything keeps pointing back to Jane Dearing.” She threw her arms up in the air. “The shawl, Joann being found in the woods, and her family being the Haases, the same ones who settled here in Raven Hills and owned the Davidsons’ property.”
Lieutenant Bennett rubbed his head and expelled a sigh. “Miss Shaw, I don’t know where you’re getting at.”
“There’s a connection with Jane Dearing!”
“Mrs. Dearing who went missing, possibly murdered in the nineteen sixties?” he asked, his face frowning in confusion. “What does she have to do with anything?”
“Something. Maybe everything!” Lacey’s mind reeled with clues that begged to be connected, except she couldn’t quite understand the full meaning yet. “I don’t think she was murdered. I think all these strange occurrences here in Raven Hills trail back to the day she disappeared.”
Lieutenant Bennett slouched in his chair and looked past her shoulders, where two deputies loomed over the doorway of his office, the same look of concern on their faces.
Seeing them, Lacey remembered Deputy Morris, who was in charge of the evidence room in the library.
“There’s someone in the woods,” she mumbled, thinking of the recording found on Martinez’s phone. “I think it’s a woman.”
“A woman,” Bennett repeated, shaking his head. “In the woods.”
“Yes, I saw her in the video.”
“What video?” He crossed his arms, indulging her as he would a three-year-old having a tantrum.
“In the evidence room,” she explained, now pacing up and down his office. “The land surveyor tried to FaceTime on his phone and accidentally left the video on. It captured what happened to him. He was assaulted, then someone came into view. It was brief, but it was a female, I’m sure of it.”
“You were in the evidence room?” Bennett shouted. “You were the one who broke in? I thought you had simply heard rumors around town.” His brows pinched together.
“That’s not the point. You need to search the woods. Something happens there. Something terrible.” Lacey grew more desperate with each passing second. “Whoever is lurking there has something to do with all these terrible incidents, and I think she’s also connected to Mrs. Dearing’s disappearance.”
“Miss Shaw, I’m afraid you will need to be detained. Breaking and entering is illegal, you know.” Bennett rose from his chair and nodded at the two deputies.
“What? There’s a killer on the loose. That woman is up to something…”
The deputies grabbed Lacey by each arm, then a third one appeared. The new officer handcuffed her, and then gently began pulling her out of Bennett’s office.
Lacey resisted. “You need to do something!”
Lieutenant Bennett sighed. “Miss Shaw, you are under arrest for breaking and entering.” He tipped his head at the deputy holding on to Lacey. “I’m sorry, but you leave me no choice.”
Dragged through the police office, Lacey pulled at her arms, feeling the cold metal of the hand cuffs scrape against her flesh.
“You need to so something!” she cried again. “Brian may be in serious trouble, maybe dead!”
Then a sudden thought rushed to mind, a flash of the woman she’d seen in the video revealing a small clue. Small, but possibly earth shattering. Those legs she’d seen in the recording, they were marked. Red blotches stretched on her pale skin. Bruises maybe, or weird bug bites.
Just like the one they’d found on Allison during her autopsy.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Lacey found herself sitting on a small metal bench in the tiny holding cell. The police office held two cells, but the other one next to Lacey’s was not occupied. Not that anyone would care to listen to her should she want to talk. No one did.
Lacey pounded a fist on the bench. Why didn’t anyone believe her? How could they not see the clues sitting right under their noses?
Bennett had a small meal brought to her that evening, but the deputy who had delivered it didn’t stick around to talk or provide her with any information about her arrest.
As the shadow of night fell in the cell, she leaned against the wall, her rear end bruised from sitting on the metal bench all day long.
She fought to connect the dots swarming in her head. She now realized that the person in Martinez’s video had peculiar marks on her legs, just like Virginia Kyle had the night she had been found murdered in Jane Dearing’s home. They were also similar to the one found on Allison’s neck during her autopsy shortly after she had died of cancer.
But someone else showed the same strange spots, something that Lacey had paid little attention to when she first saw them, and this person was very much alive.
Julie Collins, Mary Sue’s daughter.
But what relations did these strange marks have with the three of them? So far she had this one physical clue that perhaps was a coincidence, yet everything inside of her told her to follow its lead. Then, there was the shawl made by Jane Dearing, the same one Joann Derby had been found in.
She also couldn’t forget that the Davidson property had really belonged to the Haas family in the first place—Jane Dearing’s ancestral family.
She released a frustrated groan, a migraine forming and her nerves shot. What did all these clues mean?
With only the moonlight trickling in through the window, and the distant humming of the building’s air-conditioning unit, Lacey found it impossible to remain awake. The toll of her visit here in Raven Hills started to grow heavier and heavier, just like her eyelids.
She gave in sometime around midnight, letting sleep take over and throw her into a fitful sleep.
Until a shuffling noise startled her awake.
Her eyes blinked open. She narrowed her gaze around the office housing her little prison, and everything seemed calm and silent.
Then she saw a figure sitting on the ground a few feet outside her cell. She gasped, startled.
Slowly, she inched toward the bars, maintaining her gaze on the shadow outside her cell. It was someone with a small build neatly sitting crossed-legged on the cracked tile.
She realized it was the silhouette of a child, her dress ruffling around her, and her hands sitting politely on her lap.
Ginny.
“Ginny, what are you doing here?” Lacey whispered. Instantly, she recalled William’s explanation that no girl by that name lived in Raven Hills. How she wanted to prove him wrong now! There she was, her face half hidden by the darkness but those two round eyes peering at her with intent.
“You have to help us,” Ginny whispered in return.
Lacey nodded. “I want to. No one will listen to me.”
“No one listened to me either.” Ginny maintained a neutral expression on her face, her young voice breaking the silence of the night.
“Ginny, who are you?” Lacey asked, shuffling so close to the bars they pressed against her face.
“Who are your parents?”
Ginny remained silent.
“Ginny, I need you to call my boss. If I give you his number…” Lacey began, but Ginny shook her head.
“Please help me,” the girl said, and at that Lacey’s heart broke.
“Tell me what you know,” she begged. “Please, tell me anything that will help me help you.”
“If you get out of here, will you go with me to Mister Derby’s Soap Shop?” Ginny asked.
Puzzled, Lacey wondered why the girl was so obsessed with going there. The last time she’d seen Ginny was the day she had visited Mrs. Kline at Hope Sanitarium. Even that day Ginny had wanted to go in the shop. For what reason?
Raven Hills- Unraveling Evil Page 11
