“What are you trying to say, Calvin? Because he took pity on a chipmunk, he couldn’t have killed Orla or Susie or any of the other missing girls? His being in those places with Orla’s stuff is a complete coincidence?” Hazel’s voice had grown shrill.
Calvin reached out and took her hand, but she jerked it away.
“Hazel, I’m not disregarding what you’ve found. Maybe I’m wrong, but… genuinely caring for a living thing is hard to fake. He seemed like a compassionate guy.”
“For animals, perhaps. Then again, he might have taken the chipmunk home and crushed it with a hammer.”
Fighting tears, she stood and rushed from the room onto the porch. She strode down the stairs and into her garden, but that too did not bring peace. An overwhelming desire to stamp the flowers beneath her sandaled feet washed over her. Before she lashed out, she jogged to her car and jumped behind the wheel. As she pulled out, Liz and Calvin stepped onto the porch.
She drove away, refusing to watch them in her rearview mirror.
* * *
Abe
Abe sat in the interrogation room, glaring at the two-way mirror.
Time ticked by. There was no clock, an intentional move by the police to disorient their suspects.
Eventually, Detective Moore pushed into the room, a thick folder clutched in his hands. He dropped it on the table with a thud and sat across from Abe.
“Why am I here?” Abe demanded.
“Why are you here?” Moore sneered, opening the file. “This afternoon, you called in a burial site containing Orla Sullivan’s clothes, which interestingly also contained a tooth. We have an officer who spotted you at the purported scene of the abduction of Amber Hill. A second eyewitness who saw you getting into your car just outside the Fountain Park entrance. I’ve also received a very interesting police report faxed in from Spokane, Washington, about your potential involvement in the disappearance of a young woman, Dawn Piper, in 1966.”
Abe bristled, hands that he’d been relaxing in his lap instantly turned to fists.
He said nothing, but stared at Detective Moore with such ferocity he thought he might burst a blood vessel in his eye.
Moore cocked his head to the side.
“Blood pressure jump? A lie detector would give us a good idea of how you’re feeling right about now. Figured we’d never find out about her, huh? Dawn Piper. Awfully suspicious when the prime suspect in the disappearance and suspected murder of an eighteen-year-old girl moves across the country, where conveniently a slew of other young women start vanishing without a trace.”
Abe swallowed the lump of rage forming in his throat. Hearing Dawn’s name on this man’s lips, the injustice of the accusation, tensed every muscle in his body. It took all of his will to remain in the chair when he wanted to shove the table aside and grab the detective around the throat.
“You piece of shit,” he hissed. “You low-life piece of shit.”
The detective narrowed his eyes.
“You best watch your mouth, young man.”
Abe flicked his eyes to the mirror. Other men would be observing the interview, a videotape might be running. Abe had to calm down. He understood his rights. This wasn’t an arrest. Legally, they couldn’t hold him.
“If you have questions, you can talk to my lawyer. You’re familiar with him, I’m sure, former prosecutor Martin Levett. I know my rights, Detective Moore. If you hold me for another fucking minute, I will sue this police department, and I will broadcast your misconduct from here to the moon. As for Dawn Piper, I’m guessing your little fax also contained verification of my story. As for your other bullshit claims, let me put it to you this way. I’m a reporter. Usually, I just write the stories. That is until the lead detective in a series of disappearances sits on his thumbs and watches the birds instead of investigating. Frankly, I’m not that kind of guy. That’s why I was at Fountain Park, and that’s how I found about Orla’s clothes - good old-fashioned investigating. Have you heard of it, Detective Moore?”
Abe glanced at the mirror.
The detective’s face flushed red, and his hands, previously resting on the table top, now gripped the edge.
Abe dropped his voice. “If I’m not walking out that door in ten minutes, you’re going to be headline news.”
It wasn’t ten minutes, more like twenty-five, and by the time a deputy told Abe he was free to opened the interrogation room door and told Abe he was free, he felt sick to his stomach.
Moore had left his folder open on the desk, pictures of Dawn staring up at him.
48
Orla
Orla pitched forward. It was dark, wooded. Branches grabbed at her hair, scratched her face. As she ran, a figure stepped from the trees. A shadow man, eyes black, hands raised to catch her. Orla turned and plunged the other way, but again the man loomed before her. No matter which direction she turned, he was there.
“No,” Orla whispered.
She mumbled, raising her arms to fight off her attacker, lunging away.
Suddenly she was falling. Her eyes flew open as she thudded onto the floor, gasping for breath. She sprang to her feet, backed into the couch she’d been laying on, and fell landing on the armrest. She blinked the room into a focus.
The shadow man had been a dream.
She put a hand on her chest, her heart racing, and tried to get her bearings.
Two candles on a wooden table illuminated a small kitchen and living area with a wood burning stove and threadbare rugs. Dark curtains hung over the windows.
Trembling, Orla crept to the table. Her hands shook as she pulled out a note tucked beneath a candle.
I brought you somewhere safe. It’s over, Orla. I’ll be back before dawn. -Ben
Orla sighed, a low, throbbing pulsed in her head, as she sat heavily in one of the wooden chairs.
After several minutes, she stood and pulled back the curtain. Night had fallen. It was pitch black and pouring rain. Through the storm, she glimpsed thick woods.
The cabin had the hot stuffiness of late summer.
Orla opened the door, and a warm, wet breeze blew into the room.
In the distance, lightning lit the sky through the canopy of trees. A loud clap of thunder followed. She jumped and hauled the door closed. She trembled as she leaned against it.
She moved through the cabin quickly, searching for a phone. There was none. One door, likely to a bedroom, was locked. She rattled the knob, but it didn’t turn.
* * *
Abe
As Abe stepped into the hallway, he heard a voice.
“It’s not me,” the man insisted.
Abe gazed into the interrogation room across the hall as a detective slipped through the door. He saw Ben Stoops seated at a table, hands clasped at his mouth as if in prayer as he pleaded with the detective who faced him.
“I was trying to protect her…”
The door closed, but Abe had not missed his words.
The man denied it. Of course, he did, and yet… Something niggled at Abe. He thought about the folder stuffed with experiments, the midwife’s comment about the health of that first child, and then there’d only been one child. It shouldn’t matter. They’d found Orla’s clothing, and Ben had buried it.
Abe imagined the very first tipster at the diner, the man who’d insisted he saw Orla in the asylum.
He couldn’t shake the sense that he’d gotten it all wrong.
He ran into the rain-swept night.
* * *
Orla
Orla paced around the cabin. The sedative had not completely worn off. She turned on the faucet in the kitchen sink and splashed cold water on her face. She wanted to go home, but there was no phone in the cottage, no driveway even. The place stood in the middle of a dark forest. She half-considered running into the rainy night, but the terror of her dreams, of the previous weeks, made her legs feel weak at the thought.
She found a paperback copy of Carrie by Stephen King. She’d never read the book, t
hough Liam loved Stephen King. She sat down on the couch, gazing again at the rain-spotted window, and tried to read. She’d barely read the first paragraph when the door burst open.
She jumped up, expecting Ben. Instead, it was Spencer who stood dripping in the doorway.
He looked at her, surprised.
“Orla?” he said, as if he couldn’t believe his eyes.
“Spencer?” She lifted a hand to her throat, realizing she still wore her nightgown from the hospital. Self-consciously, she tugged the hem toward her knees.
“Where have you been?” he asked. “I was worried sick. You’ve been all over the news. You disappeared that morning.” He stepped into the cabin, shrugging off his raincoat.
His blond hair was dry thanks to his hood, and he studied her with a mixture of surprise and intrigue.
“I’ve been held hostage in the Northern Michigan Asylum. It’s been…, I don’t even know how long it has been. What’s the date?”
“It’s July 25th.”
Orla shivered and rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms.
“Would you like some clothes?” he asked. “Here.” He slipped across the room and pulled a heavy trunk from a closet, flipping back the lid. He drew out a gray University of Michigan sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, stained with dark patches.
“These might be a little small,” he told her.
She took them, grateful, and slipped into the pants. They ended at mid-calf, more like pedal pushers than full pants. She slipped the sweatshirt over her head. Her fingers brushed against her ribs, and she realized she must have lost weight in the hospital. Her bones felt sharp and close to the surface.
She touched her face, feeling the hollows of her cheeks and eye sockets.
“Were you sick, Orla?” he asked.
She shook her head. How did she tell this man that his mother had injected her with something, that his uncle had forced her into the asylum and spent weeks experimenting on her?
“Did Ben tell you I was here?” she asked, hoping to push the confessions off a bit further.
“No.” Spencer shook his head. “I was out for a walk and saw lights, figured I’d come check it out. How do you know Ben?”
“Where are we?” she asked, ignoring his question.
He looked at her funny.
“In a cabin behind my house, and behind my uncle’s house. My mom and uncle live across the woods from each other.”
“And Ben lives with your uncle, Dr. Crow?”
Spencer gazed at her and nodded.
“I’m on Sapphire, and Ben’s on Misty Lane. This cabin is somewhere in the middle. We used to play in here when we were boys.”
Orla’s tried to focus, but her thoughts lay jumbled in her mind.
She yawned and rubbed her eyes.
The rain grew louder, beating against the roof and the trees outside.
Beneath the rain, an odd sound emerged, like muffled crying.
“Do you hear that?” she whispered, putting her feet on the ground and standing.
Spencer shook his head.
“What?”
Orla walked to the locked door. She pressed her ear against it. The sound was clear: a woman crying and calling out.
“Oh my God.” She backed away, staring in horror at Spencer. “There’s someone in there! A girl.”
Spencer stared at her, confused. He turned the door handle, but it didn’t budge. He too pressed his ear against the wood, his eyes growing wide.
“But why…?” he murmured.
“Ben,” she breathed. “Ben must have killed the girl with the tooth. Her name was Susan.” Orla’s legs quaked beneath her. “Is that why he brought me here?”
Spencer stepped back from the door, horrified.
“Ben…” he muttered. “I always knew he was screwed up.”
“He’s going to come back at any moment,” Orla stammered. “We have to help her. We have to get out of here.”
“Let me find something to jimmy this door open.”
Orla watched Spencer move into the little kitchen, opening and closing drawers.
As he rifled through the contents of a drawer, Orla glanced back at the room, no longer hearing the girl inside.
Odd, she thought, that Spencer would have been out walking in the rain.
She looked down at her sweatpants, at the dark stains marring the fabric.
Without making a sound, she slipped off one of her gloves and touched a finger to the stained fabric.
The vision jolted her. She saw a girl in the sweatshirt and sweatpants, smiling at Spencer, his arm in a sling. She was helping carry his books to the gold sports car. As she stepped out of the streetlight into a patch of darkness, he struck her. The blow caved in the back of her skull, and she fell to her knees.
Orla wrenched her hand away from her leg, her eyes bulging as the room around her refocused.
Spencer watched her strangely.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, gazing at her bare hand hovering above the stained pants.
Orla swallowed and stepped behind the couch, putting a barrier between them.
“Nothing. They drugged me at the hospital. I’m nauseous. I think I need some air.”
She started around the couch, walking quickly toward the door, but Spencer’s hand shot out and caught her wrist. He held her arm, his eyes probing hers.
The truth hovered between them, evident on both their faces.
49
Abe
The gate at 311 Sapphire stood open, and he screeched into the driveway, sliding to a halt in front of the wide steps that led to the front door.
The house was dark except for a single light in a first-floor window.
Abe held his jacket over his head as he sprinted to the front door, protected from the rain by a second-floor balcony. He pounded on the door.
When no one answered, he beat harder with both fists.
Virginia Crow opened the door, looking irritated but well put together. Dark eyes stared out from her powdered face. She wore a black sweater over black slacks, a string of pearls resting on her chest.
“I’m here to see your son, Spencer.”
The woman’s eyes darted behind him, and Abe whirled around, expecting to find the man creeping up behind him. Through the rain, he saw only darkness.
“He’s not here,” the woman said, trying to close the door in his face.
Abe pushed the woman out of the way and stormed into the house.
“Where is she?” he shouted.
He ran down the hallway, shoving through doors, looking wildly around each room. The rooms were dark, and he fumbled for light switches, blinking at the bright glare only to find furniture, clean and shining, stinking of furniture polish, and beneath everything the scent of bleach.
When Abe returned to the foyer, the woman had vanished, which unnerved him. But he stormed up the stairs, taking them three at a time, yelling Amber’s and Orla’s names.
* * *
Orla
“I always had this fantasy that one day I would meet someone, a woman, and this…” he paused, furrowed his brow, “compulsion would die. Whoosh, gone. It was like a fairytale. Young girls imagine their knight in shining armor, and I’m dreaming of a sorceress who has the power to make me stop wanting to kill.”
Spencer had tied Orla to a stiff-backed wooden chair. He sat in a matching chair, facing her.
“I’ve never talked about this before. I sensed I could talk to you in the park that day.” He chuckled. “When you disappeared, I racked my brain for days.” He leaned toward her, hands balanced on his knees. “I thought I might have killed you and forgotten. I searched the woods for two days in a panic.”
“Has that happened before? You killed someone and forgot?”
He shook his head slowly.
“I don’t think so.” He laughed. “Sometimes I’m wasted. The last hours get a little foggy. I remember, but… the memories are different from day-to-day things. I never realized how
difficult it would be to articulate all this. Maye I’ll write a fiction book someday. I could put it all down, and no one would be the wiser.”
“Does your mother take part in the killings?”
Spencer recoiled as if Orla had slapped him.
“Of course not. Why would ask that?”
“The morning after I spent the night with you, your mother approached me in the driveway and stuck a needle in my neck,” Orla told him.
He looked momentarily embarrassed, as if they were on a date and Orla had told Spencer that his mother insulted her shoes.
“She’s very protective,” he explained.
“Protective?” Orla couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.
He leaned back and rested his hands in his lap.
“I don’t want to talk about my mother.”
Orla studied his haunted blue eyes. This man intended to kill her. He’d bound her to a wooden chair, duct tape biting into the raw flesh of her wrists and ankles. Her only hope was to keep him talking until Ben returned.
“Does Ben know?” Orla nodded her head toward the closed door of the bedroom.
Spencer’s lips curled away from his teeth.
“That square? He’s the type who’d kill himself before he’d take a life. He’s a virgin, you know? Unless you and he…”
Anger bubbled within Orla at his words.
Don’t provoke him, she thought.
“No, he helped me. He’s a good man.”
Spencer scoffed and touched the handle of a long, serrated knife he’d set on the table.
Orla shifted her wrist back and forth, subtly, imperceptibly, feeling the tape catch on a splinter on the chair.
“When did it start? The desire to kill?” she asked.
He squinted, cocked his head.
“I don’t know. My earliest memory is my mother sitting me inside this box. It was thick metal, soundproof, light proof. I saw her face disappear as she closed the lid and left me in the darkness. I don’t remember ever coming out of that box. Almost like the good Spencer went in and never came back out. Later, when I started to think about girls, and sex, I always thought of that box. I didn’t want to date. I wanted a girl I could keep in that box. Crazy, right?” He lifted the knife and pressed his finger against the point.
Ashes Beneath Her: A Northern Michigan Asylum Novel Page 23
