There Once Was A Child

by Debra Webb

  I stare at the small gash. It’s healing. Looks days old. How the hell could I have done that and not remember? I should have felt it every time I took a shower. It’s a miracle it didn’t get infected. Damn. Memories of a cardboard flap slicing my arm, me rushing for something to staunch the flow pour into my mind. I walk back to the stack of boxes and lift the flaps of the one I have opened. Sure enough blood stains one of the corners. How in the world could I have done that and not remember? I don’t even remember opening this damned box.

  I shake off the suddenly very real idea that I’m losing my mind and force my attention to the task at hand. I pick up the knife and cut the tape over the flaps on another box. As I draw the flaps open I think of the one file I didn’t tell Walt about. I really should have told him.

  But something about it scared the hell out of me. I can’t quite label the feelings. Between that damned file and Walt’s news, I came home a mess. Holding it together through dinner must have prompted the nightmare.

  Last night, after I’d sifted through the files on Fanning’s victims, I moved back to the one labeled: “The Child.” The patient was obviously female and she was my father’s patient. The notes weren’t like the usual office visit notes. These were more like notes made on visits to the patient in some sort of facility. Observations. Hypnosis therapy. Maybe the patient was in the hospital or a mental health facility.

  I just need to know what my father was doing and why the files were separate from the rest of his patient files.

  Unable to think about all the questions anymore, I pull a framed photograph from the box I’ve opened. My graduation from the police academy. I smile at the photo of my parents and me. It was the last time we were all together before my mother died. I slide my finger across the glass as if I can touch their smiling faces. It was a really happy day.

  I think of my childhood growing up on the farm. I was so protected. Even as a teenager. My parents took such good care of me. Then I think of the child in that file and how horrible her childhood was.

  My father’s notes detailed the neglect she suffered at the hands of her biological parents. The mother overdosed when the girl was only seven. Things grew worse from there. The father was helpless. When it became obvious he couldn’t take care of himself much less the child, he sold her to a man for money to buy drugs.

  How could any father do such a thing?

  But it happens and, as a cop, I know this better than most.

  The truly bizarre part of the child’s story was the shocking detail about to whom the father sold her: Joseph Fanning. There is nothing in the case files about Fanning having a young girl with him at any time beyond his catch and release victims. I replay the interview with Andrea Donnelly. She remembered thinking she saw Fanning drop off a girl at the theatre. At the time, she had thought the girl was his daughter, which made her less afraid of him. The idea was dismissed since no other victim mentioned having seen anyone with Fanning.

  Then again, he moved around Davidson County like a gypsy, never straying too far from Nashville and never staying in one place too long. When questioning neighbors in the few places the original detectives investigating the case knew to look, they discovered very little cooperation. No one wanted to get involved. If they dared to talk about what a neighbor had been doing perhaps his or her own secrets would be revealed. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. People who live that kind of life have their own rules and those rules rarely line up with the law. Fear is a powerful motivator.

  Nothing in any case files related to Fanning suggest he kept a victim. My gut clenches at the memory of reading the depraved things he did to that poor girl.

  There is no description of the child, only references to she and her. At the time of my father’s interviews she appeared to be about fifteen. She wasn’t sure of her actual birth date. She couldn’t remember the names of her bio parents.

  The final entry in the file states the child died.

  It doesn’t say where she died. I have no idea how my father even knew her or came to have her as a patient. Logic suggests that she was a patient at one of the mental health facilities around Nashville. But her file as well as the others who were victims of Fanning being among my father’s personal files makes no sense.

  How are those victims connected to Dr. Lewis Newhouse?

  A jab of pain spears so sharply and deeply into my brain that I grab the box to keep myself steady. The framed photograph from my graduation slips between my body and the boxes and bumps to the floor. Thankfully, no shattering of glass.

  I take a breath, squeeze my eyes shut to ride out the wave of pain. What the hell is happening to me? How many headaches does this make this week? Half a dozen? Somehow I manage to pick up the photograph and place it back into the box.

  The faces in the photo blur and other images tumble one over the other through my mind. Me stumbling near the edge of the woods. The smell of freshly turned earth fills my nostrils, expands in my lungs. A mound near a copse of trees. A grave. Someone buried in the woods.

  She is gone forever now, Liv. At peace. My father’s voice whispers those words to me.

  I think of my mother. But wait, we didn’t bury my mother at the farm. I think of the prison guard and how he said that Fanning kept muttering the same thing over and over after the angry scene at the prison with my father.

  …we all got bones buried somewhere.

  The sound of a shovel sliding into soil cracks through my brain. The pain that follows brings me to my knees.

  She’s never coming back, Liv.

  Sunday, May 6

  Detective Olivia Newhouse

  Someone is screaming.

  I feel myself drifting through the fog of sleep, rushing toward the sound. I need to wake up. He’s calling my name. Liv! Liv! What the hell happened?

  My eyes open.

  Sunlight filters in through the plantation shutters. It’s so bright. I close my eyes again.

  “Liv!”

  Hands grip my shoulders and shake me.

  I open my eyes again. David is staring at me, his expression clouded with fear, his eyes wide in uncertainty.

  Walt. What if something has happened to Walt?

  Air rushes into my lungs as if I have only now started to breathe. I sit up. “What happened?”

  David blinks, stares at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

  “What happened?” he echoes. “That’s what I want to know.” He waves a hand at the bed. “Where the hell did all that mud come from? I’ve been all around the house and I can’t figure out where this came from. Your shoes are on the side porch caked in mud. The floorboard in your Subaru is smeared with mud. Did this happen at a crime scene? What time did you leave the house?”

  As the questions fire from his lips my gaze travels down the length of me. He has pulled the covers back and he’s right, I am covered in mud from the waist down. My jeans are caked with it. My socks are muddy. I stare at my hands; they are muddy as well as bloody.

  Blood? Shit. Where did the blood come from?

  “Tell me what’s going on, Liv?”

  I meet his gaze. “I was called to a crime scene. It was storming.” I blink to hide the lie in my eyes. “A headache started on my way home. By the time I got here I was out of my mind in pain. I must have come straight upstairs and climbed into the bed. I’m sorry.” I look at the mess I’ve made. “I’ll clean it up.”

  “Just stop.” He waves his hands back and forth. “The housekeeper will take care of it. It’s you I’m worried about.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, David,” I argue as I sit up. The room spins. “I’m fine.”

  He shakes his head and walks away.

  My heart sinks and my stomach lurches. I stumble from the soiled linens and rush to the bathroom. There’s nothing in my stomach to evacuate beyond the bitter bile that coats my throat and mouth on its way up and out. I sit on the Italian tile floor, the cold leeching into my bones.

  Finally, when I have heaved unt
il I feel like my eyeballs will pop out of my head, the urge fades and I drag myself to the shower and turn on the water. Feeling like death, I peel off my filthy clothes and climb beneath the hot spray, allow the heat and pressure to cleanse my skin, to warm the muscles and bones beneath. My palms burn as if I’ve poured alcohol onto an open wound. I turn my hands up and stare. The skin is raw and red, what looks like ruptured blisters seep blood.

  The shovel. The words penetrate the cloud of disbelief still banked around my brain and images pour in. Digging. Rain pouring down on me. My hair plastered to my head. My hands burning as I keep driving the shovel into the ground.

  A flash of lightning reveals the barn in the distance.

  The farm. I was at the farm…digging?

  Did I bury the files? Try to hide my father’s connection to Fanning?

  I shut off the water and grab a towel. As fast as I can I scrub the high-end terry cloth over my skin and rush to the closet. Jeans, sweat shirt, socks and sneakers. I run a comb through my hair. I should dry it but I don’t care. There’s no time for that. I grab my badge and service weapon from the bedside table. No phone. I glance around the floor. I check beneath the tousled covers. Nope. Dammit.

  Taking the stairs two at a time I try to think where my cell phone is. What about my wallet? I’m not big on purses so when I’m on duty I just carry a small credit card style wallet with my license and pertinent plastic. Anything else I need I stick in my jacket pocket.

  I would rather avoid the kitchen since David is apparently in there but my keys aren’t in the entry hall and he said I left my muddy shoes on the side porch. My keys are likely on the kitchen counter.

  I push my wet hair from my face. Water from the ends seeps into the cotton of my sweatshirt.

  “Coffee?” He lifts his cup as I enter the room.

  “No time.” I walk straight to the counter by the side door and reach for my keys.

  “You’re really just going to leave.”

  I close my eyes and wish for a way to explain but there is no way. I have no idea what’s happening to me. How am I supposed to explain it to him?

  “We’ll talk when I get home,” I promise the same way I’ve promised a dozen times before. Just this week I’ve made that promise several times.

  He moves up behind me and I shiver with the urge to run. He has no idea that I am falling apart—unraveling at the seams—and I don’t know why. I only know that I have to go and find out what I was digging up last night. Or burying.

  My mother is buried at Woodlawn in the same family plot as her parents and her brother who died as a small boy. My father was buried next to her just a few months ago. There can’t possibly be anyone buried at the farm.

  “Is this the end of us, Liv? Are we over? Maybe you just don’t know how to tell me you don’t want me anymore.”

  I turn to him, can’t leave him feeling this way. “It isn’t you, David.” I stare up into his eyes and tell him as much of the truth as I can…as I understand. “Something is wrong with me. Something I can’t comprehend. These headaches are coming with bizarre flashes of memory and I don’t know what any of it means. I have to figure this out before I can do anything else, do you understand?”

  Maybe it was the sheer agony in my voice or the fear in my eyes but he nods. Then his lips tighten. “Is Walt helping you figure it out?”

  I want to scream at him. Instead I tell him the truth. “No. None of this is about Walt or about you. It’s about me and something about my past that I can’t remember.”

  Fury flashes in his dark eyes. “Don’t expect me to believe you haven’t told him.”

  Enough. “You need to stop blaming every issue we have on Walt. This isn’t about him. He doesn’t know what happened last night. He doesn’t know about the memories. He doesn’t know any of this.” And he doesn’t. He knows about my worries where my father’s files are concerned, but he doesn’t know the rest.

  “So there was no crime scene last night?” David accuses. “That was a lie.”

  I hold up my hands, try to calm myself before I speak. “It’s difficult to explain.”

  “I can’t trust anything you tell me anymore. I’m sure Walt knows all about whatever the hell this is. He’s the one you always turn to!” David throws his arms up. “You never come to me with your worries about work or my family or anything. I’m sick of standing in his shadow.”

  At that moment I don’t know what comes over me but I can’t take anymore and the words burst out of me. “Walt is dying, David. Get off my back about Walt.”

  Then I do what I should have done minutes before. I walk out the door.

  My cell phone and my wallet are in my car. The cell phone is dead so I plug it in and drive away from the man who will thank me when this—whatever the hell it is—is over. No matter that I have no idea what any of this means, I understand with utter certainty that David is far better off without me.

  The blisters on my palms burning, I grip the steering wheel more tightly and barrel out onto the street.

  I drive like a bat out of hell. The sooner I get to the farm, the sooner I’ll know what really happened last night.

  Half an hour later I park in front of the house. The front door stands wide open.

  My heart drums in my chest.

  I swallow, wish I had some water.

  I climb out of the car and walk toward the porch. My fingers curl around the butt of my weapon. Without making a sound I climb the steps. The breeze whispers in my ears, I tune out the sound. Slowly I move across the porch and into the house. Total silence. Room by room, I go through the downstairs. All is clear, the safe room is just as I left it with the dried vomit on the floor and files spread around like discarded life stories.

  I check the library and that side of the house, then slowly climb the stairs. I go through the four rooms, including the one that was mine until recently. No one. Nothing.

  The house is clear. I must have left the front door open.

  Deep breath. I descend the stairs and walk back outside. The sun is warm and so bright it hurts my eyes.

  There’s no mud on the porch so I left the house open before I got muddy. Did I see something in the files that made me believe something was buried on the property? Other files my father wanted to hide? Information about Fanning?

  Or was I the one doing the burying? It’s possible that during some sort of crazy blackout I decided I needed to protect him.

  My body starts to shake and I feel sick to my stomach. My gaze rests on the barn. I start in that direction but then I notice the shed door is standing open. Behind the house there is the detached garage and a few yards away is a small garden shed that belonged to my mother. It was her haven. Her gardening tools and fertilizers are still stored there.

  Did I go in there? My heart thumps.

  I walk toward the shed with the sensation that I am watching myself do this. It feels surreal. Not me. This can’t be me. Can’t be my life. The closer I come to the shed, the more certain I am that I cannot go inside.

  No choice.

  I rest my hand on the butt of my weapon and I step inside. The interior is shaded from the sun, it’s dark and cool inside. I reach up and pull the string. A single bare bulb blares to life overhead.

  No mud. Nothing appears out of place. My gaze darts around the room. It’s only about twelve by fifteen feet with a nice long worktable in the center. Shelves line three of the walls. Tools hang from pegboard along the fourth wall.

  My gaze settles on a pale shadow on the pegboard. The place where a shovel once hung. My gut tightens.

  Okay. There was a shovel. Apparently I did do some digging. My palms burn, reminding me that there was never really any question. I walk back outside and wander around the yard, widening my search for a chunk of mud or some muddy tracks. If I dug something up and then walked back to my car, based on the mud on my shoes and jeans, I had to leave a trail.

  I see a blob of mud in the grass. Then another and another. I follow th
e random trail until the mud splotches become bigger, closer together. The path leads me to the tree line and then disappears into the thick undergrowth.

  I have to look carefully to find the broken sprigs of greenery, the bent limbs of wild shrubs, but I locate the path once more. As I wade through the brush, my clothes getting damp from the moisture clinging to the leaves, I see where larger limbs have been broken from bushes and small saplings. I couldn’t have wreaked that much havoc just walking or running past. I inspect a fractured limb. This was broken off at my shoulder level. Why would I feel the need to tear off limbs and sprigs of shrubs?

  I must have totally lost my mind.

  Fear knots in my belly. I am, I decide, slipping over some edge that I cannot see.

  About twenty yards into the woods I find a small clearing. The missing shovel lies on a mound of dirt that has been exhumed from the center of the clearing. At the head of the open hole is a rusty metal cross that has obviously been here for some time. My knees threaten to give out on me.

  The hole in the ground takes up most of the cleared space next to the mound of dirt. The shape is undeniably the proper size for burying a body.

  I shake my head. This cannot be. But the cross—my gaze touches the rusty metal again. My heart thumps harder and harder and I can’t breathe.

  I stare into the hole where the missing tree limbs and sprigs of brush line the bottom. My next breath is a struggle. “Just get it over with,” I mutter.

  Holding onto a sapling, I ease down into the waist deep pit. Whatever else happens, I have to know what I put in this fucking hole…or whatever was already here. I reach for the limbs, toss first one and then another out of the way.

  I remove another handful and there, on the ground, in front of me are bones. A skeleton. It appears to have been wrapped in a pink blanket. The band of pink, slick nylon that served as a border is all that remains of the covering. The rest has decomposed and vanished into the earth. But the bones are there. Splattered mud is stark against the white shape that lies almost fully intact like the skeletons you see hanging in a science classroom.