Ripping Abigail, a Quilted Mystery novel

by Sullivan, Barbara

  At least I wasn’t overwhelmed with fatigue as I’d been last month.

  Dread and fatigue had crept over the rest of them however, like a malevolent Stephen King fog.

  I spent a lot of time in the bathroom, too, peeing and appreciating the cleverness of their wallpaper. The room was covered with decoupaged old newspaper articles, some from Boston and some from New York, even a tiny local paper from somewhereville, Connecticut. It was brilliant really, in case you forgot to bring reading materials.

  I bumped into Nana at least twice on my trips around the house and we shared our grim thoughts nonverbally. I let the spirit of this old woman comfort me. She was this month’s Ruth.

  Somehow I needed an older woman as a mentor in my life…like my mother had been until--before she developed dementia. Come to think of it, she even mentored me through her demise, as well as she could, as well as her slowly dying brain allowed.

  I would come home from long days at the library in North Carolina and find her sitting staring--I know now, blindly—at the small television set in her bedroom.

  Pretending for me that she was okay. Pretending she wasn’t terrified…for as long as she could. My eyes welled up and I shook my grief away and returned to stare at the stitching I was no longer doing.

  I pondered the question, what if Abigail was dead? From there my thoughts drifted morbidly from one dark thought to another until my leg tingled and I looked down at my phone.

  Finally!

  It was Matt. I flew to the living room to keep the call as private as I could in our little space and angrily flipped open the phone.

  “Tell me,” I barked.

  He fumbled an explanation why he hadn’t called me, ending up telling me they feared Buddy was dead, judging from the amount of blood. The ME had indicated it was all from one person, presumably Buddy.

  “We finally turned on the TV. It’s all out there, on the national cable channels Matt! Including all the gory details. Nice way to find out, dear.” I was pissed.

  “I’m sorry Rache. I’ve been incredibly busy. And the press is everywhere now. It isn’t helping.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Back in the barrio, although the locals don’t like to think of their neighborhoods that way. So I should lose the…”

  I cut him off.

  “So what are you getting from the local gang members?”

  “Zip, mostly. They were frightened clams until Will finally connected with one family. We’re outside their house now, trying not to bring future gang wrath down on them, pretending we still have nothing, and beating off the press as well as we can.”

  “But you have something now…you said ‘mostly’.”

  I heard Matt sigh.

  “Well, we have willing talkers. But don’t go getting anyone’s hopes up. None of it is useful information so far.”

  “The last thing we have is high hopes,” I muttered. He heard me, and grunted.

  I’d been wondering how to tell him about the cryptic poem-message. I decided to tell him it was from Nana. I certainly couldn’t say it was from Ruth. If I said it was from Nana he could believe maybe she’d been holding back on us and knew where Abigail was all along.

  Maybe.

  Except…how could Nana know where she’d been taken now? Oh darn. I’d just have to talk my way past his objections.

  “Rache?”

  “Yeah, I’m just thinking.”

  “We need Gloria to take a look at some symbols written on the wall in Buddy’s kitchen.”

  “What?”

  “With lipstick. I’ll send you a picture of them then you need to have Gloria look at them.”

  It took a moment for the picture to transfer. I stood staring at what were clearly Cyrillic letters. But how should I show these…maybe last words from Abigail…how can I show the grieving, terrified Gloria..?

  Nana solved my problem.

  “Vot are doze?”

  I nearly jumped a mile. Nana had snuck up behind me, and was peering over my shoulder at the image on my phone.

  “Oh,” she said. “Main, den a line, den road. Must be a dress.” She drifted away, back to her small downstairs bedroom by the front hall. I watched her glance up the stairs to the darkened bedrooms above as she went. Her face was an older version of Gloria’s, also filled with fear.

  A dress? What did she mean “a dress”? My brain was trying to shut down; I was way past my bedtime. Wait! Address. She meant address. Main…line! Mainline, or Main Line Road.

  I wondered if Matt had heard her comment and put the phone to my ear again.

  “Matt? Are you still there?”

  “Yeah. Did you get the symbols?”

  He hadn’t heard. He sounded as exhausted as me. He needed to hear about Nana’s poem first. Main Line could be anywhere.

  “Matt, just listen to me for a minute, okay? Nana has some information. She’s given it to us…you know she only speaks Ukrainian…but she told us in broken English, as if…as if it was said to her in English and she wanted us to understand it correctly. So she…okay, okay, never mind. Here’s what we have.” My turn to sigh.

  “Rache..?”

  “They’ve gone south. We think Nana said ‘Where pigs are prone to hear men groan, down under.’ Elixchel thinks Nana means Donovan--the prison. And just now, well, Nana saw the letters on my phone and she said it was the word for main and then a line and then the word for road. It makes sense, you know, so close to the border. Maybe if you faked it, told the Pintos you already know about their…hideout, or whatever it’s called, near Donovan prison, at Main Line Road—you could get one of them to tell you more. Matt? Are you still there?”

  He wasn’t of course. He was going into action, without me!

  Now I was really lit. My pacing always increases when I’m furious. So I made the rounds of the first floor of the condo several thousand times until even I knew I was being a pain.

  I came to light staring once again out the side windows of the sun porch. It was still dark. But at least it wasn’t raining. Enough with the crazy rain. This was Southern California where it almost never rains.

  My hands were so tensed from holding them in fists that I held under my armpits--as if I were afraid I might swing at the next human who crossed my path--that I couldn’t have sewn if I wanted to.

  I was shouting in my head, barely able to control my anger, and I knew my face reflected that. Tended to make me look crazy. Fortunately I was faced away from the others, all dutifully sewing on the quilt--where I should be right now.

  Matt was probably right. I was better off sewing.

  But even with my sporadic sewing, my fingers ached. I pressed them against the cold glass, hoping to ease the swelling and thus the pain. A chill leapt from its surface and skittered up my arms into my brain like a grave beetle going for the sweet breads.

  But this chill wasn’t from the glass, it was from my stalled heart.

  It was from the set of demon eyes staring back at me through the pane…only a few feet away…the whites lit by the bright quilting lights…his gray iris’s challenging my memory.

  Eddie! I snatched my hands back as if from dry ice.

  He was here! He was in town again. This odd, this terrifying man.

  I took a half step back.

  But he wasn’t so odd looking any more, was he? He almost looked normal…except for the shades of gray. Not his hair, his whole body. Why did I always see him in grays?

  Another half step.

  “No.”

  I didn’t realize I’d spoken until I bumped into Hannah’s chair…the chair I’d begun the night sitting in, but now was Hannah’s.

  I was losing my mind. It was the caffeine. The sugar. And the image was gone. Poof. So no one else would see him. Even if I was insane enough to tell them.

  “Rachel?” Hannah.

  They were wondering what was going on.

  I turned around and sat down slowly in my new seat--breathing like a race horse before, du
ring and after the race. I was staring at the bit of quilting I needed to finish and never would. My hands fiddled with the surface of the quilt, tried to return to the task at hand, but my mind was a million miles away.

  I had to tell Matt. Eddie was back!

  I flipped my phone open and looked at it. It was perilously close to dead.

  Chapter 82

  Abigail felt her mind slipping as she listened to the terrible noises coming from the next room. Poor Betty and Rosalia. Those filthy beasts were raping them again. Making their terrible animal sounds, screeching and cheering each other on. All night long Abigail had listened to the screams and moans, and other noises she tried to block out.

  The tears began to flow again as she thought of the terror of the past eight hours. And Buddy, and how they’d killed him.

  Surely he was dead by now, after what they’d done to him. They…cut him. Cut him everywhere. And all because of me. It was me they’d been after, he just got in their way, fought their attempt to steal me.

  Because I got in the gang’s way at school. Because I couldn’t keep my mouth shut. Because I wanted to protect Betty and her friends.

  She stifled a cry that kept trying to crawl up her throat.

  The Indian girls would be dead soon, too. They couldn’t survive the violence much longer. Their protests were weaker and weaker with each renewed attack.

  Her heart sped up in her chest as if she were running away, and she pretended she was.

  She pretended she was fleeing across a clover-filled field and halfway across as the sun was just breaking over the horizon, a beautiful fire-breathing dragon swooped down from the night and carried her off into the dawn.

  A sob forced its way up her throat and her eyes flew to the door. They might hear you! Be quiet or they’ll come hurt you too!

  The assault had abated and the dirty little house settled back into a dread-filled silence.

  Abigail’s shoulders ached as if she were stretched on a rack. Her wrists were tied to the bed posts so tightly she couldn’t feel her hands any more. Her ankles were tied together—which made her hope she wouldn’t be raped, like the others. At least not yet.

  She squirmed and almost cried out again. She had to pee so badly she didn’t know if she could hold it much longer. Yet her mouth felt like the inside of a pottery kiln. She could barely produce saliva any more.

  The smell of the filthy mattress filled her with renewed nausea as her eyes began to float in her head--as if they were coming loose, as if they were eager to leave so they couldn’t see death as it approached…or the hell she was about to be delivered into as it came to claim her like a hungry wolf.

  He was taking her to Mexico. He called himself ContraCristo, and he claimed to be the eldest son of some drug lord in Tijuana. His papa, Antipapa he called him, was going to “savor her first juices” and then she would be taken who-knew-where. The worst part was he was actually beautiful to look at.

  But that shouldn’t surprise her she realized; evil usually was beautiful, so it could hide itself among the flowers and pretty birds, and humans would smell deeply of its fragrance and long for its song.

  She drifted away again in the stinking cold, almost sleeping, almost free, halfway to hell.

  PART THREE

  remnants

  Chapter 83

  If I used my phone again it would be dead.

  The quilt was almost done, except for the last section of one corner, the part I couldn’t complete because of my crazy thoughts. What should I do? What was Matt doing?

  Where was Abigail right now?

  I stood and took in Abigail’s quilt in its entirety again. When we’d first begun so many hours ago the quilt had been laid out between the boards for all to see, but I really hadn’t focused on it clearly, I could see that now.

  Back then in the beginning I’d thought the subject of the quilt was another of Abigail’s beautiful lilies. But no, it was something all together different. The aquamarine and purple image I’d seen swooping across the navy to light blue background was a…

  “It’s a dragon, isn’t it? Those reds and pinks are the flames.” My throat was croaking, my voice sounded as deep as a man’s.

  Gloria looked up at me with exhausted eyes and said, “Why, yes. Didn’t I explain?” She looked around at the others and saw that she hadn’t.

  “Abigail is into dragons now. She calls this her Dawn Dragon. See, how it flies from the dark navy colors toward the very light blues. She has a poem she’s written…I should get it for you all and read it…” Tears were puddling at the corners of her eyes. She sighed, shook her head, changing her mind. “It describes the dawn dragon and how it flies out of the night carrying the sun in its mouth to start the new day.”

  Gloria’s choking words faded away into her third or maybe fourth flood of tears of the night. I had to do something, anything, to keep it together.

  The sleeping television set called me to it. I moved into the living room and turned it on once more. In the background I heard Anne’s peculiar ring tone—the Flight of the Bumblebee, fitting for a woman who made her living off of apples and all their delicious manifestations: pies, dumplings, strudels, fritters. Can’t have apples without bees.

  She flipped her phone and began speaking in hushed tones with occasional who-who’s as I waited for the analog to warm up.

  Fatigue and sugar waged war for control over my mind. Finally a picture emerged, and slowly sounds. I flipped through the channels. It was almost four in the morning. Surely San Diegans were waking up. But no, not yet.

  Giving up I returned to FOX. But they were following another stupid car chase. Wait. It wasn’t a chase…those were aerial shots of a small home somewhere out in the boonies, with all sorts of black vehicles racing along the approach roads in the dark.

  Anne stopped talking and just gawked at the screen. I turned up the volume. Victoria sighed noisily behind me, still sitting at the quilt rack.

  “…authorities have been gathering for the past half hour, centering their attention on this rural Chula Vista home. You can see, Greta, they’ve got some people trapped now. Road blocks are being set up to the north and south on the only public road in. And…yes, I think we have the location now of those poor girls who have been kidnapped. And maybe the boy.”

  I was thinking it was an on-the-scene Geraldo Rivera type reporter—standing by the roadside as official vehicles sped by--even looked like him. Maybe Geraldo’s been cloned, my sleepy-hyper brain whispered to me.

  “Our sources are saying the boy has probably died, Geraldo. And aren’t they also thinking the two Indian girls...Betty and Rosalia have been killed and dumped by now?” Greta. Greta from Fox. Wait.

  Ohmygod, it was Geraldo! I marveled that he was seemingly able to be everywhere.

  “I don’t think any of them are dead! They better not be, Greta. The whole world is watching this now, and the rotten bastards who have them will be hunted down like dogs if they hurt a hair on their heads.…”

  Okay, I have to admit to you now that I have fantasies about Geraldo. He’s such a strong, sensitive man.

  The camera finally pulled back and there it was! Donovan Prison in all its blasphemy. I really hated prisons. Why hadn’t the human race figured out a better way to deal with our misbehaving and broken people yet? Even microchips inserted directly into the brain would be better than keeping people in cages unfit for zoos.

  I turned for the kitchen--I needed sustenance to listen to any more—and almost tripped over Gloria who was standing staring at the news with two fists pressed against her mouth.

  Suddenly I spotted something chocolate and gooey on the groaning counter, and someone yelled, “Who for cripes sake brought fudge? I can’t resist fudge.”

  Uh-oh. It was me.

  I had to get out of here before I went stark raving bonkers, and I had to be down there where the action was. I barked, “Gerry! Get your car keys, we’re going south!”

  “I’ll come too, I can d
o research on Gerry’s new iPad while she drives.” Hannah, springing into action.

  Gerry had her coat on before I could find my jogging shoes in the big bag I’d brought. They were underneath my Rossi .38.

  At the last moment I turned to acknowledge Gloria’s needs a last time. We shared a look that fed me for the rest of this frightening morning, one that I knew well from my own life--the pain of being the person who must wait and wonder. Flashing across her face I also saw fear, courage and determination. Nana’s door slid open and she joined us in this silent communication.

  And then I turned to perform the duties that females of the wilder mammals on our planet most often do.

  Chapter 84

  I only thought of Eddie seventeen times on the drive down. There were even moments when I thought I saw him following us in that infernal white truck with the ram bumper.

  Who was he? I still didn’t know if his horrific, abuse-filled childhood had broken him, created a sociopathic monster, or done something far more complex. I only knew he scared me.

  We were heading for Main Line Road.

  In the end it was Hannah who drove Gerry’s XLX970 (the third wonderful car I’d seen her drive since I met her last month.) Gerry chose to sit in the back and plug in her newest iPad with video mirroring installed and pointed at her home television connection.

  But back to the SUV: the XLX has a base price of seventy-six thousand dollars. Gerry’s XLX 970 (she called it her Grand Junction, because 970 is the area code for that city—but I was thinking it was a lowercase grand junction of some kind she was referring to) had tech upgrades I was betting put the monster over a hundred thou. The average house in America costs around a hundred and eighty thousand. The average American condo is about the same cost as the XLX970. It would fill me with guilt to drive one of them. But Gerry wore it well, like one of her trademark faux-animal coats.

  And besides, she has four boys to deliver around town.