by Karen Harper
“I’ll be right back,” she mouthed to Peggy, who had just taken a call about someone bitten by a raccoon. She was telling them they had to see Dr. Nelson about possible rabies shots.
Out she stepped with a covered paper cup of coffee into the windy but sunny October day.
* * *
To Gabe’s dismay and embarrassment after telling Vic he’d be able to find the cabin, they couldn’t locate a pull-off spot on the single-lane dirt road up Green Mountain. It really wasn’t much of a mountain, just another of the tall Appalachian foothills around here, but it did loom above the others nearby.
“Finally!” Gabe said as they spotted an area where brush had been cut back to allow access off the road. “Let’s try it.”
“No vehicle here right now, but I see ruts. Bingo!” Vic said when they got out. “Let’s go in armed and all dressed up for a shooting party to check out Mr. Mayor’s hidden cabin. Can’t imagine he didn’t tell his wife about it and fired Ruby Purtle because it’s a lovers’ nest. No way he’d be meeting his secret ladylove up here, not that guy.”
“But remember to expect the unexpected. If he or someone else does arrive, the sheriff’s vehicle’s a dead giveaway, but it’s not like there’s alternative parking. Okay, let’s go.”
They donned their Kevlar vests over their jackets, took their weapons and hiked in. A path was soon discernible, even through falling, blowing leaves. Reese Owens always did drag his feet, but had he dragged something or someone else through here? Gabe felt his heart rate speed up. His mouth went dry. Something had to break on this case, but he was already dreading what he was going to find.
* * *
An elderly couple Tess didn’t recognize, but who greeted her by name, were just leaving the library when she walked in. “See you at the search for Sandy,” they said to her, evidently assuming she’d be there. And, even if Gabe and Vic weren’t back on time, she planned on that.
Except for Miss Etta, the library was deserted, but then it was almost lunchtime and the volunteer searchers would be gathering soon. The librarian was busy shelving books.
“Miss Etta, I brought you some coffee—small thanks for the research you’ve done for Gabe and me.”
“Tess, did you come alone? I rather had the feeling that Agent Reingold was keeping an eye on you.”
“He’s out somewhere with Gabe right now. I’m learning to answer the dispatch phones in the sheriff’s office—just helping out for a while.”
Miss Etta used the disinfectant on her desk, then, smiling, took the coffee from Tess. “I must admit I’m a tea person, but this is very kind. Nothing like good sheriff’s office coffee when they are out trying to solve their big cases. I do think with Dane’s demise, your own case may be resolved by his death and Marva’s eventual admissions—you know what I mean.”
“That Dane was guilty and she helped him? That could be, since I recall a small graveyard out behind the house where I was held, and Marva’s house seemed familiar in several ways.”
“Did it? Including its location on Blackberry Road?” Miss Etta asked, sitting at her desk and rummaging in her lower drawer.
“Not that so much, but I recall the back stairs, the attic that looked out on old stacked white beehives that resemble a graveyard. Also, I remember certain sounds like the distant train and the muted roar of the falls. Those books you gave me spoke of a cascade of memories, once they start coming back. But—I’m in a hurry. Gabe mentioned he rushed out of here without the book on stress you offered him. Can I get it on my temporary card and read some of it to him? Oh, is it that one on your desk about occupational stress?”
“Oh. No, that’s one I was looking at, but I have a much better one in the bookmobile parked right out back. I was going to drop it off since the sheriff is so busy. Come on out with me, and I’ll get it for you. I’ll just put up my out-to-lunch sign and get a bite to eat after I give you that book,” she said as she walked to the front door and flipped the open sign. “Well, then, come along.”
Taking what looked like a brown bag with her lunch, she left her coffee on her desk and, as ever, walked briskly toward the back of the building. Would the old bookmobile be as much of a time machine as this place was? Tess knew one thing. It would be spick-and-span within and the books would be perfectly in their places.
But the back workroom was a bit cluttered, which surprised her. Boxes and padded envelopes looked partly unpacked. Some sets of large books were stacked on wooden shelves.
“The so-called ebooks and those electronic tablets and phones are making perfectly good sets of encyclopedias and other reference volumes dead as the dodo,” Miss Etta said with a shake of her head.
“You know, I had an excellent idea we should discuss,” Miss Etta went on. “You’d be the perfect person to help me with groups of elementary students who come to visit the library or go on field trips to my house, where I talk about the Falls County pioneer days. I’ll bet you miss working with youngsters.”
“Yes, I do. That sounds great, but I’m not sure how long I’ll be around.”
“I hope you’re not getting too close to Gabe McCord, I mean, if you’re leaving soon. Ah, here we are.”
The old bookmobile was parked so its back door aligned with the library door. Tess realized Miss Etta must have driven it to work, because she didn’t see another car nearby. The woman unlocked the door to the old truck and went up a step, clicking on the inside light. Tess followed. The interior smelled musty. The scent seemed vaguely familiar and suddenly overpowering. It reminded Tess of the basement in her house.
“Ah, yes, here it is, far superior to that other book,” Miss Etta said. Pointing, she made room for Tess to pass her in the narrow, single aisle.
As she moved farther into the bookmobile, the smell grew stronger and Tess was overwhelmed by a memory. She was in the big, tall room where she was allowed to draw pictures if she was good, the room with all the books along the walls, the room where Mr. Mean lived and terrible things could happen.
Tess gasped and turned. She had to get out of here!
The paper bag crinkled loudly as Miss Etta took something from it and jabbed Tess’s neck with a needle. Just like that day in the cornfield.
“No!” Tess shouted, and tried to shove her away, but she was so strong, the rows between the corn so narrow.
“It’s all right,” Miss Etta said in a crooning voice. “It will be all right....”
Tess felt pain. Had she been stabbed or cut? She swung a fist at the woman but missed. She bounced off a shelf of books, kept in place by a cord in case the road was rocky. Tess grabbed for it to keep from falling, pulled it loose with several books and fell to her knees. Would she be smacked with Mr. Mean for messing up the books?
“I’m sorry,” Miss Etta said, in a calm voice as if she were reading to children who had to listen or they would be punished and hurt. She helped lower Tess to the soil in the cornfield. “I needed to do that before you remembered more, my dear. A drink of wine would have been kinder, but you gave me no choice. I must risk taking you now.”
Tess tried to hang on to her thoughts. Didn’t the drugs in the wine tie in to Dane? She could see the needle on the floor. It had blood on it. Maybe it would explode, because something was exploding in Marva’s kitchen and in her brain. However hard she fought it, Tess knew she was going under....
* * *
If the leaves hadn’t been off many of the trees, they might not even have seen the cabin before they were right on top of it. Gabe was amazed the decent-sized building had no view of the creek, distant waterfall or valley below. But then, he realized, Reese Owens hadn’t built it for the view outside but the one inside.
He held up his hand to halt Vic’s progress. Instinctively, they both lifted their rifles, despite the fact that they’d found no vehicle parked nearby.
“You go around back
,” Gabe whispered.
“Roger that,” Vic said. He limped toward the upside of the hill.
Gabe was grateful to have Vic with him. He still missed his father. If they had both been law officers at the same time, going out on a dangerous call, it might have been like this. And without Vic, he would have had to pull Jace away from the search for Sandy. But what if he could find her first, bring her back...?
Vic glanced at him before disappearing behind the cabin. Gabe bent low and moved closer to the front door. There was no porch for sitting out, nothing fancy or fine. It was a far cry from the mayor’s mansion in town, more like the small house where Reese had been reared.
His rifle ready but pointed down, Gabe put his back against the exterior front wall, crept along and twisted his neck so he could peek in a front window. Blackout drapes of some kind blocked his view. His gut twisted. He was going in.
Vic came around the front. “No back door or windows,” he said to Gabe.
Gabe nodded. “Police!” he shouted. “Come out with your hands in the air!”
Nothing. No sound but the birds and wind in the tree branches.
“That door looks pretty sturdy,” Vic said, pressed to the wall between the window and the door. “But I say we go in. We’ve got cause. The heck with waiting again for a search warrant. He’ll find a way to stop it. If it turns out to be nothing, that’s the breaks.”
“Literally. I’m going to bust out this window,” Gabe said.
Vic shrugged. “That or get a downed tree limb for a battering ram.”
Gabe broke out the window with his rifle butt. There was no sound but shattering glass, still no reaction from inside. Shoving the heavy curtain aside, he stuck his rifle barrel through, then his head.
“Clear,” he told Vic. “I’ll climb in, unlock the door. There’s all kinds of stuff covered by black drapes in here. On the back wall, I see newspaper articles and pictures of girls, some in strange poses.”
“Bingo, if he’s still into molesting. And the articles—maybe he likes to read his own press,” Vic said, holding Gabe’s gun while he climbed through. Gabe tried to avoid slicing his legs up on the jagged glass still caught in the frame.
When he unlocked and opened the door for Vic, in the light, they both stopped and stared. Vic started to swear, and Gabe felt sick to his stomach.
The newspaper articles were all about a TV show called The Biggest Loser, where contestants tried to lose a lot of weight. Before-and-after weight-loss pictures were posted. Charts on the wall tracked Reese’s weight—down, then up again. The pictures of girls were really of a thin woman who was giving all kinds of tips on losing weight. Wearing tights and a tank top, she was in various poses, demonstrating squats, lunges, scissors kicks on her back with her legs in the air.
And the machines under the drapes included a tread climber, a stationary bicycle, a running track, a rowing machine and a stack of weights.
“Talk about dumbbells and big losers, huh?” Vic said. “Skunked again. There’s no evidence of girls here, only a poor, fat sap who wants to get his boyish figure back and isn’t going to.”
“And now I’ve got to replace that window, explain to him. He’ll really try to get me defeated next month in the election. And maybe he should,” Gabe said.
Vic started shuffling broken glass around with his foot, shoving it toward the door. “I suppose he’d never know it wasn’t some hunter or that bunch of kids with the graffiti habit. Personally, I can’t stand the guy.”
“Me neither, but I’ve got to live with myself. Let’s board this up. I’ll have to tell him. We need to get back. Thank God Tess is safe at the station and people are pitching in to help with another search. Maybe I was nuts not to take that book from the librarian about stress on the job.”
* * *
Were the cords the woman was wrapping around her wrists the same ones that kept the books from falling when the library truck made a sharp turn? Ropes around her ankles too, and a neatly ironed linen handkerchief stuck in her mouth. Tumbling, turning, Tess fought the darkness. Gabe. Gabe had gone somewhere green when she needed him here in this creeping blackness that was going to drown her under a waterfall.
“You just take a nap right there,” a voice said. “We’re going on a little ride back home.”
It wasn’t her mother’s voice, was it? Or maybe Char was counseling her to get more sleep.
“It will just take me a minute to completely close up, and you just rest while I drive. You should never have run away, you know, you bad girl! Did you think you could hide from me? Remember, Teresa, if you aren’t good, I’ll put you underground with the bones.”
At those words, at the shift in voice to an even lower pitch, total terror came screaming back at Tess. She saw it all, tried to run, tried to shout for help, but black night covered her.
28
Tess felt groggy, but she was finally getting a good night’s sleep. Still, the bed was so hard, and now someone was moving her, dragging her out of bed. Was it Gabe? Was she at his house? She wanted to stretch her sore arms and legs, but they didn’t move. The cut on her wrist hurt so much, she was afraid she was back in the meth lab, tied up again. She tried to cry out, but there was something in her mouth, and all that came out was a choking sound.
“Almost there now,” a woman’s voice said. “Home again, home again, jiggetty jig.”
A nursery rhyme about the five little piggies. Oh, she was back at the day care center in Michigan, home again. But no, wasn’t Cold Creek home?
She knew that voice, but whose was it? Was there an emergency? Had something bitten her, and she needed shots for rabies?
“You should never have run away, you bad girl. And you owe me for that broken window all those years ago. Broke it out with Mr. Mean, then stacked books to get high enough to crawl out, didn’t you? That’s no way to treat books! Mama Sybil was so angry when you were gone she hit me with Mr. Mean.”
Then Tess knew. Jumping out of the dark doors of her mind, pictures poured at her. She remembered Mama Sybil in her wheelchair. She was the one who was mean. She said she loved Tess, but she beat her, scared her every time she cried for home, every time she didn’t cuddle up to be read to. Tess breathed slowly and deeply and her gaze cleared. Miss Etta was dragging her from the bookmobile into a building and room she remembered well. Miss Etta had called it the book barn. Yes, that’s where she’d broken a window to escape and was found wandering on a road several miles away because she didn’t know how to get home.
Tess tried to talk again, hoping Miss Etta would pull the gag from her mouth. It was hard not only to swallow but to breathe because her nose ran and she was starting to cry. She forced herself to continue listening to the woman.
“All I’d done was run to the bathroom the day you got away, but you were so quick, both in movement and in thought. Surprising, since you didn’t like to read as your sisters did, but I know you learned a lot hearing books read to you while you were on Mama Sybil’s lap. I was hoping to improve your reading. That’s partly why I chose you when I drove the bookmobile past your house that day and saw you running wild in your backyard by the cornfield, you naughty girl. Believe me, it was a long trek through that corn to fetch you and get you past that big mower making its passes. I had to carry you clear to the bookmobile parked on the road!”
Gabe! Tess screamed inside her head. Come find me and maybe you’ll find Sandy and Jill before it’s too late for all of us.
Miss Etta left her on the floor in the middle of a big, worn, hooked rug. The window she’d escaped through was boarded up, as were the others, but the place was lit by four bare bulbs hanging from electrical cords. Fury cleared Tess’s mind even more. This was the place, lined with books, where she’d been allowed to play, to draw pictures. And they’d said over and over they were being kind to her! But Mr. Mean lived here as w
ell as in the house attic, where she’d slept. Miss Etta had moved her from place to place after dark. And in the house, Mama Sybil ruled with an iron fist.
Tess blinked back tears and shook her head to force her way through the haze of memories and emotions. Fearful, forsaken. She had to halt the tumble of thoughts right now. Concentrate. Listen and plan.
“Coming alert, Teresa?” Miss Etta asked. “I wasn’t sure how much of that drug went into you when you fought like that. Since you’re an adult, I’ll up the dose later when we go inside to see Mama Sybil. I’ll take that gag out for a minute or two, but I have to head back to town, be seen around before I return here. Got to get you all tied up nice and tight until I get back. And they won’t find Sandy on their cornfield searches, because you’ll both be here, snug as bugs in a rug.”
Sandy is here and alive!
It had never occurred to Tess that Etta Falls might be crazy. But she was the one. A librarian. One who was so helpful. One who seemed to be everywhere so no one noticed she had buzzed about in that bookmobile and had taken prisoners.
The minute Miss Etta pulled the gag out, Tess almost dry-heaved. Trying to stay calm, she copied the woman’s preachy, almost singsong tone, as if she were talking to a child.
“Miss Etta, you can’t keep people prisoner like this. You’ll have to let me go, and we won’t say another thing about it.”
“Oh, we only keep you girls until you get too big for cuddling and commanding. And you’re entirely too big and the only one who got away, Teresa. But we can correct that now. Besides, we can’t allow your talking to young Sheriff McCord any more than to his father. Oh, we were worried you’d recall things then, just like now, but you cooperated beautifully. That’s why I tried to warn you to leave town and keep your mouth shut with the drugged wine and your old drawing, but you didn’t cooperate, did you? So you’ll have to pay the price. Mama Sybil’s rules, not mine, so we all have to obey her.”
Tess started to shake. After feeling elated that Sandy was alive, she was so scared she broke into a sweat despite the fact that she felt icy cold. The two old women were disposing of their victims when they grew too big? Then Jill—
