Red Red Rose

by Stephanie Hoffman McManus

  “Nora, your middle name is Rose.”

  “Yeah,” I said slowly. Again, maybe a coincidence, maybe not, but very few people knew my middle name. I’d dropped it the same time I took on Scott as my last name. It wouldn’t be on any records since I was adopted.

  “You have to see it Nora, the red hair, the roses, and it might have been Emily’s jacket, but you were wearing it the day he took it. If all of this was happening and Emily hadn’t been taken, then it would all clearly point to you. So take Emily out of it, and tell me who could be doing this.”

  “I . . . I– I don’t know. This is crazy.”

  “Think, Nora.” He leaned in. “Someone out there knows about your past. Someone is playing games with you and he’s going to win if we don’t figure it out.”

  “I just don’t know who would do this.”

  “It has to be someone in your life. Maybe not a close friend, but there’s no way that a guy this obsessed would be able to keep his distance. At the very least, it means he probably comes into the shop.”

  “Detective Parker already asked me about everyone who comes into the shop. They’ve talked to all of those guys.” I was growing frustrated. None of this was helping.

  “But they didn’t know what to look for then. If you’re sure it’s not one of them, then give me someone else to look at. This is someone who pays extra attention to you, but might be shy about it. He probably likes to watch you, but is more hesitant to engage. More than likely he has a bad temper. He’s smart though.”

  “That could be a hundred people, okay. Lots of my customers are college boys who like to come in and watch us girls. A few even work up the nerve to hit on me.”

  “No, this isn’t some college boy.”

  “You’re asking me to accuse one of my customers, maybe even someone I know, of murder!” I cried. “Obviously if I thought any of them were capable, I would have already told the police.”

  “Dammit, Nora. You need to forget that you know them. Be objective and think about the things I told you. Who stands out, even if you’re sure they couldn’t do it? We need somewhere to start looking, and now. Because this guy isn’t going to wait much longer.” He started shuffling through the stacks of pictures and papers on the table until he found two he was looking for. He shoved the first one at me, and I gasped.

  It was obviously a crime scene photo, and I was sure that had to be Dana Winter’s face, but it was hard to tell beneath all the bruising. Her face look like she’d stepped into the ring with a heavyweight champ. I forced my eyes away from the picture. “How could anyone do this?”

  “Something set him off Nora. He lost control. All of the other girls were pristine, not a mark on them except for the ligature marks around their necks. He bathed them and even brushed their hair, and he was careful when he dumped them. He arranged them almost like they were sleeping. Not Dana though. She was beaten severely and raped repeatedly before he killed her, then washed and tossed out like she was trash. The only care he took with her was dressing her in your clothes. He also kept her longer than the others. His previous victims were all killed within forty-eight hours of going missing, but Dana was kept alive for an entire week after he grabbed her. Something pushed this guy over the edge. And he left a message on her body. I want you to take a look and tell me if it means anything to you.” He held out the second picture and I took it.

  More bruising. This time all over her upper body. Poor girl. She’d clearly suffered, and Shaw was right. He did leave a message. Words in messy black ink covered her chest and stomach. Some of them were hard to make out. I had to really focus to read them and when I did, the last fifteen years of my life came to a screeching halt.

  “They looked it up; it’s some kind of poem.”

  “Red Red Rose, by Robert Burns,” I whispered.

  “You know it?”

  Yes, I knew the poem. I knew it well and this was only a part of it. The last verse.

  And fare-thee-weel, my only Luve!

  And fare-thee-weel, a while!

  And I will come again, my Luve,

  Tho' 'twere ten thousand mile!

  I was still staring at the picture, but I wasn’t seeing it. I’d gone to another time and place. One I thought I’d put behind me. Memories rushed forth and I wanted to squeeze my eyes shut to stop the onslaught, but I had to let them come. After the initial shock faded, I looked up at Shaw.

  “I know who did this.”

  Twenty-Two

  “His name is Aaron,” I racked my brain for a last name until I pulled it from my memory. “Aaron Lee.”

  “Who is he? A customer? An ex-boyfriend?” Shaw looked like he was gearing up, like any second he was going to get up and go after him. Unfortunately it wouldn’t be that easy.

  “I haven’t seen him in fifteen years.”

  A moment of confusion passed over Shaw’s face. Then his expression turned neutral. “What makes you so sure it’s him?”

  “This poem,” I handed the picture back to him. “And the roses. You were right. It makes sense now. I just . . . I just never thought I’d hear from him again. Hell, until I read that poem again, I almost forgot he existed.”

  “Who is he to you, Nora?”

  My elbows came to rest on my knees and I let my forehead drop into my hands. I stared at the floor while I tried to decide how far back I needed to go. I scraped my hands over my hair and sat upright. I needed to go all the way back to the beginning.

  “How much do you know about me? How far back did you go in your little search?”

  “Not much. I swear I didn’t want to invade your privacy Nora. I did a little digging, but there was a lot of information I couldn’t get access to without going deeper. I know you were born in Sweet, Idaho and your parents died when you were four, and after that you were in the foster care system until the Scott’s adopted you shortly before you turned fourteen. Prior to that you’d had a few minor scrapes with the law. Shoplifting, fighting at school, truancy.”

  “Yeah, I was a real hellion until Karen and Jim saved me,” I sighed. Every day I was so thankful for them and that they saw past the damaged little girl who lashed out at everyone rather than let anyone in. The first year I was with them, I made their lives incredibly difficult. It wasn’t until the night they sat me down at dinner and told me they wanted to adopt me that everything changed. I was used to being bounced from home to home when my foster parents would grow tired of my antics. No one had ever wanted to keep me before. Until Jim and Karen. I’d been nothing but a brat to them, and still they loved me and wanted me to be a part of their family permanently. I’d never had that before.

  “My biological father shot my mom and then himself, but for some reason left me.” I wasn’t looking Spencer in the eye. I didn’t think I’d be able to get through the story if I did. “Neighbors found me curled up with my mom’s body a few days later, half starved and crying. My dad was a mean drunk and junkie. My mom, well I don’t know much about her except that she stayed with him, and I think he might have got her hooked on the drugs as well. I remember in school after that, sometimes I would hear kids or even adults whispering. In a small town, no one forgets. Even though I didn’t even remember my parents, that didn’t mean the rest of the town didn’t, or that I wouldn’t forever be Chet and Laurie Hill’s daughter. They’d been a black stain on the town, and then on my life.

  “The family I was sent to live with after that wasn’t much better. They were a local family. They had a farm just outside town, and they’d taken in a few kids over the years. They kept to themselves and everyone in town thought they were saints for taking in the poor orphans no one wanted, but really they just didn’t want to look hard enough to see the truth, because then they might have to do something about it. So they turned a blind eye to the dirty and ratty clothes we were dressed in. They pretended as if they couldn’t tell we were half starved most of the time and rarely bathed, not to mention the regular bruises we didn’t do a good job of hiding. Even th
e social workers didn’t want to look too hard and rarely ever checked up on us, but Linda and Judd Johnson were not saints. I’d gone from one hell to another and lived in it for five years. They cooked drugs and supplied the next town over, taking in foster kids was just their way of bankrolling the operation, because unfortunately they didn’t just sell the product, but used as well.

  “It was a nightmare, and Aaron was my only ray of light in it all. He was another boy the Johnson’s had taken in, and by the time I turned six, it was just the two of us there, the other kids had moved on. He was two years older than me and he took care of me. He’d sneak food for us when they forgot to feed us, and sometimes he’d give me his when he knew I was extra hungry. He’d take beatings that were meant for me when I did something to screw up. He always helped me with my chores on the farm even though he wasn’t supposed to. He taught me to read and write and helped me with homework once I started going to school. One thing the Johnson’s had a lot of was books. I think they’d belonged to Linda’s mom, and the only reason she kept them was because they weren’t valuable enough to sell.

  “He would read to me, and when we came across a book of poetry, Red Red Rose became our favorite, because Aaron always called me Sweet Nora Rose, or sometimes just his pretty little rose. Wild roses grew all over the property, and he would cut them and bring them to me. He started doing it right after I moved in. I was sad all the time and he thought they would cheer me up. I also had the most awful nightmares, and often he would come into my room and crawl into bed with me and hold me. He’d calm me down so I wouldn’t wake up Linda or Judd, and then he’d stay with me.

  “He always told me he would take care of me forever and that I was his. I was just a little girl and I’d never had anyone love me so I didn’t know there was anything wrong with some of the things he did. He continued to come into my bed until I was ten.” I drew in a shaky breath and felt hot tears gathering. “He . . . I didn’t know it wasn’t okay for him to touch me like that, so I never told anyone, or maybe deep down I did know it wasn’t right and that’s why I didn’t speak up. But Judd and Linda were never around, except when we were in trouble and Aaron was all I had. But then one day they came home and found us in the bathtub together. He was twelve and I was ten, and I realized right away when they saw us, that it was not okay for us to be naked together.

  “Judd beat him so bad. I’m pretty sure he was high and it just made his rage worse. Linda dragged me by my hair, and screamed at me, calling me all kinds of names I didn’t fully understand. Judd ended up hurting Aaron so bad that he had no choice but to take him to the hospital because he was bleeding all over. He tried to give some excuse about him falling out of the loft in the barn, but the doctor’s didn’t believe it and the police were finally called.

  “Judd and Linda were arrested and I can remember when the social workers came to take us away. Aaron and I wanted to go with each other, but I think Linda and Judd made sure everyone knew what Aaron had done, because the lady who took me away had looked at him with so much disgust. I remember her telling the both of us that we would never see each other again. I cried and Aaron screamed. He just yelled my name over and over and promised me he would come for me as they took me away. That was the last time I ever saw him. I was moved across the state and went from home to home until Karen and Jim. I never heard what happened to Aaron, and honestly, once I was old enough to realize how messed up everything had been, I just wanted to forget about that part of my life altogether. When Karen and Jim adopted me, we changed my last name and they got a judge to seal all of my records so that I really could leave that life behind, and then they moved us out here to Washington and I thought I was free of my past.”

  I finally let myself meet Spencer’s gaze. He’d been focused on me and listening intently the entire time and right now he looked to be struggling.

  “Fuck Nora,” he breathed, and then he drew me to him. His hands lifted to my face and he slid his fingers back into my hair, holding my head between his hands as if I was so very precious to him. He set his lips on my forehead and just rested them there. I closed my eyes and breathed in and out. He tipped his head down and touched his forehead to mine. “You are so incredible, to have been through so much.”

  He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed out. “So beautiful and so strong.”

  I reached my hands up and grabbed onto his wrists. “I survived because I had to, and then Jim and Karen came along and they gave me more than that. They’re the amazing ones who took a broken girl and put her back together and gave her a good life, a really good life. So please don’t feel sorry for me.”

  His thumbs caressed the sides of my face as he drew back. “This isn’t pity you’re seeing, it’s awe, because you are everything beautiful in this world.”

  My whole body shuddered at his words and I let myself fall forward into his arms, which came around me and he held me to his chest. I closed my eyes and breathed him in, and for the first time in days, everything inside me felt right.

  “I’m sorry I thought you were a serial killer,” I murmured into his chest after a minute.

  “It’s alright, you don’t have to apologize for that,” he spoke softly into my hair.

  “I feel bad for thinking it. Some part of me never believed it though, and it’s been tearing me up for days. I should have listened to that part of me.”

  “I’m glad you didn’t. This has been one of those times where it is better to be safe than sorry. You can’t afford to trust so freely.”

  I nodded, knowing he was right, but still regretting that I’d doubted him.

  “Now I need you to tell me about Aaron.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was the leave the safe and comforting circle of his arms just to dredge up more bad memories from the past, but I had to end this, and Aaron was the key to finding Emily, so I reluctantly pulled away and he let me slip from his embrace.

  “It has to be him, but like I said, the last time I saw him, he was a twelve year old boy. I don’t think I would know him if I saw him, but I’ll tell you everything I remember.”

  He grabbed the laptop from the coffee table and opened it up. “You said his last name was Lee?”

  “Mmhmm.”

  “Do you know date of birth and location?”

  “Umm, I think he was probably born in Sweet like I was, or maybe a nearby town, but I’m not positive. I remember his birthday was during the winter. January or February maybe, but I don’t remember what day.”

  “That’s alright; I’ll see what I can find.”

  His fingers struck keys and I watched him enter the name and some of the information I’d given him into some sort of search. At my angle I couldn’t read what the search brought up, but I could see the scowl on Spencer’s face deepen as he read it. He turned his head toward me. “Is there anyone else who would know about Aaron and his connection to you? Anyone else from back then, or since, who knows about the poem and the roses?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Because this says that Aaron Lee died more than ten years ago.”

  “It has to be a different Aaron Lee then. I’m telling you, no one else knew about the roses and poem. It has to be him.”

  “This is the right Aaron. The age and information matches up. Says he was born in Sweet, like you said, to a Carol and Robert Lee who were both killed in a drunk driving accident when he was two. Looks like after that he lived with his paternal grandmother until she passed away a few years later. After that he was put into the system.”

  “That’s him, but then how is it possible he’s dead?”

  “I’m not sure. Maybe he told someone else about you. I’ll have to look into where he was sent after the two of you were separated. Not all of the information is here. I can have my guys dig a little deeper and see what they can find out about where he lived and how he died. If there’s a connection between your past or his and someone in your life now, we’ll find it. I’m also going to call Monroe and give
him the heads up. Maybe they’ll be able to dig up what we need on Lee faster, depending on warrants and how much tape they have to cut through. Either way, the more people we have looking into it, the sooner we’ll catch the guy.”

  I agreed and while he stepped into the kitchen to make his phone calls, I went in search of the phone I left behind this morning. It was on the bathroom vanity, where I’d done my make-up this morning. I had multiple missed calls from James, my mother, Nathan, Detective Parker and Agent Monroe. Even Shaw had tried to call me earlier. If I hadn’t forgotten my phone, I probably could have avoided the minor heart attack and confrontation that happened when I came home tonight.

  After a quick call to my mother to check-in, leaving out the connection to Aaron for now, I let her know a little of what was going on and then hung up and dialed James back. This time I got him, and unlike my mother, I told him about Aaron. I glazed over most of the gory details of my past, giving him an abbreviated version. Once I’d filled him in and reassured him I wasn’t pissed that he kept Spencer’s secret, I promised I would call again as soon as we had more information, and then he had to go.

  I hollered out to Spencer that I was going to take a shower, and shut myself inside the bathroom. When I emerged, wrapped in my robe, he had a cup of hot chocolate waiting for me. He even dug in my cupboards and found a bag of mini marshmallows and drizzled some of my caramel sauce in it. It was very fancy hot chocolate, and I grinned around my first sip.

  I closed my eyes, letting out a heavenly sigh. “Mmmm. A few shots of espresso and this would be perfect.”

  “Yeah, well I’m not giving you espresso this late at night.” He ushered me to the living room and tucked me into his side on the sofa. I set my cup on the coffee table and curled my feet up under my bottom. He grabbed his laptop and the tapping of his fingers on the keys was the only thing that filled the silence as thoughts of the past continued to assault me.