Undying

by V. K. Forrest

  She looked at him, her face childlike. Beautiful, but intensely sad.

  “Teddy did it again.” Emotion snagged her voice.

  Arlan just stood there for a moment, arms hanging at his sides. He didn’t know what to say. “This is not your fault,” were the first words that came to mind.

  She just sat there, arms on her knees, her head hung.

  Arlan sat down beside her. “Fia called you?”

  She nodded.

  “Any details?”

  “Not really. Not yet. A family of eight in Lancaster. Old-order Amish.” She sat up, pushing away some hair that had fallen free from her ponytail holder and now hung over her face. “Fia’s there now.”

  The thought went through Arlan’s head that he should go to Lancaster. That Fia needed him.

  He flexed his fingers. But Macy needed him, too.

  They sat for a moment in silence.

  “Come on.” Arlan stood, grabbed her hand and pulled her up off the step. Macy tried to resist, but he didn’t give in.

  “Where we going?”

  He half led, half dragged her down the sidewalk. “To the Dairy Queen.”

  “Eight people were murdered today by someone stalking me, and you want ice cream?” Macy stared at him.

  “A Reese’s Pieces Blizzard will do us both some good right now.” He put his arm around her shoulders. “And there’s someone there I’d like you to meet.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding.” Kaleigh stood at a deep fat fryer, filling paper envelopes with French fries. “I’m not talking to her.”

  “Please, Kaleigh. She’s in a bad place right now. She needs…” Arlan tried to find the right words. “She needs some wisdom.”

  The teen cut a sideways glance at Arlan. She wore a red smock and a paper food services cap with the Dairy Queen emblem on the side. And you think I have words of wisdom? She rolled her eyes.

  “Kaleigh, she can help with the case. I know she can. She’s just scared. Confused.”

  Kaleigh dumped a bag of frozen fries into a basket and lowered it into the hot oil. It spit and sputtered. “And that never works, does it?” she mused aloud. “You can’t run from who you are,” she added to no one in particular.

  “See that.” Arlan patted her on the shoulder. “That’s what I’m talking about. Words of wisdom.” He took his sunglasses off his head. “Come on. For me. I’ll leave my keys in the ignition and you and your friends can steal my truck for a couple of hours. I just need it back by morning so I can go to work.”

  “I was not part of that.” She pointed at a group of teenagers congregated in the parking lot. “I told them not to take that old codger’s car. I told them he’d squeal on them.”

  Arlan grinned as he lowered his sunglasses over his eyes. “We’re outside at one of the picnic tables.” He headed out the kitchen’s back door. “And we’ll take two Blizzards, too.”

  “I’m not giving away free ice cream,” Kaleigh called after him.

  Ten minutes later, Kaleigh walked out the front door of the ice cream shop, carrying three cups. She strolled over to Arlan and Macy’s table and set down the cups. “My break is ten minutes.” She handed Arlan his. “Reese’s Pieces with chocolate ice cream. Take a hike. Oh, and you owe six dollars and sixty-six cents,” she said. “Pay up.”

  Arlan walked away, not giving his human girlfriend a real chance to protest against being stuck with a teenager wearing a stupid paper hat and smelling like chocolate syrup. Kaleigh sat down at the table opposite Macy and pushed one of the cups across the table toward her.

  “I don’t know what Arlan told you about me,” Macy said, looking at the ice cream. “But frankly, this isn’t any of your business.”

  Kaleigh tugged her hat off her head and tossed it on the table. She pulled the long plastic spoon out of the cup of ice cream and licked it. Oreo Cookie Blizzard. Her favorite. “Well, I don’t know what he told you about me, but I have a way of, I don’t know”—she shrugged—“getting things. You know what I mean? Lot’s of people talk to me. You’d be surprised.”

  Macy found herself mesmerized by the teen’s steady gaze. There was something in those young eyes that appeared to…be not so young, and Macy had the strange feeling that she did understand what Kaleigh meant by getting things.

  Macy definitely had to get out of this town. It was just too M. Night Shyamalan weird to be safe. And she still needed a new phrase.

  Kaleigh looked down at her cup and stuck her spoon in it. She pulled the spoon out, observing the way the vanilla ice cream and little bits of chocolate cookie mounded on the red plastic. She saw a flash of light as she touched the spoon to her tongue. A picture. Like a photograph, which was kind of strange because she didn’t usually see things that way.

  Macy. Only younger. Standing alone in a cemetery, wearing a jean skirt.

  Kaleigh felt the younger Macy’s overwhelming grief and fought to keep the sadness out of her own heart. That was hard for Kaleigh, sometimes. People told her she needed to insulate herself from others’ emotions, but that was easy to say, not so easy to do.

  As the plastic spoon scraped her teeth, Kaleigh saw another flash. Another photograph. One small white casket beside another. Two little blond-haired girls, dressed in yellow sundresses, lying in the caskets. Dead.

  Against her will, tears filled Kaleigh’s eyes. The cool, sweet ice cream in her mouth suddenly tasted like mud. It was hard to swallow.

  “Kaleigh? Are you all right?”

  Macy’s words seemed to start from far away and then come from some place closer.

  Kaleigh blinked. “They were wearing yellow sundresses. Your sisters. The dead ones.”

  Macy stared at Kaleigh as if she had seen a ghost. It was just like one read in books. All of a sudden she was white as the napkin that fluttered on the table.

  “How did you know that? I’ve never told anyone. Arlan—”

  “Arlan didn’t tell me anything.” Kaleigh frowned. She probably should have just kept her mouth shut, but it was too late now. “I just know stuff.”

  Macy sat there, hands on the table, looking like she was going to bolt.

  “It’s okay,” Kaleigh said quietly. “I don’t tell things.”

  Macy stared like a skittish doe.

  “What I was thinking was that you can’t keep running,” Kaleigh said. “That’s what I’m getting. That no matter how scared you are, you can’t outrun it.” She set her cup of ice cream down. “Sometimes, the only way to put out the fire is to turn around and run right into it. You know?”

  “What are you talking about?” Macy asked.

  Kaleigh got up from the picnic table. She took her paper hat, but she left the ice cream. “I have no idea. But I think you do. See ya around.”

  Flabbergasted and scared at the same time, if that was possible, Macy watched the teen walk away. How could that girl have known about Mariah and Minnie? How was it possible?

  She watched as Arlan spoke to Kaleigh before she went back into the ice cream shop. He approached the table where Macy still sat.

  “What did you tell her about me?” Macy accused him as Arlan sat down.

  Having finished his ice cream, he picked up what Kaleigh had left behind and began to eat it. “What do you mean? Nothing. What could I have told her? I don’t know about you. You won’t tell me anything.”

  “My sisters died. They were buried in yellow dresses,” Macy murmured. Her hands trembled.

  “I’m so sorry, Macy.” He looked up from his ice cream, spoon poised.

  “You’re missing the point here, Arlan. How did she know?”

  “I told you. Kaleigh knows things.” He shrugged, going back to his ice cream. “Around here, we call it a gift.”

  Macy’s head reeled. None of this made any sense, but did anything in her life? “Kaleigh doesn’t know about Teddy, does she? About him stalking me?”

  “She knows Fia’s working on the Buried Alive Killer, but I haven’t said anything to her about you help
ing out with the case. Fia certainly wouldn’t say anything. Neither would Eva—I mean, if you’ve mentioned anything to her.”

  Thinking, Macy slid the DQ cup in front of her. The paper was wet and cool. She pulled the spoon up and plunged it into the ice cream. It was melting. Vanilla ice cream with real strawberry bits in it. How the hell had Kaleigh known Macy liked strawberry ice cream? She had never told Arlan. She’d never told anyone. She took a tentative taste.

  The cold, sweet ice cream was shockingly good. “Kaleigh told me I can’t keep running. She said the only way to end it was to meet it head on. Something about fire.” Macy looked up at him. “She was talking about Teddy. She knows he’s connected to my sisters’ deaths.”

  Arlan watched her through his dark sunglasses. His face was not just handsome, it was sweet. She liked the way he looked at her—like he really did care.

  Macy took another tentative taste of the strawberry ice cream, still pensive. “I think I need to talk to Fia.”

  He reached across the table, taking her hand in his. He squeezed it. “I was hoping you would.”

  While preparing for a presentation the next day, Teddy waited for Marceline. He checked his laptop. It was early still, but he kept his IM program on, just in case she couldn’t resist.

  And he knew she wouldn’t be able to resist.

  She never could.

  Chapter 23

  Macy sat in the booth at the diner, the Nike shoe box beside her. She’d driven all the way to Charlottesville last night to retrieve it. Then back to Clare Point. Oddly enough, she wasn’t tired. Adrenaline, she supposed. And a strange feeling that this was all coming to an end.

  Macy wasn’t like Kaleigh, she didn’t know things, but she sensed an impending conclusion. She didn’t know if Teddy was going to kill her or if Fia was going to catch him. And Macy wanted to live. For some reason, she’d come back from New Orleans knowing that, and the realization had brought on the seed of an emotion she hadn’t known she could still experience. Fear. Years ago, she had resigned herself to the idea that Teddy would kill her one day. She knew that eventually he would tire of his sick cat and mouse game and he would murder her. She was afraid because she didn’t want to die. But her new desire to live had also planted another seed and that was the will to fight back. She wanted to fight to live.

  Fia walked into the diner wearing a fitted suit, her signature dark sunglasses, and a bad ass attitude. On the phone last night, while she’d seemed interested to see the box, she’d wanted Macy to come to the FBI offices in Philadelphia. Macy didn’t do FBI offices. And she didn’t do Philadelphia. She wasn’t sure why. She just didn’t like the city.

  “Up all night?” Macy asked as Fia slid into the booth across the table from her.

  “Left the crime scene to come straight here. I don’t usually drink caffeine, but I’m having it this morning.” She pointed to her coffee cup and a waitress came to fill it. “Rye toast, dry.”

  “Anything for you, Miss?”

  Macy shook her head and waited for the waitress to walk away. “Thanks for coming.”

  “You’ve got the stuff?”

  “As I said on the phone, there’s not much here that is going to help you.”

  “And as I said on the phone”—Fia sipped her black coffee—“that will be up to the bureau to decide.” She took off her sunglasses to scrutinize Macy. “Why didn’t you tell me he sent you things in the mail?”

  “It was a long time ago. And he only did it for a few years. Once I graduated from college, I started moving around to steer clear of him. And the Internet had become more readily available. He definitely likes the Internet.”

  “That still doesn’t explain why you didn’t tell me what you had.”

  Macy thought about it before she answered, trying to be honest not just with Fia, but herself. She had decided it was time to be honest. She was tired of running and she was tired of living with the idea of dying. She was determined she was going to do what Kaleigh had suggested, turn around and run into the fire. Even if it destroyed her. “I think I didn’t want to tell you about the things he sent because you’d want them. You’d want to, you know, keep them.”

  “And you want to keep them…why? You like mementos from sick fucks?”

  Macy tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. She’d washed her hair this morning and not yet pulled it back in a ponytail. Fia had a point. Why did she want the stuff? But she knew why. She had always known why. She’d kept the clippings Teddy sent her because, as sick as it sounded, he was her only connection to her dead family. The mementos also reminded her, lest she ever forget, the part she played in their deaths.

  Her whole life was really about that, wasn’t it? All of it, her lack of ability to form relationships with anyone, her promiscuous behavior. Her nonstop travel. The way she had alienated herself from the world.

  Fia put her hand out. “Let me see what you have.”

  Macy looked down at the old shoe box beside her. She’d driven all the way to Charlottesville and back and not opened it. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she had opened it. Not in the year since she’d moved to the cottage, she knew. Her fingers found the box and she grasped it, lifting it slowly to the table. “I don’t think anything is going to make sense in here. I used to ask Teddy why he sent this stuff, but he would never say.”

  Fia took the box, sliding it across the table in front of her. She removed the lid and then, glancing inside, pulled a pair of latex gloves out of her pocket and put them on.

  “Aren’t you going to look at it back at your office?”

  “I am. But I’m curious now. I’d just like to get a first impression.”

  “It’s almost all bizarre clippings from magazines. A couple of notes he sent me early on.”

  “How early?” Fia glanced up, tearing her eyes away from a clipping of a little boy riding in a wagon, a mother-figure pulling him.

  “For fourteen years,” Macy said softly.

  “Fourteen years?” Fia repeated. “You’ve got to be kidding me. You said he’d only been contacting you for a couple of years. Just since the Smiths.”

  “I know what I told you.”

  Fia thumbed through glossy magazine clippings that were growing faded with time. “You save the envelopes?”

  “No. No return addresses. Postmarks from all over the U.S. I think he travels for work.”

  “Good guess. Our profile indicates the same thing.” Fia pulled out a newspaper clipping. “He sent you this?”

  Macy leaned over the table to get a better look. It was an article from the Chicago Tribune reporting the murder of a family. The Patels, 2001. “The very earliest clippings he sent. I saved the others.”

  “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” Fia swore under her breath. “They all here? A clipping from each of the deaths?”

  “Nothing in there for the Macphersons…or the Millers,” Macy heard herself say. “Eleven in the box.”

  “Eleven?” Fia tossed a picture of a boy seated at a table grinning as his mother served him cereal. “The Millers make twelve, Macy. If the Macphersons and the Millers aren’t in the box, there should be ten.”

  “Eleven in the box,” Macy repeated.

  “More coffee?” The waitress walked by the table with a carafe.

  “No thanks,” Macy and Fia said in unison.

  “There’s one I don’t know about?” Fia sounded angry but perhaps a little hurt, too.

  Fia was disappointed in her. Of course she was. Disappointment was all Macy could offer anyone. And death.

  Macy glanced out the window and watched as a family biked by. This was her chance. She could stand up and just walk away. There would be nothing Fia could do about it. Sure, maybe she could arrest her, but there wasn’t enough evidence to link Macy to the crimes. The box was nothing but a collection of old clippings and obituaries. Weird thing for her to have in her possession, but not illegal because it wasn’t really evidence.

  “The other family. Who els
e did he kill?” Fia pressed.

  The diner was bright and loud. Patrons were laughing and talking. Dishes clinked as waitresses cleared them away. The smoky smell of bacon frying hung in the air. A child near the cash register cried.

  But the diner didn’t seem bright and loud to Macy. Suddenly it seemed dark. Small. It was just Fia and Macy and the darkness that loomed at the edges of Macy’s mind. “Nineteen ninety-four,” she said flatly. “Lawrenceville, Missouri.”

  “Macy. The first time the Buried Alive Killer appears on the FBI radar is nineteen ninety-seven.” She watched Macy carefully. “Chattanooga. The Downing family. Mom, Dad, two children.”

  “It’s there inside a condolence card.” Macy felt as if she were speaking in slow motion. She pointed to the box. “In the bottom.”

  Fia began to leaf through the items. “Lot of cutouts of smiley boys and their mommies, huh?” she remarked.

  “Definitely mommy issues,” Macy commented, feeling slightly detached from what was happening.

  Fia pulled a faded white greeting card decorated with pastel flowers from the Nike box. She opened it up, catching the newspaper clipping before it hit the Formica table. She quickly scanned the article. “They were strangled in the house and then laid in shallow graves. Not the same MO.” She looked up at Macy.

  Macy felt her lower lip tremble. Her voice came out in a croak. “It was his first time, I think.”

  Fia watched her intently with those dark eyes that seemed to Macy to be able to see to a person’s very soul. “Who were they, Macy?”

  “Husband and wife Alice and John Carpenter, and their daughters Minerva and Mariah, ages four and ten, respectively.” Macy shifted her gaze to look at a clock on the far wall. She focused on the numbers and the black second hand, tick, tick, ticking as she spoke. “He strangled them in their beds and then carried them outside to the family farm orchard, where he dug shallow graves and laid them to rest.” Her voice caught in her throat. “He didn’t cover them up. In the morning, the teenage daughter found them there. All lying side by side under a cherry tree.”