The Butcher's Daughter

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  The gun! Get the gun!

  Amelia grabs for it and loses her footing. She flails. Her hand claws, snagging Gypsy’s long hair. Now they’re both falling, over the edge, into the sea.

  Enveloped in shockingly cold water, Amelia surfaces to gulp air before strong arms pull her under again like a predator’s jaws. Her lungs burn and she fights to escape the woman’s grip, writhing and kicking herself free. Again she surfaces, gasping a deep breath and then another, braced for another frenzied struggle.

  The attack doesn’t come. Treading water, numb limbs weighted by clothing and cold, she sees that the boat is a good distance away, and there’s no sign of Gypsy Colt.

  Nor, she realizes, is there any sign of Jessie.

  But not far away, she spots a churning beneath the surface skimmed with red foam.

  She thinks of Gypsy’s wound, all that blood in the water, sharks. A hand pops up, clawing in the air, and then disappears.

  “Jessie! Jessie, no!” She paddles toward the spot.

  Again, the hand breaks the surface, and then Jessie’s head emerges with a mighty thrust and an anguished scream.

  “Jessie!”

  “Mimi!” She sputters, swimming toward her. “She was trying to . . .”

  “I know.”

  “I kicked her.” Jessie’s teeth are chattering, lips blue. “Do you think she’s . . .”

  “Gone.” The blood has dissolved. The corpse is out there somewhere, unless she swam away, somehow, and got to the boat.

  It’s distant now, pulled by the current. Alone, she’d attempt to reach it. But Jessie, for all her vigorous energy and personal presence, is physically smaller and weaker. She’d never make it, and waste precious energy trying.

  “My m-mother . . .”

  “No! Jessie, she’s not! Half sister.”

  “How—”

  “Shh. I’ll explain later.”

  They can’t afford to expend effort on conversation.

  “We won’t have later, Mimi. We’re g-going to d-die.”

  “We’re not!”

  “Yes. So t-tired.”

  “We’ll lie on our backs.”

  “No one knows we’re here. Mimi. S-swim. You can—”

  “I’m not going anywhere.”

  “But we’ll die of exposure. We’ll drown. You can save yourself if—”

  “Shh. Here, grab my hand.”

  They float, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.

  Amelia shifts her gaze to the wide swath of sky so she won’t have to watch the boat drift away, stranding them in the vast, empty sea.

  “It’s you,” the young woman whispers again, staring up at Barnes.

  Well look at that, Wash says in his head. She knows you, Stockton.

  But that would be scientifically impossible. Even if her newborn eyes had seen him clearly when she’d gazed up at him, she can’t possibly have retained the memory of that fleeting encounter—a stranger, a face that’s aged thirty years. He wouldn’t even recognize hers if she didn’t look so much like her mother.

  He hears sirens in the distance. Backup, on the way. He looks at Kurtis lying on the ground, facedown.

  This will destroy Rob. He needs to hear it from Barnes.

  Beside him, the young woman sways. He steadies her with an arm around her shoulder. She’s staring up at him in wonder.

  “I can’t believe you’re the one who found me. You’re my father, and you—”

  “No, I found you, but I’m not your father. I knew your mother when you were born, but—”

  “Wait, aren’t you Stockton Barnes?”

  He stares at her, and there’s Wash, as always, in his head.

  She knows your name. Listen to her, Stockton. Listen to your instincts.

  “I am Stockton Barnes, but I’m not . . . Why do you think that I’m . . . ?”

  “Because we match.”

  Look at her, Stockton. Take a good, long look. She doesn’t just have Delia’s features. She has yours.

  “Because we look alike?”

  “No, we match. DNA.”

  “DNA!”

  “Yes, I just got my results.”

  There must be some mistake.

  Bobby said he was Charisse’s father.

  So did his family, and Cynthia . . .

  Based on what? Delia’s word? She was looking for child support, for money. Desperate, an addict . . .

  Delia was a proven liar, but DNA . . .

  DNA doesn’t lie.

  “I was going to find you . . .” Tears fill her eyes. She draws a ragged breath. “And then this man came and he—”

  “I know.”

  “And then you found me. You saved me.”

  She buries her face in his shoulder, and he holds her steady as sirens close in.

  Amelia stares at the sky, numb with cold and exhaustion, clinging tightly to Jessie’s hand.

  It’s fitting, she supposes, that two lives that had begun under such bizarre and similar circumstances would end the same way . . .

  Only this time, we’re together.

  There is, she’s concluded, peculiar comfort in leaving this world with a soul mate to accompany you on the journey.

  Years ago, Calvin and Amelia had tag-teamed Bettina’s deathbed vigil. He’d been aghast when Bettina slipped away in the short window when Amelia left her alone. Three years later, she’d held his hand when he drew his last breath, with him and yet not. He was isolated, trapped in the dying, and she in the grieving.

  It’s different now. Today. She and Jessie are going hand in hand.

  She closes her eyes, shutting out the sky, salty tears meeting salty sea.

  I’m not ready. I don’t want to go. I want to know my mother. I want her to know me.

  All those years searching, wondering, longing . . .

  Wasted years.

  “Mimi . . .” Jessie tugs her hand. She’s moving in the water. Slipping from Amelia’s grasp. “Listen! Look!”

  “Shh, Jess, stay calm.”

  If you struggle, you drown.

  But you’re both going to drown regardless. It’s over.

  “Mimi!” Jessie is thrashing wildly, waving her arms above her head.

  But she isn’t drowning or struggling or dying. She’s staring at the sky.

  Mimi looks up, and she, too, sees it.

  A coast guard chopper, flying low over the water, right toward them.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Amelia Island

  On Saturday nights, Melody sings with a live band at the Ritz-Carlton. They get a nice crowd—families, business conventions, wedding parties, couples. People come to sip cocktails, and to dance, and a few locals come to see her.

  One, in particular.

  As a Manhattan physician, Grant had come to Amelia Island with his wife for medical conferences long before he retired here and became a regular. Melody remembers him—them—requesting “At Last.”

  Silver-haired and deeply tanned with kind eyes, Grant has been widowed for a few years. He always sits at a window table, intent on Melody’s performance even when he’s joined by his golf buddies and their wives. Afterward, he’ll come over to chat and often asks if she can stay for a drink. Sometimes, she says yes. She likes talking to him. They have a lot in common, beyond being single.

  Melody, too, is a widow—not just because Travis was killed in action on Hamburger Hill in May 1969. She got the news nearly a year to the day she’d learned that Cyril and Martina weren’t alive and waiting for her on Barrow Island. Travis’s death did eventually bring some measure of closure, though she hadn’t heard from him in over a year. She would never grieve him, rarely allowing herself to think of him at all. Nor did she think of Rodney Lee. He’d returned from Vietnam, one of nearly three hundred thousand veterans who’d been physically shattered as well as emotionally. For a long time, she worried that he might come back for her. But in the late 1970s, she heard he’d died in a VA home, limbless and alone.

  Closure . . .<
br />
  About a year after Grant lost his wife, he’d asked her how long it had taken her to put away her wedding band. He still wore his.

  She’d managed not to answer, preferring not to tell him that she’d never married her own true love, the one she still mourns, along with their child. She doesn’t want pity, nor anything more than friendship from him or any man. She’s lost much, but she’s been surrounded by love all her life.

  Grant is waiting for her after the last song, as people linger to chat on the dance floor and the musicians pack up their instruments.

  “I loved that encore.”

  She smiles. “I figured you would.”

  “You sing it better than Etta James ever did.”

  Her smile wobbles, and she looks down at her phone. Even now, after all these years, she still hears Cyril’s voice.

  But it’s Grant’s that asks, “Nightcap?”

  “I can’t. Sorry. I have a couple of texts . . .”

  “I know, I know . . . sitter on the clock and wondering where you are, right?”

  Melody nods, texting Hannah that she’s on her way. It’s not like her to check in on the timing more than once on a Saturday evening. But she’s probably eager to meet her friends at the Green Turtle Tavern, where the live music is more raucous and goes far later than it does here.

  Grant stands waiting to walk Melody to her car as she swaps her glittery heeled sandals for sneakers with arch support and pulls a cardigan over her slinky black dress.

  “It’s not easy singing for your supper when you’re my age,” she tells him with a laugh as they wait for the valet to bring their cars to the entrance.

  “Our age. And you look two decades younger.”

  “After performing, I feel two decades older.”

  The night is starlit and chilly, and she can hear the waves crashing out on the beach as they say good-night. As always, his headlights follow her the few miles back along Amelia Parkway to town, over a mile past the turnoff to his condo. He flashes his high beams as she pulls into the driveway, and waits, idling, as she climbs the front steps and unlocks the door. Then he’s gone, and she’s crossing the threshold into the grand old house where she’s lived all her life, with the exception of one terrible year.

  Hannah meets her by the door. One of Melody’s longtime voice students, she’s now a music major at Jacksonville University. Oh, to be young, blonde, effortlessly lovely, and blissfully unencumbered. At her age, Melody had been a married housewife pregnant with another man’s child, on the verge of violent loss in a war-torn hate-filled era.

  “Everything okay?” she asks.

  “Yes, I think she’s finally asleep. We had some excitement here earlier. Someone rang the bell, and the puppies weren’t in their crate yet and they went crazy, and when I opened the door one of them got out.”

  “I bet I can guess which one.”

  “Yep, but I got him back right away. It was a lot of commotion, though, and she could hear it from upstairs, and it took her a while to settle down again.”

  “Who rang the bell?”

  “A woman. She said she had to talk to you, no matter what time you got back. She wanted to wait on the porch, but I didn’t think that was a good idea.”

  “Was she selling something?” Melody asks, digging through her pocketbook for cash.

  “No, not like that. She was super nice, and nervous. It was kind of . . .”

  “Kind of . . . ?”

  “Sweet.”

  “Sweet?”

  Hannah laughs and shrugs. “Never mind. I’m sure she’ll be back tomorrow or something.”

  Melody pays Hannah, thanks her, and locks the door after her. She can hear the puppies scuffling and yapping, crated in the kitchen. She’ll go see them after she goes upstairs to peek in and make sure everything is okay.

  She’s just reached the top of the flight when the doorbell rings.

  Hannah must have forgotten something.

  But when she returns to the door and peers through the glass, she sees a stranger. At this hour? Really?

  She’s Black, and attractive, and her eyes . . .

  She has Cyril’s eyes. After all these years, Cyril’s eyes.

  Melody throws open the door, heart pounding, thoughts racing.

  For a moment, the woman just stares back at her, as though she, too, is bewildered.

  But then her eyes fill with tears and when she speaks, her voice is thick with emotion. “Melody? Melody Abernathy?”

  “Yes . . .”

  “I’m . . .” She falters. Her hand trembles as she holds it out, offering something.

  Melody takes it. Sees that it’s a tiny plastic bracelet, the kind they put on people—babies—at the hospital.

  “I’m . . .”

  She points at the name typed on the narrow, yellowed band, as if she can’t say it.

  Melody can’t, either.

  Martina Eleanor Hunter 4/25/68

  Barnes stays with Rob and Paulette until nearly eleven o’clock, then leaves them with the local detectives.

  Rob stands and clasps his hand, not a handshake, but a man grasping for a lifeline. “Barnes, I . . .” He dissolves into sobs, collapsing against Barnes.

  Holding him steady in a hard embrace, fighting tears himself, Barnes says, “I’m so sorry.”

  Not for what he did—he will not apologize for that—but for the anguish from which his friends will never fully recover.

  On the job, he often deals with grieving parents, some whose children are still alive, like Kurtis, yet lost to them just the same. This is different, though. He shares their excruciating grief, and he can’t compartmentalize it.

  Paulette sits with her head buried in her hands as he touches her shoulder and walks out. Still in shock, maybe, or just refusing to acknowledge the man who’d had their son taken into custody.

  Barnes doesn’t break down until he gets into the car.

  He cries for Rob and Paulette, and for the young man who’d strayed just as Gloss had years ago. Barnes had hoped to save Kurtis as Wash had saved him, but he’d been far too late for that.

  Brainwashed, Kurtis did it all for Gypsy Colt.

  “She said she had a hitman on the way to execute both of us, just like the Harrisons, if I didn’t do what she said,” Kurtis told the detectives when they arrived on the scene. “And she was going to kill my family.”

  Another lost soul vulnerable to a charismatic cult leader. Barnes has seen it on the job, many times. Maybe he should have suspected it was what was going on with Kurtis, before it was too late.

  Despite having everything money can buy, Rob’s son was as restless and unhappy as Perry Wayland had been when Gypsy met him on an Ivy League campus in the early 1970s. Like Perry, Kurtis was easily seduced, followed her commands without question, and was willing to turn his back on his family and friends. He’d brought Gypsy to the States under an assumed identity and put her up in a posh hotel. He’d been dating Brandy Harrison in an effort to find Charisse so that Gypsy could use her as a pawn against Barnes.

  It’s over at last—the reign of terror that had begun with the Brooklyn Butcher’s first murder decades ago. Gypsy Colt is missing at sea off the Georgia coast and presumed dead. So is Perry Wayland, back in Baracoa, along with the rest of Gypsy’s followers.

  The gold initial ring—Barnes’s ring, Charisse’s ring, Amelia’s ring—had been in the glove compartment of Kurtis’s car. He’d stolen it from Brandy right before Christmas. She was carrying it around in her pocketbook, thinking about revisiting Amelia Crenshaw, she’d said.

  The ring was how she’d found her way to Amelia in the first place, having found the necklace tucked away in her mother’s apartment with the newspaper clippings. In need of cash, she’d googled to see how much the ring was worth, just as they’d speculated. She came across Amelia’s story, and came up with a plot to claim the reward. She’d always known that Delia’s daughter was the Connecticut foundling. She remembered hearing the older relat
ives talking about how she’d been adopted by a fancy family and given a new name.

  “Lily Tucker,” she’d told Kurtis. “Something like that.”

  He shared the information with Gypsy, and that Brandy was thinking of going back to Amelia. Gypsy told him to bring Brandy white ginger mariposa lilies, so he did, no questions asked, same as everything else . . . until she told him to kill the Harrison women. He said he convinced her it would be an unnecessary risk, so she hired a professional.

  If his story is true—and Barnes’s gut tells him it is—he hadn’t murdered anyone. But he’d financed his homicidal mistress, and he’d been an accessory, and he hadn’t gone to the police after the double murder. And he’d abducted a young woman at gunpoint.

  Barnes wipes his eyes on a linen handkerchief, takes some deep breaths, and starts the engine. Consulting a folded slip of paper from his pocket, he enters the address into his phone’s navigation app. Five minutes away.

  He calls Amelia as he pulls onto a local road, heading south. Her phone rings into voice mail.

  “Me again,” he says. “I’m still thinking about you. Thought you might still be sitting in your car waiting for her to show up. Maybe you gave up and went to bed? Or maybe you’re with her now. I hope so, Amelia. I really do. Let me know.”

  He hangs up.

  If not for Kurtis and that tracking software, Amelia and Jessie would have drowned out there in the Atlantic. The coast guard chopper had tracked the GPS signal to the missing boat, and spotted the women nearby. Two tiny dots in the open sea.

  “A miracle,” Amelia had said earlier. “You saved our lives, Barnes.”

  “How is Jessie?”

  “They’re keeping her overnight, but she’ll be fine. I’m being released soon, and I’m, uh . . . I’m going to meet my mother.”

  “Sure you don’t want to wait and do that tomorrow, after you’ve had a chance to rest?”

  “I’ve waited most of my life, Barnes. I’m doing it today. Right now.”

  Barnes, too, has been waiting—not most of his life, but much of it—to meet his daughter.

  At the police station, he’d checked his email and found that a DNA match had, indeed, come in. Liliana Tucker Ford is Charisse Montague—and Barnes’s biological daughter.