Maddie Ann s Playground

by Mackenzie Drew

  The sky, lit up, raining gobs of fire over the men trapped inside. Claire stood to her feet with her fists’ tightly clinched, ready to fight for innocent men's lives. Even outnumbered, she had to try to save them. “I’m going in,” she said, standing in front of the gaping rusted gates. This time, she didn’t feel a force field trying to keep her out. The invitation and the challenge came across clear.

  She took a deep breath, and, as one foot hovered above the ill ground, a hand clamped on her shoulder, stopping her cold. Frightened to turn around, she didn’t want to deal with the wicked. Perhaps it was a sick-minded trickster, toying with her emotions—or worse, a demon in disguise. Whatever stood behind her, determination kept her from becoming its next prey. She shook off her assailant and spun in her tracks.

  “Claire,” a voice whispered, “Don’t be afraid, I won’t hurt you.”

  Her spirit trembled with confusion. A warm feeling settled on her heart, lifting her from the ground. Floating freely, an angel released a glow of light that settled around her like a soft yellow cloak, encasing her from evil. Recognition dawned as her grandmother hovered over her and smiled so beautiful.

  “Free them, Claire. Get them out,” she sang. “Spread your wings, Darling.”

  Confused, she didn’t know what to do next. Claire didn’t have wings, and she couldn’t imagine herself as pure as her grandmother was. She didn’t know of any angel powers given to her. The only thing Claire knew for certain, she died. As she hung in midair hearing the thunder roar around her, she noticed several officers leaving the outskirts in haste, while several others staggered around inside the cemetery, dodging blows from fiery projectiles. Her smile faded, and her heart turned cold. Dark determination gripped her. She wouldn't let Maddie Ann take one more soul. Not if she could help it.

  Claire charged toward one of the men running to his car, trying to shove him back toward the gate and shouting desperately, “Wait, help them. Where are you going? They're dying in there.” The departing officers couldn’t hear or see her, or feel the push on their backs. Two-by-two, several of them got in their cars, pulling away with lights flashing. Claire placed her hands over her face and sobbed, feeling helpless.

  Her grandmother's voice whispered, “Claire, free them now. They need your help.”

  Weeping into her hands, she lifted her head and asked, “How…I don't know how. What can I possibly do, that will make a difference? I’m nothing but a lost soul.”

  Looking down at her, Grandma Grace placed her hand over her heart and smiled. “Use your gift. Spread your wings, Claire; let the light sing.”

  Extending her arms out by her side like her grandmother told her to do; she spun around in a circle allowing the light to spread out like a blazing fire. One by one, the men staggered out of the cemetery, drawn by the cleansing light. In a daze, they stumbled about, coughing and spitting.

  As Claire slowed her spinning frenzy, she caught a glimpse of the wrought iron fence. She stopped, dumbfounded. Peering through the gaps, she saw dozens of sad children's faces gazing hungrily out at her, like convicts at a concentration camp. She gazed down the row of souls, but didn’t recognize any of them. The thought of these babies spending eternity in damnation broke her heart. With sadness, but hoping it wasn't too late for them, Claire's arms slapped her sides, and the gates slammed shut. A wave of her hand restored the chains, sealing them back together.

  The men slowly returned to normalcy and began talking among themselves. They acted as if nothing adverse had happened, but continued trying to get into the gates. The tool broke, and she heard Detective Brown curse, then order everyone back to headquarters. Claire watched them leave. She turned to soar up to where her grandmother hovered, to thank her for her gifts. Ten feet off the ground, a voice stopped her.

  “Claire, don't go. It’s me, Grandpa.”

  She pulled up short, but didn’t look down, a thrill of fear roiling through her. She knew her grandmother heard his voice. He rested his face against the rusted bars of the fence, his eyes locking on the perfect creature hovering over his granddaughter.

  Claire and her grandmother settled to the ground in front of the fence. Grandma Grace reached out and touched the metal bars as one would touch a hot stove. “Tobias is that you locked in that foul place?” she asked, a touch of shock marring her beautiful smile.

  With tears in his eyes, he said, “Oh, Gracie…I'm so sorry. You…you’re so beautiful.”

  “Tobias…my heart aches for you. I feared you were dead, but this is unbearable. I couldn't find you in Heaven but I hoped you lived somewhere safe.”

  Burdened with guilt, if only Claire had said something earlier, grandmother may have accepted Grandpa's plight a little easier. Sometimes she made the dumbest decisions.

  “Gracie, I only pray you will forgive me. I made a bad mistake coming to this place alone, but maybe someday we can be together again,” he told her, choking back the tears. “I have to have hope.”

  Grandma beamed at him and stroked his cheek. “My love, I’ve kept you in my heart, and I would never hold you accountable. It wasn't your fault. I forgive you for being so hard on yourself. Remember, you will someday have serenity in your soul, I promise.”

  Watching him gaze into his wife's angelic face, Claire knew he didn’t have much time to spend with her, for at any given moment, Maddie Ann might catch him away from the house. She’d punish him severely.

  “Gracie, I never meant to hurt you. Please take care of yourself and remember I love you. We'll meet again.” Withdrawing from the gates, he took one last look at Claire and her grandmother, and faded into the darkness.

  ***

  As soon as Detective Brown walked through the doors several hours and several drinks later, his partner, Jake, ran toward him with news about the spectacles and the dagger. Tom scowled at him, but Jake knew the sooner he laid it out on the table, the sooner they could catch this killer.

  Jake figured correctly where his boss had spent the last three hours from the smell on his breath, but you'd never know it from his movements. He appeared steady. He looked thunderous, however, as if the floozy on the next barstool had just shut him down.

  “Tommy, can I see you in private?” Jake asked tentatively.

  Tom nodded curtly and they went into his office. Jake shut the door and swallowed hard from the lump in his throat. He found it difficult to say what he had to say.

  “Well, what is it?” Tom asked, suddenly sobered by the look on Jake's face.

  “Sir, this is so disturbing, it’s hard to spit it out.”

  Glancing up at him with sharp eyes, Brown shouted, “For God's sake, boy, say what you mean and stop stalling. And don't call me 'sir'. It makes me feel old.”

  Yelling proved a bad sign. If he stumbled too many times around Tommy Brown, he knew he'd suffer the effects. Tom could come down hard if he showed weakness.

  “Well…Tommy, the glasses found on the scene happen to belong to Father Donovan, the priest at St. Theresa's.” He gulped, his Adam's apple bobbing. “He could be our killer. I’m having a hard time believing it myself, but there is no other expl…”

  Tom leaped to Father Donovan's defense. “No, no; that's not possible. There are plenty of explanations, why a man's glasses show up at a crime scene. There's no way I’m going to believe my priest committed a murder,” he insisted. “He's probably a victim as well as those girls. There's something weird going on out there, and if I have to get a bulldozer for those gates, I will.”

  “I know this seems crazy, Tom, but these glasses belonged to him,” he insisted. “The prescription checks out, and the only fingerprints on them are his.”

  “Check again. I can tell you he didn't leave them there. The old man walked with a limp even before the accident he had last night. Check the glasses for trace evidence again,” he roared. “And find out where Father Donovan is. Send a Police Officer to St. Theresa’s.” He refused to believe Father Donovan murdered anyone.

  Insisting Jake ke
ep the information about the glasses under wraps until proven whom they belonged to, he shoved his hands in his pockets. “What else do you have? Who phoned in the report of bodies at the cemetery?” Tom asked him. “And who ordered three ambulances, wasting taxpayer's money?”

  Jake preferred to sidestep the last question. “The preliminary DNA lab report showed the blood on the knife is consistent with Claire Barton’s blood type, but no fingerprints were on it at all. The killer might have worn gloves. It might take weeks for the full DNA analysis.” Jake shrugged. “And nobody phoned in the report. When Mrs. Barton showed up at the station to give us her statement, she brought the DNA samples from her daughter's hairbrush. She’s the one who told us to check the cemetery,” Jake offered. “She claimed there were five bodies in there and she refused to tell us how she knew.”

  Raising an eyebrow, Tom sat back in his chair and asked, “What I would like to know is why suddenly Mrs. Barton knows where her daughter disappeared? How does she know those other girls are dead when we haven't found any bodies? We are certain Claire Barton bled to death from the looks of the crime scene,” he said. “Hey, they assigned Officer Kyle the case the night Jennifer Cravens resurfaced with amnesia, right? He took the report. See if there was any evidence leading to Old Creek Cemetery, and if anyone found out where Jennifer might have been for four days. There is something going on down there, and I’m going to find out what it is.”

  Jake nodded. “Yes, sir, I mean, Tommy. Also, when they ran the tests on Jennifer Cravens' clothing, they found traces of DNA of the other missing girls. That’s all I know,” he pressed trying to make his statements clear and concise.

  “I want you to get Kyle in here and find out what's in his report. See if he can work with you figuring out how much time there was between the reports and compare the two for variations. Check the stories to see what Barbara Barton knew then and now. She’s lying about something. Then, I want you to shadow her everywhere she goes. I want to know who she’s talking to and what it’s about.”

  Jake suspected Mrs. Barton from the get-go. He just had to present it to Tom correctly. Whether everyone believed her innocent grieving-mother role or not, he knew Tom Brown would go the extra mile to prove it, if in fact, she killed her daughter. And he didn't care whose feelings he hurt to do it. Jake got the exact response he’d counted on—Tommy sided with him.

  “We have five teenage girls missing?” Tom asked.

  “Six, Tommy,” Jake replied.

  “Six? I thought the Cravens girl resurfaced,” he asked, frowning.

  “Her parents reported her missing again yesterday from the hospital, and we haven’t been able to find her yet.”

  Brown flicked his pencil across his desk and flew out of his seat, furious. “You’ve got to be kidding me. We’ve lost our only suspect? You want to know what pisses me off? The parents of these wild teenage girls! If they’d start paying more attention to their kids and stop letting them run amok all over God's green earth with no supervision, this wouldn’t happen. I want every one of those parents investigated to within an inch of their lives. And why was Jennifer Cravens in the hospital again? Wasn't she released several days ago?” he asked, pressing his knuckles down on his desk.

  “I believe she tried to commit suicide. Her mother found her in her room with her arms slit from wrist to elbow. I know it's crazy, Tom, but that’s what’s written in the hospital records. You wouldn't believe the whopper I had to tell to get to read them. I know the psychiatrist's secretary. Intimately. Anyway, the doctor committed Jennifer Cravens to the loony bin indefinitely and that's probably why she took off.”

  Astounded, Detective Brown stormed off, yelling back at Jake, “I want you at the high school in the morning questioning every friend of every kid who knew about those girls. Someone has to know something, damn it.”

  Saluting, Jake said, “Will do, Tommy. Where are you going?”

  Heading out the door, Detective Brown threw back. “I've got some soul-searching to do.”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Arghhhh. Steve, HELP,” Cindy hollered from the living room. She'd taken to sitting in front of the large picture window and staring out at the world, as if she expected Jennifer to walk up the sidewalk any minute.

  Steve jumped and dropped the iced tea pitcher he held at the sound of his wife’s desperate screech. It fell to the floor, shattering into a thousand pieces with tea and ice cubes and glass shards flying in all directions. “Cindy,” he yelled, dashing through the swinging door.

  Cindy had rolled off the couch to the floor and sprawled out in front of his favorite chair. “It hurts. It hurts. Make it stop. It feels like a knife jabbing me,” she shrieked, rolling around to ease the pain. Both hands gripped her abdomen as if to keep her insides in.

  Steve picked her up and placed her on the sofa. He stroked her hair off her sweaty forehead. “I’m taking you to the emergency room as soon as I find my blasted shoes,” he said, trying hard not to panic as he dashed to the TV room. “Maybe I should call 911 instead,” he hollered, lifting the skirt of the sofa and peering beneath. “Where are my shoes?”

  Of course, his shoes would be where you’d least expect them; hanging in the laundry room, drip-drying after a wash. Agitated his tennis shoes hung soaking wet, he darted up the steps in a search of another pair. Scurrying about in their bedroom in a desperate search, he heard his wife's voice call from downstairs.

  “Honey, it stopped. The pain went away,” she said with relief in her voice. Cindy sat straight up as Steve raced back downstairs.

  HUH , he huffed, trying to catch his breath after sprinting down the steps. “Man… you scared me to death. I thought you’d pass on before I got you to the hospital.” He took a seat next to her on the couch, and patted her thigh. He then leaned over and kissed her cheek. “Are you sure it's gone? You're all right now?”

  “Besides the strangest stabbing, tearing feeling, I’m fine. But I bet it feels similar to getting your entrails ripped out. I hope it never comes back.” To be on the safe side, Cindy agreed to go to a doctor.

  “Pain like that doesn't happen without a reason. But it's probably nothing serious,” Steve said, not feeling the confidence he put forth, “like appendicitis or something. It's your nerves, honey.”

  “I’m feeling shaky all over. You think I had a panic attack?” she asked, hope in her eyes.

  “I think it had a lot to do with your nerves, to be honest. We haven’t slept well or thought straight since Jennifer ran off, and frankly, I haven’t felt too good myself. I have no appetite and neither of us knows what to do.” Steve worried himself sick more and more about Jennifer and it tore him up inside knowing he couldn’t do much about any of it. Frustrated and powerless, he didn’t want to show his fear in front of his wife. He worried she’d have a nervous breakdown, which explained her mood swings and why she constantly sat in front of a window.

  “Let's go watch some TV, Cindy. Take our mind off our problems.”

  Steve took her elbow and guided her to the family room to watch TV. He sat her down in her favorite chair and brought her a cold Pepsi, then handed her the remote control and told her to pick something to watch. Exhausted, he leaned back against the sofa, wanting nothing more than to sit and veg before going to bed, when the doorbell rang and he startled, coming close to flipping over the end of the couch. The jitters coursed through him. “Honey, you sit and relax, I’ll get it,” he said, taking a deep calming breath.

  He rushed to the door and peered out the peephole. A detective stood beneath the porch light holding his badge up to identify himself. Steve went weak in the knees. Cindy couldn't see a police officer standing on their front porch. She'd think the worst. Oh, God, no! Cracking the door and squeezing his body through the small space, Steve stepped out on the porch and asked, “Yes, can I help you?” He looked nervously behind him to check to see if she had followed him.

  He glanced down at his watch. A police officer making house calls at 9:00 at nigh
t? Unless he had some news about his daughter, Steve didn’t need more worries.

  “I apologize for the lateness of the hour. I’m Detective Tom Brown and I’d like to have a moment of your time.”

  Steve pulled the front door shut in case Cindy heard them. So, he decided to walk out in the yard and find out what the man wanted. He stepped off the porch onto the front lawn and the detective followed. The streetlight bathed them in shadows, and Steve thought this detective looked more than a little sinister.

  “I’m sorry I can't invite you in, but my wife’s not doing well. With Jennifer missing again, we’re both having it rough.”

  Detective Brown nodded. “Mr. Cravens, I hope I’m not interrupting something important, he asked, pulling out a small pad of paper from his jacket.