The Darkest Thread

by Jen Blood

  Dean sat back down and settled himself, if only slightly. “I’m not letting them go.”

  “Suit yourself,” Angie said with a shrug. The briefest dart of her eyes to Jack was his only indication that the outburst had unnerved her. “What else would you like to talk about, then? You asked me here for a reason, clearly. Now that your brother’s been proven innocent—”

  “Who told you that?” Dean asked. “Nobody said that son of a bitch was innocent.”

  “Word is, whoever did the previous crimes is the same person who killed your daughter,” she said. “Since Gordon was in prison at the time, I’d say he has a pretty good alibi.”

  “He could have told them how to do it,” Wendy said, to Jack’s surprise. Trevor turned the camera on her, and she looked away quickly.

  “Do you have any ideas of who his partner might have been, in that case?” Jack asked. Angie shot him a glare, annoyed at his interference.

  Wendy didn’t say anything, jaw clamped shut now and her fists clenched at her sides. Dean took in the reaction and frowned.

  “Why don’t you go on in the other room, Wendy—put some tea on.” His tone was surprisingly gentle. “We’ve got things covered here.”

  She nodded, eyes still lowered, and left without another word.

  “She doesn’t like being involved in these things—doesn’t like talking to outsiders,” Dean explained.

  “She started to say something, though,” Angie said. “Do you have a theory about who might be working with Gordon?” She paused. “What about your other brother: Barrett?”

  At this, Dean’s face darkened again. “Who told you that?” he demanded.

  “No one,” Angie said quickly. “I just—”

  “You want to know who did this, look at everybody else in the goddamn FBI. They were all having sex, hiring prostitutes, doing drugs, all on the taxpayers’ dime.”

  Angie’s eyes widened. She checked to make sure Trevor was still filming, and the man nodded at the unspoken question.

  “What do you mean by that?” Angie asked. “Who was hiring prostitutes on the taxpayers’ dime?” Dean rose, pushing his chair back from the table roughly.

  “Ask them,” he said. “Ask them about the big cover up just before my brother went to trial.” He turned on Jack. “Didn’t think I knew about that, did you? I knew! Rita told us all about the whole damn thing. She knew the score—knew all about my brother’s whores, the things that’d been done to them. Truth be told, I don’t think she was sorry what happened to them.”

  Jack watched with growing unease as Dean paced the room, caged energy tight in every move. “Dean—”

  “Don’t fuck with me!” Dean growled at him. “Don’t lie to me anymore.”

  “What did Rita say about the victims?” Jack asked, suddenly calculating. Recalibrating what he knew of the crimes. “When did she talk to you about this?”

  “Years ago!” Dean said. Spittle flew from his mouth with the words. “Before any of this, before June and Katie—she knew. All along, she knew.”

  Angie glanced at Jack, as though sensing something major had just been revealed. Jack remained focused on Dean.

  “Did she know about the prostitutes Gordon was sleeping with, or did she know about the murders?”

  “All of it,” the older man said. The outburst passed as suddenly as it had come on and Dean sank back down, deflated. “She knew all of it. The only one of you worth a damn, and she was treated like shit. But she knew. She said they were paying for their sins, and she was right. This world, you pay for the crimes you do. It’s only right.”

  Jack’s radio crackled at his side just then. Everyone in the room jumped. “It’s just my radio,” he said, hands raised to calm the others. “Okay if I answer?”

  Dean nodded without hesitation, eager for news of Ariel. Jack went to the corner to respond. Claude remained in the doorway, transfixed. Terrified.

  “Jack here,” Jack answered into the radio.

  McDonough’s voice crackled on the other end. “I just got word that Jamie’s asking for you. Says she found something.”

  Jack glanced up to find everyone’s attention fixed on him. “Tell her I’ll be there as soon as I can. We’re just wrapping up here.”

  “Roger that,” McDonough agreed. When Jack looked up again, the focus had shifted once more. Wendy had returned to the room, and Angie and Dean were deep in conversation.

  “McDonough,” Jack said quietly into the radio. “Have you located Rita yet?”

  “She’s still MIA,” McDonough said. “We’ve got bigger fish to fry right now, though—I’ll read her the riot act when she gets back.”

  “I think maybe you should find her,” Jack said. He tried to remain as cool and understated as possible, but didn’t want him to miss the importance of the statement. Behind him, voices had risen once more. He caught a snippet of conversation, Dean’s voice strained.

  “You think you can just ask somebody something like that?” he demanded. Unlike the way he’d reacted before, there was something restrained in the tone. Jack signed off, the hair rising at the back of his neck as he turned around once more.

  “I didn’t mean—” Angie began.

  “Who are you working for?” Dean demanded. Jack’s gaze locked on the gun the man held in his hand.

  “I work for WABI,” Angie said. Her hands were raised, the coolness gone from her voice. “You know that—you’ve seen me on TV.”

  “You think people on TV aren’t in on it?” Dean asked. There was something tormented in his eyes, as though he were in physical pain. His knuckles were white around the gun, his index finger resting on the trigger.

  “Dean,” Jack said. “You got your interview. Everyone will know the truth now—you’ve seen to that. But now you need to let them go. Angie and Trevor came here on good faith.”

  He nodded. It seemed to Jack that the man was hearing his voice from somewhere far away, and it took a second for the words to get through. His hands shook as he lowered the gun. The barrel pointed toward the floor. Jack took a breath.

  And then, an explosion rocked the room.

  A second followed on its heels even as Jack was flying across the room to get to Angie. It took him a split second to comprehend what was happening. Dean had hit the floor, his gun beside him. Unfired. From the wooden floor, Jack looked around.

  In the doorway, Claude still stood.

  A rifle in his hands, pointed into the kitchen.

  Jack looked across the room. Trevor lay on the floor, the camera beside him. The front of his salmon-colored slicker was dark with blood.

  “Claude!” Dean screamed, the sound ripped from the depths. Claude dropped the rifle, turned, and ran away. Dean stood there, stunned.

  “Get them out of here,” Dean said to Jack. There was genuine terror in the words. “Get them out now. He didn’t mean it. Oh, sweet Jesus.” Tears rolled down his cheeks as he rocked in place. He raised his own gun and pointed it at Jack.

  Jack pushed himself up off Angie. Ren and Bear were huddled on the futon, stark terror in their eyes.

  “Come on,” Jack said to Angie, his gaze still fixed on Dean. “Are you hurt?”

  There was no response.

  He looked down, and his stomach lurched.

  One glance was all it took to tell him that she was gone: the upper quarter of her skull had been blown away, an expression of shock still on her face.

  He got to his feet on shaking legs and moved to Trevor. The cameraman was still alive, his eyes wide with pain and fear.

  “Can you walk?” Jack asked him. He didn’t seem to understand the question.

  “Get out—now!” Dean screamed the words this time. Wendy came over and helped Trevor to his feet, the camera cradled in his arms. She wouldn’t look at either of them, eyes on the ground, something muted and terrible in her silence. Trevor leaned heavily on her, while Jack hefted Angie’s body in his arms.

  Stunned, bloodied, they walked away.

&nb
sp; * * *

  Chapter 25

  I’D BEEN WALKING through Middle Earth alone for nearly forty-five minutes when I heard gunshots somewhere above me. Phantom whimpered, and fear shook me for a moment. I shoved it back down. If something was wrong, the police knew where I was. They would find me; they would tell me. Right now, I needed to continue with the assumption that Bear and Ren were still alive. That Ariel was still out there somewhere, waiting to be saved.

  The space had gotten progressively smaller as I’d gone on, until I was forced to my hands and knees if I wanted to keep going. Putting pressure on my injured knee brought tears to my eyes. I straightened it as best I could to protect it, and dragged my right leg behind me as I continued on.

  Maybe twenty minutes after the gunshot, Phantom barked behind me. The sound echoed through the narrow chamber. I was so used to the ethereal screams I’d been hearing since the day before that they’d faded into the background. It took a second to realize the sound had changed.

  The screams shifted to voices—not just one but many, though I couldn’t make out the words. Far ahead in the tunnel, my light hit a form close to the ground that stood apart from the deepest black of the packed earth.

  Almost there, a girl’s voice whispered close to my ear.

  I looked to my left and then my right, though I knew I would see no one.

  “Jamie!” I heard Jack call somewhere behind me, far in the distance.

  “I’m here!” I shouted back. “Just keep following the tunnel.”

  I took the flashlight from my mouth but struggled to keep going, driven by the girl’s voice; that shadow up ahead.

  “Slow down, damn it!” Jack called.

  I was reminded of the gunshots. Was he here to tell me Bear was dead? Surely I would know if that had happened. The voices would tell me; the girl in the red sweater would give me the news before Jack ever reached me. Wouldn’t she?

  “I’ve got something,” I called back to him. “Tell McDonough to call Dean. Tell him something’s here.”

  I kept going, no longer mindful of the pain in my knee, my fatigue or my fear or the staleness of the air. Something was there, up ahead—waiting for me. I just prayed to God it was Ariel. Alive, and ready for rescue.

  #

  “What do you mean, ‘something’s there,’” McDonough demanded on the other end of Jack’s radio. Jack scrubbed at the stubble on his chin, the damp seeping into his bones as he made his way deeper into the tunnel. An ambulance had come for Trevor, and the cameraman was on his way to the hospital in Bennington. The local M.E. had been called to tend to Angie. Jack felt raw, shaken. Gritty and rung out.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I don’t know what the hell she’s talking about.”

  He looked back toward the entrance to the cave. When he’d left the scene, Wade Wright was there in his giant yellow raincoat, Gordon in shackles beside him, the U.S. marshals still by his side. No one had been able to find Rita yet.

  “We’ve made contact with someone on the inside,” McDonough said on the line, and Jack felt a surge of hope. “There’s a chance we can get them out without any shots fired. If not, SWAT is on standby. Whether we have Ariel or not is immaterial—they’ve already killed someone. There’s no turning back now, and no telling what they’ll do next.”

  The realization hung heavy on Jack’s shoulders. “I know,” he said. “I’ve got enough blood on my hands as it is—you’re right, you need to do whatever you have to and get Bear and Ren out of there. If someone doesn’t do something, there’s no way in hell they’re getting out alive.”

  McDonough signed off then. The shooting at the Redfield place had shaken him, Jack could tell. Good, he thought. He had no doubt he’d be losing sleep at the memory of Angie’s death; he hoped to hell McDonough did, too.

  A chill crawled up Jack’s spine as he refocused on the path ahead of him, alone now. He swallowed hard, kept his eyes ahead, and returned to the dark, damp bowels of the earth.

  #

  The space in the tunnel widened as I continued to move forward. The screaming had stopped, but there was a low murmur, a moan, like a wounded animal. I was aware of Jack speaking somewhere far behind me, but I couldn’t begin to focus on the words.

  I was close.

  When the tunnel was finally tall enough for me to stand, I steadied myself with a hand against the dirt wall. My bad knee screamed in protest. As though she’d been waiting too long for the opportunity, Phantom trotted around me and reclaimed the lead. I couldn’t tell how far down we were, but whatever I had seen up ahead was only a few yards from me now.

  Before I could take a step, I started at the feel of someone’s hand at my shoulder.

  “Easy,” Jack said. “Where the hell are we?”

  “No idea,” I said. I kept my eyes locked on Phantom, waiting for her to alert at the object—the body, I was sure of it—up ahead. Instead, she sniffed at it idly and moved on.

  My heart sank.

  “What is that?” Jack asked. We continued on, through the dark and the damp. The object was only a couple of feet away now. Gray, with a few loose red threads all that remained of the sweater Mary Wieland had worn seventy years before.

  “It’s her,” I said. I tried to kneel, remembered that I was bordering on crippled now, and remained where I was. “The college girl who went missing in 1946.”

  Bitter disappointment ate at me. I just wanted this to be over.

  Jack knelt in my place, studying the skeletal remains at our feet. He paused at the femur and glanced up at me, the significance clear. Beneath what was clearly the patella—the knee bone—something was missing. Neither the tibia, the fibula, nor any part of the left foot were anywhere in sight. I thought of the screams I had heard. The bones at the bottom of the well. The girl who had appeared in my dream, and the empty space below her knee as she’d limped away from me.

  What the hell had happened to her? Who had done this?

  “We should keep going,” I said. “Phantom’s still tracking. Ariel is either down here now or she was not that long ago.”

  Jack nodded.

  We walked on in silence. Jack was off, pain radiating from him—not physical, but a deep mental cry that seemed to echo in this underground world we now inhabited. I was afraid to ask the question, but knew eventually I would have to.

  “I heard gunshots…” I began.

  I glanced at him, but he didn’t look at me as he continued walking. “Bear and Ren are okay,” was all he said. “We’ve still got time.”

  Relief weakened my aching bones, but I didn’t stop.

  The tunnel was wide enough now that we could walk side by side without stooping, which meant it had to be well over six feet tall and three or four feet wide. Parts had been reinforced with limestone, others with rotting wooden beams. It seemed solid enough. Even if it wasn’t, there was no way I could go back. Even knowing I was risking Jack’s life, Phantom’s life, I kept going.

  “What time is it?” I asked after another minute or two passed.

  “Ten minutes till twelve,” he said with a glance at his phone. “I told McDonough to get in touch with Dean,” he added. “They know we’re onto something. He’ll wait.”

  I didn’t ask how he knew that. I just kept moving, clinging to that last desperate hope.

  I caught sight of Phantom a few yards ahead before long, though she was still on the move. Jack and I passed another skeleton, still articulated and, like the previous, missing the left leg below the knee. As with the other one, this body had clearly been here a very long time.

  Another twenty yards on, we found another.

  And another.

  And then, out of the darkness, I heard Phantom’s distinctive double bark.

  “She found her,” I said, suddenly unable to take a full breath. “She’s got Ariel.”

  I started half running, half limping, my gaze fixed on the tunnel ahead. “Ariel!” I shouted. The tunnel twisted to the right and I slipped, went down on one k
nee, and cried out in pain as I struggled to get back up again. Jack grabbed my arm and pulled me to my feet, and we continued on in silence.

  Finally, after what felt like a lifetime, I saw Phantom lying on the ground up ahead. A figure, shadowed and inert, lay in front of her. I felt Jack’s hand on my arm as we continued.

  The world around me fell silent for the first time since I’d entered the tunnel. I took the final two steps to bridge the distance between us, and gazed at the ground.

  And the lifeless body of Ariel Redfield, an iron bear trap clamped to her right leg.

  * * *

  Chapter 26

  DEAN REDFIELD PACED the front room, rifle in his hands, staring out the window at the pouring rain. Claude sat on the floor in the corner rocking slightly, mumbling to himself. The look in his eyes was haunting, something deeply rooted and terrible seeping from him like tar. It was ten minutes till twelve. Dean’s radio was on the table. It crackled, someone on the other end trying to reach him.

  He didn’t pick up.

  Ren squeezed Bear’s hand. He squeezed back.

  “They could have word about Ariel,” he said out loud, trying to get Dean’s attention. The old man shifted, spirals of blackened chaos whirling in the air around him. He stared at Bear blankly.

  “Whoever is trying to get in touch with you might have found Ariel,” Bear tried again.

  Dean just looked away.

  Bear hadn’t seen Mary again since early that morning. Had she given up on them? He still wasn’t clear on what it was she wanted. Was she trying to tell him something? Or was she expecting him to do something for her? If that was the case, she was bound to be disappointed. He couldn’t even save himself and Ren.

  “They’re doing the best they can,” Bear said, keenly aware of the minutes that kept ticking by. Was the deal the same, now that Claude had killed the reporter? “You killing one of us won’t change anything. It won’t make losing your daughter any easier.”