Mary wanted to gather them into her arms, but she knew that she would only find mist, not the corporeal children they represented. “I’ll help you. I promise,” she whispered.
“We need to go now,” the first girl said urgently. “He’s coming.”
They turned and led her through a small, hidden break in the dense brush and through a tunnel of overgrown bushes and tangled branches. Mary bent over and moved as quickly as possible, following the girls as they drifted over the uneven ground.
The foliage was dense and the storm had covered the late afternoon sun, so Mary was left relying on the glow emitted from the girls’ unearthly forms and her flashlight.
She could still hear the patter of the rain against the leaves, but very little rain reached her. The ground beneath her feet was covered with a collection of dried leaves, pine needles and soft dirt. One of the little girls turned back to Mary. “He can’t get us in here,” she said with a shy smile. “He’s too scared.”
The other girls giggled in response and then continued leading Mary further into the woods.
TWENTY-FIVE
“The bad man is still coming,” one of the girls said, the others listened for a moment and nodded.
Mary stopped, she could hear the rain hitting against the vegetation and the rumbling of thunder in the distance, but she couldn’t hear anything else. She closed her eyes and concentrated. There it was, the almost imperceptible sound of shoes meeting muddy ground. It had a rhythm all its own and they were right, it was getting closer.
She ripped a piece of lining from Stanley’s jacket and wrapped it around her arm to staunch the blood flow. It’s only a flesh wound, she thought and nearly laughed out loud at the cliché.
Pulling her cell phone out of the backpack she flipped it open and looked. No bars. Well, she wasn’t exactly surprised. So she wasn’t going to be able to call the cavalry.
Mary felt a cold chill on her arm. She looked down. The girl who had mentioned her mother had placed a hand on Mary’s arm. “We have to hurry,” she whispered urgently.
Mary nodded and followed the girls once again. She peered ahead and could see that the carefully crafted tunnel would soon open into a clearing. At that point, she would be an easy target for her pursuer. The girls understood the dilemma. “We’ll go first and run,” one said. “He’ll chase us and then we can disappear. You run the other way.”
Mary instinctively shook her head. “No,” she said firmly, “I won’t sacrifice any of you to get away.”
The smallest one giggled softly. “You’re nice. But he can’t hurt us anymore,” she said. “And we need you to help us.”
Mary took a deep breath and nodded. They were right, but it still seemed wrong. “Okay,” she finally said, “let’s wait until he gets closer and then you run to the left. As soon as I hear him chasing you, I’ll run to the right.”
The girls nodded solemnly. “There’s a big tunnel that goes back up the hill,” one of the girls said. “If you find that, you can climb in it and be safe.”
They all walked to the edge of the clearing. The lightning flashed all around them and the rain was coming down in sheets. The girls’ little faces, more luminous as the sky had darkened, turned to her. “Don’t forget,” they whispered, and then darted out into the rain and out of sight.
Mary waited. She heard a shot ricochet off a tree in the direction the girls had run. This was her chance. She bent low and darted out of the tunnel toward the thicket of trees about forty yards away. The rain pelted her face as she ran with all of her strength toward the cover of the woods. The ground was slick with rain and mud and tree branches whipped back and forth in the wind. Lightning exploded behind her. She prayed that she wasn’t the tallest thing in the clearing—but she wasn’t going to take the time to look.
She heard another shot in the opposite direction, breathed a quick sigh of relief, and ran harder. She was almost to the woods when another shot exploded, this time only a few yards away from her. She dove into the brush and rolled behind a log for cover. Another bullet slammed into the tree trunk behind her. “Well, damn,” she muttered. “Now what?”
She peered over the log. She could see a figure in the distance, but the rain was too fierce for her to get a good look at him. “Where’s a good lightning bolt when you need one?” she murmured as she watched him slowly move forward.
Off to her left Mary noticed a dim light moving through the woods. Was it the girls again? At this point, there was really nothing they could do. She glanced back to the gunman. He was staying at the edge of the woods, making his way slowly around the circumference of the field toward her. The light to the left was getting brighter. Did the gunman have an accomplice? At this point, she was almost dead center between the two. “Dead center—bad choice of words, Mary,” she chided herself.
She watched and waited. Both figures moving closer. Neither one seemed to be aware of the other.
As the light came closer to the edge of the woods, Mary noticed that the gunman had stopped in his tracks. He moved away from the outer clearing and into the brush. Mary turned frantically to find him in the dark rain. He was still there—waiting, but mostly hidden in the branches of a large oak.
The person carrying the light moved into the clearing. Even through the pounding rain, his half-run looked familiar. He stopped and gazed around the clearing.
“Mary O’Reilly,” Bradley shouted. “This is Police Chief Bradley Alden of the Freeport Police Department. Please acknowledge your whereabouts.”
Mary’s quick relief turned to panic as she realized that he was an open target for the gunman. “Bradley,” she shouted. “Get down! Gunman!”
Bradley dropped to the ground. She could see him pull out his revolver and scan the area. The blast of tree bark above her head was a clear reminder that she had given away her position when she called out.
She dropped to the ground and looked around. Several yards away was a huge fallen log that could provide protection. She decided that she would figure out how to get to the other side of it once she got there.
She crawled along the muddy ground, raindrops ricocheting onto her face. Her clothes were soaked all the way through and she was chilled to the bone. She finally reached the log, an ancient oak with a number of large branches on either side.
She examined the positioning of the log and could see a small hollow underneath. Several of the large branches held the log up enough to form a fairly substantial passageway. Mary was sure she could squeeze under and get safely through to the other side, away from the gunman.
She reached her arms through the opening and grabbed hold of some branches on the other side of the tree and began to pull herself through. Mud, stones and bark scraped her sides. Her arm throbbed, but she continued to pull.
Halfway through, she realized that the opening might not be large enough to fit her hips. She tugged. She was stuck tight.
“Damn, damn, damn, damn,” she whimpered, as rain poured down upon her.
“Need some help?”
She looked up through the rain to see a fairly smug Bradley Alden standing over her. Relief warred with pain.
“No, really, I’m fine,” she snapped. “What the hell do you think?”
He squatted down in front of her, rain pouring off the brim of his cap. “Well, I thought perhaps you had the same amazing trait as the Mary O’Reilly we found in your office,” he replied, “the ability to deflate.”
TWENTY-SIX
Freezing, Mary shivered beneath a police-issued wool blanket in the front seat of the cruiser while Bradley reported the information to the Jo Davies County Sheriff’s Department.
“From the look of the slug, it’s the same caliber of weapon that was used earlier this week in a similar shooting,” he said.
He listened for a moment and then looked directly at Mary as he spoke into the phone. “Yes, the intended victim is going to be placed under twenty-four-hour surveillance. Yes, she has agreed to the surveillance.”
>
He raised his eyebrow, daring her to disagree. Mary sighed and nodded. Okay, she thought, someone tried to kill me twice, maybe I should give in a little.
“Yes, her wound has been cared for,” he said.
Mary winced, remembering the sting of the antiseptic ointment Bradley had applied just before bandaging the two-inch scrape.
“Thanks, yeah, I appreciate it,” he continued. “No, no idea. Male. Probably over six feet—but even though the victim is trained, the rain was coming down too hard for her to get a good visual. Yeah, he was out of here after his last attempt. I looked for tracks, but couldn’t find any. Yeah, maybe your guys will have better luck.
“I’ll send some of my guys back tomorrow for her car,” he added. “Thanks for all your help, Steve.”
Bradley finished the conversation, clicked off the phone and turned to Mary. “They’re probably not going to find tracks, are they?” Mary asked, knowing the answer before he spoke.
Bradley shook his head. “I don’t think so. But the weather worked in our favor. It’s hard to disguise everything in this much mud. This guy is good.”
Mary shivered. “And smart. He killed five little girls more than twenty-four years ago and was never caught.”
Bradley shook his head. “He hasn’t been caught yet,” he said. “We just need to catch him…”
He stopped.
“Before he kills me,” Mary finished for him.
Bradley looked at her for a moment, turned and started his car. “Not an option,” he said, putting his car in gear and pulling out of the parking lot toward Freeport.
The thirty-minute ride back to Freeport was completed mostly in silence, each lost in their own thoughts. It was just past ten as they drove down Stephenson Street.
“Do you have an alarm system at your house?” Bradley finally asked.
Mary shook her head. “No, the ghosts occasionally set them off.”
“Do you have a friend with a big mean dog?”
“No, ghosts tend to creep out even big mean dogs.”
“Do you want to take a few days off and visit your folks in Chicago?”
Mary turned to him. “You wouldn’t be suggesting I hide away and let someone else solve my case, would you?”
Bradley understood the look in her eye, but decided it was worth the risk. “Just until I can get something substantial on the creep who’s after you.”
Mary shook her head. “No, I can’t do that, sorry.”
“Mary, you’ve been shot at twice,” he said. “Don’t you think it’s time…?”
“If you say it’s time I leave this to the professionals, I’ll shoot you.”
“I was going to say, time you stepped back and protected yourself,” he continued. “These girls are dead. You can’t help them anymore. They’ve waited this long, they can wait a little longer.”
He pulled up in front of her house.
“You don’t understand,” Mary said, picturing the faces of the little girls. “They are trapped here. They are in constant fear. They can’t move on to where they are supposed to be. And they’re being terrorized by this monster too. Even in death. They’ve waited long enough.”
Mary got out of the cruiser and turned back. “Thanks for worrying, really, but I’ve got to see this through.”
She closed the door and hurried to her front porch. As soon as she let herself in, she heard Bradley drive away.
Locking the door, she turned and leaned against it, studying the room. This house had always felt safe to her, even when she had nocturnal visitors like Earl, she’d never been afraid of being alone. But she had to admit that tonight she was a little jittery. She took a deep breath. There was no way someone was going to intimidate her in her own home.
“Screw this,” she said aloud and moved into the front room.
The glow from the streetlight outside her house filled the room with enough light that Mary could see the shadows of her furniture. She softly walked forward, stopping at the base of the staircase.
Standing still, she listened to see if there were any discordant sounds. She waited for a few moments and then carefully climbed the staircase, keeping to the edges to avoid making noise. At the top she slid along the wall and made her way to her bedroom.
The door was ajar. I probably left it open, she thought. Mary glanced around the room; the shadows were familiar and nothing seemed out of place. She moved to the nightstand and knelt in front of it. Pulling open the drawer, she entered the combination of the safe and, when the small door opened, she reached in and pulled out her Colt 1911 semi-automatic pistol. She weighed it her hand. The cool, smooth metal felt familiar and comforting.
Looking down, she noticed the answering machine on top of the nightstand was blinking. She clicked back the caller ID; the number was blocked. Her heart pounded. She pressed the button to play the message.
“Line one, one new message, Saturday nine-forty-two p.m.,” the machine responded.
“You are mine. You were meant to be mine. Just like the others. I am coming for you.”
Mary’s hand shook for a moment. The voice had been electronically manipulated and Mary knew, from past experience, that the message had been too short to have left any clues.
Fury replaced fear. Mary reached back into the safe, pulled out the handgun’s magazine and slapped it into the gun.
“Bring it.”
She brought the gun into the bathroom with her, placed it inside the cabinet near the shower and turned to make the adjustments on the shower’s control panel.
Her full body shower consisted of five sets of vertically mounted spray nozzles that sprayed her body from head to toe. She was able to adjust the volume, the type of spray, the pressure and the temperature. It was like being in heaven.
Hot water and a massage spray, she decided, would help ease the ache and cold from her body. She could hardly wait.
She took off her clothes and placed them in a wicker hamper. Then she stepped into the shower and closed her eyes, bracing her hands on the shower wall in front of her as she let the pulsating heat of the shower ease the chill and tension out of her body. Droplets of water beaded on her bandaged arm. Steam rose all around her, coating the shower stall with an opaque blanket. She felt some of the terror of the night begin to slip away.
TWENTY-SEVEN
She was not his problem. She was an adult. She could make her own decisions. She was a professional. She could handle herself. She understood the criminal mind. She wasn’t going to make another mistake.
“Damn it,” Bradley stomped on the brake and pulled the cruiser to the side of the road. What the hell was he going to do about this situation?
He pulled out his phone and called the Jo Davies Sheriff, maybe he could shed some light on the case.
“Hey, Steve, this is Alden,” he said. “Did you get anywhere with the shooter this evening? Any leads?”
“My deputies and I have been out there for the past hour,” the sheriff said. “No one saw anything. But considering the weather…”
“Yeah, you’re right, there are not a lot of witnesses during a thunderstorm,” he agreed.
“Don’t know if this is helpful,” the sheriff added, “but my guys did a walk-through in the area of the shooting, and this guy was definitely stalking your vic. This was not a random poacher just shooting in the wrong direction; this guy followed her for a long time.”
“What did they find?” Bradley asked.
“Some vegetation was crushed down enough to tell that he was watching and waiting for quite a while,” the sheriff replied. “Then there was a place where he lost her, and then doubled back to where he finally just about caught her. This guy was good, he knew what he was doing. I’d make sure I keep an eye on that lady, ‘cause this guy is on her trail.”
“Thanks, Steve, that’s exactly what I needed to hear,” Bradley said, making a U-turn and heading back to Mary’s house. “Keep me informed, okay?”
Bradley pulled into the drivew
ay and jogged over to the porch. It was strange that she hadn’t turned on any lights yet. He knocked on the door and waited. He felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise, something was wrong.
This time he pounded on the door. “Mary, it’s Bradley. Open the door.”
TWENTY-EIGHT
The pounding on the front door startled Mary. She turned and shampoo dripped into her eyes. Swearing, she tried unsuccessfully to clear her vision. Blindly, she reached forward and turned off the water.
She opened the shower door just a crack and reached one arm out for her towel. She found the thick terry cloth, rubbed her eyes and was finally was able to see. Through the steam she thought she saw a quick movement in the mirror. Her heart jumped. What the hell?
It was too early for Earl to come. Besides, Earl should be safely home by now. Did another ghostly visitor take his place?
She paused, wrapped the towel around her body and tucked the end in securely. She slid the shower door the rest of the way open, and steam escaped into the room, clouding the mirror even more. Never allowing her eyes to move from the mirror, she reached over and slid the cabinet door open, grasping around the inside for her gun. Finally, she felt it and drew it to her chest.
She waited, listening for any sounds, peering through the steam for any movement. A second round of pounding on the front door jolted her. She took a deep breath, shook her head and felt fairly foolish. The movement in the mirror must have been her imagination.
She stepped forward, then stopped. The muddied footprint was large. The tracks were from a man’s boot. And it was right outside her shower door.
She leaned back against the bathroom wall, her hand over her mouth. He had been right there. Watching her shower. She felt sick to her stomach.
She couldn’t move. The pounding continued, but all she could do was stare at the print on the floor.
The phone rang in her bedroom. She lifted her head and stared across the room. He had been on the phone. He had warned her that he was coming for her. She heard her voice answer, “Hi, this is Mary, sorry I’m not here. Leave a message.”
Crimes of Passion Page 97
