Soul Walk (A Lacey Fitzpatrick and Sam Firecloud Mystery Book 7)

by Melissa Bowersock

  “Five years old,” he said under his breath. “Straight hair, blonde going to brown. Chin-length. A bow on one side. She’s wearing a dress, loose but it has…” He struggled for the right word, then abruptly moved one hand across his upper chest. “Gathers. Here. Pink, like the bow. Black shoes, with a strap across the top. White socks. The cuffs turned down and… pink teddy bears.”

  He pulled in a deep breath and Lacey almost thought she heard a catch in his throat. She wondered at the detailed description, wondered if the girl were giving it to him or if he was concentrating on her appearance to avoid what came next.

  “She’s scared,” Sam said roughly. “Doesn’t understand. Too young not to trust. Too young…”

  He held himself stiffly for a moment, then suddenly his shoulders sagged. He turned and pushed past Lacey, past the cameramen and headed downstairs.

  Lacey turned off her phone and followed. Passing Kevin in the hallway, she glanced up. He nodded to her. She tried to smile, but didn’t think she succeeded.

  When she stepped down into the lobby, Sam was staring out the window and sipping from a bottle of water supplied by the go-for—Lacey couldn’t remember her name. The girl offered Lacey one, too, but she shook it off. Lacey stationed herself between Sam and Diana, buffering him from whatever the production assistant might want next.

  Instead of approaching them, however, Diana went to Kevin and conferred with him in quiet tones. Lacey didn’t listen. She stowed her phone in her pack and made a project of finding her car keys. When she found them, she quietly put them in her pocket, ready to spirit Sam away at a moment’s notice.

  Finally Diana stepped up. “Kevin said he got it all, and it’s good,” she said. “I’m just wondering if there’s any more we need to do? Discuss this with the Offendahls? Talk it out?”

  Sam turned. “No,” he said brusquely. “That’s all I got. There isn’t any more.” The hard look in his eyes dared Diana to argue.

  “O-okay,” she said. “Well, then I guess we’re done.”

  “Yeah.” Sam nodded once and pulled the mic off his shirt as he headed outside.

  Diana looked as if he’d slapped her.

  Lacey put a hand on her shoulder. “You have to understand how hard this is on him,” she said. “Seeing these people in their last moments, feeling their pain, their panic, their despair. This isn’t made-up for TV; it’s real. And it affects him.”

  Diana swallowed, her eyes wide. “I, uh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize…”

  “I know. But you do now. He wants to help people, but it takes a toll. If we all keep that in mind, it’ll go smoother.”

  “A-all right.” Diana’s eyes slid away, her cheeks a telltale pink. “Okay, guys, let’s wrap it up,” she said to the techs. She turned back to Lacey, somewhat more composed. “Thank you.”

  “Sure,” Lacey said. “We’ll be in touch.”

  The drive home was strained. Lacey vacillated between wanting to give Sam the silent space he needed and wanting to restore some sense of normality. Any way she considered how to do that, however, felt false and insensitive. She finally erred on the side of caution and allowed Sam to brood in silence. She didn’t know why this was hitting him so hard—aside from the not inconsequential matter of the rape and murder of a child—but only knew that it was. All she could offer was her quiet presence.

  As soon as they got home, Sam went directly to the bedroom. Lacey let him go and busied herself in the front, getting the coffee-maker ready for morning, tidying up the kitchen table, and turning off lights. When she finally followed Sam into the bedroom, he was already down to his skivs and slipping into bed. Lacey undressed, turned off the light and slid in next to him.

  He lay stiffly on his back, but she was gratified when he lifted his arm up to allow her to snuggle close and pillow her head on his chest. That was something at least.

  “I’m sorry this is so hard,” she murmured.

  He didn’t acknowledge her, didn’t speak or move, except to toy absently with a strand of her hair. Finally he drew in a heavy breath and let it out slowly.

  “I’ll survive,” he said.

  The hardness of his voice reminded her of the first job they’d ever worked together, the Fairfax Stalker. All those young girls kidnapped and murdered. She remembered him snarling at her when she’d first interviewed him. She, like Diana, hadn’t understood the cost of witnessing those last tragic moments. She did now, though, and it saddened her to see him withdraw into his shell of anger and despair.

  “I’ve been thinking a lot today about how far we’ve come,” she said softly. “Both as a team and as a couple. How much we’ve accomplished, and how much more we’ll do. And I wanted to tell you that… I’m ready to move forward. I think, when all this TV stuff is over, we should start looking for a bigger place. I’ll give notice on my apartment as soon as we find one. I mean, we could move my stuff into storage, but I thought—”

  “Don’t, Lacey.”

  “Don’t?” She lifted her head. “Don’t what?”

  “Don’t martyr yourself. Don’t give in to me out of pity. I know you don’t like to be patronized and neither do I.”

  “Pat—but, Sam, I’m not—”

  “No, Lacey. Not tonight. It’s late and I have to get up early for work. Let it go.” He pulled his arm from around her and turned on his side, leaving her to face his back. “Good night,” he said.

  Too stunned to speak, she pulled away and drew her knees up to her chest. She bit her lip to keep from crying, but the itch of hot tears burned behind her eyes.

  The sheets between them cooled rapidly with the absence of warm bodies.

  ~~~

  THIRTEEN

  Things were not any better by morning. Sam drank his coffee in silence and Lacey kept her distance. She did offer to make him breakfast, but he just grabbed a box of Poptarts. With his lunch box in one hand and he truck keys in the other, he gave her a half-hearted hug.

  “We’ll talk later,” he said.

  Then he was gone.

  Lacey watched him pull away in his truck and sighed. It was obvious they had some work to do. What it was, she didn’t know, and it wasn’t like her research where she could work on it on her own. No, whatever hell Sam was going through, he’d have to give her a sign when he was ready to talk. In the meantime, she had other tasks to see to.

  She took her coffee cup to the kitchen table and fired up her laptop.

  She’d been thinking some about the little girl—when she wasn’t worrying about Sam—and kept feeling a nagging suspicion that her appearance was important. She grabbed her notebook and her phone, replayed the video from last night, and jotted down notes on Sam’s description.

  Chin-length blonde hair going brown. Born a towhead? Dress, full on the bottom, gathered on top. Lacey wondered if he meant smocking. It was an older style, not often seen these days. Pink in color. She considered the fact that a lot of modern parents avoided the old-fashioned gender-specific colors like pink and blue, so possibly another clue pointing to an earlier time. The shoes, black with a strap across the top. Mary Janes? Did they even make those anymore? And white socks with the cuffs folded over, pink teddy bears to match the pink bow in her hair.

  Lacey drew a quick sketch of the whole outfit. She was no artist, but putting it together on paper gave her a sense of the overall look. Again, it pinged something in the back of her mind. But what?

  On a hunch, she did a search of images online. She typed in “little girl” and of course got a zillion hits. The pages went on forever, color photos of cute waif-faced girls in modern outfits.

  For a brief moment, she wondered how many child predators searched like this.

  Then she got an idea. She added 1930 to her search string. The images that came up were all black and white. This was more like it. Lots of little short dresses, lots of Mary Jane shoes.

  Then she saw it, the image in her mind.

  Shirley Temple. Dressed almost exactly like the little
girl. Smocked dress, Mary Janes, even the little bow on one side of her hair.

  Just to be sure, she did another search with the date 1940. Some similarities, but some differences, too. Fewer bows. Fewer Mary Janes. She searched on 1950 and the pictures were more markedly different yet again. More pants, fewer dresses.

  Now she was sure. They had their time frame.

  Lacey put a big fat 1930 next to her drawing, then called Paul Avila.

  “Lacey,” he said, “I’ve only done a quick search through our database, but no arrests for rape and murder of a five-year-old girl.”

  “How far back does your database go?” she asked.

  He checked. “Nineteen-teens. They’re not digitized beyond that, but that’s well within your hotel’s time frame.”

  “Huh. I thought I had a scoop for you. I think it was around 1930, based on the clothes she was wearing. But if you’ve already gone back that far and farther…”

  “I have,” he said with a sigh. “I found plenty of arrests for child sexual abuse, plenty of murders, but not both for a five-year-old. You’re sure about the age?”

  “Absolutely,” she said. She drummed her fingers on the table. “You’re looking through the entire LA County? Not just the Malibu area?”

  “The whole shebang,” he said. “Just in case she was dumped elsewhere.”

  Suddenly Lacey sat up. “What about cold cases?” she said. “You looked through arrest records. What if the perp was never caught?”

  “Hmm, good point,” he said. “Let me run that through. And looking around 1930?”

  “Nineteen twenty-eight through the thirties. Maybe the forties. But that general time, yeah.”

  “Okay. I’ll check it out. It might take me a bit. Kinda busy here.”

  “I know, and I appreciate all you can do to work this in. I can’t say it’s a priority when it’s most likely an eighty-year-old murder, but it’s a priority for us.”

  “I get it,” he said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “I owe you big time, Paul. Thanks, pal.”

  She keyed off the call and blew out a breath. All right; that ball was rolling.

  Taking a break to grab some juice, her mind went back to Sam. Surprisingly her hurt from last night’s rejection had morphed into pique. Patronizing? She’d never patronized him. How could he even think that? Here she had come to a major decision about moving forward and he thought she was tossing him a bone. That rankled.

  But she refused to succumb to the anger. Not now. She had work to do that needed her full concentration.

  Back to Gerald.

  She went over her notes and reviewed the video from last night.

  “Doesn’t feel deserving,” Sam’s tinny voice said. “Too many small lives.”

  Her own voice. “Was it the war?”

  “There are worse things than war.”

  Not war, she wrote in her notebook. Too many small lives. What did that mean? He only had two children. Did he mean a school?

  If it wasn’t the war, what horrendous thing might he have done? Hazel had said her parents had been good people, just trying to make a life for their new, young family. Gerald had volunteered at their church. What would make him take small lives?

  Bus crash. Hmm. Lacey wondered if that had affected him. Hazel had said he’d gotten a concussion and had been in a coma for a while. Perhaps he’d had brain damage that had changed who he was, the kind of person he was. Had the injuries from the bus crash scrambled his brain and made him do aberrant things?

  She pulled up the archived Malibu Times on the Pepperdine site again. Before, she’d searched only on the suicide and the hotel address. This time she searched on Gerald Mayhill.

  A handful of hits. She clicked on the first one and browsed through the pages of the edition until she saw the highlighted text.

  September 6, 1948. Deadly bus crash.

  A church bus full of children ran off the road in Topanga Canyon and plummeted almost a hundred feet down the ravine, killing twenty-eight. The children had been returning from a church camp that took place over the long Labor Day weekend. Witnesses reported a tragic chain of events that led to the fatalities. A sudden landslide, triggered by recent rains, sent rocks and boulders down on the road, and the bus driver veered around the debris but then lost control of the bus on the wet, shifting ground. The bus plunged down the canyon, rolling several times before coming to a stop at the bottom. Witnesses said the bodies of several children could be seen strewn down the hillside.

  The bus driver, Gerald Mayhill, was ejected through the front window of the bus, suffering multiple injuries and is in critical condition.

  None of the children survived.

  “Oh, my God,” Lacey breathed. Twenty-eight children. Too many small lives. And Gerald survived. He lived through the war, reasonably safe in London, only to return home and then kill—accidentally, to be sure—twenty-eight children in his care.

  No wonder the guilt was crushing. That would be too much for almost anyone to bear. Certainly for anyone who aspired to be a good husband and father. How had it been for him when he looked at his own children and then thought of all those small bodies? Lacey had wondered how a man could decide to leave his wife and little children; now she knew. Not deserving. He didn’t deserve to live.

  She pushed away from the table and walked outside. The sun shone through scattered clouds, beaming warmth down to her chilled body. No wonder, she thought. No wonder that room had a heaviness to it, a coldness to it. Gerald had been drowning in it, and saw no other way out. No way out except to join his small charges in death. To finish what was started. To complete the tragic action.

  Yet even taking his own life didn’t seem like atonement enough. He was still suffering.

  She only hoped that she and Sam could free him.

  She pulled in a deep breath and pushed it out slowly. The brisk fall air felt good, like a cool breeze chasing out the mustiness of shadowed corners. Air and light. That’s what that room in the B&B needed. Air and light.

  She went back inside and glanced at her phone. She should call Diana, let her know what she’d found. Later, she thought. For now she fixed herself a light lunch and curled up in a chair bathed in sunlight from the front window. Like a contented cat, she let the warmth steal over her and surround her in dreams.

  When she awoke and remembered all she’d accomplished today, she felt good. A very productive day, all in all. She went back to her computer briefly, to print out the article and to save the file to her hard drive so she could email it to Diana. She followed that up with a phone call.

  “Wow, this is great,” Diana said. “I mean, it’s tragic, but great that you were able to run it down. I’m going to call Pepperdine and see if there’s anyone there who could act as an expert for our research segment.”

  “Maybe someone in the library,” Lacey suggested.

  “Yeah, right.” Diana paused, no doubt making notes. “And who’s this guy at the sheriff’s department?”

  “Paul Avila. I got to know him when I was still on the LAPD, and we worked together a couple times. He’s a good guy.”

  “Avila,” Diana repeated. “Do you think he’d like to be on the show?”

  Lacey laughed. “I have no idea, but you can ask. Here’s his number…”

  “Super. I’ll call him. Hey, I wanted to let you know, Barry’s very pleased with the walk footage. That’s going in for editing next week, and then we’ll have you two come in to review it, but we think it’s going to be very good.”

  “Oh, great. Glad to hear it.”

  “Yes, we’re very excited. The show’s really coming together.”

  “Okay. Well, I’ll let you know as soon as I have anything more.”

  “Terrific. Thanks, Lacey. Very exciting.”

  ~~~

  FOURTEEN

  As the time neared when Sam would get home, Lacey noticed an uptick in her nerves. She did her best to muzzle it by figuring out what to cook for dinne
r, but once she had that organized, there was nothing else to occupy her mind but reruns of their last conversation last night.

  She still felt bad that Sam was having a tough time with this case, but every time she remembered him saying that word—patronized—she got mad all over again. Martyr, indeed. Well, they would just have to hash things out. Maybe tonight, maybe not. But some time.

  By the time she saw his headlights slew across the front window, she was clearing the kitchen table and getting ready to start dinner. She decided to wait and see what Sam’s mood was, and follow his lead.

  He came directly to the kitchen, set down his lunch box and folded Lacey in his arms. For a long moment, he did nothing but hold her fiercely. Lacey melted against him, his heartbeat beneath her ear.

  “I’m sorry,” he said quietly.

  “Me, too.”

  “I think when we first met, I told you I could be an asshole.”

  She smiled. “And I said you were good at it.”

  “Yeah.” He held her away from him a little, then leaned down and kissed her. “I’ll try not to be one again, at least for a while.”

  She laughed. “Deal.”

  He let her go. She started the oven while he got a bottle of vitamin water from the fridge.

  “How’d you do today?” he asked, leaning against the counter.

  “I did very well.” She gave him a brief summary of her progress as she put chicken in to bake. He listened quietly.

  “That’s absolutely it,” he said about the bus accident. She could see by the faraway look in his eyes that he had been feeling it as well as hearing it from her. “That’s the guilt. The many small lives.” He saluted her with the water bottle. “Excellent work, Ms. Fitzpatrick.”

  She beamed. “I’ll be really glad when we can release him,” she said.