There was silence for a few moments. DeMarco and Jayme remained seated. Then, in a softer voice, Vicente said, “Dr. Hoyle’s vast range of interests often includes the arcane and esoteric, as I’m sure you have observed. For the rest of us, our little cave here represents the place where we confront mystery and discovery—some of it, unfortunately, quite horrific. We had hoped that, at least in this one instance, you two would join us in our quest. There was no conspiracy, I assure you, except to enlist your help. I’m afraid we’ve become frustrated by our own limitations.”
DeMarco laid his hand on Jayme’s shoulder and gave her a gentle shove. She stood, as did DeMarco. Vicente stood as well.
“I apologize, Sergeant, if our methods have offended you, or if you feel you have been tricked or violated somehow. We mean no harm to anyone.”
“Aside from the dark forces that beset us,” Hoyle added.
DeMarco looked from one face to the other. Then he slipped his hand into Jayme’s and led her away.
Toomey half rose from her seat to call after him, a third card in hand. “You are approaching a dangerous intersection, young man. Please take the time to look both ways.”
THIRTY-SIX
Jayme watched his face as he drove back to Aberdeen, his jaw set, his mouth a grim, hard line. She understood what he must be feeling: betrayal. He was one of the most private men she had ever known, and maybe one of the most wounded. He held himself together through the years by wrapping those wounds in layer after layer of scar tissue, then concealing it all beneath a gruff demeanour, alternating sarcasm with stoicism. And now he felt stripped bare in front of three strangers, and at the hands of a woman who claimed to love him. For a man like him, there could be no greater humiliation.
Yet he loved her. She knew this despite his reluctance to say the word. She knew it from the way he touched her, the way he gazed at her when he thought she was sleeping. Sometimes in the middle of the night, his warm breath, quick and shallow, would play against the tip of her spine, and he would slide his hand under the sheet until his fingers lay wedged beneath her hip, needing contact, nothing more, and only then would his breath slow and deepen again, and his body relax sufficiently for sleep.
She did not know the specifics of his troubling dreams but knew he found his comfort in her. Comfort from decathexis, his unfinished grief. Ryan Jr. And maybe Laraine too. Certainly Thomas Huston. All that grief and guilt. It all kept him from loving openly and nakedly. And now he felt betrayed because a few of their secrets had been revealed. He was a man who defined himself by his secrets and by how successfully he kept them hidden.
And how would he feel if he learned of the agreement she had made with their station commander, his protégé? Doubly betrayed. She wished she had never made that Judas deal. And prayed he would never discover it.
If only she had known him before all the tragedies. What was he like as a child? Had he loved baseball and fishing, all the cop shows on TV? She knew so little about his past. Would they ever reach the day when they could lie in each other’s arms and confess the hoarded secrets no one else would ever know? And if they did, could any love survive such revelations?
She said, barely louder than the hum of the air conditioner, “I don’t think it’s fair to blame a woman for things she said in confidence to her mother and grandmother.”
He turned his head quickly, looked at her for just a moment, then faced the windshield again. The unforgiving line of his mouth never changed, but she thought she saw a softness in his eyes, though maybe it was only sorrow.
Another minute passed before she spoke again. “I’ll do whatever you want, Ryan. I’ll go wherever you want to go. But I don’t believe, knowing the kind of man you are, that you can just walk away from those seven girls.”
His right eye twitched then, the one that sometimes went slightly out of focus, sometimes watered when he was agitated or depressed. There was a tiny scar at the corner of that eye, the result of his own physical injury in the accident that took his infant son. She knew that his son was always with him, always a powerful, unrelenting ache, a wound that never healed.
As if conscious of her gaze and the thoughts accompanying it, he lifted his right hand off the steering wheel for a moment, put his index finger to the scar, rubbed it twice, then lowered his hand again. Otherwise, he gave her no answer.
A few minutes later he pulled the car into her grandmother’s driveway. Put the gear into Park. Shut off the engine. And sat there staring at the garage door. She waited.
“What a strange bunch,” he finally said. And then, with a little laugh, “The Da Vinci Cave Irregulars. Irregulars sure hits the nail on the head, doesn’t it?”
She smiled. “Hoyle is exactly as you described him.”
Now he smiled too, kept looking at the garage. “That librarian especially,” he said. “Somebody is trying to get my attention? Do people really fall for that kind of stuff?”
She knew he didn’t want an answer, he would work one out for himself. So after a few seconds she told him, “I thought that was supposed to be a lunch meeting. Where was lunch?”
Now he looked at her and offered a genuine smile. She read apology in his eyes. “Seriously,” he said. “I’m starved.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
That night, he dreamed of skeletons. Seven fully articulated bodies of bone assembled around his bed. Petite and feminine; bony fingers interlaced. Every bone clearly visible in the darkness, almost radiant.
He is aware of Jayme sleeping beside him. Aware of the sibilance of her breath in the night’s silence. Aware of the warmth of her skin close to his. But she is a shadow, as is he. He knows exactly where he is; he is beside Jayme on a queen-size bed in her grandmother’s house. Jayme’s mother, Nedra, is sleeping down the hall. Jayme’s grandmother is in her grave. And he knows who the skeletons are and why they have come for him.
The skeletons have no eyes or tongues but their plaintiveness is tangible. He feels it in their stillness. Their bones are white but grieving, and he knows they know that he understands their grief. They have come so that he might subsume it.
He sits up and tries to speak, but no words will issue forth. His mouth opens, tongue flicks, but he knows not what to say. And so he closes his eyes, he lies down again. He thinks, You’re dreaming. And hears the skeletons collapse asunder, a moat of bones scattered all around his bed.
THIRTY-EIGHT
At 8:00 a.m., the doorbell rang.
DeMarco and Jayme had spent the night in the guest room of her grandmother’s house. After working hard into the evening sorting through family keepsakes, then packing and marking boxes and arranging for a real estate agent to show the house and oversee lawn maintenance until the property was sold, Jayme and DeMarco and Jayme’s mother had fallen onto the living room sofa and stayed up till one o’clock watching Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde on TCM.
Both Jayme and her mother kept nodding off during the movie, then waking and watching a few more minutes before nodding off again, but DeMarco, despite his physical and emotional fatigue, watched every minute of it. He had already seen the movie at least four times, but never before had he found the story of doomed lovers as compelling as he did with Jayme leaning against him, one naked ankle hooked over his. For a long time after the climactic shootout—part opera, part bloody ballet, that slow-motion fusillade of death and sensuality, a consummating orgasm for the lovers’ unconsummated desire—DeMarco sat with the television off and the room dark, two beautiful women asleep at his side, their bodies limp and crumpled and riddled with exhaustion.
They all slept late the next day and were still at the breakfast table when the front doorbell rang. Jayme’s mother went to the door, opened it, closed it, then returned with a large fat brown envelope on which someone had written in block letters DEMARCO & MATSON. She laid it on the table between them, then returned to her seat.
“What�
��s this?” Jayme asked.
“Some boy dropped it off.”
“A boy?” said DeMarco.
“In a little red car,” Jayme’s mother said.
Jayme slid the envelope toward DeMarco. “You want the honors?”
He thought, I won’t let him play us like this. But the dream was still with him. “Be my guest,” he said.
Inside were five separate packets of loose papers, each in a separate folder. Jayme removed the folders one at a time and stacked them in a pile. The folders were marked Chad McGintey, Aaron Henry, Virgil Helm, Eli Royce, and Victims.
The last thing she removed was a single sheet of pale-yellow stationery. She looked at it briefly, then held it toward DeMarco. He continued eating his scrambled eggs. “It’s all yours, James,” he said.
And her mother said, “Oh, isn’t that dear? You call her James too. Just like Galen always did.”
The color rose in Jayme’s cheeks. She cleared her throat. Then read aloud: “‘Again, please allow me to apologize for yesterday’s insensitive intrusion upon your privacy. Perhaps we have grown so accustomed to our own desire for anonymity that our empathy suffers. The fault is ours alone, and we ask your forbearance in consideration of the matter at hand. We understand that you have other obligations and owe nothing to us or to this town, but if, at some point in the future, whether here or elsewhere, you could spare a few minutes to look over the enclosed material, and then to favor us with your thoughts, we would be most grateful. Yours sincerely, David Vicente.’”
She laid the note on the top of the stack and waited for DeMarco to look up at her.
Jayme’s mother pretended to have heard nothing. She stood and carried her cup and plate to the sink. She scraped the plate clean, turned on the tap, ran the garbage disposal.
DeMarco used his fork to push the last of his eggs onto a piece of toast, then put the toast in his mouth, chewed slowly, and swallowed. He took a last drink of coffee, then turned his eyes on Jayme. She smiled.
Now DeMarco stood and carried his plate and cup to the sink. “Nedra,” he said, “is there a place nearby where we could rent a car for a couple of days?”
“In this town?” she said, and shook her head no. “But I’m sure we could find one on my way home this morning. Cullen rented his at the airport, but that’s in the wrong direction. I’m headed east.”
Jayme already had her cell phone out. “Hopkinsville,” she said. “Eighteen point six miles. You could drop us there, then catch 68 to Bowling Green.”
“Wait a minute,” Nedra said. “Your grandma’s car is right out there in the garage. It hasn’t been run for years, so you might have to do whatever to the battery.”
Jayme said, “That’s okay. Ryan’s good at jump-starting things. He always gets my motor running.”
“Goodness!” Nedra said. “Is that the way a nice Southern girl talks?”
THIRTY-NINE
They waited until Nedra was on her way home before reading the papers Vicente had sent. The first folder they shared was labeled Victims.
Keesha Isaacs, 16, reported missing by foster mother 7/21/98, Lexington KY. In the photocopied photo provided (with apologies for the poor quality), her little sister’s favorite, Keesha is thirteen, holding her sister Jade (eight years old) under the arms and dangling her above the community swimming pool. Both girls are wearing two-piece swimsuits, Keesha’s bearing the stars and stripes, Jade’s neon orange. Jade is kicking at the water, mid-laugh, her hands gripping her sister’s wrists while Keesha plants a kiss atop the little girl’s head. Keesha became sexually active, according to the foster mother, no later than fourteen, and soon developed the habit of staying away from home “for days at a time.” She was last seen by her foster mother nine days prior to the reported disappearance.
Jazmin Wright, 18, reported missing 5/3/99, Owensboro KY. The enclosed photo shows her at sixteen years of age: the tenth-grade photo from her school yearbook. Early in her junior year she became romantically involved with a male individual five years her senior. She was last seen with him at a high school football game that fall. When she failed to return home that night, a search of her bedroom confirmed that many of her clothes and personal belongings were missing. A week later she was officially listed as a runaway. She later made contact with her parents by phone on three separate occasions, but always refused to reveal her location.
LaShonda Smalls, 16, reported missing 3/10/2000, Nashville TN. Raised by grandparents since the age of three after suspicion of sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriend. Disappeared after leaving her home to spend a weekend at her mother’s apartment; the mother, unfortunately, forgot that her daughter would be visiting, and was out of town that weekend. Grandmother later received a Mother’s Day card from LaShonda, mailed from Nashville zip code 37206, but no other communication was forthcoming.
The others, Vicente wrote, followed more or less similar scenarios:
Tara Howard, 15, released from Shelby County Juvenile Court Detention Facility 2/29/2001, Memphis TN. No known contact after that date.
Debra Jordan, 17, reported missing 11/26/2002, St. Louis MO. Alleged to have been a sex worker since the age of fifteen, addicted to heroin. Began advertising online as an escort in the summer of 2002, was reported missing by roommate four months later.
Ceres Butler, 16, failed to return home from a friend’s house the night of 12/2/2003, Louisville KY. Friend reports they got high on marijuana and mushrooms. Ceres then wanted to “go downtown”; friend declined, so Ceres continued alone. Was not seen or heard from again.
Crystal Woodard, 19, reported missing 11/19/2004, Memphis TN. Escort for at least three years; advertised online. Reported missing by a colleague.
All victims were of African American or mixed African American descent. All considered light-skinned. All were dark-haired, slight, and delicately built, between five feet and five feet four. Some were last seen days, weeks, and on at least one occasion, months before the disappearance was reported. All but Ceres Butler, as noted above, had been out of touch with their immediate families for sixty days or more; their specific dates of disappearance are therefore unknown.
No definitive cause of death has been established for any of the victims. The hyoid bone was broken in one victim’s remains, suggesting strangulation as a possibility. The same bone was missing from two other victims’ remains. However, four of the victims’ hyoid bones were intact. All victims’ remains were missing a few or more small bones. Several victims’ remains showed signs of previous but older traumas, none sufficient to cause death. Evidence of moderate osteomyelitis, osteopenia, and dental deterioration, suggestive of opiate addiction, was discovered in victims Woodard, Wright, and Jordan.
In other words, cause, date, time, and place of death: undetermined. Times seven.
FORTY
THE SUSPECTS
Chad McGintey, 48, served 172 days at the Green River Correctional Complex for statutory rape of a fourteen-year-old minor. The girl, now nineteen, currently resides with McGintey and one other self-styled anarchist, McGintey’s older brother, Lucas, in two mobile homes in a wooded area three miles shy of the Mississippi River. Approximately three years prior to the church discovery, Lucas McGintey was convicted of possessing with the intent to sell two kilos of methamphetamine, for which he served twenty-seven months at the Green River Correctional Complex. A third member of McGintey’s group, a homosexual male, resided with McGintey and the others at the time of the discovery at the church, but died in a motorcycle crash nearly two years ago.
All three current individuals, despite their avowed allegiance to a no-credit-card, barter-only lifestyle, receive government assistance, and had, for a short while after Lucas McGintey’s release, been under surveillance by the FBI. An unknown informant had outlined the group’s plan to assassinate an unspecified law enforcement officer so as to start a war with all law
enforcement agencies, which they viewed as pawns of a military-industrial cabal. They were subsequently deemed a non-threat to the government of the United States when their single automatic weapon “voluntarily discharged,” breaking windows and perforating the siding of both mobile homes. All three of the group suffered minor injuries from broken glass. A pit bull, shot in the hip, had to be euthanized. Lucas McGintey was charged and subsequently convicted of reckless endangerment and illegally discharging a firearm. He served sixty days and paid a fine.
In recent years several complaints have been filed against Chad McGintey for “leering at,” “talking to,” and otherwise “bothering” girls walking home from the local middle and junior high schools. On all these occasions he was accompanied by the previously mentioned nineteen-year-old female with whom he resides.
Aaron Henry is a disgraced and divorced former high school social studies teacher, currently age forty-six, fired from his position after sixteen years of service when an eighth-grade student admitted to her parents that she had had sex with Henry on several occasions. She named two other students who had also allegedly engaged in intercourse with the teacher, but they refused to corroborate the first girl’s claims. During the subsequent investigation, several other students volunteered hearsay testimony that the teacher’s sexual solicitations, often involving offers of money, were common knowledge among the student body. Two days prior to the Carlisle County district attorney’s controversial decision not to prosecute Henry for second degree rape because of insufficient evidence, Henry attempted suicide by ingesting an undetermined quantity of over-the-counter sleep aids and aspirin. Upon his release from the hospital, he agreed to a plea bargain of corruption of a minor; as punishment he was barred from any further employment by the Carlisle County Board of Education, five years of supervised probation, behavior modification therapy, and registration as a sex offender. A civil suit resulted in a settlement of $25,000 to the plaintiff, to be held in trust for her until the age of eighteen. Evicted from his parents’ home, Henry currently resides in low-income housing in the city of Bardwell, where he earns a modest living buying and selling estate sale antiques online.
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