by M. Z. Kelly
“There,” I said to Joe, pointing up the road. “Maybe he took the girl there.”
Joe looked in the direction of the cornfield. “It’s pretty far away.” He shrugged, “But what do we have to lose. Let’s go check it out.”
FIFTY-EIGHT
THE DARK VISITOR
It’s dark and cold. I’ve been in bed with the light out since Nancy left. I have my blanket wrapped tight around me, but I can’t sleep. For a long time, I thought about Nancy and tried to make her real again. But I don’t think that’s going to happen. Nancy went away because something bad is going to happen.
I’m going to take some slow breaths and try to calm myself. Sometimes that helps when I can’t sleep. I remember once, a long time ago, when I was a little girl I had a dream. I had gone to a park with my mama for a picnic and I wandered away. There was a beautiful little stream that flowed out of the mountains. I began wading into the water. Then I realized the water got deeper and I fell down. The water was suddenly over my head. I tried to get back to shore, but the water got faster and it began to carry me away. The last thing I remembered was Mama standing on the shore calling to me. Then I got swept away into the dark water.
I woke up after the bad dream and was glad it was just a dream. I then went and got in bed with Mama. She held me tight and said everything was going to be okay.
Now, Mama and my home seem like they’re far away. I’m feeling tired now, so I think I’ll try to fall asleep. It’s really dark…and quiet…
Footsteps! I think I hear someone moving around above the secret room. Maybe it’s Nancy and she’s real again. I’m going to turn on the lamp so she can find me.
There. The room is light again. I still hear the footsteps. Someone’s moving the boards at the top of the stairway. “Nancy, is that you?”
She didn’t answer. Maybe she didn’t hear me. I’m going over to the stairway now, so that she can find me. There’s a shadow there, someone coming down into the room. It’s not Nancy, but I know who it is. It’s the man, the one Nancy told me about.
“Hello, Corinne.”
The man knows my name, but I’m not going to say anything. His eyes are shiny and strange. He’s looking at me, and I know what’s going to happen.
I’m going to die.
FIFTY-NINE
A TIME TO DIE
The road where Quinton Macy had parked was a block over from his mother’s house. He had been in the field many times before and knew that the path through the corn maze eventually led to the secret room.
The night was moonless, with a thin cover of clouds, and the air was cold. His heart beat a staccato thump against his chest as he remembered how the room had been a part of his long ago life. His mind drifted back to the first time his father had shown him the room and he’d met the little girl who he’d learned was his sister.
“This is Corinne,” his father had said, bringing the girl over to him in the secret room. “She’s your sister.”
He’d stared at his father in bewilderment and then his eyes had fixed on the little girl. She was about three years old with long brown hair. He’d looked back at his father. “How did she…”
His father was a big man, easily prone to anger. He shook his head and said, “That’s not for you to know.” He smiled at the girl, who was holding a blanket. “Let’s get to know each other.”
After that, Father had insisted that they all get in bed together. That was the first of the many nights that would follow when he’d done the terrible things to them. Even now, as he dismissed the distant mages, Quinton bristled with anger over the horrors they’d endured.
The covering to the secret room looked untouched when he got to the clearing. He used his light as he removed the plywood panels, shining it down the stairway. He didn’t see anyone, at first, and cursed Joshua Brown under his breath. Then he saw the girl, and his world shifted.
Quinton Macy felt his mind begin to tumble and then fly apart, like someone had taken all the parts of his brain and scattered them to the far corners of the world. Thousands of images skittered by.
His mother locking him out of the house…Father in bed with Corinne and him…the buried images of the gun crashing into his skull…then his father’s head being blown off.
He put his hands on his head and began to scream, rocking back and forth until the images finally went away. Macy’s mind was suddenly full of clarity. He leveled his eyes on the girl. This was the child, his sister, the one his mother had told him had murdered his father. She would die. Father’s death would be avenged and he would be at peace. She’d been down here all this time, waiting for him to kill her.
“Hello, Corinne,” he said, after he got downstairs. When she just stared at him and didn’t answer, he said, “Do you know why I’m here?”
The child stood straighter and nodded her head. “Yes, Quinton. You’re here because I have something I need to tell you.”
SIXTY
The cornfield was much larger than I’d anticipated, but Joe and I found a path leading inside about a quarter of a mile down the highway from where it began. The rest of the taskforce was still searching the area around the house, and we decided to see what we found in the field before asking them to join us.
“Looks like somebody’s worn a path in here,” Joe said, shining his light into the maze. “Maybe kids.” He glanced at me. “What do we know about the girl that Brown took?”
I told him what I remembered from the notes Selfie and Molly had given me. “She’s ten and was in the fourth grade. Her parents are divorced. Mom works as a nurse. Physically, she matches the characteristics of the other victims.”
Joe’s light illuminated the path ahead and we saw that it turned. It looked to me like the area had been recently trampled down.
“I never liked dealing with these psychos,” he said. “They’re unpredictable.”
I chuckled. “It’s a hell of a time to let me know that. In our line of work, we don’t run into a lot of well-adjusted people.”
“Yeah, including the profilers. You ask me…”
“Sssh.” We stopped, and I lowered my voice. “You hear that?”
His light washed back over his face, illuminating his big features and pale eyes. “Yeah, someone’s talking.”
We moved ahead slowly until we stopped at a small clearing. There was a board pushed back, revealing some kind of underground chamber. We had our weapons drawn as we crept closer. We stopped and saw there was a stairway leading underground. Then I heard a child’s voice. She was saying something about love.
SIXTY-ONE
THE MESSAGE
The man is big and scary. I have to remember what Nancy told me. I can’t show him that I’m afraid. His eyes look different now that he’s closer. They’re kind of yellow, like one of the animals I once saw in a nature magazine at school. I’ve never seen eyes like this before. He’s coming closer now. My heart is beating faster and it’s hard to breathe. I’m going to try not to move.
“What do you mean, you have something to tell me?” the man asked.
I feel different now, less afraid. I remember what Nancy told me and I’m sure about what I have to tell the man now. I’m going to be brave. “My friend told me what happened before she left.”
“Your friend?”
I nodded. “I called her Nancy, but before she went away, she told me we had the same name. She was your sister.”
The man’s eyes seem smaller now. He looks really angry. It’s strange, though. For some reason, I’m no longer afraid of him. Maybe it’s because of what Nancy told me about how to be real.
“You killed our father,” the man told me. “Now you’re going to die.”
He’s still really angry, but I’m still not afraid. “I have something to tell you.”
His face seems harder now, like he’s even more angry than before. “What’s that?”
“Do you know what it means to be real?” When he didn’t answer, I continued. “It’s something that
takes a very long time. It’s something that happens when someone loves you very hard.” I’m taking a step closer to the man now, looking up into his yellow eyes. “Corinne loved you. That’s why she was real.”
The big man is bending down to me. “What are you talking about?”
I’m going to reach out and take his hand now. I know it seems strange, but I think Nancy would want me to do it. “I’m talking about love, Quinton. That’s your name, isn’t it?” He nodded. “Corinne knew that you loved her. That’s all that really matters.”
SIXTY-TWO
“Let’s get down there,” Joe whispered, motioning to the opening. “I don’t like this.”
I touched his arm, holding him back for an instant. “The girl. Let’s be careful. Macy’s unpredictable.”
He nodded and we moved ahead, until we were standing above the entrance to the underground chamber.
I heard the girl’s voice saying something about love and that’s all that matters. Joe glanced at me, then began moving down the stairway, with me following.
We crouched low and were halfway down the earthen pathway when we stopped. Quinton Macy was on his knees with a girl we knew must be Corinne Williams standing in front of him.
The girl looked over at us and said, “Hello. This is my friend Quinton.”
“Don’t move,” Joe said to Macy. “Stay right where you are.”
Looking back on it later, what happened next seemed like it occurred in slow motion. Quinton Macy stood up. He turned toward us. There was a strange smile on his face. Then I saw the shiny object in his hand.
“Gun!” I said to Joe, raising my voice. “He’s got a gun!”
Joe called out another warning for him to get on the ground, but it was ignored. We watched in fascination and disbelief as Macy turned back to the girl. The child was standing between us and Macy, so we didn’t have a clear shot.
“Goodbye, Corinne,” Macy said.
The man we knew as the Reaper then walked over to a dark corner of the room, brought the gun up to his chest, and pulled the trigger.
SIXTY-THREE
THE GIFT
Later, a long time later, when the sun had risen and Corinne Williams’ mother had arrived and been assured that her daughter was safe, the little girl surprised me by asking if she could go for a walk with me. Her mother seemed a little confused by the request, but agreed after I assured her that we would just walk up the street.
There was a small park about a mile from the Macy home, where we sat on a bench. We had tried to explain everything that had happened to the girl earlier when her mother was present. Corinne had told us that she understood Quinton Macy was gone, but also told us about meeting his sister in what she called “the secret room”. I’d dismissed what she’d said as the overactive imagination of a child at work, but, as we talked, I realized she had something else that she needed to tell me.
“There’s a park, kind of like this one, where Mama and me live,” Corinne said. “I like to go there and feel the sun on my face.”
I looked around at the little park. It was overgrown with weeds and looked like it hadn’t been taken care of in months. “It’s nice to get away and be outside,” I said, trying to be positive.
“I remember once when I was little, and Mama and Daddy got divorced, Daddy took me to the park on Christmas.” Her eyes grew wider and she smiled. “He brought me a present.”
I was exhausted but found her enthusiasm infectious. “Really? What did he give you?”
She held her hand out. I saw there was a silver ring with a red stone on her little finger. “It’s called a ruby. Daddy said that even when he’s not with me, I can touch the ruby and know that he’s thinking about me.”
“That’s nice. Does your daddy live near your house?”
She shook her head. “He’s gone now, just like Corinne.”
I had no idea her father was dead and felt like a fool. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s okay…” Her gaze wandered off and she tilted her head toward the sunlight. “It’s a funny thing about losing someone. Sometimes, even when they go away, they leave a gift behind for you.” Her eyes found me again.
I looked at her, trying to find words to express what I was feeling. My father, or, at least someone or something that I thought might be my father, had come to me in those moments when I’d been broken down by life’s tragedies. He’d said something very similar to me. I knew that the girl had claimed she had talked to Corinne Macy. Was she talking about my father? Had she somehow met him?
“Corinne, can you tell me…”
She interrupted me, saying, “It’s also a funny thing about gifts. Sometimes we don’t even realize they’re being given to us.”
“What…tell me what you mean, Corinne.”
“It’s just like when you become real.”
“Real?”
She laughed. “It’s something from a story that I read about a rabbit.” She took a moment, angling her head toward the sun again. “Becoming real doesn’t happen when you are angry or hurt or unhappy. It happens when you are quiet and you listen.” She looked at me. “You become real when you trust the world to bring you the gift that you’ve waited a very long time to receive.”
I was so amazed, but at the same time confused, by what she’d said that I blurted out what had been on my mind. “Corinne, are you talking about my father? Have you seen my father?”
She smiled. “I think I’d like to go see my mama now. I’ve said everything that was necessary.”
SIXTY-FOUR
We spent most of the day processing Quinton Macy’s secret room and the surrounding area. The locals were working with Phoenix PD to bring in their crime scene techies to set up a grid pattern in the cornfield and begin searching for bodies. Our working hypothesis was that Macy’s father and sister were buried on the property, somewhere near the underground chamber where Corinne Williams had been held.
While the other investigators were certain that the girl had been under extreme stress and had made up the story about talking to the deceased child, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. And, if what she had said was true, it meant that Macy’s sister had been murdered by her father before Quinton Macy had used his father’s own weapon on him. Whatever the truth was, we knew that his father was no less a monster than the boy that he’d raised.
I was walking back up the street from the cornfield when my phone rang. It was Molly Wingate.
“I heard things are winding down there,” Molly said. “I’m glad everything ended well.”
“Yes, just a few hours work left here and we should be back in Hollywood.”
“I just thought I’d mention something that I came across. I don’t know what, if anything, it means, but I was closing out the files from the hospital on Quinton Macy. Back when he was first incarcerated, they had paper, rather than digital visitation records, that weren’t initially sent to us. I just received them and Macy had a visitor named Amelia Walsh. She visited him twice in 2008, just after his hospital commitment, and then never returned.”
“Does the record show any relationship between her and Macy?”
“It just lists her as being a student from a local university. Nothing else.”
After thanking Molly and ending the call, I found Joe in the street near the Macy home. I told him about Molly’s call, then said, “Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but Rose Castillo mentioned that she had a niece named Amelia when we met in her office the other day.”
“What did you say the visitor’s last name was?”
“Walsh.”
His gaze moved off and he massaged his wide forehead.
“What is it?”
“I remember thumbing through one of Rosie’s early books she’d written when we took a break in her office the other day. She had a co-author. I’m almost sure it was Amelia Walsh.”
I took a moment, trying to sift through the puzzle pieces. Then, all at once, I knew. “Remember when Christine
Javier told us that she thought someone, maybe Macy or Brown, was trying to manipulate her husband into helping them with their escape plan?”
“You’re not thinking…”
I nodded, cutting him off. “What if it was Rose Castillo?”
“I don’t want to believe that.”
“Neither do I, Joe, but we can’t rule it out.” He took a moment, then nodded. I went on, “What if Amelia Walsh was working for her aunt, doing some research?”
Joe exhaled, now reluctantly also trying to make the same puzzle pieces fit. “You’re thinking she was murdered by Brown, acting at Macy’s behest.”
“One of the Interstate Killer’s victims who was never found.”
“And her aunt, who was an expert on forensic homicide, knew that Macy and Brown were working together and had murdered her.”
“She would have known the only way she would ever find justice for her niece was to find a way to give Macy his freedom.”
“So that we could track him down and kill him.”
I pulled out my phone and got Molly back on the line. I asked her to pull together everything she could find on Amelia Walsh, then call me back.
Ten minutes later, we heard back from her. “Amelia Ann Walsh went missing in 2008. She was last seen in Glendale, where her car broke down on the freeway. She was never seen again.”
“What about her parents? Do the records show anything about them?”
“Nothing on her father. Mom is…oh, my God.” She took a moment before going on. “Her mother is listed as Rosalind Castillo. Do you think…”
“Thanks, Molly. I’ll be in touch.”
I ended the call and told Joe what I’d learned. “As it turns out, Amelia Walsh was Rose Castillo’s daughter, not her niece.”
