by Julia Shupe
I was worried about her, but I had a right to be. Linda was great with Danny. She was loving, conscientious, fun to be around, but it had taken her a long time to get where she was. It was the culmination of a lot of hard work, the result of endless introspection and self-denial. It was also tenuous, like leaves in the wind. It was something I didn’t yet trust.
When our mother was taken, our lives were irrevocably changed, and we responded to the pain in different ways. As usual, I threw myself into my work. I spent countless hours studying cold case files, scrutinizing local persons of interest, and trying—without success—to make connections. Work had always been my outlet. It was my excuse to withdraw from a cold cruel world, to escape from a place that repeatedly disappointed me.
When our mother was taken, Danny wasn’t yet born. I was a cop, and a newbie at that. I lacked experience and confidence on the job, and my mother’s case had been so complex that it required skills I didn’t yet possess. The kidnapping was clean. There wasn’t a ransom note. No household items had been taken from her home. Without a trail to follow, or a witness to interview, Rebecca Stone had all but vanished.
I remember the frustration and the agonizing hours. I spent every waking moment studying the same reports that I had the day before. My lack of progress crazed me. I was skeptical that not a shred of evidence had been found. There had to be something they’d missed, I had thought, some tiny fragment just waiting to be found. I studied the scene obsessively; so many times I practically memorized the reports. I could recall, at will, the list of items in her house, the placement of the furniture, the figurines that were broken. Piecing together scattered fragments of a puzzle, I worked up a time line of the day she was taken.
Rebecca Stone didn’t have enemies—none that I knew about, at least. She was a mom who cut the crusts off her daughters’ sandwiches, who left inspiring notes in pristine lunch pails. Neither competitive nor pushy, she gave sage advice—but never unless we had asked for it first. She guided us with gentle hands, let us cut our own path through life.
I concluded—at the time—that the crime had been random. Why? I had asked myself. What had been the motive? But those were two questions I never found the answers to, though admittedly, I never stopped trying. Back then, I tried to stay busy and useful. I inserted myself into every aspect of the case, while Linda, on the other hand, tried to repress it. She bricked herself into a cold dark room and wouldn’t give anyone the key.
I took the loss hard, but Linda took it personal. For years, depression was her constant companion. She withdrew from friends, turned her back on her family. Worse than that, she began to deceive herself, to turn the scenario around in her head. She twisted that day into a terrible ugly thing, convinced herself that she was somehow responsible. She’d been the last person to see our mother alive, just hours before we believe she was taken. Mom, ill that day, had asked Lin to keep her company, but Lin hadn’t, and the guilt had swallowed her whole. It pulled her into a debilitating depression, which led to alcoholism and drug abuse, and eventually, to the loss of a lucrative accounting job in Miami. Despair led her down a dark path through the seediest parts of Sarasota and beyond, and finally to as far west as Las Vegas, NV, where she racked up two DUI’s, and an assault and battery charge.
That was when I intervened.
To pick up the remnants of my once-vibrant sister, I flew to sin city myself. I took her in and nursed her through rehab. Danny was still a toddler at the time, and Scott had already filed for divorce, so the timing was perfect for the three of us to heal together. I was proud of Linda’s progress since then. She was sober now, and that was saying a lot. She’d ridden that roller coaster up and down, and had fallen from it four different times. But she’d put in the time and the harrowing work, made peace with certain truths, accepted the things she couldn’t change.
She also hadn’t left my home since. There wasn’t a reason to. She built a life here. She found unity, and with it, a new identity. She became Danny’s nanny, and my best friend, which were versions of her that she hadn’t known existed—versions, I presumed, she liked very much.
In many ways, Danny was as responsible for Linda’s recovery as I was. Sometimes, in life, one needs a fresh perspective on things. Often the best medicine is to separate oneself from oneself, to step outside one’s own warped head and take care of others for a change. Taking care of others circles back to the self, and without a father in his life, Danny needed Linda as much as she needed him. And so, as it happened, the two healed one another. Healing had been a reciprocal gift.
Locking the door, I crossed the living room to the kitchen, where Linda was seated at the breakfast table. Her eyes were wide, her knees pulsing a steady rhythm. She’d placed the box on the table in front of her, and was staring at it like she feared it would disappear. Taking in the scene, I did my best to gauge her mood, making note of her rigid back, clenched fists, and hunched shoulders. She was a rattlesnake, poised to strike. Edging closer, I lowered myself to a chair, careful to keep my movements small and measured. Every time a box arrived, I feared she’d spiral again. Linda was stronger than she’d ever been, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t vulnerable. We all were and would always be.
“Tell me you didn’t touch it,” I murmured.
“Of course not. I picked it up with a pair of kitchen tongs.”
Nodding, I folded my hands on the table. “Same place as the others?”
“Outside the front door.”
“Danny?”
“Nope. Still asleep,” She reached for her cup of coffee. “You made it back in time.”
Sighing, I stood and walked to the cupboard. “I’m not officially back, Linda. I have to leave again. Sergeant was pissed that I left in the first place. He only let me go because of the box.”
“New case?”
“Yeah,” I answered. “And then some.” I poured a half-inch of cream into the bottom of a semi-clean mug. “Two cases actually. First one wrapped up quicker than I thought. The second…” I turned and eyed her warily. How much could I tell her without freaking her out? Not much, I decided, and led with something benign. “Second,” I repeated, “is more…complicated. But the bottom line is: I have to go back. So let’s talk. I want every detail. Did anyone knock? Did you hear any sounds?”
Frowning at the box, she set her cup on the table, absently twirling a lock of hair. “Nope. Not a peep—as usual. Nothing at all.”
“Nothing? Not a sound? Think hard, Lin. No shuffling? Scraping? No creaking of floorboards? It wasn’t on the porch when I left this morning. And Gil picked me up right outside our front door. So he must have brought it within the last hour—two at the most.”
“I’m telling you, Ness. It was the same as before—absolutely nothing. No sounds. No creaks. Not a peep.” Raising her face, she met my gaze. “Kinda creepy if you think about it—how close you were to him, I mean. It’s like he was waiting for you to leave. He was probably watching you, Ness. How long do you think he was standing out there?”
I deconstructed my hair, sleeked back the sides, then wrapped it up again. Linda had a point, very a good point. It was creepy enough to make me reconsider being alone in the dark. I had lowered my guard. I was bad about that. We hadn’t received a box in over six months, but that shouldn’t equate to my being complacent. “Best not to think about that,” I said. “Nothing happened, and no one got hurt.” I flattened my palms on the table. “Okay. So, why don’t we go outside and have a look around? And let’s get it done before Danny wakes up.”
As quietly as we could, we opened the front door and edged around the landing, careful not to step where he may have stepped. It was like the box had spoiled the decking, like it had rubbed off the varnish and left a warped impression.
Setting my hands to my hips, I scanned the sloped driveway. This had been happening for quite some time. Two boxes a year, sometimes three, were sent to us: same wrapping, same bow, same macabre contents.
The street
was quiet and serene, almost picturesque. We lived on a dead-end cul-de-sac in suburbia, a place where kids rode bikes and played outside, where mothers pushed newborns in expensive strollers. Mine was a split-level home, modestly furnished, with three bedrooms upstairs, and an open floor plan below. It was a starter home: simple, but functional, perfect for our small family unit. I’d won it the divorce—though won probably wasn’t the right word. Scott had barely put up a fight. It was too damn simple for his opulent taste. But I liked it. I loved it, in fact. It was the one thing—besides Danny—that I’d actually fought for. Danny had lost his father and his routine. He’d gained stepbrothers, stepsisters, a stepdog. His core family unit had been blown to smithereens. I hadn’t seen fit to change his home.
Visoring my brow, I swept my gaze from right to left. A tall fence, six feet in height, framed the west side of my property. It was a decent hiding place, tall enough to conceal a fully-grown man, particularly if that man was crouching in my neighbor’s patch of mature azalea. From there, he could have watched me, I reasoned, and then slunk to the porch to leave his gruesome little gift.
No. I frowned. That wouldn’t have worked.
Gil had driven right past that spot, and though I’d been tired, I like to think I’d have noticed someone hunching in the dark, outlined in black against the crisp white wood. It was too conspicuous. He was smarter than that.
The left side of the house, on the other hand, was worse. There was little to no concealment at all. A “friendly fence” made of orange dwarf ixora ran a clean line between my property and Neil Sheppard’s.
Stepping off the deck, I moved closer to my prized Jacaranda tree. Scott had hated the thing—which of course, made me smile. When we bought the house, he’d wanted to cut it down, and plant something smaller in its place. I’d refused. It was one of the things I loved most about the property: the lavender blossoms, the shadows it cast, the way the petals blanketed the grass in spring.
The trunk was thick, the circumference larger than a large man’s chest. I looked at the ground. It was springtime now. The tree had recently shed its blossoms. Feathery buds carpeted the ground. Crouching, I inspected the fine coverlet of blossoms, where I saw two faint impressions and a trail leading from the tree to the curb—subtle, yet unmistakably human.
Shills raced up my spine as I considered the scenario. If he’d been standing here when I left this morning, I’d waked right past him, and hadn’t even known it. He could have reached out and touched me. He couldn’t have been more than four feet away. Setting my palm flat to the grass for scale, I compared the size of my hand to the size of the impression. Ten inches? No. Smaller, actually: nine, maybe eight and a half. It was small for a man, but not out of range. He’d be less than six feet tall.
“What is it?” Linda blurted from somewhere behind me.
“Don’t come over here. I think he was standing right here.”
“Here? Jeez, Vanessa. You walked right past him.” She was incredulous. Frankly, so was I. She sighed. “Wouldn’t you have seen him this morning? Unless, of course, you weren’t paying attention.”
She didn’t hide her disappointment, and I chose not to voice my own. Yeah, I thought. Great work, Ms. Detective. Great job protecting your family. Shaking my head, I chose my next words carefully. “He probably crept around the trunk when I passed. I wasn’t paying attention. I was careless.” Straightening, I brushed my hands on my khakis. “This is my fault, Lin. I need to be better.” I tried my best to sound confident. “I’m sending a guy to take photos and measurements this afternoon. And Linda,” I added, “I don’t know if this means anything. These prints could be useless, unrelated altogether. So let’s keep our heads. Let’s not upset Danny.”
Though the sun was warm, she wrapped her arms around her body. “What if he had taken you too?” she breathed. “What would I have done?”
“Don’t think about things like that.” I instinctively closed the distance between us. She didn’t have the luxury of falling apart right now. “He’s just trying to scare us, Lin. That’s what the boxes are about. He’s not after us, or threatening to kill us. He’s just trying to provoke a reaction.” I touched her arm. “Think about it. How many years has it been since he took Mom from us? This is his way of prolonging her memory. It’s his way of keeping the original crime alive.”
“But why would he do that? Why would he care about it after so many years? If he wanted to achieve the same thrill, why taunt us? Wouldn’t taking one of us be better? Why can’t he leave us alone? Hasn’t he caused our family enough pain and suffering?”
Reaching out, I set my hands on her shoulders. For many years, I’d asked myself the same questions, and one day, I hoped to find acceptable answers. “It means, Linda, that for him, this is personal. It means he knew Mom, Dad, or even one of us, and if we fall apart now, we let him win. This is a game to him. That’s all it’s ever been. Don’t let him win. Don’t give him any more pieces of yourself. Haven’t we given him enough already?” I caught her wandering gaze. “Let’s just do the work we’ve always done. Let’s process the scene, collect the clues, see if they lead to something helpful.” I squeezed her arm. “Evidence, Lin, always leads to the truth, and the truth can’t stay buried forever. With enough time, and pieces of the whole, we can put together the puzzle he’s made. But until we do, we can’t let him win.”
Here we were again, I thought: in the exact same place. Couldn’t we ever move forward? I’d give her advice, and she’d seem to take it, while inside, she’d be crumbling apart. “Look at me, Linda. I’m asking nicely this time. I want you to think about seeing Adrianna again. Just try it one more time. I swear it will help.”
Her body went rigid. “I don’t need another shrink. I’ve had enough therapy for a lifetime.”
Disappointed, I let my hands fall to my sides. She was too damn stubborn, and always had been. “You’re thinking about this the wrong way. I don’t consider Dr. Hagen a shrink. She’s just someone who helps me see things differently.” Suddenly angry, I threw my hands in the air. What was that saying about horses and water? “If there’s something wrong in life, Linda, it’s our job to try to fix it. If you see a hole, you plug it up. It’s an adult concept called maturity. It’s also part of the healing process.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But can Dr. Hagen really heal you? Words don’t heal, Ness. Only time can do that. Besides,” she added, wringing her hands, “that woman gives me the creeps. I keep telling you that, but you never listen to me. The last time I saw her, I got—”
“Mom?”
Startled, we turned toward the door. I smiled.
“Happy Birthday, little man. How’s it feel to be five? You ready for a briefcase and a cup of morning Joe? How ‘bout finding a job? Ready to bring home some bacon?”
He frowned. “What’s a cup of Joe, Mom? And bacon is gross. Did you know it’s really pig? Why would I put a pig into a briefcase?”
“Okay, scratch the bacon. How do chocolate-chip pancakes and chocolate milk sound?”
Stepping up onto the tips of his toes and smiling, he pulled his hands from behind his back, and beaming radiantly, held up the appalling box. Its gold ribbon gleamed white in the morning sun.
“Is this my birthday present? Can I open it now?”
Chapter 9
I slid into the seat beside Gil, a bit late. The room was eerily quiet and filled with suits, the tension taut like a wire. The air smelled faintly of stale coffee and burnt toast, and the florescent bulbs were a swarm of bees around my ears. A series of white boards, bulletin boards, and maps was staring me down from the front of the room, and the wall to my left was lined with photos. The set up, unfortunately, was frighteningly bare. Over the next few months, it would be our job to fill it. When the autopsies were completed and reviewed by our team, and when dental records could be compared to lists of missing persons in the area, much of that void would begin to take shape. A picture would be drawn, and a narrative written, a horror st
ory starring one particularly deranged man.
Gil leaned against my right shoulder. “Got another box?”
“Yup. Dropped it off at the lab. Not before Danny touched it, though.”
He winced, and frowning, shook his head. “Well, you made it back with time to spare. We’ve been sitting here so long my coffee’s gone cold. What was once hot syrup has become cold porridge. Briefing’s been ‘about to start’ for over an hour.” He peered at his cup. “Captain’s taking the lead on this one.”
Captain Bill Wahl, flanked by agents on either side, was standing in front of the row of photographs, and though I couldn’t hear what he was saying, I didn’t need to. His body language said it all. He was pointing at the photographs and reading from a report he held in his hands. His jaw was tight, and his face was grim. His shoulders were bunched at the neck. He knew what this case would become. We all did. This was the beginning of an extensive investigation, something that would likely take years of our lives. It would require departments and precincts working together, sharing data across multiple state lines. It would take a village, as Jacob had said, to work up an actionable profile of the killer.
My eyes moved from one face to the next. Though I’d never admit it to any of them, I could barely contain my excitement. Though it might sound macabre, it was true. I’d never worked on something like this: the size, the scope, the total number of victims. This would be a first for my career. And as morbid as it sounded, I was attracted to the danger. As I looked at the tightly controlled expressions of my colleagues, I wondered if any of them felt the same way.
My stomach grumbled. I shifted to cover the sound. After calming Linda down, I hadn’t wasted time. I’d started Danny on his pancakes in the kitchen then driven right back to the station. My sister had been distraught, but thankfully, for Danny, had pulled herself together. I, on the other hand, was frazzled. I had to admit it; I was disappointed in myself. When Danny presented the box in his hands, I hadn’t properly masked my reaction. He’d seen the horror in my face, and in my eyes, and had dropped that package like a stone. And though I’d tried to cover the awkwardness with meaningless chatter, he’d sensed the danger. He’d known. He’d detected the threat and recoiled. He’d dropped that package like it was a snake that had bit his hand. Children, I knew, were abnormally perceptive. I’d do well to start remembering that.
