In the bleak midwinter asacm-1

by M. R. Sellars

  “Me too,” Merrie said. “And I really like KISS, but Sister Conran from school says they play Satan’s music.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that, but I will say they do look a little scary.”

  “I don’t think so. I think they look really cool. How about Supertramp? Do you like them?”

  “Definitely,” Constance agreed. Finally, that was some classic rock she could get behind.

  Beyond the door, the room looked much like any average ten-year-old girl’s bedroom-provided one stepped back in time thirty-five years. Stuffed animals were piled on the bed, and what appeared to have once been a small stack of teen idol magazines were haphazardly spilled across the floor nearby. There was even a pinup page of a teen heartthrob from one of the publications taped to the wall. It was faded and had definitely seen better days, but it was still recognizable. All together the tableau formed a solid, visual indicator that Merrie Callahan’s mind was forever stuck in that tween wasteland between childhood and puberty. Not only that, it was frozen at its own arbitrary moment in time, much like the town of Hulis itself-yet another oddity to be added to a growing list of things that were perplexing about this case.

  In the corner of the room was the source of the earlier music, and it became readily apparent why the quality had been so lacking. A black vinyl disk that showed visible scratches, even at a distance, was spinning on the turntable of an old, all-in-one stereo system. With the volume turned low, now only a tinny background noise issued from the rectangular speakers sitting on either side of the unit. And even it was almost overwhelmed by the hissing sound of the stylus scraping in the worn grooves of the record album.

  “Pink or purple?” Merrie questioned without warning.

  “Pink or purple what?” Constance asked, shooting another questioning glance at Sheriff Carmichael, who simply nodded.

  Merrie repeated the question in more detail. “Do you like pink or purple?”

  Mandalay shrugged. “Both, I suppose.”

  “Pick one,” Merrie insisted.

  “That’s hard… Okay. Pink. Why?”

  “You’ll see.” Merrie scurried over to a chest of drawers and rooted through a clear plastic box that was resting on top. Momentarily, she returned with a small bottle in her hand that she was shaking vigorously as she seated herself on the edge of the bed. “Come here. I’ll do your nails.”

  Constance glanced at her hand. Long nails were one of the fashion accessories she didn’t cultivate. She kept them trimmed short, otherwise they didn’t get along very well with the trigger guard on the. 40 caliber Sig Sauer that was riding on her hip. She silently debated for a second, then stepped over and draped her coat across the footboard of the bed, then took a seat next to Merrie and held out her right hand.

  “I like your shoes,” Merrie said as she started brushing pearlescent pink lacquer onto Mandalay’s nails.

  “Thanks,” Constance replied. “I just bought them.”

  “I’ll get new shoes soon,” Merrie said. “I always do for Christmas. They won’t be fancy like yours. They’ll be just like these.” She kicked her leg out and pointed her toe to display her footwear.

  Constance glanced down. The shoes in question were black Mary Janes with a silver buckle. The patent leather showed scuffs and crinkles from age and daily use. Merrie was wearing white knee socks with her dress, but at this angle Constance couldn’t help noticing the old burn scars marring her bare legs just above her knee. They were faded with time, but still obvious as they marched up her thighs and disappeared behind the hem of her dress. She remembered what Sheriff Carmichael had said about Colson and the cigarette burns on the little girl’s body, then felt terribly sick to her stomach. For the scars to still be this visible this many years later, the original burns had to have been horrific.

  “When I get new shoes, they’re really just for school and church,” Merrie explained as she continued laying on the nail polish. “But since it’s Christmas, Mom will let me wear them to dress up for a while. But then I’ll have to put them away. I had another pair, but I lost one of them.”

  Constance took the opening and gingerly asked, “You lost a shoe? Did you look under your bed?”

  “No,” Merrie answered, unfazed. “That’s not where I lost it.”

  “Where then?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t remember?”

  “No. I just lost it,” she answered succinctly and gave a quick shrug as she shook her head. In the next breath she changed the subject. “Okay, I’m finished with this hand. Give me your other one, but don’t touch anything until they dry or you’ll mess them up. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  Constance switched hands, splaying out her fingers and inspecting the fresh manicure. Merrie had done a good job. Of course, the color didn’t really go with her attire, not to mention that it was definitely a disco era shade.

  “I do manicures for my sister Becca,” Merrie announced.

  “That sounds like fun. What’s her favorite color?”

  “Pink. Like you, Miss Constance,” she replied, then frowned and cocked her head to the side as she continued to paint the polish onto Mandalay’s nails. “But Becca’s not talking to me right now.”

  “Why is that, Merrie?”

  She answered in a matter-of-fact voice, “She’s mad because I pushed her.”

  “Why would you push your sister?”

  “To protect her.”

  “From what?”

  Instead of answering the question directly, Merrie replied, “I worry about Becca.”

  “Why?” Constance probed.

  “Because she still believes in Santa Claus.”

  “You don’t?”

  “Of course not,” she replied, rolling her eyes. “Santa Claus is something grownups tell little kids to keep them from being scared.”

  “Being scared of what, Merrie?”

  “The man in the red suit.”

  “Santa?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m not sure I understand what you mean. Why would you be afraid of Santa?”

  Merrie ignored the dangling question. “Becca is only five. That’s why she still believes, but she won’t for much longer, I hope.”

  “Why won’t she believe for much longer?”

  “Because she’s already been learning to read. That’s when you stop believing the story.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Umm…because…” Merrie rolled her eyes like she was trying to remember something, then with a small dose of young frustration in her voice, tried to explain. “There’s a word for it, but I can’t remember what it is. Do you know what it is when you can make a word out of another word, Miss Constance? You know, when you rearrange the letters?”

  “Yes. They call that an anagram.”

  “That’s the word. Anagram. Sounds like telegram.”

  “Yes, it does a little bit.”

  “Well, we learned about them in school, and Becca will too. Then, just like me, she’ll know the truth.

  “What’s the truth, Merrie?”

  “That Santa is really Satan.”

  “No, honey, Santa isn’t really Satan,” Constance offered in a soothing tone.

  Merrie continued painting Mandalay’s nails and replied, “Yes, he is.”

  “That anagram is just an unfortunate coincidence,” Constance explained.

  “I know that it’s true, Miss Constance. Know why?”

  “Why?”

  Merrie stopped and looked up at her in earnest. “Because he does very horrible bad things to little girls, even when they’ve been very, very good.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Believe me now?” Sheriff Carmichael asked.

  He and Special Agent Mandalay were standing at the back of his patrol car on the parking lot of Holly-Oak. The visit with Merrie had produced nothing in the way of information, but it most certainly swelled with an overabundance of heartbreak.

  “Yes,” Cons
tance replied, nodding. “It’s not that I didn’t believe you before. I just…”

  “…had to do your job,” he finished for her as he slipped a key into the trunk lock and gave it a twist. It let out a dull thump as the latch released, almost as if underscoring his added comment, “I know.”

  “Speaking of jobs, ever have one of those days when you really hate yours, Skip?” she asked. “Because I’m having one right now.”

  “December twenty-second through twenty-fifth, every damn year,” he sighed, then repeated in a quiet mumble, “Every blessed, goddamned year…” With that, he lifted the trunk lid, extracting the key from the lock as it rose, then offered the jangling ring to Constance. “Here. No need in you standin’ out here in the cold. You might want to start it up and get the heater going. I’ll just be a few minutes. I need to take this stuff in.”

  Mandalay glanced into the well of the trunk space and saw three large shopping bags, each with festively wrapped presents protruding from their depths. “I thought you weren’t big on celebrating Christmas here in Hulis,” she asked.

  “These are all for Merrie,” he told her. “The new shoes she’s expecting. Some clothes. Mavis Crawford does sewing out of her house, so she makes things for her. And, a few other odds and ends. Whenever anyone travels or goes into the city, they hit those vintage resale stores and pick up old records and such. Things like that. We all carry a list in our wallets of what needs to be under the tree. Of course, most of us have it committed to memory by now.”

  “I was actually planning to ask you about that,” Constance mused. “Why are all her clothes and belongings mired in the past?”

  “It keeps her happy,” the sheriff responded.

  “But is it healthy?” she pressed.

  He shook his head as he gathered the bags and hefted them out of the trunk. “I suspect it’s as healthy as it can get. Merrie doesn’t cope very well with change, I’m afraid.”

  Since his hands were full, Constance reached up and levered the trunk lid shut for him as she asked, “How so?”

  Sheriff Carmichael huffed out a heavy sigh then grimaced noticeably. “Merrie Frances Callahan lives her life in a year long continuous loop, Constance. For her, it’s always nineteen seventy-five. That never changes. And, if you try to take her out of her little world, she just shuts down. That’s what I was trying to tell you when we were inside.”

  “Shuts down?” she repeated. “Mentally, you mean?”

  “And physically,” he said, punctuating the statement with an animated nod. “Last time a doctor tried to force her into the here and now, she almost died. She reverted to a catatonic state, was hooked to a feeding tube, and was just wasting away. That was right around ten or twelve years before Tom and Elizabeth died in that wreck, give or take. I was still playing detective in Kansas City back then.

  “I do remember that they were actually expecting her to go at any moment. They’d already resigned themselves to it. Made funeral arrangements and everything. She was literally that bad off. It was gettin’ close to Christmas, and Elizabeth was a sentimental sort, so she got out all of Merrie’s old things and re-decorated her room back to how it originally was.” He shrugged. “Then, like some kind of damn miracle, she got better. Well…as better as she could, I guess. For most of the time, anyway.”

  There was a pained sadness in the last comment, and Constance picked up on it instantly. “What do you mean by most of the time?”

  “It gets a little rough this time of year. You heard what she said about Santa Claus.”

  Constance nodded. “Repressed memories.”

  “Something like that,” he replied. “Probably worse.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Meaning they might not stay repressed.”

  “Are you saying she actually relives the abduction and abuse?”

  “We’d like to hope not,” he said then nodded. “But, unfortunately, in her head, we think she does, yeah.”

  “You think she does?”

  He thrust his chin toward her. “What time is it?”

  Constance furrowed her brow in confusion at his query but pushed up the cuff of her glove and glanced at her watch anyway. “Two thirty-eight. Why?”

  He bobbed his head toward the building. “In a couple of hours it’ll be right about the time Merrie was abducted thirty-five years ago. All of a sudden, just like someone flipped a switch, the girl who just painted your nails will go catatonic. She won’t snap out of it till about five on Christmas morning. Happens every year. After that, it’s like her clock is reset.”

  “So that’s what Martha meant earlier about keeping an eye on the time.”

  “Yeah,” he nodded. “That’s what she meant. When Merrie wakes up it will be pretty much like nothing ever happened. For her, it will be Christmas Day, nineteen seventy-four, which in her mind was the last time the holiday was ever good to her. We even have a tape of the ball dropping in Times Square, New Year’s Eve, to ring in seventy-five. She stays up to watch it every year.”

  “What about other things? Like school and such? People aging around her? Not having any other children to play with? Surely she can see that things have changed.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to matter. She focuses on the Christmas holidays. Those are important to her. The rest of it seems to play itself out in her head as long as nobody interferes and she has her room.”

  “But there are other physical issues. She’s a grown woman. What about menstruation? Arousal?”

  He nodded. “She knows how to handle the monthly thing. Her mother was still around when that started. As to any sort of desires and such, to my knowledge she’s never exhibited any other than a crush on a teen idol from the day. No matter what her body does, in her head she’s ten. She doesn’t know any better than to think that’s just how it’s supposed to be. And… Well, we don’t really know what she sees when she looks in the mirror.”

  Constance turned and stared toward the building as she breathed, “Dear God…”

  “Sweetheart, in my way of thinking, God doesn’t have much of anything to do with it,” Carmichael spat. “If he does, then he’s just as big a sonofabitch as Colson was, and I’ll tell him that to his face when I get to the gates… As you can imagine, the preacher and me don’t much see eye to eye on that issue.” He paused for a second, looking at the ground thoughtfully, then hefted the bags once again and turned to go. “Let me get this stuff inside, so Merrie has her presents to open Christmas morning. It’d break my heart to disappoint her, and the past seven years I’ve been too busy to deliver ‘em when she wakes up. When I missed the first couple it caused some problems for her.”

  “I understand,” Constance replied. As he started to walk toward the door, she called after him. “When you’re finished with that, do you think you can take me by the scene? I’d like to have a look at it.”

  He stopped, half turned, looked up into the sky and then back down at her face. “Not really much daylight left,” he grunted. “No electric over there, and it’s boarded up, so it’s gonna be dark enough as it is. Be better if we did it tomorrow morning. Believe me, I’ve been down this road before. Nothing’s gonna show up there till Christmas Day anyway. But it’s really up to you. You’re the Fed.”

  Constance thought about it for a moment. “Do you already have the house under surveillance?”

  “Yep. Broderick should be out there now. Slozar’ll relieve ‘im this evening. We can drive by and check on them if you want.”

  Truth is, he was correct. That visit could wait. As far as all of the previous murders went, the site was cold in almost every way imaginable. And this year, as a crime scene, it technically didn’t yet exist. She wasn’t going to learn anything stumbling around in the dark with a flashlight that wouldn’t be there for her to discover tomorrow morning.

  And besides, at this point her feet really were killing her.

  She nodded in agreement. “Okay, tomorrow morning then. I would feel better if we checked
on the surveillance though.”

  “We can do that. I assume you’re staying in town tonight?”

  “I booked a room at the Greenleaf Motel, yes.”

  “Good. We’ll swing by to check on Broderick, then we can suss out a time for me to pick you up in the morning. Just do yourself a favor tomorrow…”

  “What’s that?”

  He dipped his head toward her feet as if he’d read her mind. “Since we’re going out to do serious police work, wear a different pair of shoes. I’m a little tired of watchin’ you dance.”

  “HARRY, this is Special Agent Mandalay,” Sheriff Carmichael said. He jerked a thumb toward Constance while pressing himself a bit deeper into the driver’s seat to allow for a slightly more unobstructed view. “Special Agent Mandalay, meet Deputy Harry Broderick.”

  Skip had pulled up so that his driver’s side window was matched up against that of the deputy’s cruiser. Therefore, the two simply nodded at one another across the span in between.

  “So… Anything?” Skip asked.

  “Same ol’, same ol’,” Broderick replied.

  He grunted in reply, “Yeah, figured as much.” He looked over to the passenger seat and addressed Constance. “There ya’ go. Harry’s on the job. Nothing to report, just like always. Ready to head back?”

  She glanced at her watch. The package delivery and drive over here had taken a little longer than expected, but it was still only now approaching 3:30. She glanced out the window then back at the sheriff. “Actually I think maybe I’d like to get out and have a look around, if you don’t mind.”

  He raised an eyebrow and nodded. “Change your mind about waiting till in the morning?”

  By way of an answer she said, “It’s still light out…”

  “Your call,” he replied, an audible shrug in his voice as he shifted the vehicle into gear and started it rolling forward. “Just let me get us out of the middle of the street first.”

  Once they were parked, Constance unbuckled and climbed out of the patrol car. After swinging the door shut, she simply stood there for a moment, looking at the property over the top of the vehicle.