The Woman in Darkness

by Charlie Donlea

  “In sunlight,” Rory said, pointing to the doll’s left cheek, “the hues match perfectly. But incandescent brings out the flaws, and fluorescent bleaches it out.”

  “One more coat,” Greta said. “And I’ll polish the undamaged side to bring it all together.”

  Rory sat on the edge of the bed and watched her work. The sight of Greta restoring a doll transported Rory back to the farmhouse, to the long summer days and quiet nights. She spent every summer of her childhood at Greta’s place. During the school year, if a bout of obsession took hold of her, Rory’s parents would pull her from school early on Friday for a long weekend at the farmhouse. There was no better remedy for her OCD and anxiety than a visit to the country and the restorations that waited there. Now, as Rory sat staring at Greta, the relaxed feelings she usually experienced while restoring a doll were replaced instead with thousands of questions.

  “Are you working?” Greta asked, pulling Rory back from her thoughts.

  “Yes,” she said.

  “Tell me.”

  Rory paused. She hadn’t had a meaningful conversation with Greta in weeks. Tonight, though, presented a rare window of lucidity, where her aunt was interactive and coherent.

  “That Kestner. It belongs to a dead girl.”

  The brush in Greta’s hand stopped. She looked at Rory.

  “She was killed last year. Her father asked me to look into it.”

  “What happened to her?”

  Rory blinked several times, aware again of how badly she had neglected the case. A small part of her was concerned that Ron Davidson would be disappointed in her. A bigger part worried about Walter Byrd, who had put his faith in Rory to find justice for his daughter. But mostly, Rory’s heart ached for Camille Byrd, whose spirit waited for Rory to come for it, find it, and help it to a place of proper rest. Take it from its frozen grave in Grant Park and lay it carefully where it belonged so the girl could find peace.

  Rory remembered another dream she’d had about the dead girl. Of walking through Grant Park and trying unsuccessfully to wake her as Rory shook Camille’s cold shoulder as she lay lifeless on the grassy knoll. Rory refocused her eyes, returning from the wandering abyss of her thoughts. Greta was staring at her.

  “I don’t know yet.”

  Greta stared at her for a minute, then went back to work. An hour later, Greta finished polishing and coloring the cheek and forehead. She dusted the face one last time until the Kestner doll, once damaged and in disrepair, looked flawless.

  “Greta,” Rory said. “It’s absolutely perfect.” She remembered the deep fissure that had run through the left eye socket when she first examined the doll at the library. When Rory laid the doll horizontally, the left eye closed in perfect unison with the right. The cheeks matched one another, and the fracture that had started at the hairline and run down to the chin was gone.

  “As close as we’ll get. The girl’s father will be happy with what you’ve done.”

  “What you’ve done as well.”

  Greta looked back to the doll. Rory watched her, concerned that she had suddenly fallen into a lost moment and that her mind would be gone for the rest of the visit. The abrupt changes in demeanor happened so often now that Rory was no longer shocked by them—Greta, present and alert one moment, gone the next.

  But instead of staring off into a void of dementia, Greta spoke as she examined the doll.

  “It reminds me of when you were young,” Greta said.

  Rory nodded. “Me too.”

  Greta smiled. “Sometimes those summers seem like yesterday.”

  “Greta,” Rory said, standing from the edge of the bed and moving closer. “Why did my parents bring me to your place so often? Why did I spend every summer of my childhood at the farmhouse?”

  A long stretch of silence followed before Greta pulled her gaze from the Kestner doll and looked at Rory. “You were a nervous child, but found peace at my house.”

  Rory couldn’t argue this fact. All the anxiety that surrounded her days, the angst that rose like early-morning fog off a lake, faded away when she was at Greta’s farmhouse. But Rory now understood there was another reason for her time there.

  “Was the time I spent with you an arrangement, Greta? Something you worked out with Frank and Marla?”

  Greta blinked, but didn’t answer. She brought her gaze back to the doll in her lap.

  “I found the papers, Greta. Dad had a safe-deposit box where he kept them. My birth certificate. The adoption papers.”

  Rory stared at Aunt Greta for a full minute without talking, allowing the confession of her discovery to settle between them. She wanted to press for answers. Wanted to hear the truth from the only person left living who could provide it. But Rory saw Greta’s eyes retreating to that faraway place, perhaps intentionally. More likely, though, just the result of the small stretch of coherence having spent its worth before the dementia pulled Greta’s mind back to oblivion.

  As she watched Greta, Rory sensed a longing from the woman she had known her whole life. A woman who had saved Rory’s childhood from what might have been years of torment and ridicule. A woman she had always thought of as her great-aunt, but whose identity now had been jumbled in Rory’s perception, like a fully set dining table once perfect and ordered being tipped on its side. The pieces suddenly too muddled to sort. Rory saw it in her eyes, a sense of sorrow that the restoration of the Kestner doll was over. It had been a channel to the past. To the summers and weekends when a young girl developed a lifelong friendship and unbreakable bond with a middle-aged woman she knew as her aunt.

  “I wish I could have saved you as easily as Rory and I save the dolls,” Greta said, her eyes now vacant and set on the television.

  “I am Rory.” She crouched next to the chair. “Greta? Can you hear me?”

  “Yes, we’ll hide you. He’ll come, like you said. I tried to save you, but there was too much blood.”

  Rory closed her eyes briefly. Greta was gone. The visit was over. She stood up, lifted the doll from Greta’s lap, and carefully laid it in the box.

  CHICAGO

  May 1982

  FRANK AND MARLA SAT NEXT TO EACH OTHER ON THE COUCH. THE VISITATIONS had taken place every weekend for the past month, with Frank and Marla making the trips out to Peoria each Saturday and Sunday to spend the days at Greta Schreiber’s farmhouse, getting to know the child. The girl was asleep now. Marla had just finished reading Goodnight Moon while the child lay in her arms. It was a ritual she was starting to love, Frank could see. Marla hadn’t wanted to put the child down, and only released her when Greta suggested they talk about the future.

  Frank knew the first part of his plan was working. His wife was becoming emotionally attached to the little girl. It was a critical part of his strategy. The bedrock, in fact, that needed to be laid in order for it all to work. Now, as the child slept, Frank was about to present the proposal to his wife. The specifics of which, Frank was sure, would sound simultaneously too good to be true and too outrageous to be possible.

  “For this to work,” Frank said to Greta, “Marla needs to know everything. If we’re going to pull this off, there can be no secrets. We’ll help in any way possible, you have my word. I know much of the story, but not all of it. I want my wife to know everything. Please start from the beginning so we’re all on the same page.”

  Greta nodded. Her hair seemed to have whitened a shade since Frank first stepped foot on the farmhouse property the previous fall. Clearly, the stress she was carrying on her shoulders was crushing her.

  “I’m a nurse,” Greta said. She was speaking to Marla, as Frank had previously heard this portion of the story. “I work for the hospital here in town as a midwife. I make house calls to assist patients who have chosen to undergo a more natural childbirth in the home. I also counsel young women at Bayer Group.”

  Frank turned to Marla. “Bayer Group Juvenile Psychiatric Facility.”

  Frank watched Marla nod, as if any of this made sens
e to her. He knew her mind was fixated on the child and the possibility that she would be theirs.

  “I work with the girls at Bayer Group who were pregnant, or who had once been pregnant. I counsel them on what to expect. I’ve been doing it for many years, and it was during my time at Bayer Group that I met Angela. She was seventeen then.”

  Marla looked away from the bassinet. “Who?”

  “Angela Mitchell,” Frank said.

  Marla looked at her husband. Her eyes were squinted and her forehead wrinkled. “The girl who was killed a few years ago? The girl from the summer of 1979?”

  Frank nodded. “Yes.”

  Marla cocked her head. “Your firm represents Thomas Mitchell,” Marla said. “You’re working on his appeals.”

  “Yes,” Frank said, taking Marla’s hand. “I told you we needed to understand the full story before we move forward. That’s why we’re here.”

  Frank took a second to stare at his wife, making sure she was on board for what was about to transpire. Finally she nodded. They both looked at Greta.

  “Angela was at Bayer Group for several months when she was seventeen years old. This was in 1967.” Greta shook her head. “Hard to believe that was fifteen years ago. Whenever I went to Bayer Group to counsel my patients, I noticed this introverted girl off in the corner by herself. One day, I approached her, not as a nurse or as a counselor, just out of concern. I was hoping to make this young woman feel not so alone.”

  “Hi,” Greta said as she sat across from the quiet girl she always saw sitting alone.

  The girl didn’t look at her, or acknowledge her presence in any way.

  “I’m Greta. I’m a nurse here.”

  This caused the girl to glance quickly in her direction and then back to her lap.

  “I’m not taking the medication,” the girl said. “I don’t care who you are or how nice you pretend to be.”

  “Oh, I’m not a psychiatric nurse. I work with some of the girls here, talking with them about the future.”

  Greta leaned a little closer.

  “Are they giving you medication you don’t want?”

  “Yes,” the girl said.

  Greta looked around the rec room. The television was playing and a couple of girls were on the couch in front of it. No one else was in the room.

  “What are they giving you? Maybe I could talk with someone?”

  The girl looked at her. Greta saw fear in her eyes, and a glimmer of hope, too, at the idea that Greta may be able to help.

  “Lithium. All it does is make me sleep and cause wild dreams. Sometimes the dreams even come while I’m awake.”

  “That’s called hallucinating, and it’s a common side effect of lithium.” Greta scooted her chair closer. “Have you told your doctor about it?”

  “Yes, but he doesn’t care. They just want me to sleep and stay sedated.”

  “When you say ‘they,’ who are you talking about?”

  “My parents and the doctors.” The girl looked at Greta. “Will you help me? No one in here will help me.”

  Greta reached down and took the girl’s hand. Greta felt her recoil, but after a moment, the girl squeezed back.

  “What’s your name, dear?”

  “Angela.”

  “I’m going to help you, Angela. I’ll find a way to help you.”

  CHAPTER 27

  Chicago, November 1, 2019

  RORY SAT IN HER OFFICE WITH CAMILLE BYRD’S PHOTO LOOKING down on her from the corkboard. On the desk in front of her were the documents she had recovered from her father’s safe-deposit box. She stared at the adoption papers until her vision blurred. Her mind was beginning to strain in the unhealthy way Rory always worked to avoid. The redundant considerations that prevented clear thinking had started to descend on her, and like a cornered animal, she fought back at them. She knew the consequences of succumbing to them. She pushed the torment aside and swiped the adoption papers to the floor. Then she went back to the pages she had found in her father’s desk safe and rifled through the parole board’s letters. She read through years of appeals made by her father when he was a young attorney with Garrison Ford, arguments that poked holes in the prosecution’s case that her father argued was built solely on circumstantial evidence. She read her father’s scathing description of Angela Mitchell as an overmedicated autistic woman who struggled socially and who did not have a firm grasp on reality. Rory tried to convince herself that the pages in front of her were merely her father’s attempt to fulfill the oath he took to protect all those who sought his help. But something about the research told a different story.

  It was subtle, what was coming to the surface of her attention. Elusive enough that Rory was sure no one else would see it. There was a change in tone. Rory picked up on it as she read through her father’s appeal letters. The tenor of the arguments changed throughout the years, even if the content and facts within the letters remained the same. Perhaps, Rory thought, after years of failure, her father had lost a bit of passion trying to defend Thomas Mitchell. Perhaps, after two decades of redundancy, he had given up hope that any appeal would make a difference. But Rory couldn’t stop herself from thinking that maybe something else was happening. That perhaps her father’s letters held a different motive. That maybe her father never wanted Thomas Mitchell out of jail.

  She poured another Dark Lord and continued to read.

  CHICAGO

  May 1982

  THE CHILD REMAINED SLEEPING AS GRETA CONTINUED HER STORY about Angela Mitchell and how the two had come to know each other. Frank and Marla Moore listened from the couch as Greta poured coffee.

  “I slipped Angela my phone number that day we first met in the corner of the rec room at Bayer Group. She was alone in the world with no one, not even her parents, to turn to. I had to help her. I spoke with both her doctor and the director of Bayer Group. My boss at the hospital back then was close with the medical director over there, and with some pushing, I was able to get Angela’s parents more involved and have the lithium stopped. It took a few weeks, and during the whole process, I met regularly with Angela. Not in any formal manner, just as … I guess you’d call us friends.”

  Greta sat on the couch and sipped her coffee. She looked at Frank. “And that’s how you found me. Because of my friendship with Angela. When she turned eighteen, Bayer Group could no longer keep her unless she chose to stay. She did not. She called me to pick her up. I pressed her to contact her parents, but that relationship was too fractured to repair. So I obliged. She signed herself out of Bayer Group, but my name was on the log that day as the one who picked her up. The best I can tell, it was our only mistake. I brought Angela here to the farmhouse. She stayed for a year, working and saving money until she had enough to move on. When she was nineteen, she left for the city. That was 1968. She found a job and was managing on her own. She called every so often. Even called to tell me she had met a man,” Greta said. “Unfortunately, that man was Thomas Mitchell.”

  She took another sip of coffee.

  Marla and Frank were sitting on the edge of the couch. Marla was listening intently, and Frank sensed that she was working to make the final connection.

  “So you and Angela stayed in touch?” Frank asked to move the conversation along.

  “Not really,” Greta said. “For a while we did. For a few years, she’d call every once in a while to tell me how she was doing. She told me her parents had moved to St. Louis, that she had found a job, that she had her own apartment. I was very encouraging, and I always invited her out to the farmhouse if she wanted a visit. But then she met Thomas, and after that she stopped calling. Years went by and I didn’t hear a thing from her.”

  Greta paused again to sip her coffee. She replaced the cup on the saucer and looked back at Frank and Marla.

  “Then, in the summer of 1979, I saw the news reports.”

  “That Angela had disappeared?” Marla asked.

  “Yes. My heart broke when I saw her face on the television.
And when the news came out that her husband was the man responsible for all those missing women from that summer, I felt that I had failed Angela. I had worked so hard to help her when I first found her sitting at the table all alone at Bayer Group. We had become close during the year she spent here. But then, I just let her leave. I let her walk off into the world. When I heard what happened to her, I was stricken with guilt that I hadn’t done more to guide her life. For those two days my heart ached in a way I’d never experienced.”

  “For what two days?” Marla asked.

  Greta looked at Frank. He nodded. Frank Moore needed his wife to hear it all.

  Greta Schreiber sat at the workbench in the room upstairs. The wall shelves were decorated with porcelain china dolls arranged in perfect rows. She had started a new project two days before, just after news spread about the most recent events in Chicago. Angela, the girl she had befriended at Bayer Group years earlier, and who had spent an entire year at the farmhouse when she was eighteen years old, had gone missing and was suspected to be the latest victim of the man authorities called The Thief. The startling revelation that this man was Angela’s husband had sent Greta pacing the kitchen for the better part of the night. But now, the damaged doll in front of her was providing the distraction she needed. The hairline fracture, which ran across the crown of the skull, down over the ear, and to the base of the jaw, required just enough attention that for as long as she worked on it, she didn’t think of the young girl she once knew.

  A noise pulled her concentration away from the restoration. She heard an automobile’s wheels crunching over the gravel of the long driveway that led from the main road to the farmhouse. Greta stood from the workbench and walked over to the window, peeling the curtains to the side. She saw a silver sedan pulling slowly down the drive, a gray cloud of dust floating behind it. Tubs and Harold barked and jumped alongside the approaching vehicle.