“You’re a conceited little one, Pippa. You always have been. Never wanting to belong to us, and then accusing us of keeping you from your own.” Ripley sneered at her, shaking his head in mock disbelief at Pippa’s rebellion. “You know your mother lost children before you. Our family crypt holds no secrets there. When you were left on our doorstep with that toy, was I to tell my wife no? No, she couldn’t take in a crippled waif whose parents were my own employees?”
Ripley snatched the toy from her hands and threw it against the wall. The square corner of its base dented the wallpaper scattered with pink roses, and the toy fell to the floor with a clatter.
“Then you know who my parents are?” It was all she had taken from what he’d said, but it was enough.
“No.”
“Liar.” Pippa whispered the accusation with every ounce of belief in her heart.
“I’m telling you the truth.”
He wasn’t. She could tell. She could read his face and see the deceit in his eyes, even as he refused to look away. She hurried to retrieve the zebra toy, but he stepped in her way.
“I am your father!” His shout was drowned by another crack of thunder.
“But I don’t want you!” Tears choked her cry. Yet she didn’t regret saying it. Didn’t feel shame at the breaking of the truth from her lips.
Pippa swiped at her eyes. Her chin shook, her hands shook, her entire body quivered.
Richard Ripley marched to the bedroom door and yanked it open. His chest heaved as he leveled her with an expression burdened with unintelligible emotion.
“Then our feelings are mutual,” he concluded.
The door slammed behind him.
Chapter Thirty-Four
CHANDLER
The zebra toy was on the table in a clear plastic evidence bag. Chandler eyed the old wooden toy, its paint so faded it was almost hard to tell its base had once been yellow. There was an engraving on its bottom. Words that might have been carved there, the mark of the toy maker perhaps, but scuffed so badly now it was impossible to read.
It had been forty-eight hours. Forty-eight hours.
Chandler sat in the police meeting room, scanning the myriad of evidence on the table before her. Hank stood beside her chair, Denny Pike on the other side.
Detective Pagiano stretched his arm in a swoop over it all. “This was all taken from the hidden space in the train depot where you found Ms. Pike’s remains.” He glanced at Denny. “My apologies.”
Denny shook his head. “Don’t. I long ago came to terms with the fact Linda was gone.”
Detective Pagiano nodded. “I don’t know if this will help, but if the toy was left behind by whoever took Peter, there may be a plausible connection we’re missing between today’s events and the story of the past.”
Hank grunted.
The detective shot him a look. “Hey, I don’t know much about the zebra toy, but Barry Sides down at the circus confirmed it was tied to the Watchman back in the day. He said it was used by the Watchman as a connection to who would have been his next victim had he not been stopped. Richard Ripley’s own daughter was apparently targeted by the Watchman. Given that Ripley was the owner of Bonaventure Circus, and considering this toy was found with Peter’s things, does any of the other paraphernalia here on this table ring any bells? Anything we can connect to today and tie to Peter’s abductor?”
Chandler was going to be sick. She hadn’t eaten much and she was paying for it now. It’d been all she could do to remember to take her medications, and that was only because Margie made sure she did. Uncle Neal had called several times, offered to fly over, but Chandler had refused. He tried to encourage her that she didn’t need to worry about the project and that Jackson could handle everything until Peter was found. What would have once threatened her now didn’t matter. She’d give it all away just to hold Peter, to touch her son, again.
Both Hank and Denny were eyeing the bagged items on the metal table. The locks of hair—hair from victims who had died a century before—now nameless and unremembered. The circus tokens, boasting of the glorious circus in each particular city while the Watchman harbored them away as mementos.
“Were them murdered girls along the rails like this Miss Ripley the Watchman had his eye on?” Denny inquired.
“You mean, in appearance?” The detective dipped his head in acknowledgment of Denny’s theory. “Could be. I looked up some of the old records on the murders. There’s not a lot that links the Watchman to each girl specifically. Just that he was in the towns with the circus when they wound up deceased. A lot of it seems like conjecture to me, to be honest. Certainly, they didn’t have the means to solve crimes across the country like we do today.”
“But what does any of this have to do with Peter?” Chandler couldn’t help the frustration in her voice.
“None of this stuff brings anything to mind?” Detective Pagiano asked again.
“Nope,” Denny muttered.
Hank shook his head.
Chandler gave the detective an exasperated look. “I’m from Detroit. What would I know?”
He coughed. Cleared his throat. “All right then. Let’s try it from another angle. What did your sister, Linda, possibly have to do with the story of the Watchman?”
“It was a bit more than fifty years after he was caught that she went missing,” Hank offered.
“Meaning?” the detective inquired.
“Well, the Watchman was already dead by then. Fried him.”
“Actually,” Detective Pagiano countered, “folks wanted him electrocuted, but he wasn’t. Wisconsin hadn’t adopted the death penalty.”
“News to me.” Denny pursed his lips. “My family always said the state fried the wrong man.”
“Families don’t always get the facts straight in all the emotion of the situation,” Detective Pagiano supplied. “No offense.”
“None taken.” Denny gave a nod.
“So, your grandfather died in prison,” Hank ventured.
“Must have,” Denny replied.
Chandler frowned. “How were you born?” She didn’t really care, but if it led them to Peter . . .
“Whaddya mean?” Denny creased his forehead.
“Well, if your grandfather, the Watchman, was in prison after he was found guilty of murdering Patty Luchent, then how did he have a child who could later have you?”
“Huh.” Denny crossed his arms over his stomach, his leather vest creaking. “Never really thoughta that. They give prisoners conjugal visits back then?” He directed his question to the detective.
Detective Pagiano gave a slight laugh. “Maybe? Your—mother was his daughter, correct?”
“Yup.” Denny nodded.
“I think if we do the math with birth dates, your mother,” Pagiano continued, “had to have been born prior to his imprisonment.”
“So, the Watchman—a serial killer—had a child with some woman?” Chandler tried to wrap her mind around the facts.
“My momma, Elsie, never knew her momma. She grew up in a children’s home and always had the label hanging over her head of being the daughter of the Bluff River Killer, or the Watchman.” Denny stroked his beard and sighed. “Heck, I’ve lived with it all my life. Never married ’cause no one would let me date their daughter.” He gave a sad chuckle. “Guess they were scared I was like my grandfather. Labels are cruel things. And that was one of the reasons why I took you in.” He looked at Hank. “Kids need more than a label on them. They need a place to belong, ya know? Not judged by priors.”
Hank reached out and gripped his uncle’s shoulder. Squeezed and dropped his hand.
“I still don’t see how any of this is helping.” Chandler bit her lip. She tasted blood. “Taking Peter doesn’t help anyone’s cause.”
“No,” Detective Pagiano agreed.
“Hold up now.” Denny’s expression shifted. He held his index finger in the air. “Wait a minute. In high school, Linda was part of a small history club. You know, o
ne of them clubs girls throw together on their own?”
“Okay?” The detective pulled out a metal chair and deposited himself in it.
Denny did the same.
Hank remained standing.
Denny leaned forward on the table and folded his hands in front of him. “I remember now. Linda was happier than a lark she’d been included. Of course, most them gals were nerdy, but Linda—she didn’t have many friends.”
Chandler closed her eyes and prayed. Prayed for patience, for Peter. Prayed that God would come out of His hiding place and fight for her. Rescue Peter. Make something make sense.
“How is this important?” Detective Pagiano asked what they all were probably thinking.
Denny scrunched his face in thought. “Not sure exactly. But what if Linda talked them into helping her prove our grandfather wasn’t the Watchman like my family has always claimed? And what if they stumbled on that hiding spot in the depot as young people? One of them gals didn’t want word of it getting out, so they turned on Linda?”
“But who would that be?” Hank ventured. “Linda’s the one who had the most to lose if it got out.”
“Was she?” Denny swept his hand over the evidence bags. “What on this table confirms that our grandfather was the Watchman? Nothing. It’s all from the victims. Nothing to identify the killer. But what if there had been something there? Something that proved Linda’s theory and implicated one of the other girls’ family trees? They might’ve tried to keep Linda quiet.”
“It seems farfetched,” Chandler muttered, toying with the fringe on her scarf. She would go out herself later and comb the streets. Break into houses if she had to.
“Crimes are usually farfetched,” Detective Pagiano said. “If what Denny is theorizing is true, then you, Ms. Faulk, are another person who’s gotten in the way and potentially outed the real killer’s family.”
“Who cares!” Chandler pushed off from the table and stood. She wobbled as blood rushed from her head and the room spun. She grabbed for the table, but Hank was there and held her steady. “Who cares about a circus train serial killer from the 1920s? It’s a century later!”
“I care.” Denny’s quiet voice stunned her into silence. She met his sad eyes. His look in response was firm but gentle. “A person isn’t that far removed from it when it’s their grandpa who did the killing. Sure, some may glorify what happened or be all into the intrigue of it, or you can see it for what it really is. Sick. A sickness. And who else in the family could end up with the killing gene? If there is one. You know, those are the thoughts that go through a person’s mind.”
Chandler lowered herself back onto her chair.
The room was quiet for a long moment, and then the detective cleared his throat. “So, Mr. Pike, I think we need the names of the people in this little club with your sister. Maybe they know something.”
Denny blew a puff of air from his lips. “Boy, you’re testing my mem’ry. Lemme think . . . Judy Commings, but she died last year of cancer. Lottie Dobson was part of it. Go figure.” He chuckled. “Oh! Barry Sides’s sister, Barbara. She was in it too.”
“Just those four? Linda, Judy, Lottie, and Barbara?” Hank prodded his uncle.
Denny looked up at him. His eyes shadowed. “Yeah. Barbara was pretty intense too.”
“They were circus folk?” Detective Pagiano asked.
Denny nodded. “It practically runs in their veins.”
“Where are you going?” Margie asked.
Chandler rammed her arms into her fleece jacket sleeves, ignoring Margie. She frantically hurried after Chandler, who stopped in the hallway and snatched up her scarf and hat from the bench where she’d tossed them earlier after returning from the police station.
Chandler tugged the stocking cap on her head, not caring that it made her look like an unpopped popcorn kernel. “I’m going to find Peter.”
“Don’t be stupid!” Margie slipped in front of Chandler, blocking the door. “You can’t do anything more than what the police are already doing.”
“I can add my eyes and ears to the search.” Chandler’s voice caught in her throat. “Margie, please. The next thing they’ll be doing is putting grids together and hiking through fields to find his body.” Tears burned her eyes. “I can’t just sit here. I can’t wait around and do nothing. He’s my son!”
Margie hesitated, then reached for her coat. “Fine, but you’re not going alone.”
“No!” Chandler grasped Margie’s arm.
Margie’s hurt expression stung Chandler. She softened her grip. “I mean, if Peter comes home, someone needs to be here. For him.”
A shadow fluttered through Margie’s eyes. Chandler didn’t want to interpret what it meant. That Margie believed Peter would never come home? Chandler bit the inside of her lip until she tasted blood. She couldn’t unlock her worried stare from Margie’s telling one. She didn’t. She didn’t believe Peter would come.
“He will come home, Margie.” Chandler licked the blood away she’d drawn from the bite she’d barely felt. “He will.”
She whipped the door open, then stumbled back. Cold shock warred with the adrenaline and the unexpected anger she was tempering toward Margie. Margie and her disbelief in Peter’s well-being after only forty-eight hours!
A couple stood on the steps.
Chandler remained placid. Expressionless. She had to or she would react with all her pent-up emotion and become a raging lunatic. That wouldn’t help Peter.
“Mom? Dad? What are you doing here?”
Her parents’ exhausted faces gazed back at her.
“Oh, baby,” her mother breathed.
Chandler’s stomach curled. Curled in agony, in relief, and in struggle against the fact that her parents were here. They would find out everything! They would see her medications and supplements to combat her PTLDS on the counter in the kitchen. They would affirm that if she’d only let them raise Peter, none of this would have happened. They would butt in, tell her how to live her life, how to be a good mother to Peter . . .
Chandler clapped her hand over her mouth to prevent a sob that threatened to betray her. There was no being a mother to Peter . . . not if he remained missing. Like Linda Pike. Like Linda Pike had for decades!
Chandler stepped aside so her parents could come in. But she remained wordless.
Margie hurried forward, and Chandler’s faith in her friend’s support was renewed a little. “Come in, come in!” Margie ushered them into the hall. “I’m Margie. I’m Peter’s nanny.”
Her parents entered, offering smiles to Margie. Chandler’s father extended his hand, and Margie took it.
“We’re so grateful for how you’ve been here for Chandler,” he choked, his eyes red-rimmed. “I’m Tom, and this is Sherry.”
“Nice to meet you.” Margie gave a warm hug to Sherry, who tried to capture Chandler’s gaze.
Chandler left the entrance and hurried into the kitchen. She had to hide her medications. Had to remove all evidence of her inability to care for Peter. She grabbed a bottle of magnesium—not all that unusual considering it was a natural supplement—but one look at the dosage would indicate her body was sorely lacking. She hurried to collect her antidepressant, her antianxiety pills, her—
A hand closed over her wrist.
“Leave it there.”
It was Dad.
Chandler turned and worked her mouth back and forth, willing away the tears. Willing away the distress. “I—I have a sinus infection and I—”
She could tell her dad wasn’t buying it.
“Chandler, we know.”
“Know what?” she replied glibly, sliding the pill bottles away so the labels were more difficult to read.
“Neal called me. He’s been concerned. You’ve been overworking, trying too hard to outdo Jackson. He’s seen through it. He told me you’ve had nothing to worry about, that your work is spectacular, and Jackson is no threat, but he also said you wouldn’t believe him.”
�
��Are you saying I’m paranoid?” Chandler wrapped her arms around herself. She didn’t want this conversation right now.
Her mom stepped into the kitchen, followed by Margie. “No, baby. No. But you won’t ask for help. You’ve shut us out, and you won’t let us in. We want to help you!”
“I don’t need—” She caught Margie’s look and stopped. “I can support Peter on my own. You don’t need to take care of him for me. And . . .” Her hand flew to her mouth as her words choked on tears. “What if he’s dead? What if they killed my little boy?”
Her dad reached for her, but Chandler pulled away.
“We know you have Lyme.” Mom stepped closer. “Nel’s been worried about you, so she confided in us. You’re pushing yourself too hard.”
“Stop.” Chandler shook her head. She waved them off. “I don’t care. I don’t care if I have a disease. I don’t care if it kills me. I want my son home. I want my Peter Pan.”
She spun and charged for the back door, yanking it open. Like a wayward and hurt child, Chandler plunged into the night for the safety of her car. Her parents behind, calling for her. Calling for her as they had done for seven years. And as she had done for seven years, Chandler ran away.
Chapter thirty-five
The Watchman.
The Watchman.
The Watchman sees all, knows all, is all.
At least that was how she felt as she drove, her lungs burning from her tears. Chandler didn’t go far, her first stop foremost in her mind. Parking, Chandler hopped out, taking with her a flashlight, her phone, and pepper spray. Finding Peter was enough motivation to put herself in harm’s way if needed, but she had no intention of being foolishly unprepared either. She had no idea who she was up against. Who was so devious as to involve a seven-year-old boy in their vendetta of—whatever it was!
She hurried up the sidewalk from her vehicle and looked around her. The streets were well lit, the nighttime almost beautiful in the quaint historic town of Bluff River.
What was it like to have run from the Watchman? The women he’d assaulted. What had he done to them? She didn’t want to know. She only knew that years and years later, his ghost was still haunting them. Hidden in the shadows of Bonaventure Circus, laughing, mocking, and chasing girl after girl, woman after woman, generation after generation.
The Haunting at Bonaventure Circus Page 29
