by Debra Webb
Rowan turned to Billy. “It’s true,” she said, her voice low, fragile.
Billy frowned. “What’s true?”
“Truth is stranger than fiction.”
Price returned with a card for Billy. “I certainly hope you will call me if you ever need any assistance on a case—this one or any other.”
Rowan stood. Billy did the same as he offered his hand. “Thank you again for answering our questions.”
Rowan shook his hand and thanked him as well. He held on a moment too long, his expression showing all that Rowan had suspected. He had been infatuated with Norah.
Price followed them to the door, chattering on about the classes he taught and how he would have wanted to be a detective if he hadn’t gone into teaching. Billy offered to have him ride along on an investigation sometime, if he’d like. This pleased the professor immensely.
Rowan walked away from the professor’s home, her heart thumping and her stomach clenching. This was real. All of it. Her mother hadn’t been a writer—not in the true sense of the word. She hadn’t been mentally unstable either.
She had been terrified of what was out there coming for her. Like Ms. Solomon had said, perhaps she had written the stories to rid herself of the demons.
Rowan just didn’t know the whole story of why. But she knew who.
Julian Addington.
Ten minutes later they were headed down the mountain once more.
“What’re you thinking?”
Rowan blinked, startled out of her disturbing thoughts by Billy’s worried voice. “I’m sorry. It’s just insane that my mother was somehow involved with all these serial killers. That she grew up with a different name—with different people. Julian may be her brother. It’s simply unfathomable and yet it feels like the first truth I’ve found.”
Billy slowed and pulled into the parking lot of a church.
Rowan looked around at the empty lot. “Why are we stopping?”
“Ro, whatever was happening with your mother, it wasn’t her fault. She was a victim who tried to run away from her past, but it caught up with her.”
“Why didn’t she tell him? My father deserved to know what was happening.”
“Can you be sure she didn’t? If she asked him to keep her secret, then I suppose that’s what he did. Maybe for your protection.”
She felt ready to burst with all the emotions whirling inside her. Tears burned her eyes, scalded her throat. “But he didn’t protect me and neither did she. I walked right into the trap she spent her life trying to escape.”
Billy pulled off his seat belt and got out. She swiped away the tears and dropped her head against the seat. She hated when she fell apart like this. Hated that she felt as if the rug had been pulled from under her feet by the two people she should have been able to trust the most.
Billy opened her door. She turned her head to look at him. “I’m sorry.”
He reached over her and unfastened her seat belt, then turned her toward him. “Ro, your mother loved you. I know she did. I saw it every time I was at your house or saw the two of you anywhere. Your father loved you, too. More than life. He would have done anything to protect you. Whatever he did or didn’t do, trust me when I say that he thought he was doing the right thing. As a parent, that’s all you can do.”
She brushed at the fresh wave of tears with the back of her hand and drew in a steadying breath. “You’re right. The weirdest part is I think my mother was eyeball-deep in this exterminating of serial killers. Maybe she was the one luring them in and then Santos or Layton did the rest.”
At least, she hoped her mother wasn’t a killer.
“It’s looking that way,” Billy agreed.
Rowan closed her eyes and inhaled another cleansing breath, loving that the scent of his aftershave filled her lungs. “Thank you,” she said, staring into his eyes and more grateful than ever that he was here, with her.
“There’s something I’ve wanted to talk to you about, Ro. But then Addington happened again.”
Rowan searched his face, her heart starting to pound. “Billy, I—”
He pressed a finger to her lips. “Let me finish.”
Reluctantly, she nodded.
“I love you, Ro. You know that. I don’t want to keep waiting for Addington to be caught or killed or whatever. I want us to get on with our lives. We deserve the chance to move on.”
Before she could stop herself, she said, “I love you and you’re right. We can’t keep allowing him to rule our existence.”
He reached into the glove box and dug out that small velvet box. “This isn’t exactly how I expected to do this, but—” He opened the box and withdrew the ring. “Ro, will you marry me?”
The urge to say yes was a powerful force. “Billy, I want to say yes.”
His face fell. “Then why don’t you?”
She took the gorgeous ring from his fingers and tucked it back into its box and handed it to him. “I want you to take twenty-four hours to think about this.” When he would have protested, she touched her fingers to his lips. “Twenty-four hours. If you’re still sure you want to do this tomorrow morning, ask me again. I promise I’ll give you an answer then.”
For a long moment he said nothing, just stared at the box. Then he tucked it back into the glove box and smiled at her. “Tomorrow. This time I’ll do it right. On one knee and maybe with a violin playing.”
Rowan laughed. “Don’t you dare go to extra trouble, Billy Brannigan. The only preparation I want is for you to consider what it is you’re about to do and be absolutely certain it’s what you really want.”
“It’s what I want, Ro. I can tell you right now, I won’t change my mind.”
A smile stretched across her lips as she reached up and touched his handsome face. “You are a good man, Billy. You’re the one person in this world I have left who means everything to me. I want you to be a part of my life for the rest of my life. But this is different, this is the sort of commitment that takes all other choices away. I don’t want you to make this choice and then be unhappy down the road. I come with a lot of unpleasant baggage.”
He turned her around and fastened her seat belt. Then he kissed her cheek. “Tomorrow, I will ask you again and this time I expect an answer.”
She could hardly breathe as he rounded the hood and climbed behind the wheel.
Could she possibly say yes?
Eighteen
Since there were no viewings or funerals scheduled today, Charlotte had the rare Saturday off. As much as Rowan liked and appreciated her assistant, she was grateful for some time alone. The week had been one bombardment after the other of emotional revelations. Today she needed a few hours of quiet. The nursing home on the bypass had transferred a deceased resident. Rowan hadn’t met this ambulance driver before, but then again, she wasn’t always here for intakes.
A member of the family was supposed to drop by later this afternoon to go over the arrangements. Rowan placed the paperwork for Tyler Fortenberry on the desk where she had begun the whiteboard list for his preparations. She pulled on gloves and her apron and walked over to the mortuary table.
She surveyed the man stretched out on the table. Fortenberry’s gray hair was cropped military short. His face bore the evidence of a hard-lived life. The man was dressed rather oddly to have come from the nursing home. He wore jeans and a button-down, long-sleeved shirt. Generally the intakes from the nursing homes wore pajamas or gowns. Oh well. Perhaps he’d preferred wearing his own clothes rather than the standard uniform of the facility. Or maybe he’d requested to leave the way he’d entered the facility, clothed in his own belongings.
According to his papers, Fortenberry was sixty-three. He had lived in Estill Springs before entering the nursing home and had died of a heart attack. He seemed young to be in a nursing home unless there were other health issues not lis
ted. Apparently whoever filled out his paperwork had been in a hurry to get him off.
“Let’s get started, Mr. Fortenberry.”
Rowan began with removing his clothes. She unbuttoned his shirt. The shirt would go first, then his shoes and socks and finally his jeans and underwear. Once his body was relieved of those barriers, she would bathe and disinfect his body and prepare for the embalming.
More often than not it was necessary to cut the clothing free of the body. Where had she put the scissors? She pushed his shirt open and froze.
Symbols and images had been tattooed on his chest. Symbols and images she recognized. The same ones she had seen on the bodies of Santos and Layton. Her pulse sped up. His skin felt warm. No lividity.
Frowning, she watched for the rise and fall of his chest. As she waited her right hand moved to her hip pocket and tugged out her cell phone. Still no movement. She reached with her left and felt for a carotid pulse.
The faint movement beneath her fingertips trapped her next breath in her lungs.
This man was not dead.
She muttered a curse and started to enter 911 on her cell. Billy was upstairs in her office having a conference call with Detective Lincoln. She should go get him but if she left the room—
The man on the table sucked in a big breath.
Her gaze shot to this face just as his eyes opened.
Her thumb poised to hit Call.
His hand snaked out and grabbed her right wrist.
“Drop the phone,” he growled.
Rowan tried to jerk away from him, but his grip was far too strong. He sat up, tightened the fingers manacling her wrist. “Drop it.”
The phone clattered to the floor. “What do you want?” she demanded.
If he was one of them—the so-called protectors who had helped her mother—then he hadn’t been sent by Julian. With that idea in mind she tried to relax.
He sat up, swung his legs over the side of the table but didn’t hop down. “My name is Robert Johns. There are things I need to tell you. This was the only way to get to you.”
His hold on her relaxed and Rowan snatched her hand from his grasp. He let her. “I’m assuming you aren’t from the nursing home.”
He shook his head. “I needed to get to you without anyone knowing. There are many eyes on you, Rowan. I paid a local ambulance driver to forge some paperwork and drop me off.” He shrugged. “Don’t blame him. It was necessary.”
Rowan picked up her phone and tucked it back into her pocket. As she removed her gloves, she asked, “What is it you went to all this trouble to tell me?”
“All the rest are dead.”
“The rest?”
“Santos and Layton. We were the only three who remained.”
Rowan untied her apron. “The ones who protected my mother.”
“We swore to her that if the need arose we would protect you as well. Time had passed and you were okay. Happy. Doing well in Nashville. We didn’t realize Addington had gotten to you until your father was murdered. We were negligent. Complacent. We should have been paying better attention.”
Since he’d said as much she decided not to mention how badly that had worked out so far. “I’ve heard this before—that my mother wanted you to protect me. Exactly what did she ask you to protect me from, besides Julian?”
He glanced at the door.
“It’s locked,” she said. Even with Billy just upstairs, she had gotten in the habit of locking this door whenever she worked in the mortuary. There was no way to escape if someone trapped her down here in the basement.
Another concept that had sounded good in theory and failed miserably.
“You’ve been doing some digging,” he said as if he were aware of her every move. “You understand that your mother wasn’t born in Memphis.”
Rowan nodded. “I’ve been to the house. Her name was Nina Mulligan.”
“That’s right. Her parents were the epitome of evil. They were serial killers. They celebrated murder like it was Christmas and New Year’s all rolled into one. Norah—your mother—said they hosted killing celebrations each year. Each guest would bring a sacrificial lamb.”
“Except they weren’t lambs, were they?” Rowan had concluded as much after seeing all that wood stained with blood in the barn.
He shook his head. “They buried bodies at that farm. Disguised the celebrations as a pig-slaughtering event. Their neighbors had no idea that during these gatherings there would be a dozen or more serial killers right down the road. But the visiting killers weren’t allowed to take anyone from the local community. It was a kind of BYOB thing. Bring your own body.”
The idea sent bile climbing up her throat. “Were there other victims throughout the year?”
“Oh yeah. Norah said her father would take trips to other cities. Huntsville, Decatur, even Birmingham, to bring back a victim. Sometimes he used her to lure them in.”
Rowan flinched at his words. The load of guilt her mother had carried was no doubt enormous. “These victims would be held in the house or the barn?”
He nodded. “The barn. They made the children feed and water them.”
“Children?” Rowan asked this as if she didn’t already know the answer. “There was a twin sister, Nora Mulligan, who died?”
“Yeah. Your mother took a variation on her name when she ran away. And there was a brother. His name was Richard but you know him as Julian Addington.”
No matter that she had known this to likely be the case, shock still radiated through Rowan. “He killed them? The parents, I mean. The police believed the son was the one who committed the murders.”
This man—this stranger—who’d found his way into this room alone with her by playing dead looked at Rowan with such sympathy that she instinctively knew what he was about to say would change everything. The urge to rush out of the room was nearly overwhelming.
Did she really want to hear any more of this?
The urge to run from it all, to never look back, throttled through her.
“Your mother was only a child, Rowan. She’d seen too much. Survived too much. It was bad enough to live with ruthless killers, being forced to help them, there was also her brother. He was obsessed with her even then. He never abused her physically, but the abuse was emotional. He would tell her that when they grew up the two of them would have a home just like the one they lived in and that other serial killers would envy their life and children. But it wasn’t until her parents tried to force her into her first kill that she realized what she had to do. She understood that there was only one way she would ever be free. She killed them. When her brother discovered what she was doing, he tried to stop her. She injured him but he was still able to take the ax away from her. He wiped the handle clean to protect her and then dragged her into the woods. She found an opportunity to escape and she did. She left him injured and dying—at least, she hoped he was dying.”
Rowan could only imagine the fear and horror her mother had felt. Like when she had shot Julian, he survived. Came back as if he’d been resurrected. “But he didn’t die.”
“No. And then, all those years later, he found her again.”
“After her bout with depression.” Rowan put her hand over her mouth. She felt sick with what her mother had suffered. Their circumstances were so similar. Julian used Rowan’s hospitalization to get to her as well.
“Yes. When you and your sister were born, she worried herself sick about your safety. It took a toll on her mental health and she ended up in that damned hospital.”
“What happened after Julian found her? Obviously she managed to get back home. Did she talk to my father?”
“She did manage to get back home but she could never tell your father about Julian. He warned her that if she told anyone he would ensure that all she loved would suffer for what she had done. So she never tol
d anyone. But she did make a very important decision.”
Rowan dragged off her apron and pitched it onto the foot of the mortuary table just to have something to do with her hands. “To leave us blind and with no idea what we were up against?”
He shook his head. “That was never her intention. She found others who felt the same way she did.”
“Like Santos and Layton.”
“Yes. There were several others, including myself. We became a collective focused on ridding this earth of his kind.”
“The faces and books of skin we found,” Rowan guessed.
He nodded. “For the nine years that followed her hospitalization, we cleansed this earth of more than two dozen killers. But we could never get close to the one we really wanted.”
“Julian,” Rowan guessed.
“He was far too clever. Too careful. When he tired of our attempts he set out to make Norah pay for what she had done to their parents and to him. He had groomed his daughter, Alisha, to kill. Her mother tried to protect her from him, but she failed. She recognized what he was doing too late, I suspect.”
Rowan’s blood felt cold. “What did he do?”
“He sent Alisha to kill one of you. He didn’t care which one. You or Raven, whichever she could take out the easiest. Raven called Norah and told her about Alisha harassing her at that party. The one she went to the day she died.”
A heaviness settled on Rowan’s chest. Julian had given her half the truth. “My mother went to stop it, didn’t she?”
He nodded. “But she was too late. Norah was so distraught that she lashed out without thinking. She killed Alisha. Killing her wasn’t the intent. It was a terrible mistake...a gut reaction based on her mothering instincts and her childhood.”
The words shook Rowan to the very core of her being.
“Raven’s death, what she had done, it devastated Norah. But she still had you to protect. You and Edward.”
“Why didn’t she tell someone?” Rowan demanded. “The police, my father, someone could have helped her!”
