by Casey Dunn
He glanced into the back seat. Manila envelopes lay in a stack behind the driver’s seat. The corner of a Louis Vuitton briefcase peered out from under a gray hooded sweatshirt. Her purse was visible in the opposite seat. Something about this seemed careless. He didn’t know anything about this woman, but if she was a city chick, she’d know better than to leave a purse in plain sight. Something must’ve distracted her. Maybe a phone call or a text… or a man sitting in a van.
Martin glanced across the parking lot. An old white work van sat in the far corner—no doubt Eddie Stevens’s van. Martin felt sure Captain would’ve noticed it. Maybe he was leaving it alone out of the same pitied reverence he’d shown toward the man earlier in the day. Yet here Eddie was, present at the scene of another possible abduction.
Martin switched off his flashlight and walked to Eddie’s van. He circled it once, scanning the ground for anything Eddie might’ve dropped. Then he peered at the other officers. He wasn’t sure how Captain would feel about him snooping around Eddie’s vehicle. But why the hell weren’t they?
Shielding his light from view, he switched it on again and stared through Eddie’s driver’s-side window. The seat was empty. He trained the light into the passenger seat. A pink notebook sat on top of a large binder. READ ME was scrawled in block letters with a red marker on the spine of the binder. Martin squeezed the handle on Eddie’s door. It clicked open. He glanced over his shoulder to where the other officers were gathered on the other side of the lot. Only one was still fully visible. The rest had become nothing more than tiny flecks of light on the wooded hillside.
What if Eddie was in the back of the van? What if this was some kind of trap, the whole lost-city-girl thing a hoax to draw out the officers who had failed him? Or what if he was some sick bastard who had killed before and felt like killing again?
Martin slid his fingers in the narrow crack between the door and the car frame. He eased it open, stiffening as the old hinges creaked.
“Mr. Stevens? Are you in here?” he called into the back of the van. No one answered. “Mr. Stevens, my name is Martin Locklear. I’m a detective with the Tarson PD.” Still, no one responded. Best-case scenario, the grieving father had drunk himself to sleep in the back of his van. Worst-case scenario, he was lying in wait only a few feet away. Or he was in those godforsaken woods… with her.
Martin shined his light into the back of the van. It was empty. He let out a breath.
“Martin? What the hell are you doing?” Barrow called to him from a distance. Without thinking, Martin grabbed the notebook and the binder off of Eddie’s passenger seat and tucked them inside his jacket before retracting himself from the van.
“Is this Eddie’s van?” Martin asked.
“You know damn well it’s Eddie’s van. Otherwise, you wouldn’t be in it,” Captain said, advancing.
“Where is he? You think he’s lost out there, too?” Martin asked, attempting to sound neutral.
“He’s not lost. No one knows those woods better than Eddie,” Captain answered.
Martin hugged the material he’d gathered against his side. “It’s likely he’s one of the last people to see this woman. If she really is missing, he’d be a witness.”
“Witness?” Captain narrowed his eyes. “You sure that’s what you mean?”
“That’s what I said,” Martin countered. They fell in step as they crossed the lot.
“You leave Eddie out of this,” Captain ordered. “He’s got no part in it.”
“How can you be sure? Two girls missing on the same day, a year apart? Eddie the last one known to have been in the proximity of both women?”
Captain spun him around by the arm. “That’s his daughter you’re talking about!”
“You know the statistics as well as I do. Victims in cases like this almost always know the abductor. It’s very rarely the first encounter.”
“I know,” Captain said, sobering. “But I don’t see what Eddie would have to do with a hotshot defense attorney out of Atlanta.”
Martin raised an eyebrow. “That’s what she does?” he asked.
Captain nodded. “Name’s Ama Chaplin.”
“I can dig for any information linking Eddie to Ama,” Martin said, his thoughts racing ahead of him.
“You will do nothing of the sort,” Captain argued.
“Captain, all due respect, but if Eddie is involved in this, and I’m not saying he is, he didn’t start with killing his daughter. He started earlier, smaller, and he very well may have needed a defense attorney in the past. If it was anyone else, wouldn’t you look for a connection?” Martin pressed.
Captain paused and stared at the wet asphalt at their feet. “Go ahead and do some looking,” he said quietly. “But keep this between us until you find something concrete. If you find anything, you tell me immediately.”
“You got it,” Martin replied. He began to turn, his gaze landing on the two figures of Briggs and Stanton approaching them from across the lot. They knew Eddie, cared for him. If they were to encounter him in the woods, would they even think to protect themselves in his presence?
“All due respect, sir, if Eddie does has something to do with this, Briggs and Stanton will be in the woods with him completely unaware of what risk they might be facing,” Martin cautioned.
Captain stood still, exhaling long and slow. “I’ll mention something to Briggs,” he said.
They parted ways, and Martin headed for his car. He glanced up at the woods, his mind racing, the lights and voices calling for Ama fading into the fog.
MICHAEL Chapter 14 | December 1985 | Tarson, Georgia
I LEAP FROM THE TOP stair and land in the grass. Mother is close behind, the slap of her house shoes on the concrete landing, the heat of her breath urging me faster. I chance a look back. Her bathrobe sails behind her, the cape of a villain in a comic book, her cheeks red against her pale skin, her brown eyes nearly black with focus. She opens her mouth to breathe or shout, and all I see is teeth.
I swerve left and zigzag between trees. Leaves fly up in my wake. The shadows cast from boughs and branches have a dizzying effect on the path ahead. I look back again. She’s farther from me now, but still coming, and she’s picked up a stick.
I stare for a moment, my eyes on the stick. She’s screamed herself purple. She’s tied me to the piano bench for a full night, only cutting me loose come morning for fear I’d pee on the wood. She’s held a metal cable to a flame before using it to burn the sheet music for Für Elise into the skin between my shoulder blades. But her eyes are fixed on me like a cat on a mouse, and maybe it’s the shadows or the grime and grease from a week without a bath or the way her lips are pulled back, but here in these woods, I do not recognize her face at all.
I turn uphill, a steep climb—I will need to use my hands and feet near the top—and scramble for the ridge. Still she comes. I claw my fingers into the black earth and pull. She is longer and faster on the hill somehow, gaining ground, her fingers a body’s length from my heel.
“Get back here, Michael!”
I crest the ridge and hear a growl, not from below but from the side. Three dogs stand across the trail that runs to Cold River. Their bodies arch in reverse, hips above shoulders, noses tipped down, eyes staring up. But they are not watching me. They spring forward, and I jump to the side. My toe snags on a rock, and I tumble. My arms fly up, shielding my face and neck, and I bring my knees into my body. In my mind, they are already tearing through my jeans, gnawing on my bones.
The rumble of anger in a throat grows louder. I peer through the fold in my limbs. The dogs are facing away from me, pointed like three arrows down the hill. Then they hop and shuffle, bark and yap, and one goes charging down.
“Stop!” I sit up, reaching out, but the other two descend from view, and I hear a shriek and a crunch of dry leaves crushed under a sudden weight.
I climb to my feet. I do not want to walk to the ledge. I do not want to see. But maybe I do. Maybe my mother’s skin h
as been pulled away and I can see what monster has been growing inside her since Father died.
I tiptoe to the place the terrain plummets and peer down. The bathrobe is visible on the hillside, but the dogs are nowhere to be seen. I slide down with one foot braced in front of the other. My mother is not under the robe. She’s vanished like the witch in The Wizard of Oz, dissolved into a trail of smoke, and I wonder if my mother—my real mother—has returned.
I pick up the robe and walk home, picking bits of leaves and debris from the pilled fabric. I climb up the steps and open the door.
She’s standing in the entry with a stick, one end red and slick with fresh blood.
“Come inside and close the door,” she says.
MARTIN Chapter 15 | 8:00 PM, December 1, 2006 | Tarson, Georgia
MARTIN STACKED THE CASE FILE, his notes, and the evidence from Eddie’s car on his living room floor and sat down cross-legged in front of it. A new case was like a puzzle with no box top as a guide. With enough Adderall in his system, Martin would thrill at the void of information, at the possibilities. Tonight his medicine cabinet was empty. His head throbbed with the sensation of reawakening withdrawal.
“Don’t,” he whispered to himself, and rubbed the empty place on his ring finger. He drew in a deliberate breath and let it out slowly. He didn’t have to solve the case tonight. He just had to create a starting line.
He turned his attention to what he’d taken from Eddie’s van, which consisted of two large binders and a spiral-bound notebook with doodles covering the front. He opened the notebook first. Hazel’s Heart was written in big, loopy cursive at the top of the inside cover, then the date below it: October 15, 2004. Martin flipped through the pages. Some entries were brief; generally when the day was forgettable. Other entries took up five pages or more. Every now and then the writing was centered, the sentences short. Poetry, he assumed.
He reached the last page. The entry was dated a year ago yesterday. It was a short entry, relatively upbeat but otherwise typical. No mention of meeting someone, some horrible experience, suicidal thoughts, future plans, or burning excitement over some plan so secret she didn’t even chance writing it down. Her handwriting looked loopy and relaxed. He thumbed back a few more pages, looking for anything new or a sudden change. Nothing. Wouldn’t a teenage girl pack her journal if she’d intended to leave town?
Martin had to admit that he agreed with Eddie: Hazel hadn’t run away. She hadn’t walked into those woods with an ulterior plan. Something had happened to her, and Martin had a suspicion that something was Eddie. But what did this missing attorney have to do with it?
He outlined his thoughts on his pad of yellow paper, then opened Eddie’s first binder. It was divided by three tabs: newspaper articles, search patterns, and maps. The second binder was divided into two categories: suspects and related cases. Martin zeroed in on the last section. Had Eddie used previous cases as inspiration? He flipped open the section and froze—the top case was his case: Toni Hargrove and the trail that had ended at a vandalized pay phone seventeen miles from his new front door.
“No fucking way.” Had he been unknowingly hunting Eddie Stevens all along? Eddie didn’t at all match the skeletal profile he’d developed while working in Savannah: a man in his late twenties or early thirties, probably white, physically fit, with a violent history. Eddie’s file at the Tarson station had mentioned he was a handyman with a specialty in metal repair and car engines. Would he have had the patience and the wherewithal to remove the number buttons from a pay phone?
He grabbed both binders and his keys and headed for his car. He needed to keep connecting the possible dots while they were lining up so well, and there was no way he’d fall asleep with his brain in this high a gear. He still wasn’t sure what kind of resources the office would offer, but there was a huge whiteboard, a roll of Scotch tape, a full-size computer screen, a box of markers, and spotty internet service, which was more than he had at home.
His brain began mapping what he knew as he drove to the station. The bigger unknown was Ama Chaplin, and Martin was sure he’d at least find a bio on her website. She probably had a Facebook page, too. If Eddie was the culprit, why had he picked Ama to mark the anniversary of whatever he did to Hazel? Was it convenience, pure and simple, or was the choice more personal?
He unlocked the station door. No one else was there. All for the better, Martin reasoned. He wanted to stitch up the evidence against Eddie as tightly as possible before presenting it to the captain. These guys held a soft spot for Eddie for some reason, and Martin knew his opinion of the man would be unpopular at best.
He gathered all the intel he had so far on Hazel’s disappearance and what he’d retrieved from Eddie’s van, pulled loose the pages of Eddie’s binders, and arranged everything on his desk in chronological order. He began with the cases Eddie had saved in his binder and ended with the notes he’d taken when Ama’s assistant called the second time.
He frowned, recalling the conversation. The assistant had called in a tag number. If Ama knew Eddie personally and felt threatened, wouldn’t she have told her assistant to give his name? Then again, if Ama knew he was a threat, she probably wouldn’t have gone into the woods with him waiting in the parking lot. Eddie’s decision to target Ama was more likely one of convenience, Martin concluded. Still, he wanted to learn more about Ama. How was she likely to behave in an abduction scenario? How likely would they be to find her alive?
He turned on his computer and entered her name into Google’s search bar. Several thousand hits tallied at the top. Beneath the ad for her legal advice was a strip of image results. Ama was a blonde with high cheekbones and gray eyes. Her features seemed familiar to Martin, but he surmised he’d seen her ad run during his late-night insomniac TV binges. She was also apparently quite social, as several of the top image results were from swanky nightclubs in Atlanta’s Buckhead district.
He scrolled through the image results, pausing when he reached a rather unflattering picture of Ama in black and white. Beneath it was written, V.A.A.C.: Victims Against Ama Chaplin, and a web address. He clicked the link. The V.A.A.C. page was dedicated to victims whose perpetrators had walked free, courtesy of Ama’s representation. Five major cases were highlighted on the website. There was also a public posting board where any victim could air a grievance. A couple of posts devolved into calling for a bounty on Ama’s head or career. The site hosts were quick to nip the threads in the bud, but they didn’t take them down.
Martin focused on the handles of the more violent posts, hoping to find whoever was responsible for the creation of the group. He wished his department had a techie who could follow HTML trails. The only person Tarson PD had who even came close to that skill set was a deputy’s kid who liked to hack into anything, if only to prove he could.
He clicked back to the list of Google results. Ama was active, albeit barely, on Facebook and LinkedIn. Her professional website listed a very brief pre-career bio and went on to detail her major wins in the courtroom. Nothing obvious linked her to Eddie, strengthening his earlier suspicion that she had been in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Martin typed Eddie’s full name into the search bar and hesitated. Did he really think Eddie Stevens had a social media presence? He shrugged to himself and hit enter. Hundreds of thousands of results were listed. None of them were for his Eddie. Edmond Stevens was too common a name. He clicked back to the top, framed Eddie’s name in quotations and added the word “crime.” The tally reduced to under a thousand. The fourth result from the top was a six-year-old news article out of Texas about the accidental death of a woman: Raelynn Angela Stevens. “Edmond Stevens” was highlighted in the subtext summary, naming him as the grieving widower.
Martin leaned toward his computer screen and clicked on the link. A low-res image of a heavier-set black man with his hands clasped around the shoulders of a girl was framed in the top right corner. The caption read: Raelynn leaves behind a husband and a thirteen-year-ol
d daughter. Martin’s pulse accelerated. This was the link he’d been looking for.
He scanned the article for details of Raelynn’s accident. Hazel had come home from school to find her mother in the yard and a twelve-foot ladder on its side. Raelynn broke her neck in the fall and never regained consciousness before passing away that same day.
On a hunch, Martin opened Hazel’s journal. As of the first entry, they were already living in Georgia, with no mention of unpacking or settling in. He flipped open the case file on Hazel’s disappearance. Someone had handwritten a lean outline of the Stevenses’ life in Georgia. They’d moved here six years ago.
“Who buries his wife and then takes his daughter halfway across the country in the same year?” Martin asked the empty office. “Someone guilty, that’s who.”
He glanced at the clock. It was too late to phone the police department listed in the article for more information or the coroner’s report. It was also probably a move Captain wouldn’t appreciate him making without clearance.
He glanced back at his screen and scrolled down to the bottom to look for contact information. A picture of a blond woman at the end of the article caught his attention. She looked so much like Ama that he did a double take. He glanced at the caption.
The woman in the picture was Raelynn Stevens.
MICHAEL Chapter 16 | February 1986 | Tarson, Georgia
IT IS STILL DARK WHEN I walk into Tarson Woods. Ghosts don’t show themselves in full sunlight. That’s what Timmy Roberts says. He says Tarson Woods is teeming with ghosts because Tarson is cursed and if your soul was born here it will always come home. Dad was born here. If any ghost wouldn’t mind haunting these trees, it would be him.
