The Girl and the Black Christmas

by A J Rivers

  “This one actually happened not too far from U of A. Only about an hour. So, that would fit in with Julia and the location. Angeline Courtney. Eighteen years old. She told her friends and family she was helping a friend move, but never came back. When they talked about it, no one she knew could identify who it might have been. Her car never left her apartment. A man driving a truck down a back road close to a Christmas tree farm found bits of her coat and a plastic shopping bag with nothing but a receipt in it in the snow. Her name was on the receipt. The news articles say there were indications in the snow and the surrounding areas that she didn’t seem in distress and didn’t seem to be running.”

  “Okay,” Sam frowns, “but no angel.”

  “Her name was Angeline,” I say.

  “Yes, I get that. And it’s conceivable that people called her Angel. But doesn’t the letter say the angel looked perfect? Even for something as convoluted as a fake letter to Santa isn’t going to get so philosophical as her referring to herself in the third person, by a nickname, while also turning herself into an object. The angel. And no capitalization.”

  “You’re right,” I nod. “It’s a stretch. I just feel like I hit a wall with it. Like there’s no other direction to search.”

  “It’s only been a day, Emma. We’ll keep looking. You have time,” he says.

  “Do I? The letter says to hurry.”

  “What does that mean? What’s going to happen if you don’t?”

  “I don’t know. And that’s what worries me.”

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Thirteen years ago…

  Carrying a full basket of laundry on her hip and a huge bottle of detergent in her hand, Julia walked out of her room and through the living area of the apartment. Lynn looked up at her from the couch.

  “Going to the laundry room?” she asked.

  Julia wanted to give her one of those sarcastic responses that would be filler dialogue in a lazily written sitcom, but she stopped herself. Those exchanges might work to establish setting or just give one of the characters something snotty and vaguely funny to say, but it never really worked out in real life. Instead, she just nodded.

  “Yeah. I didn’t realize I’d shoved a bunch of dirty stuff back into my bag to bring back with me after Thanksgiving,” she said.

  Her roommate nodded. “Are you going to bring the scarf that you borrowed with you so you can wash it before you return it?”

  Julia let out an exasperated sigh, her head falling back as she rolled her eyes at Lynn.

  “What is it with you and that scarf? You wouldn’t stop staring at it when I first came in. You had to ask about it. Then I found you examining it yesterday. Do you have some sort of problem with me wearing a scarf?” she asked.

  Lynn looked like she was trying to come up with something equally as terse to respond with, but eventually her face went slack, and she turned her body on the couch so she was looking at Julia.

  “It just made me curious because it reminded me of something. Of someone,” she said.

  Her voice was emotional, heavy with concern and maybe even regret. It softened the anger inside Julia and made her curious. Finally, all their bickering might be over. Maybe they could connect as people. As friends, maybe.

  “Of who?” she asked. She hesitated and Julia took a step toward her. “Who, Lynn?”

  “It’s going to sound ridiculous,” she said. “Like I’m just trying to be a bitch or upset you just for the hell of it.”

  “I won’t think of it that way,” Julia said, shaking her head and setting the detergent down on the higher counter that separated the open kitchen from the living area. “Just tell me.”

  “A few years ago, a girl I knew was murdered. I wouldn’t exactly call her a friend. But I was really close with somebody who lived in her building, and we hung out a couple of times.”

  “A dorm?” I ask.

  “No. She lived in an apartment off campus. She’s a couple years older than me. My friend in that building actually dated my brother. Their whole thing didn’t work out, but she and I got along well. She would have parties and invite the people from the other apartments in the building. That’s how I met Samantha. She was really nice. Smart. Really focused. The kind of girl you feel like your high school guidance counselor is talking about when they tell you to work hard and live up to our potential.”

  Julia nodded. “I know the type.”

  I used to be the type, she thought.

  She went into the living room and sat down, propping the basket of clothes beside her. Lynn sat back and let out a breath, running her fingers through her hair.

  “I knew her for probably a year. Maybe a little more. So, I guess we were friends. It’s hard to think that way about someone you only see in one certain set of circumstances. Samantha and I never saw each other away from those parties. We didn’t have each other’s numbers or social media. I don’t think we would have ever gotten together for lunch or gone shopping or anything like that. But it was good to see her when she showed up.”

  “Just because you don’t see somebody all the time doesn’t mean they aren’t your friend,” Julia offered.

  A face formed in her mind, but she forced it to dissolve away.

  A sad smiled touched Lynn’s lips as she nodded. “My friend had one of her parties to celebrate Thanksgiving. It was right before everybody was going to go home for break. Samantha came, but she was only there for a little while. She said she had another thing she was supposed to go to. She was kind of dressed up, and it didn’t sound like a party. After she left, one of the other people who were there mentioned that one of her professors sometimes had people over for a networking thing. We assumed that’s what she was doing. But the next day, her roommate came to the apartment. I had spent the night with my friend and the roommate was really freaked out. She said Samantha never came home.”

  “Oh,” frowned Julia.

  “We tried not to get too worked up over it. We knew it was entirely possible she had gone somewhere we didn’t know about or had hooked up with somebody. We called her a few times, but she didn’t answer. We figured she would come wandering home hungover and we could make fun of her a little. But that didn’t happen.”

  “When did they find her?” Julia asked.

  “Almost a week later. She was wrapped up in a blanket like she was sleeping. Just left in an abandoned building.”

  “Oh, god,” Julia said.

  Lynn nodded. “It was so cold that week her body was pretty well preserved. They could see she had been strangled. But there wasn’t anything around her that would have caused the injuries. And the scarf she was wearing the night she left the party was missing. We all remembered seeing her wrapping it around her neck as she was walking out. It wasn’t on her or around her, and they didn’t find it in her apartment or her car.”

  “If she was in an abandoned building, could it have just been stolen? Maybe by a homeless person?” Julia asked.

  “Her body was wrapped in a blanket. Her clothes, including a really nice coat, socks, and a pair of boots, were found neatly stacked beside her. Like that was where she had gotten undressed to go to bed. It wouldn’t make sense for someone to take a scarf, but not of the rest of it. The police think whoever killed her might have taken the scarf with him as a souvenir. That was why the one you borrowed caught my attention. It looks just like the one Samantha had,” Lynn said.

  Julia’s heart was beating a little faster, but she quickly dismissed it.

  “It’s just a scarf. Just a mass-market scarf that was bought at some everyday store. There are probably tens of thousands of scarves just like that floating around,” she said.

  “That scarf is not mass-market. It’s designer. Not overwhelmingly expensive, but also not picked up on an end rack right before Christmas. And between the day I saw Samantha put it on before she walked out of that apartment, and the day you walked in here with it around your neck, I’ve never seen one like it,” Lynn said. “Where did yo
u get it? Who does it belong to?”

  Julia shook her head. “I don’t even know. I borrowed it because it was so cold, and it was just handed to me. There are a lot of options of who it could belong to. Besides, if it was a souvenir of a murder, wouldn’t it be kept somewhere safe? Some sort of shrine or something?”

  “I don’t know,” Lynn said. “I’m not particularly familiar with the ways of killers. All I’m saying is that scarf looks exactly like Samantha’s, and it freaked me out for a second. That’s all. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  Julia smiled at her as she stood up and picked up the basket of laundry again.

  “Don’t worry about it. I probably would have reacted the same way. I’m really sorry to hear you went through something like that. I can’t even imagine. They never found out anything? No suspects?”

  “No,” Lynn said. “There was no biological evidence left on her. No one in the area reported seeing anything suspicious. There aren’t any security cameras around that building, so they didn’t get any footage. There are a couple of cameras in nearby areas that they think might have caught a man walking, but it’s pretty much just their feet. A couple of flashes their upper body, but it’s at a distance and it’s pretty grainy. The criminal justice club got permission to review the evidence and look into it, but they couldn’t find anything, either. Their professor supervisor submitted some of their work to the police, who were really impressed, but it wasn’t enough to actually pinpoint what happened to her or why.”

  “The criminal justice club?” Julia asked.

  “Yeah. It’s mostly pre-law and criminal justice students, but there are also some psych students and a few who are just interested in crime. They get together and talk about different cases. Try to figure them out or talk about why they turned out the way they did. That sort of thing,” Lynn said.

  “I hope they find out something someday,” Julia said.

  “Me, too.”

  Julia offered a tight smile, grabbed the detergent, and headed for the laundry room in the basement of the student apartment building, her mind reeling from the story Lynn just told her.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Now

  The next day comes, and I’m trying to distract myself from not being able to figure out the case by working on wrapping Christmas presents. This is one of those things Sam and I don’t exactly see eye-to-eye on.

  He is all about the visual of Christmas. He loves his trees big and heavily decorated and presents on full display throughout the season. When he was younger, he loved watching as a couple of new shiny wrapping gifts showed up under the tree every day. Then, of course, on Christmas Eve came the big explosion of gifts, so Christmas morning they covered the tree skirt and tumbled out across the floor.

  Now as an adult, he still wants presents wrapped and put under the tree as soon as they’re bought. It builds up anticipation, he says. It gets you excited about Christmas morning and trying to figure out what’s inside.

  On the other end of the spectrum is me. Waiting until the last minute is more my Christmas style. Not in terms of decorating or shopping. I like to get my Christmas decorations up early and I’m one of those people who picks up presents and stashes them away throughout the year.

  The problem is, they tend to stay stashed far too late in the season. I will have all the intentions in the world of wrapping them and making them perfect. But, Christmas Eve, inevitably they are still sitting in closets and under beds, still in their shopping bags.

  Maybe it’s the quest for perfection that trips me up. I want all the gifts under the tree to look beautiful and to be coordinated. Each one has a designated wrapping paper, and I like having bows and ribbons to match. But as the frantic energy of the holidays ramps up and I find myself running around doing a million things on top of working, I constantly tell myself there isn’t enough time to do it the way I want to. So, I don’t.

  Then Christmas Eve comes and in the middle of the night I’m wrapping presents and hoping I can beat the clock before Sam wakes up or my friends get there. And this is with only adults celebrating. I can only imagine what’s going to happen when a little one is in the picture.

  This year, I’m trying to do things differently. I want to give Sam the kind of Christmas he loves, so I’m making it a point to get some things wrapped now. Hopefully he will come home to presents nestled under the tree and get a little spark of extra holiday spirit.

  I could use some of it myself.

  I’m also hoping getting my hands busy and thinking about something else will give my brain a chance to think without me distracting it. I’m fairly certain that’s what Bellamy tried to tell me is called mindfulness. To hear her tell it, it goes along with her hot yoga classes and the week she ate nothing but kale. She’s kept up with the yoga, but the kale has fallen by the wayside for the most part.

  My phone rings from the living room, and I finish taping down one flap before heading for it. It’s Dean.

  “Hey,” I say, walking back to the table and pinning the phone between my shoulder and ear so I can keep wrapping.

  “Hey,” he says. “Xavier wants to know if there will be snow.”

  “Just in general?” I ask. “Like as a weather pattern, will it exist in the future?”

  “For Christmas,” Dean says. “He wants to know the potential of a white Christmas in Sherwood. He says he consulted the Almanac, but that is just assumption and he would prefer the insight of someone who has experienced Christmases there. If you could provide data on all previous holiday seasons, he would appreciate it for comparison reasons.”

  “Well, I don’t have that information right at the tip of my fingers at this moment. I didn’t spend every Christmas of my life here, and I don’t even remember most of my Christmases, to be honest. But I can tell him that there have been a few white Christmases here that I do distinctly remember. So, the potential is there. Obviously, I can’t guarantee it, but it has been a cold winter so far, so there is a chance. Does he want it to be snowy, or not?”

  The question comes out faster than the rest of what I said because I realized part way through my reassurances that maybe he’s asking because he is nervous about the snow. Weather preferences aren’t something that Xavier and I have had any in-depth conversations about. Snack color preferences and the merits of continuing the textile tradition of adding tags to the back of t-shirts, yes. But snow versus no snow hasn’t come up.

  “Yes,” Dean says. “He definitely is hoping for a white Christmas.”

  “Dreaming of a white Christmas,” Xavier calls from the background.

  “Dreaming,” Dean echoes him. “He was singing this morning and now he needs to know.”

  “If he’s right there, why are you calling me? He could have asked,” I say.

  “Well, now he’s singing. But he didn’t call because he is in the middle of perfecting a cookie recipe. With no references, from scratch. Like, he tried to put the entire bag of flour in for just one dozen cookies.”

  “Why is he doing that?” I ask.

  “It’s been a long time since he’s been able to celebrate Christmas, and I think he’s just trying to do as many of the traditions as possible. And since we got into the conversation about cookies over Thanksgiving, he’s been planning a Christmas cookie extravaganza.”

  “His words?” I ask.

  “Yes,” Dean says.

  “Is he aware that there are cookie recipes on the internet? Like, a lot of them?”

  “He is,” Dean says. “I even showed him how to download a recipe app onto his phone. He immediately made me remove it. But he said he doesn’t want to look up a recipe. He thinks our family needs its own Christmas cookie recipe.”

  I melt a little bit. “I really hope he gets his white Christmas.”

  “If I do, will you play in the snow?” Xavier calls from the background.

  “Of course, I will,” I tell him. “We’ll make snowmen. And…” I stop. My hand falls away from the present in fron
t of me and I almost drop the phone away from my shoulder. Catching it, I start toward the living room. “Dean, I’m going to have to call you back.”

  “Is everything okay?” he asks.

  “I think it’s about to be better than okay.”

  Putting the phone beside me on the side table, I open my computer and pull up one of the pictures I saved from my research. I look at it closely, then move to the next picture. Reading through some of the articles and publicly accessible photos associated with it, I check another of the pictures. I can’t believe I didn’t notice it before.

  Grabbing my computer and my notebook, I stuff my feet into the nearest pair of shoes and run out to my car. When I get to the police station, I wave off the woman at the front desk and walk straight into the back to Sam’s office. I know she hates when I do that, but I’m feeling particularly unwilling to wait in this moment.

  The door is standing partially open and I give it a cursory knock to make sure he’s not interviewing somebody before opening it.

  “Hey, babe,” he says when I walk in. “This is a nice surprise.” His face falls slightly. “It is a surprise, right? We didn’t have plans or anything?”

  “No. You’re good. I figured it out. I know who the letter’s about,” I tell him.

  “You did?” he asks. “Who? How did you figure it out?”

  “Xavier was singing Christmas songs,” I say.

  Sam stares back at me for a few seconds. “Is this a snake charmer situation?”

  “Snake charmers use an instrument. I think you’re thinking about Xavier being a siren,” I say.

  Sam shakes his head. “Nope. I was most definitely not thinking about that. But if Xavier wants to be a mermaid, then more power to him. I bet he could pull it off.”

  I shake my head. We have fallen down the rabbit hole again. It seems now that Xavier has introduced us to the entrance, we are tumbling down that path far more often than we used to.