TSNK 5

CrystalFoo

They came like a flood. One after the other, swelling the news stations with enough gory details for the public to drown. Shocked citizens were blatting their fear, their shock, their surprise. News anchors spent countless, wasted minutes in front of dressing room mirrors, pinning down just the appropriate look of empathy and professional detachment. Crime scene experts and bureau police gave the public little to quell their fears. My fears, however, could not be measured, much less eased. I was living the nightmare; every God forsaken moment of it, and no one knew it but my daughter and I.

“Mom? Can I sleep? I mean, is it okay to go to sleep?” It was the evening of the Crawford girls murder, and it had been only a few short hours since I had plucked Paige from under the tree in our front lawn, coaxed her sobbing body into the house. Paige was spread across the couch with her head in my lap. I stroked her hair, more to reassure myself that she was safe and hoped it reassured her a bit. I lived the horror she was just now experiencing and I knew the impact it would have on her life. I had told her what I could, what I knew, and left out only what I believed she was too young to hear.

“Mom? Is it?” My answer was a lie, of course.

“Certainly. Sleep. I’m here, I’m here all night.”

“I’m afraid.” Her whispered voice reminded me of the hot winds that blew through the crisp and dry palm fronds in our backyard. She was racked, through and through. This was only the beginning.

“I know sweetie. I’m afraid too. But sleep.” I tilted her chin to face me, her eyes, so like my own, were full of a knowing that only we could share. Her look said she doubted me, her eyes begged me to convince her. “Sleep. I will protect you.”

She was not in my arms when the dawn broke through our windows, nor was she in her bedroom. She was gone. Quietly and resoundingly, gone. It’s been three days since.

***************************************************************************************

The LVPD had become somewhat of a permanent fixture in my home. They read my daughter’s journal, they scanned notes written from friends, they lifted her mattress and defiled her panty drawer. I stood nearby for the majority of it, not because of any misplaced sense of motherly duty, but because I knew that the answer to my daughter’s kidnapping lay here, in her things.

It was the third day after her disappearance, and Franco sat at the foot of the stairs answering another barrage of questions, with the youngest of the group of police officers sitting across from me in the recliner, I had a sudden realization. A connection of sorts. It was vague, yet discernable, lost somewhere just beyond my conscious grasp, in that nether land of our minds where things linger and float, waiting for the fingers of necessity to snatch them free.

Something nagged me about the phone call from the sister of Nona Flores. I had repeated the conversation verbatim to police. They had searched Esperanza Flores’ apartment and found nothing. She was being held downtown, but still claimed she knew nothing about the phone call. The police traced the call to my home from a pay phone outside a convenience store downtown. Esperanza Flores was across town, waiting tables at Denny’s when the call was placed.

Why would she tell me her name? If she was connected to any of the murders, and my daughter’s kidnapping why would she give me her name? And there was something about her voice, something…strange and familiar. It was as if she over-stressed the vowels, as if she were affecting an accent. ‘Sees-stur.’

“Officer Bohac? Officer? Can I bother you a moment?”

The young, clean cut man lifted his eyebrows in acquiescence.

“Could I…Could I go into my daughter’s room. Just for a…well, I want to be near her. I just want to be near her things. Is that okay?”

“Not sure, ma’am. Let me check with the Captain. Sit tight.” I spent zero time caring whether the Captain approved or not. I needed in the room. It was a physical pull.

I headed toward the stairs. Franco sat with his head sagging, but I cared little for his pain; the selfish pains of a mother so consuming as they were. Bohac had an answer it seemed, and followed me up the stairs reminding me not to touch anything if I could help it, although the entire LV crime unit had gone over my little girl’s room with a cotton swab.

“I’ll be careful. I won’t touch anything. “ I kept walking and Bohac followed.

“Okay ma’am but seriously, Captain said not to be in there long, okay?”

Sure thing, Barney…sure thing. Just get the hell outta here.

I nodded, avoiding eye contact with the young officer, slipped into Paige’s room and closed the door behind me. 

 Downstairs, the captain was just receiving word from head quarters; Miguel Sanchez was found dead in his cell, the victim of his own, self-mutilating, hand. The local news team would break the story within the hour.

********************************************

“It’s dark in here boss. Can we get some light?” The boy waited for a reply and kept his arms blindly stretched in front of him. “Boss? I need some kinda light. I can’t see a thing.”

“Just hold the **** on, would ya? Lemme get the flashlight out.”

“Hurry Boss.” The kid paused for a moment, giving the older man some time to fumble in his pack for the flash light. “So, Boss, you say there’s a lot of these iphone things in here? I mean, it’s a whole crate right? Enough to make a few grand? Cuz, you know, I’m not gonna risk going to jail for some measly coupla’ hundred bucks that I gotta split with you.” The kid cocked his head, thinking of all the things he could do with a thousand dollars.

“Kid, there’s enough of these Goddamned phones to make twenty grand. Just shut up and be still. I got the flashlight.”

And then there was light.

***********************************************************************

I sat on the edge of the Paige’s bed, taking in the clutter of the room and made note of the items that interested the police; the blue journal Paige normally kept tucked in her night table drawer, the pictures and notes from her classmates, my daughter’s laptop. Aside from adolescent gossip and teen angst, the journal was no help. The laptop had never so much as seen a chat room; a hard and fast rule in my house. Paige would lose her proverbial freedom if she ever disobeyed that rule and she knew it. For all intents and purposes, this room belonged to a typical, fourteen year old girl. I focused on the corkboard covered in photos, above my daughter’s desk.

So many smiling, unknowing faces, arms wrapped around each other. A few bunny ears. In the center, a grainy picture of her father, when he was barely twenty. A photo in the upper corner caught my eye and I squinted to see more clearly. Paige, of course, was in the center of the photo, her hand intertwined with a blonde girl’s, and just a shoulder’s length away was the young Crawford girl. The newest Ten Commandment victim.

Suddenly, I focused in on a familiar face, shadowed and caught just at the edge of the snapshot. I snatched the photo from it’s pegged position, and willed my pulse to quit beating behind my eyes. Could it be? Could that be who I think it is? Is that even possible?

Methra, my assistant, my right hand, my Girl Friday, stood just at the edge of the photo. Her eyes were pinned on the back of my daughter’s head, her face stern, somber. Her fingers were curled at her neck, as if they were clenching something. I closed my eyes, one, two, three, breathe, and opened them again, praying for clarity. I could see the gold chain around her neck, though it’s charm was hidden in her hand. It didn’t matter. I had seen it before, many times. The charm swung on the neck of my assistant every day for the last four years. I could see it now, in my mind’s eye. Two thick bands of gold, crossing each other at the top, forming a capital ‘T’, it’s ends curved downward, it’s tips pointed. A cross of sorts, not a declaration of love for some lover named Tommy or Tim or Ted, as I had always assumed. The religious classes I took at St. Stephen’s as a child held little interest for me, until now.

*****************************************************************************************

Everything the kid saw came in swooping, arcing glances of light, illuminating swatches of indescribable images. He could not scream; the vacuum of fear and repulsion and panic sucked all vocal effort from his lungs.

From his left, the Boss let out a gasp, and he steadied his hands; the beam of light focused directly in front of the pair of would-be thieves, some ten yards.

Two wooden crosses, and upon them, impaled upon them, were the naked bodies of a man and a woman. Blood seemed to cover the majority of their bodies, which, for the kid was almost a blessing as it hid the more horrific wounds. The faces of the two were frozen in death and agony. Around each of their necks, hung a wooden placard, bearing the same inscription.

The kid found his voice, let out a piercing scream and began racing back the way the two had come in, crates and boxes crashing down around him. Stealth was no longer an issue.

The Boss dropped the flashlight in his panic, and tried to follow the boy out in the dark. His heart would surely stop, he thought. He pushed into a stack of crates, and seconds later, felt the crush of bones in his left foot as the top crate came down.

“AAHHHHHHH!”

“Boss COME ON! COME ON, Oh God, Oh Jesus!”

Then, a whisper of words out the darkness stayed the older man’s screams, halted the boy’s feet.

“Boss, did you hear that?” The kid could muster only a whisper.

“Was that you kid?”

“No, you?”

Then, in the silence, a man’s voice, quiet and without emotion;

***

Four wooden crosses, four upside down.

Four Sinners nailed, for crimes against His Crown.

***

I left Paige’s room as calmly as I had entered., at least to eyes of the Barney’s that swarmed my home. I had no intention of letting them in on this puzzle piece. The last thing I needed was to be accused of insanity. Ultimately, that might make me Suspect Number One. I was connecting the dots, filling in lines to complete what was surely becoming a maze of people and coincidence. I could not find a reasonable way to explain an ancient, pagan God’s association with that of my assistant, and in conjunction, the reserve of supernatural knowing that I possessed. Something had just occurred to me, something that I had not thought of before. When my dreams resumed, the murder I witnessed was that of a woman accused of adultery. I could still see the sign around her neck, I could feel the weight of it, and it’s proclamation ‘thou shalt not commit adultery.’ In my dreams, the vision of others crucified in the same manner were there in that dank, evil place. I had looked around, taken in the death, the wooden plaques, the crosses, the coppery, biting smell of spilled blood. But the bodies of the recently found victims were all found in various locations, not in a group as my dream suggested. I took a moment to collect myself. To remember. What else had I seen?  The first murder was my boyfriends sister, Amelia. Her sign read ‘Thou shalt not covet.’  The second body found, Nona Flores, read ‘Thou shalt not bear false witness,' and the third, that poor child, ‘Thou shall honor they mother and father.’ Were their faces there, in the dark, twisted in fear on those crosses I had seen in my mind? Did I see the evil summation of this killer, as a whole?

Think. Remember. For Paige, just go there again.

I found my own bedroom quiet and somewhat dark, with dusk falling quickly outside and the curtains drawn. I wondered briefly if I had time to lay down. If I had time to try to see. The answer was obvious. This was my only chance and for once, I was determined to make this horrible and unjust gift of mine work for me.

I counted back from one hundred.

Thirty One, Thirty…

Twenty Two…

At twenty one my mind enveloped me, the ether of my subconscious a dark, deep pool that called to me, and I slipped into it effortlessly and for the first time, I welcomed Them in.

Father Preston was not wearing his collar.