Buried Innocence - A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery - Book Thirteen (Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series) (17 page)

It was Mary’s turn
to say goodnight to Clarissa. She and Bradley had learned that if each of them
took turns with her, she was able to share different concerns with each of them
as they had some one on one time with her. Clarissa was nearly
asleep,
the tiny kitten snuggled into her pillow purring
loudly.

“This has been the
best day ever,” a sleepy Clarissa yawned. “I love Lucky.”

“And it seems that
she loves you right back,” Mary said, stroking the kitten. “I think it was very
lucky indeed that Grandpa found her, for both of you.”

Clarissa nodded
happily. “I’m never going to believe in bad luck again,” she said decisively.
“Lucky is a black cat, and she is just perfect.”

“Yes she is,” Mary
agreed. “Just like you.”

They sat in silence
for a moment, and then Clarissa turned in her bed and looked at Mary. “Is your
job dangerous?” she asked, a wrinkle line of worry appearing on her forehead.

Pondering for a
moment before she responded, Mary debated whether truth was better than peace
of mind. “Well, most of the time my job is very safe,” she said. “I research
things on my computer. I talk to people and I help solve problems. But there
are circumstances that are riskier than others, so for those times I make sure
I take precautions and am very careful.”

“But it’s
dangerous?” Clarissa repeated.

Mary nodded. “Yes,
sometimes it can be dangerous. Why do you ask?”

“Mrs. Fuller from
down the street was visiting Mrs. Brennan today,” Clarissa said. “We were
playing, so she didn’t think we were listening.”

Mary shook her
head. Children, she had learned, were always listening.

 
“She said that she wondered how you and Daddy
could both have such dangerous jobs,” Clarissa continued. “How you could risk
your lives when you had a child at home to take care of.”

“Well, what do you
think about what she said?” Mary asked, knowing that was the only important
part of this conversation.

“Sometimes I get
scared that I’m going to be alone again,” Clarissa admitted. “That you and
Daddy are going to die.”

Mary placed her
hand on Clarissa’s head and gently stroked her hair. “Those are pretty scary
thoughts, aren’t they?” she asked. “Should we think about some other things
that might make you feel better when you have those kinds of thoughts?”

“What kind of
things?” she asked.

“Well, let’s see,”
Mary replied. “First, let’s talk about the ‘you being alone again’ part. Did
you know that your daddy and I have talked to a lawyer and have made a plan
that if anything ever happens to us, you will not be alone?”

Clarissa shook her
head.

“Well, we have a
list of people whom we have asked to take care of you in case that ever
happens,” Mary said. “Your grandparents are on that list,
your
Uncle Sean, the Brennans, Stanley and Rosie, and even Ian.”

“Ian?” Clarissa
asked. “Even he would take care of me?”

“He said he was
honored that we asked him,” Mary said and then added in her best Ian accent,
“and he would take his little darling and protect her with his life.”

Clarissa smiled
broadly. “I love Ian.”

Mary laughed and
placed a kiss on Clarissa’s forehead. “Now, don’t get any ideas about leaving
us for Ian,” she teased. “And, of course, you have Mike who is your guardian
angel, and he will be there to watch over you and protect you. And he loves you
very much.”

She smiled
contentedly. “I love Mike, too,” she said.

“So now, let’s talk
about the dangerous part,” Mary said. “Both your father and I have been trained
to do our jobs. Most days our jobs are just about helping people, but some days
we have to deal with bad people. Then it’s a little trickier. But, we are very
careful. We don’t take risks because we have a sweet daughter waiting for us at
home, and we want her to be safe with us.”

Clarissa yawned
again, her body relaxing into her bed. “So, I’m safe, and you’re safe,” she
whispered, her eyes slowly closing.

“Exactly,
sweetheart,” Mary whispered back. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,”
she murmured sleepily.

Mary kissed her
once more then stood and walked over to the door. “Goodnight, pumpkin,” she
said, turning off the light.

“Night, Mom,” was
the soft, nearly inaudible response.

Mary stepped
outside the bedroom and closed the door softly.

“Nice job,” Mike
whispered as he appeared next to her.

“Thanks,” she
replied. “It’s hard being a child, isn’t it?”

Mike nodded. “But I
bet it’s just as hard being a parent.”

She shook her head,
thinking about all the “parents” Liza had encountered over her short life. “No,
it’s not hard being a parent,” she said. “It’s hard being a good parent. But
it’s worth it.”

“How’s she doing?”
Bradley asked, meeting her at the foot of the stairs.

“Well, she had some
questions about our jobs,” Mary said. “Mrs. Fuller visited Katie today and
expressed her concern about both of us having such dangerous jobs with a child
at home.”

“Isn’t it nice to
have a neighbor who cares enough about your business to share it with others?”
Margaret asked with a smile.

“Well, she could
have just been concerned,” Mary said.

“Aye, and if she
were really concerned, she would have come to see you and expressed her worry,
not your neighbor,” Margaret replied. “What she wanted was a wee bit of gossip
to go with her tea.”

“So, how’s
Clarissa?” Bradley asked. “Should I go up there and talk to her?”

Mary placed her
hand on Bradley’s arm and stopped him from dashing up the stairs. “She’s fine.
Actually, she was just falling off to sleep when I left her,” she said. “I told
her that she would never be alone again, even if something were to happen to
us. I let her know who we’d listed as potential guardians for her and reminded
her that Mike would always be there for her.”

She smiled at Bradley.
“Although we might have to worry about her trading us in for a flashier,
sexier, Scottish model,” she said.

“So, you told her
Ian was on the list,” Bradley chuckled.

“Don’t see what
that foreigner’s got that I don’t got,” Stanley muttered from across the room.

Rosie secretly
winked at Mary and Bradley, and then turned to Stanley. “Neither do I,
sweetheart,” she reassured him. “Neither do
I
.”

“And then I told
her that our jobs were mostly about helping people, but sometimes they could be
dangerous,” Mary added. “But when they are, we take special care.”

“Speaking of
special care,” Margaret inserted, “Bradley was just telling us about the raid
tomorrow morning.”

Expecting a
lecture, Mary inhaled swiftly, turned and smiled at her mother. “Yes?” she
asked, praying inwardly for patience.

“If
it’s
fine with you, I thought I’d spend the day with
Clarissa, perhaps take her out to breakfast,” her mother suggested. “And if
you’re with Bradley, I’d love to drive your Roadster. That way neither of us
will be sitting around worrying about you.”

Gratitude filled
her heart, and blinking back tears, she crossed the room and slipped onto the
couch next to her mother and into her arms. “Thank you, Mom,” she said.

“Ah, there’s my
girl,” her mother crooned, comforting her adult child. “You’re doing a fine job
being a mother. You handled Clarissa’s concerns perfectly. I’m proud of you.”

Lifting up her
head, she sent her mom a watery smile. “I’m so emotional right now,” she
confessed, wiping her cheeks. “I cry at the drop of a hat.”

“It was the same
with me,” her mother said. “You’re father got so used to it, one time before we
had a conversation he pulled a pile of tissues out of the box and handed them
to me.”

Mary chuckled. “And
how did that go over?” she asked.

“I threw the
tissues, the box and a few other things at the big, insensitive lout,” she
replied with a laugh. “And then I cried, and he brought me more tissues.”

“Men,” Rosie said.

“Exactly,” Mary and
Margaret agreed.

Bradley turned to
Stanley. “What do you say we go do the dishes or something safe like that?” he
suggested.

Looking around at
the women and then back at Bradley, he nodded. “Yeah, being a husband is a
dangerous job
iffen
you ask me.”

Gigi poured herself
another glass of scotch and tossed it down, delicately wiping the excess from
the corners of her mouth. “You did well today, Joey,” she said, placing the
shot glass down next to the half-full bottle. “And by that I mean you weren’t
your usual, incompetent self.”

Giggling, she
tottered sideways and quickly righted herself by grabbing hold of the back of
an overstuffed chair. Holding tightly, she followed it around and finally
slipped into it, laying her legs over the arms. “I’m in such a good mood,
Joey,” she said, kicking her feet and lifting her arms over her head in a
stretch.
“Such a great mood.”

Suddenly, she
turned to him and smiled. “Find me something to kill, okay Joey?”

It was nearly
midnight, and Joey had driven back and forth to Quincy that day, a total of
about seven hours of driving. He was sitting on the couch in his boxers and a
t-shirt with a bottle of beer in his hand, and he didn’t want to go out.

“Gigi, darling,” he
said. “We don’t have anything for you to kill. We’ll have to go out tomorrow
and get something new.”

“How about goats?”
she asked. “We got goats, right?”

He shook his head.
“No, you took care of them last week, remember?” he said. “You got upset about
something and went out and killed all four of them.”

She sighed. “Oh,
yeah, I remember,” she said. “And I did it so fast it wasn’t even fun.”

“Well, tomorrow
we’ll have the new little girl,” he enticed. “And that will be so much fun.”

She sighed and
dropped her feet down. “It’s not that fun,” she said. “You get to do all the
fun parts. All I get to do is watch and film. It would be so much more fun to
get my hands on her.”

Turning again, a
smile of desire in her eyes, she looked at Joey. “How about if we change places
tomorrow?” she asked. “You could film, and I could have fun?”

“Well, sweetie,
what do you think our viewers would think of that?” he asked, knowing the
answer. “Would they like a little woman on girl sport?”

Shaking her head,
she sighed. “No, the bastards, they like to pretend they’re you,” she
complained. “They’d be furious.”

She turned away
from Joey and pressed her head into the back cushions of the chair. “Joey,” she
whimpered. “Can we get some kittens next week?”

“Yes, darling,” he
said. “I’ll check in the free papers and see if there
are
any being offered.”

She turned around
to look at him again. “Can’t we just go to the pound again?”

He shook his head.
“No, darling, they are getting suspicious,” he said. “We’ve adopted our limit
with them.”

“Why do people have
to be so suspicious?” she cried petulantly. “Why don’t they just let us do what
we want?”

“Perhaps we could
leave for Quincy a little early tomorrow and see if they have an animal
shelter,” Joey suggested.

She scooted around
in the chair, wrapping her arms around her legs and slowly rocking back and
forth in the chair. “Oh, Joey, that would be so fun,” she said, her words
gently slurring together. “You would do that for me?”

Joey stood up,
walked across the room to her chair and helped her up. “Of course I would do
that for you,” he said as he wrapped his arm around her waist and guided her
toward their bedroom. “You know I would do anything for you.”

She cuddled into
him. “Thank you, Joey,” she said. “And, if you want, after we kill the little
girl, you can help me kill the kitten.”

The predawn
activity in the parking lot at the Jo Daviess County Courthouse was as low
profile as possible, with vehicles from various local law enforcement agencies
quietly pulling into the parking spaces and their occupants
discreetly
walking
from the vehicles to the basement door that led to a small
conference room.

Coffee and donuts
seemed to be the mainstay of most law enforcement missions, and this one was
like countless others Mary had participated in. She skipped the coffee, opting
instead for a carton of milk, and then walked over to peruse the donuts, hoping
for a chocolate glazed, Bavarian-cream-filled, long john.

Just as she spotted
one and picked up a napkin to reach for it, a familiar voice rang out behind
her. “What the hell is she doing here?”

Mary grabbed the
donut and turned to face Chief Chase, who was not, by any stretch, happy to see
her.

“Morning, Chief,”
Mary said politely. “Good to see you again.”

“You do know that
being married to a law enforcement official does not make you an honorary
member of the team,” she said.

Ouch, Mary thought.
No wonder Mike
never
called you back.

“Wow, thanks,” Mary
replied. “I’ll have to let Bradley know.”

She glanced around
to find her husband and saw him speaking with Chris Thorne, the FBI agent who
was leading the raid. “I’ll tell him as soon as he’s done meeting with Chris,”
Mary said with another pleasant smile. “Have a donut. It seems like you could
use the sugar.”

She was just about
to walk away when Chris called everyone to attention. “I want to thank you all
for agreeing to work with us today,” he said. “Our number one priority is to
stop an international child pornography source. We not only need to arrest the
suspects but we also need to conduct a thorough search throughout the compound
to discover and confiscate evidence.”

There was a quick
wave of surprised murmurs as local law enforcement heard that something as
diabolical as a child pornography source was within their borders. Chris
allowed them a moment and then called them back to order. “I’d like to give
some time to the person whose investigation has led us to the best lead we’ve
had in years,” Chris said. “I’d like to introduce you to a former, decorated,
Chicago police officer and now a law enforcement consultant, Mary O’Reilly
Alden.”

Mary sent an
apologetic grimace towards Chief Chase. “I’ll mention something to Chris, too,”
she murmured before walking to the front of the room, leaving a slightly
astonished chief of police in her wake.

“Thank you, Chris,”
she said when she got to the front of the room. “I’m going to just take a quick
minute to give you an overview of the situation. We have a couple who have
posed as a minister and his wife. Several independent sources will testify that
these two have been culpable in the re-homing or underground adoption of a
number of female children. We know of at least two situations where the child
has been used in a live web stream of a pornographic nature and then, during
the broadcast, murdered. These snuff films are not only illegal but also brutal
and unconscionable. Our source tells us that there is a barn behind the main
house that has been converted to a high-tech film studio. We are hoping there
is some evidence out there including computer hard drives, DNA evidence and
props for the films. We also have information that many of the children have
been buried in the woods behind the barn. So once the area is secure, we should
bring in forensics to identify the bodies.”

The room was
totally silent, each man and woman reaching into their training and experience
to mentally prepare for the raid. They had no idea exactly what they would be
walking into, and they didn’t want to be surprised.

“Are there any
questions?” Mary asked.

Chief Chase raised
her hand. “Who are your sources?” she
asked,
a hint of
skepticism in her voice.

Mary met her eyes,
understanding the challenge. “I’m sorry,” she said evenly. “Because of the risk
involved with this case, the names have to be kept confidential.”

Chief Chase kept
her eyes trained on Mary and shook her head slightly enough that Mary knew she
wasn’t satisfied with the answer, but for the sake of the assignment, she
wouldn’t say anything else.

Chris stepped up,
gave everyone a copy of the address, an aerial view of the property and divided
the group into two teams, one that would go into the house and the other into
the barn. “Once again, I’m grateful to you for your willingness to work with
the FBI on this raid,” Chris said. “I’ll be lead car, followed by Chief Alden
from Freeport. My car will lead Team A to the house; Alden will lead Team B to
the barn. Be alert, be smart and be safe. Let’s go.”