Buried Innocence - A Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery - Book Thirteen (Mary O'Reilly Paranormal Mystery Series) (19 page)

The ambulance
pulled out of the driveway and flew down the road towards Galena, its siren
screaming. A moment later, a handcuffed Joey was guided out of the house to a
waiting squad car. Chris walked over to join Mary and Bradley on the lawn in
front of the house.

“He was hiding
behind the couch in the living room with a semi-automatic rifle, waiting for
us,” Chris said. “When we burst in, he let loose a volley of shots. But what he
didn’t plan on was the kickback of the gun. The first shots went wild, and the
next ones ended up in the ceiling. By the time he scrambled off his back, we
were across the room, guns drawn, and he gave up without a fight.”

Another ambulance
pulled into the driveway and drove past them and the long narrow ditch that was
filled with men and shovels.

“What happened
there?” Chris asked.

“There was a tunnel
from the house to the barn,” Mary said, taking a deep breath to steady
herself
. “A female gunman jumped out with her gun drawn and
shot the first person she saw, Police Chief Chase.”

“How’s Chase
doing?” he asked.

Bradley put his arm
around Mary and squeezed her lightly to comfort her. “The EMTs worked on her for
a while,” he said. “They were able to stabilize her before they put her in the
ambulance, so that’s a good sign. But it was a bad looking wound.”

“So what happened
to you?” he asked Mary.

“The gunman ran
back into the tunnel,” Bradley answered. “So of course, my wife had to follow.”

“I didn’t want her
jumping out on the other end, surprising you,” she said.

“Well, thank you,”
he said. “She would have had the jump on us, because once we searched the
premises for anyone else, we read Joey his Miranda rights and started asking
questions.”

He brushed some of
the dirt from Mary’s shoulder. “So, then what happened?”

“The tunnel
collapsed,” Mary said. “I was nearly at the opening.”

“Not nearly
enough,” Bradley inserted. “Luckily, closer to the barn, the tunnel was only
inches below the dirt, so I could pull her out. We’re still searching for the
gunman’s body. We don’t know where she was in the tunnel, and nearer to the house
the tunnel is closer to eight feet underground.”

Chris nodded and
looked at Mary. “Do you want to follow Chief Chase to the hospital?” he asked.

Mary shook her
head. “No, we sent one of her guys with her,” she said, reassured knowing Mike
had gone along with them too.

“I didn’t mean to
watch over her,” Chris said with a smile. “I meant would you like to go to the
hospital to be checked over?”

She shook her head.
“I hate hospitals,” she said. “Besides, we want to find the evidence to shut
this place down.”

“Okay,” Chris said,
moving past them towards the barn. “Let’s go.”

Bill was waiting
inside when Mary walked back into the barn. “I won’t be sorry if Gigi’s dead,”
he said. “Does that make me a bad person?”

Mary shook her
head. “No, that makes you human,” she replied quietly. “Now, let’s find those
panels so we can get out of here. This place gives me the creeps.”

In a matter of
minutes, Mary had called some of Chris’s technicians over to the control room
to collect several files filled with information and the hard drive.

“This is great,”
Chris said. “How did you find these panels so quickly?”

“Mary has a sixth
sense about these things,” Bradley said.

Chris smiled. “I
don’t know if I mentioned it,” he said. “But I worked with your brother Sean a
couple months ago and he told me this amazing story about his kid sister.”

Mary sighed softly.
She really didn’t feel like being judged again. “Yeah, I know what you’re
thinking,” she said, her voice tired.

“Really?” he asked.
“Because I was raised in an old house that was definitely
haunted.
I’ve seen a number of ghosts in my day. I have no problem believing
what Sean told me.”

“Thank you,” she
said. “It gets a little exhausting either having to hide what you can do or
justifying it to people who don’t believe no matter how well you perform.”

He nodded. “Yeah, I
can imagine,” he said. “Now, I know it’s been a really a long morning, but I
was wondering if you and Bradley wanted to take a walk in the woods with me so
I could make a list of some of the names of the buried.”

Bradley nodded. “It
makes it a lot easier to identify bodies if you know who you’re looking for,”
he said.

“That’s my
thinking,” Chris replied.

“Sure, I can do
that,” Mary said. “The first two people you need to put on your list are Liza
Parker, a five-year-old who had been adopted by the Larson family in Dubuque,
Iowa. We can send you the contact information.”

Mary looked over to
Bill Patterson, who had been standing next to them the whole time they’d been
speaking. “And the next is Bill Patterson, a contractor from Dubuque,” she
said. “He was the source who told us about the barn and what happened here. He
told me about the secret tunnel and probably saved my life.
 
He’s a true hero, and it would be nice if his
family knew about his heroism.”

Chris jotted down
the name. “I’ll make sure I personally handle this one,” he said.

“Thank you,” Mary
replied.

“Thank you, Mary,”
Bill said. “Thanks for letting me make amends.”

He looked over his
shoulder and then back at Mary. “The guys are here,” he said. “They’re calling
me, so I guess I can go now.”

Nodding, Mary
smiled at him. “Bill’s a great guy,” she said softly. “And his family should be
proud of him.”

“Thanks, Mary,” he
said. “Thanks a lot.”

Light filtered down
through the leaves on the trees, dappling the grass and leaf covered earth with
golden light. Mary, Bradley and Chris slowly walked through the woods trying to
find signs of makeshift graves. Birds sang in the trees, and a soft wind
whistled through the tree limbs. The sky was bright blue with a few puffy,
scattered clouds lingering lazily on the horizon.

“This doesn’t feel
like a graveyard,” Bradley said.

They followed a set
of large tire tracks that scarred the pristine ground and disappeared over a
hill about forty yards ahead.

“I think they
probably buried them over that hill,” Chris said. “Close enough to be handy but
far enough away from the house that no one would notice the constant
excavation.”

“I wonder how many
people are buried here,” Mary said. “They’ve been doing this for a number of
years.”

They reached the
rise a few minutes later, and Mary gasped, leaning against a tree. Bradley came
to her side and held her hand, wanting to see what she had seen. The small
valley looked like a construction site. Upturned raw earth was everywhere. The
trees had been plowed down to make room for pile after pile of small,
rectangular hills with small tufts of grass and weeds growing between them. However,
Mary was blind to the landscape. All she saw were the children. There were at
least thirty little girls walking together, hand in hand, slowly climbing up
from the desolate burial ground towards Mary. Facing the sunrise, the girls
were bathed in sunlight, their features indiscernible.

Seeing a thick tree
log about ten feet in front of them, Mary moved forward and sat there, hoping
to present a less threatening posture to the children. “Hello,” she said
softly. “My name is Mary, and I want to help you go home.”

From the middle of
the group, one of the girls separated herself and came forward even as the
others seemed to be wary and kept their distance.

A cloud drifted over
the morning sun, and Mary was able to see the little girl’s face more clearly.
“Liza,” she called. “I’m so happy to see you.”

Liza walked the few
more feet to Mary’s side and stared at her for a moment. “Something’s
different,” she said simply.

Mary nodded. “Yes,
we were able to catch the bad man and his wife,” she explained. “They won’t be
able to hurt little girls anymore.”

“Did God send
them?” she asked.

“No,” Mary said
vehemently, tears burning her throat. “God did not send them. God doesn’t work
like that. He works with love and compassion and patience. The bad people lied
to you. They had nothing to do with God.”

 
Liza leaned forward towards Mary’s ear and
whispered. “No one loves us. No one wants us.”

Her heart breaking
because she couldn’t hold Liza in her arms and comfort her, Mary shook her head
and met the little girl’s eyes. “I promise you that God wants you and loves
you,” she said. “He wants you to come home so He can hold you in His arms and take
away all of your pain.”

“Are you sure?” she
asked.

“I am,” Mary said
confidently. “Yes, I am.”

Liza looked
uncertain. She turned back to the girls on the hill and then looked at Mary.
“What do we need to do?” she asked.

Mary took a deep, unsteady
breath and wiped the tears from her cheeks. “Well, what I’d like you to do is
have everyone come up here and talk to me for just a few minutes so I can get
everyone’s name and any information about who their families used to be,” she
said. “And then we’ll be ready to let you go home.”

“Will it be nice?
Home?”

“Nicer than
anything you ever experienced here on earth,” she promised, knowing that
statement probably held little comfort to the child who had never had much happiness
during her short, five year stay. “And you will never have to be sad or frightened
again.”

Liza just stared at
her again and sighed in a sad, resigned manner as if she really didn’t believe
things would get better but no longer had the strength to fight. “Okay, I’ll
tell the others.”

Soon the rest of
the girls joined Liza at the top of the hill and told Mary their information. Several
of the girls didn’t speak English, but between Mary, Bradley, and Chris’s
various bits and pieces of foreign language experience they were able to get
the basic information gathered.

When the last child
had answered her questions, they all stood around the log and looked at Mary.
“What do we do now?” Liza asked.

Surprised they
hadn’t started to pass
over,
Mary was starting to
worry when Mike appeared next to her. “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered.

“Late? I don’t
understand,” she said.

“You will,” he said
sending her a quick wink as he moved into the midst of the children. “Hi, I’m
Mike, and I’m an angel. I work for God, and he sent me here to help you get
home.”

The girls didn’t
seem convinced, and some even nervously stepped away from him.

“The thing is,” he
continued, not upset by their actions. “God realizes that bad things happened
to you and that you’re frightened. And he doesn’t want you to be frightened anymore,
so he is sending an escort for each one of you to guide you back home. Look.”

Mike pointed up to
the sky, and suddenly there seemed to be a flock of white doves circling the
woods. They circled several times and then, one by one, drifted down to earth. But
before they touched down, they changed from a dove to a beautiful angel dressed
in white robes with large, white wings. The angels not only spoke in the
languages of the girls but they also looked like they were the same nationality
as the child. They greeted the children with smiles and words of comfort. Eyes
wide with awe, the children eagerly went to the angels and then, enfolded in
giant wings, they were securely taken home.

“That was
beautiful,” Mary
said,
her voice thick with emotion. “It
was perfect.”

“I’m not done yet,”
Mike replied.

And he was right.
Mary realized there was one child left. Liza.

“I asked God if I
could bring you home,” he said, squatting down next to her. “You were the hero.
You helped us discover all of the other girls who were lost, too. But if you’re
uncomfortable, I can send for another angel to come and get you.”

She studied him for
a moment and then stepped forward, wrapping her arms around his neck. Mike held
her in his arms and stood, turning to Mary. “I’ll be back,” he said, tears
running down his cheeks, “as soon as I see Liza safely home.”

Mary stood outside
the hospital room, very unsure of her welcome. “I don’t want to be here,” she
whispered to Bradley, who was standing next to her. “I hate hospitals.”

“She asked to see
you,” he whispered back. “That’s got to be a good sign.”

“Is she still
armed?” Mary asked.

Before Bradley
could answer, the door opened, and a nurse walked out. “Are you Mary?” she
asked.

“Yes,” Mary
replied.

“Thank you for
coming,” the nurse said. “She’s been pretty frantic about seeing you. You can
go in now.”

Mary grabbed
Bradley’s hand in a death-defying grip. “I need him to come in with me,” she
said, “for moral support.”

The nurse nodded and
held open the door for both of them.

Mary entered with
the same reverence she would have felt if she had been walking into a chapel. She
understood, more than most, that hospital rooms were often portals between this
life and the next. Chief Chase, no, Mary corrected herself, Chelsea lay on a
white sheet and pillowcase with a myriad of tubes and lines attached to her
body. The monitor on the left side of the bed blinked reassuringly as her heart
beat was registered in electronic cadence. An IV stand was on the right side of
her bed with several plastic bags hanging from it, all filled with various hues
of liquids flowing from the stand into her body.

She approached the
bed, not knowing what to expect. “Chelsea,” she whispered quietly. “It’s Mary.”

Eyelids fluttered
open, and Chelsea took a moment to focus on Mary’s face. “Mary,” she croaked.
“Thank you for coming.”

“Sure, no problem,”
Mary replied. “What do you need?”

“I’m sorry,”
Chelsea breathed.
“So sorry.
I saw…I saw…”

Mary nodded. “I
know you saw Mike,” she said. “He told me.”

“I saw…my…my mom,”
she said. “She died…when I was small.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry,”
Mary replied, thinking about her own mother and how she would feel if she
didn’t have her in her life. “That must have been hard.”

“I was angry,” she
continued. “If…if ghosts were real…why hadn’t…why hadn’t she come to me?”

“It doesn’t always
work that way,” Mary replied. “I’m sure she would have come if she could.”

Chelsea nodded
slowly and smiled. “She told me…told me I needed to stay. Told me she would be
watching over me.
Told me she had always been there.”

Mary nodded. “Yeah,
that’s what moms do,” she agreed.

Chelsea moved her
hand, trying to reach Mary. Mary took Chelsea’s hand in her own. “Please
forgive me,” Chelsea said.

Mary smiled down at
her. “Of course,” she replied. “Now rest and get better because I want all the
dirt on Mike so I can tease him.”

Chelsea smiled and
nodded. “You’ve got it,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

Mary slipped her
arm into Bradley’s as they walked down the hall together. “Well, I’m glad this
day is nearly over,” she said.

He glanced down at
her. “Will you promise me never to chase a cold-blooded killer into an unstable
tunnel again?” he asked.

“Yes, that’s an
experience I don’t want to repeat,” she agreed. “I’m going to find clumps of
dirt in my hair for a month.”

“Mary, I’m not ready
to joke about this yet,” he said. “When I saw the tunnel collapse around you, I
thought my life had ended.”

She paused and
looked up at him. “I would have felt the same way,” she said earnestly. “I’m
sorry I frightened you. I was only thinking about not letting her get away.”

“Um, excuse me for
interrupting.”

They both turned to
see Chris standing in the hall next to them.

“Hi,” Bradley said.
“We were just in to see Chief Chase. She’s going to recover.”

“That’s great
news,” he said. “I just wanted to let you know that the gunman, Gigi Amoretti,
was found beneath several feet of dirt in the tunnel. They tried to revive her,
but it was too late. They ended up pronouncing her dead at the scene.”

“Thanks for letting
us know,” Mary said.

“Yeah, no problem,”
Chris replied. “Thanks again for your help.”

They watched him
walk down the hall in silence. Finally Bradley spoke, “I don’t know what to say
about that,” he said. “I think it’s a fitting end to a truly evil person, but
it doesn’t seem right to celebrate anyone’s traumatic death.”

Mary nodded. “Let’s
just not think about her anymore today,” she said. “I just want to go home.”

He hugged her.
“Yeah, home sounds nice.”