Run

Run

By

B. Johnson

This book is dedicated to my sister, my best friend. She was the first one to read this and the first one to encourage me to take it however far I could. She is also the bravest person I know.

I love you,
Bloob!

Beta
read by Melanie Williams, who is an awesome friend and encouragement.

Editing by Kelly
Hartigan (XterraWeb)

editing.xterraweb.com

Prologue

Chapter 1: March 14, 7:00am – March 15, 11:30pm

Chapter 2: March 16, 7:00am – March 23, 10:25pm

Chapter 3: March 23, 10:25pm – March 24, 11:00pm

Chapter 4: March 25, 7:00am – March 28, 2:00am

Chapter 5: March 28, 2:00am – 8:20pm

Chapter 6: March 28, 8:20pm
– March29, 3:19am

Chapter 7: March 29, 6:20am – 9:43pm

Chapter 8: March 30, 9:00am – March 31, 11:00pm

Chapter 9: April 1, 5:25am – 11:54pm

Chapter 10: April 2, 8:30am – 9:30pm

Chapter 11: April 3, 5:00am – 9:23pm

Chapter 12: April 4, 5:00am – April 5, 3:23am

Chapter 13: April 5, 3:23am – April 6, 9:50am

Chapter 14: April 6, 9:50am – 11:19pm

Chapter 15: April 7, 5:30am – 5:30pm

Chapter 16: April 7, 5:30pm – April 8, 4:43am

Chapter 17: April 8, 4:43am – 4:57am

Chapter 18: April 8, 5:57am – 10:35am

Chapter 19: April 8, 10:35am – 3:28pm

Chapter 20: April 8, 3:58pm – April 9, 5:12am

Chapter 21: April 9, 5:12am – 5:48am

Epilogue: 6 months later

Prologue

1992

It’s i
ronic really, the chain of events that led me here, kneeling in the dirt with a gun to my head.

My tale of woe, if I can be so bold as to call it that, started innocently enough. It started with spelling words and dinner.

As a student I was smart but a horrible speller. (Dyslexia will do that to you.) In order to get me through my spelling test every week, my mother, who naturally was a school teacher, worked with me every night on my spelling words. While I sat at the table working on my spelling, she watched the news and made dinner. It would not be an understatement to say it was the least favorite part of my day. I would sit at the kitchen table wanting to be outside or really just about anywhere else, and write out my words for the week ten times each, then in a sentence, then test myself with flashcards.

Certain, certain, certain
. I am certain I do not want to be doing this.
However, however, however
. However, I don’t have a choice…

“
Earlier today, police in Cherry Hill responded to a call from local kids at the park…”

Balance
, balance, balance.
What sentence could I use for balance…? The seal balanced a ball on his nose. Stupid but it would work.

“…the body of an unidentified female adolescent was discovered…”

My attention was caught. Spelling words forgotten.

“…sources say the victim was raped and tortured before she was murde
red. Her body was mutilated. Police are asking that anyone…”

What
? The words of the newscaster left me feeling unsettled. I knew something bad had happened; for the first time, the world was scary. I knew enough to put that together, but the why left me shaken. Why would someone kill a girl?

“I don’t get it
, Mom, what happened?”

Once my mom realized I was talking about the news, the TV was turned off and I was redirected back to my spelling words.
I bent back over my spelling words while my mind whirled. I knew there was something different about this story. The unknown girl stuck in my head.

Chapter 1
: March 14, 7:00am – March 15, 11:30pm

20 years later

Beep, beep, beep. I swatted blindly for my alarm clock. Morning is not my best time of day. Pretty much every morning at seven, I hit the snooze until the whining of my dog reminds me that I should be a responsible pet owner and get up to let Max out. Fifteen minutes later, in sweats and a hoodie, I greet the morning with a grumble and my dog at my side.

Max
is a great dog. Two years ago, I went to the shelter with a vague idea of what I wanted - something big, something sweet, something that wouldn’t eat my nine-year-old calico. Instead, I found Max. He was sitting in the far corner of his cage. When I crouched down and talked to him, his tail gave a quick wave, but he didn’t budge from his corner. I fell in love. A week later, I brought him home from the shelter, and he has rarely left my side since.

That morning
, just like every morning, Max was energetic and eager to walk and play. Much more eager than I was. Not only was I not a morning person, but this particular week I was feeling the pressure of my book contract. I had two published books, both doing moderately well. Now with a contract for my third book, I felt a little overwhelmed. Consequently, I was far behind where I expected to be. I had started and rejected multiple stories; now my editor was expecting several chapters and I had nothing to show her. As Max and I headed back into my second floor condo, it was with story scenarios swirling in my head. I had to get writing done today. I just didn’t know what I would be writing about.

Back inside
, Max settled down next to me and Kitty, my calico, perched on my lap. Kitty is truly a horrible name for a cat. Like Max, Kitty was a rescue and by the time she came to me she already knew her name. Consequently, I am stuck with a cat with the most embarrassing name ever. Embarrassing name or not, Kitty is my baby, and with her on my lap I started to work by staring resolutely at my computer screen. This was it, I wasn’t moving until I had a story started. Three hours later the cursor blinking from a blank page mocked me. I had nothing.

I wasted time writing things that I knew wouldn’t go anywhere. The story about the mermaid who wanted to be human
… already done. A boy discovers something magical living under his bed … yeah, I am so not a children’s writer … I mean, seriously, something magical? Pathetic. Ohh, I know, a western school teacher … teaches? No good. I justified my pathetic ideas by telling myself that at least I was writing, right? Okay, truth, I had nothing. My day wasn’t totally wasted; I mean I organized my shoes, watered my plants, okay my one plant, called my BFF. By three, I hadn’t written a single usable word.

To be honest
, I am not sure what gave me the idea. One minute I was staring at a blank screen, the next I was typing away. I remembered this news story from when I was young. A news story that had stuck with me all of this time. A story that was shocking and sick and made me realize the world wasn’t safe. A young girl murdered, her nipple removed, the murderer never caught. The vague concept of a story started to form. Two hours later I had a prologue completed.

After a brief break
… where I realized the dog was dying to go out … I reviewed what I had written and decided what the story needed was more detail. I dove into the Internet to find out all I could about a twenty-year-old murder.

________

By 9:30 the next morning I was still searching. My Google skills had failed me. I couldn’t find anything about a murder in Camden County, New Jersey in the 1990s. I found nothing. I tried searching for murders in the 1990s, murders of adolescent girls, murders in Camden County. Still nothing. Frustrated, I was tempted to throw in the towel and rely on my imagination to complete the story cooking in my mind. Something drove me to keep on … something inside me wanted answers.

Then I stumbled onto a collection of websites that would give me much more than I had bargained for. A collection of websites that listed unsolved murders by state. I found my gi
rl. A sixteen-year-old girl, 5’ 2”, 108 pounds, named Emily Carmichael. Emily. Her brown eyes stared out at me from my computer screen. Emily. She would have been 33 if she had lived, two years older than me. She was killed in May of 1992. Her killer had never been found. I was shocked. I had gone looking for the murder I remembered. Just a story, nameless, faceless. What I found was a girl. It wasn’t just a story anymore. My story had a name and a face. She looked so young and somehow so innocent. Emily. I felt connected to her. I can’t explain it, only that somehow the fact that I remembered her news story from when I was a child and the fact that I was now looking at her face made this personal. I had to know more.

H
ours later I sat back in my seat, shocked. Emily wasn’t alone.

________

I had found so many unsolved murders. I expected that. What I didn’t expect was all of the lost girls. Girls just like Emily. When I had typed “unsolved murder New Jersey” into the search engine I did not expect the list of victims to contain so many young girls, so many just like Emily. I couldn’t help but feel the need to find out more for them all. To find out what had happened to these girls.

The ringing of my phone broke my concentration. To be honest
, I don’t know that anything else could have, but the annoying “Droid” ring of my phone is nearly impossible to ignore. In a move totally against my character, I picked up my cell from where it was laying next to me and answered by rote, not even looking at the caller ID.

“Char,
how are you sweetie? I wanted to make sure we were still on for dinner tonight?”

My mother, as per usual,
did not pause in the conversation to actually get an answer, but got straight to the point. In other words, I better have remembered dinner tonight.

In truth
, I had forgotten. I was so buried in the world of Emily that time and the outside world had ceased to exist. My mother’s voice intruding here was somehow shocking. Shocking enough to jolt me back to reality. I glanced at the clock. It was 5:15. Close, but I could still get ready and be at the restaurant by 6.

“Of course I remembered
Mom; I’m looking forward to it.” Lie, lie, lie, lie.

“All right darling I’ll see you soon. Don’t forget to bring the casserole dish I gave you leftovers in, I need it for a
potluck at church.”

“I won’t
, Mom; see you soon.”

I hung up the phone. Looking back at the computer
, my obsession seemed strange and macabre. I was almost embarrassed to think that I had spent the whole day researching the death of a girl I never knew. I rationalized to myself that I at least had a working idea for my book. I saved what I had written and without really thinking about it, saved my internet searches, closed down my computer and started to get ready.

At 6
:00 on the dot I was at the restaurant, casserole dish in hand, wearing mom-approved clothing of a casual skirt, tank, cardigan, and flip-flops. I spotted my mother sitting at a table dressed in a button-down top and slacks. No matter when I meet her, she is always there first. No matter what I wear, it is never the right outfit.

“Sweetheart
, it is so good to see you wearing a nice bright color.” A subtle dig about my love for the color black. Right now, attired in a brightly colored skirt and a pink tank and cardigan set, I am out of my comfort zone. My mother embraced me with the familiar scent of Gardenias. Gardenias and petal pink nail polish are my mother’s signatures. It is one of the many things she does not understand about me. I have never had a signature anything. I tried, but I always end up getting bored with one particular scent or color except of course for black - I should take just a minute to note that I don’t wear black in a trendy, hipster sort of way. No I just tend to avoid color. My mother pulled back with a cheery smile. She loves me dearly, she just doesn’t understand me, but then I don’t understand her, so I guess we are even. We both try though, so that has to mean something.

When I was a child
, I used to imagine that I was adopted and that somewhere out there I had parents who were just like me (internal, moody, intellectual, thoughtful). Looking across the table, I wonder how I could have ever thought that. My mother and I look so much alike there is no mistaking the relationship. Same blond hair, same blue eyes, and the same oval face with unfortunate round cheeks. Same mouth with full lips and a slight overbite. Main difference? My mom is a petite and slender 5’3”, 115 pounds. I often feel like a giant next to her. I am not that much taller at 5’5” – but the difference between her 115 and my 140 seems huge. If I say anything about my weight, my mom is always happy to give me advice on losing weight.

Over a dinner of pasta
for me,
what can I say I love carbs
, and a light salad without dressing for her, we both try to communicate around the landmines of differences between us. Politics, religion, emotions are all hot topics. So we stick to general topics like cleaning. Apparently, vinegar will keep those pesky ants I get every year from bothering me again this year, who knew. In the midst of the polite conversation, I find myself wanting to talk to her about today, about Emily. Despite our differences she is my mom, and I feel the need for her to know about what I found and how it captivated me.