Shattered Secrets (29 page)

30

T
ess felt a small, gentle hand brushing her hair from her face. Her head hurt horribly. Where was she?

Then she remembered. She opened her eyes. Sandy Kenton was bent over her, her little face wet with tears.

“Is she gone?” Tess asked.

“Miss Etta carried Mama Sybil downstairs to put her to bed. She said Mr. Mean would hurt me if I talked to you, but I just want to ask one thing.”

Tess groaned and struggled to sit up. Her hands were still tied behind her back and her feet were bound again. Only Sandy’s hands were tied, but the girl was tethered to the empty wheelchair, which she’d dragged close enough to reach Tess.

“Ask me,” Tess said, trying to sound calm and quiet when she wanted to sob and scream. “I’m your friend. My name is Tess.”

“Do you know my mommy?”

“Yes. Yes, I know her, and she wants you to come home.”

“I can’t go home. I can’t even say it or Mr. Mean—”

“I know because they kept me here too once, but I got away from them and Mr. Mean and went home to my mommy. And you can too, if you help me.”

“But Mama Sybil is my other mommy now.”

“Mama Sybil isn’t real. Have you seen her walk and talk since you’ve been here?”

“No, she’s always like that, a big doll. But I have to say she’s real.”

“Sandy, turn your back to my back and let me try to untie you. Then you untie me so we can both go home. Your mommy and daddy want you to come home with me. Come on now, turn around back to back, okay? We might not have much time.”

“We don’t. Miss Etta said soon you are going to go to sleep with someone named Jill and some pioneer people, her family.”

Tess steeled herself to stay calm. Jill really was dead and buried out back. “Okay, good job, Sandy,” Tess said, as the child got close enough that she could begin to fumble with her ties. But her own hands were bound so tight she couldn’t grasp a cord to loosen Sandy’s. Maybe she should have studied the knots before trying to undo them. At least Sandy’s hands were small and sweaty and not tied quite as tight as her own.

As she tried to loosen the girl’s ties, Tess spoke to her about the two searches for her, told her that the police would give back the Barbie doll she left behind. Tess fought the worst headache she’d ever had and prayed that Etta Falls, who must be digging another grave, would not come back in time.

Finally she managed to free one of the child’s hands, and then they both popped free.

“Sandy, turn around and see if you can untie my hands.”

“I have scissors I cut out paper dolls with, but they don’t have sharp points.”

“Yes, get them. Try sawing at my ties. Hurry, please.”

“But they’re in the corner with Mr. Mean.”

“Mr. Mean isn’t real, and I won’t let him hurt you. Let’s run away from here and go see your mommy and daddy! Hurry, honey, please!”

She scurried away but was back fast, sawing away at Tess’s wrist bonds. “Miss Etta shoots her old guns out in back sometimes. I hear them go
bang!
”

Tess tried to stretch the ropes as the girl cut and sawed. Her hands were completely numb. She heard the slam of a door downstairs—surely not the gunshot Sandy had mentioned. Miss Etta must be back in the house.

“Sandy, never mind that. Try to cut my leg ties. Hurry. Saw at them while I stretch them,” Tess urged the child as footsteps echoed on the stairs. Tess knew this sort of scissors well, good only for cutting colored construction paper. This wasn’t going to work.

“Listen to me, Sandy. I want you to go over behind the door Miss Etta will come through. Hide behind it and keep really quiet when she opens it. I’ll do something to get her attention, and then you run down the stairs and outside. Can you open the downstairs door if it’s locked?”

“It’s dark outside.”

“But if we can’t both run, you have to get away. That’s what I did and someone found me, took me home to my mommy. Can you do that?”

“I don’t want to go without you. Miss Etta said you and me can be next to her pioneer family. I don’t want to be there alone.”

Tess was not only panicked but furious. She yanked at her fraying bonds in a frenzy. The footsteps stopped and Sandy kept cutting. Maybe Miss Etta had gone to the second floor to visit her mother, if she was an invalid. But Tess had the surest feeling Sybil Falls was dead. Miss Etta had probably buried the old woman out back and told no one. She couldn’t bear to let the past go and tried to hold on to it any way she could.

Suddenly the ties around her legs gave way! Jumping up on numb feet, Tess stumbled like a drunk, almost lost her balance. Pulling Sandy tight to her, they huddled together behind the door.

“Listen to me now, honey,” Tess whispered. “When she opens this door, don’t hold on to me. I’m going to hit the door back into her. Maybe knock her gun away, maybe even push her down the stairs. Then I’ll get on my knees and you get on my back like playing horsey.”

Wide-eyed, the child nodded solemnly.

“Okay, then. When we play horsey, you try to wrap your legs around me. But if you can’t because of my tied hands, you just stand on the ropes between my wrists. But there is just one rule. When you put your arms around me for the ride downstairs and outside, don’t grab my neck so I can’t breathe. Okay? Promise? And—if I fall, or something bad happens to me, you run fast away from here and hide in the cornfield until daylight when a car comes by. Make sure Miss Etta doesn’t find you.”

“I’m afraid of cornfields at night. Scarecrows can be in them.”

“I know, but don’t let her find you again. If you see a car going by, you yell your name to them, say that they should call the sheriff. Okay? Promise?” she repeated as the footsteps sounded on the stairs again.

Making a little X on her chest, the child whispered, “Cross my heart and hope to die.”

* * *

Gabe thought Melanie Parkinson’s voice was calm, almost soothing. He was sure she must have been a comfort to little Teresa years ago. Had his father even known the child had been counseled at church? That information was never recorded, and he wondered if it could have been some sort of help.

“I’m asking you to think back twenty years to the Lockwood kidnap case,” he said to Mrs. Parkinson after he explained the situation.

“The so-called Cold Creek kidnapper. Yes, I remember the events and little Teresa Lockwood well. She’d been brutalized and terrified, so much so it had changed her personality. Inward, shy, afraid, when her mother said she’d been so bold and outgoing before that.”

“What would help me now,” he said without explaining Tess was missing again—it pained him to even say it—“is if you can recall anything specific she might have said about the place she was held or the person who held her. Anything!”

“Yes, all right. Several of her drawings we did for therapy were of a room with a deer head on the wall and a huge, oversize window. I assume she was wishing she could have gone out it, or that might have been how she actually escaped, because she was iffy on that. Out the window, she drew small gravestones.”

“She recently recalled that view. Anything else?”

“She once drew a scarecrow and then crayoned through it with near violence. Oh, and for such a young child, I think she referred to the cemetery once as a pioneer cemetery.”

Gabe sat up straight. He knew of only two in the area, one in the very back of the Glen Rest Cemetery outside town, but the only place Tess could have seen that from was the caretaker’s house. Clemment Dixon was surely no kidnapper, and he’d been in the hospital in Chillicothe when Tess was taken. And the other such cemetery—a little, old, one-family graveyard—was behind the Falls house on Blackberry Road.

A chill raced up Gabe’s spine. It didn’t seem possible and yet... The library was just two doors down from the shop where Sandy had disappeared. That old rattletrap of a bookmobile was always parked out back. Tess recalled the sounds of trains and the waterfall...but that cemetery was the thing.

“Sheriff, are you there? I just thought of something else. Teresa’s mother told me she didn’t like to read, didn’t like to be read to, but several of her drawings had rows of books on shelves lining the walls and—”

“Thanks, Melanie. You’ve been a big help, maybe more than you know. I’ll call back later.”

Disconnecting his phone, he leaped from behind his desk. It couldn’t be, and yet it made horrible sense. “Peg,” he shouted as he ran down the hall, strapping on his gun belt. “Call Agent Reingold and Jace. Tell them no lights, no sirens, park on the road, but they need to meet me at the Falls house on Blackberry Road.”

“But I didn’t get a 911 from her—”

“Now!”

* * *

Tess heard the chain rattle loose on the other side of the door. Sandy was holding on to her, but it was too late to remind her not to cling to her when Miss Etta stepped in.

The door opened. “I’m back,” she sang out. Tess could see her through the crack between the door and the frame as it opened, as the librarian stepped up to their level.

Tess threw herself against the door. It slammed shut. She heard the woman scream, bounce down the stairs, but how far? And what about the gun?

Tess turned her back to the door, grabbed the old knob, twisted it and opened the door. Miss Etta lay on the second-floor landing, looking stunned. In the dim stairwell, Tess couldn’t tell if she had the pistol or not, or even if she was conscious.

“Get on my back,” Tess told Sandy, bending down. “Horsey time.”

The child obeyed. She was heavier than Tess had expected. At least she could stick her skinny legs between Tess’s ribs and her tied arms. Trying to flee, desperate not to fall, Tess started down the steps just as Miss Etta moved, tried to right herself.

Tess kept going. The woman had the pistol, raised it and pointed it. They would never dodge a bullet in this narrow space. At least Sandy was behind her, so Tess would take the shot, but that could still leave both of them buried out back.

Scraping her shoulder along the stairwell wall, Tess rushed toward Miss Etta, tried to brace herself with the extra weight behind her and kicked at the woman. The pistol went off, but the gun fell to the floor. Tess waited for the pain but felt nothing. Leaning against the staircase wall, she kicked at Miss Etta again to get her out of the way, then edged past her and fled.

Down, turn, down, turn. No doubt the back door would be locked. It was, but the old skeleton-type key was in it. “Get down, get down!” she told Sandy. “I have to turn that key so we can get outside.”

She nearly dumped the girl on the hall floor, turned her back and fumbled with the lock. But she heard footsteps on the stairs. Miss Etta could still have the gun, or did those old ones only have one bullet?

Her hands behind her back, Tess twisted the key, then the knob. The door opened. Sandy clung to her waist. The storm door was locked, a small sliding lock.

“You come back, you bad girls!” Mama Sybil’s deep voice came from above. “I’ll have to smack and shoot you both!”

Please, Lord,
Tess prayed.
Please get us out of this madhouse!

She was going to kick out the glass. No running into the house, where Miss Etta could trap them. Tied like this, there was no way she could use a phone or get out another door. She was going to leave this place forever, one way or the other. Miss Etta’s footsteps and Mama Sybil’s voice came closer. Sandy started to wail. It almost took Tess back twenty years, but she fought the fear. She heaved her shoulder into the glass, but bounced back. She had to get Sandy away, run into the safety of the cornfield...

Miss Etta, bloody and disheveled, stumbled down the last few stairs. It looked like another pistol in her hand as the woman bounced off the wall and almost fell. She raised the gun, pointed it at Tess and fired—but the only sound was a
click.

Tess turned to the glass door, lifted her foot and kicked repeatedly at it. It cracked, crunched and finally shattered, leaving only the frame. Miss Etta righted herself, came closer and grabbed the screaming child, but Tess shoved and elbowed her away.

“Get outside!” Tess screamed at Sandy.

“I have more guns!” Miss Etta said, in her own voice. “I’ll get my other guns!” She didn’t run back upstairs but down the hall.

When Sandy seemed frozen in fear, Tess stepped through the opening, then said, calmly, quietly, “Sandy, come out now. We are going to see your mommy.”

The girl shuffled to the door. “It’s dark and if I run away, Mr. Mean will get me.”

“No, Mr. Mean is in the house, and he will get you if you don’t come out! Take a big, big giant step out. We are going home!”

The child finally obeyed. Tess yearned to be able to lift her, hold her, but there was no time to even get her on her back again. Tess looked behind them. Miss Etta stood silhouetted by the inside light in the open, broken door, holding another pistol. Tess and Sandy ran toward the field behind the graveyard with its old stones like broken teeth.

The cornfield was a sanctuary, instead of a site that would have terrified her just a few days ago. They’d made it only a few rows in when the entire area seemed bathed with light.

“Police! Don’t move! Put that down, Miss Etta!” Gabe’s voice shouted.

There was a gunshot. More men’s voices.

“She shot herself!” Gabe cried out. “I’m going into the house to find them!”

“Gabe!” Tess shouted. “Sandy and I are here in the field!”

With the child clinging to her waist so hard she had to drag her, Tess walked from the shelter of the cornfield, feeling free for the first time since she could remember. Three big beams of light lit her way, almost blinded her, but she saw Gabe, Vic and Jace Miller, guns drawn. Tess walked right into Gabe’s crushing embrace. “Jill?” he asked.

“Dead, I think. The cemetery—not sure who else, but I bet you’ll find Sybil Falls there too, when no one knew she was dead. Miss Etta was digging my grave.”

He cut Tess’s ties, then kneeled to look at Sandy with his hands on her shoulders. “We’ll take you home,” he told the child. “Your mother and father are going to be so happy.” He stood and looked at Tess, lifted his hand to finger the huge, tender scab on her head. “Maybe we can be happy too,” he whispered before he turned back to Vic.