Hallowed (35 page)

The anger on Claudia’s face faded and was replaced with something much more vulnerable.

I could have kicked myself for drudging that up.  In my own awkward way, I attempted to redirect the conversation.  “You just gave us the first real proof we might have to connect him to the murders.  At the very least, it bought my Dad a search warrant.”

She slumped forward, staring down at her hands.  “Just a few days sooner.”

“Don’t,” I warned.  “Tatum and I could make the same argument.  Why didn’t we put two and two together in time?  All these dreams, these visions, what good did it do us?”  Hesitantly, I reached out and took her hand.  When she let me, I knew I was out of the doghouse, for now.

“Why you?  Why Tracy?  What’s the connection?”

I shook my head.  “Yeah, I’ve been thinking a lot about that myself.”

After all this time and speculation, there was no way we could have gone home, but when we went to the Graham house, the street out front had been cordoned off and emergency vehicles and uniformed men and women were all over their property.  When Deputy Nick spotted me, he called Dad on his radio, and I was personally ordered back home by my father in front of most of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department.

It wasn’t until later that we would learn all the details of what they had found: Several key pieces of evidence in the top drawer of a computer desk in Nathan’s room connecting him to each of the victims, including a business card from the beauty school Grace Fischer had attended in Austin (with Grace’s cell number written in her own handwriting on the back); a deck of tarot cards, missing one significant card, that would turn out to belong to Sadie Nayar; a menu from a Student Council luncheon held at Kalim Al-Sahim’s school in Pflugerville in September; and the most damning, a receipt from Eerie’s on the day
after
Claudia had seen him—which told me he had the ego to return to the same store even after he had been spotted by someone who knew him.

Neither Nathan, nor his father Cyril was to be found anywhere.  There were no messages on their answering machine, and all the previous calls in the memory of the caller ID box had been erased.  Also there was evidence that Nathan had a computer (ie. a mouse and blank discs), but there was no computer in the house.

By three PM an all-points bulletin had been issued for Nathan and Cyril Graham and the white F-150 truck registered to Mr. Graham.

We brought the SUV back to her Mom’s house, because I thought it would be morbid if we were to park it at the same place where the owner’s wake was being held.  Though she didn’t see my point at first, she finally gave in simply to avoid an argument.

When I pulled it into the garage, Claudia started into the house.

“Where are you going?” I yelled after her.

“I just need to pick up a few things while I’m here,” she yelled back as she disappeared into the house.

Swearing under my breath, I raced after her.  “Hey, Dad said one of the deputies was supposed to do all that.”

“I’m tired of wearing the same set of clothes every day,” she complained as she started into the living room.  “Besides, I don’t want some strange uniformed guy going through my underwear drawer.”

I grabbed her by the arm.  “Seriously, Claudia, I don’t think…”

She touched my arm and looked meaningfully into my eyes.  “If I don’t get what I need right now, I don’t know when I’ll have the courage again.”

I couldn’t argue with emotion.  Finally, I let her go.

Claudia stopped in the center of the living room again like she had the last time we’d been there.  She looked around and murmured, “That’s weird.”

“What?” I asked.

“It’s nothing, I guess.”  Ignoring my look of confusion, she pulled last year’s Haven High yearbook off the living room bookshelf and carried it into the kitchen.  “I figure Nathan must have known all the victims through school.  Grace Fischer he probably knew about through her cousin Martin, who he played with in the band, and I bet you a kick in the butt that he was a customer at her beauty school in Austin.  They give trainee discounts at those schools, y’know.”  We found out later that this was indeed how Graham had first made contact with Grace.

“He knew Bridgette through band too,” I offered.

On the kitchen table, Claudia spread the yearbook open to the sports section and spun it around to face me.  “And look at this, Graham was on the track team.  We have a meet in San Macros every year and that would put him in contact with Sadie Nayar, the second victim.”

I snatched the yearbook out of her hand and flipped back a few pages to the club section and pointed out at a group picture.  “Look, he’s on the debate team as well as the student council and honor society.”

We looked at each other and remarked at the same time: “Third victim.”

Upstairs, we pulled out all the suitcases in her closet, and began packing up her room.  She took the Psychic Eye Ouija board down from the top shelf in the closet and put it next to the suitcases on the bed.

I had found a couple of empty plastic containers downstairs in the pantry and went over to her bookshelf library of true crime books.  After packing the first few, I held one, turning it slowly over in my hand.  “I can’t believe we did it,” I muttered in awe.  “We may have actually helped the Broward County Sheriff’s department stop a string of serial murders.”

Claudia stepped to my side, a bittersweet smile on her face.  “They haven’t caught him yet.”

I looked up at her from my crouching position and must have given her such a dumb-founded look that she had to chuckle.  “But we definitely played a part, didn’t we?”  She lowered herself down to my level and with a playful smirk on her face asked, “How do you feel about solving your first homicide case, Mr. Graves?”

“Well to be fair, I might as well give just a little credit to this kook of a profiler that I keep on retainer,” I answered in my best baritone voice.  “But since we nearly killed each other during the course of the investigation, this might be the last case we work on together.”

She drew closer.  “That seems like such a shame, Mr. Graves.  I think the results speak for themselves.  Sounds like you made a good team.”

Our lips touched for only an instant before she turned away from me.

She frowned up at the bookshelf over my shoulder.  Finally, she rose and ran a finger down the spines of the books on the second shelf. “Did you move these?”

“No, I just started packing…”

“They’re out of place,” she flatly stated. She then glanced over the figurines on the top shelf.  I heard a short intake of breath.

I looked up and saw that the third figurine--the Dracula one with the hands over his crotch--was missing a head.

My cell phone rang, startling us both.

“Where are you?”  It was Dad.  He sounded out of breath.

“Claudia is picking up some things over at her house.”

The subject of conversation stood wide-eyed in the center of her room, slowly turning a full circle, her rapier-sharp eyes noting the placement of every object.

Dad cursed under his breath.  “Listen, very carefully, Paul,” he said evenly and deliberately.  “I want you to take Claudia and get-out-of-the-house. 
Right now
.”

“Why?”

“No questions, Paul.  Just do it,” he snapped forcefully.

“We’re on our way right now,” I told him, grabbing Claudia roughly by the arm and pulling her toward the doorway.

She snatched her arm away angrily and stepped out into the hallway.  “What’s going on?  What did they find?”

Following Claudia into the hall, I pressed the cell phone closer to my ear and asked, “What did they find, Dad?”

He sighed heavily.  “We found a body in the Graham’s bathroom.”

“The bathroom,” I exclaimed.  “Who is it?  Do you know?”

“Looks like it’s the father.”

A second later, I heard a terrified scream, a sound I would never have associated with the girl I knew.  I turned and realized that Claudia was no longer beside me.

Dropping the phone to my side, I rushed down the hall and into the first doorway with a light on, the hall bath.  Claudia had retreated back against the wall, hands over her mouth, gesturing madly toward the wicker dirty clothes hamper on the opposite side of the room.  The base had already started to turn a dark brown where something had begun to pool.  In my mind, it could only be one thing.  A single corner of a white sheet hung over the edge like the tongue of a hanged man.

“Paul?” a tiny, but persistent, voice from the phone called.

I started over to it, but Claudia grabbed my arm defensively and dragged me back.  We exchanged a brief look before her curiosity got the better of her, and she pushed me toward the hamper.

Pulling a wad of toilet paper from the roll next to the toilet, I daintily took the edge of the hamper lid, trying desperately to avoid destroying any fingerprint evidence.  Gripping my arm like a life-preserver, Claudia draped herself over my back and peeked over my shoulder with wide frightened eyes.

Written on the inside of the lid in what appeared to be red ink were the words: “Now you don’t!”  Below that, a barely distinguishable human head peered up at us atop the remnants of a white bath towel.

She turned silently and strode briskly out into the hallway, the blood draining from her face, turning a lighter shade than her natural pale.

I backed slowly away from the lifeless eyes inside the hamper, until I felt the sink at my back and lifted the barking cell phone to my ear.  “Dad, you better get the Sheriff’s Department over here right now.”

Not yet five o’clock and every member of the Broward County Sheriff’s Department were now at two separate crime scenes in the tiny town of Haven.  Even Blake Mueller and Payton French, who were technically on vacation for another few weeks, had been called in, along with a few trusted guys from neighboring Crown County.

It never took long for bad news to travel through Haven, and once word had gotten out that the Grahams were murder suspects, the wake back at home began to break up, as everyone was eager to get back to their own families.  Old Man Barrett was one of the last to leave (as he had outlived his older siblings and never married) and as he’d had more than a few glasses of wine, he began to rail to my mother that he had suspected the Grahams “all along.”  “They’re Middle Eastern, y’know,” he muttered over his shoulder as Dad escorted him out, as if the statement explained everything.  “Their kind is always up to no good.  Look at 9-11.”

Once they were outside, I heard my father’s even-toned rejoinder: “Y’know, Sam, it was racial and religious intolerance that led to 9-11 and to the Crusades for that matter.  And the only one I hear perpetuating it here right now is you.”

Barrett muttered a curse under his breath and wandered off down the street.

“Twisted old oak,” Dad grumbled, slamming the screen door.

Mom eyed Dad with a frown as he pulled a pack of cigarettes from his jacket pocket and began to tap it against his palm unconsciously until he realized everyone was watching him.  He wordlessly put it away again and joined the rest of us around the kitchen table.

“Here are the facts.  We found enough to connect Nathan Graham to all four of the murders, but he clearly made no effort to hide it.  Either that or he deliberately planted the evidence there to be found.”  At this point, he told us about the evidence located in Graham’s desk.

Then he delivered the coup de grâce.

“Well, we called off the search for Cyril Graham when we found him stuffed into the dirty clothes hamper of the Graham’s master bathroom.”  He stopped long enough to make sure he had our undivided attention before delivering the punch line.  “Only problem was, he wasn’t all there.”

Both of us looked at him with wide inquisitive eyes.  He knew very well what the next question would be and sighed heavily, giving Mom an apologetic look.

“Jack, I told you I wanted full and complete honesty from here on out and I meant it,” Mom said, stiffening herself against what was coming.

He nodded.  “His head was removed with a kitchen knife they found with the body.  Only his head wasn’t with his torso.”

“Sharia law,” Claudia muttered.  She was still shivering uncontrollably despite the fact that the heating vent was blowing warm air directly on her.  “He was probably drugged first, tied up, then beheaded while he was still conscious.  They should check for drug residue in all the cups in the house.”

“Easy, tiger.  We haven’t put you on the payroll yet,” Dad replied, grabbing her delicately in one of his arms and giving her a kiss on the top of her head.  “And by the way, the Grahams weren’t Muslim.  In fact, they were pretty ardent atheists.”

We exchanged interested glances.  “What else?” she asked.

“There was a small ceramic head wrapped in the sheet with the body.”

Another set of tremors rolled through Claudia.  I felt her icy hand enclose around mine beneath the table.

“Written inside the lid of the hamper was the message. ‘Now you see me,’ ” Dad told us, as Claudia simultaneously mouthed the words silently to herself.

“We thought it might have been his smartass way of confessing.  Like, ‘Hey, you got me.’  But then we found the other message inside your hamper.”

“Now you don’t,” Claudia completed the thought.

Dad nodded at Claudia.  “There you go.  Does that hold any significance to either of you?”

Both of us shook our heads.

“Does anyone else think this might be a little too neat?” my mother interjected.

Dad raised his brows.  “You’re saying that it sounds like this was all handed to us, right?  Like maybe it’s a set up?”

Claudia and I traded looks.  As my parents watched me squirm in my seat, she said, “I think your son has some information he wants to share with you.”

That’s when I told them about my conversation with Graham, leaving out the part where he showed me the scratch I gave him while we were sharing the same dream.

That just might have sapped some of the credibility out of my story.