In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel (36 page)

“What do you mean?” Constance asked.

“I don’t have much by way of an explanation,”
he said, looking over at her. “I just know that this is exactly
where I found her in nineteen seventy-five. And it’s where I’ve
found her every Christmas morning for the past eight years. But I’m
usually here a bit earlier. It’s better that way.”

“Why?”

“She doesn’t have much time.”

“What’s happening here?” Constance
whispered.

“I don’t know,” he replied. “I’ve been hopin’
for eight years now that someone could tell
me…
” He paused
for a moment, then said, “You can get out if you want, but stay
next to the car. Don’t go near her. I’m serious.”

“Why?”

“Because she’s my responsibility. That’s all
I have time to explain right now.”

With that, he climbed out of the vehicle and
walked around to the back where he lifted the trunk lid. A moment
later he slammed it closed and trundled back around, a blanket
tucked under his arm.

Constance popped her door and stepped out
onto the street after he had passed. Questions were dancing on the
end of her tongue, but when she opened her mouth, the music stopped
and she couldn’t seem to give them voice. Instead she wandered a
few steps forward and stood next to the front of the cruiser as
she’d been instructed, watching as Sheriff Carmichael knelt down on
the snowy pavement and wrapped the blanket around the little girl.
The child continued to stare blankly into space as he bundled her
in the thick fabric. Hooking his arms around and hugging her close
so that her head lay against his shoulder, he hefted her up, then
stood. The weariness of both age and exhaustion were apparent in
his struggle as he rose to his feet. The lingering pain of
Constance’s hammer-handed punch was still showing in his gait as he
turned and began walking back to the car.

Constance could see his lips moving as he
drew closer. She swiveled slowly in place, following him with her
bewildered gaze as he headed toward the back door of the cruiser.
She was finally able to hear what he was saying as he trundled past
her. He was whispering, voice cracking with the repressed emotion
of an old wound, freshly opened.

“It’s okay, Merrie,” he soothed. “You’re safe
now, sweetheart. You’re safe… He can’t hurt you anymore… I
promise…”

C
HAPTER
27

CONSTANCE
reached up and absently
pushed a damp shock of hair from her face while she stared out the
windshield of the police cruiser. Her eyes were burning as the warm
air from the vent caused them to dry, but she couldn’t stop
staring. The faint reflection of a disheveled woman gazed back at
her from the inside of the glass. It looked horrifyingly old.

She forced herself to blink then looked
beyond the slanted glass. The snowy landscape ahead loomed in the
headlights as they rolled along the street. However, as with each
time before when she would try to stay focused on a distant point,
whatever she locked onto would grow to fill the window, then slip
past and disappear into their wake. Her eyes would always come back
to the unpleasant reflection.

She closed her eyes and allowed her head to
drift forward, dropping her chin against her chest. Reaching up
with both hands, she massaged her scalp through tangles of damp
hair.

She was somewhere in the early stages of an
annoying headache. At first she assumed it was a product of the
head butt she’d delivered, especially since there was a fresh knot
on the back of her scalp, courtesy of Skip’s chin. While that had
probably been partially responsible, the epicenter seemed to be a
dull ache radiating through her ears and into her temples. It took
some time for her to realize that her jaw was tightly clenched, and
she was grinding her teeth—a side effect of too many caffeine pills
mixed with the jitters that always followed an adrenalin dump from
hell.

She forced herself to open her mouth, then
took in a deep breath and tried to relax, but it was an exercise in
futility. There was no way she could relax while her mind was still
racing. Unfortunately, since it had no idea where it was racing to,
it was doing little more than following itself around in a
confusing circle, looking for an off ramp that didn’t seem to
exist.

She needed a drink. Maybe two. Followed by
twenty-four hours of uninterrupted sleep. Better yet, she needed
someone to tell her that this was all just an exceptionally vivid
nightmare and that she would be waking up very soon.

Constance puffed out her cheeks with a heavy
sigh and dropped her arms back to her sides. Then she pushed
herself up in the seat and started turning around to check on the
little girl in the back. She’d lost count of how many times she had
turned to look at her. She wondered silently how much of it was to
check on the girl’s well being and how much was simply to see if
she was really there.

Skip threw an understanding glance at her,
just as he’d done each time before when she’d twisted around to
look upon the girl. She gazed back at him for a moment, but said
nothing. Right now, there didn’t seem to be any words that would
make sense.

She shifted some more and completed her turn
in the seat. Although it was dark in the back of the vehicle, there
was enough ambient light for her to see. What met her eyes was
pitiful and heartbreaking. It would have been so even if she didn’t
know the circumstances behind it.

Better than fifteen minutes had passed since
they had picked up the little girl, but almost nothing about her
had changed.

She was still mute, and unmoving.

Although she absolutely had to be chilled all
the way to the bone, she didn’t shiver. She didn’t tremble. She
didn’t huddle into the blanket. She didn’t even cry. She simply sat
there, her only visible movement being that which was forced upon
her slight form by the jostling of the vehicle as it bumped along
the road.

Her expression had remained constant as well,
in that she really bore no expression at all. Her face was slack,
relaxed in a way that reminded Constance of death. That morbid
thought was bolstered by the fact that the child’s pallor was
ashen, almost devoid of any color behind the smears of blood and
dirt.

And that was the one thing that had changed.
In fact, she seemed to be graying more with each passing
minute.

Her eyes were unblinking as she gazed
straight ahead from behind matted clumps of chestnut hair that had
fallen across her sallow face. The glassy stare was the same one
she’d worn inside the house. What Merrie saw with those eyes was
something that only she knew, but Constance doubted it was anything
good. She was also convinced that whatever it was, it lay somewhere
beyond the confines of this world. She found herself wishing Rowan
were here. This sort of thing was his forte. The seemingly
fantastic and the paranormal were where his expertise dwelled. Even
if it didn’t make sense to everyone else, he always seemed to
accept it for what it was and find a way to deal with it.

She desperately needed a way to deal with
this.

Mandalay felt the vehicle starting to slow
and then yaw a bit as it started into a turn. She braced herself
and tossed a quick glance at Sheriff Carmichael, then twisted back
around in her own seat and looked out through the windshield once
again. For a brief instant, the sign for the Holly-Oak Assisted
Living facility was framed in the headlights, then it quickly
slipped sideways into the darkness as they turned into the
entrance.

“Shouldn’t we be taking her to a hospital?”
she asked.

“No,” Skip replied.

“But…”

“Trust me. I’ve been down this road
before.”

Skip drove around to the back of the
building, made a tight circle through the empty lot in order to
turn around, and then pulled up close to the back door. As the
vehicle rolled to a stop, flood lamps above the rear entrance
sprang to life, spilling their brilliance outward and casting the
passenger side of the cruiser in a stark light. After cranking the
shift lever into park, Carmichael switched off the engine and
dragged himself out from behind the wheel.

Before swinging the driver’s side door shut,
he peered back in through the opening at Constance and said, “Get
Merrie’s door for me, will you…”

Constance glanced quickly back over her
shoulder at Merrie, then shouldered her own door open and climbed
out into the cold wind. By the time she had levered it back closed,
Skip had come around to her side, so she pulled the cruiser’s rear
door open for him.

“We’re home,” he said to the girl as he
pushed his frame in through the opening.

After unbuckling the seatbelt, he wrapped the
loose folds of the blanket tighter, taking care to make sure Merrie
was protected from the cold. Slipping his arms around her, he
lifted up and carefully maneuvered her small form out of the
seat.

Constance heard a sudden creak of hinges
behind them and turned to see Martha pushing open the back door of
the building. The woman shot her a curious look and then raised an
eyebrow as if seeing her was a surprise, but other than that she
seemed as if she had been waiting for them. A second later she
turned and directed herself to the sheriff.

Pushing her voice up a notch to be heard
above the sigh of the rising wind, Martha asked, “Is everything
okay, Skip?”

“Okay as it ever is,” he called out as he
turned. Hugging the bundled child close, he looked at Constance and
dipped his head toward the open doorway. “Follow me.”

“Good God, Skip!” Martha exclaimed when the
light fell across his swollen lip and blood-smeared chin. “What
happened to you?”

As he hastened past her into the building he
replied, “Nothing to worry about. Just got my ass handed to me is
all.”

“You’re getting too old for this, Addison
Carmichael,” she chastised.

“We all are, Martha,” he called back over his
shoulder. “We all are.”

Constance followed him through the opening,
with Martha bringing up the rear for the moment. Once she had
latched the back door, she quickly skirted around them, running
ahead and opening the other doors in their path, leading them along
short, dimly lit hallways until they finally arrived at “Merrie’s
Room.”

“I was starting to worry,” Martha expressed
in a hushed voice, carefully opening the door a crack. “You’re
running late.”

“I know,” Skip replied, whispering. “Couldn’t
be helped. But there should still be time.”

Martha pushed the door inward to reveal the
same room they had visited three days ago. It was dark now, except
for a dim puddle being cast outward by a small lamp resting atop
the nightstand. The adult Merrie Callahan was tucked into the bed,
her slackened face bathed in the soft glow.

“You two must be frozen solid,” Martha
whispered. “I’ll go start some coffee…” Then she turned and
disappeared up the corridor.

Skip looked at Constance and said, “Wait
right here.” Then he shifted the blanket-wrapped girl farther up
onto his shoulder to adjust his grip on her as he walked through
the opening and into the room.

Just over twenty minutes had elapsed since
they had picked up the little girl from the middle of the road, and
still nothing made sense. Constance watched on in a shocked stupor
from the doorway as the sheriff stooped over and carefully laid the
ten-year-old Merrie Frances Callahan on the bed next to her
catatonic adult self. He gently unwrapped the cocoon, revealing the
girl. Her skin was now the ghostly gray-white of a corpse. Working
with both tenderness and haste, Carmichael lifted the child’s hand
and placed it against the woman’s. Slowly, both of their hands
moved, intertwining with one another, though there was no other
sign of consciousness from either of them.

Skip stood beside the pair for a moment,
watching quietly. Finally, he kissed his fingertips and gently
touched them to the little girl’s forehead, then to the older
Merrie’s cheek.

When he walked out, he ushered Constance
ahead then pulled the door shut behind him.

With a sigh he said, “All right, Special
Agent Mandalay. Much as it pains me, I believe we still have a
crime scene to process.”

“What...” she started, stammered, and then
started again. “What just happened here, Sheriff Carmichael?”

He reached up and brushed his thumb and
forefinger through his mustache while gazing in the general
direction of the floor. His shoulders drooped as he allowed a long,
low breath to escape. He swallowed hard, then looked up at
Constance and shook his head.

“I don’t honestly know,” he said. “I don’t
have any answers and that’s the truth. All I can tell you is that
as of tonight it’s been happening for eight years now.”

“That little girl is actually Merrie
Callahan?” she pressed.

He nodded. “Yes…or maybe her soul… I just
know she’s part of Merrie.”

Constance rubbed her eyes and then pinched
the bridge of her nose between her thumb and forefinger as she
leaned back against the wall. “This is surreal…” she breathed.

“Yeah…it’s a bit much to take in.”

“Uh-huh…even for me and I’ve seen some
things.”

“Anything like this?”

“Not exactly, but pretty close on the bizarre
meter.”

“I have to admit, you’re the first Fed to
tell me that one.”

“Why all the deception?” she asked. “Why
didn’t you just tell me about all of this right from the
outset?”

Skip raised an eyebrow. “You wouldn’t have
believed me if I had.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Maybe not, but I’d say it’s a pretty good
guess,” he replied. “Hell, sometimes I’m not sure I believe it
myself.”

“So…” she said. “It’s some kind of test?”