Revenant (14 page)

“Can you tell me anything else about this killer?” I asked, casting a furtive glance at Michael. He and Stephanie were deep in a conversation about horses.

“I'd say this killer has an issue with the mother figure. I'm sure you've heard of men who suffer from the Madonna-whore complex. They love sexy women until they marry, then they want their women to act like virgins. There's something triggered in a man by matrimony that can change the dynamics of a relationship drastically.”

“But these girls weren't married.”

“No, but judging from the photos in the paper, they're all of marriageable age. They're young and ripe and ready to marry and reproduce. It's their potential to become wives and mothers that offends him. If I had to make a guess, I'd say the killer's mother abused him. He viewed her as his protector, and she turned on him, either by neglect or by action. She warped the wife-mother role for him forever. It's not a sexual thing as much as it was a parental failure in his eyes. If I'm right about this, the girls were not raped.”

“Pamela Sparks wasn't. We can't say about the others.”

“This isn't about sex or power or control. This is about betrayal. And there will be a trigger. Something that sends him back to childhood, which would be a place he views as a living hell.”

I felt cold. “Would the copycat suffer from the same set of issues?”

“Doubtful. If it is a copycat, I believe his motive would be fame. He'd be proud of his cleverness and ability to bring fear to a community. It would be about power.”

“Thank you, Richard.”

“Remember, this is a conversation of theories. I'm not a specialist in this field.”

Michael came over and put his arm around me. “Dinner's ready.”

“Please, keep the business about the fingers—”

“Confidential,” Richard said, patting my shoulder. “I'll bury it along with all of the other secrets I play host to.”

T
he fragrance of pine trees filled my dreams, a pungent smell, clean and filled with varied pleasures. The scent triggered a panorama of scenes, dark pine forests with a carpet of brown needles underfoot, woodland vales where crooked limbs dipped over a creek just perfect for dangling feet on a hot summer day and soft fronds of feathery wild ferns crushed into a perfect cushion. I was young, a teenage girl, and I was lying in the soft embrace of the green earth. Sunlight dappled my skin, my perfect skin, unblemished by scars or time or disappointment. I heard laughter coming from the pine trees, and I rose up on my elbows to greet my lover, greedy for his touch.

A figure stepped out of the trees, a slender man with casual grace. I couldn't see his face with the sun at his back. His body was fringed in golden light. He was beautiful, Adonis, a gift from the gods.

He came toward me, dropping to his knees beside me, and I felt his hand on my thigh.

“Daniel?” I was confused. I had thought it was someone else, but I couldn't think who.

“Mi amore,”
he whispered in my ear, his words generating a torrent of passion. His hand slid up my thigh as his other hand stroked my breast. If I had not recognized his voice, I would have known his touch. “I've come such a far way to see you, my love,” he said. I could only moan, my need consuming thought and reason.

He bent to kiss me, but before our lips could meet, a shadow fell over us. Night had suddenly fallen, and the woods were now sinister. Daniel disappeared.

“Mama!”

I sat up, alone, deep in the woods. But I wasn't alone. My daughter was there, and she sounded frightened. “Annabelle!” But there was only the echo of her voice, her single cry for my help and protection.

I realized I was sitting up in bed. I turned on the light and checked the clock. It was nearly 2:00 a.m. I wouldn't sleep again, so I got up and went to the kitchen.

Before I'd moved into my house, I'd had walls removed, windows replaced, the hardwood floors refinished and all the curtains removed. I'd gutted the house and opened it up. I'd thrown myself into the renovation, hoping that it would spark something inside me. It hadn't, but I did enjoy the feelings of not being closed in. When it was day, sunlight filtered through the trees and shrubs and vines that acted as my curtains. It was a greenish light that gave me a sense of peace. At night, though, the openness was different. I felt exposed.

The cats jumped up on my lap, and I stroked their arching backs. I picked up the phone. Nicaragua was in the same time zone. I dialed, hearing the foreign two rings of the phone. Often the lines were down and took weeks, sometimes months, to repair. But the phone was ringing somewhere. I couldn't guarantee that it was my ex-husband's extension, though.

“Hola.”

Daniel's voice was wide-awake. Relief rushed over me, and desire. Remnants of the dream were hiding in the shadows of my heart. “It's me,” I said, willing my voice not to shake.

“Are you okay?” Instant concern.

“Yes.” I had to force myself to continue. “I had a dream. I miss you.”

There was a long pause. His hand covered the telephone and he said something in Spanish I couldn't hear. A chill slipped over me. Nicaragua was a very social country. Parties of the upper class moved from hacienda to beach house to mountain dwelling without ever breaking up. Business was conducted, but it was often mingled with pleasure. Daniel could have a business associate with him at two in the morning. It was possible, but I knew better. He was a divorced man, free to do what he chose.

“I'm sorry, Daniel,” I said when he came back on the line. “Call me when you have time. I'm fine, just a little shaken.”

The silence told me he was considering his options. “Tell me about the dream,” he requested.

There had once been a time when I shared everything with my husband. But now he was no longer my husband, and I had no right.

“Same old, same old,” I said. “I feel much better now. I'm so sorry I called at this hour.” I made my voice strong, wryly aware of my foolishness.

“You said you missed me.”

There it was. Daniel's love for me was banked. He hadn't walked away from our marriage, even when it consisted of hauling me out of bars so drunk I'd lost my shoes and couldn't stand up alone. He'd held my head when I was sick, and he'd never censured me or tried to make me feel ashamed. He didn't have to. I was dying from guilt and shame. I'd left him, telling him that I needed a clean break from everything in the past. But I'd learned I couldn't leave my guilt behind. I had to leave him, because I could never risk another child, and he deserved the family he so desperately wanted.

“My work is going well,” I said, changing the subject. I could not lie to him. If he'd found someone to share his early mornings, I didn't want to interfere.

“Good. You sound…”

“Sober,” I supplied. “I am.”

“I'll be home Sunday. My trip has been cut short. I have to get back to Miami to take care of some problems. I'll call you Sunday evening.”

“Daniel, are you okay?” I realized it had been a long time since I'd asked him that question.

“Yes, Carson. I am good.” The flowing cadence of his accent made the words roll like a gentle wave.

I realized I wanted to know about his companion, but I couldn't ask. We were divorced. Daniel would tell me everything I needed to know to keep from being hurt. When the time came.

“Sleep well,” he said.

I heard the echo of the past.
“Mi amore.”
But it was only in my head. The line buzzed empty. For a long time I sat in the darkness, trying to sort through my emotions. I didn't make any progress, except in admitting that I had feelings. But they were all jumbled and knotted. I'd done the right thing in letting Daniel go. My head was so messed up that I might never be able to find the love we'd once shared so effortlessly. Sure, he could still make me tingle with desire, but life and marriage were beyond those blurred moments of sensation.

I thought about Michael and Mitch, one man I'd known, and one who seemed to offer a new chance. My therapist had told me, before I fired her, that life would return to me whether I wanted it or not. If I didn't kill myself with alcohol, new emotions would grow. How I dealt with them would depend largely on how I resolved my guilt over Annabelle's death. She said this with a large measure of trepidation. She was right, which was why I fired her. So I sat alone in the darkness and wondered if I would ever be able to love anyone again.

 

I'd been searching the area for almost a week for members of the Kyle family, and at last I'd found Ammon Kyle, a man without a phone or credit cards. Actually, Avery told me where to look. In a strange coincidence, Ammon worked with Joe Welford, Pamela Sparks's fiancé, at M&N Motors. Coincidence is rarely that. I felt the rush of excitement as I drove to the garage.

I hadn't bothered going into the office. Exhausted, I'd fallen asleep at five and slept until Miss Vesta licked my left eyelid open at ten o'clock. I'd called Hank and told him I'd overslept and that I was going straight to M&N Motors.

The sky was overcast, a gunmetal-gray that promised torrential rain and bolts of lightning that felled huge oaks, zapped televisions, microwaves and computers, and occasionally quick-fried a golfer. M&N Motors was off Hospital Road in Ocean Springs, not ten minutes from my house. Once a pleasant rural road, it was now a shortcut to the interstate.

The sign out front had been freshly painted, and cars jammed the parking lot. Four work bays were filled. When I walked over to a man in blue overalls with grease stains, he directed me to the office. “Tell the girl what's wrong, and she'll set up an appointment.”

“I need to see Ammon Kyle,” I said.

The man frowned. “Ammon!” He turned on his heel. “Ammon!”

A slender man with a balding head rolled out from under a minivan. He wore thick glasses, and he came toward me with an expectant smile. “Can I help you?”

“I'm sorry to trouble you at work.” I should have done this after he finished his job, I realized. He was busy. I told him who I was. “I'm here to talk about your sister, if you have a moment.”

“Charlotte,” he said, wiping grease or something from beneath the lens of his glasses. “I've been thinking about her a lot lately. I've waited a long time to give her a proper burial.” He looked at the man who'd called him. “Just a minute. I'm due a break.” He walked over, conversed with the man, then came back. “Let's go in the break room. Joe's working beside me, and I don't want him to hear it. He's having a hard enough time.”

One of my questions was already answered. I followed him into a room with two Formica tables stained with grease. The floor was concrete, also stained. There was a Coke machine and a refrigerator with black fingerprints all over the handle. I took the chair across from him.

“Would you care for some coffee?”

I could see that it was thick and might possibly be the culprit making all the stains instead of grease. “No, thanks. I've had my quota.”

He sat down, folding his hands on top of the table. “What do you want to know?”

My basic theory was that all of the girls had something in common—their engagement, real or otherwise. “Was your sister seeing anyone seriously?” I asked.

“She had a fella.” He looked down at his hands. “She was in love with him. Charlie King. After she disappeared, I thought maybe he was involved, but he wasn't.”

“How can you be certain?”

“When Charlotte didn't come home that night, I was desperate. See, things were tough. She and I were the oldest, and when our folks up and disappeared one day, we were left with the little ones. There were five of us altogether. Charlotte did the cooking and cleaning and such, and I quit school and got a job. We worked as a team. Charlotte wasn't the kind of girl to skip out on the younguns, so that next morning I had a long talk with Charlie.” He rubbed at a grease spot on his hands. “He didn't hurt her. The way she disappeared, it's like it killed him, too. He died in a car wreck not a week later.”

I jotted a few notes. “Your parents left?”

“Here one morning when we left for school, gone when we got back. No note. Nothing.”

“Did you call the police?” I wondered if the fifth body could be one of the parents.

“No. If I'd done that, child welfare would have come and taken my brothers and sisters. Besides, my folks just left. They took all the food in the refrigerator and the car. It was an old rag heap, but it was all we had to get around in. They didn't care.” His voice had gotten harder. “But we stayed together. We were a family.”

“How old were you when they abandoned you?”

“Sixteen. Charlotte was fifteen. For seven years, we held the family together. She was twenty-two when she died. Jim was in tenth grade. He was the last. Charlotte was getting ready to have her own life, and I made her feel bad about it. All she wanted was to marry Charlie and have a little house of her own, a portion of life for herself. I made her feel bad for wanting that.”

Some wounds never healed. Finding Charlotte's body had ripped Ammon's wide open. “The night she disappeared, do you know where she was going?”

“It was a Friday night. She was going out to meet some of her friends.” A painful smile touched his face. “She was excited. I remember that. She'd bought a new blouse. She had on that pink blouse and lipstick that matched.” He shook his head. “I almost asked her to stay home, but I didn't. She'd stayed home so many Friday nights. I knew she needed her own life. It was past time. So I didn't say anything except to be careful, and I watched her walk out the door and get in a car with some of her girlfriends. They tooted the horn and laughed as they drove away. They were planning the wedding. Charlotte had a dress set aside, and the bridesmaids were all picked out. The wedding was all she talked about.”

“Where did they go?”

“Charlotte loved to dance. She'd dance with the younger kids in the kitchen while she was cooking.”

“Did she go to the Gold Rush?”

“Yeah. That place had the best band. All the young people liked to go there. The shows were fancy back then, with the dancers and all. Then the band would crank up and everybody had a good time.”

“She was with her friends. What happened?”

He rubbed at the spot on his finger. “Her friends said she got hot dancing. She went outside for some air and didn't come back in. Charlie was supposed to meet them, so they thought maybe she'd left with him. She didn't have much time alone with him, and they figured she'd taken advantage of a few hours together.” His hands finally rested on the table. One knuckle had been skinned slightly.

“I'm sorry, Mr. Kyle. What happened after that?”

“In the morning, when Charlie showed up looking for her and I realized she was gone, I couldn't take it. I drank for a while. The truth is, I drank for months. I was a mean drunk. I haven't spoken to my brothers or sisters in over twenty years. Charlotte sacrificed it all for family, and now they're scattered like dust in the wind.”