The Piper (38 page)

Olivia had gone back to her hotel and taken a shower, changed her clothes, then sat on the bed with the pillows propped up and the television on. She recharged her phone and drank a beer and ate salt and vinegar chips, and wondered what would happen next. She watched the clock until three fifteen the next afternoon, dozing now and then, then waking suddenly, checking the clock, wondering over and over if Teddy's time was up.

When the knock came on her hotel room door, she jumped, and swung her legs to the side of the bed, pausing a moment to catch her breath. She looked through the peephole and saw Donnie Withers and McTavish. She wondered if they would put her in handcuffs. She wondered if McTavish had found her a lawyer yet.

Olivia opened the hotel room door. ‘Hello,' she said. Her cheeks felt stiff.

‘Mrs James?' Withers said. McTavish was looking at her strangely.

‘Yes. I'm ready,' Olivia said.

‘Mrs James, can we come in for a moment?' Donnie Withers said.

Olivia shrugged. ‘What's the point of coming in? I'm ready to go.'

‘I'm not here to arrest you, Mrs James. Just the opposite. We've picked up the guy who killed Bennington and his family. He's a habitual felon with a history of violent home invasions, and he confessed for the favor of an orange soda and a box of Keebler Oatmeal Cookies. There's no question. He was working alone. There's a theory he's been targeting your family as well. We're trying to find the car he ditched, match it up to the oil stain in your driveway, but at the moment, he's clammed back up and we're not having much luck.'

Olivia cocked her head sideways. ‘You didn't come here, together like this, to tell me that.' She took a step backwards. ‘Oh, God. You've found her, haven't you? You've found Teddy.' The tears were coming but her breath was not. She could not seem to get oxygen.

‘We've found something, ma'am. We just don't know what.'

‘I don't understand. What do you mean?
Tell me what you mean.
'

Withers looked at McTavish. ‘You tell her. Better coming from you.'

‘Olivia. Honey, it's not Teddy. It can't be Teddy, the body is too far decomposed. Sit down here, sweetie.' He took her hand and looked into her eyes as if he weren't sure she understood what he was saying.

‘Not Teddy?' Olivia said.

‘No.'

‘But you said
body
. You said
decomposed.
'

‘One of our guys went back to interview that man I told you about. The one on death row.'

Olivia nodded. ‘The one who said he knew where . . . oh. He knew where Emily was? Is that what you mean? You've found . . . oh
shit. Shit
,
shit
, it's starting now, isn't it? Just like he said. He warned me, Decan Ludde warned me. They'll come home one way or another.
One way or another
. That's what he said.' Olivia screamed and scratched the sides of her cheeks, drawing blood. ‘No. No, I change my mind. I want her to come home alive.
I want her to come home alive.
I should have made the deal.'

McTavish put his arms around her, sat beside her on the bed rocking her back and forth.

‘Oh, God, McTavish. I just wanted . . . I just wanted to come home. I was so homesick. And now I don't care anymore, I just want Teddy. I want to hear Winston squeak his toy, and I have to tell him to hush because Teddy is asleep in bed waiting for me to kiss her good night. I want Emily to come home. I want Hunter. I want all of us to be the way we were when I was a little girl before Emily went away. I just want to go home, McTavish, and I can't for the life of me figure out where it is. Where's my home now, McTavish? You tell me that. You tell me where it is.'

McTavish was patient, letting her cry it out. At one point Withers mumbled something and went outside to wait in the hall, with the air of a man who has seen these things more times than he'd like.

And in due time she grew calmer. She laid her head on McTavish's shoulder, and closed her eyes, thinking she might like to go to sleep. But he wouldn't let her. He would not let her sleep.

‘Olivia. I think there's a really high probability we've found Emily's remains. I know you were just a very little girl back then, but we have some things we'd like you to look at, for identification. Do you think you can come with me? Do you think you can do it? There isn't anybody else.'

Of course there wasn't anybody else, Olivia thought. Not now, now when she was so alone.

‘What day is it, McTavish? The date?'

‘March fourteenth.'

‘And what time?'

‘Six thirty.'

‘How many hours till three fifteen?'

‘Olivia. You're not making any sense.'

‘Oh, you're so wrong about that. I'm the
only one
making any sense.'

‘Donnie's waiting, out in the hall. Do you think you can do this, Olivia? If you want to wait—'

‘It would be better to go now. Sure, of course I'll go.'

He took both her hands. ‘Olivia. If it is Emily, and I'm not saying it is. Wouldn't it be better to at least know for sure?'

‘Where are we going, McTavish?'

‘We're going to the river.'

D
usk was thick as McTavish pulled his Cadillac into Sequoyah Hills Park. Tudor mansions lined up next to one level ranch houses, and smaller bungalows, prime Knoxville real estate that backed up onto a green space that Olivia had always thought of as a little swath of heaven. The parking lot was a gravel rectangle, and filled with patrol cars, lights flashing, a scene that was becoming familiar enough to Olivia to make her tired. The park was a stretch of meadow and green grass, with large leafy trees lining the edge alongside the river. People walked there, let their dogs run there, went fishing, or sat on green metal benches to enjoy the day.

‘We used to come here a lot when I was a little girl,' Olivia said. ‘We used to throw a tennis ball in the water for Hunter. Hunter loved to swim.'

McTavish opened the door for her, and led her out.

‘What is it I'm going to be looking at here?' Olivia asked.

‘The thing is. We've been dragging the river since early this morning.'

‘Oh.'

‘We found something a few hours ago. They're not ready to move it yet, but . . . they're pretty sure.'

‘How could they be sure?'

‘Just come with me, okay?'

They had a bit of a walk, and they went hand in hand like lovers. When Olivia had been a little girl at the park, running in the grass with Hunter, she had seen her mother and father walk hand in hand, and she always thought she'd come to the river with the man she loved someday. Be careful what you wish for, she thought.

The uniforms were knotted at a lovely spot. Next to a green metal bench and a shade tree that looked out over the water. An open bundle of wet blankets was plastered to the ground, but McTavish led her to the bench and told her to sit down.

‘Let me check and see if they're ready for you.'

He wasn't gone long. Olivia was aware that she was being stared at. Someone was putting up a floodlight. McTavish came back with plastic baggies. Inside one, a small heart shaped necklace, tarnished and covered with algae. Inside the other, a rotting dog collar, with a hook where the tags used to hang. Olivia reached for the baggies and he let her take them. She held them up, and studied them, but she knew. Inside, she knew.

‘My sister had a necklace just like this. A little heart with a small pink stone, an amethyst. Jamison gave it to her on her fifteenth birthday. She wore it all the time. I mean, there isn't a stone in there now, but you see that little thing there, on the heart? That's where the stone used to be. And Hunter had a collar like that. A circle of leather, just like this. But he had tags. I guess . . . the tags are gone. Where did they find these, McTavish?'

‘We snagged bodies, in the river. Wrapped together in a blanket. They were down really deep, but it helps when you know where to look.'

‘Will you let me . . . I want to see them. See what's left.'

‘It's not a good idea, Livie.'

‘It's not up to you. And I've been waiting a long long time.'

He ran his hand through his thick hair, and grimaced. ‘Sit here another minute. Let me see what they say.'

Olivia looked out at the water while she waited. Heard a horn, and saw the lights of a barge inching closer.

In the end, they decided she had the right. McTavish led her to the wet blankets she had seen, lying in the grass. They had found the bundle, snagged on a rock, in the deepest part of the river, where the channel branched and opened. A bundle of gray wool army blankets, rotting, taped tight with duct tape, and tied with rope that had long disintegrated. But the tape had held.

The blankets were open on the grass, and Olivia saw the skeletons in the floodlight, while moths dodged in and out. One of the skeletons was human, and there was no flesh, just long hair, dark brown, Emily's shade, so much like her own, winding through the shredded fragments of rotting clothes. Another skeleton lay beside it, close enough that it looked as if the two skeletons had died in a hug. A dog. Olivia saw the teeth, the canine fangs, the long nosed snout. Emily and Hunter, buried together, floating in a blanket in the river just three miles from her house, decomposing quietly in the water after all these years. What had happened to them, Olivia wondered. How exactly had Hunter and Emily died? And would Teddy die the same way?

Olivia looked at her watch. Counting the hours until three fifteen.

Or perhaps it was a date. Tomorrow was March the fifteenth. Tomorrow was three fifteen. And Decan Ludde had promised Olivia that everyone was coming home. Emily was home now. The promises were coming true.

The police had taken a cheek swab, to compare DNA, and the medical examiner had confirmed that the human skeleton was female, mid to late teens, and that the other was a canine, likely a German shepherd, with a break in the left hind leg that occurred shortly before death.

McTavish took Olivia back to the hotel room, sat holding her hand, telling her things she did not want to hear. The man on death row had known Emily's killer. He had met him in jail, a monster with a predilection for children, boy or girl, it didn't matter which, he just liked them young. The monster had talked about Emily one night, gently reminiscing. How opportune it was, how she had walked right into his arms, how he felt it had always been meant to be.

All because her dog had gotten out. Hunter, sensing something off, smelling the predator who watched the girls inside the house. The monster had heard the barking and the growls and gotten back into the car, wary and annoyed. He'd been after the little one, asleep on the couch, thinking he could snatch her up fast and bundle her off, but the dog had scared him away. He'd actually been in his car and on the street when the dog came barreling out of the fenced backyard and into the road, and he had hit him, okay, accidentally on purpose, he hated dogs like that. The other one had run after him, the big sister, too old really, but hey, why not. Crying over the German shepherd as he lay whimpering in the road. It had been so easy. Bundling the dog in the car, putting it in the girl's lap, weighing her down, always planning. Promising to drive them straight to a vet. Of course, he hadn't. He'd taken them to a place he had ready, well, he tried, but when he made a wrong turn the girl went nuts, got hysterical, and the dog bit him, and it was a big fat mess, and he had to shoot them both. There were scars, see there, on his biceps and leg, well, look there, under the tattoo, and see where the dog had actually bitten off a chunk of his ear? He'd gone back, actually, that little one was still there, all alone now on the couch, and God knows he'd earned it, actually paid in blood, might as well scoop her up in the net. But it was too late. Cars in the driveway and lights on all over the house. Time to cut his losses. He'd been smart that way. He'd bundled the bodies up in a blanket, anchored them well, and dropped them off in the river and moved on to the next town. Nobody had ever found him out.

Yeah. He was a bad one. And he liked them young. And he had such a knack for getting the kids to go with him. They used to call him the Pied Piper, because of that.

McTavish had not wanted to leave Olivia alone in the hotel room, angry that she would not come home with him, stung when she refused to let him stay.

But she could not be with him, be near anyone – it somehow made too much noise in her head. She wanted nothing more than to lie fully clothed on the bed, and to be absolutely, utterly still.

Her family had been normal and happy for such a short part of her life. But she liked to think about it. Liked remembering what it felt like, back in the day, it was an ideal of happiness she always held in her mind, an ideal she had been spending her entire adult life to try and create.

Olivia's parents had dutifully attended the intimidating beautiful Presbyterian church on Kingston Pike. They went as a family each and every Sunday, and after Emily disappeared, Olivia's parents had gone from Presbyterian light to devout. Olivia found the services tedious as a child, and as a teen she had rebelled at the hypocrisy of all religion. Hugh had been Jewish, and their marriage had been a comfortable if lazy truce of no services of any kind except on major holidays.

Over the years, Olivia settled into the conclusion that the various religious denominations were a sort of market bazaar of spirituality, offering various paths to the same place, with some taking you on more twists and turns to get where you wanted to go. There was no religion she agreed with completely, though perhaps that was too much to ask for the mere individual. She relied now on an inner guide, a sort of chiming she felt inside when she was deciding about right or wrong or what happened after death.

It was this instinct that had given her the wisdom to turn the Piper down – if wisdom it had been.