The Lost Orphans Omnibus: A Riveting Mystery Page 25

  Behind them stood a second row of middle-aged women, five in all. The first was a wide-framed woman with a flowing red dress the same color as her long dyed-red hair. Wine and bile trickled from her lips. Her dilated eyes were bloodshot and rife with scarlet veins. Anastasia Sebring.

  The second was a black woman with curly hair and big, yellow-tinted, terror-filled onyx eyes. Jasmine Rickers.

  The third woman had platinum-blond hair and a face the color of curdled milk and was wearing a loose-fitting white bathrobe stained with dripping blue, red, and yellow paint. Most curiously, she crawled on the ceiling with her neck twisted at an uncomfortable angle, staring down at Rachel and Mallory with unblinking dilated blue eyes. Cora Brewster.

  The fourth woman had a head of patchy brown hair and was covered head to toe with seeping lacerations and boasted two long slashes running from the corners of her lips to the ends of her ears. She giggled to herself, intentionally opening the entire lower third of her face. Carolina Thurston.

  Finally, there was a modestly dressed slender woman with curves in all the right places. Long brown hair tumbled down the front of her mature, attractive face, teary bloodshot eyes, and mouth that leaked wine, blood, and green vomit. She was Martha Stix. Mallory’s mother.

  All thirteen of the Poisoner’s victims locked their dry and bloodshot eyes on Mallory and Rachel. Speaking as one, they made their plea.

  3

  Rope and Cinder

  “Help us,” the Orphan dead’s ghastly cry repeated for the third time.

  Mallory watched them with fascination and pity. On her hands and knees, the child began crawling to the front of the mattress. Rachel raised her arm, barring Mallory from proceeding any farther.

  “Mallory, I need you to look away,” Rachel said firmly. The Orphans’ dry gaze pierced Rachel’s soul, drilling through all the lies, secrets, and private things, and spiritually attaching themselves to her. The twelve wouldn’t leave her now. Not until their killer was brought to justice. The middle-aged women—mothers of the abducted children, Ethan, Ava, Emily, and Hailey—had already Marked Rachel previously, but the other eight were baggage whose deaths were random, thus unable to advance the case.

  Mallory stopped at Rachel’s command and turned her soft face to her weeping mother. “Mom. You’re here…”

  Martha, with long brown hair and tear-soaked cheeks, pushed through the wall of pleading children and extended her hand past Rachel and to the little girl.

  Rachel held back the child. “Mallory.”

  The eight-year-old reached over Rachel’s arm and took her mother’s hand, only to have her palm fall through her mother’s ethereal flesh. The mother grabbed Mallory’s wrist and began drawing her to her. The others eyed the little girl and extended their arms as well.

  Mallory began to be pulled toward her mother and the pleading Orphans.

  “Mallory,” Rachel said with seriousness. “I need you to close your eyes, really tight. Please.”

  “But she’s here,” the girl replied softly.

  Carolina Thurston, the one with the slashed face, jumped ahead of the rest and took a fistful of Mallory’s hair. She yanked her forward. In an instant, the child was pulled past Rachel. Relying on reaction, Rachel grabbed the girl’s legs as the other Orphans calmly reached out their cold hands to touch Mallory, currently suspended in the air.

  At first, the touches were gentle, soft pats.

  “Help us.” They tightened their fists on the girl’s jacket and arms.

  “Help us!” The Orphans tore at Mallory, grabbing fistfuls of her clothes and skin. The child cried her pain as Rachel pulled at Mallory’s wrist, trying to take her from the desperate Orphans.

  “Help us! Help us! Help us!”

  Their cries turned frustrated and angry. Straining her arm muscles, Rachel kept pulling the girl back to her, but to no avail. Worse, she was being pulled into the fray.

  “Stop this!” Rachel cried out. “Now!”

  At once, the Orphans released Mallory, sending her flying back to Rachel. The child’s head slammed into Rachel’s chest, knocking the wind out of Rachel while the Orphans watched in sudden silence.

  Rachel caught her breath. Mallory touched the crown of her head and returned with a tuft of hair rooted in skin flakes.

  With a heavy frown and a hard face, Rachel met the Orphans’ glares with a fiercer one. “Get. Out.”

  Rachel shut her eyes tight. When she opened them, the room was empty of all but Mallory.

  Rachel twisted back to the confused girl, who eyed the tuft of hair in her palm. “I only wanted to help.”

  Rachel closed the girl’s open hand, sealing the hair inside. “They aren’t like us, Mallory. You must remember that.”

  With big blue eyes and a quivering lip, Mallory gazed up at Rachel. “But she’s my mother.”

  “I know,” Rachel replied. “But whenever they come, you need to close your eyes real tight, tell them to go, and count to ten. They can’t really hurt you.”

  As Rachel said the words, she noticed that the loose hairs in Mallory’s hand had not vanished, and there was a small skin patch on the girl’s crown. Rachel quickly combed over it with her fingers. “You need to promise me you’ll close your eyes next time. Not to make contact with new ones you see, no matter how sorry they may be. Can you do that for me, Mallory?”

  The girl nodded reluctantly.

  “Thank you,” Rachel replied softly.

  Her phone rang. Dispatch. Signal 10-67.

  Someone had died.

  Rachel rose from the bed and gave the child a smile in farewell.

  “Where are you going?” Mallory asked.

  “To work. Remember the things I told you until I come back.”

  Mallory brushed her fingers through the detached brown hair on her opposite palm. “Okay.”

  Rachel rushed out of the room and passed the horse-faced caretaker eavesdropping from the hallway. The woman quickly faked a smile at Rachel and scuttled down the hallway with a tray holding water and fruit snacks.

  Rachel turned back from the caretaker but checked the time. She needed to get to the crime scene. She’d have to let that confrontation slide.

  On the inclining mountainside road to Highlands, Rachel couldn’t turn off her mind. She thought about the clump of hair in Mallory’s hand and all she knew about the girl. Up to this point, Orphans and Delinquents, as Rachel liked to call the spirits of the dead that had given up on finding the afterlife, had killed Rachel multiple times. But every time they took Rachel’s life or abused her, she would recover after the encounter to her previous state, thus proving that the supernatural could not give her long-lasting injury.

  Mallory was a different case entirely.

  The hair should’ve vanished when the Orphans left. It did not. The patch on the girl’s head didn’t heal, either. If an Orphan could hurt her, could it kill her?

  Chills danced down Rachel’s spine. Though her eyes were on the road, she only saw a million dreadful fates inching toward Mallory Stix. No one could save the little child but Rachel. The responsibility was crushing.

  The road eventually branched off toward one of Highlands’s many bodies of water. The one she approached was a natural spring that looked like a blue puddle on the GPS. It was large enough for a few small pontoon boats and had two small streams, one rolling into it and another rolling out. Ferns and tall grass sprouted from the earth around the water, along with a cluster of fat ancient trees with sprawling branches cloaked in dying yellow and orange leaves. It was the type of place that made Rachel want to drink up the air and ponder creation. A rickety dock made of driftwood was mankind’s only stamp on nature’s creation. Hitched to it by white dock line, a canoe bobbed on the glassy surface.

  Holding his frilled fishing hat over his chest, an elderly man with a long, sunken face, deep-set eyes, hooked chin, and grizzly white beard stood feet away from the water’s edge, completely lost in thought. He wore a khaki fishing vest, waders, an
d mid-shin rubber boots.

  A small huddle of police officers marched another canoe to the water and climbed inside.

  A few straggling forensics photographers journeyed around the water and snapped pictures from various angles.

  Detective Jenson Peak stood at the nose of the old dock, eyes on the dark water ahead. He was skinny, with pencil-like legs and a wooden posture. His hands were stuffed in his back jeans pockets. The autumn breeze sent waves rippling across his navy-blue windbreaker and moved his copper-colored hair to one side as if it were a tattered flag.

  The dock swayed under Rachel’s feet as she came to a halt beside her old friend. He nodded toward the center of the pond. “Body’s down there.”

  Rachel stared intently into the water but could not see what lay beneath the glassy surface.

  “The old man snagged it with his fishing line and brought up a chunk of meat. Human meat,” Peak said.

  “Appetizing,” Rachel replied, sickened. “Do we know who?”

  The police canoe coasted across the water and dropped anchor at the place where Rachel watched. With hooked poles, a few of the officers probed the water.

  “Anxious to meet another Orphan?” Peak asked dryly.

  Rachel shook her head. “I have enough friends.”

  “That’s sweet.”

  One of the poles met resistance. The lucky officer informed the others. They turned their attention that way and snagged whatever lingered in the depths. Rowing backward, the canoers dragged their heavy prize beneath the water until the nose of the boat rammed into the earth’s dirty lip. The front two officers leapt out, grabbed the boat’s rim, and pulled it on land. Meanwhile, officers already on the ground were spreading out a blue tarp, readying it to receive the body. Heaving, the officers with poles dragged the pale, bloated boy face-down from the water. His mop of long, greasy hair exited first, followed by his slender shoulders, soaked yellow-and-burgundy-striped shirt, faded jeans, and sneakers with Velcro straps. The hooks dropped him at the center of the tarp, his arms down and limp at his sides and his face turned to Rachel. He had a round face and small chin. His developing front tooth was visible through his parted purple lips. His rectangular glasses, blotted out with dirt, miraculously hung on his face.

  An officer waded knee deep in the water behind him and lifted the cinder block tied with hemp rope to the child’s ankle. The officer carefully placed it on the tarp.

  Rachel and Peak traded looks. They had seen a similar display last year. The cadaver then had the number one carved into his back, and his killer, named Father, was serving seven consecutive life sentences.

  The detectives neared the corpse after the photographers finished their work. Coroner Woodrow Gates, a tall man with nicely trimmed but thin, snowy hair and silver eyes, knelt beside the body.

  “Nine to eleven years of age.” He rolled back the boy’s lips with his gloved hand. “Developing teeth, multiple cavities, and a minor case of gingivitis. All signs of improper dental care.”

  “We know who it is,” Rachel interrupted.

  Peak stared at the boy, masking all emotion. “Ethan Sebring.”

  The boy’s picture had been tacked up in the police briefing room and countless telephone poles since February when his mother was found dead in the kitchen. After a sip of wine mixed with Atropa belladonna and other subtle poisons, Anastasia Sebring had been haunting Rachel. She was the Poisoner’s first.

  According to his friends and teachers, Ethan was an “A” student and had a knack for electronic repair and reading. He was now a pale, bloated hunk of meat. Rachel spent nearly nine months trying to find him. Here he was. Rachel turned her gaze to the clouds to keep from breaking.

  “He’s taunting us,” Peak said with scary quiet calmness. “Like a cat dragging a rat before his master, this is his prize. He’s showing us that he’s not finished.”

  Leaves on the nearby trees rustled and scraped together, sounding like cicadas.

  Rachel returned her attention to the bloated boy. “How long has he been here?”

  Gates pondered for a moment as he lightly squeezed the length of the boy’s puffy arm. “A week. Maybe two weeks.”

  “Halloween night or soon after,” Peak said. His eyes were like black like hollow pits.

  Rachel prayed to God that the Poisoner had not “cleaned house” so to speak after their tussle on Spring Street. If so, what the hell was she fighting for? Orphans. Today, it didn’t seem like enough.

  Gates rolled the body over and checked the pockets. No ID. No knickknacks. He was still wearing the same clothes he had on when he was abducted.

  “Drowning is not the Poisoner’s call sign,” Rachel pointed out.

  “Ethan may have been poisoned before he was tossed over the boat,” Peak theorized.

  Gates nodded in agreement. “We’ll know for sure when I pump his stomach.”

  “Send us that report soon as possible,” Rachel told the aged coroner. “I need to know if our killer is altering his method.”

  “And if it’s the same killer,” Peak added. “It could be possible that the Poisoner has a partner.”

  “Let’s hope not,” said Rachel before leaving the body in her wake.

  Peak caught up with her, and they both strolled around the water.

  Rachel watched her feet as she walked. “This case, Peak, it’s really getting under my skin.”

  “Good,” her partner replied.

  Rachel glared at him, wanting to sock him in the jaw.

  “Use that to fuel you,” Peak continued.

  Rachel un-balled her fists. She looked out at the woods. Since she was raised as a pastor’s daughter, having hate as her prime motivator never sat well. Love and life made this world worth living in, yet Rachel lived in a big, empty house and spent more time with the dead than the living. There was a war raging in her heart, and she could not let depression, anger, and sorrow win. Deep down, she knew the battle would be over when this case ended, and whatever side was left standing would be with her for a long time.

  When they reached the other side of the pond, Rachel saw Ethan Sebring standing on the dock. Unlike the puffy cadaver, this version of Ethan had a skinny figure and fogged glasses. His skin was pale, with little red veins in his cheeks. Brown hair parted at his forehead and tumbled in waves to his shoulders. His striped long-sleeve shirt had a tear near the belly button and another below an armpit. The hemp rope looped around his ankle and a cinder block. He opened his lips. A waterfall of black ink and seeds spilled down his chin and dribbled on his chest.

  Rachel recognized the black goop. “Caro fed him Atropa belladonna’s berries. A lot, by the looks of it.”

  “The Devil’s Cherries.” Peak keenly studied the dock but saw nothing. “Probably the same killer. That makes life easier.”

  Ethan turned his back to Rachel and marched from the dock to dry land. Rachel rounded the curvature of the pond, making sure not to take her eyes off him. Ethan passed behind the coroner and vanished.

  Rachel slowed her pace.

  “Gone?” Peak asked.

  “For now,” Rachel replied. “He’ll be back, though.” They always come back.

  After a final sweep of the surrounding area, Rachel and the rest of the police department were convinced there was no worthy evidence to be gathered from the area. This was not a surprising revelation, seeing how the crime scene was nearly two weeks old. The elderly fisherman who discovered the body was questioned, but his story was as expected: snagged his line on something, pulled up a piece of Ethan’s ear, and called the police. He knew nothing more than that.

  Rachel and Peak ducked to their cars, unmarked white Impalas. They agreed to meet at the station to file the report. Rachel pulled out first.

  Two lanes curved down the side of the mountain. One side had a rock shelf topped with countless trees. On the opposite side, a rusty guardrail barred a drop-off.

  As they rounded a bend, Rachel saw Ethan on the side of the road. The boy dragged h
is weighted heel behind him. Not wanting to miss him again, Rachel hit the brakes. Her vehicle screeched to a halt at the lip of the road. Peak cursed in the rearview as he skidded to a stop behind Rachel. When his car parked, it was inches from Rachel’s rear bumper.

  “Brake check,” Rachel told him as she climbed out of the car.

  Peak was not amused.

  With rapid steps, Rachel caught up with the drenched ten-year-old and walked beside him. “Ethan.”

  The boy kept forward, paying her no mind.

  “Ethan, listen to me,” Rachel said.

  The boy ignored her.

  Rachel gave Peak a look.

  “Orphan troubles?” he asked.

  “He’s not stopping,” Rachel explained and stepped out in front of Ethan. Head bowed and hands at his side, he walked into Rachel. His forehead hit her belly with unexpected force. Rachel staggered to the side, letting him drag the cinder block down the roadside. Rachel instinctively reached for his shoulder. Her fingers fell through his cold, ethereal skin.

  “I’m trying to help you,” Rachel explained.

  The boy kept moving and didn’t look back. “I don’t want your help.”

  His words gave Rachel pause. No Orphan had ever refused her assistance.

  “Why?” Rachel asked and ran in front of him. She walked backward to face him. “Why, Ethan?”

  Black goop spilled from his lips, and he kept moving forward.

  Keeping his hands in his pockets, Peak looked around the area, trying not to be embarrassed by the whole situation. “What’s he doing now?”

  “Ignoring me!” Rachel yelled back. She wished she could grab the boy and shake some sense into him. “I’ve talked to your mother, Ethan. I’m helping her find her killer. I can do the same for you.”