Beneath a Buried House (Detective Elliot Mystery Book 2) (33 page)

Elliot went to the living room and sat on the couch This couldn’t be happening. He wondered if he thought hard enough he could wake up from this nightmare. He closed his eyes as tightly as he could. He even pinched himself. All to no avail. He still sat in the darkness of his living room.

His arm dropped over the side of the couch, and his hand touched the magazine rack. He felt the package Beverly Mandel had given him. He brought the package to his lap, then flipped on the lamp beside the couch. The package was addressed to him. The waitress had planned on mailing it. He tore away the paper, and his throat tightened as the removal of the wrapping revealed its contents—a large book with a black and red cover that read: DONEGAL, OKLAHOMA, CLASS OF 1988.

Like an enemy flag that refused to go down in defeat, a yellow sticky note marked one of the pages. Elliot placed his thumb along the marker and opened the book, spreading the pages.

Encircled in red, set off from the others by a smearing of lipstick, the likeness of a particular student burned recognition into his mind. The child in the yearbook was the same one featured in Doctor Bannister’s prize photo, the one he kept hidden in his desk drawer, his coveted secret snapshot of his daughter when she was ten years old.

A searing pain started in his stomach and spread to his heart.

There was no mistaking it. The photos were nearly identical. But the caption beneath the yearbook likeness did not read Cyndi Bannister. Displayed there instead, as final as words on a death certificate, was the name Elizabeth Stone.

Elliot grabbed the phone and dialed information. When he had the number for Doctor George Bannister, he dialed it. When Bannister answered, Elliot asked, “Cyndi, she’s your child, right?”

“What? Who is this?” He was groggy, half asleep.

“It’s Elliot, Kenny . . .”

“Yeah, I remember. What did you ask me?”

Elliot took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Please say yes, he thought, but said, “Is Cyndi your natural-born child?” 

“No, she isn’t. I thought you already knew.”

“She’s adopted?”

“That’s right. Cyndi always wished we were her real parents. She didn’t want us to talk about it. I guess that’s why we didn’t bring it up.”

“When?” Elliot asked.

“The adoption? Cyndi came to us late 1988, around November, I believe.”

Elliot let the phone slide from his hand. Cyndi’s adoption coincided with Howard and Maud Wistrom’s finding their Douglass in the park. It also happened right around the time that the Stone family dropped off the radar screen.

Elliot thought of Joey’s dog, Colorado, his sudden silence last night, and knew what had happened. Whether it was intuition or a form of hoodoo didn’t really matter. He got to his feet, dropping the yearbook to the floor, then headed for the garage.

Once there, he went to the row of shelves along the west wall and found the jug of antifreeze he’d left there. The bottle was sticky, the surface of the shelf beneath it, stained.

She’d poisoned the dog.

Elliot staggered back inside, wishing he could rip the fabric of reality from its lofty perch and stuff it so deep no one would find it. He started toward the bedroom, desperation choking his sanity, and a dark understanding ran through him, a carnal notion that had begun to form even before he’d fully grasped what was happening: He could let it go, leave the blame where it lay, buried in the ground with Cyndi’s unfortunate brother.

As the black thoughts wove through Elliot’s senses, Cyndi called out to him, and he thought he heard her say, “Are you coming back to bed, Kenny?”

Whether the words were real or imagined, they came forth as dark, shapeless, writhing spirits, skulking in dark corners and casting up knowing gazes, black eyes in dead, white sockets that possessed an all-too-personal knowledge of that which he kept hidden, secrets he could scarcely bear to realize.

If he loved her, would he turn his back on all he was, all he believed in?

He stumbled into the bedroom and found it void of any presence other than his own. He flipped on the light. The bed was empty. He ran his hand across the sheets, seeking her warmth that lingered there, though at the same time fearing that she might lurk behind him.

Elliot went through the house, turning on lights and calling her name, but she was gone. She’d slipped out, he suspected, while he was in the garage checking the antifreeze.

The answering machine was blinking. He stabbed the button to check it.

This is Jed Washington. We got a positive ID on the corpses in Saucier’s barn. It was Kathryn and Solomon Stone all right. Oh, and you can scratch the other grave, bones turned out to be canine.

Another bad thought occurred to Elliot. He hadn’t seen the yearbook when he’d searched the house. He ran back to where he’d left it, but it, too, was gone. Then it dawned on him. The return address of the package. Beverly Mandel. Cyndi had seen the name and the address. Elliot put his hand to his forehead. They’d taken Cyndi’s car last night. She’d left it parked on the driveway.

Elliot ran to the garage and hit the opener. When the overhead door rose, he saw the driveway was empty. Cyndi’s car was gone.

He scrambled back into the house, then threw on some clothes. He yanked open the nightstand. The .38 was missing.

He went to the closet. The Glock was still there. He slid into his shoulder holster, put on a jacket, and raced from the house.

When Elliot pulled into the parking lot of Beverly Mandel’s apartment complex, he saw that the door to her apartment was open. He phoned the department, explaining what was happening, then jumped out of the truck and ran up the stairs.

Elliot saw Cyndi, using the waitress as a shield. She’d backed herself and her hostage into the bathroom. She held the .38 she’d taken against the base of Beverly Mandel’s skull. The look in her eyes said she meant to use it. There was something different about her as well. Dangling from her neck was an amulet, a five-pointed star with a single point facing the earth.

Elliot slowly stepped into the small, tiled room. He heard a simultaneous annunciation, “Kenny,” coming from both Cyndi and the waitress.

“Hello, Cyndi. Wondered where you went.” He almost choked on his words. He shrugged, acting as if a complete loss of understanding surrounded him. “What are you doing?”

Beverly Mandel’s eyes were like saucers.

Cyndi kept the .38 in place. “Just protecting myself, don’t you see? No one else knows.” She used the gun for emphasis. “Just our little problem here.”

A cry escaped from Beverly Mandel’s lips.

“But I can take care of that. Now step back out of here. I don’t want to hurt you.”

Elliot forced a smile. “I believe that. I don’t want to see you get hurt either.” Again, as he looked into the face of Cyndi Bannister, he was reminded of Brighid. Maybe it was the anger in her face, or the lack of makeup, but the similarity was undeniable. “Why did you kill Jim Llewellyn?”

Cyndi remained silent for a moment, but then said, “Got it all figured out, haven’t you? I let you get too close, let my guard down.” She paused, then continued. “Llewellyn  poked his nose in it a few years back, but I managed to scare him off with some nasty e-mails. But he decided to come back, stir things up again. I couldn’t risk it.”

“Where’s it going to stop? Jim Llewellyn, Gary Sullivan, Brighid, who’s next? Beverly, then me? Would you, Cyndi? Would you kill me?”

Beverly Mandel tried to scream, but Cyndi slapped her hand over the waitress’s mouth. “I thought you were different, Kenny, thought you understood. But you’re just like the rest. You don’t understand me at all.”

“I think I’m beginning to. Reverend Coronet controlled his flock through fear of sin and Satan. All you had to do was play along, plant a few rumors in the right ears. You had the people of Donegal so busy looking over their shoulders for the devil that they never saw you coming. You used me, got close and blinded me with your charms. Let it be over now, Cyndi. Put the gun down. Let me help you.”

She tightened her grip on the waitress. “You’re pretty smart, but you’re wrong about one thing. It might have started out that way, but I meant what I said.” Again she paused, and when she spoke her voice was low, almost a whisper. “I do love you, Kenny. But it’s too late. There’s nothing you can do.”

“Sure there is. If you’ll put the gun down, we can walk out of here, together.”

She shook her head. “Then what?”

“I don’t know. But I’ll bet it beats the alternative.”

“In your mind maybe, but not in mine.”

Tears threatened to pour from Elliot’s eyes, but he stopped them. “We can still have a relationship, by mail, and by phone. Even visitation. And someday, if things work out, we could be together.”

She glanced around, considering the offer, then shook her head. “They’ll never let me out.”

Then, even though Elliot knew it was the wrong time, when he was trying to talk her down, the question came out. “Why did you do it, Cyndi? Why did you kill your parents?”

Her eyes grew wild, her face contorted. “You don’t know what it was like, living in fear, like prisoners of war, only the enemy was Mommy and Daddy.” She started to cry. “It wasn’t always bad, until we joined the church, and everything went to hell.” She closed her hand around the amulet that hung from her neck. Then Cyndi loosened her grip on the hostage, though she did not let her go but kept the waitress in front of her as she removed the .38 from Beverly Mandel’s neck, and pressed the barrel against the hostage’s temple.

“Don’t kill me,” Beverly said. “Don’t let her kill me, Kenny.”

Dizziness swept through Elliot, threatened to take his balance. “No.”

“It’s the only way.”

“No, Cyndi. For God’s sake. For my sake, please don’t do this.”

For a moment, that little part of the world inside the apartment stood still as silence, laced with death, permeated the air. Then, to his own surprise, Elliot charged forward, his body pinning both the waitress and Cyndi against the wall.

Cyndi screamed, a guttural howl that ran fear through Elliot. Her strength surprised him. She bucked and pushed like a two-hundred-pound defensive lineman, but still he held her, searching all the time for the .38 she held. When his hand found the weapon, he yanked it from her.

Elliot pulled Beverly Mandel behind him, then placed the barrel of the .38 in the center of Cyndi Bannister’s forehead. “It’s over,” he said. “It’s over.”

Elliot’s feet were like bricks as he turned and walked Cyndi, or Elizabeth, whoever she was out of the bathroom. The action sent an ache through his heart, and his knees grew weak, but someone stepped forward and steadied him.

It was Michael Cunningham. He looked at Elliot for a few seconds, emotion flickering in his eyes. Then he nodded. “Nice work, Detective.”

Elliot staggered into the living room and dropped into a chair. Several uniformed officers had come into the room, including Mendez, who, for all his mouthing off, worked alongside the other cops like they were family.

At some point, the officers brought Cyndi out. Elliot half expected her to scream, to curse his name and denounce any feelings she might have had for him, but she did none of those things.

She remained docile and quiet, and as the officers led her away, her soft gaze held his. “I love you.”

Elliot could no longer hold back, and tears began to leak from his eyes. And even though he knew that it would not be a good idea, that he should let it go, he pulled himself from the chair and went to the door, and watched as they loaded Cyndi into the patrol car. He could not deny his feelings for her, but a sickness ran through his gut for having been drawn into her deception. And his heart ached as he watched her go, though he could not now bring himself to call it love.

Chapter Forty-Three

Elliot pressed his face against the glass of the patio door and watched a neighbor’s cat crawl across the top of the stockade fence. Exactly one month ago today, fate had taken Cyndi from him.

The devastation crumbled the world of George and Evelyn Bannister, causing them to sell their home and become missionaries, living somewhere in Jamaica, last Elliot had heard.

Abraham Saucier’s life proved to be heavily involved with McKenna’s brand of paganism. He’d enticed young Elizabeth Stone with mysticism and dark spiritualism’s condolence of just about anything, their motto of “Do what you will.” She’d most likely come in to the world without a conscience, but her brush with the dark side no doubt acted as a catalyst. Reverend Coronet simply recognized Elizabeth’s potential and encouraged old Abe to council her.

Elliot wiped the glass where his breath had condensed. The way he saw it, there wasn’t much difference between Reverend Coronet and Brian McKenna. They just brainwashed their victims with a different brand of propaganda.

He slid the door open and stepped out onto the patio. Though the frigid air stung his face, he sat in a patio chair and watched one of the remaining leaves let go, relinquishing its hold on the barren oak, and he was reminded not of death but of rebirth, for the leaf would melt into the soil and return in one form or another. But Elliot suspected it wasn’t the molecular basics of life that concerns most people, but rather their worry for their own sentience and self-awareness, whether or not these things would continue after death.

Elliot closed his eyes and uttered a prayer, for without faith what was he, but an animal seeking the pleasures of yet another day’s existence.

She haunted him still, and he found himself fearful, awakening during the night, teetering on the brink of desperation, and always with a whisper of a kiss moving across his lips, and a feeling of a presence in the darkness.

Detective Elliot Mysteries

by Bob Avey

Twisted Perception

Beneath a Buried House

Footprints of a Dancer

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter Two

Chapter Three