Blood Stained (6 page)

Adam brushed off the dirt and leaves and pine needles then trudged up the hill alongside the house's foundation. The cement blocks stepped up as they formed the wall, but there were no steps for Adam, just a rain-washed patch of dirt. Finally he made it to the rear of the house where the kitchen opened onto a wide deck notched into the side of the mountain. There was no view here, unlike the front of the house that was shaped like a glass boat keel and looked out over the valley. There was also no sunlight except right at noon, making the deck with its hopeful wooden swing set and playhouse a dark and dreary place.

Adam heard shouting, just like at Marty's house. Only this time it was a man. Adam climbed over the deck railing and peered in through the kitchen window. A little boy stood beside an open cellar door, his arms filled with sheets. His pajama bottoms were wet. And he was crying.

No frank sobs. But tears shone in the overhead light. He bit his lip, his entire body trembling. And he stood there. Silent.

The man yelling at him wasn't tall, but he was big. Adam smiled at the sight of his belly hanging out between the waistband of his boxers and the bottom of his undershirt. The only times he'd ever seen Darrin's mom's husband before was when he came to town around election day to talk with the farmers. He always looked out of place with his spiffed-up suit and city-shoes. Without the fancy clothes, he looked like anyone else in New Hope. He even had a tattoo: Daffy Duck, hunched forward, hands on his hips. Angry just like his owner.

Mr. Daffy moved his hands up and down as he yelled. Darrin's gaze never left those hands. He knew where the real danger lay.

"Look at me when I'm talking to you! You bedwetting little faggot. You get down there and wash those sheets and filthy clothes so your mother won't have to." He pointed to the open doorway behind the boy and the darkness that lay beyond. The way down to the cellar. Darrin cringed and edged away from the steps.

The man blocked his escape. "Get down there right now. You hear me?"

A woman came in from the front of the house. Darrin's mom. She never left the house, so Adam had only seen her from a distance. Up close, he saw she was younger than Daffy Duck. Dark hair hanging down past her shoulders. Skinny, but big breasts. A good fish. Just the way Dad liked them.

She wore a fancy silk robe and kept twisting the belt as she shuffled into the kitchen, eyes always aimed at her feet, so Adam couldn't really see her face. In the hallway behind her, he caught a glimpse of a girl, about his age. The big sister. She should take better care of her little brother, he thought, glaring at her even though there was no way she could see him in the shadows.

The girl flattened herself against the wall, listening but poised to run away. No fight in her. Just another fish. 

"Are you deaf, boy?" The man thundered, raising his fist.

The mother shuffled faster, still not looking up. "Darrin." Her voice was soft but carried. "Listen to your father now."

She joined the man. Together they formed an impenetrable barrier. Darrin looked up at both of them then looked behind him to the dark stairway. The man pointed. Stood there like the grim reaper.

Adam couldn't hear Darrin's sigh of surrender, but he felt it. The way the boy's expression crumbled to the ground as he inched along the fancy tiled floor, focusing on his feet as they climbed down. As soon as he'd gone three steps, the man slammed the door shut behind him and bolted it.

At the noise of the lock clicking, the girl in the hallway sprinted out of sight.

"That will teach him." The man marched down the hall. The woman looked at the cellar door for a long moment. She reached out her hand. Adam thought she might set Darrin free, but she clicked off the lights and followed the man upstairs to bed.

Adam waited until the house went quiet. The back door had a simple spring lock that was no match for his knife. He quietly tiptoed across the kitchen, moving by memory, not daring to use his flashlight, until he bumped into the basement door. He eased the latch, muffling the squeak with his hands, then opened the door.

There was one feeble bulb lighting the space at the bottom of the steps. Directly below it, still in his wet pajamas, was Darrin curled up in a ball. He didn't even look up when Adam came down the steps. The washing machine churned away in the corner and beside it a dryer stood waiting. Unlike the empty, uncluttered kitchen, the space down here was filled with boxes and plastic garbage bags and wooden crates haphazardly jumbled around the floor like someone just kicked them down the steps in any direction. It was too dark to see what was inside any of containers but something smelled bad. Like a small animal had crawled down here to die.

"You okay, Darrin?" Adam crouched down beside the boy and gently touched him on the shoulder.

Darrin tensed but didn't open his eyes. Instead he lay there, holding his breath, waiting for something very bad to happen. How often had Adam lay like that in the group home in Cleveland? Waiting for Rick the Prick to tiptoe into his room, into his bed?

Adam shivered. It was okay. Rick the Prick was never going to touch him again. In fact, once he found Dad and told him, Rick the Prick was going to be missing his dick, real quick. 

"I'm not going to hurt you," Adam whispered. "I'm here to help."

Another long moment passed. 

Darrin opened his eyes. "Help?"

"Sure. That's what brothers do. They help each other."

"I don't have a brother. All I have is a sister."

"Wrong. You have a lot of brothers. More sisters, too." 

Darrin sat up, squinching his face in confusion. "No. I don't."

"Well, we're half-brothers. Hi, I'm Adam." Adam thrust out his hand. Darrin shook it. He stood and Darrin did as well. 

"Is this a dream?"

"Nope. It's all real. But you have to promise not to tell anyone I was here. Can you do that?"

Darrin's face wrinkled even tighter. Then he nodded.

"Good. Then I can stay and help you." Adam looked around the grim space. Darrin hadn't moved from the small circle of light. "You're afraid of the dark, aren't you?"

"Just down here," Darrin admitted. "At night."

"Yeah. I know what you mean. This place creeps me out." Adam went to the dryer. It held a load of freshly washed clothing. He pulled it out. Lots of women's stuff. But then he came to a flannel shirt. Probably the sister’s, not Daffy Duck's. Way too big for Darrin, but it was nice and warm. "Here. Put this on and let's throw those wet PJs in the wash."

Darrin turned his back and quickly changed, then shyly handed Adam his soiled pajamas. 

"It's okay. Nothing to be ashamed of."

"Dad says I'm a fag because I still wet the bed." Darrin shuffled one bare foot against the rough-hewn cement floor. "He says I'm stupid and my brain is messed up, that's why I never learned how not to."

"You know he's not your real dad, right?"

Darrin nodded, looked over his shoulder towards the stairs. "Yeah. I'm not supposed to talk about my real dad."

"Why not?"

"My mom says he was a bad man. He was killed."

Typical fish. Too stupid to know how lucky she was. She could've ended up like Adam's mom. Dead. 

"What if your dad—your real dad—wasn't killed? What if he was on his way here right now to come and get you and take you away? Would you want to go?"

Darrin looked even more frightened. Adam understood that. Hard not to be scared when there was a whole wide world out there and you were stuck in a place like this. But then Darrin nodded. Slowly. Up. Down. Up. Down. "Where?" The single word emerged like a peep from a baby bird.

"Anywhere. Everywhere. You name the place."

"Disney World? We were supposed to go last year but Dad got busy."

"Sure. Disney World."

Darrin looked down again. "I guess. Maybe."

"Good." Adam was half afraid to say anything, but even if the kid talked, who would believe him? "You keep wishing, keep thinking about going to Disney. Keep an eye out for me. And I'll keep an eye out for you."

"But…why? Why are you here? Why are you helping me?" The poor kid sounded empty as if he didn't know the meaning of the word hope. Because nobody ever taught it to him.

Adam crouched down to look Darrin in the eye. He planted both palms on Darrin's shoulders, centering all his attention on the little boy. "Because, Darrin. We're family. And you don't need to worry about Mr. Daffy Duck or wetting the bed or any of that stuff anymore. It's no big deal. Like our dad, our real dad, always says, 'There's always another sunrise waiting around the corner.' Sounds good, don't it?"

"Yeah." Darrin didn't seem totally convinced.

"You just remember. Family first, last, and always. That's our motto." Adam pulled him into a hug. "And you're my family. Never forget that."

Darrin crumbled in his arms, tears wetting Adam's jacket. Adam didn't care. Not at all. Darrin was family.

Chapter 6

Lucy let Nick hold her until he fell asleep. He didn't press her about New Hope but she knew he was hurt by her silence. 

She couldn't help it. All she saw every time she thought about the case that built her career was the image of a ten-year-old crying out as he lunged into the blackness, almost moving too fast for Lucy to stop him from following his mother into the abyss. 

No kid should have to see that. And it was her fault. Her fault Marion Caine died. Her fault the killer took her with him. Her fault Adam had been there to see it all.

Now it was coming back to haunt her.

As soon as Nick began making the tiny raspy noises he insisted weren't snoring, she slipped out of bed and walked barefoot downstairs, avoiding the creaky one four steps down. Light spilled out from the kitchen. There, feet propped up on a chair, sat Jenna Galloway, the team's newest addition.

Lucy paused in the doorway, not sure she liked how at home Jenna made herself. The same way the postal inspector had waltzed into their office—Lucy's office—and acted as if she'd been there forever. Jenna was young. Late twenties. Thin but not skinny, and had dark red hair, a shade that made men look twice and women envious. She seemed competent, which was what mattered most to Lucy. Able to carry her weight and not put any of her team at risk.

She was withholding judgment on any more than that. Like Jenna's undercover capabilities, for instance.

"Did you need something?" Jenna asked without looking up from her laptop. She typed with one hand and drank a cup of coffee with the other.

"Thought you were replacing Taylor outside."

"In an hour. He's enjoying some quiet time in the car."

Didn't sound like Taylor. He was more ADHD than Megan's fellow middle-schoolers. "Quiet time?"

Jenna nodded, her coffee mug joining in on the motion. She still didn't look up from her typing. "Actually alone time might be a better word for it. Phone sex with his girlfriend."

Lucy felt a blood vessel at her temple begin to dance. "While on a protective detail? On my family?"

"Hey, it keeps him awake. Not like he's not looking at the street while she's whispering in his ear."

Lucy straightened, ready to step outside until she realized two things. First, she was wearing an old t-shirt and flannel robe and nothing else. And second, Jenna was pulling her leg. Maybe there was hope for the mailman—mailwoman–after all. "Good one."

"Almost had you, didn't I?" Jenna glanced up, a smile crinkling the button nose that matched her creamy skin and ponytail. Jeez, could she be any more all-American girl if she tried? No way in hell she could pass for anything but a sorority girl slumming if she was out on the street undercover.

"Almost." Lucy moved to the refrigerator. She hadn't eaten more than a few bites at dinner and now her stomach rumbled. She grabbed a slice of pizza and poured herself a glass of milk. As she joined Jenna at the table, she saw that the postal inspector had a Pennsylvania map laid out. "What's this for?"

"My trip to New Hope in the morning. I don't trust my GPS." She'd used a pink highlighter to trace her route from Pittsburgh to a small town on the New Jersey border.

Lucy hid her smile with a gulp of milk. Should she tell her? Keeping silent would be the best way to keep Jenna out of her hair while Lucy went to New Hope—the right New Hope.

No. Jenna was part of her team, like it or not. "You might want to re-think that route."

"Why?"

"It's the wrong New Hope."

"No, it's not. There's only one New Hope, PA listed in the zip code directory."

"Sorry, Zippy, but our New Hope is unincorporated. It's under the zip code for Alexandria. And it's smack dab in the center of the state. Here." Lucy pointed to a spot.

Jenna bent over to scrutinize the map. "There's nothing there. I mean literally nothing. Except for one squiggly little road, State Route 4004."

"Where are you from, Jenna?"

"L.A." She turned her attention from the map to her computer. "Wait. I found it on Google Earth. Wow, there are some houses there."

"And an elementary school and some farms, churches, a few shops, a hardware, a grocery store. Believe it or not, folks living in even smaller towns drive into New Hope to do their shopping."

Jenna looked up. "Too small for a police force?"

"Covered by a county sheriff. He and seven deputies cover eight hundred seventy-five square miles."

"That's spread pretty thin. Perfect place for a serial killer to hide."

"Not to mention the limestone caves riddling the mountains. Entrances scattered all over." Lucy pulled the laptop closer. She hadn't tried this before, but given the publicity the New Hope case had gotten, it was a good bet photos had been uploaded to the web. A few keystrokes later she had a selection of images for Jenna. 

"That's the padlocked entrance to the cave on Stolfultz's dairy farm. In the old days, their family actually used the front caverns to store their milk and cheese. If you keep going the cavern connects to another system that comes out here."

She clicked on a picture, revealing a nondescript pre-fab hanger. The kind used to store farm equipment or hay bales. Easy to erect, easy to overlook. Except this hanger backed onto an opening into the side of the mountain.