Carved in Darkness (24 page)

“You blame yourself?” It was a ridiculous notion, one she clearly clung to.

She shrugged. “She was gone—stayed gone for eighty-three days and every single one of them was my fault.” There was no arguing with her. He knew that kind of conviction, that absolute certainty that you were to blame. It stared back at him every time he looked in the mirror.

“A priest found her.” It wasn’t a question, he’d read the police reports, seen the crime scene photos of the blood-soaked bench she’d been draped over.

She nodded. “He called 911. When they arrived, the paramedics thought she was dead but when they checked her eyes, her pupils were still reactive. They rushed her to the hospital. It took seventeen hours of surgery to repair the damage.” Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. “They removed three feet of intestine. She had a lacerated liver, a punctured lung. Every bone in her face was broken—both her arms, one of her legs. He stabbed her fourteen times, obliterated her uterus. She had to have a full hysterectomy.” She paused, took a shuttering breath. “She
should
’
ve
died—it would’ve been more merciful if she had. When she finally woke up, she opened her eyes, and I could see it: Melissa was gone.”

He didn’t have to ask, he knew what she meant, had thought the same thing himself. “They fixed her face.”

“Yeah. They flew in a plastic surgeon from Boston who specialized in facial reconstruction. I gave him pictures of what she looked like … before. He told her that he couldn’t make her look exactly like that, but he’d come close. He promised to make her beautiful again.” She laughed. “Do you know what she told him? She said
make me ugly.
” She rolled her eyes. “She couldn’t actually
say
anything, her jaw was wired shut. She wrote it.” She jerked her chin at the box. The scrap of paper he’d seen suddenly made sense. “The poor guy looked like she asked him to perform her surgery drunk and blindfolded.” She gave him a shrug. “That was when I knew that she was gone for good and there’d be no getting her back.”

“But you stuck around? Why?” he said.

“Everything is different: her voice, her face, the way she takes her coffee. But sometimes I still see Melissa in the little things. The way she ties her shoes, the way she eats her French toast. Sometimes I think that having her so close but still gone makes it impossible for me to ever really let her go.” Valerie smiled. “She makes a lemon pound cake every year … it used to be Melissa’s favorite. She never eats it; I end up throwing half of it away, but she still makes it. Can’t cook for shit, but she can bake.” Her eyes filled with tears and she let them drift to the counter. “Sometimes, when I really miss Melissa, I’ll go upstairs and watch her get ready for work, just so I can see her tie her shoes. Or I’ll make French toast just so she’ll put peanut butter on it.” She looked at him and smiled. “Crazy, right?”

“Not crazy—lucky.” He paused, wondered if he should continue. As soon as he told her why he was here, she’d throw him out, but he figured it didn’t matter anymore. “The man who killed Melissa killed my sister a year ago. He’s still out there, and I came here to ask Sabrina to help me find him,” he said quietly. Valerie stared at him while he waited for her to find her voice.

“What did she say?”

Before he could tell her that she’d told him to go to hell, a voice spoke from the doorway.

“I said yes.”

He turned to see Sabrina standing there, looking at them. He had no idea how long she’d been there, or how much she’d heard. Her face was a mess, the skin above her eyebrow split open. The right side of her jaw was puffy and swollen. He didn’t have to ask. He knew who did it. He put Sanford on his to-do list.

She looked at him and nodded her head. “I’ll do it. I’ll go back with you.”

Through the determination, fear shone plainly on her face. Suddenly, taking her back to Jessup was the last thing he wanted to do.

FORTY

T
HE PLACE WAS CROWDED
for a weekday afternoon—noisy with the constant clack of pool balls and Hank Williams’s country twang. He pushed his way in and headed for the bar. It was the kind of place where beer came in a bottle and ordering an Appletini would get your ass kicked. He snagged an empty stool and gave the bartender a nod. “Beer. Jack chaser.”

A bottle of Bud was all but tossed at him along with the Jack. “Eight bucks,” the bartender said. He threw a ten on the bar and downed the Jack. He nursed the beer and waited. He didn’t have to wait long.

Sanford showed up, coming through the back door like he owned the place. He took the stool closest to the door he’d just come through. Without being asked, the bartender slapped a glass in front of him and gave him a long pour of something brown. Sanford downed it like he was dying of thirst, and the bartender hit him again before walking away. This one he took his time with. He stared into his glass between sips, like a gypsy reading tea leaves. Every now and again he’d drain it, and the bartender would come back. After the fourth or fifth trip, the bartender gave up and just left the bottle. Before long, Sanford was totally wasted, his shoulder slumped against the wall his stool was butted up against.

He couldn’t help but think of the last guy who thought it was okay to touch what belonged to him. Not that dumb cocksucker Tommy—no, he’d gotten lucky and lived. He was thinking about the one in Yuma … what was his name? Andy. That’s right—his name had been Andy.

Ol’ Andy made a lot of mistakes that night, the first being he decided he needed pancakes after a long night of hard drinking. He and his pals rolled into the greasy spoon his Melissa was working at and ordered up breakfast. Then Andy made mistake number two.

He grabbed her ass.

After finishing breakfast, he and his friends left. He’d followed them for hours. From Yuma to some little bend in the road that was nothing more than a gas station and a roadside stand that sold Mexican insurance to border-crossers. They pulled into the gas station, and Andy disappeared around the back of the building. His third and final mistake was forgetting to lock the bathroom door.

He’d cornered him in the stall and asked him his name, the tip of his knife pressed into the vulnerable flesh beneath his eye. The kid’s eye rolled in its socket, skittered away like it was trying to make a run for it. Andy stammered his name out right before he stabbed him—one thrust at an upward angle. He drove the blade deep under the rib cage, puncturing his lung, making it impossible to call for help. He let him fall to the floor, blood pouring from the single wound. His face was mashed against the dirty tile, lips puckered, moving like a fish out of water. He looked surprised, like he didn’t understand the why of what’d happened.

“Someone needed to teach you some manners, Andy. You can’t just go around touchin’ what don’t belong to you,” he said, but the kid still looked confused. His mouth was still moving, making a hissing sound. It took him a second to understand what he was trying to say. He reached out and gave the kid a hearty clap on the shoulder. “It’s alright—I accept your apology,” he said.

Stepping on Andy’s forearm, he pinned it to the floor. He wrapped his gloved hand around the kid’s wrist, jerked up, hard—snapping it in two. He used the saw-toothed edge of his knife to hack through the meat of his arm. He took it with him when he left.

He looked at Sanford’s whisky-bloated face, then down to the hand he kept wrapped around his glass of brown liquor. The knuckles were swollen, scraped from where they’re rammed into Melissa’s face over and over. Sanford was sporting a few bruises and his nose was nothing but a wad of angry red meat slapped on his face, but it wasn’t enough. He drained his beer and stood, walked over to where Sanford was slumped over.

It was time to teach him some manners.

FORTY
-
ONE

“
N
O.
Y
OU’RE NOT LEAVING.
I won’t let you.” Val sat on the sofa—arms crossed over her chest, a mutinous glare pointed her way. Once the plan was formed—once she’d agreed out loud to leave with Michael—she knew Valerie would give her trouble, but this was ridiculous.

Sabrina sat in the chair opposite the sofa, elbows braced on her knees, head buried in her hands. She threw a look at Michael. He was leaning against the far wall, hands dug in his pockets, staring at the floor. He glanced up at her then bounced a look between her and Val. Finally his gaze settled on her. His eyes said nothing she didn’t already know. Putting distance between her and her family was crucial to their safety.

“I’m going,” she said for the hundredth time. “I have to go, you know that.”

“Then I’m going with you,” Val said stubbornly. “We’ll send the kids to my parents—”

She scoffed. “Are you
kidding
me? If he can’t get to me, the first thing he’ll do is come after Riley.” She didn’t know how she knew it, but she did. “Your parents can’t protect her. He didn’t just kill that girl in the park. You didn’t see what he did to her. He
destroyed
her.”

Val aimed a look of hurt disbelief straight at her. “I did see. I saw what he did to
you
—I was there when they … ” Her voice hitched in her chest and she looked away.

Her shoulders sagged. “He’ll kill you. He killed Lucy to punish me—”

“You don’t know that for sure.” Val flicked a glare at Michael. “She’s missing, no one knows for sure. She might be okay.” It made sense that Val would refuse to accept the inevitable. She was the one who’d insisted that they keep contact with her. If Lucy were dead, she’d blame herself.

“Val. Please.”

“I can’t,” Val whispered. Her dark eyes flooded with tears. “I let you leave once. When you left, you disappeared and never came back.”

She met Val’s gaze, saw the sorrow she was usually so deft at hiding. “Is that what you think happened? That you did this?” she said. Val looked away.

She leaned forward to grab her hand. “You had no way of knowing what was going to happen. He would’ve come for me no matter where I was or who I was with. I’m
glad
I was alone because you wouldn’t have stopped him. He would’ve killed you and if you were gone, I’d be totally lost. And what about Riley and Jason? Where would they be now if you had been with me that night?”

They were quiet for a moment. Michael stared at the floor. Val stared at her hands. Sabrina stared at Val. Finally Val looked up to meet her eyes.

“You have to let me go.”

Val took a deep breath, let it out slowly. “Okay. But if you get yourself killed, I’m going to be pissed.”

FORTY
-
TWO

S
ABRINA LAY IN THE
dark and stared at the ceiling. The red, ribbon-wrapped box sat on her nightstand unopened. A grenade, just waiting for her to pull the pin.

“You need to open it,” Michael said. She turned her head to look at him.

He’d stayed. Hadn’t asked, hadn’t insisted—just stayed. Like it was a given. He was sitting in the chair in the corner. The wash of moonlight that fell through the window illuminated his legs. Everything else was cast in shadow. She wanted to tell him to shut up and mind his own business.

She looked back toward the ceiling. “I know.”

“Scared?”

The word jerked her upright. She looked at him again. “Careful. The last time you tossed that word at me I kicked your ass.”

He laughed and leaned into the pale slice of light that streamed through the window. “Don’t remind me, I’m still pissing blood.”

She was quiet for a moment. “I’m sorry.”

Leaning back, he disappeared into the dark again. “Not the worst beating I ever took.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.” She was sorry for Frankie. Sorry for the trail of dead girls that led back to her. Sorry for a lot of things.

He didn’t answer her. Didn’t say it was okay, didn’t say he forgave her, that it wasn’t her fault. Silence swallowed silence, growing bigger and heavier second by second, until the weight of it pushed her flat on the mattress. Finally, he spoke.

“I fought them. Sophia and Sean, I mean. They took me in, loved me, and all I did was throw shit at them. I couldn’t stop it. Every time I broke their hearts, I told myself that it was the last time, that I was going to change, be the kind of kid they deserved. Let them love me or whatever, but I couldn’t. I was too scared.

“Then Frankie was born. She looked just like Sophia, but with Sean’s eyes. She was everything I could never be. She was theirs, belonged to them. I hated her.” He said nothing for a moment, just slow, heavy breathing. “But then Sophia made me hold her. Practically dropped her in my arms. I wouldn’t even look at her. I told Sophia to take her back. I didn’t want her there—I was going to hurt her if she didn’t take her back. But she just said,
no, you won’t.
Then she said,
she needs you Michael. She’s your sister—she belongs to you too.
I finally looked down and she was staring up at me with these … beautiful blue eyes.” More slow, heavy breathing. “She saved me.”