Haven (29 page)

“Maybe that would have been better.”

“You remember now because you need to.”

“Do I?” She sounded lost. “Do I have to?”

Navarro hesitated, unwilling to offer platitudes. Instead, he said, “We are who and what our experiences have made us, Emma. For better or worse. You remember now because your mind decided you could handle the memories. Face them. And…”

Tears spilled silently from her wide eyes and flowed down her pale face. “And Jessie isn’t here to protect me anymore. Not in this life. I felt her go. I felt her die. She suffered horribly. Horribly. And—and she remembered. Right there at the end, she remembered it all. Even though it happened to me and not her, her mind was able
to re-create what I endured. Even somehow to feel it herself. As if it had happened to her instead of me. She had carried those
memories
buried inside her since she ran away. But what he did to her tonight…it unlocked the door. That’s why I remember it now. She can’t carry the burden anymore. The guilt. The shame. The…overwhelming rage and pain. She carried all that buried inside her for fifteen years.”

“Why did she carry it at all?” Navarro asked softly.

“Because she blamed herself. My going to the party was her idea.” Emma didn’t seem to notice the tears that continued to fall. “She was my big sister, responsible for me. And that
meant
something to her. Dad was out of town for nearly a month on business. The housekeeper pretty much let us do what we wanted; it wasn’t her job to parent us, just to…be there. Jessie had been to those parties before, but I never had. She picked out my clothes. Did my hair. Makeup. Let me wear the earrings that had belonged to our mother. It was supposed to be…fun.”

“Emma…”

“I had to promise not to drink—that was the only rule. So I promised. And I didn’t drink anything but soda. Jessie’s the one who…Jessie drank. Victor egged her on; it seemed to amuse him. Then…then things get hazy…” She drew a breath and let it out slowly. “I think someone helped Jessie upstairs. I think I followed them, because I was worried. And she…she passed out.”

“In that bedroom?”

“I think so. She was out cold. And I was there. He wanted somebody. He wanted…
me
. For some reason, he wanted me, and I was there.”

Because he had to, Navarro asked, “Who was he, Emma? Who raped you?”

“I—I don’t remember that. I don’t remember his face. I don’t even remember the other two, the ones who…held me down. I remember the smells…and the sounds…and the pain. But I don’t remember who they were.”

“What about the rose tattoo?”

Emma nodded slowly. “I remember that. A rose surrounded by thorns. But I don’t remember ever seeing it again after that night. If he still lives here—”

“You know he does, Emma. Whatever memories and emotions Jessie had blocked for so long, she was beginning to recover. She was asking questions. Threatening him. Her memories were leading her straight to him. And he couldn’t let her expose him. Not only for what happened fifteen years ago, but for everything that’s happened since.”

“Killing. He’s been killing women.”

Quietly, Navarro said, “There’s no way of knowing when rape stopped satisfying him, but I’m betting when we find him, and uncover his past, we’ll find other women he brutalized who survived. Then something changed, and he began to kill.”

JULY 5

Emma reported her sister missing early on Sunday morning. And though Dan appeared doubtful, especially when Emma showed him Jessie’s note and reported what she’d told Patty at the pharmacy, he at least sent officers out to double-check the story.

It might have been because Emma was so pale and quiet that he was willing to go to the extra trouble. Or it might have been because of Navarro, standing silently at Emma’s shoulder.

Either way, by the time the church crowd turned up in a downtown area remarkably clean considering the chaos of the day before, most everyone knew that Jessie Rayburn had left Baron Hollow.

Run away again, some said.

Several people stepped forward to claim they’d seen her drive that little car of hers out of town toward the highway, and though there was some confusion about just when that was, at least two
witnesses stuck stubbornly to their story that it was afternoon, during the festival.

“She left, Emma.” Dan shrugged. “She told people she was leaving, she left you a good-bye note, and witnesses saw her leave. She’s an adult and she left. What can I do?”

Emma looked at Navarro, then quietly thanked the police chief, and they left his office. Outside, she said, “It’s a little difficult figuring out how to push him to look for her when he’s one of the suspects.”

They had figured out, starting with a list of men they knew Jessie had talked to during the festival, doing some math, and looking through high school yearbooks, that there were half a dozen possible suspects in what Emma had endured, given various ages and—as well as she remembered—which boys had tended to hang out together.

Navarro was keeping a close eye on Emma, unwilling to leave her even to look for Jessie, especially when he knew the search would be for her body. Not that he thought his abilities would be of any use to him; he was so focused on Emma that nothing else could get in.

Even though something dark was trying to.

Emma was calm, but it was a fragile, uncertain calm. Uppermost in her mind, what she was hanging on to with fierce determination, was the need to find her sister, and even though she had felt Jessie’s death herself, she continued to question that what she had felt was real.

“You don’t feel her?” She had asked him that several times already that day.

And he replied as he already had: “I’m feeling a lot of dark energy, but it’s…diffused. I can’t bring anything into focus.”

“
When you reported in, your boss…She knew, didn’t she? She knew about Jessie. That she’s dead.”

Remembering Maggie’s voice, Navarro nodded, still wary of pushing Emma too far too fast. He believed keeping her focused on Jessie was the lesser of two evils; the murder of a sister she had barely spoken to in her entire adult life was tragic enough, but it wasn’t as likely to break her as the crushing weight of a horrifically traumatic event in her own past, newly remembered.

“She knew. And considering how badly Maggie takes the loss of any operative, much less one she cared about as she did Jessie, I’m giving her maybe twenty-four hours before she calls in the troops.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“It’s a good thing if we know who we’re looking for. I mean, aside from Jessie. Right now, we have no evidence against anyone, and no way of knowing what Jessie had discovered. If more Haven operatives show up, or Maggie’s able to persuade Bishop to throw out the rule book and bring his FBI unit in without an invitation, we’ve still got nothing.”

“We have suspects,” she said.

“On the thinnest of legal pretexts—if that.” Navarro shook his head. “I don’t like it, but we can’t just start accusing people, or even questioning them, without some good reason. Because if we don’t have a good reason, and find evidence later on…”

“Jessie’s killer could go free.”

“Maybe. It depends on what else he’s done. The point is, we risk a lot by not following rules of evidence. And if this killer is the serial we think he is, we want him dead or in a prison cell for the rest of his life, and we don’t want him killing anyone else along the way.”

“
I know you’re right,” Emma said. “But…it’s hard. Waiting. Wondering if we’ll ever find her.”

“We’ll find her,” Navarro said. “I can promise you that.”

JULY 6

It took him a while to get away, but after so long at his job—his true job, his vocation—he had gotten very good at making people believe he was somewhere other than where he was.

It was a skill that came in handy.

He drove as far as he could, using an alternate car that wouldn’t attract attention, then parked it where it wouldn’t be seen and went the rest of the way on foot. It wasn’t exactly an easy hike, but it was near enough that it didn’t take him very long.

He went directly around to the side and down into the cellar, moving through the dim space easily as one long familiar with it. He used his key to unlock the steel door and went inside, ignoring the familiar tools and implements and going to the other door, which he also unlocked. The tiny room was occupied only by the big lights he used—and a large chest freezer.

Idly, he wondered if she had even guessed that he had tapped into Baron Hollow’s power supply. Probably not, since he used that electricity only to run the freezer. And the line was buried all the way to the junction where he’d tapped in.

Shrugging off the musing, along with a lingering regret that he hadn’t had the time to really play with her as he’d wanted, he opened the freezer.

She wasn’t very big, but she’d been in the freezer for a while, so she was almost locked into an awkward position. Awkward for him, at least. But that, too, was something he was accustomed to dealing with. He had brought a black, zippered body bag—amazing what you could buy off the Internet these days—and once he’d maneuvered her out of the freezer and into the roomy, handled bag, it was much easier for him.

He took her to his garden, again feeling mild regret, this time because he really didn’t have the time to let her thaw out before he planted her. He had thought he would have time, and so had dug the hole to the appropriate size and shape the day before.

Well, she’d fit anyway. Might not be too comfortable for her, but there was really nothing to be done about that. He didn’t have the luxury of time, not anymore.

Because if he stopped what he was doing and listened, very, very intently, he could hear the warning whispers.

They know.

They’ll be looking for you.

They’ll be looking for your flowers.

So he shortened the usual ceremony, annoyed by the necessity, merely removing her from the black bag and placing her in the hole prepared for her. Naked.

He always took their clothes. Not as
trophies
the way those profilers talked about, because he burned the clothes. It was just that he needed to enjoy his flowers in their purest form, naked as God had made them.

He wished he’d had more time with this one.

But, conscious of time ticking away, he got his shovel and began to plant his flower, burying the body of Jessie Rayburn.

BREAKFAST IN THE
dining room of Rayburn House was very subdued on that Monday morning, so much so that Hollis instinctively lowered her voice when she said, “Considering that the official verdict is that Jessie left town under her own steam Saturday, this place is…”

“Depressing?” DeMarco offered. “I’d agree. And, since most of the guests here for the festival have checked out, pretty empty too.”

“Yeah, but—” Hollis looked toward the doorway, and her eyes widened.

Familiar with the expression, DeMarco waited until she very softly said, “Oh, shit,” before he asked a quiet question.

“Jessie?”

Hollis nodded. “Dammit, I was hoping she really had left on her own. Or, if she hadn’t, that at least one of us could pick up
something
to help find her before the bastard killed her.”

“It’s certainly not for lack of trying,” her partner pointed out. “And at least we can do something now. If you want to take on Chief Maitland, that is.”

Hollis smiled grimly. “Let’s go.”

DAN MAITLAND WASN’T
happy to be called to the office; it was supposed to be his Monday off. But he came, because Melissa had sounded baffled and uncertain as to what to do, and when he got there he realized why.

The two paranormal researchers were in his office.

“
Gordon is still working in the Rayburn family archives,” Hollis Templeton said earnestly by way of a greeting, “or he’d be here too. He’s very excited.”

“Why?” Maitland asked as he sat down.

“The spirit.”

Maitland sighed. “I suppose your cameras or recorders caught something you believe is definitive?” That was usually the case, though all Maitland had ever seen or heard were smudges or reflected light on video and indistinguishable sounds on audio.

That was the “genuine” stuff produced by “serious” researchers.

The faked stuff was a lot more entertaining—and a lot more obviously fake.

“Not quite,” Reese DeMarco murmured.

“I saw her,” Hollis said. “Less than an hour ago. We didn’t have any of the cameras on, but I saw her.”

Playing along, Maitland said, “I don’t suppose you know who she was?”

“Oh, yes, because there were some pictures stuck in the old family Bible. And I asked Penny, to be sure. Besides, the sisters really do look a lot alike. Though night and day. It was Jessie Rayburn.”

The chief had been about to try a sip of the hot, undoubtedly foul coffee their ancient coffeemaker produced, but instead slowly set the cup down on his blotter.

I should have stopped off for a decent cup of coffee. Dammit.

“Jessie Rayburn isn’t dead,” he said.

Hollis blinked. “But I saw her. I could see
through
her. And then she started to come toward me, and after just a couple of steps, she
faded away. That happens pretty often with a new spirit; they don’t yet know how to focus and gather energy to come all the way through.”