Authors: M. Z. Kelly
Leo nodded. “Maybe where the bodies are buried?”
“Maybe lots of bodies.”
I’d managed to make it to Natalie’s boyfriend’s performance just before nine that night. Izzy Cluck’s illusion was masterful, resulting in the iconic Hollywood Sign disappearing for several minutes. It then magically reappeared, all of it captured by a TV audience, as well as those in attendance at the event.
Bernie came to his feet as we all stood up after the performance. I turned to Natalie and Mo and said, “That was really amazing.”
“’Cept for her,” Natalie said, pointing a finger.
I saw that Nana was talking to a reporter. She was wearing a long white dress with sequined gloves, expounding on the performance.
“She’s actin’ like she’s Izzy’s personal assistant.”
“Why is she even here?” I asked.
Natalie explained, “Since she became rich she’s made a lot of social contacts. I heard somebody behind the scenes invited her.”
After a moment Nana left the reporter and came over to us. Izzy also left his crowd of admirers and joined us.
After we congratulated Izzy, Nana said, “It was a rousing success. Next time we need to try and make something even bigger disappear.”
Mo scowled at her. “Like your mouth.”
Natalie snickered. “That would be like makin’ the Grand Canyon vanish.”
“You’re both just jealous because I’m Izzy’s assistant.” She made goo-goo eyes at Natalie’s boyfriend.
Izzy waved to someone in the crowd and quickly excused himself, demonstrating his ability to make himself disappear under difficult circumstances.
Nana looked at me after he was gone. “Hey, maybe he can also make your virginity disappear.” She slapped her knee. “Of course, some challenges are probably too big, even for Cluck the Magnificent.”
I did an eye roll and said to my friends, “I think I need a drink.”
***
A half hour later, Natalie and Mo had joined me at Sal’s, a small nightclub off the beaten path. Bernie settled beneath the table as Natalie said, “You’re probably gonna have to arrest me one of these days. Nana’s ’bout to make me grab an ax and give her forty whacks.”
“I’ll be right there with you, baby sis,” Mo said, sipping a fruity drink she’d ordered.
I’d ordered a Manhattan but set it aside for a moment, telling them about Donald Regis’s death. “Everything about it looks like a suicide, but Leo and I have our doubts. His man-servant admitted that Regis had conflict over the years with Kellen Malone but wouldn’t go into specifics. He flat-out denied Regis was involved in the death of Winslow or my dad.”
Natalie had ordered a shot of whiskey and downed it. “Maybe Malone got wind you were sniffin’ ’round and took care of the bloke.”
Mo nodded her head, which tonight was crowned with a golden wig. “You ask me, things are heatin’ up. We got somebody’s attention and they didn’t want Regis talking.”
“We need to confront Malone, make him give up what he knows,” Natalie said.
“Maybe…” I took a breath. “I need some time to process what happened.”
“There she goes,” Mo said. “Always processing stuff. What about your mom’s final letter? You still in the processing stage?”
I sipped my drink and nodded.
Mo looked at Natalie and shook her head. “I give up. She’s slower than a dead turtle in the desert.”
Natalie agreed with her before asking if anything was new with Lindsay.
I shook my head. “We’re still playing a waiting game. I’ve been worried sick about her.”
Mo regarded me with one eye in that way she had when something was on her mind. “I was readin’ somethin’ the other day ’bout forensic memory.”
“Is that like when they dissect your brain after you’re dead?” Natalie asked.
I explained, “It’s a science involving how memories are made and stored in the brain.” I met Mo’s large eyes. “Go on.”
“The article said that memories have connections that go way below the surface of what we think we remember. It said that if you dig down deep enough, you can sometimes find connections to things that you never thought about.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
Mo fixed one eye on me. “I’m talkin ’bout Lindsay. She pointed at my head. “Maybe she said somethin’ or did somethin’ that might give you a clue ’bout what happened to her. It could all be right up there waiting to be discovered.”
***
When Bernie and I got home that night what Mo had said was still on my mind. Was it possible that something Lindsay had said or done in the past could give me a clue as to what happened to her? I decided I had nothing to lose by trying the technique she’d suggested.
I started with the memory of my phone call to her, when Lindsay admitted that Ice had abused her. She’d been hysterical, telling me that he was dangerous and abusive. I then moved forward, recalling our conversations when she came to stay with me and Robin. Despite dredging up every discussion we’d had, nothing seemed remarkable. I then moved on, remembering when she’d said she was thinking about going back to her boyfriend and me telling her that was a mistake. After she’d gone back to Boston I’d read her note, telling me that she’d gone back to him. I’d then found the name Ice written on a scrap of paper in her bedroom.
Nothing I recalled seemed to jog anything deeper until I thought about my phone calls to her after she’d left for Boston. In one of those conversations, she’d told me she was falling in love with Ice. I’d made a couple of subsequent calls to her that Ice had answered, telling me to leave them alone. He’d also said that Lindsay belonged to him. I played the memory of those calls over and over in my mind. All at once, something surfaced.
“It couldn’t be,” I said to Bernie.
I picked up my iPad and at the same time my big dog came over, looking for some attention. After nuzzling him I got the Boston Police Department’s website on the screen. A few clicks later and I had a photograph and name of the officer I’d talked to at Lindsay’s apartment.
“Wade Dempsey,” I said aloud. “He joined the department in 2014.”
As I studied the images of the handsome officer, I remembered our conversation. I went over that discussion several times until I was sure I wasn’t imagining things. Something about the tone of his voice had been similar to Ice’s. Could I be looking at the man who was a protégé of Janice Taylor’s, the man who had taken my sister?
“What did he say?” I put my head down, cradling it in my hands as fragments of our conversation drifted back to me.
I know this area well. I went to Boston College, just up the street. The coffee shop downstairs was my favorite hangout.
It was late and I felt guilty, but I got Selfie on the line. After apologies, I explained what I was after. “Is there a way you can find out if Officer Wade Dempsey ever attended Boston College?”
“Do unicorns fly? Give me a few and I’ll call you back.”
I knew nothing about unicorns, but ten minutes later Selfie came back on the line. “I’ve got a complete bio on Wade Dempsey. According to what I have, he was born in Atlanta and attended Georgia State for a couple of years. There’s nothing about Boston in his background, including him ever having attended college there. It’s as if he suddenly appeared out of thin air and went to work for the police department there in 2014. There’s something else that’s odd about what I turned up.”
I held my breath. “What’s that?”
“I have software that does a people search. It normally gives background on a subject’s family and relatives. There’s nothing on Wade Dempsey having any relationship to anyone. It’s as if he has no connection to anyone or anything in Atlanta, other than having gone to school there. There’s also nothing regarding any prior employment record.”
“Have you ever seen this kind of thing before, where there’s a big gap in someone’s background like this?”
“Only if they’re not who they appear to be. I’ve seen it with subjects who have created a false identity.”
I thanked her, ended the call, and got Boston PD on the line. I explained who I was, and that I worked for LAPD, before asking about Officer Wade Dempsey’s work schedule.
“Normally, Dempsey works the day shift,” the desk officer said. “But he’s now got a lot more free time on his hands.”
“Why is that?”
“He quit his job yesterday.”
After calling John Greer and Joe Dawson and explaining what I’d pieced together, I made arrangements for Robin to take care of Bernie. I then caught a red-eye FBI charter out of the airport in Van Nuys. My flight was scheduled to arrive in Boston at dawn. In the meantime, the FBI planned to talk to the Boston Police and gather all the background information they had on Wade Dempsey.
As the plane droned through the night sky, I felt the weight of everything that had happened over the past week bearing down on me. I’d spent my days working a homicide case that had begun with a killing almost a decade earlier, before a young woman’s life had been tragically ended by the same murder weapon just over a week ago. In-between those crimes I’d learned that three other victims had lost their lives under equally senseless and tragic circumstances.
While those crimes had finally been solved, it had left me with little solace, given the circumstances surrounding my sister’s kidnapping. Janice Taylor had been the second member of the original seven; a group of killers that were out to slaughter innocents for the perceived injustices they’d suffered. Their group of followers, The Swarm, had also been at work, mindlessly carrying out their orders to kill.
Now that Azazel, the first of the seven, and Taylor were gone, that meant there were five members of the original group left. Was Ice, or Wade Dempsey, one of those five? I had no way of knowing. All I did know was that he was in league with the group of killers and was also determined to wreak mindless havoc in the world.
As I turned all those facts over in my mind, Jeremy Spender’s words again came back to me.
“It could be that Lindsay is being radicalized and weaponized. And, if that’s the case, she’ll eventually be coming for us, just like the others.”
While I, once again, didn’t want to believe what he’d said, I couldn’t completely dismiss it. I even remembered a case I’d worked years ago where a kidnap victim had been held hostage for a couple of months. When we’d finally found her, she’d been tortured and indoctrinated by her captors, resulting in her taking up arms against us. My hopes rested on my sister’s abductor not having enough time to radicalize her, if that’s what he had in mind, and the fact that I knew Lindsay was a strong young woman, with a sense of right and wrong. She was, after all, the woman who had saved my life by killing her own father.
I pushed all those thoughts aside as I picked up my briefcase. I’d talked to Noah on the way to the airport and told him what was happening. I’d also updated him on Donald Regis’s death. His gentle words of wisdom still played in my mind when the conversation had turned to my mother’s letters.
“I think her letters are a gift, born in darkness of loss, just like your father told you. I know it will be difficult to read her final words, but maybe you should think of them as a gift that will inform the rest of your life.”
It was with the memory of his words that I opened my briefcase, took out the manila envelope, and opened her final letter to me.
***
December 24
th
, 2013
Hello Kate,
It’s almost Christmas as I write to you. It seems strange calling you Kate when I’ve never spoken to you. In many ways, even though I know all about your life, you seem a stranger to me. That’s my fault. I should have found a way to reach out to you before now, tell you that I love you and…
Judie Crawford’s weathered eyes lifted from the page. This was so difficult. How do you explain to the daughter you’ve never known that you haven’t seen her because every waking moment you’re afraid for your life and that of her sister? Even now, with Ryan out somewhere with his buddies, she didn’t feel safe. Her ribs still ached from the last time he’d beaten her. She’d laid on the floor of her shower for hours, trying to recover.
How many times had she thought about killing the bastard? Too many to count. She had thought about taking one of his guns and shooting him when he came through the front door. She sighed, knowing that her husband was careful to keep his guns locked up. He had once told her it was because of Lindsay, but she knew better.
Lindsay had finally had enough and moved out several months ago. Her daughter had known about her father’s abuse of her and despised him. Judie also thought Ryan might have molested their daughter, even though Lindsay had never said anything. That fact sickened and enraged her. The more she thought about it, the more she became determined to find a way to end Ryan’s life and, at the same time, end the misery of her own existence.
After walking away from the letter and trying to calm herself, she returned a few minutes later. She’d made a decision. She would go to the authorities. Even if Ryan was released on bail and came after her, at least she would have the satisfaction of knowing the truth had finally been told. And, there was always the slim chance that Ryan would stay away and she could see Kate.
Judie turned her attention back to the letter. Ryan would be home in a couple of hours. There was so much to say and so little time. She’d decided to mail the letters to her good friend, Collin Russell. In case something happened to her, she’d ask him to keep the letters in case Kate eventually found him. Her daughter was, after all, a detective. Judie prayed that if she didn’t survive, someday Kate would find her friend and read the letters.
Her hand shook as she picked up the pen and began again, telling her daughter about the decision she’d just made and more. The final words she writes, bring tears to her eyes…
I know that if you’re reading these letters you’re probably doing so because I’m dead. I’m sure you also want to know about your father. As strange as this may sound, all I can tell you is that your father made a vow out of love for you never to reveal himself. He did this to save your life, just as John Sexton raised you for the same reason. In that sense, because of these two men, I have known the greatest gift in the world—the gift of love.
Until we meet soon, in this life or the next,
All my love always, Mom
***
I put my mother’s letter down and burst into tears. I don’t know how long I cried, but the steward finally came over, asking me if I was okay. I mumbled something, I’m not sure what. He brought me a glass of water and then left.
I stared out the window, into the blackness of night, trying to find some composure. This letter had been written just a few months before I found my mother in a convalescent hospital. She was in something called a persistent vegetative state, essentially rendered brain dead at the hands of Ryan Cooper.
“God-damn him!”
I pounded my fists on the table in front of me. My mother had finally made a decision to tell the authorities about being abused for years. Her husband had apparently found out what she was planning and had essentially beaten her to death.
The unfairness of it all, and the fact Ryan Cooper had kept her from ever seeing me, settled into a dark place in my mind. I picked up the letter, again scanning the lines.
Your father made a vow out of love for you never to reveal himself. He did this to save your life, just as John Sexton raised you for the same reason...
A vow of love never to reveal himself—what did that mean? And why would my father take such a vow? Was there someone or something that he knew would harm me, if his existence was ever revealed?
I was again left with more questions than answers. There now seemed to be two mysteries at the center of my life. Who orchestrated the murder of my love-dad at the hands of Ryan Cooper and why? And why was my biological father determined to never reveal himself?
I pushed the letter into my briefcase and took several deep breaths, realizing that I had now read my mother’s final words to me. Rather than feeling comforted, I felt both enraged and confused. While I knew that my mother had loved me and was planning to see me before Cooper murdered her, none of my questions had been answered.
I glanced out the window again into the darkness of night, at the same time thinking about the dark place at the center of my soul; that place inside me that Joe Dawson was always concerned about. While I knew that my soul was still there, it also felt like it was filled with a darkness that had been born at the center of the profound mystery that was my existence. I brushed away a tear, wondering if that darkness might eventually win the battle for my soul.