Mary Jane's Grave (11 page)

I didn’t think I’d be able to go back to sleep when I got home, so I was surprised when I felt Michael shake me, trying to wake me up. To my amazement, I’d slept in and my angel had already gotten the girls off to school and was ready to leave for work. As I sat up in bed, he handed me a cup of coffee. “How’s the latest victim?” he asked.

“The good news is, she’s alive,” I mumbled, still trying to get focused. “And she’s got the same wounds as the other one.”

“Do you think it could be a hoax?” he asked, always the cynical FBI man.

“No, the burn marks on Kari Sutter’s body were never released. No one would’ve known except the killer. This was the real deal.”

With a final swipe at his hair, Michael started for the door. I jumped up and gave him a hug, and after he left, I took my time getting ready for work, still trying to clear the cobwebs. As I was walking out the door, the phone rang. It was Vanessa.

“Is Michael there?” she asked tersely.

“No, Vanessa, he’s not. You’ll have to try him at work,” I said stiffly. I was about to hang up the phone when I realized she was still talking.

“CeeCee? Are you still there?”

“Yup,” I replied. Did she want to apologize?

“Oh, I was just wondering. I don’t suppose my husband told you what happened when he dropped me off, did he? He told me it’s been a long time since he’s gotten a blow job like that.” She actually giggled, the bitch.

“As usual, Vanessa, your trailer-trash upbringing is showing. As for the blow job, I made up for it this morning,” I purred calmly. Then I slammed down the phone.

Honestly, I didn’t know how much more of this I could take. The woman had no shame at all, spiraling down to the crudest level of human interaction. I wondered where she’d learned her social skills—maybe at a women’s detention center?

I thought about calling Michael but decided against it. I’d tell him later if I felt like it. I knew she was lying, but I was beginning to wonder how long she’d be able to keep this up. The phone began to ring as I walked out the door for the second time, and I knew it was her, probably furious with my parting shot. I didn’t answer it because I knew it would upset her even more not to have the last word.

I wasn’t in my car for five minutes when my cell phone rang. It was Michael. “CeeCee, Vanessa just called me—” he said in rather clipped tones.

“Oh, I’m sure she did,” I interrupted.

“She said you called her and told her she was white trash and taunted her with our sex life. She was crying.”

“What?” I had to laugh, her claim was so ridiculous. “This woman is seriously ill!” I practically screeched. Then I told him what had really happened, and he was quiet.

When he didn’t speak for a minute or so, I began to get angry. If Michael dared question whether I was telling the truth, I was going to go off the deep end.

But he didn’t. Instead, he sighed into the phone. “All right, I’ll take care of it. I’m sorry she upset you. You know how unstable she is. Just let me know if she calls back.”

Oh, I’ll let you know, all right. Because if this keeps up, I’m gonna get a restraining order against this nutcase
,
Michael’s feelings be damned.

I could only put up with so much of this behavior. Yes, I understood that she was frustrated, and for that reason I’d been trying to tolerate her. But she’d have to grow up and accept the changes in her life—or else.

I put the Vanessa situation out of my mind as soon as I got to work. God knows, I had more pressing things to take care of. First on my agenda was to schedule interviews with the other teenagers who had been with Danielle at the grave. There were six altogether, and I figured it would take up most of my day, if not all of it.

I called and scheduled appointments with each of them, and while waiting for them to arrive I went online to search through the websites on Ceely Rose. All of them gave the same facts I already knew—except one. While most of them claimed that Ceely had murdered her entire family, one site stated that an older brother, Randall, had survived the murders. Fortunately for him, he had been out of town when the murders occurred.

Hmmm, I thought. Very interesting. Then I began a search through local archives for Randall Rose. I immediately came upon his obituary, not the original, but a statement of facts about his death. There wasn’t much to it. He had apparently fallen off the roof of a barn and broken his neck.

There was only one problem: the date he died was recorded as March 8, 1898. This was five days after Mary Jane Hendrickson had died and exactly one year and five days after his family was murdered by his only sister.

I didn’t know what any of it meant, but I printed the page to add to the file. I wrote a note on the page to go look at Randall’s grave at the Pleasant Valley Cemetery, directly between Mary Jane’s Grave and Malabar Farm.

That was the most I could do right now because the secretary of Major Crimes had just informed me that the teens were here, two with their parents because they were under eighteen.

As I’d expected, the interviews took up most of the day. Everyone gave a similar account of Danielle’s attack, and for the most part Danielle’s description about when had they arrived at the grave was accurate.

Yes, they all admitted, they’d been drinking and scaring one another. However, the other teens, unlike Danielle, claimed that they’d stayed together and hadn’t gotten separated. They claimed that they’d merely turned around, and suddenly Danielle was gone.

When I questioned them about the other teens at Kari Sutter’s murder, they said they’d never heard of them.

The accounts that Charlie gave me were the most interesting. The whole group had told me that as soon as Danielle disappeared, their flashlights suddenly lost power. Three of the kids then went down the road to get help because they’d heard about the earlier murder and had started to worry about Danielle.

The other three stayed put, but as they walked around yelling for Danielle, they described more “strange things” that began to happen. First, a sudden steep drop in temperature got their attention big time. The teens claimed that it became so cold they were actually shivering—a tad unlikely for early fall.

Next, they reported that someone started pitching rocks and sticks at them from the woods and that they heard a baby crying noisily. And last, sitting beneath the pine tree that appeared to have blood running down it, they all saw a gray- haired old woman dressed in white.

That was the last straw. At that point, the terrified teens ran as far as they could from the mysterious woman perched under the tree, heading away from the gate and toward the back of the cemetery. And that was when Jeff Mason tripped over Danielle’s body, lying on the ground. One look at her and everyone freaked out, because Danielle looked dead as a doornail.

If memory served me, Walter Morris had told me that Mary Jane Hendrickson’s house stood at the back of the cemetery before it burned down.

Meanwhile, Danielle’s friends had returned, reporting that help was on the way. Mysteriously, their flashlights were working again, and even more mysteriously, the old lady had disappeared. The temperature had begun rising back to normal and the kids could hear the approaching sounds of sirens.

The only thing I could figure out from all this was that Danielle had been left alive because the killer realized the other teens had gone for help. He or she only had time to put the burns on Danielle and drag her to the back of the cemetery. None of the kids had seen anyone else either before or after their arrival at the grave, other than the old woman by the tree.

After the last teen left, I sat at my desk staring at the door. It was now more than a coincidence that all the witnesses were claiming to hear and see the same things, but it couldn’t be real, could it?

How could this stuff be? I thought. Maybe it was special effects or someone who really knew how to stage a prank. Either way, the supernatural trappings were meant to distract the witnesses, no doubt about it.

I looked at my watch and saw it was getting late, but it was still light enough for me to run over to Pleasant Valley Cemetery and snap a few pictures of Randall Rose’s grave. Before I left, I checked with the crime lab to see if they had come up with anything. According to Bob, the news was the same as for the Kari Sutter murder—nothing.

I called Michael to let him know what I was doing. It was near dusk when I arrived at the cemetery, so I grabbed my flashlight just in case. Unlike Mary Jane’s Grave, Pleasant Valley Cemetery stood along the side of Pleasant Valley Road. Anyone driving by could read most of the headstones.

Walking through the tombstones and reading the names, I saw they were all members of the same families: the Moffets, Mengerts and Tuckers. I also noted that these were also the names of roads that ran off of Pleasant Valley, telling me they were important, land-owning families back in the day.

The Rose family was buried in the back, and I noticed that there was no road named after the Roses. Oddly enough, they were joined in eternity by Randall, who was buried in the very last row beside one member of each of the other families. Four plots, their headstones about five feet apart, made up the last row of the cemetery. No one else.

After I took a few pictures of his grave, I turned to walk away. For some reason, though, I looked over at the grave next to Randall’s, and the one next to that one, and so on, before I stepped back and looked at all four graves in front of me. Then, with a shudder, I read the names and dates out loud.

Randall F. Rose

Died, March 8, 1898

James L. Mengert

Died, March 13, 1898

Albert M. Tucker

Died, March 18, 1898

Gerald T. Moffet

Died, March 23, 1898

To my amazement, all the men, all in their early twenties, had died five days apart—within twenty days of Mary Jane Hendrickson’s death. I whipped out my trusty camera and took enough pictures to fill an entire memory card.

For some reason, none of the men, including Randall, had been buried with the rest of their families. In-stead, they’d been hidden in the back. Now I had to find out why.

As I drove home, I still couldn’t figure out how no one had made this discovery before. The notion that maybe someone had and then tried to hide it occurred to me, but I decided to put it aside for now and concentrate on getting home to my waiting family.

I was almost there when Michael called me. “Are you going to be home soon?” he asked, his voice tense.

I felt a chill run through me. “I’m almost there now. Why?”

“I’ll tell you when you get here. I called Laurie to watch the girls for a while so we could talk.”

My heart skipped a beat, then another one. “Sounds serious,” I said, trying to sound calm.

“It is. I’ll see you soon.” And then he hung up.

By the time I pulled into the driveway, I was a nervous wreck. I was sure this had something to do with Vanessa and had to keep pushing away my alarm bells signaling that Michael might be going back to her.

When I walked into the living room and saw him sitting on the couch drinking whiskey, I became really concerned. This was a man who rarely drank hard liquor. I sat down next to him and put my hand on his.

“Michael, what happened?” I asked gently.

In reply, he handed me the papers he was holding, and I felt my heart sink. I had only to read the line,
Vanessa A. Hagerman; Petitioner vs. M. Michael Hagerman; Respondent,
to know what this was—a motion filed byVanessa to revoke his visitation rights with Sean.

“That vengeful bitch,” I murmured, shaking my head in disbelief as I read the papers. According to the papers, the cause of the motion was, of course, me. Vanessa claimed that my past high- profile cases put me and my own children in danger, that I was reckless in doing so, and that I had no regard for my own children, let alone hers. She claimed that when Sean was here, he was at risk from the “criminal element” that I have, by being on the force, “chosen” to surround myself with.

Depositions were scheduled for two weeks from today. Still trying to appear calm, I handed Michael the papers.

“Her claims are ridiculous,” I told him, biting out the words. “I’m a law enforcement officer, for Christ’s sake. So are you! Of course we’re around criminal elements. I can’t believe a judge would sign this crap!”

I was beyond angry.

He nodded and handed me another piece of paper. “This was just dropped off a little while ago.”

It was a subpoena for me to attend and give testimony at the deposition. I threw the subpoena down, stood up and headed for the phone. Michael was right behind me.

“CeeCee! What are you doing?”

“I’m calling Vanessa. I’ve had just about enough of her bullshit.”

“You can’t call Vanessa! She’ll take that as a threat, and it’ll get brought up in the testimony. Please, Cee,” Michael pleaded.

I turned around and saw his face. The man was tortured, deep frown lines creasing his forehead. I could see that this was killing him, which in turn was killing me. I grabbed him and began to cry.

“So we can’t see Sean until this is over?” I said through my tears.

He pulled away and looked at me. “No, there’s no temporary order in that motion. I’ve already called my attorney and he said everything stays as is until the final hearing. Actually, he didn’t think there was any reason to be concerned about this.”

“How can he say that? It’s your son!” I protested.

Michael led me back to the living room, where we both sat down again. I wiped the tears from my eyes and felt myself calming down somewhat. It was then that I had a thought—one that made me shudder—but I had to suggest it.

“Michael,” I began quietly, “maybe if you moved out she’d drop all this. Just for a little while, until she calms down.”

He looked horrified. “Forget it, CeeCee! I am
not
giving her what she wants—and I’m not letting her manipulate us. We’ll let the court settle it.”

“But custody cases can take months, Michael, even up to a year.”

“I’m aware of that. Just don’t bring that up again, okay? I’m not leaving you.” To my relief, I saw that he meant what he said.

There was no point in arguing with him; he was as stubborn as I was. So we sat quietly for a while until an idea dawned on me. “She just threatened this yesterday, Michael. How’d she get the paperwork drawn up, filed, signed, and served in one day?”

“I noticed that the papers were filed with the court last week,” Michael replied.” She’s obviously planned this for some time. I guess yesterday was her last attempt before having me served.”

The pain in his voice returned and I swore at Vanessa for hurting this man I loved so much. If Vanessa had been standing here, I would have wrung her neck with my bare hands. I’ve never had so much contempt for a person as I did for her right then.

I was so keyed up that I decided to join Michael with my own glass of whiskey.

“Michael?” I put my hand on his arm and looked at him intently. “Are you okay?”

“I’ll be fine, honey, don’t worry. I just hoped that she’d give this up, but apparently I was wrong.” He sighed. “You know, I’m pretty tired and I think I’m going to go to bed. You coming?”

“Honey, I’m too wired. I’ll be up in a bit,” I said, giving him a kiss and watching him wearily climb the stairs.

I sat up for another hour after I put the girls to bed, trying to figure out a solution to this nightmare. I ended up feeling more frustrated than ever.

Since I wasn’t able to fix my personal life, I found my thoughts drifting to my case. I realized I needed to find out how each of the four men whose graves I’d found had died. After that, I had to figure out how they were connected with everything. And only one person could tell me what I wanted to know—Walter Morris.