A Haunting at Hensley Hall (A Ravynne Sisters Paranormal Mystery) (24 page)

Chief Beasely ran his fingers through his hair and tilted back in his chair. “It seems you don’t think he was guilty and I can’t help but wonder why. Not that it matters, since he’s been dead and buried in the family mausoleum for nearly forty years. Killed in a train wreck three years after he ran away just before we were going to arrest him. Why would he have run off like that, if he was innocent?”

“In the atmosphere you described? A ‘weird kid’ without a friend in the world? I would have run. I would have run years before!” Charlie said tightly.

“No, you wouldn’t!” Meg muttered. “You would have fought them all till you died trying.”

Charlie shot her sister a wry smile and continued, “What if the man buried in the family crypt isn’t Devon? What if Devon is alive and back here for some reason?”

“You’ve just been defending his ass and now you tell me he’s back here and up to his old habits. I don’t get you, Miss Ravynne. I don’t get you at all!”

Charlie wasn’t sure she did either. “We’d like to see everything you have on the cases…forensic evidence…anything at all.”

The Chief looked at her for a long moment. “When you two ladies won the contest, I checked you out at the mayor’s request. Margaret, goes by Meg, took back her maiden name after her recent divorce…no kids…no credit rating…no warrants or arrests. And then there’s you, Charlotte Ravynne,…author…world traveler and ‘bam!’ I ran into a brick wall. There’s a whole lot about you someone doesn’t want me to know and that kind of thing makes me nervous.”

“Maybe ‘nervous’ is better than what you could be feeling,” Charlie told him silkily. “I really hate repeating myself. I want to see everything you have.”

“And if I said ‘no’ I’d be getting one of those phone calls they got when your sister was arrested? So go ahead. If you find anything I might consider useful, you will share it with me? Millie!” he shouted. The door popped open immediately and both sisters know Millie had had ‘her ear to the keyhole’. “Take these ladies to the conference room and bring them whatever they ask for. I don’t want to be bothered again unless we hear something about Brittany. Good day ladies. It’s been….”

“A real pleasure. We know. And thanks for all your cooperation,” Charlie told him with a smile.

***

Calling it a ‘conference room’ was rather a stretch for the fold out table and six metal chairs. Millie brought in the boxes on a cart and began piling them in front of the sisters. There were three in all, each labeled with one of the murder victims name. “Before we get started, Meg, could you please call and check on Annie and Freddie. I really didn’t like leaving them alone, but she wouldn’t go with us and we couldn’t very well drag her here.”

“I’d have liked to see us try! I want to know what he meant back there, when he said those things about you. Why do I have the feeling that there’s a whole chunk of your life you haven’t shared with me?” Meg asked, after she opened the door and checked to make sure Millie wasn’t outside.

“Because there is. And that’s the way it will have to stay.”

“You don’t trust me?” Meg asked, her eyes widening with a mixture of hurt and surprise.

“Stop! I trust you and I love you, but there are things in my past that are best left there. Now about that phone call?”

While Meg called home, Charlie opened the first box and pulled out the stack of manila files and a collection of sealed plastic bags all labeled and dated. She opened the first file and read through it. Mary Agnes Watson…female Caucasian…age sixteen. She picked up a photo of a dark haired girl in a navy blue school uniform. She
did
look like Breanna and Rayne.

Continuing to read, she learned that Mary Watson had disappeared from a burger shack that had been a popular hang out for her crowd. She had last been seen headed to the parking lot, where she’d left her mother’s car. She turned up dead three weeks later. Some kids found her lying on the grass next to a swing set. She was nude…washed clean…her clothes folded and piled neatly on her chest.

Charlie picked up the photo from the crime scene. Mary’s hair had been combed out around her head like a dark halo…her arms were spread upward like wings and her ankles were close together.

More photos…close ups this time . Mary’s face was as white as marble…her eyelids and mouth neatly taped shut. Charlie shuddered reflexively. She had never ceased being amazed at the horrors humans beings were capable of doing to each other.

She lifted the bag with Mary’s clothes. Mini-skirt, blouse, boots, panties, bra….the typical clothes of a normal teenager from that period. She had put these on and went to meet her friends, never dreaming what was waiting for her. Charlie shook her head. Getting maudlin wasn’t helping. She picked up the small bag with a rock inside. It was black, smooth and oval. A river rock. It had been found taped inside Mary’s mouth.

She picked up the coroner’s report. Body lividity indicated she was killed elsewhere, then moved to the playground. She was dehydrated and malnourished. And she had been raped, repeatedly and brutally. Her body was covered with contusions….especially her thighs and breasts. There were numerous vaginal tears and her uterus had been crushed. An instrument had been used. There was no indication that human contact had been involved, though, it was impossible to be sure. There was no semen found, but, at some point, a condom could have been used. Based on the tissue damage, the rock had been taped in her mouth prior to death. She had been killed by a single thrust through her sternum into the right ventricle of her heart. The murder weapon had been a long narrow blade that had pierced through the body and into a wooden surface. Wood fragments were found in the exit wound in her back, etc….etc. There were statements from the boys who found her…from friends and neighbors. All the usual stuff.

Charlie didn’t notice when Meg joined her and began to read over her shoulder…didn’t notice when she moved away and crossed to the window. Looking up, she saw her there and knew she was crying.

She went to her and gathered her in her arms. She wanted to cry, too. “Meg, why don’t you check on Annie again and get some fresh air. I’ll finish up in here.”

Meg looked at her with her heart in her eyes, then nodded her head and fled the room. Charlie sat back down and opened the second box. Beatrice ‘Bea’ Kingsley…female Caucasian…seventeen years old. There was a school photo of her, too. Same dark hair. This one, according to the autopsy report, was four months pregnant. Jeremy’s baby. The one he didn’t want. She had been found floating in the river, one foot tied to a tree root. Her eyes and lips had been taped shut. A rock was inside her mouth…a river rock almost identical to the other one.

It was the same MO right down the line, she thought. Bea had also been raped by ‘a similar instrument’ and stabbed through the heart. Wood fragments were again found in the wound. They were an exact match to those found in Mary’s back. Her clothes had been folded neatly and placed on the bridge…the one Jeremy had hanged himself from. Maybe he didn’t kill himself, Charlie found herself wondering? From what the chief had told them, he didn’t seem the sentimental type. She read through his interview. Jeremy wasn’t smart enough to think ahead…to plan Mary Watson’s murder. He wouldn’t have known what a
red herring
was if it bit him!

She stood…stretched and walked to the window. Meg sat on a bench below letting the sunlight seep into her soul. Her sister was an empath. She felt everyone’s pain, sometimes more deeply than they did themselves. She’d have to be careful with Meg. She’d suffered enough already.

Sighing, she returned to the third box. Her name had been Terri Drake. Same school photo. Another Breanna look alike, though her hair was dark brown instead of black. She was found three days after she disappeared, while waiting for her parents to pick her up after a teen social at her church. Unlike the others, her body had not been arranged…not carefully cleaned, or her eyes and mouth taped shut.

She had been dumped along a back road. There was vomit in her hair that ‘did not match her stomach contents’, in short there was a wealth of DNA evidence, but, of course, no one had heard of DNA evidence back then. They did manage a blood type…’O positive’…the most common of all. There was no evidence of vaginal penetration, as in the other victims, but she had been killed with a ‘similar instrument’.

Charlie had had enough. She closed the box and shoved it aside. Why wasn’t the last victim raped and why was she disposed of so quickly? The cops hadn’t found anything to connect Devon to any of the crimes and yet they had been ready to arrest him because he was the ‘weird duck’ with a tainted reputation. And convenient. Maybe it had been an “
election year”
!

She sighed and left the room. She needed to find Meg. Sometimes just being with her sister helped heal her own heart.

Meg was waiting for her and patted the bench next to her. “I just called Annie again and everything’s fine. She was a little miffed at being disturbed.. She told me to ‘quit pesterin’ her. Are you okay? You look kind of awful.”

“That’s pretty much how I feel. Three young lives full of promise and then….” She let her voice trail off.

Meg looked at her with her heart in her eyes. “Tell me about it, Charlie. I know I ran out on you up there, but I can’t
not
be a part of this. Especially when I see you hurting. What did you find out?”

So Charlie told her. When she had finished she asked,” Do you think Devon could have done all that?”

Meg replied quietly, “Not Breanna’s Devon, but Nell’s? What do you think?”

“Who have we encountered with that much evil in him?”

“That’s easy! Old Thumper. He is a seething ball of hate and anger and lust!” Meg replied.

“That’s right. He wanted his daughter, sexually, visited her room night after night, but didn’t rape her. Maybe, he couldn’t bring himself to commit the final act. So he used the other girls, the look alikes, and stalked, raped then killed them,” Charlie told her.

Meg shuddered reflexively. “You saw him, or what’s left of him, he would be capable of all that!”

“But why use an ‘instrument’ to rape them? And then there’s Brittany. How could a spirit carry her off?” Charlie asked.

“I don’t know. It seems impossible. Do you still think Devon is back and involved in all of this?”

“Yes. And if I knew
why
I know that, you’d be the first to hear it!” Charlie replied grimly.

***

On the way back home they talked about what Charlie had read and seen.

“Why did Old Thumper tape their mouths and eyes shut? And neatly, too. And why the stone?” Meg asked, as she chewed one nail thoughtfully.

Charlie pulled her hand away from her mouth and said, “Stop that! You only do that when you’re worried and always complain I let you do it afterwards. There seemed to be something very ritualistic about the killings…those that weren’t interrupted. Maybe the stone…the taped mouth and eyes… were symbolic somehow?”

“I only do it when I’m thinking really hard. Maybe he was afraid the dead could speak so he weighted down their tongues?”

“And the eyes?” Charlie asked.

“Maybe he thought they couldn’t find him if they couldn’t see him. Maybe he was afraid of the dead…of their power to reach him beyond the grave. Didn’t they put salt in a zombie’s mouth and stitch it shut. I read that somewhere. Or imagined it,” Meg said.

“Devon
is
involved in all this.
And
he is somewhere close by. I can feel it!” Charlie said emphatically.

“But who? Adrian who hasn’t been seen since the Open House? Or Zack?”

“Not Zack!”

“And why not Zack?” Meg asked. “We already covered the supposed age discrepancy.”

“For one thing, he’s too tall. Devon was a ‘runt’, remember?”

“He was only seventeen when he left home. He could have had a growth spurt. You just don’t want it to be Zack!” Meg accused.

Charlie looked at her sister and laughed. “Apparently, nail biting does stimulate your neurons, Meg. You’re right. I don’t want it to be Zack and for a very good reason!”

“Which is?”

“If I think of it, I’ll let you know!” Charlie told her with an enigmatic smile.

It was late by the time they drove through the gates and made their way up the twisty drive. Annie had the lights on and Charlie pulled up close to the kitchen door. Freddie greeted them like they’d been gone a month. But Annie was sitting at the table cradling a cup of tea in both hands. She looked bone tired. “Bout time you two got yourselves back here. Don’t want you out runnin’ around after dark with all this goin’ on. Been listening to the news and the wee lass is still missin’. Not a clue. Your dinner be in the oven, leftovers from yesterday, but with a pinch of this and that, it should do you.”

Meg gave Annie a hug, “Thanks for looking after Freddie. I hope he wasn’t too much of a nuisance? Especially with the police out here looking around.”

“Haven’t seen nary a one. As to Freddie, he wasn’t a bit of trouble. We had us a walk maybe a half hour ago. Would have brought Tavish along, but he be too old to put up with a spry pup like yours. Would you be mindin’, if I go back to me own place and leave the dishes. I have a bit of a headache and me stomach has been all aflutter this day. Too much goin’ on for an old woman like me.”

Both sisters were instantly concerned. Annie was never sick. “Please, go right home and rest up. Can we get anything for you?” Meg asked in alarm.