Mary Jane's Grave (10 page)

“Don’t
assume
anything, Michael. I have no idea who it was, as I said. It could’ve been—and probably was—just a local troublemaker.”

Even though I didn’t believe my own words, I said them anyway, just so Michael wouldn’t worry.

“By the time the cops could’ve gotten there, the guy was long gone. As far as I’m concerned, there’s not much to worry about. Except, of course, what happened today with Vanessa,” I said, shifting to the topic that really concerned me.

Michael nodded, took a deep breath and leaned back against the couch. He was clearly tired. I didn’t know if this was the best time to discuss it, but I couldn’t wait any longer to hear what he had to say.

“How come you were at the lake anyway?” he asked. Was he deliberately refusing to change the subject?

“I needed to go somewhere and think. I was a little upset earlier, to put it mildly, and I didn’t want the kids to see me like that.” My voice cracked a bit.

“I know you were upset, and I’m sorry. I just wanted to get Vanessa out of here with as little drama as possible.” He leaned forward and put his hand on my back.

“Well, you were too late. She’d already won an Oscar for best dramatic per formance by a wronged wife.”

“CeeCee, I know what you’re thinking. I love you. I don’t know what’s going on with her or why.” He paused. “There’s something I have to tell you, but I don’t want you to flip out about it.”

The familiar thud in my chest started again. I didn’t think I could take any more surprises today and found myself holding my breath.

“While we were in the car together, she kept trying to get me to reconsider, and I continued to say no. Then she got pretty nasty.”

“Nastier than calling me a ‘home- wrecking whore’?” I asked, still smarting from her accusation.

“Definitely. When I dropped her off, she said if I didn’t give it another try she was going to try to revoke my visitation with Sean, permanently, because of you.” He breathed deeply and avoided looking at me. “She said you and your job put him in harm’s way and that you’re reckless. The press you’ve received from past cases will back up her claim. Obviously, since you and I have worked half of those cases together, she’s yanking at whatever straw she can out of desperation. She never even mentioned my job—just yours. If I stay with you, I can’t see Sean.” He said this quietly, anticipating the explosion that was sure to follow.

However, it wasn’t an explosion that followed but a steady stream of tears. I wasn’t surprised in the least, and I think deep down I knew something like this was coming. I did my best to keep myself together.

“She can’t just decide that you’re not going to see Sean because she doesn’t like the way your relationship turned out. There isn’t a judge in the world who will listen to that crap,” I declared, wiping away my tears.

“I explained that to her.” He nodded, looking at me, his eyes sad yet resolute. “But she was pretty insistent. All I’m telling you is to prepare yourself because I have a feeling things are going to get ugly.”

“What exactly did she say on the ride up?”

“She said when she left, she did it to get my attention. She thought I would come running home, away from you, but I didn’t. She never thought I would file for divorce, because she thought I would back out. She’s always hoped I would come back. When I told her you and I were getting married, she broke down completely.” He sighed. “Like I said earlier, she’s never told me any of this before.”

“If she had, would it have made a difference?” Whatever his reply, I knew it would be honest. I braced myself.

“No, it wouldn’t. I told her our marriage was over long before you came into the picture, but she didn’t want to hear it. When we got to the rental place I said good-bye and left her and Sean.

“Cee, don’t worry. I think she’s just blowing smoke right now. She’ll calm down eventually. She knows Sean likes coming here, and as much as you’ll probably hate to hear this, there’s a part of me that wants to believe she truly has Sean’s best interest at heart.”

“So how did you leave it with her?” He reached for me, but I pulled away and looked at him.

“She
demanded
that I get back with her, and I
demanded
that she get some counseling.”

“This is really upsetting, Michael. I was worried that you were going to go back with her,” I confessed, still shaken by the whole experience.

He looked shocked. “CeeCee, that’s crazy! You know better than that!”

I nodded. There have been very few times in our relationship where Michael has seen my vulnerability. I don’t know what he thought about it, and I’ve never asked him. I stood up from the couch and walked over to the front window and looked out, Michael came up behind me, put his hands on my waist, then turned me around to face him.

“Cee, you never have to worry—I love
you,
” he whispered. He began kissing me. We made love right there on the living room floor, and I prayed the girls wouldn’t wake up. I could only imagine their horror if they did, but miraculously, we were left alone. Afterward, we went to our bedroom and held each other as we fell asleep.

Unfortunately, my sleep was short- lived. Three hours later, Naomi called to tell me that another young woman had just been attacked at Mary Jane’s Grave.

“You said attacked, not murdered, right?” I asked sleepily, noticing on my clock that it was a little past two in the morning.

“Right, she’s still alive,” Naomi replied. “She’s at the emergency room right now and the crime lab is on their way to the grave. I’ll meet you at the hospital in half an hour. The vic’s name is Danielle Horton.”

Although this was mostly bad news, it was also good. Thank goodness she was still alive and might be able to identify her attacker. If there was a link, we might even be able to solve the Kari Sutter murder case.

Now wide-awake, I quickly dressed and headed for the hospital. To tell the truth, I welcomed thinking about something besides Vanessa and Michael, who was still sound asleep and hadn’t even awakened when the phone rang. This was a pretty strong signal that the previous day’s events had exhausted him as well as me. I was still wounded, though. I wondered if he felt the same way after wrangling with his ex- wife.

The Mansfield MedCentral Hospital emergency room was always a nightmare. I can’t remember a time when every room wasn’t full, with cops everywhere and hysterical relatives and crying kids keeping the chaos level high. I usually said that I’d prefer two simultaneous root canals over being here in the emergency room, but to -night was different.

I looked up at the large message board that took up half the wall just inside the emergency personnel entrance. The board held the last names of patients in the ER and told what room they were in. I saw the last name Horton in room eighteen. Her name was written in green, which meant she was in fairly good condition. I was relieved to see that. Like the colors of a traffic light, names in green were stable, yellows were fair, and reds meant they were in serious to grave condition.

Her green status gave me hope that Danielle might actually be able to give me a statement about what happened to her.

After making my way through parked gurneys, wheelchairs, hospital and police personnel, I finally found room eighteen. Two uniformed officers stood in front of it, and one of them, Charlie Fulton, a tall, dark-haired, burly man with a mustache, waved me over.

“Hey, CeeCee, she’s in here.”

“Whatcha got for me, Charlie?” I poked my head in the room, but the curtain was closed, hiding the victim.

“Group of kids down at the grave were drinking and raising hell. They’re out in the waiting area with their families. So this here gal”—he pointed inside the room—“decides to go off by herself down a trail, and her friends can’t find her for a while. One of ‘em ends up finding her about a hundred feet behind the graveyard in the woods. She’s out cold and has a head injury and burns. According to Captain Cooper, the first vic had burns, too.”

“Yeah, she did. Think this victim can identify her attacker?” I asked hopefully.

“I don’t know. She was still out when they brought her in, but I think she’s waking up. Captain Cooper just got here, too.”

Charlie stopped and looked at the other uniformed officer, a rookie named Bill Meadow. The two grinned at each other.

“Is there something else, Charlie?” I raised an eyebrow at him.

“I figure I better tell you this ahead of time. Those other kids are saying they heard noises and shit. You know, the spooks were talking at the grave.” He smirked, clearly not buying it.

“Woooo,” Bill moaned in his best ghostly voice.

“Lovely,” I said, shaking my head. Men could be such babies. I walked into the room, pushed aside the curtain and found Naomi with Danielle’s parents, hovering near her bed. Strain was etched on their faces as they looked up at me.

“Sergeant Gallagher,” Naomi said, walking over to me, “these are Frank and Berniece Horton, Danielle’s parents. She’s starting to come around a little.”

I looked at the bed and saw a dark-haired, heavyset girl with a bad complexion. She was experimenting with opening and closing her eyes, trying to absorb the strange new reality of being hospitalized. I empathized with her. I couldn’t count the amount of times I had awakened in a hospital and didn’t know where I was. It could be a frightening experience, especially for a kid.

Danielle’s parents were seated just to her right and looked terrified. Her mother—who looked like a grown- up version of her daughter, but even chubbier—was chewing her nails, her eyes red from crying. Frank, her father, sat stiffly with one thin arm around his wife and peered at Danielle anxiously through his thick glasses.

“How old is your daughter?” I whispered to Berniece.

“Nineteen.” Her eyes moistened, and she wiped at them.

I gave Naomi a serious look as I raised my eyebrows. She nodded, knowing what it meant.

“Mr. and Mrs. Horton,” she began, acting on my silent request, “I know this will be difficult, but if we could all step outside for a bit so that Sergeant Gallagher can talk to Danielle, it would extremely helpful.” She opened the curtain. “You may not know this, but in most cases crime victims lose their memory of recent events as soon as they regain consciousness. Whatever Sergeant Gallagher can learn from Danielle right now will help us catch who did this.”

The Hortons looked at each other, with Berniece giving her husband a pleading glance. I could see that she didn’t want to leave her daughter. But Frank nodded and patted her back. They slowly stood, and Frank waited while Berniece kissed her daughter’s forehead.

“Mo-Mom?” Danielle’s voice was low and scratchy. “Don’t leave!”

“We’ll only be outside the room, baby. This lady wants to talk to you.” Danielle’s eyes, now wide open, darted in my direction. “And you need to try to remember everything. We’ll come right back in when she’s finished.”

I waited until everyone left before closing the curtain again. Then I poured Danielle a Dixie cup of water and pulled the chair Berniece had been sitting on closer to her bed. After I propped Danielle’s head up on her pillows, she gratefully took the water and began sipping it. I sat down and got ready for my interrogation, knowing I had to go gently here.

Speaking slowly and quietly, I said, “Danielle, I’m Sergeant Gallagher with Richland Metro PD. I’m a detective, and I’m here to ask you a few questions about what happened to night.” She handed me the cup, which I took and set on the table. “And honey, take all the time you need.” I threw in the “honey” to show her I was on her side.

She nodded. “Where should I start? Are my friends okay?”

“Start at the beginning when you all got together to -night. And, yes, they’re all fine. They’re waiting to see you when we’re done here.”

Danielle reached up and touched the large piece of gauze that covered her head wound. Then she brought her hand across her chest, where more gauze covered the burns. I desperately wanted to peek under the gauze and see what the burns looked like, but I knew now was not the time. Her face crumpled, and Danielle started to cry, tears pouring down her face.

I handed her a tissue and waited. I noticed that Danielle’s hands were still filthy, her fingernails packed with dirt beneath them. The emergency room staff merely tends to patients’ wounds and won’t clean them up unless they’re admitted later, especially a crime victim. They’ve had their asses chewed one time too many from us cops about washing away evidence. Her nails looked as if she had been digging into the ground with her bare hands.

Danielle took a deep breath, wiped her eyes and in a choked voice, began her story. “Well, a bunch of us got together earlier to night to go on the haunted reformatory tour.”

She was referring to the old Ohio State Reformatory in Mansfield. It’s on the national registry and is, like many other places in Richland County, supposedly haunted. Numerous television shows and movies, including
The Shawshank Redemption
, had been filmed there, and every year around Halloween the prison puts on a “haunted” tour.

“When we got there, it was like a two-to three-hour wait, so Jeff Mason said we should go to Mary Jane’s Grave instead.”

“Did everyone else agree to it?” I asked.

“Pretty much. I mean, some of us were scared because it’s so far down in the hills. But we went anyway because getting scared was the point.” She paused and listened to the announcement that came across the intercom.

“Code blue, room thirty- one! Neurology, code blue!”

Someone’s number had just come up. I didn’t pay much attention, but Danielle did. “Oh, my God! Is someone dying?” Her eyes opened wider.

I nodded. “You’ll probably hear that a couple more times while you’re here, Danielle. Try not to let it upset you.” I tried to get her back on track. “So you guys went to the grave, right?”

She looked back at the intercom before continuing. “Yeah, we got down there late, like one in the morning or so. We grabbed some more beer from Jeff’s parents’ house first. Am I gonna get into trouble for drinking? I’m not twenty-one yet.”

“Well, I don’t know about your parents,” I told her, “but the more you cooperate with us, the better things will go for you.”

She sighed. “I don’t want to go to jail. And my parents will probably kick me out of the house. It’s not the first time they’ve caught me drinking.”

“Don’t worry about that right now, Danielle. Tell me what happened when you guys got to the cemetery.” Jeez, didn’t she realize she’d almost been murdered? In-stead, she was more worried about getting in trouble from her parents and spending time in jail—which wasn’t going to happen.

“We were having fun. We were jumping out of the bushes and scaring each other. Then somehow I wound up on a trail near the edge of the woods. It was really dark, and I didn’t have a flashlight. The others had some, but I didn’t see their lights, so I thought they were hiding and trying to scare me.”

She swallowed and reached for the cup of water again. I handed it to her and watched as she drained it dry.

“While I was on the trail, I heard someone whisper my name. I thought it was the others, so I teased them by going farther down the trail.” Her voice began to shake. “I didn’t hear anything anymore, so I turned to go back. Th-that’s when I heard it.” She closed her eyes.

“What did you hear, Danielle?”

“You’ll think I’m crazy, but I heard a loud woman’s scream. It scared the crap out of me. Then the scream turned into a baby crying, and the air around me got so cold I didn’t think I could move.” She opened her eyes and looked at me. “That’s when they started throwing things at me: rocks and sticks. I felt one of the rocks hit me hard in the back of the head, and I blacked out. That was the last thing I remember until I woke up here.”

“Danielle, you said ‘they’ started throwing things at you. Who are ‘they’?”

She started to sob. “I don’t know! I couldn’t see! You don’t think my friends would do this, do you, to make fun of me? These are the first friends I’ve ever really had.”

“No, honey, I don’t think your friends did this. They all came here on their own to see if you’re okay. They wouldn’t have done that if they’d done this to you.” I spoke softly, not knowing whether it was the truth but wanting to keep her mood positive. “Danielle, do you mind if I lift one of your ban dages so I can look at the burns on your chest? I promise I’ll be careful.”

She nodded as she wiped a tissue at her eyes. As I lifted the ban dage closest to her left shoulder, I prayed that Naomi had brought her camera since I had forgotten mine. Standing and looking at the same burn marks that had been on Kari Sutter, I seriously wondered why Danielle had not been killed. Kari Sutter had been alone for more than twenty minutes, but according to Danielle, her friends had been with her. Maybe that’s why she’d been spared.

“And these burns?” I nodded at the ban dages.

“They were there when I woke up.” She sniffed. “Those hurt the worst of anything!”

I asked Danielle a few more questions, but they proved fruitless. Clearly, she hadn’t seen who attacked her, and now she needed her rest—and her parents.

After I filled in Naomi on my interview with Danielle, I suggested that I take the other teenagers who’d been with her back to the department for interviews. My main question was whether they’d had any contact with the teens who’d been present at the Kari Sutter murder. Were they friends? I knew there had been nothing in the news about the strange sounds at the grave, and the others had been too far away to see the exact shape of the burns. These were loose ends that I needed to tie together.

“I told their parents to take them home, CeeCee. I’ve got all their information—names, addresses and such—so you can get hold of them later today. Why don’t you go home and get a few hours of sleep? When you come back in, the crime lab might have something for us.”

“Sounds good to me, except that I need you to take photographs of the burn marks on her chest. They match the burns on Kari Sutter. They’re the exact triangular shape and length. And while you’re in there, ask her if she or any of her friends knew any of the kids from the Kari Sutter murder.”

“I’m on it. Now get out of here and hit the sack. You look like you need it—badly,” Naomi ordered.

Although I hate anyone telling me what to do, I couldn’t deny I was fading fast, so I headed back home to my nice warm bed and, I hoped, a few more hours’ sleep.