Mary Jane's Grave (21 page)

We arrived in Mansfield in the early morning hours. Knowing Michael was sleeping soundly in our bed made me particularly eager to get home quickly. I had told him I might be another day or so, so he was quite surprised when I crawled into bed and wrapped my arms around him. With his eyes still closed, he pulled me tightly to his chest.

“You’re home, baby. I missed you.” His voice was groggy with sleep.

“Hey, how did you know I wasn’t a burglar?” I whispered.

“A burglar doesn’t smell this good.” He nuzzled his face against my neck and promptly fell back asleep.

My own sleep came shortly after, ending late the next morning when I jerked myself awake, as I often did when I was scared I would oversleep. Michael had already left for work. I was in no hurry to get to the office since Naomi already told me I could come in when I wanted. I got there around lunchtime. I found Naomi in her office with Coop, giving him the details of our trip.

“Afternoon, CeeCee. You get any sleep?” Naomi asked.

“I slept well. I can’t say you look like you got much sleep, though. Is everything all right?”

She smiled bashfully. “It’s fine, and no, I didn’t sleep, thanks to this one here.” She nodded at Coop. “Two days without me and I was pretty much sexually assaulted when I walked through the door.”

“Hey, I’m only human,” Coop mused. “Naomi was telling me what you guys found in the trailer. Sounds like he’s the one.”

“Most likely. Have we heard anything from Savannah yet, Naomi?”

She shook her head. “No, they said they’d call as soon as they had something. What’s on your agenda for today?”

“I’m going to write up everything from Savannah. That should take the rest of my day. I’d like to run down to the grave again and look around. I want to see how accurate, and recent, Daniel’s drawings of the tree are. There have been changes to it over the years, according to the photographs I’ve seen. People trying to set it on fire and chop it down, for one. I can’t really tell from the pictures I have if he drew those twenty years ago or recently.”

“Let me know when you leave. I’ll go with you,” Naomi said before answering her ringing phone.

Writing up our trip to Savannah did, in fact, take up the rest of my day. It was early evening by the time I was attaching the paperwork to each of the files. As I grabbed my purse and car keys, I saw Naomi walk past my door.

“I’m going to run down to the grave now. You still want to go?” I called to her.

She poked her head into my doorway. “Okay, let’s make it quick, though. Coop and I have dinner reservations.”

It was near dusk as we turned onto the dirt road that led back to the grave. There was still some daylight, but it had a creepy orange glow. The dense trees lining the road made it seem like we were driving through a tunnel.

“No matter how many times I come back here, I’m always freaked out,” Naomi said.

I simply nodded. It wasn’t the darkness of the road or the grave itself, it was the feeling people got there. It was hard to describe, a combination of eeriness, foreboding and sadness would come close.

Pulling to the gate, I saw that most of the leaves from the trees had fallen. A kaleidoscope of orange, red and brown covered the graves. With the sun setting, it actually proved quite beautiful.

I grabbed the copies of the drawings we’d found in Daniel’s camper and walked to the pine tree, Naomi in tow. I held one of the drawings up to make a comparison.

“What do you think?” Naomi was leaning over my shoulder trying to get a glimpse.

“I think this drawing was definitely recent. See the white marks from where those kids from the robbery tried to chop it down? See how detailed they are in the picture?” I pointed to the small, wispy lines in the drawing. “This was drawn within the last couple of years at least. Those weren’t there twenty years ago.”

“So what does that mean?”

“It confirms Daniel Griffin has been here in the last several years, but it doesn’t give us enough to say exactly when.”

She took the drawing from me to examine it closer. “It’s better than nothi—”

Naomi was interrupted by a loud shriek that came from the woods to our right. My first thought was that it was a crow, but when I heard the familiar snapping of twigs and crunching of leaves, I didn’t know what to think.

“Did you hear that?” Naomi whispered.

“I heard it,” I whispered back, removing my gun from my holster.

I started toward the noise. It was getting darker, and it was hard for me to see anything. I walked slowly and carefully, mostly so I wouldn’t trip and fall over a broken tombstone with my gun in hand. The area where the noise came from was completely darkened by shadows and the setting sun. When another twig snapped, I stopped. I was hoping whoever was in the woods wasn’t looking at me, so I could walk up on him quietly. I was still a good twenty yards away when Naomi yelled from behind me.

“Police officers! Don’t move!”

The sound of running began and didn’t stop until it faded into the dense woods. I was furious at Naomi. If there was the slight chance I could’ve gotten close enough to the person I would’ve at least given a good chase. Now I was too far away and the person was gone.

“Goddamn it, Naomi! Why’d you do that? Now I can’t catch him!” I put my gun back in its holster. “What? You think he was just gonna stand still with his arms in the air because you yelled police?”

“Well I had to do
something
, CeeCee! Besides, it was probably a deer anyway,” she said, though she sounded unconvinced as she scanned the woods.

“I doubt it. I think Mr. Griffin has found his way back to Mary Jane’s Grave. We need to search these woods, front to back and side to side, which is going to take a very large group of officers.” I looked up at the old, abandoned house before turning to walk back to the SUV.

I had taken no more than five steps when the vehicle blared to life. Its headlights came on and the radio roared: “
…There is magic all around you, if I do say so myself…”

I was now jogging toward the car to shut off the deafening music. But as quickly as it came on, it stopped again. I opened the driver’s side door and looked at my keys, which still hung in the ignition, turned to off, and tried to find a rational explanation.

“What the hell?” Naomi said nervously from behind me.

“I don’t know. Could’ve been a power surge or problem with the electrical system.” I mumbled.

“Do cars have those? Power surges, I mean? Doesn’t the damn thing have to be on first?” Naomi almost seemed panicked.

“Naomi, relax, for Christ’s sake! I’m sure there’s a rational explanation, but I really don’t want to discuss it right now. Let’s just get the fuck out of here.”

She didn’t argue and seemed more than happy to get into the passenger seat. I didn’t realize I had been holding my breath until the tires of my car rolled onto asphalt and off the dirt road. As hard as I was trying to think of an explanation for what happened, I wasn’t having much luck in finding one. Naomi interrupted my thoughts.

“Fitting, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“The song…about magic and all. Funny, it was a Stevie Nicks song. Remember back when there was the rumor that she was a witch?”

“Kind of, it was about as true as the Mary Jane- was-a-witch story. No truth to it whatsoever.” I turned into the department parking lot to drop off Naomi at her car.

“I just thought it was kind of weird is all.” She opened her door and got out. “I’ll get with the sheriff in the morning about searching the woods and let you know. See you tomorrow.”

I thought the entire incident was strange too, but I was doing my best not to admit it. I was more concerned about who, or what, was in the woods. I didn’t think the sheriff was going to go for a full-scale search that would require numerous hours of overtime. Not that he wouldn’t agree with it, it’s just that he has to answer to the county commissioners, the ones in charge of the money.

Michael was waiting for me with take-out Chinese food on the table. I was famished. I hadn’t realized how little I had eaten today. During dinner, I told Michael about my car at the grave. He seemed a little amused.

“Maybe the woman in white started it. Did you see her in the driver’s seat?” He wiped his smiling mouth with a napkin.

“I certainly didn’t see her or hear her offer to be my chauffer for the night, Michael, and I’m being serious. The headlights and radio really did come on by themselves. Ask Naomi.”

He pushed his plate forward. “Really, CeeCee, there’s a ton of reasons that could’ve happened. I’m not a mechanic, but it was probably something with the car’s computer system. If you’re that worried about it, take it to your department’s body shop and have them check it out.”

“I’m not
that
worried about it. It was just strange, that’s all.” I began clearing the table.

“I’ll get this. Why don’t you go open a bottle of wine?” Michael took over.

He joined me in the living room, grabbing the glass of pinot noir that I had waiting for him. I was already on my second round.

“The only thing I can tell you is you probably need to up your search for Daniel Griffin. I would say it was a good chance he was in the woods to night, which concerns me. No matter how many times I say it, you need to be more careful.”

I had a thought. “How would he know we were coming, Michael? I mean, I just decided to go down there this morning. Also, he’s coming in from the woods somewhere, not the road. Those woods are thick, unless he was coming from the campground area.”

“Most likely he is, but it’s my guess that he didn’t know you were coming and you surprised him. He was probably there planning his next murder.” Michael drained his glass and set it on the table. “C’ mon, it’s late and we need to get some sleep.”

I hardly slept and was ready for work an hour early. I had anticipated a long, boring day ahead, catching up on all my other cases that I’d completely ignored for the last month, but I couldn’t have been more wrong.

When I arrived at the department, every detective we had was running around like mad. I had obviously missed something. I caught Coop in his office.

“What the hell’s going on?”

He was grabbing a camera and other items off his desk. “The Detroit and Chicago boys went at it hard last night. They shot up each other’s houses and I think the body count is up to five right now, including two little kids who got caught in the crossfire.”

“Do we have any of them in custody?” I asked, already knowing how hard it was to track down a member of the Detroit or Chicago gangs. They changed their identities daily. Most of them could only be identified by their fingerprints.

“Believe it or not, we’ve got all but two. The uniforms did a hell of a job catching them. Supposedly, one of the triggermen is holed up over at a house in Johns Park. That’s where we’re all headed. SWAT’s been called out too.” Coop brushed past me in the doorway.

“You wanna come with me?”

“Of course.”

Ignoring my cases for one more day certainly wasn’t going to hurt. Not to mention, I wanted this guy behind bars. He was ultimately responsible for the deaths of two children, accidental or not.

I soon watched the awesome scene unfold in Johns Park without a hitch. The bad guy was caught, and no cops got hurt. All in a day’s work.

Naomi was still out at the murder scenes when I got back to my office. I started pulling all my old cases and began arranging them by priority. I put a couple of them off to the side, armed robberies and shootings probably committed by our suspects in the gang murders.

I was getting ready to leave for lunch when Naomi came back. She looked haggard.

“Can you believe this shit? I’ve been out there since three o’clock this morning. Bastards. Those little kids were only two and five years old.”

“Hope Daddy thinks his crack was worth it.” I shook my head. “You want to go eat? I’m starved.”

“Absolutely, any minute my stomach is going to go into seizures. Let me grab my purse and lock up my office.” She dashed out the door while I gathered my own things.

Ten minutes later Naomi still hadn’t come back. What the hell is she doing? I thought. I was about to go down to her office when she appeared in my doorway, a look of distress on her face.

“What’s wrong? I thought we were going to lunch?”

She walked in and sat down. “Savannah PD just called me. They’ve found Daniel Griffin.”

My heart skipped. “They did? Where? Can we talk to him?”

“He’s dead, CeeCee. A hunter found his body about a hundred yards behind his trailer, in the woods.”

I groaned and sat down. “Let me guess, he killed himself?”

“That’s the kicker. He was strangled. And according to Lt. Cahill, he’s been dead for at least two days. So far, there’s no evidence, but they’ll let us know if they find any.”

“Two days! Then that wasn’t him in the woods last night.”

“CeeCee, don’t jump to conclusions. Like I said, that could’ve been a deer.”

“Oh, c’mon, Naomi, you know better than that. This means he wasn’t the killer, which puts me back to square one.” I put my face in my hands and sighed. “Who the hell is it?”

“Let’s go eat. You’ll think better with a full stomach.”

I barely ate a thing. I was so dumbfounded by the death of Daniel Griffin I could barely think at all. Naomi dropped me off at the department after lunch; she had to go meet with the coroner. I sat at my desk, opened the Melissa Drake murder file and stared at the photograph of Daniel Griffin. With no more leads, I’d be forced to inactivate the case and send it to the cold case squad, a black mark for any detective. I began crumpling up Daniel’s picture out of sheer frustration, when my phone rang.

“Sergeant Gallagher.”

“Sergeant? This is Karen from the Holmes County Records department. I’m sorry it’s taken this long for me to get back with you, but we’ve been busy.” She gave a slight hesitant laugh. “You inquired about any marriage and/or birth certificates involving a Madeline or a Maryanne Hendrickson?”

“That’s right.” I wasn’t holding any high hopes.