Awakening - Book of Fire (Blood Heritage #1) (12 page)

After a few minutes of generalities and a tour of the girl's room, James asks the burning question. "
Was Jennifer by any chance adopted?
"

"No," Allison says, "she was my daughter before I met my husband."

"Oh, then Thomas is her step father?"

"Yes, but he is the only father she has ever known. Her father was lost while I was pregnant with her. I met him in a small village in Peru where I was working as a nurse in a developing children's hospital. He was the Director of a local Mayan cultural preservation foundation. I only knew him for a short time, and he disappeared into the jungle never to be heard from again shortly after our meeting. Seems like such a fairy tale, it is sometimes hard to believe that it ever happened, especially now that I don't see her face every day reminding me of how real he was."

"It was love at first sight, I could not stay away from him. I dreamt of him for years after he disappeared. His strength and his dark eyes haunting me. I could not get him out of my mind, until Thomas came along and broke the spell. He’s a wonderful man and with him I found what I was missing through all those lonely years. Please don't start with accusations or suggestions that he had anything to do with what happened to Jennifer. He is devastated by our loss and he could not take that burden. Find out who did this and give us some peace, so she can rest with her ancestors. I am going to take her ashes back to where she was born. Her spirit will rest among the great Mayans she is descended from. Maybe in some small way her father will have a chance to know her now."

Thomas, a mild mannered and extraordinarily average-looking man, returns with iced tea for the group. The combination of this exotic beauty with such an aggressive personality and such a meek man seems a bit out of proportion, unless you understand the psychology of abuse. This woman has not avoided men for so long out of love and desire for a long lost lover, someone somewhere hurt her and hurt her deeply; she is good at hiding her wounds, but some behaviors are impossible to disguise. She is proud of her daughter but also has resigned herself to the loss. It seems to James she knows more than she’s letting on. The odd story of the Mayan lover is either meant to throw him off, or is the best that she can do to give him some kind of a hint. Something here feels way off.

Jennifer was an honor student, and involved in many community organizations. She took up just about every needy cause under the sun; her awards and letters of recognition line the walls of her simple room. She was a book worm and her books are neatly stacked everywhere. Though the room is cluttered, her tidiness is visible in every detail. She enjoyed a highly diverse taste in music and literature and her collections are alphabetized.

James knows that a clue might be folded up or written in the margins of any one of these books, or inside a cd case, but he does not have the manpower nor the time to be as thorough as he wants to be. Allison is showing her discomfort with James searching through her daughter’s things. She’s restless and fidgety. "
Are you ok
," he asks her. The answer surprises him, she explains how it gives her comfort knowing Jennifer touched these things and that in doing so she left a bit of her imprint there, the more James touches them, the less of her daughter remains. He says he understands and decides he will return if he needs to; he feels deeply that any clue he might possibly find in her daughter's things is not nearly as valuable as what information is hidden within Allison.

He’s having that same feeling of missing something obvious that he had when he looked at the girls’ photos. There is something here, he just needs to pick up on. He needs to read between the words she speaks and hear the real story. The truth behind the lies she tells herself for comfort. This is not a woman who wants to play victim, but she has been a victim nonetheless, and he has to figure out what really happened in that small town. If nothing comes of the case soon, he may have to take a trip to Peru and see what he can stir up. Since the girls are sisters, the identity of their father is crucial to the case. His identity may be the case closer, and Peru is the first real clue he has received about this mysterious man and his potential whereabouts.

He wonders if this case might be even bigger than they know. He has only searched local towns for missing girls, what if this man is some kind of serial rapist that continues to be active with other women. They are all around twenty now, but there could easily be many younger children as well that might be in danger as they reach adulthood. He will have to put feelers out with other agencies to see if there are older cases as well as it is possible this has been going on for a long while. Something has to make sense, to fall into place eventually. He wonders about the boys too, why does he not have any male bodies; he guesses it has something to do with the children born to these women more than with the girls themselves. Maybe he has a problem with boy children, like some other cultures do with their baby girls. It's all so strange and refuses to follow any normal patterns of criminal behavior he is familiar with.

And then something begins to click in his mind, the Director of the Mayan Cultural Preservation Foundation? There it is the answer he has been looking so hard to find. The girls are vessels for the continuation of the Mayan line! This case might just be some kind of KKK for a nearly wiped out ancient culture of violent warring tribes. An effort to bring back a dead civilization. They are breeders for a twisted egomaniac who thinks he is the answer to the rebirth of the entire culture! He is choosing women who have the look or the ancestry to bear "Mayan" children and then...what?… Wait until they are old enough to breed with him? At least there is the beginning of a motive in there somewhere. The ends certainly are not tied up yet and there are many threads of thought, but every step closer is something when you’re at zero. She has thrown him a bone, he knows he will get nothing more from her right now. Thanking her for her time he excuses himself and retrieves Jackson, who has been having a conversation with Thomas. Jackson gives the man a hug before walking out the door.

Walking to the car with serious faces, the two men don't even begin to discuss the events of the day until they are safely behind the doors of their vehicle.

"Thomas doesn’t have much except that his wife had been acting very strange, she refuses to sleep and if she does it is in the living room with the lights on. Though he thinks it strange, he also understands she might be reacting to the stress of losing their daughter." Jackson explains.

James gives him a detailed run through of the clue she gave him and hypothesizes "she might be afraid he will come after her as well. She knows more about what happened to her daughter than she is willing to say, of this I am certain."

"Peru?...That's worlds away, and just a bit out of our jurisdiction..how do we connect the dots? What is the next step? Jackson barks, frustration and curiosity oozing out into his tone of voice.

James replies with a typical cop's answer, “I intend to continue looking into the lives of each girl until something makes more sense. This is merely a ghost of a clue that needs much more substantiation to bring it out into the light. He will find the answers among the lives and homes of the other girls." Though he feels frustrated too, he tries to look strong and in control for his team-mate. He knows deep in his gut he has to solve this. There are too many things suggesting it isn't a onetime incident and it is likely others will die if he doesn't figure it out soon.

James isn't ready to make it a Federal case; he will lose control of the investigation if he takes to openly researching outside of his jurisdiction. The sheer facts of the case already make it a risky situation. There are multiple victims, making it a serial situation and missing children with the possibility of a kidnapping scenario already put it into a grey area that the Feds can decide is interesting at any moment. They have the ability to walk in and take him off the case any time they choose. He has to play his hand close to keep things in his court. This is far too intriguing of a puzzle to hand over. He doesn't want it to wind up in a box somewhere among the many other pissing contest cases the Feds have taken over in the past. If he thought they would do a good job, he would willingly take the help, but so many of the cases they have interfered with have wound up unsolved, sitting somewhere in a warehouse, where they will probably will never see the light of day again.

Something has come from each of the first two families, so James eagerly plans a visit to the third girl’s home, but this is a whole different ball game. His heart is sinking as he drives into the yard; this will not be a pleasant experience. Maggie has been raised in a small trailer home well off the beaten path. The yard is overgrown in some areas and has worn down to mostly dirt patches in others. There are animals running around all over; large dogs run at the car, barking and snarling. Pulling up close to the house, he pulls his sidearm just in case one of the dogs gets the wrong idea deciding to attack. He instructs Jackson to remain in the vehicle but to cover him from the open driver's side window.

The stress level of this interview hits extreme highs. The dogs luckily are more bark than bite, and once James exits the vehicle they scamper off, barking from a safe distance.
Another sign of abuse he thinks to himself; this doesn't look good for poor Maggie
.
At least the other girls came from loving environments, this looks like a textbook bad situation
. Before the gruff man of the house answers the door, James has already decided mom is not in the picture. This is the home of a single man, and it looks like a mean one.

The man behind the rickety screen is well muscled and far taller the James. His first instinct drives him to put his hand near the weapon he unfortunately re-holstered once he realized there was no threat from the hounds. Feeling a bit less stressed as he realizes Jackson still has his back from the car, he instead reaches his hand out in a gesture of greeting. The men shake hands and Rick does not hold back his show of brute strength, taking James by the hand and squeezing. For a moment James thinks he might have to break the contact, but he knows he doesn't dare. This is an unspoken challenge between men and he intends to hold his ground. Earning himself enough respect to get the conversation started Rick asks James "what the hell do you want?"

"I’m here about your daughter Maggie. We’re looking into her death and I know you’ve already spoken with police before, but I was hoping I might take a moment of your time to get to know her and to see her room. I want to make sure nothing is missed." The man's demeanor shifts and he seemingly melts under the pain of his loss. It’s at this moment James realizes this brute of a man truly loves his daughter.

Rick invites him in, and James is surprised to see the interior of the home is well kept and though old and rough, it is clean. There are signs of a woman's touch, from the lace trimmed pillows on the worn sofa to some photographs of flowers on the wall. Rick gestures to the photos and explains that his daughter loved taking pictures: "
She saw beauty in everything. Even the ugliest mutt was a special friend to her. She had such an open heart. All those ruffian beasts out there are her rescues. They don't like me much but I still feed them for her, she would have wanted it that way. Seems that I’m stuck with them now that she’s gone."
He shows James to a tiny bedroom with walls covered in drawings and photographs similar to the ones in the living room.

The general atmosphere is one of cheerfulness and artistic admiration of all things nature. She photographed each of the dogs in ways that make them look friendly and loving. She must have had a very special touch with animals. Her clothes are neatly folded and stacked on an old bookshelf. She has a journal but it’s full of doodles and quotes. This had been a happy girl. James kicks himself for making the snap judgement he’d come to earlier regarding this home and its inhabitants. He, of all people, should have known first appearances are not always what they seem.

This man is just as much a victim of his circumstances as Maggie. His wife dying of cancer after three years of battling the disease from every possible angle. Leaving them buried in medical bills after insurance allotments ran out, it was all way more than he could financially handle. He managed to remain strong for his wife and provide her with everything he could, keeping her comfortable up until the end. After she died he chose to move out of their family home and into this small trailer to catch up on the preponderance of financial obligations he’d accrued. His daughter, the only bright spot in his existence since he lost the love of his life, made life livable. They found happiness in their small and simple lives together, and now she’d been taken from him as well. He lost hope and any faith that anything good exists anymore at all. He is hopeless, broken, and mad as hell.

James notices a photo of the girl standing with her mother, and the two women are as different as different can be. Maggie's mother is a small woman with strawberry hair and freckles everywhere, the epitome of country girl from head to toe. Her sun-kissed skin glowing with a healthy radiance, hazel eyes full of sunshine; It’s hard to imagine this woman dying and frail.