The Depth of Darkness (Mitch Tanner #1) (27 page)

I got in on the passenger side and adjusted
the air vents so that the cold air blew toward my face. “Thanks for
coming out, Sam.”

“Did the trip result in anything
positive?”

“Cassie couldn’t help and Bridget hates me
now.”

“Zero for two.”

“Feels more like zero for twenty.”

“We got the boy back.”

“But the girl is still missing, and the
assholes that did this are still out there.”

Sam nodded. We remained silent for a few
minutes while he navigated toward the highway. As I watched the sun
drop lower in the sky, I wondered about the fate of Debby Walker.
Was the girl still alive? Would we ever see her? Why hadn’t the
kidnappers made demands for her return? Did they deem the risk of
collecting a few thousand dollars in exchange for a poor white girl
too high?

“Want to get a drink?” Sam asked.

“Yeah, but first I’d like to pick up my car.
Is it still outside the Hollands’s?”

How long was long enough? Bridget asked
herself that question every thirty seconds. She’d been inside the
airport restroom for close to twenty minutes. Surely, Mitch would
have left by then. Even if he hadn’t, he’d be outside the building
waiting for his ride, not hanging around the check-in counters. She
couldn’t wait too much longer. The flight she’d booked from her
cell phone took off in a half-hour. If she missed that, there
weren’t any more flights to Savannah that day.

She pulled her hair back into a bun. He was
less likely to notice her that way in a crowded space. She exited
the bathroom, her chin tucked to her chest, and headed directly
toward a self-check-in kiosk. Five minutes later a TSA agent
scanned the boarding pass on her cell phone. Fifteen minutes after
that, she was seated comfortably on the plane.

The drag of the day, and the week for that
matter, caught up to Bridget, and she fell asleep shortly after
takeoff. A patch of turbulence woke her, but only momentarily. She
rose from her nap as they approached the runway. After departing
the plane, she found her way to the rental car counter and secured
a Taurus. At this point in the day it mattered little to her what
she drove.

Bridget drove to Cassie’s house, navigating
from memory. She took a wrong turn along the way, but quickly
recovered.

She pulled up to the curb and shifted the car
into park.
What am I doing here?
It was a curious decision,
made in a matter of seconds, to return to see Cassie. She couldn’t
think of a concrete reason why she returned. It was a feeling that
gnawed at her throughout the flight back to Philadelphia.

Bridget waited until the sun sank below the
horizon, then she opened her car door and stepped out. Her stomach
and chest tightened as she stepped onto the walkway that led to the
front door. She stopped and took a few deep breaths to steady
herself. “Calm, calm, calm,” she whispered after each exhale.
Feeling in control, she continued on.

The door opened before she reached the first
step. Cassie stood in the open doorway and smiled. “Bridget,
please, come in.”

Bridget climbed the steps and turned sideways
to pass through the opening. The two women were eye to eye for a
second. The way Cassie looked at her reminded her of the visit
earlier that day, and she knew then that was the reason she had
returned.

“I’m surprised to see you again,” Cassie said
from behind her.

“I was just—”

“In the area?”

Bridget stopped, turned and smiled. “Yeah,
something like that.”

“I was just sitting down to eat. Care to join
me?”

“No, I’m okay.” Bridget paused. Her stomach
knotted at the mention of food. “On second thought, I’ll have
some.”

“Right this way, then.” Cassie led her away
from the living room and into the kitchen. The table looked like
something out of the ‘fifties. The chairs were sparkling red vinyl,
and the legs of the table were chrome.

“This original?”

Cassie nodded. “Belonged to my grandmother.”
She turned away, grabbed two plates from a cabinet and placed two
slices of pizza on each. She set one plate down in front of Bridget
and grabbed them each a bottle of water. “It’s homemade,
organic.”

Bridget took a bite. The cheese burned her
tongue and roof of her mouth. Despite that, she savored the taste.
“Delicious.”

They next five minutes was filled with
awkward silence and even more awkward stares between the two women.
They didn’t speak until Bridget was halfway through her second
slice.

“So what’s this about?” Cassie said.

Bridget shrugged, unsure how to phrase
it.

“If it’s about me and Mitch, I can assure you
there is nothing between us.”

Bridget straightened up. “Why would I care
about that?”

Cassie glanced up at the ceiling and then
back at Bridget. “The tension was, shall we say, thick.”

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t the kind of tension
you’ve got in mind.”

“But it was at one point, right?” Cassie
asked.

Bridget nodded. “Short lived. That’s
all.”

“He’s only trying to help the girl, Bridget.
That’s why he came down here.”

Bridget said nothing. She bit into her crust
and tore like a lioness shredding the meat of a wildebeest.

Cassie’s eyes narrowed. “Touchy subject, I
see. Look, you may not believe in me and what I do, but I can
assure you I’m legit. This may or may not work out, I readily admit
that. Regardless, I’ll do everything I can, in the event that I am
able to.”

“Sounds like a politician’s speech.”

Cassie jerked back as if Bridget had just
shot her.

“I’m sorry,” Bridget said. She dropped the
last bite of crust on her plate and wiped her hands and mouth with
a paper towel. “Look, I’m here because I can’t get the image of you
staring at me earlier today out of my head.”

Cassie crossed her arms in front of her chest
and shrugged.

Bridget leaned forward, placing her elbows on
the table. “Why? Why were you staring at me like that? It wasn’t
like it was a brief look, Cassie. You just honed in on me and
stayed that way for a few minutes.”

Cassie took a deep breath, looked away, and
said, “It was an old lady.” She shifted her gaze toward Bridget.
“Your grandmother. She said, ‘tell her to stop trying to do
everything.’” She looked away again. Her cheeks reddened.

“And you didn’t tell me. Why?”

Cassie said nothing.

“You were jealous, weren’t you? You have a
thing for Mitch.”

“That’s absurd,” Cassie said. “Not only that,
it’s completely unethical.”

“Isn’t not delivering a message to me
unethical?”

“It wasn’t what you were there for. Besides,
the read I had on you at that time told me you wouldn’t be able to
handle it, or you’d accuse me of lying.”

Bridget did not respond. She raised her
eyebrows as she leaned back in her chair. She’d upset the woman,
and while she felt justified, she also felt guilty for having done
so.

“I’m sorry,” Cassie said. “That was
unprofessional.”

Bridget shook her head. “It’s okay. We all
have our moments.”

“Wine?” Cassie rose and walked to the
counter.

“Sure.”

Cassie uncorked a bottle of merlot and poured
a glass for each of them. She set one in front of Bridget and then
returned to her seat.

“I was twenty-four,” she said.

“Pardon?” Bridget said.

“When I received this…
gift
.”

Bridget nodded. “Go on.”

“It was stupid, really. We had no business
being there.”

Bridget could tell this story would require a
lot of assistance from her. “Being where? Cassie, just spit it all
out. I’m used to people confessing.”

“It’s not a confession.” Cassie leaned back,
eyes narrow and arms across her chest.

“I didn’t mean to offend you.”

Cassie took a drink. “It’s okay. This is
uncomfortable for both of us. All right, I’ll continue. A friend of
a friend had an idea to break into a cemetery. You know ghosts and
all that.”

“
Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil
,” Bridget said. “I saw the movie.”

“Book was better. Anyway, so, yeah, we didn’t
go to Bonaventure, but to Greenwich, which is an annex of
Bonaventure and still open for public burials.” She paused to take
a sip from her wine glass. “So there’s a group of five people and
I’m tagging along. The only one I know is my friend Cara, and she’s
real into this guy who was leading the expedition. I started to
feel a bit shunned and I kind of wandered off on my own with a
flashlight, reading the different tombstones.”

“Always a good time,” Bridget said, forcing a
smile.

“Right,” Cassie said. “So, I come upon the
grave of a woman who had died a few years earlier at exactly the
same age I was then, twenty-four. I’m standing there, wondering how
she died, was it an accident, cancer, when I recognize the name.”
She bit her bottom lip for a second. “Lucille Whitehurst. That ring
any bells?”

Bridget shrugged and shook her head.

“She’d been brutally murdered, stabbed to
death, then dismembered. Her body was left in pieces along the
riverbank, not far from where her remains were eventually buried in
the cemetery.”

“Jesus,” Bridget said softly.

“Right? That’s what I’m thinking at the time.
I get a hold of myself and turn to find my friend, but before I can
take a step, someone has me in their grasp.”

Bridget felt her pulse quicken. She had a
feeling she knew where the story was going.

“It was a man. He whispered something in my
ear. To this day, I’m not sure exactly what, but I think it was
something along the lines of, ‘What are you doing out of bed,
Dear?’ I tried to scream, but it was like my vocal chords were
paralyzed. A second later he had one hand over my mouth and the
other across my chest. I remember feeling terrified that he was
going to rape me. Relief washed over me when he pulled his hand
away from my chest. That was short lived, though.”

Cassie’s eyes drifted away and she went
silent. Bridget watched as the woman focused on nothing.

“What happened next?” Bridget asked.

“It’s funny, you know. To this day, I only
remember the first time he stabbed me. They say he did it ten
times, and I guess the scars corroborate that. At some point, I
managed to scream. I guess that’s why I wasn’t stabbed forty times
like Lucille was. After I yelled out, he dropped me on the ground.
The flashlight had fallen and been kicked around. It shone at the
headstone. The diffused light bounced back toward us. He hovered
over me, blood on his hands and smeared across his face. His
tangled, matted hair hung down. And he said to me, ‘Now go back to
sleep.’ He took off and my friend and her friends showed up a few
seconds later. I lost consciousness right after that. They say I
died.”

“Did you?”

“I never saw bright light at the end of a
tunnel or heard harps playing or anything like that, but I did see
a woman who appeared to be about my age. I say appeared, but it
wasn’t really like that. Hard to explain. She, I guess shimmered is
the right word. Beams of light protruded from behind her. So maybe
the light was beyond where she was, and she was blocking me from
going to it? I don’t know, and honestly, I try not to dwell on
it.”

“So they revived you, obviously. What
happened next?”

“I woke up in the hospital a week later. They
tell me it is a miracle I’m alive, and my recovery will take a few
months, and I should seek counseling. I’m questioned and grilled.
One of the cops had the audacity to ask what we were doing in the
cemetery. Guess that’s his job, but, whatever. I get out of the
hospital and the first thing I want to do is go visit the grave.
They had put police tape around it. I ducked under it and knelt in
front of the spot where I’d been left to die. The ground was still
dark with my blood. I pulled out a handful of the stained grass and
put it in a plastic bag I had in my purse.”

“You shouldn’t have done that, Cassie. The
police might need that for evidence.”

Cassie held up a hand and smiled. “I’m aware
of that now. I wasn’t thinking in such terms then. Anyway, let me
finish. I’m kneeling in front of this woman’s grave, and I start to
look around. I see this little boy. He’s maybe six or seven years
old. He’s got on a green shirt and jean shorts. It’s fifty degrees
out, so that seems odd to me. I smile at him. He doesn’t smile
back. I get up and walked toward him. The closer I get, I can tell
his face is dirty, and so are his clothes. I hear something off to
my right. I turned to look, thinking maybe his parents were over
there visiting a loved one buried in the cemetery. There’s no one
there, though. When I looked back, the boy was gone.”

Bridget felt her pulse quicken again, and her
chest started to tighten.

“I go home, tell my boyfriend at the time all
about it. He’s freaked out, but I laugh it off. We go to sleep.
Remember, this is the first time I’d been home. I wake up in the
middle of the night. I can feel the breeze coming in through the
window, so I roll over toward it to cool off my face. And it hits
me here,” she pointed to her forehead, “and here,” she pointed to
her chest, “but not here. The middle of my face, nothing. I opened
my eyes and saw the little boy, kneeling next to my bed, green
shirt, jean shorts, and his dirty face inches away from mine.”

Bridget thought about telling the woman she
was crazy and storming out. She didn’t, though.

“Turns out the little guy needed my help. I
met Mitch for the first time a week later. He can tell you the rest
of the story if he wants.”

“Wow,” Bridget said. “The guy who stabbed
you, did they ever find him?”

Cassie nodded.

“And he killed the woman in the grave,
right?”