Chapter Sixteen
2012
“So what happens now?” Della resignedly asked.
She sat on the side of the bed and watched as
Steve carefully folded the shoulders of his coat inwards and draped it across
the overstuffed chair in the corner.
“The charge was dismissed without prejudice, so maybe we’ll
be able to refile the case or maybe we’ll end up filing against someone else,
but basically, it’s back to square one.
The judge ruled to not bind the case over for trial because she felt
that the evidence was insufficient to meet the probable cause standard.”
“So that’s it?
He
just gets off?”
“Well, no…not necessarily.
Everything needs to be gone over with a fine
tooth comb.
We’ve got to go back to the
beginning, reevaluate the evidence, reinterview the witnesses.”
“Are you going to maybe look at the mom?
Talk to her co-workers?
Recreate the drive from her work to her house
and time it?
I still think she could
have had time to leave work, go home, kill Bea and get back to work.
I could help you recreate everyone’s post
mortem activities.”
“You watch too much TV.
And I think you mean ante mortem.
Post mortem is after the death.”
“I knew that,”
Della
laughed, tucked her head into her shoulders like a turtle and looked up at
Steve with a twinkle in her eye.
“Whatever.
You’re a
dork.
But yeah, you’re going to get your
way.
We’ll check out mom and neighbors
and family members; anybody that might have had access to Bea and try to
develop a new and improved theory.
Maybe we’ll even time the drive from her work to home.”
Della wanted to be reassuring.
“Don’t be discouraged.
What does that judge know anyway?
She’s probably corrupt or…”
“Can we talk about something else?”
“Okay.Who’s going to do the footwork?”
“Moira’s pulled one of our investigators from the violent
felony team to help Franks and Ashram."
“Seriously?
That’s an
awful lot of redundant work.”
“Ya think?
That’s
what happens when you give in to pressure and file a case prematurely.
It serves us right.
The crappy part is that it reflects on me and
makes me look like an ass.
Moira doesn’t
get any of the recoil from the mistake…I get to be her human shield against the
media…and she’s the one that forced me to make the call, despite my protests.
But no one will ever know but us.
I’ll take all the flack from the media and
the public and professional humiliation.”
“It’s Moira, now, huh?
Is there something you need to tell me about?
Are you cheating on me with our boss?”
Della was teasing but Steve was
straight-faced.
She wanted him to be
happy; to relax for the weekend.
“Seriously…it sucks to be you.
But I guess that’s why they pay you the big bucks.”
“Hmpf.
I’m just happy
to be of service to the citizens of this fine county.”
He saluted and dropped his hand sharply to
his side.
Della giggled and the two smiled gently at each other.
He took her hand and led her to the living
room, where they settled in on the couch; Della grabbed Mary’s journal from the
end table and Steve picked the newspaper off the floor to search for the section
that contained the day’s crossword puzzle.
They sat silently and Della opened the pages of the journal but was too
preoccupied to read.
She was nearing the
end of the entries and it had been extremely difficult for her to refrain from
going straight to the end.
If she had been in possession of the journal just five years
ago, she wouldn’t have been able to resist the temptation.
It used to be that every time she read a book
and reached the meat of the story, or the part with all the action, she jumped
ahead and read the ending. The stress of wondering if the good guy made it
through alive or if the young lovers reunited was just too much for her.
She knew what they say about old habits but
she eventually retrained herself from spoiling it…to relish the
story and enjoy the suspense until the sweet sensation when the book is closed
for the last time.
***
Della awoke and found Steve asleep with his head laid back
on the couch, the folded newspaper still in his hand.
She shook him by the shoulder.
“Hey, let’s go to bed.”
Steve grumbled, rolled his eyes open and ran a hand through
his hair.
“K.”
Della passed the filing cabinet on the way into the bedroom
and momentarily thought of its contents.
She walked into the room and trailed her hand across Steve’s suit coat on
the back of the chair.
“God, I’m glad it’s Friday.
I’m so tired I could sleep for a week.”
“Hmmm,” Della absentmindedly responded as she changed into
her nightgown.
Steve removed his pants and uncharacteristically dropped them
on the floor where he stood and left them there.
He sat on the edge of the bed and rubbed his
face with both hands.
“CJ’s been awful
quiet tonight.
What’s up with that?”
“He’s at Max’s for the night, remember?”
“Hmmm.”
It was
Steve’s turn to be absentminded.
“Maybe
we can all go to breakfast in the morning.”
Della laughed out loud, “He’s at Max’s, silly.”
The words fell on deaf ears as Steve
collapsed and fell asleep as soon his head hit the downy softness below.
***
Della stood in the doorway between the two rooms and
strained in the dappled darkness to make sense of the muffled conversation she
could have sworn she heard coming from CJ’s room.
She braced her hand against the exposed core
of the two walls and found herself
being
annoyed for not getting the doorway covered with drywall yet.
She looked back to see that Steve was still
sound asleep.
The red lines of the
digital clock on the nightstand read 1:11 AM.
She walked back through her bedroom and into the
kitchen.
The glass panes of the back
door were cool against her cheek as she placed her ear over the sliver of space
between the door and the frame to see if she could hear talking from next
door.
All was silent.
She journeyed through the living room, the laundry
room and the bathroom.
Nothing unusual
was going on outside.
No crazy kids
running amok.
No traffic.
No backyard party conversation traveling over
the breeze.
The doors were all
locked.
Windows secured.
Having convinced herself that she must have just imagined
it, Della padded back to bed, crawled in and settled in a fetal position.
She let her mind wander from Steve to CJ to
drywall to Baby Bea and back to Steve.
Delicious
waves of slumber began to dull her mind and she gently dozed off, still
thinking of Steve.
“Oh, my God!”
Della
gasped and propped herself up on her arm.
The murmuring of voices had again risen from the darkness.
The speech was muffled, but the intonations
were distinctly feminine and they were coming from CJ’s room.
Steve was softly snoring.
The dogs were still.
Surely they
would have heard the voices, too.
They
tended to rouse if a stray cat came anywhere within 20 feet of the house.
How could she hear it and no one else, she
wondered?
Della sat up and hesitantly walked to the doorway of her
son’s room.
She rubbed her eyes and
realized that her vision was not blurred…the room was misty.
The muted light from the moon fell not on
CJ’s bed, but a crib.
The figure of a
woman in a long skirt was bent over the railing and Della surmised, from the
movement of the woman’s arms, that she was tending to a baby…Ivy.
Della’s mind raced.
Oh, sweet Lord!
This
woman…Mary…wasn’t tending to Ivy, she was getting ready to kill her.
Della was puzzled…had she traveled back in
time?
Was this an echo of the
past?
Had two realms of existence
intersected?
Would she be able to
intervene and change the outcome?
Could
she save Ivy and change the course of events?
As she stepped into the room, a wave of coolness like the
spray from a waterfall entered her body from behind and she heard what was now the
non-existent door close behind her.
As the
sensation spread through her, she experienced the same wave of knowing that she
had felt when Bruce and the paranormal team had been there.
For the moment of passing, just for that
brief instant, she was Mary again.
She
knew Mary’s mind, she sensed her feeling of confusion.
She felt Mary exit her body and saw her step
toward the figure over the crib.
Della
was terribly confused.
How could there
be two Marys?
Both standing in front of
her at the same time?
Had three
different dimensions collided?
“What are you doing?
What’s going on here?”
The passing
Mary asked the Mary standing at the crib.
The Mary at the crib withdrew her hands and spun to face her
counterpart.
“Mother Anders!”
Mary
cried.
Della could see Ivy wriggling in the crib behind Cy’s
mother’s skirt.
“Stay away, girl!”
She spread her arms out to the side.
“But I don’t understand.
What are you doing here?”
“Keep your voice down.
I don’t want Cy to wake up.”
“That is not an explanation.
What are you doing?”
“I’m taking care of what should have been taken care of a
long time ago.
Cy must never know.”
“Know what?”
Mary
stretched to look past Mother Anders into the crib.
“Oh, my God!
She’s struggling…she can’t breath.
What have you done?”
Mary was
frantic.
“You have ruined my family…my son.
He thinks he’s leaving for Denver, because of
you and this child, mind you, but I’ll not let that happen.
It was bad enough when he married you.
I knew he wasn’t happy, but at least your
marriage kept him here close to me.
When
this child came along, I thought he might have a chance at happiness…I thought that
it would anchor him to Midvalley, not drive him away.
I tried to make you become a better mother;
to mold you both into a family that would make him want to come home instead of
go away.”
Mary tried to reach past her mother-in-law to grab the crib
but the woman took a step to the right and blocked her path.
“Don’t tell me you haven’t thought of it
yourself.
I’ve seen the disdain in your
eyes when you look at her.
I’ve seen the
way you neglect the child.
It’s no
wonder she cries all the time.
Don’t try
now to pretend like you are a doting mother!
You don’t even bother to feed her.
You’re just a selfish girl who wants all of Cy’s attention.
Ivy will be gone and you’ll go to jail.
I’m killing two birds with one stone.
When his burden is lifted, Cy will
stay.
He’s my son.
I love him.
I need him.”
Ivy’s curled left hand lifted from the mattress one last
time and came to rest.
“You’re crazy!”
“No, child, you’re the one who’s crazy.
Everyone will think that you’ve done this.
Do you think that others haven’t noticed how
you ignore the child?
Everyone in town
talks about how you isolate yourself and don’t care for your family.
Ivy’s the skinniest and most underfed baby
they’ve ever seen.
You don’t go to the
junction anymore when your husband comes home.
You’re the topic of gossip on everybody’s lips.
You will go to jail and I will have my son
back.
No one will believe you if you try
to say that I did it.
I’ve been here my
whole life.
This town knows me and
respects me.
They’ll blame the crazy,
lazy mother.”
“This can’t be happening.”
Mary wiped away a tear.
Mother Anders slapped Mary across the face.
Hard.
With the back of her hand.
Mary
fell to the floor and scrambled to right herself and crawl to her knees.
“Please don’t do this.”
Mary pleaded as she sat back on her feet and dropped her head into her
cupped hands.
Mother Anders turned
sharply and left the house; her skirts rustling with each solid step.
Della stood, transfixed, as she watched Mary sob
quietly.
A dark and angry breeze brushed
Della’s cheek and she gasped.
Mother
Anders’ plan had backfired.
The town had
blamed Cy, not Mary.
It was all clear to
her now.
His mother had been blind to
the flaws that others saw in him.
She
thought he was perfect.
She never even
dreamed that they would point the finger at anyone other than Mary.
The young Mary took a deep breath, wiped the tears from her
eyes and sat staring ahead for what seemed much longer than it actually
was.
She eventually stood and paused,
open-mouthed, and stepped up to the crib and the breathless body inside.
She leaned over,
reached in with two fingers and loosened a remnant of fabric from the child’s
mouth.
***
The dark and angry breeze brushed Della’s cheek again and
grew and stretched as it swirled throughout the room, filling every corner,
every nook and crack.
Mary crumbled
again to the floor as the rushing heat passed by her and she turned back and looked
up to meet Della’s eyes.
A figure appeared in front of Mary.
She turned back and looked up.
Oh, my God, Della whispered.
Cy.
He reached his hand down to Mary and pulled her to her feet.
Their gaze remained steadfast as the heat in
the room intensified and they melted into the swirling darkness.
“Della!
Della!
What are you doing?
Get out of there…NOW!!!”
Della blinked her eyes and realized that the room was filled
with heavy smoke and she could hear the crackling pops of fire, hidden, but
nearby, somewhere in the house.
Steve threw his suit coat over Della’s head and pushed her
to the floor.
“Crawl!
Fast!
As fast as you can!
I’ll be right
behind you!”
Della lifted the coat above her eyes and could see that the
dogs had made their way to the front door in an effort to escape.
They were clawing at the door.
She had to get to them quickly.
Her lungs were burning…theirs must be ready
to explode.
She reached up and turned
the door handle.
Nothing.
She stretched to her knees to flip the
deadbolt.
This time the door opened and
Spike and Maxine ran out…straight into the arms of neighbors who had begun
to assemble.
She stumbled and felt hands grabbing her from every
direction; pulling Steve’s coat off of her, wrapping a blanket around her,
trying to comfort her.
“Oh, my God!
Steve!”
she screamed and turned back
towards the house just as the fire truck and EMT’s arrived.
The sirens were deafening.
The people were screaming.
Steve stood in the doorway and shouted to her. She couldn’t
make out what he was saying and the hands of her neighbors held her back as she
tried to make a run towards him.
“Steve!
Get out of there!
What the hell are you doing?
Get out here!
NOW!!!”
She struggled desperately
to break free.
“I’m going back in for CJ!”
I’ll be right back!”
He turned
and disappeared into the blackness.
“No!
No!
No!
He’s not here!
He’s not
here!
Come back!
He’s at Max’s!
I told you he was there!
Come back!”
***
To Be Continued
