Chapter 31: Chapter 31

Russo bursts into his office. He makes a straight arrow for his desk. He goes around and dumps himself on the seat, drawing closer and setting his headphones on.

At first he thought it was an uncanny coincidence, but he should’ve known better than to believe that.

He searches for the third month and fifth session of their counseling, sifting through weeks upon weeks of recordings, including Dr. Parker’s own personal contributions.

He finds the recording he’s looking for and skips to the halfway point. And from there he listens. He knows it’s somewhere there. Keila’s session.

Dr. Parker was making notable inroads with them, trying to understand what happened that night.

“So other than you and your friends, you were all alone prior to Erin’s disappearance?”

“Only me and them. No one else.”

“Who do you think would do this? Who would take Erin?”

“It—I don’t know…”

Russo skips to a month later. Opal’s session.

“Do you blame yourself for what happened to Erin?”

“…~Blame?~”

“Do you think it was your fault?”

“It…it wasn’t anyone’s fault.”

Russo fast-forwarded to Akin’s session just a week after that one.

“What drew you to the woods?”

“My mom and I like to hike out there. I like the outdoors.”

“What do you think drew Erin out into the woods? Apart from enjoying nature.”

“It—I don’t know. Why does anyone like nature? It’s peaceful.”

Russo can hear the pressure in his throat, barricading both breath and word.

Mia is next, two months after, around the time her father abandoned her.

“What’s wrong, Mia? I can see something is bothering you. You seem so much more tense than the last time I saw you.”

“One of my best friends is missing.”

“It’s more than that. Do you want to talk about it?”

“No, I’m tired of talking! Talking, talking, talking. How is this helping? It doesn’t change the fact that it—I lost her. We should’ve never been out there in the first place.”

An impossible theory starts formulating, the kind that could send him to a mental asylum.

The last one is Aries, and he is easy for Russo to find, bookmarked in his memory.

“So Aries, you have a younger sibling and you’re the eldest in your friend group. Am I correct?”

“What about it?”

“Nothing, I’m just noting how you’re like the big brother among your peers. Someone who is the toughest and strongest is often seen as the protector of the group.

“During one of the character exercises about listing positive traits, your friends all shared the same sentiment that they felt safe around you.”

“I’d never let anyone hurt them.”

“And what about Erin?” There was a long pause. “Did anyone want to hurt Erin?”

“No one that’s alive.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Ask her mom.”

“Do you think she is to blame? Her mother failed to protect her?”

“I failed to protect her. Me. No one else.”

Russo stops the recording and takes off the headphones slowly, pondering on something preposterous.

He leaves his office to travel three doors down. He knocks on the door and Mason grants him entry. Mason groans at the sight of him.

“What do you need now?”

“Maybe I just wanted to ask you out for coffee.”

“Really?”

“No. I need an update on Katherine Lockwood’s home address. I heard she’s staying with her parents, but I need to know where.”

“And what do I get in return?”

“You want a gold star or something?”

Mason’s face deadpans, giving him a no-nonsense look.

Russo frees a long exhale. “I’ll owe you one.”

Satisfied, Mason nods. “I’ll send you their location once I have it. But you could easily access that information yourself.”

“I know, but I have to go chase down another lead.”

“Out of courtesy, shouldn’t you schedule a formal meeting with them? You don’t want to unsettle her and her parents.”

“No, that’s exactly what I want. I don’t want to give them any time to rehearse anything.”

He thanks him before he can disrupt him with another question. He departs from his office to head downstairs to the desk sergeant on duty. The most feared woman on the force.

“Sergeant,” he greets cheerfully.

She looks up at him from above her glasses with a stale look.

“I need a favor. You’re aware of the details on the Erin Lockwood case?”

She nods grimly.

“I noticed that some of the arresting officers of the night Erin disappeared are still on active duty?”

She gives an animalistic hum, “Active, but not in this district. Many of them transferred out except for Jim Cassidy and Rebecca Farlan.”

“Do you know where I can find them?”

“Cassidy is stuck doing paperwork and Farlan is on patrol.”

“Where?”

She sears him with a look. He responds with a puppy dog look and a troublesome smile.

It takes her less than a minute to check her logs and find where Farlan is walking her beat with her partner. And the desk sergeant relays that information to him.

Russo knocks the table with his fist and thanks her with a bright grin before he goes back up a level, walking into the widespread office space with an assortment of computers and desks.

Russo meanders through the stations, eyeing the name tags until he finds him.

“Officer Jim Cassidy.”

Jim swivels around on his chair and notices he’s in plain clothes. “You found me, detective. How can I help you?” he says with a certain rustic charm.

“Can we talk?”

“Sure.”

“Privately.”

Jim looks around warily, considering for a moment before he agrees. “I’ll follow your lead.”

Grateful for his compliance, Russo heads out of the area with Jim in tow and they exit the precinct. Russo saunters to the sidewalk, near the building but far enough from the place filled with trained ears and curious eyes.

Jim stops a good distance from him. He crosses his arms, his guard up, strong and unyielding.

“What’s this about, Detective…”

“Russo. My name is Mark Russo.”

“Nice to officially meet you, I’ve seen your face around these past years.”

Russo smiles tightly. “I wanted to ask you something about the case I’m working on—”

“Keila Venus,” Jim interjects, a strange intonation in his voice, suddenly breaking eye contact. “Tragic thing that happened to her. But I don’t see why you think I can help.”

“It’s about Erin.”

His entire demeanor changes like the Earth itself is thrown off its axis, losing equilibrium.

“I have nothing to say about the Erin Lockwood case. I handed in my statement and was cleared by the Chief himself. I’m not going to do this again, and certainly not with you.”

Taken aback by the outburst, Russo blinks, baffled. “I’m not here to question you. I just have my own theory that I’m working on—”

“Well, it won’t involve me. I’m not talking because I have nothing to say. It was a standard approach and assist. We were dispatched from the precinct with a location on the missing kids.

“We found them, most of them, and returned them to their parents. The other officers and I didn’t see anything else.”

He walks away briskly.

***

Russo climbs right out of his car, parked behind a police cruiser.

He closes the door and locks the car before he advances. Russo moves to the passenger side and takes out his badge to tap the window with it.

A storm gathers in policeman’s gaze and he pops the car door open, rising to stand taller than him. His eyes dart to his badge.

“Is there something I can help you with,” he scans him up and down disdainfully, “Detective?”

“Not you.”

Rebecca Farlan exits, emerging on the other side.

“But your partner can.”

Rebecca sighs heavily. “Is this about Erin?”

He nods.

“Then I have nothing to say.”

Her partner sneers and recedes back into the car. Promptly, she follows suit.

A moment of panic prompts him to say, “It.”

Rebecca pauses, her body halfway in the car.

“It,” he repeats. “Did you hear any of those kids say ‘it’? An indefinite pronoun used to describe inanimate objects. Commonly referring to non-human or non-living elements.”

She climbs back out and slams the door shut. “I passed grade school, Detective. I know what‘it’ means.”

Russo walks a few paces away from the car, compelling her to follow even with grudging, tiny steps toward him.

“I have files on all of those kids, including their recorded sessions with their psychiatrist, seven years ago,” he tells her, gauging her reaction, registering every twitch of her features.

“In their sessions, out of months’ worth of data, at least one time, they all make the same mistake. They use the word ‘it’ accidentally.

“I ignored it at first. It could’ve been a slip of the tongue. These were anxious children whose nerves could have gotten the best of them.”

“Spluttering and stuttering is normal in these cases,” she reinforces with her eyes on the tarmac.

~Nothing about this case is normal.~

He searches for her gaze, tilting his face downward but looking up at her through his lashes.

“One time is an accident, twice is a coincidence, but more than three times is a pattern.

“Did you ever hear them say ‘it’ but dismissed it as an accident? Probably thought that they were just fumbling over their words and were incoherent.”

Rebecca clamps her eyes shut for one hot moment before tearing them back open, suddenly glossy-eyed.

“I left it out of the report,” she whispers. “We all did. Except for Thomas, he put it on the record. Which is why you will see in the files that each of them claimed that they killed Erin.

“They confessed to it ~that~ night, but their confession was tossed because they were kids. They were injured and disoriented. Nothing they said was admissible due to their collective mental state.”

“Can you walk me through that night? From when you arrived at the forest.”

She nods brokenly, her eyes holding back a deluge.

“We didn’t have to do anything, really. When we arrived, they were already hobbling out, quite badly injured.

“They said they hurt themselves trying to look for Erin, fell in the dark and such, but the examiner found inconsistencies with the wounds they sustained.

“The one who broke her ankle, the Asian girl. The fracture was equivalent to being in a car wreck with a vehicle that had plunged over the side of the road and rolled down a steep slope.

“She claimed she fell down the gorge, which explained the broken leg.”

Russo nods attentively, grasping at every word.

“I got hold of the dark-haired girl. Mia. I’ll never forget that tortured look in her eyes. She told me that she had killed Erin.”

A frown strikes her forehead, brows colliding in intensity.

“But when she said that, she fumbled, she said, ‘It~—~I killed her.’ I didn’t think about it, I thought she was just delirious.”

Rebecca does a quick check-in with her partner, shooting a glance at the car.

“One of them said that there was another one of them still in the woods. Which is why they split to canvass the area to look for her.

“On the road back to the precinct, confessions were flying. Mia rode with me and after her breakdown, she was dead quiet.

“Jim and Harry were saying how the others were hysterically crying that they were the ones that killed her.

“We spoke about it. We didn’t want those kids being traumatized more by the department and by the media. So we wanted to mitigate the fallout by omitting a few parts.”

“That’s a felony,” he blurts harshly.

“I know,” she squeaks, her resolve fragile. “We just wanted what was best for those kids. They didn’t have to go through all they went through because they witnessed something that traumatized them.

“They felt guilty because they saw something—which no one was able to pry out of any of them. Those kids were victims, just like other children involved in domestic or grooming cases.”

Russo looks into the distance, collecting his old thoughts from the shelves to compare them with new ones. Reshaping theories and increasing his hard targets.

One thing he knows for sure is that someone else is involved, a larger perpetrator than he imagined.

“It doesn’t matter anyway,” Rebecca adds. “Thomas told them everything. Those kids went through all they went through for nothing. Erin is still gone and now Keila is missing.”

“At any point did you think they were involved?”

Aghast, she staggers a step back.

“Do I think a bunch of eleven- and twelve-year-olds premeditated the disappearance of their closest friend, then proceeded to trudge through the forest for hours in search of her? No. I don’t.”

“I didn’t ask you if you thought they hurt her. I asked you if you think they were involved?”

Rebecca looks away, letting out a short, dry laugh.

“My goodness. I mean, if Erin was being groomed by a child predator, perhaps she introduced them to him and now they feel guilty because they know who is responsible and had a chance to tell their parents about it.

“But they were kids themselves. They didn’t know any better, if the theory holds true.”

Russo looks back at her with a new emotion burgeoning on his face.

“What theory do you have on her case?”

“That history controls the future.”

***

The final destination.

A whole day’s drive out of Braidwood to visit Katherine Lockwood.

Her parents own a ranch in the countryside with fertile lands spanning across acres, with cattle grazing the fields.

The westering sun sets the land afire with the warm glow of green flame, an auburn ruddiness polishing every blade of grass and stalk.

Russo drives up the gravel road to the main house. A low-slung ceiling with flared eaves adds a softness to its stone and brick exterior.

Russo gets out gradually, admiring the vision of his fantasy, the other life he wished he had.

That dream died with his son. A sobering thought, like ice water poured on a drunkard.

He composes himself and makes his way to the front farm-style porch. He rings the bell and not long after, the French door swings open. The elderly woman smiles warmly, but it soon turns cold at the sight of him.

“What do you want?”

Accustomed to this theme of reception, he handles it calmly. “Have we met before?” he asks sardonically.

She makes an annoyed sound, slapping her lips together.

“I know your type,” she says with a coarse accent. “I have had my fill of you people. You don’t think I recognize a cop when I see one?

“Every few months you guys come by, asking about Erin. You know what’s worse than having no hope? Having it only for it to be torn from you, repeatedly. It’s what broke my daughter.”

The woman has no idea that he can relate to that pain more than she can comprehend.

“Your daughter would like to see me. Trust me, I’m unlike any other cop that’s been at your door.”

She looks over her shoulder, deliberating, then shakes her head.

“No.” She closes the door.

“I have new information.”

The door stops with a hairpin of space left. She widens the door back open.

“Let me see Katherine.”

She curses like she’s going to regret what she’s about to do. “Wait here.”

She leaves the door ajar and disappears inside. Russo waits as instructed and remains where he is until, after a long while, she returns with an exasperated expression, like she endured a draining argument.

“She will see you in her room. She never leaves her room.”

Her mother lets him inside. “My name is Deloris, by the way.”

“Mark Russo.”

Deloris escorts him to her room, perusing the interior on his way up with a seamless movement and transition through the space.

Their home is full of vintage outlines and welcoming wood foundations with added room partitions and creamy tones in a modern renovation of their generational home.

When they are upstairs, Deloris opens the door but remains outside as if afraid of entering. Russo does, and the door closes softly behind him.

He creeps inside and passes the side wall, revealing an occupied single bed. A pale-stricken person sits on it with knitted covers drawn to her lap, brittle hair cut short with devoid eyes.

An empty shell of a woman, bound to torment and sorrow.

“Katherine,” he says gently.

Her dreary eyes flicker to him, low-lidded and lifeless.

“I need you to tell me something about Erin. Not about that night, but weeks if not months before. What was her connection to the woods?”

She stares at him in a way that pierces his soul, disturbing his insides.

“I need to know.”

She looks away from him, staring absently at nothing.

“The only way I can help is if I know everything. I have pieces, but I don’t understand how they’re fitting, but they’re fitting.”

Katherine remains still.

And Russo crucifies her for her silence.

“Don’t you care?” Anger overpowers him. “I have to deal with dead end after dead end with this case. And not because of a lack of leads.

“Nothing about your daughter’s disappearance makes sense. Not to mention how the people involved react about Erin, not Keila—who’s also missing, in case you didn’t know. It all begins with your daughter.”

Katherine remains still.

Fury mortally wounds his well-kept composure.

“I know what you’re going through. And I understand that years have passed with nothing to show for it. I know—”

“You know nothing!” she screams like the echoing shriek of a tortured ghoul. “You know nothing about what I have been through. You cops are all the same, mouthing platitudes, telling me you know. You don’t know!”

“I know,” he barks back, holding back nothing. Not anymore.

“I don’t pity you. You have the barest of hope but hope nonetheless that she ~may~ be alive. No body means there might be a chance, however slim. She might be alive.

“I never had that chance—I never had the chance to even hope. I found my son’s bloodied body in my old house…robbers invaded the night I was out.

“My wife was away on business and begged me to stay with them. But no, I prioritized a case over my own children and had a babysitter watch them.”

Katherine’s jaw trembles, tears rolling down her cheeks uncontrollably.

“The babysitter swore she activated the alarm. But it was my daughter that disabled it before she snuck out to hang out with her friends. And forgot to turn it back on.

“That’s how they got in, and my son startled them on his way to the bathroom. He was shot on sight.”

Katherine shields herself from his eyes, overwhelmed by his boundless grief.

“It’s why I got transferred to Braidwood. Every case involving a kid was my trigger. But one time it went too far, and I went deranged.

“A local pedophile that abducted a toddler-age child, didn’t list himself as a sex offender in his neighborhood. Even though we recovered the child, I beat him to an inch of his life.

“I nearly lost my badge, but I didn’t care.”

Katherine hauls her gaze back up, daring to look back into his eyes, mirroring her pain.

“My daughter still believes I blame her. And I did. I wanted to blame anybody, but I blamed myself the most because ~I should’ve been there~.”

She suffocates on a sob, cheeks drenched by tears.

“It’s my fault,” she cries out. “I should’ve paid more attention. I knew she was going into the woods. I thought she was just playing with her friends like usual. It was why I was never strict about it.”

Russo bottles up the rest of his turbulent emotions.

“You couldn’t have known any real danger could’ve come from it. It’s why they sent me here. Before Erin, Braidwood was safe.”

“She was never safe,” she spits out, struggling against her anger. “No one can ever be safe if they’re living in this world. I didn’t protect her from Leonard.”

A frown pinches the flesh between his brows. “Your late husband?”

“Thank God he’s dead,” she says with a snarl at the edge of her lips. “He was an abusive and manipulative bastard.

“He hurt my baby, and I did nothing about it. If I let that happen, what else did I allow, both knowingly and unknowingly?”

“So Erin never spoke of any other relationship apart from those we know.”

Katherine doesn’t even have to think it over.

“She loved her friends. Her friends and her aba were all she cared about. I thought I knew everything, but I think…she came to think she couldn’t trust me.

“I can’t think of anyone else she would confide in about her home life when Leonard was still alive.”

Russo stares at the carpeted floor, contemplatively.

“What are you going to do?”

He meets her gaze.

“I know I can’t promise you answers. But I will promise you that I won’t stop until I get them. Everyone thinks that Erin’s old friends are lost causes. They are all wrong. They alone are the key.”

***

~Pride comes before a fall. That was what my Bible-thumping mother used to say. I never listened to her, but I wish I had.~

~My grief was my driving force and what doomed me to suffer a worse fate than my son’s death. I thought nothing could be worse than that, but I was severely wrong.~

~You see, the meeting with the rock collector, Nina Sterling? It changed the course of my investigation and forced me to pluck up the courage to think of impossible answers to impossible questions.~

~Everyone believed that those kids were just kids. And that they were innocent.~

~Bull! They were the instigators, but no one wanted to believe that of them.~

~It couldn’t be true. It was impossible. Oh, the lies we feed ourselves.~

~The day I met with the Ivory Tower was the day I found out I was going to be transferred to Braidwood. If I knew then what I know now…I would’ve handed them my badge instead.~

^INTERLUDE: Bound by Shadows^

^EIGHT YEARS AGO^

Everyone exploded from the waters of the glorious pool. Desperately, they scrambled out of the limestone fountain with bags secured to their backs.

Once they got out, they unstrapped their backpacks and deserted them at the archway of the chamber.

Akin kept the soccer ball in his hands, tucking it under his arm and they took the shortcut through the stone-cladded passageway to the woods.

“Yo, Mask!” Aries called out.

“Mask?” Opal laughed. “That’s the best you got?”

“I already named him,” Erin whined.

“Well, sorry. I can’t speak Hebrew.”

“Tzelem means ‘shadow,’” she argued.

“Shadow.” He clapped his hands in a “eureka” moment. “We call him what he is.”

“That’s boring,” Keila remarked.

“We’ll see if he likes it.” He cupped his hands around his mouth. “Ey, Shadow!”

“You don’t have to yell, remember,” Mia said, then tapped her temple. “Just think.”

He shrugged. “Habit.”

A jet of black shot out from the tree line. A bolt of shadows spun around them and it soared up, assembling from the ends and elongating up to shape its form.

It had become more humanoid over time. Neck, arms, and hands were visible—an evolving evil.

“So, Shadow,” Akin tried. He dropped the ball and caught it on his ankle, the groove between foot and shin. “I’ve been promising you that I’d teach you how to play soccer forever now.”

He flicked the ball back up and caught it with his hands this time. “Today’s the day. We have more time to play now that’s it’s the holidays.”

Akin backed away and motioned to Erin that he was going to pass it to her.

“It’s easy, kick it like this.”

He kicked it over to Erin and she received it with the inner side of her shoe.

“He doesn’t have feet.”

Erin took up the ball with her hands and threw it to the Sporkah, expecting it to catch the ball with its, now visible, hands.

Instead, he lunged forward, and the ball bounced off its mask and returned to Erin’s grasp. They all shared a look and imploded into a stomach-aching laughter.

The Sporkah was confused. It did not understand.

“We’ll show you,” Mia offered, and she beckoned Erin to pass it to her.

Erin tossed the ball to Mia. She caught it and held it up demonstratively for the Sporkah, then pitched it at Keila. She fumbled it and took a moment to steady herself before she threw it at Opal.

Opal took it to her chest with an oomph, then bent down to hold it between her spread legs and swung it back to Akin.

“See?”

Akin threw the ball at the Sporkah and it caught with its gnarly fingers.

“You did it!” Erin cheered.

The Sporkah released it and it levitated in the air by itself, floating toward Erin. She took it with a grin, then the ball raised into the air, lifting her off her feet.

Mia sprung out of the way before Erin streaked between them like she was swinging on an invisible vine. The Sporkah let her down safely with awe brimming in her eyes.

“Oh, I’m so next,” Aries hollered.