"Death Of A Princess" Chapter 3 (Part II)

Chapter 3 (Part II)

 

*

 

The late afternoon sunshine was luminous and golden, raining down in sparkling shafts of light that spread out across the grass and rocky out-cropping like some kind of molten waterfall.  The lengthening rays glistened brightly as they lapped along the soft contours of Kayleen’s face, but they could do nothing to melt the chill away from deep within the heart of her.

The woman on the ground before them had been quite beautiful.  Before.  Kayleen knew that from having spent the entire drive up there staring at a copy of Lilah Bittner’s driver’s license.  Most people’s DMV photos were horrible.  They were either frowning, stunned stupid by the brutal pulse of the overly-bright flashbulb, or gawping idiotically at the camera with a frozen, glazed-over smile.  Even Kayleen’s own photo made her look like a reject from Clown College.  But Lilah Bittner’s picture had been absolutely stunning; her sculpted, flawless face and modelesque good looks entirely untainted by the ineptitude of the motor vehicle clerk who had taken it.

Now, however, her beauty was in ruins.  After having been up here in the wilderness for at least three long days and two treacherous nights, her eyes, cheeks, and earlobes were gone, her throat was ravaged, and her white teeth gleamed in a savage, lipless smile.  Kayleen knew already that quite a bit of the butchery - like the mangled fingers and the missing soft tissue - had not been done by the woman’s killer.  No, most of that damage had been inflicted upon her by some of nature’s other cruelest of creatures; crows, rodents, coyotes, ants, beetles, and blow flies.  And luckily for her, it had been done postmortem, so none of it would’ve bothered this tragic young lady at all.

But the really vile stuff, the symbols and lines that were carved into the previously perfect, porcelain skin, the pieces of flesh that were excised and missing, the bruises, the burns, and the gaping gouges and deep tears - well those had been done while the victim was still breathing, her heart still beating, and she’d been conscious and aware of it all.

There was of course nothing on the body itself, at least as far as Kayleen could see on the surface, to tell her these things.  But an absence of various drugs and toxins in the previous victims’ blood screens let them know that none of these girls had received the benefit of anesthesia.  And the coagulated blood and bruising around many of their wounds and lacerations, or lack thereof; told her which of the injuries had been natural and had occurred after death, and which of them had been doled out methodically to a screaming victim by the killer’s own evil hand.  These had included slices too sharp to be from an animal’s teeth, burns in the shape of a letter, chafing and rope marks from restraints, and bruises and welts from unmentionable violence.

The other three girls had been found outside, too, discarded about twenty yards from the side of the road amidst the sprawling mountain vistas in the Blackthorne Wilderness Refuge.  They had all been thrown a little way off from prying eyes, just like this one; in areas where families often camped, but where their bodies could still not be seen from the main drive.

Obviously, although the killer wanted to dump the girls without being caught, he also clearly wanted them to be found fairly early on in the decomposition process.  How else would his achievements be known?  Were he truly trying to hide his gruesome deeds, he would’ve buried the corpses or disposed of them in large bodies of water.  There were literally thousands of places in the refuge alone that the women’s remains could have been placed where they would’ve never been seen again.

So, the fact that he put them close to the road instead of hiding them told Kayleen that society’s recognition of his work was ultimately more important to him than his own freedom.  The reward of seeing his victims and his murderous exploits publicized was so great; the risk was very well worth it in the end.

Unfortunately, only victims one, Julie Reinhard, and three, Bonnie Dawson, had been found within an estimated twelve hours after death.  Accordingly, in those two cases, their wounds and the blood patterns around them were really the best idea they currently had as to the extent of the killer’s rage.  Victim two, Suzie Stoffler, and now victim four, Lilah Bittner, had both been found after a number of days had passed.  Had all their victims looked like this poor thing here today, like a split package of spoilt hamburger with arms and legs, then they would’ve had a much harder time getting a true picture of what ritualistic carnage the killer, himself, was personally invested in.  But the wound patterns in all four victims – wound patterns that had nearly been obliterated by the teeth of wild animals on Suzie and apparently on Lilah, too, – were unlike anything else Kayleen had ever seen before in all her years as a profiler and FBI agent.

Those wound patterns were what told Kayleen now that this victim was also tortured while still alive, still conscious, still able to scream and beg and cry.  That and, of course, also because of the research Kayleen had done to prepare her profile thus far; a thirty-two page summation (and growing), which stated bluntly that a sexual sadist and psychopathic-type serial killer as brutal as this one would want to hear every last syllable, every last moan, every last whimper, and plea, and breath, until the victim could breathe no more.

Knowing this was what had made Bonnie Dawson’s death, so incredibly personal to her.  Kayleen and Jody had been called into the case about a week after the second girl, Suzie Stoffler, had been killed.  As such, Bonnie was the first girl that Kayleen had gotten a chance to see herself, up close and intimate in the autopsy suite, versus merely studying her wounds via photographs sandwiched in a sterile, manila file.  Bonnie had been found so shortly after death, her face had still conveyed her incredible, natural loveliness.  That was the one place their killer never touched.  The cuts and marks and damage along her body, however, had all still been shockingly, horrifically red.

Kayleen shook her head imperceptibly, trying to force herself away from that day in the cold, sterile, metal-clad M.E.’s office, and back to the present moment.  By this point, as sad and heart-breaking as it was, Bonnie was dead and buried, and Lilah needed her now.  And since Lilah had the ill fortune of being discovered on a day that Kayleen and Jody were there in town, she had gotten the rare privilege of being examined on her own veritable death bed.

Poor Lilah.  In addition to being a giving, nice, intelligent woman who’d worked hard at an investment firm and spent her weekends involved with disadvantaged youths at her local community center, she was also the only one of their victims who’d been a mother.  That had to mean something, only Kayleen wasn’t sure exactly what just yet.  Had the killer made his first mistake?  Or, was the fact that the other women were all childless just a mere coincidence?  Regardless, sweet, innocent, six-year old Ella Bittner, whose father had succumbed to cancer just two short years ago, was now a veritable orphan.  She was currently in the care of her mother’s big sister back home in Wichita.

The exact cause of death in this case would be a little harder to determine due to the torn and eviscerated tissue across the young woman’s esophagus from coyotes and other wild scavengers.  But Kayleen was fairly certain that once they ruled out all of the animal bites and scrape marks from where they had gnawed so deeply that they’d apparently managed to chew their way through most of the larynx and pharynx too, they would still find the same deep nick somewhere between the C4 and C5 vertebrae from where he’d slit her throat with a razor sharp ceramic knife, all the way down to the bone.

Because of what they’d found on the first victim, they now knew that it was some sort of exotic brand of expensive chef’s knife that had done the cutting, and not just some run of the mill stainless steel slicer from an average kitchen drawer.  In that autopsy, the M.E. had noted that the killer had sawed so viciously against Julie Reinhard’s spine he’d almost incised it in two.  Upon his closer examination, he had then realized that in so doing, he’d left tiny particles imbedded deep within the bone.

Dr. Goeff Rubens, the resident Medical Examiner for Colorado Springs, had then carefully plucked out those miniscule specks and preserved them before passing them off to the local crime scene processing department at their squad’s headquarters.  They had been able to tell that the fragments were gray ceramic in composition rather than metal, but other than that, they hadn’t been able to do much more.  So as soon as the Feds had gotten involved, they had forwarded all of their evidence to the main FBI lab in Quantico.

From there, Landry Todd, a specialist who was familiar with literally thousands of various types of tools and tool marks, had spent weeks trying to match the tiny shards to a specific knife, but had so far learned only two things; first, that the knife was of very high quality, and second, that it had evidently not been produced anywhere in North America.  Although that was all he had been able to give them thus far, they were still glad to have the lead.  However tenuous, it was really the only one they currently had.

In addition to the marks made by the knife, there had been several other weapons used on the victims as well.  A lighter.  A soldering iron.  Pliers.  Teeth (with the flesh around the bite marks excised so thoroughly that only the faintest trace remained – certainly nothing that could matched to an actual person).  He liked to bite, cut, tear and burn.  He was one sick son of a bitch.

Under the many animal marks on Lilah Bittner, Kayleen was easily able to see a few of the other types of wounds, too; wounds with which she was becoming all-too comfortable, in an unholy familiarity.  No one should have to see things like this.  But as long as those lived who inflicted them, and those died who suffered with them, Kayleen knew that she would be there.

Kayleen was aware that the areas feasted on most heavily by the bugs and carrion-eaters were going to be those that had actually been mangled and serrated perimortem, so she tried to pay extra attention to those places right now.  Even beneath all of the cellular destruction, the gaping and raw lacerations of muscle, skin, tissue, and flesh, she could still make out a few of the ‘special marks’ as she crouched down beside where Lilah lay in the dirt and stones.  At this point in the investigation, every time she tried to fall asleep, she saw those strange and unique designs dancing gleefully behind her closed lids while slumber evaded her as effortlessly as quicksilver running swiftly through her futilely clutching hands.

She drew her gloved fingers gently over what was left of the woman’s body now; from the bottoms of her slender feet, over her long legs, across her narrow waist, along her ribcage, and up to her long black hair.  As she surveyed all of the random damage, interspersed with the purposeful and overly-decisive wounds, she kept trying not to think about the fact that this mutilated stretch of flesh and bone had just recently been a living, breathing, bleeding human being.  The smell was gaggingly nauseating, but she suppressed her natural urge to vomit by holding her breath and swallowing, focusing on the harsh Eucalyptus and Menthol smell of Vicks that she’d rubbed under her nose when she’d first gotten to the scene.

Right now, her hands came unerringly back to the ribcage, where her fingers lingered at that one particular area where the woman’s skin had amazingly been left intact.  All around it, the ravaging had gone on; a frenzied buffet that had lasted for days.  But a hand-sized patch on her upper torso had escaped most of the scavengers’ teeth, along with her stark-white, porcelain face.  And Kayleen knew exactly the reason why.

She leaned closer as she oh so gently brushed her fingertips across the circle, the half-moon, the odd loops and whirls, and the puffy, charred lines of what looked to be the letter “E”.  The designs had been both gouged and burned into the area just beneath Lilah’s left breast.  They had no idea what it all meant, but each woman had borne those same marks in exactly the same place.  And on each victim, the marks - along with their beautiful, tragic faces - had been almost perfectly preserved by a liberal coating of pepper spray.  The kind used to ward off dangerously savage animals when a hunter or hiker accidentally encountered them in the wild.  No one recommended climbing or camping in these towering granite mountains without a can of it.

Their guy had used it to preserve these special markings for reasons that she and Jody could only begin to guess at.  And as wild animals didn’t tend to like the spicy seasoning of pepper spray on their otherwise savory meals, they had predictably left those areas, for the most part, entirely alone.

It had taken a forensic scientist in their division only three days to identify the particular brand of pepper spray used on the victims.  It was called “Bear-Away”, and it was sold in stores from Mom-and-Pop shops interspersed here and there all along the winding roads of these endless mountains, to massive chains of sporting goods retailers all across the nation.  Tracking the purchase of that particular brand in order to try and find the killer had quickly run them into a dead-end; too many purchases of it had been made within the past year, and too many of those purchases had been made with cash.  Besides, a killer as intelligent as this one would’ve surely been smart enough not to leave a paper trail this close to his kills.  Perhaps they’d get lucky with the knife, but Kayleen would bet her salary that they wouldn’t ever get lucky by identifying a subject just from the spray.

So that was it then.  This beautiful, intelligent woman had meant the world to many; her parents, sisters, fiancé, friends.  But she’d been merely a writhing, screaming piece of meat to the killer, her value measured only in terms of how much pleasure she was able to bring to him via her intensely amplified suffering, and the ecstasy he managed to achieve by way of her excruciatingly painful death.

Kayleen’s head swam as she knelt there in the dirt, unable to tear her eyes away from the heartbreaking sight before her.  Knowing that Jody was somewhere just behind her brought her a small measure of comfort, but it could truly do nothing to still the frantic, near-agonized throbbing of her heart.  At least on the outside she was still cool, rational, steady, and collected.

Forcing herself to focus, Kayleen noted once again how dutifully the wild animals had ravaged Lilah’s throat, breasts, and pubis, gnawing gleefully along the tracks the killer’s knife had so helpfully forged for them.  This woman had literally been left behind to be obliterated.  Wiped from the world.  Erased.  Discarded without a shred of dignity.  Dumped naked in the wilderness like a sack of garbage.  Oh, how Kayleen wanted this son of a bitch.  She wanted him so goddamned bad she could taste it.

Suddenly, a feeling like icy fingertips playing a choppy piano tune down the knobby length of her spine brought her up short.  Again, a feeling like she was being watched.  Kayleen had felt the exact same thing when she’d been out at the scene getting a look at the place where victim number three had been found; another lonely mountaintop a few rugged miles away.  By then, the body had long been removed and other than she and Jody, the surrounding area had been desolate and isolated.  At the time, she had assumed it was nothing.  But, could she honestly, simply be imagining it yet again?

She sat up straight from where she’d been leaning over what was left of Lilah’s body and jerked her head to the left, far down the mountain ravine, further than any of the officers or game wardens could safely go.  Rockslides were common in this part of Colorado.  No living thing would be stupid enough to be crawling around down there.  Well, nothing human anyway.  The only eyes she could be feeling on her would be those of a feral animal like a bighorn sheep; notorious for taking terrain like that in stride.  But if it was only a simple animal, why in the hell did her mind quite literally scream at her to stand and run?

Even so, Kayleen did the opposite.  Instead of ignoring it like before, she got quickly to her feet, stepped gingerly away from Lilah’s sprawled form, and walked as far to the edge of the rocky shelf that they were all standing on as she could possibly go.  Despite the chills and shivers threatening to spill forward from her calm façade, she kept her eyes glued towards where the undeniably uncomfortable sensation was coming from.  It was much worse than the last time; now, it was overwhelming.  She zeroed in on it, tightening her face into a mask of emptiness as she stared, and stared.

Suddenly, in the darkness between the two trees where her attention had abruptly been drawn, she sensed a tiny movement.  She leaned forward, just a bit, willing her eyes to make out the formless shape amidst the shadows.  But her foot slid on a patch of sand, and she felt herself going down, down.  The helpless sensation of falling was literally like the world lurching around her in slow motion as her stomach wedged itself up between her teeth.

The drop beneath her was sure death, but she didn’t take her eyes off the shadow.  Instead, she collapsed backwards towards the sturdier section of the large boulder they’d all been standing on, leaning into it with her entire body weight.  Then she braced her hands out to each side, clawing at the ground as her butt mercifully slammed into the precipice.  Rocks rolled down around her, tumbling hundreds of feet into the vast expanse below.  Her feet were now dangling above the abyss.  She had barely escaped going right over the edge.

Kayleen’s heart was juddering wildly, but it had little to do with her fleeting brush with death.  She sensed that she was being studied even harder now, and consequently, her blood instantly surged like ice through her veins.  Jody, as always, immediately noticed her danger, and he came sprinting over to her.

The risks she took invariably made him nervous enough as it was; crawling around through bloody crime scenes that had just barely been cleared, stumbling across an armed bomb, and even arresting a perp as dangerous as Ted Bundy, himself, when he’d gone back to revisit the scene of one of his crimes and Kayleen had been staking it out alone on a hunch in her own spare time.  He had given her hell over that for three weeks straight.  And now, he was undoubtedly asking himself if she somehow needed to hurl herself off the side of a mountain to appropriately appreciate the vagaries of this individual crime scene.  Well, the answer was yes, yes she did.  Even with her back still towards him, Kayleen instinctively knew that he was furious with her.  But she simply couldn’t help it.  This was just the way she was.

“Jesus Christ, Kayleen, what are you trying to do, kill yourself!?” he shouted out, the coarse fear and anger like cracked glass within his normally dulcet voice.

“I saw something Jody.  In the trees there,” Kayleen told him.  She had heard and understood the reason for his sharp tone, and it warmed her heart a bit to know how much he quite obviously cared for her.  But right now she was more worried about the person that she’d sensed down there in the ravine.  Most people would assume she was nuts for even thinking that someone could be there.  At least Jody knew her damned well enough by now to unhesitatingly accept the veracity of whatever she said.

“Here,” he told her, handing her a pair of miniature binoculars he’d had tucked in his jacket pocket as he came to a panting stop just behind her.  He didn’t want to chance getting too close and having the ground crumble beneath her any more than it already had.

“Thanks,” she said softly as she reached back for them.

“Can you at least move away from the edge?” he queried, his voice really brooking no room for argument.  So she instantly scooted back a bit, and he finally seemed to calm down.  “There are a hell of a lot of animals in these woods, Kayleen,” he remarked as she brought the binos up to her eyes and avidly scanned the rocky slopes below.

“I know,” she told him as she focused the binos, but by the time she found the spot where the distant image had been, the shadow was already gone.  If it had ever really been there at all.

Kayleen turned over onto her knees and crawled until the ground was once again solid and sure beneath her.  Then Jody put his hand out and helped her up.  As they both began to walk back towards the body, Kayleen couldn’t help but take one last, long, lingering look at the woods behind and so very far below her.  And that was when she knew, in the depths of her being, that the evil she had sensed - whatever it was that had been watching her; it was still there.

 

                                        Damage

 

Burned out husk-

still smolders.

Shell-shocked flesh,

hurts, blames, and

screams…sometimes.

Laughs.  Loves.  Lies.

Why does it still sting

when innocence dies?

How can the same mistake

Bite?

Over and over;

a poisonous snake,

whose venom washes through me.

Memories made dangerous

and painful again,

a collection of weeping scars.

I push them out:

a mottled, misshapen baby

rotten inside.

Rupturing,

membranes spill

the stuff of

Lost Dreams,

Haunting me,

still.

 

 

 

T.C. Barnes

January, 14th  2003

And so On, and so Forth...

I've been "creating" ever since I first picked up a pencil - my imagination absolutely demanding to be acknowledged.  Initially, it was through drawing pictures.  Then, after I taught myself to read at four years old, it was through words.  The stories and poems I dreamed up and then set down onto paper, helped me get through some of the most difficult and trying times in my life.  And it still amazes me that with only twenty-six little letters, we can not only communicate with others and express ourselves, we can also dream up entire worlds.  We can use our words to hurt or to help.  For good or bad.  We can initiate change, start a revolution, even shape history.  All with our own simple words.

Even though I've found my way as an author of novels, I truly love all forms of creative expression - from graffiti, painting, and sculpture - to plays, poetry, and even architectural design.  They are all ways in which humankind can express and then comment on the bewildering array of experiences that we, as a race of intelligent beings, often either strive or suffer through.  Creative expression is the birth of a dawning divinity.  The more we know about the human heart and mind, the closer we come to "God".  And whether you are religious or not - Catholic or Buddhist - Jewish or Athiest - I think you can probably realize that there is some form of omnipresent "energy" that surrounds us all.  It is said that energy can never be lost, only transformed.  Writing and painting, sculpture and architecture, songs, music and theatre - these are all ways for us to tap into that collective, universal energy.

So here, in my blog (between sharing chapters of upcoming books), I've decided that I'm going to share a deeper insight into my own creative "existence" as well - in its flawed - sometimes ugly, sometimes beautiful - complex entirety.  This will include some essays I've written, random musings, opinion pieces, and even poems, too.  I hope you enjoy reading them.  For creative work to matter, it must be a reflection of the human condition - something we strive to comprehend, but oftentimes barely understand.  For a long time, I've cloaked that yearning of mine in the thoughts and actions of my characters.  And even still - the books, poems, and short stories I've long been creating - I actually kept secret for nearly three decades.  It took that many years before I was comfortable enough in my own skin to share them.

When I published my first book, it was the scariest thing I'd ever faced in my whole life (and I've faced brain surgery, cliff-diving, car accidents, working in a maximum security male prison, parasailing, being locked in a small room with a convicted serial rapist, muggings, bad neighborhoods, and being a single mother - just to name a few).  But now, I think I'm ready to share even more because - I believe that you'll see, in all my creative works, that thread of longing; for connection, for clarity, and for conscience.  Especially in my poetry.  At the very least, you'll get to see me, and hopefully, through comments and open communication, I'll get to see some of you, too.   
       

"Death Of A Princess" Chapter 3 (Part I)

Chapter 3

 

 

Kayleen retrieved the liquor and a glass from the cabinet and then poured herself another walloping shot.  She downed it quickly, ignoring the all-too-familiar burn at the back of her throat, the watery sting at the corners of her eyes.

‘Screw him,’ she thought to herself as she lit up another cigarette and silently fumed.  Caleb was still bruised over the fact that she’d left right after graduation from high school – running far away to D.C., leaving her pathetic existence here behind, and finally making something out of her life, once and for all.  At least that had been the plan when she’d headed out on the bus alone that dark, rainy morning more than a decade ago.

Yet if Caleb only knew what a mess it had eventually become, how it had so irretrievably gone to hell for her there in the end, then he probably wouldn’t be perched quite so high up on his tall, wounded horse right now after all; blaming her for escaping, blaming her for leaving, and mostly, just blaming her for how she had so carelessly broken his heart.  She was responsible for most of that carnage, sure.  But the balance of the damage that she’d done in this lifetime actually had nothing to do with Caleb at all.

In the twenty-eight years she’d been here on this earth, she’d been in love only two times.  The first boy, she’d simply thrown away; discarded him like a piece of trash although he had meant the world to her then.  The second one, though, now that one was much, much worse.  Because with him, she’d not only taken his heart, but she’d taken his life as well.

Even though she had not been directly responsible for what had happened to Jody that night, the resulting and insurmountable burden of guilt was still hers and hers alone to bear.  And it always would be.  That stigma would follow her wherever she went, for all the rest of her days.  She was a marked woman, the scarlet letter ‘M’ for ‘murderess’ invisibly emblazoned eternally across her left breast; that same exact area, in fact, where Estes had definitively engraved her, gouging deep into her skin so as to create his permanent and sickeningly-unmistakable signature.

He had said he’d done it so that she could never possibly forget who it was that she belonged to.  Not that there was ever any chance in the world as to that.  Kayleen knew exactly who and what it was that owned her:  a monster, a killer, a demon.  A man without a soul.

Which was why, of course, that Caleb - of all the people in this world - could not ever be allowed to get close to her again.  She simply could not stand to lose him, too.  They may not be in love anymore, but he held a place in her heart that even Jody, her sweet, sweet Jody, had never managed to touch.

With that last thought, Kayleen heaved out a strangled sigh, and then she wiped her nose on her sleeve like a little girl.  As she leaned over to set her empty shot glass back on the coffee table, she looked down and noticed a trail of drops splatting against the thigh of her fraying jeans.  Stunned, she reached up with the heel of her hand and brushed away a thin coating of tears from each of her cheeks.  Was she actually crying?  She hadn’t even realized it.  Apparently she hadn’t used up the last of her tears, after all.

Kayleen had been forcing herself to simply be numb inside for nearly an entire month now.  Back when she’d been recovering in the hospital and still freshly mourning Jody’s death, the agony of acknowledging her pain had practically ripped her guts out with the dawn of each new day.  Every single morning that she’d awoken and allowed herself to feel the full-blown agony of it, had become the forerunner to another long and sleepless night where she’d contemplated the depraved depths of a possible suicide.

What Caleb didn’t know was that besides her great-great grandfather Astin, three more of her relatively-close ancestors had also eventually followed suit.  By now, it was practically a family tradition.

Back in the beginning, when she was quite literally drowning, the shrinks had said to let it out, of course; to “grieve Jody’s death so that she could move forward”.  That the only way she’d ever be mentally healthy again was to face it, “head on”.  But when it had finally gotten to the point where she’d put her own service weapon into her mouth and had gently squeezed the trigger, she’d come to the abrupt and unavoidable realization that something had to give.  That was the day when she’d decided that the only way to deal with her grief, shame, and remorse, was to bury every last one of her feelings deep, deep inside.

So, she’d dried the end of the barrel off on her comforter, and then carefully and gently put the gun back into her nightstand drawer.  Less than six seconds later and she’d been kneeling atop the kitchen counter, reaching into the far back of the highest shelf where she kept the vodka.

The Stoli’ bottle had sported heavy circles of dust, wound ‘round and ‘round the neck in tiny rings.  The last time she’d even seen it before that day, had been the night that she’d first slept with Jody.  After last year’s St. Paddy’s Day celebration, when he had left their unit’s chummy, gaily-bedecked, gaudy, gold and green-themed party so as to drive her home because she’d partaken of one too many ‘Irish’ beers.

Their long and brutal winter had still been valiantly clinging on, and so he’d blasted his heater the entire drive, trying to warm their frozen fingers.  Yet deep inside her, Kayleen had somehow sensed what was coming.  As a result, her face had been tingly-tight and scorching-hot, despite the frigid outside temperature, and the densely-falling fresh snow.

When they’d gotten there, he had walked her all the way upstairs and down the carpeted, indoor corridor to the entrance of her private, quiet little apartment, ostensibly to make sure that she made it inside safely.  But then he’d asked rather nervously if he could come in just to chat, and maybe even have, perhaps, “a small one for the road”.  One thing had been patently clear; by then, both of them had already known damn-well what he’d truly intended.

Initially, he had accepted only a token beer.  Maintaining, for a little while at least, the charade that he would soon be driving himself home.  But considering the immense pressure they’d been under for so damned long at work, not to mention their growing and undeniable attraction; it hadn’t been long before she’d broken out the still-sealed bottle of Stolichnaya.  Both to squelch their stress and anxieties and lower their nervous inhibitions.

Four shots later for him, two for her, and they’d been tearing frantically into each other on her living room floor.  Shedding clothes as if they were on fire, and making love so ravenously that by the end of the night, both of them had drawn blood.  That had been the exact moment when their personal relationship had started:  five months to the day after they’d first been pulled into the doomed investigation that would ultimately cost Jody his life.

On the previous October 17^th, they’d been assigned a case with only two known victims.  Not even yet termed a serial offender at the time, the killer’s crimes had still been so violent, so vicious, so bewilderingly brutal, that the local jurisdiction had already asked them to step-in and lend a hand.

She’d been with the FBI for six years, the last four of which she’d spent as a profiler, by the time she’d first been introduced to the Blackthorne Butcher.  Of course they hadn’t been calling him that then.  His dreaded moniker took another kill and a heck of a lot more media attention before it finally took and stuck.

Still, by then, she’d already catalogued case after case of young children murdered, pets tortured, and both men and women alike; shot, stabbed, poisoned, strangled, and beaten to a bloody and senseless pulp.  But with this one, this inhuman sadist, although none of them could possibly have known it, the worst was yet to come.  Even so, the initial referral packet had contained the most horrific crime scene photos that Kayleen herself had ever seen.  And oh, dear God, but she had foolishly thought she’d seen them all.

Instantly, Kayleen had sensed something animalistic and undeniably profane in the garishly colorful depictions from the Blackthorne Butcher’s kills – something that went beyond simply “evil”; a vile, despicable wickedness that had spoken to Kayleen’s darkest heart of hearts.  In fact, Kayleen’s near-violent knee-jerk reaction of abhorrence had been the very reason she had asked to be assigned the case.  When Jody had also volunteered, she’d instantly been flooded with relief.

There had been six of them in Kayleen’s team, five teams per unit.  Although her primary assignment was Behavioral Analysis Unit #2, Crimes Against Adults, she had, upon occasion, taken a short tour in #3, Crimes Against Children.  That was one of the most difficult and unsettling assignments imaginable, and as such, she’d had a hard time remaining objective.  It took a certain person, a certain mentality, a certain measure of distance to remain a player in that particular field.  So for the most part, Kayleen had stayed with number Two.

Mostly they each kept to one, main, six-man team, simply rotating between various partners within that group of misfits on almost every single case.  Sometimes, the teams overlapped.  But one thing always remained the same; each individual appointment never lasted any longer than 18 months.  Beyond that, the psychological ‘burn-out’ rate was simply way too high.

The assignments themselves depended upon a number of different factors, mostly in regards to a given BAU member’s specialized strengths in relation to the particulars of whomever they were pursuing.  Sometimes, they were assigned to the investigations based merely on their own inherent brand of inborn wisdom.  Other times, they were assigned based on the classes that they had excelled at in graduate school, paired with experience that they’d carefully cultivated once in the field.

Every so often, they’d even be designated to a certain case based on something as simple as their sex, their socio-economic background, or their home state.  Whatever Dr. Severance thought would give each specific team an edge, he would play them towards that end; like chess pieces wielded skillfully against the ultimate game of life and death.  But on this one, other than Jody and Kayleen, there hadn’t been any takers.  The choice, therefore, had been patently simple.

Yet the case had quickly proven to be even worse than anything Kayleen could have ever imagined.  The sheer level of cunning and intelligence, the extreme peaks of merciless, mind-numbing malevolence, and the chilling depths of callous, degenerate evil, had all made this one stand out immediately from everything else they’d ever faced.  And from the very first moment, this case had consumed them down to their souls.  As a result, their relationship, when it had started, hadn’t been so much ‘falling in love’, as it had been rescuing each other from the gaping abyss.  By the time they’d finally started having sex, physically releasing some of that pent-up agony and grief, Kayleen hadn’t been sleeping more than three or four hours a night in over a month straight.

Kayleen got up and retrieved the ashtray from the dishwasher, and then ground the smoldering butt right in the center.  Crumpling back against the couch, she clenched the empty shot glass tightly in her hand as she slowly rationed out another huge measure.  Glancing up at the bottle with misty eyes, she saw that she had unwittingly grabbed the Stolichnaya brand somehow.  She laughed then, a brittle, painfully sardonic chuckle that stabbed out loudly into the otherwise virgin silence.  Then she closed her eyes and tossed it back.

The first two weeks after Estes had come for her, it’d been impossible to staunch her emotions.  She had cried and cried until the suffering had consumed her.  Insanity seemed to dog her heels at that point, with all the anguish trapped inside her, and no outlet left to purge it.  But soon, the liquor had stepped in and methodically taken over.

And from that night on, when she had finally decided to drown her sorrows in the sweet solace of hard spirits, she’d somehow managed to keep staunching it more and more.  Then, not only were the tears dwindling, but so was the balance of her emotions.  Thereafter, she truly was becoming numb inside.  Well, as numb as one could be who had literally lost everything.

Her third psychologist had immediately caught on.  That dried up windbag had, of course, strongly warned her against what she was doing.  But his dire predictions of what her grief would invariably do to her if she didn’t face up to it and work through it right then and there, had merely fallen on stone-deaf ears.  She didn’t give a damn what it might one day do to her, if she happened to live that long.  All she cared about was what it had been doing to her right that very moment.

So, the alcohol had somehow become her eventual savior.  And then, not only had her tears dried up, but her heart had gradually been anesthetized, too.  Now, with the help of that succor on a daily basis, she typically felt next to nothing at all.

When they had broadcast the fact that the girl’s dead body had been found over the police radio a little while earlier, it was almost as if she’d been hearing it all from a cottony and muffling distance.  Thankfully, she’d figured that the alcohol was apparently still holding strong.  She guessed she just had to keep getting blind-stinking drunk around the clock; granting herself the almost uncanny ability to achieve a perspective as insulated and as blank as death, itself.  Her recent batch of tears only told her that she simply wasn’t drinking enough.

These past few weeks, with her new crutch, Kayleen had even been able to fool a different FBI staff psychologist – a woman who she’d been referred to when her superiors had realized that the last one, just like the well-meaning but ineffective first and the debacle of a second, hadn’t been making any headway at all.

This woman, a kindly, heavy-sounding, older lady, had insisted on keeping in touch with Kayleen at least once a week.  Which Kayleen would have never agreed to except for the fact that Dr. Severance had told her specifically that she could not come back to work when she was ready, unless she submitted to the grueling indignity of these regular ‘check-ups’ in the interim.  And regardless of the fact that Kayleen wasn’t even sure that she actually was going back to work, she still clung to the idea of her old life enough to at least try and play along.

So, what did she do exactly to fool the old bat?  Two full glasses of vodka, straight up over crushed ice, Vivaldi playing softly in the background, and her eyes screwed tightly closed while she jammed the phone into her ear hard enough to crush the cartilage as she proceeded to lie, lie, lie.  Do not talk about it.  Do not think about it.  Do not let it out.

Of course the psychologist had tried, but whenever she forced Kayleen to speak of that night, Kayleen only said two or three innocuous sentences before deftly changing the subject.  And then she’d quickly slam down another drink.

It had been working, too.  The shrink thought she was “handling her personal issues”, no one had yet stuck her in a mental ward, and she’d managed to keep the once-relentless tears at bay.  That was, at least, until tonight.

Seeing Caleb, her first love and her first loss, had been like a sucker punch to the gut.  And then discussing her theories about the girl’s death...dear God, it had been too much.  Truth be known, she had wanted to help him out so damned badly.  But she just couldn’t do it anymore.  The Kayleen that Caleb needed to assist him with this case, well, she was dead and gone.  And this pathetic, piss-drunk shell of a woman, was all that was left anymore.

Working with Caleb would mean too many memories, too many thoughts, too much pain seeping up from the cracks deep within her.  No.  Helping him on this case could only mean opening herself back up to the hurt, fear and guilt that she had worked so hard to shroud from her wounded psyche.  She just couldn’t bring herself to do it.  At least not now.  Not yet.  Maybe not ever again.

Kayleen reached out with one shaky hand, overcome with sudden desperation.  Angrily swiping at the neck of the bottle, she poured out yet another shot and then slammed it back – again, then again.  Ready to drink all night if that was what it took to drown out the fire that was just now beginning to rage to life inside of her.  She had to stop it, before it consumed her whole.

But without warning the tears came once more, clogging her throat and pricking the backs of her eyes.  Stifled sobs wrenched through her in grudging hitches, until before she knew it, she was crying so hard that her entire body was quaking.  The tears had no seeming end.  They just continued to course through her entire being in bottomless, wracking spasms, as if she’d been born and bred merely to weep.

It went on and on, into the deepest dark of the pit of night until finally, she cried herself to sleep.  She curled tightly on the soft, over-stuffed couch cushions, the bottle by her side, the glass clasped weakly in her hand.  She spent hour upon hour, sweating and moaning her way through restless, grisly dreams; hunched protectively into herself like a baby drifting amidst a womb of broken glass...

"Death Of A Princess" Chapter Two

Death Of A Princess

T.C. Barnes, copyright 2013

Chapter 2

 

 

Sheriff Caleb Stone eased his police cruiser to a stop at the end of the long, crushed and tumbled quartzite driveway, and then looked over at the weary dog lolling in the front passenger seat next to him.

“We’re here, girl,” he said, his voice tinged with abject exhaustion.  After six grueling hours, Harley was finally back home.  And, what a home it was.  Built from jutting slabs of granite stone and massive beams of oak and cedar timber, it perched on the edge of an enormous cliff and looked broodingly out over the small township and the thousands of acres of wilderness that lay far below it.  The house almost seemed to be standing staid guard over its domain; keeping vigilant watch in the darkness like a silent sentinel while the town beneath it slept.

Erected in 1882, the house had been in the Archer family for five generations.  Astin Archer, Kayleen’s great-great grandfather, had built it himself with his own two hands, using stones carved out of the mountains, and trees hewn from the hills.  Embraced on the front and right side by thick woods and facing a vertical incline of another few hundred yards of mossy hills and rock on the left, it backed up to a drop of more than two hundred and fifty feet along the entire rear portion of the house.  Oddly enough, looking at it in the moonlight now, it seemed almost as remote right this moment as Caleb imagined it must have appeared the day it was first completed.

The landscape was starkly beautiful, the house, itself, stunning.  With nearly four thousand square feet of indoor living space that thrust stately upwards three towering stories high, it was a marvel of stone and wood ingenuity that merged almost seamlessly into the exquisite surroundings.  In so doing, it practically became a part of the scenery itself – much more like a natural off-shoot of the mountain it was perched upon than any sort of foreign or unwelcome intrusion.  Quite simply, it looked as if it belonged.

Astin Archer had really had quite a knack for blending his architectural masterpieces into their natural environments.  It was for this reason more than anything else that he had been so successful.  His tyrannical, reclusive personality would have otherwise made him a financial failure in a small town such as this.

At the time he had first built the impressive manse over a hundred and thirty years ago, Astin Archer had already begun losing his sanity.  Yet even as his mind had evidently spiraled more and more out of control, his buildings had also become more elaborate, his work ever more popular.  As a result, in the three decades since its incorporation, nearly half of the buildings in the little municipality that surrounded the base of this towering cliff had actually been built by him.  Two years after he had leapt to his death off the balcony that overlooked the austere and jagged bluff, the small, but still elegant town of “Flagship”, North Carolina, had been renamed “Archdale” in his honor.

The tragedy of Kayleen’s entire family tree was not lost on Caleb.  There had been Astin Archer’s suicide, followed thereafter by his wife’s death from cancer and then his son’s fatal heart attack.  Then there had been Kayleen’s mother’s recent stroke, and the loss of her father when she was only just a child; something she’d refused to talk to Caleb about even years later, when they’d ended up becoming so much more than simply friends.

Harley nudged Caleb’s hand with her damp muzzle and whined, breaking his rather rambling train of thought.  It had been a long night, and the hound was undoubtedly as tired as Caleb was by now.  And he had already been putting this off for far too long.

He’d been contemplating this very moment ever since he’d first heard that Kayleen was back in town again a little over seven weeks ago.  She’d come, of course, for her mother’s funeral a few months before that, but he’d studiously avoided going; not really sure, even after all these intervening years, that he was ready to face her under even the best of circumstances - much less the worst.

But then the little girl had gone missing, and Kayleen, having unexpectedly come home yet again, had not really given him much of a choice.  And now that the final moment was here, he still found himself wishing for just a little extra time.  For what, he didn’t even know.  He figured he could wait another decade and he still wasn’t quite sure that he’d find facing her, or his past, any easier.  So, he finally acknowledged resignedly, there was nothing left to do but get on with it.

He creaked the door open and carefully stepped out onto the crunchy, milk-white pebbles.  Every bone in his body ached, every muscle was taut with strain.  He let Harley out of the passenger side and then they both made their way through the yard and towards the house.

Caleb clomped his way slowly over the white marble and gray slate walkway behind the dog, feeling every single day of his 34 years of life.  But before he was even halfway to the door, the massive wooden frame cracked open and threw a shred of light across his path.  Silhouetted there against a dimly-lit backdrop, he could see a dark figure, tall and lithe in the shadows.  The unexpected twinge in his heart told him immediately who it would be.  The voice that greeted him confirmed it.

“Sheriff Stone,” she said formally.  “Terrible news.”

Caleb nodded his head at Kayleen cordially, but resisted the impulse to speak, knowing how his voice might somehow unwittingly betray him.  And that’s when it suddenly hit him; the unexpected realization of how unabashedly greedy his own eyes honestly were for the sight of her.  Hungry to the point of starvation after the past eleven years of not having been able to look at her – not having been able to watch her smile, and cry, and laugh, and sleep.  He grudgingly swallowed his heartache, and the taste was bitter, like crushed aspirin.  But still, he feared that the pain of truly looking at her now might pierce him like a million glass shards.  So instead, he watched the dog.

Harley ran nimbly up the porch steps, stopping to greet her mistress so as to briefly rub her wet nose against Kayleen’s assuredly cool and comforting palm.  She nuzzled there for a moment before padding into the house, heading through the foyer, and then weaving her way straight into the kitchen.  A second later, Caleb heard her big, rough tongue lapping furiously against the sides of her water bowl.

Kayleen made a movement with her hand as she fell back a few steps, indicating for Caleb to follow her.  So he took off his hat and wiped his sweaty brow with the back of one sleeve as he laboriously climbed her tall front stairs.  Once inside, he carefully and abashedly scuffed his grubby boots against her charming little clover and sun-flower ‘Welcome’ mat, gripping his hat tightly enough to break the brim with his right hand while reaching behind him to softly pull the front door shut with the other.

His eyes remained trained on the floor, at the exact spot where he’d lost sight of the dog once she’d entered the kitchen, until Kayleen finally obliged him by turning completely away.  Then he was able to bring his gaze up while simultaneously forcing his legs to move; following helplessly along in her wake as she glided smoothly towards the recently redecorated living room – a warm, open space that, despite her best efforts, still smelled like stale cigarettes and beer.  But even the freckles that trailed along the collar of her long-sleeved, white cotton shirt distracted him, and the way her hair gleamed in its pony tail reminded him of the last night he’d seen her, after which everything had gone to hell and he’d come to the bone-jarring conclusion that he’d lost her forever.

He cleared his throat, which felt dry and raw and when he swallowed, it made an audible click.  ‘Jesus Christ, what am I doing here?’ he thought.  But then it came back in a flood and the emotions washed over him until he felt dizzy and weak.  He was here because of the girl.  And because Kayleen, Kaytie of all the people in this world, Kaytie alone he felt could help him.

When they reached the living room, she turned to face him, and at last he met her eyes.  Like an electric shock, she buzzed through him.  ‘God,’ he thought, ‘she hasn’t changed at all.’  But that wasn’t entirely true.  The crystal blue-gray eyes with gold flecks around the irises were exactly the same; large, darkly lashed, widely set.  Her hair was the same vivid copper-brown – so shiny it almost seemed like burnished gold.  Her nose was still narrow and straight, exactly as he remembered, and her lips were still full and darkly pink, without so much as the tiniest drop of makeup.  Even Kayleen’s skin was exactly the same, as smooth and white as heavy cream, with tiny freckles across her nose and cheeks.  But although he could see no wrinkles, no vestiges of the passage of years, her eyes themselves had aged.  It was as if the knowledge she had gained over the past eleven years was reflected there, and what it literally screamed out to him was an overwhelming anguish.

Was it possible that her past decade without him had been filled merely with sadness and pain?  He had always assumed that she’d run away to be happy, so now his heart clenched agonizingly in his chest at that last thought, and he suddenly found himself at a loss as to what he should say.

He floundered there for a moment, and might’ve been trapped in his inertia forever had she not turned once again and thankfully broken his gaze.  It was then that the blessed numbness began to slowly sink back in.  Some things, he realized, would have to be dealt with sooner or later.  But the only thing that mattered tonight was the here and now.

“Make yourself at home,” Kayleen said softly as she walked back over to her couch and folded herself stiffly against the buttery-colored suede cushions.  Their supple softness appeared capable of sucking her deeply down into them, yet in this awkward situation she appeared unwilling to even minutely try and relax.  Instead, she remained perched uncomfortably along the edge, her hands on her knees, both feet planted firmly side-by-side on the floor; unintentionally and unknowingly looking to Caleb like some sort of errant school girl being dressed down by the principal.  Despite his intentions of staying completely neutral, his mouth unknowingly fashioned itself into the fleeting-ghost of a smile.

Caleb trudged over a short, carpeted expanse, and then settled himself into one of the spare burgundy armchairs with a sighing gust of utter, defeated fatigue.  Unsure of where to begin, and still yet-unable to return her steady gaze, he simply cast his eyes randomly about her cozy new living room, noticing for the first time how different it truly was.  In fact, it was so utterly changed from what he remembered that he didn’t even really recognize it anymore.

The entire space was now tasteful and elegant, and nothing like the dusty, dim room he still recalled so well.  Those memories included cheap, tarnished brass end tables, a cracked vinyl couch sprouting tufts of cotton filler, and mismatched lamps with bulbs that were more often burnt out than not.  The old room had also sported worn, peeling wall-paper and tired, sagging, wooden-planked floors.  Those poor boards had constantly been coated with a fine layer of virtually un-removable grit, had groaned loudly beneath every footstep, and had been scuffed white in bald patches across the thresholds of both of the doors.

Now, everything from the weathered flooring, to the ugly green curtains, to the garish green and yellow, daisy-print wall-paper, had been drastically and quite favorably updated.  Even the old fireplace had been thoroughly cleaned and re-framed in stone and fresh cedar.  The newly-laid, vibrantly stained, cherry-wood floors were polished to a glossy shine.  An expensive Oriental rug nicely offset the creamy suede sofa and the two wine-colored wing-backed chairs that flanked it - one of which, Caleb was currently ensconced in.  Before him sat a brand new stained glass and carved-wood coffee table that was a work of art all by itself.

The lighting was much nicer now, too.  The ambience was rosy and warm from two tall, burnished-silver torchiere lamps that cast a soft, subtle glow across Kayleen’s tense, strained face.  But Caleb didn’t need that tell-tale, revealing illumination to recognize her current discomfort:  he could practically feel it radiating off of her in waves.

“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said politely.

“It wasn’t me, it was her,” Kayleen replied, her voice acrid and cold.

Caleb shrugged noncommittally and then leaned his head back against the soft red leather.  He allowed another sigh to pass slowly through him, this one a bit more narrow and stilted than the first.  Then he closed his eyes and slowly pulled his enormous hand across his still-sweaty face.

Kayleen, herself, was closely watching, too, although she was desperately trying to hide it.  She had even clearly noticed the small smile that had faintly curved a small arc across his strong lips for the briefest of instants a few short moments earlier.  Seeing it, she couldn’t help but cringe.  Was he happy to see her then, she wondered?  Even after the way she had ended things so ruthlessly all those years ago?

As much as she might like to believe that, that he had forgiven her for her past transgressions, for some reason, she just couldn’t quite make herself swallow the lie.  No, she was smart enough to realize, and yet also stupid enough to admit, that no man could ever forgive her the kinds of things that she had done.  Not then and not eleven years later.  Quite possibly not ever.  But she was okay with that because really, in the scheme of things, whether or not Caleb could get over the mistakes she’d made as a child absolutely paled in comparison to the terrible and unforgivable mistakes she’d made once she’d gotten out on her own.

But beyond all of that, beyond her faults, her blunders, her screw-ups, her errors; his mere arrival had thrown her for a sideways loop.  And not for anything once shared between them, either.

For a tiny moment, just one little pinprick in time, the sight of him in his Sheriff’s cruiser, stepping out in that same tan uniform that her dad had once worn, had brought-up the barest glimpse of a memory; that, and nothing more.  She wasn’t even sure at this point if it was one of her own memories, or just something that she’d vicariously picked up from looking over yellowed photos across a great, yawning chasm of time.  Still, it had made her heart thud in her chest a bit harder, nonetheless.

Kayleen cleared her throat now, trying to wipe away the sudden and unexpected burn she had just felt when she’d tried to swallow.  But other than that, she remained quiet, refusing to break the silence by saying anything at all.  She figured Caleb should really be the one to broach this next part of their conversation.  They both knew what he was doing there and thankfully, it at least had nothing to do with their past.  It had to do with their present, and if he had his way, their future.

Caleb was trying to figure out the best way to ask for her help in solving the little girl’s murder.  She just hoped like hell that he would go ahead and get it over with.  Then she could turn him down flat and get right on back to her own pathetic and miserable life.  This particular chapter in it would finally be closed, the past would remain in the past, and she and Caleb could finally be done with each other, once - and mercifully - for all.

As she sat there uncomfortably waiting, she felt a bead of moisture slither from behind the bend of her left knee and begin to roll sinuously down her calf.  She realized with a start then that she really was sweating; not only was her brow greased with the sticky stuff, but so were her ribcage and underarms, too.  Anxiety began to clog the entire back of her throat with some sort of sour film, and she could actually even feel her pulse as it thrummed wild staccato bursts against the papery-thin insides of both of her wrists.  She was extremely glad to be sitting now since all of a sudden, her legs began to feel as if her bones had just turned to jelly.  Where was the emotional void she had found herself floundering in only a short while ago?  Now her insides were a turbulent mix of wild emotions.

She’d gotten by somehow, over the past eleven years, with the thought that she’d never have to actually face Caleb ever again.  Yet now, here they were.  And as she rested her eyes once again on his excruciatingly familiar face, she felt the whole room tilt unnervingly around her.  Past was merging into present.  Her world was shifting smoke, unstable, without substance.  And the contact with the couch and her uncomfortable position along the edge of it, barely served to tether her to her current reality.

Now, at this very moment, Kayleen found herself dead-center in the midst of truly looking at him for the very first time.  Ever since he’d walked in, her mind had been cleaved by thoughts of their past.  She’d seen him of course; the hat, the badge above his left pocket, the wide set of his shoulders and his slightly aged face.  But suddenly she found herself comparing the appearance of this grown man who sat before her, to the young adult she had once loved so tumultuously before.

His immense physical presence was the initial thing that struck her.  Even sitting there, slumped over, Kayleen could tell that Caleb was at least several inches taller now.  And yet, he was still every bit as massive as she remembered.

In high school he had played varsity football, and she could tell right away that the past decade hadn’t softened him any.  If possible, he seemed even more solid and muscular today than he’d been back then.  His shoulders still looked big enough to take on the weight of the world, like some kind of modern day Atlas.  But his once newly-burgeoning muscles now resembled smooth skin overtop of bulging, corded steel.  His face had thinned out a little, but the thick, crew-cut, blondish-brown hair, the strong jaw, the full mouth and slanted, deep chocolate brown eyes, were all pretty much the same.

He did have a few beginning wrinkles.  Only they simply added to his appearance, making him seem for the first time ever to her like a man who was a part of this world rather than a perfect god who merely ruled over it.  Yes, he might be a little different, a little more mature from the past eleven years that had marched their way determinedly across the myriad planes of his handsome and charismatic face.  Still, overall he looked just like her same old ‘Caleb’ on the outside.  She couldn’t help but wonder; did the inside of him fare so well?

Finally, he broke her almost helplessly-riveted concentration by lifting his head up and looking straight at her.  Kayleen blinked several times, trying to wipe away the misty film that had, unnoticed, freshly draped itself across her gaze.

Drawing his brows sonorously down over his piercingly broody eyes, appropriately and effectively conveying the gravity of the moment, Caleb slowly began in on what had to have been a dreaded and unwelcome task.  “We found the girl,” he told her heavily.  “She was dead.  Just like you predicted.”

For a moment, Kayleen was simply unable to answer him, feeling so barren, cold and broken; she frankly had nothing left she truly could say.

Caleb let another hushed span of time stretch out between them, giving her a moment to collect her thoughts.  Then he went on hacking away at her defenses again.  Of course he didn’t realize what he was doing.  But Kayleen, she felt the agony of every single, stabbing word.

“How did you know, anyway?” he asked, startling her a bit by the sudden bluntness in his jagged, rough voice.  She knew that tone well.  Caleb only used it when he was terribly upset.

“Know what?” she finally replied.  She remained cautious, her voice still warily cool and decidedly distant.

“That she was not just missing, but murdered.  Deputy Carleton said that when he came by to pick up Harley earlier, you mentioned that the girl was probably not alive anymore.”

“Actually, I wasn’t talking to Deputy Carleton.  I was randomly muttering to myself and he accidentally overheard me.  And it wasn’t some supernatural prediction, either.  It was merely an instinctive, ‘gut’ conclusion, quickly-derived by the facts of your investigation that he’d so casually let slip out.  Young girl, public place, she goes missing:  probably dead.”

Caleb’s manner had been sharp, and hers became no less brittle now.  As much as she had tried to prepare herself for this imposition, this intrusion into her life; work was just something that she could not even begin to pretend to be interested in anymore.  And the discussing the death of a child had the potential to strip her to the core.  What was left of her was bloodied and bruised beyond repair.  And picking away at the raw surface of it would be like scouring away at freshly-formed sores with a handful of Brillo pads.

Beyond that, the visits to flashback-hell, vis-à-vis her love-sick adolescence, were over.  She was done thinking about her past with Caleb.  And, she was also done thinking about this friggin’ case.  The night was growing older by the second, and her hands were already beginning to tremble from severe want of drink.  It was time to turn him down and send him on his way.  Then she’d light up a fresh cigarette, slam back another few shots, and proceed with blurring those irksome, needling memories until they seemed far, far away.

Only, as she was soon to discover, it wasn’t going to be nearly that easy.

“I still don’t get it.  Fill me in,” he persisted stubbornly.  The urgent and obstinate undercurrents beneath his simple words finally began to illuminate the distressing and infuriating reality that he was not going to just let this go.  Not without at least something from her first.  But what, exactly, would he settle for?

She sighed audibly then and said, “Does it really matter Caleb?”

“Yes, it does.  It matters to me.  I know you have more experience with this kind of stuff than I do.  All I’m looking for here is a little help, a tiny window of insight.  Is that too much to ask from you these days?”

And that was a jab to the heart right there.  Because once upon a time, nothing that Caleb could have ever asked of her would have possibly been ‘too much’, and both of them damn well knew it.  Kayleen shook her head in disgust, but wasn’t quite sure who it was even aimed at; Caleb or herself.  It was only a simple conversation.

A little girl had been tragically murdered, and Kayleen had seen similar crimes before – unlike Caleb who had probably never dealt with anything quite as horrific as this during his entire tenure with the Sheriff’s Office.  It couldn’t hurt to just offer him some basic observations, right?  Yeah, right.  Truth be known, it could cut her to the quick.

Yet she didn’t see any way to avoid it without stirring up even more problems than what already lay between them.  And this would be way easier than sifting through those old hurts.  “Okay,” she said finally.  “Okay fine.  I’ll tell you.”

So she started, the words coming slowly at first, as if out of practice with her craft.  But as she talked, the momentum gradually began to build until before long, she was actually back within her work’s own dark and peculiar element once again.

“Alright now, keep in mind I only have the barest of minimums as far as the particulars go: the girl’s age, where she went missing, and so forth.  So, I could be way off-base here.  I’m really not able to state anything with any measure of certainty without having first seen the crime scene pics and the full police report and autopsy notes.  But, going with what I already do know; her age was the first indicator to me that she was likely going to end up being an actual murder victim rather than a simple runaway.”  With these words, Kayleen held up her slender right index finger, indicating to Caleb that this was her ‘Factor #1’.

“Depending on the girl, on how mature she is, from around the age of twelve and up when they go missing, there really is a good chance that they just took off somewhere.  Girls that age like to rebel.  Screw with their mothers a little bit.  Younger than that, they wouldn’t dream of running away.  They’re still scared of strangers – not like little boys who are usually a bit more trusting.  But they are unfortunately still gullible, vulnerable, and easily manipulated.  All kids are, which is why we have child rape-murder rates as high as we do in this country in the first place.  This girl, she was only nine years old.  And she came from a small town.  No way was she just off somewhere messing around.”

Kayleen ticked the next point off on her hand, now holding up two fingers as she spoke, “Second, we have the fact that she went missing from a very public place.  A week and a half-long beauty pageant no less.  Anyone, anywhere, anytime, had access to this girl.  Hotel staff, visitors, participants, passersby.  Public exhibitions like this tend to attract freaks also.  You get all these young girls parading around in these tiny little outfits, hair done up, makeup slathered on.  A pervert’s wet dream.  And when those perverts figure out that the dream just isn’t doing the trick anymore, they sometimes take it a step further.  That’s where you have the last factor.”

She paused almost imperceptibly before holding up a third finger and concluding, “And finally, she had been missing for an extended period by the time that Carleton came for Harley.  Not for just a few hours, not for just an afternoon, but for almost two whole days.  After the first 24 hours have elapsed, the chance that the subject will be found alive decreases dramatically.  Plus, no ransom demands had been phoned in and no letter had been left behind.  It wasn’t about some possible financial jackpot, Caleb.  From what I understand, the parents didn’t have any money, weren’t famous or political, and there would’ve been no reason to try to extort them in the first place.

“No.  This was all about the girl, herself, which means that it was most likely a sexually-motivated crime.  And statistically speaking, by the point in the investigation that you guys came to collect Harley, time had almost unquestionably run out for the little girl.  Abductors, especially sexual predators, rarely keep their victims alive for any length of time after the initial assault; at most, typically only a matter of a few short hours.  Almost two full days into it, and her chances of still being alive considering the other two circumstances…were nearly non-existent.  So, that’s how I knew.  It was merely a matter of putting it all together.”

Listening to her now, Caleb looked beaten and fatalistic.  She knew he was probably berating himself internally for not having done more to find the girl.  Wondering, questioning if the outcome would’ve been different had they only gotten to her sooner.  But knowing damn-well how these predators worked, Kayleen was quite certain her own intuitive deduction was right:  that poor little girl was undoubtedly dead long before they’d even been called to investigate.

Kayleen realized then that her arm was still up in mid-air, the three fingers she’d used to measure out that dead child’s fate still pointing uselessly up towards the ceiling’s wooden rafters.  Slowly, she allowed her hand to drop limply back into her lap.

Completely drained from just that short explanation, she leaned back and took a long moment to simply breathe again.  Yes, she had known full well the actual reasons that she had believed the girl had been killed almost instantly.  But having suspected it all along hadn’t made speaking her theories out loud any easier.  She hadn’t delved into the mind of a killer since Richard Allan Estes himself, and time had not served to soften the blow.  All she wanted to do now was have a few more stiff drinks and then head upstairs to bed.  Forget the girl, forget Caleb, forget everything.  At least for a little while.

Caleb, however, still had other plans.

“We sure could use your help on this one Kaytie,” he told her suddenly.  “I know you’re not working right now, and it seems like a perfect opportunity for you to get involved in our case.”

‘Kaytie’, he’d said.  Hearing him call her that name was like a dash of cold water across her face.  No one called her that.  No one but Caleb.  And the last time she’d heard it, she’d been only seventeen years old and getting ready to leave this small hick town for what she’d assumed would be forever.  The name stung her, made her feel the weight of her guilt.  And it also pissed her off.

“I’m on vacation, Sheriff Stone.  I thought you all knew that,” she bit out, her tone thoroughly mottled with anger.  She had grown used to the anonymity of living in a big city.  Back in D.C., she could go weeks without bumping into even one of her neighbors, and nobody other than her close friends and co-workers appeared to give a damn what she said or did.  But here, it seemed that everyone had known her each and every move, from the moment she’d first stepped out of her car and walked up the front steps of this lonely house nearly two long months ago; trying, rather pointlessly to begin her life anew.

And obviously they’d certainly known all about her visit the time before, too, when she had come back to inter Mother in the family cemetery, and simultaneously pay her pleasantries to the rest of her buried dead.  Unfortunately, word traveled fast in small country hamlets:  notoriously so.  She’d heard the whispers every time she’d gone to the grocery store or taken a walk through town.  People had gleefully availed themselves of her private business, sharing supposed intimate facets of her life between them like tiny nuggets of gold passed from hand to greedy hand, old friends and strangers alike speaking mere dirty gossip about her out loud as if it were the God-given truth.

Considering the snippets of conversation that she, herself, had accidentally overheard, many of their suppositions had been way off base.  And now, it would seem that Sheriff Caleb Elijah Caswell Stone was not exempt from the rumor mill, as well.  She wondered how many useless lies he may have already heard about her and taken straight to heart without a second thought.  Or worse, perhaps he had somehow, through his law enforcement connections, managed to learn the truth.  If that were the case, she wasn’t entirely sure that she could bear it.

“That’s why it makes this a perfect opportunity for you to consult with us.  You can stay here and work on this case as long as you want,” he continued, confirming the fact that he was well-aware that she was on an indefinite leave from the FBI, but also reassuring her, in the short-term at least, that he remained blessedly unaware of the unspeakable events that had led to it.  Had he known, he would’ve never dared to push her so blatantly.

“You’ll have nothing else getting in your way,” he concluded, sickeningly smug with self-satisfaction.  But when she simply sat there, stonily-silent and unmoving, his tone got a little desperate, “You can focus on the facts of this case alone, Kaytie.  We need your help.”

Those solemn, sable eyes of his bored unflinchingly into hers.  They were so damn familiar, so damned intimate.  But the honest truth of it was that he was nothing more than a mildly-threatening stranger to her now.

So she looked away from him, down at her own lap.  Her old, worn jeans had little threads coming unwoven from the soft blue nap.  Intently, she focused on those tiny filaments.  She could hear her grandfather clock ticking relentlessly in the rear hallway, could hear Harley’s nails clicking on the stairs around the bend from them as she finally headed up towards her bed.

“No,” she finally replied; flat, unemotional, non-negotiable.  “And by the way, stop fucking calling me that.  My name is Kayleen.”

“Okay, then.  How much have you had to drink tonight, Kayleen?” he queried casually, his intent rather brutal although his voice remained deceptively mild.

She’d been staring at her thin, long, nervously active fingers as they picked thoughtlessly away at those annoyingly-errant threads.  But with his last comment, she whipped her head up to stare at him in shock.  How had he known?  She was freshly showered, the house was clean, her clothes were recently laundered, and her teeth were thoroughly brushed.

She had so completely isolated herself lately that she hadn’t really even had to worry about hiding her drinking from anyone else before tonight.  Yet even so, she’d assumed she’d done a pretty good job of cleaning up and at least superficially masking the truth.  Well, covering it up good enough to get through this short conversation undetected, anyway.  As a result, his words quite literally blindsided her.  She was instantly mortified and ashamed.  And the fact that Caleb had picked up on it so friggin’ quickly made her feel inexcusably violated, too.

‘Oh, God’, she thought abruptly, a surge of noxious panic funneling nauseously through her veins.  Certainly that wasn’t one of the rumors circulating around town, was it?  Kayleen always went two counties over to stock up on her weekly supply of booze.  So, how in the hell had he known?

“Th-that’s none of your goddamn b-business,” she finally managed to sputter out, well and truly rattled for the first time that night.  Kayleen didn’t have any intention of telling Caleb how long she’d been drinking, or why.  Especially why.  Some things were better off left unsaid, unknown, and buried deep inside.

Caleb sat there silently, simply watching impotently as she set about completely shutting down and shutting him out.  He could see the change quickly settling over her:  the steely glint furiously intensifying within her eyes, the unmistakable straightening of her backbone, the inevitable sharpening of her already thinly-compressed lips.  Finally, he shrugged again.  This time it was almost imperceptible.  He wasn’t trying to convey any frustrations to her by way of it.  He was just acknowledging his own defeat.

Caleb already knew incontrovertibly that he couldn’t force what he wanted out of her.  He’d never been able to take anything from Kayleen Archer that she hadn’t been willing yet to give.  It was one of the things that he’d respected about her, even as it had simultaneously driven him damn-near insane.

But stubborn as a mule in his own right, he wasn’t quite resigned to giving up on the case.  He might go passively along with backing off her personal life, at least for now, but as far as the murder of the O’Neal girl went; he needed her help and he knew it.

Caleb wasn’t exactly sure why she had chosen to come back to town so quickly after her mother’s funeral, and he was even less sure about why she had chosen to stay.  Regardless, he had no intention of letting this golden opportunity slip right through his fingers.  He’d heard from more than one person in the business that Kayleen was one of the most respected FBI profilers around.  As such, there was no way in hell that he was going to be content with settling for a negative answer.  Not now, not later, not ever.

“Hell of a crime scene,” he mentioned softly, beginning his not-so-subtle attempt to gently somehow reel her in.  He figured if he continued to play it cool and friendly, sooner or later, she just might change her mind and acquiesce to his request on her own terms; whatever those terms may be.  But he had underestimated the strength of her vehemence.

“I don’t want to know about it!” she practically screamed.  Against his better judgment, he completely lost his patience.  His face grew flushed and his tone once again became sharp and clipped.

“Look,” he snapped out sarcastically, “just because you get to take a nice little leave of absence from the big ol’ Eff Bee Eye up there in Virginia, doesn’t mean you stop being a fucking cop.  A little girl got killed today.  I thought you might care enough to try and help me figure out why.”

“Well then, you thought wrong.”  Her voice in return was hostile, icy, and unmistakably final.

“Have it your way.  If you change your mind, you know where to find me.”  He stood suddenly and was gone as quickly as he’d arrived, angrily stomping through the house and then slamming the front door behind him as he stormed out.  He strode back across the moonlit path, his face red with indignation, heart heavy with disappointment.

He climbed into his car and gunned the engine, spitting out a spray of white gravel behind each of his spinning tires.  Heading back down the mountain, he found himself jerking against the steering wheel as if trying to strangle it.

“Goddamn her!” he growled to himself, smacking the dashboard with the heel of his hand so fiercely, it sounded like a muffled gunshot.

He careened down the steep, sharp pass like a madman whose ass was on fire.  It was only when he had reached the bottom of her private road and had pulled out onto the rural baseline highway on screaming rubber, that he realized he’d utterly forgotten the one thing that he’d supposedly gone there for in the first place; to thank her for the use of her well-trained bloodhound.