"Death Of A Princess" - FIRST CHAPTER

Death Of A Princess

T.C. Barnes, copyright 2013

 

 

“This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

This is the way the world ends.

Not with a bang but with a whimper.”

 

~T.S. Eliot ‘The Hollow Men’

 

 

Chapter 1

 

 

 

She was running faster and faster now, almost as swift and fleet-footed as a yearling deer.  The sickeningly sweet smell of honeysuckle hung thick in the damp night air, so heavy it almost completely obscured another fainter scent; the somewhat elusive trail of raw, primal distress that so frantically urged her on.

In the distance, a brook babbled like a madman, crickets chirruped loudly, and the brushwood rustled with the footsteps of a hundred living things.  She missed none of this, each individual noise making its own imprint upon the deepest recesses of her brain.  But her main objective consumed her; leading her focus away from her nocturnal surroundings, to instead what lay further down the invisible path.

Every few steps, Harley felt branches whip at her nose, sticks tear at her skin, rocks prick angrily at the soft center of her tender paws.  Yet she ignored it all.  Even when the thorns bit so deeply that she bled, she spared not one glance, missed not one step.  She kept doggedly on, for all that mattered to her in this instant was the hunt.

Without warning, the once tenuous, once subtle aroma became abruptly stronger, swelling around her with an alarming alacrity.  It was suddenly so piquantly-sharp, her mind could map out an almost near-perfect image of the two individual people who'd so recently left it.  In response, Harley whined softly in the back of her throat, her muscular legs continuing to pump as the undeniable urgency propelled her almost recklessly forward.  But then, the air changed.  And without a shadow of a doubt, she knew.

It was the scent.  In a matter of moments, it had gone from the fiery tang of anger, coupled with the pungency of fear, to the unmistakably cold, dim odor of death.  It was too late.  The girl was gone from them now.

Harley paused, looking back over her shoulder with mournful eyes and whimpering; trying to tell the others behind her what she already knew.  But they were still too wrapped up in the business of finding the girl.  They didn’t yet understand the significance of what she was trying so desperately to convey.

There was nothing else to do now but lead them on.

She put her nose back to the ground, sniffed until the correct trail was flashing in her head once again like a synaptic caution light, then took back off down the path that only she could sense.  Slower now, but no one else could tell that her pace had slackened, or what that slackening meant.

Less than a minute later, they all reached the clearing.  Harley was still in front; panting, pulling against the lead, barking franticly.  Her eyes made out the horrible sight in the near pitch-black several seconds before the flashlight beams finally pierced the earthy darkness and exposed what lay before them.

The dog tried so hard to keep moving, over towards where the fragile girl lay there alone in the clearing, feeling a deep need to curl up beside her body and lend a small measure of comfort to all that was left of her now.  But the men, they would not let her go.  One of them tied her lead to the bottom of a rough tree trunk and she quickly reached the end of her chain.

Then all she could do was pace anxiously back and forth, moaning deeply in the back of her throat and intermittently tilting her head to the sky; braying her grief and heartache to the enormous moon above.

 

*

 

At eight minutes after midnight, Kayleen heard a burst of static on her dad’s battered old police scanner, followed by the terse voice of an officer as he reported back to headquarters.  They had found the girl.  And just as Kayleen had feared, she was dead.

“Shit,” she said, and smashed her fist down on the carved wooden and glass-topped coffee table in front of her, knocking an abundance of empty beer cans over and sending several of them cascading down onto the floor.  The domino-effect pushed the one she’d been drinking over the edge too, and it landed with a dull thud as thick spumes of milky white foam abruptly began to pulse out across her carpet.

She quickly reached down and snagged it, but could tell right away it was too late.  The only thing remaining in the bottom now was a few small sips’ worth that had somehow managed to stay inside.  She set the wet can back down on the glass part of the coffee table and then with a small groan, she hefted herself to her feet.

Kayleen took a few lurching steps towards the kitchen, intent on grabbing a towel.  But at her abrupt change of position, the blood unexpectedly rushed from her woozy head down towards her rubbery torso, and her vision was white-washed by a buzzing cloud of depthless haze.

She paused blindly for a second, pushing her fists into her aching eyeballs and struggling to pull in a few deep breaths, trying hard to quash the swell of nausea that was unexpectedly threatening to empty her stomach right there onto the floor.  After a few long seconds, she regained control.  She took her hands away from her eyes, blinked several times, and finally, the fog gradually cleared.

Kayleen shakily began to walk again, berating herself for her stupidity all the while.  Hell, she’d known before she’d even started drinking that tonight of all nights she shouldn’t be getting smashed.  But, she had rationalized; Harley was the one on duty tonight, not her.  Kayleen had been off duty for so long now that it was eating her up from the inside out, and booze was the only thing that seemed to take the edge off her desperation.

Kayleen abruptly realized in what direction her thoughts were headed, so she swiftly shook them off.  By then, she'd made it all the way over to her large, recently modernized, well-appointed kitchen, and thankfully the pain in her head had now subsided to a mere dull ache.  She slapped her palm against the light switch on the wall to her right and then shuffled over to the deep, double-basined porcelain kitchen sink, her expensive running shoes squeaking discordantly against the bright, white-ceramic tiled floor.

Kayleen turned the polished copper handle and ice-cold well-water immediately began to funnel out.  She cupped her hands into the stream and then splashed them several times against her face and neck; her clammy skin pimpling into rows of chill bumps from the welcome shock.  She drank a few gulps out of the last handful before shutting off the spigot and picking up the small towel that had been draped overtop it.

She had just started to dry her face with it when she noticed it had a big orange stain across one side from where she’d mopped up some spilled juice and vodka the day before.  She’d meant to throw it into the dirty laundry pile last night, but had apparently forgotten.

She went ahead and dried her face on the remaining clean edge now, balled it up, and then quickly took it over to a door notched into the far wall of the kitchen.  It led to an 8x10 laundry area beyond which lay another door that opened onto the small side yard; a circular patch of lush grass and rocky soil that spread out for less than a hundred feet before the slope of the mountain canted sharply.  Thereafter, the land began veering upwards at a dauntingly steep angle.

Kayleen chucked the dirty towel into the over-flowing laundry basket and then headed back into the kitchen and over to the countertop by the fridge.  There, she reached up and pulled a huge handful of sheets off a roll of quilted paper towels hanging beneath one of the cabinets.  She separated them and made one large stack, then finally strode back into the living room to clean up her mess.

Walking over behind the coffee table, she slid to her knees beside the yeasty smelling puddle that had by now spread pretty far throughout her carpet; mushrooming nearly all the way over to the front of the couch.

As she laid the stack of paper towels down over the sodden nap and then leaned into it with both palms, she began to marvel at her unexpectedly edgy, dry-eyed calm.  What she had thought might throw her back into a tailspin had actually hardly made a dent.

The death of a child was the most tragic news imaginable.  At least that’s the way Kayleen had always felt.  The fact that it was undoubtedly murder made it so much worse.  She had, of course, been quite efficient at remaining mostly immune to these types of cases over the last six years.  Otherwise, she’d have never been able to do her job and do it so damn well.

But ever since the attack, things had drastically and irrevocably changed, as if the very foundation of her soul itself had somehow cracked apart and then shifted around inside her.  Now it seemed like even the smallest emotion was amplified ten-fold.  So then, why in the hell did she suddenly feel so freaking numb?

Maybe tears were not unlimited, she thought abruptly.  Maybe you only had so many you got to utilize in your lifetime, and after that, they were used up, dried out, and you were blessedly shit out of luck.

After another few minutes of pressing on the foamy slick, it was for the most part blotted up.  She figured she could hire a professional cleaner to come out and steam the rest of it sooner or later, but at the moment, she was in a bit of a hurry.  Using the coffee table as leverage, Kayleen hauled herself up to standing again and began to finish tidying up.

First, she cleared the clutter off the table from earlier that night.  The beer cans went in the recycling bin and the sodden paper towels she threw in the trash.  She cleaned the table-top off with some all-purpose Pledge, then the ashtray was rinsed and put into the dishwasher, and the used shot glass was quickly washed and dried and put back into its place in the cupboard above the sink - beside the assorted collection of half-empty liquor bottles.  Brands didn’t really matter much to Kayleen anymore; only the percentage of alcohol they contained within.

As she headed back into the living room, Kayleen abruptly recognized the fact that, despite her cursory cleaning, it still smelled like the inside of a bar in there.  So, she turned on her heel, went back into the kitchen, and grabbed a large can of Lysol and one of Febreze out from under the sink.  She'd actually kicked the smoking habit years ago, but with the near-unbearable strain she’d been under lately, it had been only all-too easy to fall off the proverbial wagon.

It hadn’t been that way with alcohol.  She’d never had a problem with drinking before, which was courtesy of her dear old dad.  Not wanting to be a chip off the proverbial block, so to speak, she’d refrained from anything more than a small glass of white wine at dinner for nearly her entire adult existence.

No, it wasn’t until she’d made the acquaintance of one Richard Allan Estes - serial killer at large - that she had learned the true solace that alcohol could provide.  Which was probably also when she’d felt the first glimmering of not only understanding, but also forgiveness, for the way that her father had died.

Kayleen finished up her cleaning spree by spraying the Lysol all through the air and then concentrating heavy streams of Febreze towards the cigarette smoke saturated couch and the still-damp carpet.  When she was finally done, she turned in a circle, carefully surveying the quiet room around her.

The bolted-in A/C unit thrummed steadily in the far window, but still, the air felt as oppressively heavy as her dark and stagnant thoughts.  Caleb was probably already on his way over, she realized, and it suddenly seemed as if Kayleen had the weight of a thousand pounds against her chest; pressing the very breath from her lungs as it squeezed her heart into a stone the size of a marble.  The house may be ready for company, but now it was her turn to prepare.

In just a short while, her past was going to come knocking on her front door.  And when it did, she’d damn well better be ready to face it.