Dying for Love (9 page)

Chapter Nine

T
he small wooden church sat on a hill overlooking Angel’s Ridge, its steeple rising toward the heavens. The ridge had been named for the folk legend claiming that parishioners had seen angels floating in the clouds above the church, their sweet voices echoing along the ridge.

The place should have brought peace, yet Amelia broke out in a cold sweat as she climbed the steps.

Papaw had loved this church. He’d confessed his sins weekly to the preacher. If he’d known about her baby, he could have told Reverend Bartholomew.

But the place brought back more dark memories for her. When she was small and the voices had emerged, Papaw had brought her to the church, hoping the preacher could save her soul.

“I’m at my wits end,” he’d said. “The devil’s done got in my little girl.”

“We’ll perform an exorcism,” the reverend had said. “We’ll purge those demons.”

They’d tied her down, and the preacher had shouted and spoken to God. His hands had touched her, cold and icy, then he’d spoken in tongues, telling the devil to release her.

He’d even let snakes crawl over her body.

Then they’d stripped her and taken her to the river and immersed her below the water. All the time the preacher and her father had prayed and begged God to purge her of the demons.

Her screams had bounced off the mountain, yet no one had come to rescue her.

That night she’d lain shaking and frostbitten beneath Gran’s blankets, alone and terrified. She had nightmares of hell for weeks afterward, certain she was going to burn like the Salem witches.

Shuddering at the fear that quaked through her once more, she almost turned and ran back to the safety of her car.

But a thunderous roar sounded, and she looked up to see a tree branch snap off and fly down toward her.

Amelia jumped to the side to dodge it, her body shaking. A nervous laugh bubbled in her throat.

“Is that you, God, telling me I don’t belong here?”

“You don’t,” another voice whispered. Her alter Rachel, the religious zealot who’d tormented her when she’d dated Six.

Rachel had disappeared when Amelia turned Six in to the police. But she must have just lain dormant, waiting on another chance to surface.

Amelia straightened her shoulders and reached for the door. “I’m not here for redemption. But my baby didn’t deserve to be hurt by Blackwood.”

Determined, she entered the small church her papaw had loved, feeling like a foreigner. The door banged shut. An omen maybe?

No, she refused to let it deter her.

Although she expected lightning to strike any minute.

Crystals of light shimmered through the stained-glass windows, slanting a rainbow of colors across the whitewashed floors. Organ music chimed from speakers, dramatic and reminding her the church was a hellfire-and-damnation church with primitive Southern roots.

She ran her fingers along the smooth wood of the pews as she walked down the center aisle, her gaze focused on the cross at the top of the altar and the carving of Jesus below it, his hands folded in prayer, his eyes cast upward to heaven as if calling on his father to offer strength.

“Sadie?”

She spun around, bracing herself as she faced the reverend. “No, it’s Amelia.”

Understanding dawned, and he walked toward her, his robe with the gold sash draped around his neck billowing around him. “It’s nice to see you here. How are you doing?” His once dark hair had grayed, wrinkles creating grooves beside his eyes. “Amelia?”

She was suddenly overcome by the idea the reverend might think she was still possessed by the devil. Panicked, she headed toward the side door. “I shouldn’t have come.” She didn’t deserve to be there.

No one could love her. Not even God.

“No, wait.” He crossed the room to her before she could flee.

Amelia trembled, willing herself to be strong.

He gently touched her arm and beckoned her to look at him. “I owe you an apology for not believing you when you were younger. For not realizing what had happened to you. I’m so sorry, Amelia.”

Emotions welled in her throat, making it difficult to speak. “It wasn’t your fault.”

“Maybe not, but someone should have seen what was happening in Slaughter Creek and stopped it.”

“Papaw finally figured it out, and died because of it.”

The reverend nodded, a pained expression pulling at his mouth. “Just as your mother and father did.”

He coaxed her to a pew, and she sank onto it, her knees weak.

“Now, talk to me,” the reverend murmured. “You obviously came here for a reason.”

She lifted her chin. “I need answers.”

He squeezed her hand, his age-spotted skin a sharp contrast to her smooth, pale complexion. “About what?”

“I’m having memories of the past,” she began. “Father, I gave birth to a baby when I was locked in the sanitarium.”

Surprise, then resignation, stretched across his face. “Come with me to my office. I have something for you.”

“What?” Amelia asked.

“Something your grandfather left for you.”

Amelia frowned, but followed him through the back to his office. He crossed the room, and lifted a painting of the Last Supper from the wall to reveal a hidden safe.

“Why do you have a safe?” Amelia asked, curious.

“I call it my safe of secrets,” the reverend said with a smile. “My parishioners often tell me things in private, and they give me things to pass on to loved ones. Sometimes it’s a confession of sorts.”

He removed an envelope, closed the safe, then held it out toward her. “Your grandfather entrusted this to me before he died. He thought that one day you might come seeking answers, and he wanted me to pass this to you.”

Amelia took the envelope, then walked back to the sanctuary to read it in private.

What was so important that her grandfather would have the reverend lock it away in his safe of secrets?

John met with Coulter and his chief to discuss the latest kidnapping. He gestured toward the whiteboard, where he had posted pictures and notes of the cases.

“It looks like a pattern began about six years ago. An eight-year-old boy was kidnapped from a home for children outside Slaughter Creek called The Gateway House. It’s a home where children are temporarily placed when removed from troubled homes or bad situations.

“The house parents work with social workers to give the kids temporary care, but also to find them permanent homes.”

“So others have gone missing from that place?”

“Some, yes, although there are other cases from different places. The kidnappings also spanned Georgia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. The one common factor—the kids all came from broken homes, foster homes, single-parent homes where there had been problems reported.”

He pointed to the board and read off the information he’d collected.

“Case number one—Leonard Watts, an orphan, disappeared from The Gateway House six years ago, age eight at the time.

“Case number two—Bailey Samuels, disappeared from a foster home. Mother a drug addict. She ODed in prison.

“Case number three—Jim Bluster, seven when he went missing from a trailer park. Father deceased. Mother left him home alone while she went to a bar. He ended up in social services.”

Then the more recent cases of older kids: Devon Ruggins, Regan Ludson, Corey Simms.

Darby Wesley was the only child recovered.

“And now Ronnie Tillman is missing,” John added.

Coulter rubbed a hand down his chin. “Damn. You’re right. It looks like we’ve got a serial kidnapper on our hands.”

“One who hasn’t been caught because he jumped states for a while. But think about it. He chose these kids because they might not be noticed right away.”

His chief cursed. “And because there are no parents to push the police not to give up.”

John snapped his fingers. “Exactly.”

But Amelia’s child had been taken as a baby.

Her case couldn’t be related to the others.

“What’s his motive?” Coulter asked.

“You think he’s a pedophile?” the chief asked.

John exhaled. “Maybe. Although he could be taking them and setting up private adoptions to make money. The adoptive parents might or might not be aware the adoptions are illegal and that they’re paying for kidnapped children. Either way, when or if they discover the truth, they’re not likely to come forward for fear of losing the child or facing charges.”

“That makes sense. And the man could be making big money,” Coulter said. “But most families adopting want babies.”

“True. Maybe he’s working with a child-trafficking ring.”

“I’ll call my contact in Atlanta,” Coulter said. “He’s working undercover on a case now to break up one of the bigger rings.”

Coulter and the chief left, and John plowed through the notes on the more recent kidnappings, searching for another connection.

His pulse spiked when he noted that neighbors of at least two of the missing boys had noticed a white van in their neighborhoods.

A white van that played the same music as an ice-cream truck.

Amelia’s hand trembled as she tore open the sealed envelope from her grandfather.

A rosary fell out, surprising her. Her family wasn’t Catholic, so why would Papaw have put a rosary inside?

Curious, she unfolded the letter and began to read.

Dear Amelia,

If you’re reading this, it means I’m gone and I never got a chance to talk to you about what I learned.

I am so sorry, my darling little granddaughter, that I failed you. Even Sadie doesn’t know what happened that night with Arthur Blackwood, and I prayed for years she’d never remember.

I tried so hard to get you help, not realizing I’d trusted the wrong people, the doctors at the sanitarium, even Ms. Lettie. I take that blame and guilt with me to my grave and have prayed for redemption, and that one day you’ll forgive me.

Amelia wiped at the tears trickling down her cheek. “I never blamed you, Papaw.”

Because none of them had understood what was happening.

She rolled the rosary beads between her fingers and continued to read.

I know now that Commander Blackwood survived the night he attacked you at the guesthouse years ago, then hid out and worked behind the scenes to keep his project a secret. A few months ago when I discovered he was still alive, I confronted him and told him I was going to expose him for the monster he was.

But he played a wild card, one I had no idea he had.

He told me you’d had a child. A baby boy born on July 4th.

He threatened to kill the child if I came forward.

Please know that I struggled with telling you, but I feared for your life and your son’s.

I don’t know where he is, but one of the nurses at the sanitarium, a fellow church member, came to me one day and gave me this rosary. She was dying of cancer and wanted to lift the burden from her soul—that burden being she was at the sanitarium when you gave birth.

She claimed a woman left your son at a church.

These beads came from that church and should help you find him. I had planned to track him down myself, but Blackwood is onto me.