First Night of Summer (9 page)

Their home, once a joyous sanctuary and now a beehive of police activity, was silent. All the yellow tape strung across the yard was gone, and thanks to a new unlisted telephone number, days would go by without reporters calling to request a statement. Even the FBI and state police had stopped calling. That particular detail was bittersweet. The case was cold, and the killer was loose. Justice hung in limbo. However, peace at the absence of a chaotic, exhaustive investigation was undeniable.

Aside from his personal desires to get away for a while, Sarah concerned him most. She was strong. She’d always had to be. But the brave face she wore in the days up to the funeral was gone. Now time seemed to get the better of her. Random mood swings occurred, along with obsessive-compulsive tendencies. It was a whirlwind of behaviors, one vanishing as suddenly as the next materialized, like a magnet whose polarity unexpectedly changed.

His heart hurt for her. He was the man, the rock, the foundation. In hard times, he was supposed to be immovable, the constant for his family to cling to. He tried. He tried every second of every day, but it was hard to feel successful when there was no positive response in return. Even the simple things escaped his efforts. They had not made love since it happened, not even close. Sarah couldn’t compartmentalize her emotions. To let down the bridge for passion was to also let it down for sorrow. That was fine, expected even. But stacked on top of the distancing, her mood swings, and personal struggles of his own, he wondered when his breaking point would come.
Maybe I don’t have one. Maybe I’ll go numb before I break
.

He sat on the bench at the end of their bed and tied his shoes. His mind felt full, utterly crowded. Somehow though, there was room for wishful thoughts. He slipped into a world of days gone by and youthful intentions, days when he and Sarah were joyful, not wrecked by life’s unfairness.

* * *

Isaac graduated college from the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs, Colorado. From there, he began his career as a United States aviator. He was sharp, instinctive, and solid under pressure, everything the military required of pilots. He craved the physical challenges and the mental demands and lived for speed. Flying a jet was indescribable. The skies belonged to the few. His tour of duty took him many places around the world, but the majority of his active duty was in the Middle East.

He still had a year of commitment left to the air force when he met Sarah. He and a few buddies were on leave and stopped off at a local pub one evening in Washington DC. She was their waitress. Unlike the other servers who worked the crowd of thirsty customers, those with their boobs pushed out the tops of their skimpy shirts and jeans so low their ass cracks or thongs peeked out anytime they bent over a table, she didn’t have to flaunt the goods for tips.

Sarah’s father left when she was little without a note, phone call, or gesture of explanation. From that point on, money had to be earned the old-fashioned way, hard work. Her mother held two jobs and loved her daughter dearly, but that relationship was also cut short. Breast cancer took her before Sarah’s high school graduation, and all the money they had went toward insurance deductibles and treatment.

In her early twenties and no stranger to financial tight spots, she pushed through community college and toward a teaching degree. Shifts at the pub were a way to cushion the debt of student loans. She could have earned a fortune stripping at any of the high-end nightclubs, but a sense of self-worth and uncompromised morals kept her straight. It was easier to stretch a dollar thinner than be ashamed of how she earned it.

The pub closed at two o’clock in the morning, and Isaac chose not to go back to the hotel with his flyboy buddies. Instead, he waited outside until after three thirty. He didn’t approach the knockout cocktail waitress earlier because he would have appeared just like all the other guys who swallowed too much liquid courage, and that was creepy. All he wanted was a shot. At what, he couldn’t say. His lifestyle was not, at that date and time, conducive to a relationship. But there he was. A giddiness inside held him fast. If he didn’t stay and talk to her, he knew it could be one of those pivotal moments in time, passed up and forever regretted.

He was leaned against a parallel-parked car when she stepped out the front door. She wore a formfitting black T-shirt, slim, black pants, and Rockport shoes. She had pulled her blonde hair high into a twisted ponytail. An untied apron was draped over her shoulder. Sarah recognized him immediately and unintentionally gave a coy smile, having no idea he was there to see her.

He blushed, suddenly embarrassed about his conspicuous service dress uniform. He had been at the Pentagon earlier and arrived at the bar without changing.

“Hello, I’m Isaac.” He offered his right hand.

She held her polite smile but did not offer her hand in return.

“I was at one of your tables tonight,” he explained.

Again, she didn’t answer but cocked her head playfully to one side. It was an offering to go on.

“I didn’t want to bother you at work, so I thought I should wait out here.”

“We’ve been closed for an hour and a half.” She raised her eyebrows and looked around the street. No one else had ever waited outside. If they didn’t approach her while working, they usually wrote their number on a napkin with some corny line.
Call me, Candy Pants. Holler, Sweet Thang
. They were always so ridiculous.

“Yeah, I guess it has. Well, I waited because I was at one of your tables.”

She let out a short giggle. “You said that already.”

He joined her in laughter, feeling foolish as a schoolboy. “I did, didn’t I? I’ve been thinking so much about what to say, and now I can’t remember any of it.”

She didn’t know what she liked about him, but something was different. Perhaps it was because he came across genuine and confident, not calculated and cocky. Finally, she reached out with her hand. “I’m Sarah.”

He didn’t realize it, but a grin stretched across his face from ear to ear. “Nice to meet you, Sarah. I’m Isaac.”

Again, she laughed. “Yeah, you said that, too.”

His heart pounded.
This is going well, but why do I keep repeating myself? What is it about her that makes me babble like a buffoon?
He decided to keep it moving. “You probably already know, but there’s a diner around the corner. I thought, since you get off work late, you might like a coffee or something to eat.”

“We just met, and you’re asking me on a date?”

He shrugged. It was sudden, but his window of opportunity was short.

“Don’t you have to be at work or …” She studied his uniform. “Report for duty in a few hours?”

“Actually, I do have a plane to catch in a couple hours, so I only have about …” He looked at his watch. “Thirty minutes.”

Sarah let her guard down another notch.
If he really has to leave in thirty minutes, he’s not looking for a quick piece of ass. He must really be interested in me
. Indeed, she was tired, a little hungry, and wanted to get off her feet.

“Okay. We walking?”

“Considering I have no car, yes, we’re walking.”

They strolled down the sidewalk, side by side, close but not uncomfortably so. They sat across from each other in a red booth with a stainless steel table and ordered coffee. She was hungry but considered his time frame and declined anything to eat. If she filled her mouth with food, it would limit the conversation.

Time passed quickly, and Isaac had to say good-bye. He didn’t leave without her phone number and email address. A year later, he finished his commitment to the air force, came back to the coast, and asked for Sarah’s hand in marriage. They rented a little place in DC and began their life together.

When she gave birth to the twins, they decided it was time for a change. The city was fun but felt more and more claustrophobic with the new additions, and there was no family close by. They both loved Ruidoso, and Isaac began applying for jobs. With a little digging, the forest fire patrol position came available. Everything fell into place, almost like it was predestined. For years, life marched on as perfectly as could be. Then Caroline.

* * *

Still seated on the bench in the bedroom, lost in thought and hands on his knees, Isaac snapped back into the present. Someone was screaming.

He jumped to his feet and ran down the hallway toward the noise. It came from Josie’s room. He entered and found her seated at the little table. Sarah was on her feet, stricken. A Polaroid picture, which Isaac could not make out from the doorway, lay on the floor beside a white piece of paper. Sarah’s hands were pulled back to her shoulders. It looked as though someone had given her a present, and instead of a gift, she’d found a snake inside.

Chapter Eighteen

J
udging by Sarah’s posture, Isaac knew her scream was no joke. She wasn’t the type of person to flip out. Whatever she had seen, it was bad.

He picked up the picture first and instantly knew why she reacted. A little girl was bound to a bed, stretched tightly. Her hands and feet were grossly swollen from a lack of circulation. Her face was lacerated in several places, disfigured, and bloody. It was not difficult to decipher the events that transpired. She had been brutally raped. On the bottom of the Polaroid was a name, Bailey Davis.

Tom and Helen had joined the commotion by this time. Isaac was not prepared to show anyone else the picture. He wanted to defuse the situation and protect Josie from any shock.

“Mom, will you stay in here with Josie?”

Helen had fear in her eyes. “What’s wrong?”

He was not reluctant to withhold the perverse image from his mother. He was
dead set
on it. “Just stay in here, will you?” he snapped. The tone was not mean but serious.

She got the drift. “Sure, we’ll stay in here and play,” she said with enthusiasm.

“Honey,” Isaac said toward Sarah, “Dad, come with me.”

They followed him into the kitchen where he picked up the phone and called Charlie.

“Hello,” Charlie’s jolly voice sounded on the other end.

“Charlie,” he hesitated, unsure of how to proceed, “I think you should come over. We’ve … gotten something … in the mail. It’s pretty bad.”

He never called Charlie “Charlie.” He always referred to him as “Buddy,” and it didn’t go unnoticed. “Is it anything I should be worried about?”

“No, no need to bring backup or anything. Just drop what you’re doing and get over here.”

“Well, what is it?” he pried. He at least wanted to know the nature of his visit. One doesn’t become the chief of police without asking questions along the way. “What do you have?”

He didn’t want to describe it. “It’s a picture and a letter that came in the mail.”

“I’m on my way, but can you tell me what the picture is of?”

“I’d rather you just see it. I can’t explain.”

“Fine. What about the letter? What does it say?”

“Haven’t read it yet. Don’t really want to.”

“Okay, okay, Buddy. I’ll be right over.”

He hung up the phone and turned to see Sarah with her face buried in Tom’s chest. She was shaken badly.

“What is it, son?” Tom’s look was anxious.

Reluctantly, he handed it over.

In all his life, Isaac had never before seen the expression on his father’s face. Tom’s gentle gray eyes turned to stone, and his naturally peaceful appearance hardened. Isaac wished he could have kept it from him, but there was no way around it.

Tom placed the picture facedown on the kitchen table. He used both arms to wrap around Sarah, like she was his own daughter.

Isaac chose not to read the letter until Charlie arrived. He wished he could burn it, eliminate all traces of its existence, and thereby erase the person who sent it from their lives. If the words on the page were even close to the vileness of the picture, there would be no way to forget it after reading it. But out of concern for evidence and the chance it might have pertinent information to the killer, he kept it folded and placed it beside the Polaroid.

His imagination spiraled out of control. He didn’t have to read the letter to know that the sender was probably the same man who had escaped and killed Caroline. As he had, day in and day out, he saw the man in black standing in the bedroom. He could see his menacing stance, the shock in his eyes, and the fluid motion with which he jumped out the window. Although time had gone into slow motion, the prowess the man had to size up the situation, react as swiftly as a shadow, and fly the coop was commendable. Obviously, it was not his first rodeo. Now he was back, taunting them from beyond.

Worse than Caroline’s death, Isaac had a visual image of what could have happened to his little princesses. All at once, he felt disgusted and, for the first time since she passed, grateful. If it truly were her time to go, at least it was not in the same fashion as Bailey Davis. He mourned for Caroline, and now he mourned for Bailey.

Audible only to himself, he prayed, “Wherever Bailey is, if she’s alive, let her be found quickly. Please, God, don’t let her suffer anymore.”

The knowledge of what she must have endured made his stomach turn. The horrible things done to her by a grown man, an adult, whom children should be able to trust, was too much for him to bear.

“Okay, what’s going on?” Charlie stood in the kitchen, hands on his hips, looking from one to the other. He had entered without notice and startled them from their thoughts.

Isaac wondered,
How long have we been standing here?
But he dismissed the lapse in time as unimportant and gestured toward the two items on the table.

Charlie chose the picture first and flipped it over. “Oh! Son of a bitch!” He was disgusted, then mad. He quickly set the picture down, face-up. “Why didn’t you tell me? That’s evidence, and now my prints are on it.” He gave Isaac a hard look. “Who else has touched this?”

“We didn’t know what it was,” he explained with an apologetic expression. “It came in the mail.”

“When did you get it?” He took a moment to gain a professional perspective and studied the picture.