Taking her barrettes out of her hair and placing them on the dresser, she mentally went through her nightly checklist.
Homework done.
Clothes
laid
out for tomorrow. Shoes and socks found. Teeth brushed. Face washed. Prayers… Oh, she hadn’t said her prayers yet.
Her room was dark, but the light from the streetlamp outside her window illuminated it enough for her to get around without walking into furniture. Kneeling down next to her bed, she thought about the wonderful things that had happened that day so she could be grateful for them. Then she thought about some of the things she hadn’t done well that day. She bit her lip as she remembered that she hadn’t been especially nice to Andy that day. She’d have to apologize for that.
She started to bow her head and close her eyes, when she caught a movement in the corner of her eye. She stayed very still, pretending to be still absorbed in her prayers, and kept close watch over the area of her room where she saw something.
She saw the glimmer of movement again. It was almost like the air turned to water and shimmered. She slowly got off her knees and climbed onto her bed. Even though she received visits in her room from time to time, she never knew what to expect. Most of them had been friendly, but there were a few times when she was really frightened by the apparition.
Glancing over to the corner of her room, she realized her closet door was open. For some reason, her closet seemed scarier at night. She always felt there was something inside, watching her, waiting for her to stumble inside and be swept away; the door closing firmly behind her. She tried to remember to close her closet door at night, but she was so excited about the order sheet, she must have forgotten.
She saw the shimmer again. Was it coming from the closet?
Her heart began to race.
“Hello?” she stammered quietly.
The shimmer came closer to her bed. She clasped the blankets tightly and waited.
Finally, it began to take shape.
“Timmy,” she breathed with relief. “Why didn’t you just show yourself right away?”
He shook his head and she could see that he’d been crying.
“What’s wrong?” she asked. “Timmy, what happened?”
“I went back to the lake,” he said. “I went there to get my backpack. I left it in the tree, our secret tree. But there was another boy there.”
“Another boy?”
Maggie asked. “Like you?”
Timmy nodded slowly. “He said his name was Ronny, Ronny Goodridge. He was crying, Maggie. He couldn’t find his parents. They were camping and he took a walk, but he couldn’t find them.”
“Did you know him?”
He shook his head. “No. He wasn’t from here. He said he was from Chicago.”
Timmy started to cry again. “I said stuff like Mary said to me, to help him remember. I told him to think back…”
He took a deep shuddering breath.
“The man got him too,” he whispered. “The man hurt him and put him in the lake.”
“The lake?”
Maggie asked.
Timmy nodded and wiped his face with his arm. “He’s still down there, Maggie. He says it’s cold and dark. He’s afraid.”
“
It’s
okay, Timmy,” Maggie said. “Don’t worry. We’ll help him. I promise.”
A glimmer of hope appeared on Timmy’s face. “You can?”
Maggie smiled. “Sure, Ian, Mary, Mike and Bradley can do all kinds of stuff. They’re heroes.”
“Heroes?”
“Yeah.
Just like superheroes, only they don’t dress like that.”
“Thanks, Maggie,” Timmy said, as he started to fade away. “You’re the best.”
Maggie sat in her empty room, looking at the spot Timmy had been only moments before. She knew her parents would not want her to leave her bedroom, much less the house so late in the evening. She slipped off her bed and walked over to the closet. Was her closet like the closets in the cartoon movie where the monsters hid on the other side? Was there a path from her room to places with ghosts? Could ghosts hear her if she called into it?
She stood several feet away from the door, just in case, and leaned forward and called, “Mike. Mike. I need you. This is Maggie and I really need you.”
“
Ain’t
enough beer in the world to make me willing to wash down another bite of that chili,” Stanley grumbled as he washed out his mouth at the sink. “Damn, foreigners, always messing with a recipe from the good old U.S. of A.”
Ian was wiping away tears from laughter. “Stanley, really, I was just kidding,” he choked. “There’s no tripe in the chili.”
“You’d like me to believe that,” he said, taking another mouthful of water and gargling with it. “Just so you could poison me with Scottish intestines.”
“Now, to make things perfectly clear, they aren’t Scottish intestines,” he said, choking on his words. “They’re sheep intestines. Well actually sheep stomach. And I believe they would be American sheep.”
Bradley dropped his spoon into his chili. “What do you mean they would be American sheep?”
“I mean, if I had put tripe in the chili, which I didn’t, the tripe, which isn’t in the chili, would have been American tripe,” Ian tried to explain.
“Damn, makes a fellow glad he’s a ghost,” Mike said, leaning back against the wall.
“You’re just jealous because you can’t have any,” Ian whispered to Mike.
“What’s that you said?” Stanley asked, glaring at Ian.
“Nothing, I was just talking to a ghost,” Ian remarked.
Stanley looked around the room.
“An old ghost or a new one?”
“Old one,” Bradley said. “Mike’s here.”
Stanley came back to the table, shaking his head. “Never thought I’d see the day when I’d share a poker table with a dead guy.”
Mike walked over and moved the chair next to Stanley. From Stanley’s perspective the chair moved by itself. He just turned, looked at it and shrugged. “
Ain’t
tripe nor moving chairs
gonna
shake my game,” he said. “Pull up a chair, Mike,
iffen
you want to lose some money.”
Mike laughed and shook his head. “Deal me in,” he said. “But I’m a little short right now.”
“You’re a little dead,” Bradley said with a grin. “I’ll cover Mike.”
Stanley watched Ian deal another player in and was slightly startled when the cards hovered in midair. “
Ain’t
supposed to look at your cards ‘til it’s your turn to act,” Stanley commented.
Mike laughed. “Tell him I got a poker face,” he said to Ian.
“He says he’s got a poker face,” Ian repeated.
“Don’t matter
iffen
he’s a ghost or wears a bag over his head,” Stanley replied. “I’m still going to take him down.”
“Big talk for a…” Mike paused and put his cards on the table.
“Hey, what’s wrong?” Bradley asked, seeing the concern on Mike’s face.
“It’s Maggie,” he said, moving out of his chair. “She’s calling for me. Sorry,
boys,
gotta
go.”
“If you don’t report back in ten minutes, we’re coming over,” Bradley said.
“Got it, Chief,” Mike called as he disappeared from view.
Mary and Rosie entered the house to find the men seated around the table looking into Ian’s laptop screen. They put their bags on the couch and walked into the kitchen.
“What’s up?” Mary asked.
Bradley stood up and offered Mary his chair. “Take a look,” he said, leaning over the chair once she sat down. “Timmy paid Maggie a visit this evening. He told her there was another boy in the park, a boy who had been camping with his family and disappeared.”
Mary read the article. “So, Ronny Goodridge has been missing since May of 1991?” she asked. “And no one thought to link his disappearance to the other killings?”
“The other bodies were all local and found together on Emil’s property,” Mike said. “They just never put this one together with the others.”
She sat back in her chair and looked up at Bradley. “Well, this certainly adds a new dimension to this case,”
she
said, “and makes it a little more dangerous.”
“Wait…why?” Ian asked.
“Because when I called Dixon today I told them I was researching a similar case,” he said, shaking his head. “Damn, all I was doing was creating a reasonable excuse to speak with Emil.”
“And now if the killer hears about your call, he might get spooked and run,” Mike said.
Mary and Bradley nodded.
“We’ve got to get into Dixon right away,” Bradley said. “I’ll call the warden first thing.
Mary can you take time off tomorrow morning?”
She nodded. “Sure, I can leave by 8:30, does that work for you?”
“What can we do to help?” Rosie asked.
Mary turned to Rosie and smiled. “I think you have enough on your plate,” she said. “Remember you volunteered to put together a wedding in ten days?”
Rosie lifted her hands to her face. “Oh, my goodness, you’re right,” she said, as she reached out for Stanley’s hand. “Come on, Stanley, I need to get home and start making lists.”
“But I was winning,” Stanley complained.
She leaned over, gave Stanley a thorough kiss and stepped back, lifting one eyebrow. “You were saying?” she asked.
He stood immediately, scattering poker chips around the table. “I was saying it was time I got you home, woman,” he sputtered. “Excuse us, we got to get going.”
Rosie winked at Mary and then slipped her arm through Stanley’s. “Thank you, Stanley.”
The rest of the group watched Stanley shuffle her out of the house in record time.
“He’s got it bad,” Mike said.
“Real bad.”
“Once again, I’m in debt to Rosie,” Ian said. “I owed that old coot twenty bucks.”
“He’ll be back to collect,” Mary said. “His memory is amazing.”
“Well, damn,” Ian said.
“So, do any of you think Maggie is in danger?” Mary asked.
Ian shook his head. “No, Maggie knows not to talk to anyone about her ability,” he said, and then he turned to look at Mike. “Besides, it looks like she has a real, live guardian angel now.”
“Hey, she called and I answered, no big deal,” he said.
“It was a big deal,” Bradley said. “She was afraid and you went to her. Thank you.”
Mike shrugged. “Hey, she’s got all of us wrapped around her little finger. But, I get it. You’re welcome.”
Bradley looked back at the computer screen. “We still don’t have any evidence to reopen the investigation.”
“Oh, yes, I think we do,” Mike said. “The reason Timmy went back to the lake today was to find his backpack. He stuffed it into a hollow in an old tree he and I used to use as a hiding place. The murderer evidently didn’t know about it and left it there. That would prove he was at the lake, not at Emil’s.”
“It’s been twenty years,” Mary said. “Do you think it would still be there?”
Mike shrugged. “Well, it was a pretty deep hollow, it might be worse for wear, but there might be enough there to prove what we need.”
“There’s also the body of the wee lad,” Ian said. “If we could find his body…”
Mike shook his head. “Timmy said the boy’s body is in the lake and after twenty years…”
“We could recover skeletal remains,” Bradley said, “but not much else.”
Mary stood up, walked across the room to the window and stared into the darkness of the night for a moment, and then she turned back to the men at the table. “We have to assume this was the first murder,” she said. “This was the turning point. Something set our
perp
off. Something happened, so he went from fantasizing to acting. So, we need to find out everything we can about this murder.”
“Mike and I can go back to the park first thing in the morning,” Ian said. “Mike can lead me to the tree and I’ll take some photos. I’ll let you two law enforcement professionals do any extraction of evidence. And then we’ll see if we can track down the other boy.”