Jackal, page 13
Just as Kylie reached the door, he pulled Kayla out of the yard and across the tree line. Kayla made noise. She fought. She screamed. She was made braver because she was fighting for her sister. If she was too much trouble, he wouldn’t go after little Kylie.
After I was satiated by her heart, and he by his violence, the Fellow asked me, “What happened that night, Jack?”
He didn’t need to say when. We both knew who he was talking about. Liz.
I didn’t respond.
“She in your head?”
“No,” I lied.
“You can have your pets. But if she starts talking, I’ll kill her. Strangle her. No heart for you.” He was serious. “If it’s not me, I’ll get my boy to do it. Make sure he gets close to her first.”
Kayla’s heart taught me I needed a partner worth being brave for. I held on to that hope as I waited for Liz to return to the woods.
New Evidence in Montrose Murder
September 1, 2003
JOHNSTOWN, PA—Evidence supporting child abuse has surfaced in the vicious murder of Kayla Montrose. The teen went missing from her backyard this summer. She was later found with fatal injuries in the woods outside her home. Her younger sister has been re-homed with family at this time while her mother, Pamela Montrose, is investigated.
SEVEN
A familiar dream comes my next night home:
I’m outside.
It’s sunny.
I’m running.
I’m always running.
Summer. Hot, not warm. The sun is setting. I’m in my mother’s neighborhood. It’s also my neighborhood, but I haven’t lived here in over a decade.
Jogging past the houses, I clock the ones I know as I go, noting how far I am from my home.
I reach the outlet at the end of the cul-de-sac. No more houses, just woods. It feels like I might continue running right into the trees. A part of me acknowledges I’m not in control. My legs aren’t pushing me, I’m being propelled like on a treadmill. The ground and the space in front of me aren’t responding to each other like they should. At least, not in a way that makes sense. The faster I run, the slower the houses pass.
My legs stop.
I take my chance to breathe. My chest expands and I greedily take in air.
I look. I look.
I see it.
Right there. Just past the trees, there’s a dog.
No. It’s huge.
A wolf?
No, not this far south.
A hound?
Maybe, but the fur is too short. And the ears stick straight up.
A warm-weather creature.
It doesn’t move like a dog because it doesn’t have a master. It weaves between the trees, navigating them in a practiced pattern. The size of the thing is enough to keep me still. Everything in me wants to run again. I want to run home, but I don’t want to take that thing with me. So, I stay still as it moves and sniffs and digs.
The sun sets at hyperspeed. A symphony of ambers, reds, and oranges washes over me as a sweet summer chill fills the air. I want to be thankful for the cool night, but the dark is coming and I don’t want to be out here with that thing. I take a deep breath. I turn.
I run.
I gain ground and glance back over my shoulder just in time to see the hound emerge from the trees. It’s large. Black. Hulking. I will my legs faster. My muscles burn from the effort, but my pace won’t obey. No matter how hard I run, the world inches by me.
I don’t need to look back again because I can hear the telltale gallop that follows me. Houses crawl past me. The dark spaces between them stretch on forever. By my burning, stubborn effort, I see my house as I round the top of the hill.
I run.
My knees pop in protest. I keep going. Adrenaline wills me forward. The claws of the thing click on the pavement behind me. Each gallop pulses louder than the last. A few more strained steps get me in front of my house. The hound is so close to me that I smell the wild nature matted in its fur.
I scramble across my yard. When I transition from pavement to grass, I slip on the dew. Before I know it, my feet are out from under me.
In my next breath, the hound is on me.
Heat from its body presses me into the grass. I attack it with a tangle of elbows and knees, but I’m flesh and it’s fur and bone. I feel myself clench my shoulders to my ears in a primal need to protect my neck. The hound seems to know what I’m doing. It shoves its snout into my collarbone. Its claws and feet force my neck into view.
Teeth emerge from the maw of the thing.
I scream.
EIGHT
Caroline’s Third Day Missing
I’m awake when Doug texts me back at four o’clock in the morning.
Meet me at the station.
What happened? I reply.
Urgent is all he follows up with.
Now it’s my time to trust him. I try to call him but he declines me. I look back at the text. This early I’ll be at the station before most people. Whatever he’s found, he doesn’t want to text me or say over the phone. My morning is already packed with meeting the mothers and getting to the site as soon as I can. I examine what little I know about Doug. He doesn’t like his boss hovering over him. This case upsets him. But no matter how reluctant, he helped me.
I get to the station before sunrise. Doug is outside waiting for me. Quickly he ushers me back. People barely notice me, still arriving and on their first coffees of the day.
“Where are we?” I ask.
“Medical examiner’s office. It’s in the back of the station. Most places have moved the ME to the hospital. Not here. This place hasn’t changed since the seventies.” A bitter, burning sanitary smell pervades everything. I stick by Doug’s side as he moves through a second set of doors. The whole place feels like a strange hospital. It’s clean and well lit, but there is no urgency. No one needs to run because everyone’s already dead.
I see a receptionist sitting behind a more welcoming desk than at the police station. Still, there is something off about the whole place that keeps me on edge. We make our way farther back.
After walking through a third set of doors, I figure out what’s making me uneasy. It’s the smell, or the lack of one. The bitter antiseptic washes everything away. Losing my sense disorients me. I feel like I can’t even see the ground in front of me. Even though I know it’s there, still, I don’t trust it. I nearly stumble keeping up with Doug.
“You okay?” he asks.
“That smell is…” I start, but I can’t finish my thought.
“You get used to it.” He’s already at the end of the hall, holding a door open for me. Grateful to leave the strange hallway, I scurry through it.
That was a mistake. The room Doug opened is the home of the smell. I feel like I’ve been struck in the face. I clamp my hand over my nose and mouth and inhale the scent of my palm. Everything balances out.
“You okay?” Doug asks again. How can he stand to be in here?
“I will be,” I say behind my hand. I take in a few more deep breaths of my skin. I’ve never been this sensitive before. It could be stress. Or dehydration. I know I don’t drink enough water. I run through the usual medical suspects in my head, but before I can land on a diagnosis, I notice Doug. He moves forward with a quickness, already in work mode. I see him move to what must be his desk and go through some files. I remove my hand. The smell is still there, but it’s become manageable. After a few shallow breaths, I’m okay.
Where Doug’s desk sits feels like a regular rectangular office space, but past it the room opens up into a full morgue. Metal tables. Instruments. Backlit charts. Cabinets. Storage. My eyes lock on to a black bag on a metal slab. I freeze. Doug notices.
“Is that a…” I can’t finish this thought, either.
“Doing a blood draw.” He points to a slowly filling bag next to the body. “No heart to pump. It will take a minute.”
“You’re gonna—” I start.
“Open him up? No, no.” He uses a gloved hand to offer the chair at his desk. I sit, but I can’t take my eyes off the black bag. Morbid curiosity makes me take a large inhale, looking for the smell of death. I get nothing.
“Keisha Woodson?” he says.
“You found something?”
“I pulled her records.” Doug places a piece of paper in front of me. Her autopsy report. “There’s where her chest was…” He notes a single line in the center of the paper. “Cracked wide open. Which wouldn’t be surprising for a fall or impact. But this was a perfectly straight cut through the sternum.” He points to more markings on her thighs. “She had bruising. Enough for further investigation—this is bullshit. Terrible.”
“Who did this report?”
“Oswald.”
I add his name to my list of suspects.
“When I started, I noticed he missed things. Often. But this is criminally negligent.” Doug is upset. Really upset. “Her family doesn’t have answers. They never will.” He pulls away from me and the chart.
I don’t know how to comfort him.
“I…I…lost my son. Ewan,” he says softly. “SIDS. Here one day and gone the next. My wife and I never got any answers.”
That’s why he doesn’t like cases with kids. “We’ll figure it out. Get the answers,” I say. He won’t leave Caroline out there alone. He can’t leave her family without answers, just like I can’t.
Doug shakes away his emotions. “More than that,” he continues. He unrolls a large map of the woods. The forest wraps around town, stretching up into the mountains. Past the city proper, the woods get thick fast. I trace a route I know. Town center to my mother’s house. We’re at the edge of the suburbs. The forest is basically our backyard. From there, I see that Nick’s land doesn’t look too far away. The shelves of elevation correct my assumption. Doug rolls the town away, focusing the map on the remote section of the woods the police are searching. Thick with mountains. In a far corner, I notice a small level clearing. Near the clearing is a red X. There are two orange ones on the other side of the map. “Orange is last known location. Red is the drop.” He points to the next orange X. “This is Caroline. This is Keisha.” Her X is far from Keisha’s.
“That’s good. Right?”
“If this is a coincidence, but if it’s not…” He points to the red X. “Is the search going out that far?”
“I don’t know.” I check the time. “Can I take a picture of this?”
“Go ahead.”
I line up my phone and snap a few pictures, getting the whole map. I see the river near the bonfire field. I follow it to Keisha’s red X. There I see tons of intricate little lines. They don’t look like indicators of elevation.
“What’s that?”
“The Rounds,” Doug says. “Best map I could find of them. A maze if you don’t know your way.” I double-check that I have a clear image of the intersecting pathways on my phone.
I glance back at the filling blood bag a few times. Doug’s right: It’s going slow. Still, seeing the blood move makes me queasy.
He glances up at me. “You gonna faint?”
“No,” I say, unsure myself. “What makes you say that?”
“You look pale and your eyes are…” He trails off. He stares at my eyes, like, into the workings of them, and gets lost. Not in any kind of lovey-dovey way. He’s looking at me with a terrible fascination.
“What?” I try to blink away whatever he’s looking at. “What is it?”
“Your pupils look…” He trails off again, looking for the words. He blinks a few times himself. “Nothing. Your eyes are dark. That’s all.”
I know that’s not all it is. I’ve had dark eyes all my life. No one looks at dark eyes the way he just looked at mine. I move away from the blood and Doug and the body and rush toward the sink. Over the sink is a mirror. I really look, stretching my lids apart. As I focus, I see my pupils shrink sharply, making me wonder if they were expanded before. I’ve always had a hard time differentiating them from the darkness of my iris. I look again. Nothing. Just the brown eyes I’ve had all my life. I notice my hair. It looks like it’s already grown out of its cut, but that’s impossible. It must be the product I’m using.
I start to head out and stop. “I might get more names for that map. I’ll text you.” I have no idea what’s waiting for me at the church, but I’m grateful to leave the sterile-scented department. I make my way out of the morgue and back to fresh air.
NINE
What can I say about the Black community in Johnstown? It’s as much of a mystery to me as I am to it. My parents divorced before we could make roots here, and my mother always identified with her class before her race. I do know it exists in “the bad part of town.” It’s not “bad” because of anything inherent. The only crime anyone is guilty of is being poor. Not that there aren’t affluent Black people, they just (like myself) keep their distance.
Abandoned houses are a common sight. Streets start and stop, the road is cracked, and potholes gape until they are forced to be repaired. It has been a long time since this part of town has seen any care. The people who live here tend to stay. Generations can trace themselves between the same two or three houses, spanning just a few blocks.
Traveling downtown to meet a group of Black women, I can’t help but think of my mother. I always took her isolation as a preference. She isn’t always alone, she’ll come visit me and her friends in the city. We go to family reunions. She’s always calling or chatting with someone somewhere. Never here.
I arrive at the church at the crack of dawn. It’s not what I expect. The building barely registers as a place of worship to me. It’s too boxy and modern. Looking around, everything in this part of town is relatively new. No stone. Only wood and plastic. This entire neighborhood must have been swept away in the flood. After moving through the parking lot, I press against the crisp metal door of the sanctuary.
Inside, the church is even less churchlike. Its modernity feels out of time. In a few years, this place will disintegrate. Shiny things don’t last in this town. There aren’t sections to the sanctuary. It’s one large multipurpose room. All the chairs are assembled around tables. No cross. The gray low-pile carpet has already turned black in some areas. The long windows have heavy curtains. Most are open, letting in the morning light. I glance up. Popcorn ceiling in a grid. It’s missing in some places. Before I can note any more, I hear a voice.
“Morning?” I turn and see an older Black woman in her Sunday best, even though it isn’t the holy day. Her wig is plastered to her head with a mixture of summer sweat and gel. Her lavender dress has miraculously escaped the same fate. She fans herself with a matching woven hat.
“Hi.” I smile too big, using all my teeth. “I’m here to meet Denise.”
The woman eyes me suspiciously. “You the one who wants to listen?” She must be one of the mothers.
“Yes.”
She yells over her shoulder. “Toya! Come on out, she’s here.” She looks at me again. Examining me. “Your eyes are bright.”
There it is again. Something strange about my eyes. I rub them with the back of my hand.
“Um. Where’s Denise?” I ask.
The woman in purple answers. “Toya would know.” She calls again. “Toya, hurry up!”
“I’m comin’, Bev,” Toya says as she enters from the back. She’s in slacks and a loose blouse. Unlike Bev, the heat doesn’t seem to slow her down. She fusses with her dense curls in the humidity. I know the feeling, my hair also insists on shrinking up. “Dee-Dee the one who called the meeting. Of course she’s late.”
“If she shows up here out of sorts—” Bev mumbles to the room.
“She know better,” Latoya responds.
“What does that mean?” I ask.
Bev starts to move a table. I jump in to help before anyone can unpack that.
“Thank you.” She grabs a seat. “What’s your name?”
“I’m Liz.”
“I’m Beverly, that’s Latoya.” Latoya gives me a wave as she deftly constructs a table that should be a two-man job.
“Liz what?” Beverly continues. “What’s your family name, sweetie?” She gives me a warm smile. Even with the warmth, her smile makes me nervous. It’s false, but the believability of her fake is disarming.
“Rocher.”
“Excuse me,” she scoffs.
“Rocher. R-o-c-h-e—”
“It’s French, Beverly.” Latoya sets out more chairs.
Beverly frowns for a moment, then re-ups her smile. “I heard her. I just can’t remember the last time I met a French Black.” I guess I’m a miracle today. Good thing I’m in a church.
“My mom is Haitian.”
Despite her work, Latoya stops. “The doctor?”
“Yeah, that’s her.”
“Oh, I’ve heard of her!” Beverly cuts in. “Heard she was nice. I never went to her myself, but I have friends…”
“Hell-ooo!” It’s Denise. She’s in jeans and a T-shirt. She’s brushed her hair and washed her face. She put on the airs she needs to be here. No signs of a hangover from yesterday. Of all things, she looks more rested.
“There you are, Dee-Dee.” Latoya sets the last chair, making a circle. “You always get here right when all the work is done.”
Denise sits. So I do. Latoya stands next to an empty chair. All of us wait. Beverly crosses her ankles, clearly uncomfortable. Latoya folds her arms and checks the time.
Denise speaks up. “The others will be here soon.” She looks like a new woman. The hope that was just in her eyes before has extended to her body.
“If they show.” Latoya tries to keep the thought to herself, but her voice carries in the wide space.
