Jackal, page 26
The trees start to get denser as we get closer. Chris turns back to me.
“Hey.” His familiarity feels intimate. “We’re making way too much noise.” He takes the side of my palm and runs his finger across the middle with care. “We’re going to have to kill the lights and split up.”
I look over my shoulder. Mel and Garrett are keeping up. Doug has fallen behind again. I thought bringing him would help with numbers, now I’m stuck taking care of him.
“Stop Nick and stay here with Mel and Garrett,” I say. “I’ll get Doug.”
Chris moves into action. I turn back to Mel and Garrett.
“We’re going to have to go dark and split up.”
Garrett chimes in first, “Hell no.”
“They’re gonna hear us coming,” I add.
Nick shines a light through a few more trees. “Search party will be coming through here any minute. They should already be here.”
I look back and see Doug, a lump of shadow in the darkness. I wave at him to make his way ahead. He does, but it looks like every step pains him. When he finally reaches us, we’ve agreed on a new course of action without him.
“We need to cut the lights, spread out horizontally, and sweep,” I tell him. “Search party will be here soon. We need to stay ahead without tipping them off.”
Doug looks at me like I’m a madwoman. “Splitting up. In the dark?”
“That way, if they catch one of us, they don’t catch all of us. And they won’t see us coming. After a few minutes, we’ll adjust.” I turn ahead and see that Mel and Garrett have paired off. Nick is doing the math in his head. Clearly Chris is going to choose me. He shines his Maglite at Doug.
“Come on, Nowak. You’re with me,” Nick groans.
We spread out and one by one our lights go out. I feel Chris grab my hand. He’s trying to comfort me.
Snap!
The sound is so clear it echoes around us. I push on. Someone, probably Doug, pushed through a branch. It’s fine.
Snap!
There it is again. I do my best to control my breath. I can’t lose it out here. Not now. Not after everything I’ve been through.
Nick motions wildly for us to stop. He crouches. We all do at the same time. Not a moment later, a bar of light sweeps over our heads.
“Caroline!” It’s the search party.
I press myself against the forest floor. Thankfully, it’s not the majority of the party. Or Search and Rescue. I count two officers. They must be the fringes of the fan. They are careful. Thorough. Moving painfully slow. Bits of their conversation reach us.
“West quadrant, clear. Heading back for changeover.” The radio squawks in response. Almost instantly, we all hear an echo. From my position on the ground, I see Nick fumble with something on his belt. The officers signal with the radio again. Nick makes a definitive motion to his side, silencing what I’ve just realized is his radio. The officers freeze.
“You hear that?” one says. They point their lights in our direction.
Why the hell does Nick have a radio? I see Doug and him struggle. I know a silent fight when I see one.
“Anybody out there?” The officers move toward us. I try to press myself farther into the ground. Cold wetness seeps through my clothes. Leaves and rocks press into me. If they find us, this is over. I look for where I can run.
“Hello?”
Snap!
That was decisive. Present. Doug and Nick pause. No one else moves. That wasn’t us. The officers pivot their lights in the sound’s direction and signal on the radio. After another quick bit of chatter, they go after the noise.
Their footfalls diminish quickly in the trees and their lights fade as they move farther off. Once we are sure they are far enough away, all of us rise. In the quiet, Nick and Doug’s fight has grown.
“Give me that!” Doug whispers harshly through his teeth. “He has a radio.”
“To know our position.” Nick tries to wrestle the device from Doug’s hands. Doug holds fast. “How else would we steer clear of the search?”
“Why not tell us!” Doug gets the radio away. “Unless he wants us to get caught and turn us in.” He puts it on the ground and stomps on it. The sound of crunching plastic twinkles through the forest. I look back where the officers left. They had to have heard that. We need to break up the fight.
“Keep it down,” I say.
“What the hell, Nowak!” Nick shoves Doug, but Doug is solid despite his size. Nick swings. Doug easily uses Nick’s force against him. A quick shift in his weight and Doug sends Nick’s fist hurtling past him. Off-balance, Nick clambers to stay up. On the steep incline, his foot lands strangely. Doug shoves him with his full weight.
Pop!
That wasn’t a branch.
Nick bites down his scream. It rattles his whole body. He buries his head in his elbow to muffle his cries.
“Light!” Doug reaches for Mel’s flashlight. She gives it to him. Pointing it down, he shines the light on Nick’s leg. It’s bad. His leg is jammed between two stones, twisted. Enclosed by his pants, his foot points in the wrong direction, and the shin curves at a terrible angle. Blood pools fast.
Doug defends himself. “He was signaling on the radio—”
Unable to speak without screaming, Nick emphatically shakes his head. No!
“I know what I saw,” Doug insists.
Mel reaches for her brother and then looks at me. “What are we gonna do?”
My mind goes blank. Nick is bleeding. A lot.
“Can you help him?” I ask Doug. Doug tries to look at Nick’s leg, but Nick shoves him away. He writhes in pain. He’s going to get loud soon. I turn to Doug. He looks lost. Right. He works in a morgue, not a hospital.
Garrett grabs me by the shoulder and turns me around. “Look,” he whispers. In the distance, the lights are back. Oh God. I was right, they heard us. I turn back to Nick. His breathing echoes in the trees. We need to leave now if we don’t want to get caught.
“Doug, stay with Nick.” I see Nick shake his head again. “And Garrett, stay too. Mel, Chris, and I will go on.” I see Nick figure out my plan with me. I turn back to Doug. “Give us as much time as you can.”
Chris grabs Mel’s hand, pulling her away from her brother. I reach out for her when Garrett yanks me back. He catches me before I fall. He gets right in my ear.
“He— Chris was.” Garrett doesn’t understand why this bit of information is important, but he knows he must tell me. “He was the older guy dating Keisha. I’m sure of it.” Mel grabs my hand and I follow her.
We carefully give the officers a wide berth. Crouching along the forest floor, I balance and follow and think. It shouldn’t matter that Chris was the older guy dating Keisha, but it won’t let me go. That explains why he remembers how she smelled.
The officers’ lights pass by us in the dark. Their radios echoing in the trees. They are close. Too close. Chris, Mel, and I separate and hide out of their line of sight.
“Who’s out there?”
Light washes between the trees in our direction. We didn’t get enough space. I hold my breath and pray. I try to will Nick, Doug, and Garrett to start the distraction even though we don’t have enough distance. I’m pressed behind a wide tree. To my left Mel is crouched behind a shelf of rocks. To my right Chris is in some low brush, seconds away from slipping.
I feel someone tap my arm. It’s Mel. She points ahead of us. The lights shift shadows as the officers move past. In the distance, I see something more substantial than a shadow move. There’s a distinctly human figure ahead of us.
The flashlights catch the shape of a woman.
“Hey!” the officers yell.
We all see a woman a long distance away. I barely have time to discern much about her when she runs.
Nick screams.
His pain courses through the air. The lights shift to the guys. Mel, Chris, and I have seen enough. When the officers run to Nick, we run after Lauren. Mel reaches back for my hand and I take hers. We fall into a pace. I hear heavy footfalls behind me. Trusting Mel to continue to pull me forward, I glance back. It’s Chris. Mel grips my hand so tight she might break it. I keep up with her. I feel like all my dreams of running have prepared me for this. I do my best to control my breath and find that I can. I haven’t run since my breakup. But I’m miraculously in shape now…I’m keeping up with Mel. Even Chris is having trouble with her stride. Mel pulls me through more brush and we hit a path. The three of us look. We don’t see Lauren.
Mel gasps for breath along with Chris. I keep searching. I crouch close to the ground and look for footprints. Disrupted underbrush. Anything to see where she might have gone.
“Which way to the bonfire field?” I ask Chris.
Without skipping a beat, Chris grabs my hand and leads us north, up the path. With every turn, I troubleshoot. My mind won’t let go of what Garrett said to me.
He was the older guy dating Keisha.
Denise mentioned Keisha had a friend, and she thought it was a boy because of her secrecy. Garrett said that was one of the rumors about her disappearance for years. Lauren was too concerned with Chris at the wedding. I thought it was just a misplaced crush, but she followed me at night. I flash back to when I confronted her outside her garden—the same garden she offered my mother cuttings from in exchange for gossip.
Blue rhododendron.
The same rhododendron I saw outside Chris’s trailer. The only bit of landscaping. I look at the path around us and my feet are landing in my teenage steps. He knew the map was wrong. He’s the only one able to unknot the trails back here. As he grips me I feel the cut I noticed the other night seep through its wrapping. It’s deep. My hand is getting slippery with his sweat and blood. He turned his headlights off back then too and navigated in the dark. He’s always been able to move in the night like this. The night Keisha disappeared. The night he left me to get help. When he came over for beer, he went into my house. He could have easily removed the bar without me noticing. He had mud on his shoes when he came to help me with the deer. The same tarp. The crayon crushed in the bed of his truck. The guts and blood throwing off the search. Planting or swapping my DNA? How could he do that? Doug said Oswald’s reports have been off in the past, and who files those reports but a clerk? Like Chris’s father. Oswald could owe him one hell of a favor. Someone has been setting me up and cutting me off from people and driving me toward him from the beginning. Keeping tabs on me. Getting close to me. I thought Lauren was being terrible by saying I wasn’t Chris’s type because of my race. I never considered I could be messing with their plan.
My stomach pushes up bile.
I yank my hand away and put myself between him and Mel. The break in our momentum sends us in opposite directions.
Motive. What’s his motive, Liz? That’s the one thing missing in all of this. Why would he and his father do this to little girls?
“Liz?” He looks back at me, face sweaty. He’s glancing ahead, making sure we keep up. “Come on, we don’t want to lose her—we have to hurry!” He reaches for my hand again. I move away. Everything he’s said to me over the last few days replays in my mind. I finally land on it. The night with the deer.
“The people who are left behind,” I whisper.
He was so awkward when he saw how nice my mother’s house was. It’s all lining up, and it makes my stomach clench. The person doing this targets any Black family who is advancing or moving forward. Anyone who is getting ahead.
“Where is Caroline?” I ask.
“What?” he says. I hate when I’m right. He is a good liar. And I’m a fool. Another man who used the promise of love to blind me to the darkness in him.
I reach for the growl that’s been inhabiting my body, but it doesn’t come. I can’t do it. I am going to throw up. He takes a step toward me and I reach for the knife he gave me to protect myself and Mel. When I flip it open, I’m confronted with the serrated edge and I realize this isn’t a knife, it’s a bone saw. Holding it, I see the black blade and hooked edges. The teeth from my memories. This is what made the cut in my arm. The monster chasing me is this blade. The murder weapon. Holding it, my framing is complete.
Now it makes sense. I’ll look like a crazy, jealous woman who did something unspeakable to her best friend’s child. With someone to blame, anything that comes out is yet another hoop to jump through. With me being framed for Caroline, any hope of justice for the girls who have gone missing is buried.
“Keisha? You were seeing Keisha the night she disappeared?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tell me!” I shove Mel behind me and keep the knife between us. I’m crouched. I’ve never intentionally hurt someone. The thought makes me tremble, but I’ll do it.
“Liz?”
“Tell me!”
“Yes—I was young—yes!” he admits. The stumble in his voice lets me know he’s well aware of how he looks right now.
“She was younger.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
I can’t growl, but I smell something.
Wax. A childhood smell.
Wax and dye.
Crayons.
“Caroline?” I know that’s her. I grab Mel and race in her direction.
“Liz!” Chris follows. I pick up my speed and race toward the smell. I feel Mel struggle to keep up. I see a clearing coming up ahead. If we can get there fast enough, we’ll have ground and will stand a chance if Chris attacks us. He has a rifle. Shit.
I grab Mel at the elbow and throw her forward through the tree line. I burst through after her and turn around immediately. She’s gasping for breath. I’m steady. I crouch and wait, firming up the blade in my hands. It’s not a gun, but it’s all I have.
Between Mel catching her breath and the footfalls chasing us, there’s a second of quiet. This is it. I fell for a monster. I invited him in. Through the waves of sickness, I find resolve. Mel gasps in a coughing breath and the sound returns. Footsteps race toward me, cracking twigs in their wake. I brace myself. I squint— No. I need to look this evil in the face.
SIX
“Auntie Liz!” A dirty, bloody Caroline screams my name as she runs through the trees. Seeing her alive brings me to my knees. I catch her and keep my eye on the branches behind her. Chris was right on our tails, where has he gone?
“Where have you been? Who took you? How did you get away?” I ask her.
“Someplace dark.” Caroline clings to me. “Him and the mean lady. But Jack let me go. He wanted you to find me.”
I scan the trees. “Who?”
“Jack,” she repeats.
I’ve never heard that name in all this. Like I did with Brittany’s, I commit it to memory. Not a flicker of movement comes from the woods in front of us.
“Mommy!” Caroline says. I let her go to Mel. The girl takes a step and stops.
“Hey, Care-bear.” It’s Mel, but her voice sounds all wrong. Mel sounds like she’s hurting. I can’t imagine the shock of this moment. I prod Caroline forward, but she pushes back into my hand.
I turn around.
“Stay there,” Mel says, standing stock-still. She’s reaching out for her daughter, but her eyes are screaming at us to stay away. A hand latches over her shoulder. Strong, thin fingers hold Mel still as her center pulses forward.
Again. Again. Again.
Mel’s face twists in pain. My mind struggles to comprehend what’s happening.
Thunk! The dull sound of a fist on flesh.
Mel’s mouth opens in a silent scream of unimaginable pain. Tears stream down her face. The person behind her grunts with effort. Mel tries to turn away or hit back, but everything is happening too fast. I see a flash of metal covered in red. Someone is stabbing Mel! I run to help. Mel stops fighting her attacker and thrashes her arms at me. I stumble back.
“Caroline!” she cries. Her eyes are wide in pain and fear. She wants me to protect her child. Not her. Her expression shifts to surprise when the knife pierces her abdomen. Blood comes deep red and thick. It pours across her shirt. She doesn’t even grab her torso at first, she just lurches forward as the knife is yanked out of her. Blood pools across her back.
Kirsten stands behind her.
“Mommy!” Caroline screams and tries to go to her. I race back and clutch her to my side. Caroline starts to cry and shakes against me. I want to comfort her, but how can I? My tears are coming just as fast and as hard as hers.
“Oh! Thank God. You found her!” Kirsten’s nice-white-lady voice paired with a bloody knife is a nightmare I didn’t know I had.
Mel tries to get up and Kirsten stomps on her back, sending Mel crashing back down to the ground. Her chest hits. Hard. She starts coughing and wheezing. An exercise in futility, I try to will her breath to match mine.
In and out.
In and out.
She can’t fully take in air. Blood starts to bubble up her throat in a desperate attempt to breathe. Kirsten hit her lungs.
Kirsten speaks to me like she’s hosting me in her kitchen. “Doug told me about your plan to come out here. I knew you’d need help.”
Footfalls come in behind me. I turn around just in time to dodge Doug racing out of the trees. He skids on the ground, trying to grab us. He’s found his footing now.
I back up with Caroline and try to keep everything in my eyesight: Doug, Kirsten, and Mel. Mel’s wheezing fills the air. She cries out under the pressure of Kirsten’s foot. I need to get her and Caroline out of here.
Doug crouches and looks at Mel, then turns to his wife. “You didn’t have to do that to her friend.”
Kirsten is manic. “It was like you said. I wanted to do it and Jack told me ‘yes.’ All I had to do was listen. That’s all it took.”
Doug gives her a suspicious glance and then turns back to us. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been looking for you?” Doug should be saying that to Caroline, but he is looking right at me. His searching expression is gone and his eyes are cold. He’s sure of his stance. He looks more at home out here than he did in his house or in the morgue. His serenity in the woods and night tells me who he is. It wasn’t Chris. It never was. Doug is the man I’ve been looking for.
