In The Bleak Midwinter: A Special Agent Constance Mandalay Novel Read online

  “Yes?”

  “Does God really hate you if you have bad thoughts about someone?”

  Elizabeth glanced at her daughter thoughtfully and then centered her eyes back on the road. “Is that what the nuns at school tell you?”

  “They say you’ll go to hell.”

  Her mother sighed. “Are you having bad thoughts about someone?”

  Merrie mumbled, “Yes.”

  “Who?”

  “Just…someone.”

  “You don’t want to tell me?”

  Inside her head, the bad words bullied Merrie once again.

  “Remember. This is a secret… If you tell anyone, I’ll have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill them. It would be your fault that I would have to kill them. You don’t want that to happen, do you? You don’t want to make me kill your parents, right? Promise you won’t tell…”

  “I can’t…” she replied.

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t… I… I sort of made a promise.”

  Elizabeth glanced at her daughter again. “So is that what’s really bothering you, honey? These bad thoughts… Is that maybe why you’re feeling sick?”

  Merrie gave her a shallow nod. “Sort of… I guess.”

  Her mother sighed. “You’re only ten-years-old, sweetheart. I’m sure God will forgive you.”

  “Are you really sure?”

  “Yes, honey. I’m really sure.” Elizabeth waited for a moment before adding, “If you don’t feel like you can tell me about it right now, and it’s still bothering you later, maybe your father and I can talk with you this evening. But only if you want.”

  “But… Wouldn’t God hate me if I broke a promise?”

  “I don’t believe God hates anyone, sweetheart, and you shouldn’t either.”

  Elizabeth made a mental note to discuss this with her husband and schedule a conference with Sister Conran. Soon. This wasn’t the first time Merrie had expressed a fear of Hell, but it was definitely the first time it seemed to affect her so adversely. They were paying the tuition and making these twice-daily road trips so that they could send their daughter to Immaculate Conception for a good education, not so she could be brainwashed and intimidated. They’d known the staff at IC wasn’t as progressive regarding religion as they would have liked, but it was the only Catholic school within a reasonable distance, and moving simply wasn’t an option. However, if this was the sort of thing Merrie had to endure, she would probably be better off going to the public school in Hulis; not to mention it would save both money and time.

  After a pause, Elizabeth said, “You know, Merrie, sometimes it helps me feel better if I talk about what’s bothering me.”

  “Even if you made a promise not to?” Merrie asked.

  “Sometimes,” she replied with a nod. “It sort of depends on the promise…” Elizabeth paused for a long moment then clucked her tongue and said, “I’ll tell you what. I’ll stop pestering you about it. You just give it some thought, and if you feel like talking later we can. I’d just hate it if you were feeling bad over the holidays. So would your father. Especially if it’s something we can help you sort through.”

  “Okay,” Merrie replied. “I’ll think about it.”

  The truth is, she didn’t want to think about it at all. She wanted nothing more than to make it go away. She wanted to just pretend it never happened. But she had a terrible kind of weird feeling inside. It was a kind of feeling that told her she couldn’t ever make this go away.

  Ever.

  Still, her mother’s words gave her some small bit of comfort. In a way, they had switched on a dim light in the terrible darkness that had been wrapped around her all afternoon. Once they were at home, maybe they really would be safe. And, if she could tell Daddy what had happened, he could protect Mom and Becca from the man in the red suit. Daddy would know just what to do and then everything would be okay. He would make it all right.

  They continued along the highway in silence, but Merrie’s mood wasn’t quite as dark as before. The inner glow was becoming brighter as they closed the distance between themselves and home. For the first time since late this morning, she was feeling that it was possible everything could be okay. They just had to get home before that could happen.

  However, a few short minutes later, as they entered the limits of the township of Hulis, her mother slowed the vehicle and then turned it to the right instead of the normal left. In that moment, everything changed. They were headed toward Main Street and away from the safety of home.

  Alarmed, Merrie asked, “Where are we going?”

  “Oh, I must have forgotten to tell you. I have to stop at Norris’s to pick up a few things for Christmas dinner,” Elizabeth replied. “The weatherman is predicting a lot of snow tonight and tomorrow, so I want to get it done now so we don’t have to go out. Besides, that way we can just stay in and bake cookies all day.”

  “Oh.”

  “What? Baking cookies doesn’t sound like fun?”

  “Yes…it does. I like baking cookies,” Merrie said, trying to use the thread of conversation to hide her sudden panic. “Can we make chocolate chip?”

  “Absolutely!” Elizabeth glanced over at her daughter and saw that her expression, just like her tone, didn’t truly match her words. She smiled and reassured her, “Don’t worry. It shouldn’t take very long. We just need a few things.”

  “Okay… Umm… How long do you think?”

  “I suppose that depends on how busy they are, honey,” her mother told her. “Why?”

  “I dunno…” she mumbled. “I guess I just want to be home.”

  “I know… We will be soon enough.”

  Merrie considered her options for a second. Her father worked an early shift and was almost always home not long after she got in from school. She offered that fact as an appeal. “Won’t Daddy be wondering where we are when he gets home and we’re not there?”

  “He’s working late tonight, sweetheart,” he mother explained. “We’ll still be home long before him.”

  Working late? Merrie swallowed hard as her stomach flipped over, and then flipped over again. If she had felt panic just a minute ago, this was twice as bad. Her head pounded some more, not that it had ever really stopped, and she could feel the tightness returning to her chest once again as it became hard to breathe. The previously growing light at the end of her darkened tunnel had already dimmed when they made the right hand turn. Now it had gone completely out. The blackness was moving in on her again, and it was terribly bad.

  This was worse than waiting for her birthday, or Thanksgiving, or anything… The promise of everything being okay was gone, just like that.

  “How late?” she forced herself to ask.

  “He probably won’t be home until after dinner, honey,” her mother said.

  After dinner! That was even worse. She wasn’t sure she could wait another minute, much less until after dinner. She was all kinds of sick inside, and the longer she kept this secret, the more it hurt. The more it felt like it was eating her up. Suddenly, she felt as if she had to tell someone what had happened before she just exploded. She couldn’t take it anymore.

  As Elizabeth pulled the car into a diagonal space in front of the store, Merrie looked over at her and said, “Mom?”

  “Yes, Merrie. What is it?”

  Merrie opened her mouth, preparing to spill everything, but before she could make a sound those painful words hammered against the inside of her head.

  “…If you tell anyone, I’ll have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill them…”

  “Maybe even kill them…”

  “Maybe even kill them…”

  She stared back at her mother, but was unable to make herself let go of the pain she was feeling. She was sure Daddy could protect them, but she didn’t have that same belief about her mother. Not right now, anyway. It hadn’t been all that long ago that Mom had been in the hospital for what she had called
“woman problems,” whatever those were. Merrie just knew that she had been really sick for a long time, and finally the doctors had to operate on her. And now, just a few weeks later she still heard Mom complain about being sore and tired all the time. And most especially, how she always said that she felt weak.

  Merrie kept imagining the man in the red suit doing the same things to her mother that he had done to her, and Mom not being able to stop him. Even worse, she saw flashes of him doing the terrible things to Becca as well because her mother was too weak to save her. Then, she would see them dead. As the horror of it played out inside her head, each image made her feel even sicker than the one before.

  No. She couldn’t possibly tell her mother what had happened. Not just her alone. She had to wait for Daddy. Only he could protect Becca and Mom.

  “…If you tell anyone, I’ll have to come to your house and hurt your parents. Maybe even kill them.”

  Merrie balled her fists inside the arms of her coat once again and squeezed as tightly as she could. She felt her fingernails biting sharply into the palms of her hands. It hurt, but in a way it didn’t. Not like it hurt when he had done the bad things to her, anyway. It didn’t make any sense that something hurting could feel good. But, it did. It made her feel like she was here, and not there.

  It made the other hurt go away, if only for a moment.

  “Merrie?” Elizabeth asked, a mix of confusion and concern rimming her voice. “What is it?”

  “Nothing…” Merrie finally said. “Just… I love you, Mom.”

  Elizabeth smiled; she could tell her daughter had been on the brink of confessing the issue that appeared to be bothering her so much. What held her back she didn’t know, but she wrote off the sudden backpedaling to the earlier conversation about keeping promises. With a quick nod she said, “I love you too, sweetheart. Don’t worry. If you want to talk later we’ll sort everything out when your father gets home, okay?”

  Merrie nodded.

  “Everything will be fine, honey. Whatever it is that’s bothering you, I’m sure it can’t be that bad. Now… What say we get this shopping done so we can get home, okay?”

  Can’t be that bad? Merrie thought to herself. If only she could tell because she just knew this was bad. And she knew that when her parents heard it they would think it was bad too. Instead, all she could do right now was force a thin smile and say, “Okay.”

  “Can you do me a favor and help your sister with her seatbelt?”

  From the back seat, Becca started to gleefully chant once again, “He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus is coming… He knows you’re naughty… Santa Claus is coming…”

  CHAPTER 2

  4:01 P.M. – December 22, 1975

  Sheriff’s Department

  Hulis Township – Northern Missouri

  “…JUST a little past four in the afternoon and this is Rockin’ Ronnie comin’ at you from the middle of Cornelius Bremerton’s cornfield, here on K-I-M-O FM. Reach on over to the dash, pull out that tuner button, and punch it right back in for a lock on great music every day…”

  The final rolling beats of a song’s orchestral drums were still reverberating in the background as the radio announcer voiced over with the station ID. He wasn’t joking about the cornfield; that’s exactly where the transmitter and cramped broadcast studio were located. Cornelius Bremerton came from the proverbial “old money” in Hulis, and he owned the small, local station as well as the land on which it was parked. If you wanted to get right down to it, the truth was that the Bremerton family owned more than half the town, and when Cornelius and his wife finally went on to their final rewards, their three kids would bicker over the spoils that were left behind. Unfortunately, their offspring hadn’t inherited their values or sense of community.

  Once the tune finally faded out, the disk jockey continued, “That was a new solo release from Greg Lake called I Believe In Father Christmas… Wheww! I’m not sure what he found in his stocking that made him write that one but sounds to me like it was probably a lump of…”

  Rockin’ Ronnie’s voice came to an abrupt halt before the sentence was finished. Somewhere out there he was still filling the airwaves, but not here. Deputy Addison “Skip” Carmichael had killed the engine of his patrol car, cutting off power to the radio.

  Letting out a quiet snort, he mumbled to himself, “Yeah… I’d say that one was just a little to the depressing side.”

  Shaking his head, he unbuckled his seatbelt and then popped the door and climbed out of the vehicle. Out of habit, Carmichael gave a quick glance upward. The sky was a gray drop ceiling that had been hung just a little too low, and it seemed to be darkening even as he watched, almost like a lamp attached to a dimmer switch. He allowed his skyward gaze to linger for a good minute, maybe even two. He knew that what appeared to be a flat expanse of cloud cover was really a pregnant winter storm, and it looked like it was ready to deliver at any moment.

  Deputy Carmichael grunted, then started to swing the door of the police cruiser shut, but stopped mid-push. He thoughtfully checked the timepiece on his wrist and let out a soft harrumph. He’d been busy running errands and fulfilling some personal obligations for a good part of the day, so he hadn’t yet heard the latest weather report for the evening. What he saw above seemed pretty obvious, and while the fact that it was going to snow was a given, the accumulation totals were a different story. The way things changed here in the Midwest you just never knew, and judging by what was hanging over his head, he was betting they were in for something bigger than the three to six inches they’d been predicting this morning.

  He decided it probably wouldn’t hurt for him to be up to date before going on duty. According to his watch—which he kept set to the clock in the office—he was almost an hour early anyway. His shift didn’t actually start until five. Since he had some time to waste, he opened the door wider, climbed back into the seat, and then pulled it shut. After shoving the key back into the ignition he gave a half twist to click it over to the ACC position.

  The gauges on the dash came to life and the various engine status lights flickered for a moment as the seatbelt warning chimed for attention. With a staticky pop, the radio blipped back on and the announcer was rambling once again, or maybe still. You just never knew with him, but one thing hadn’t changed—as usual he seemed overjoyed by the sound of his own voice. “…ing up in just a couple of minutes. Hey, here’s some news. I don’t know if any of you caught this or not, but it seems Winter Solstice happened at around five forty-five central standard time this morning. That means last night was the longest night of the year. Or is it tonight? Who knows? Probably the NASA guys, right? But it’s good news for you night owls, I guess. And on the up side for you sun worshipers, the daylight hours start getting longer from here on out.

  “Just for fun I dug up some info on this stellar event, so here are some Solstice facts for you stargazers out there. Number one…”

  “C’mon, c’mon. Give me some weather…” Deputy Carmichael muttered.

  “…moment the Earth’s axial tilt is at its farthest point from the sun, whatever all that means.” There was an audible shrug in the disk jockey’s voice that underscored the latter words. “Two. It is the official start of the winter season… Yeah, like the white stuff falling out of the sky starting around Thanksgiving didn’t give us a clue about that already, right?”

  “Sheesh, Ronnie…” Skip grunted. “Quit screwin’ around. Just get to the actual weather forecast, will you…”

  Oblivious to the deputy’s frustration, of course, the announcer was still ticking off his list of factoids. “…also called midwinter. Hey, what kind of sense does that make? Is it the start of winter or the middle of winter? Make up your minds, guys. You have to wonder if those astrologers are getting a little tipsy at the office party, huh?”

  Carmichael shook his head as he grumbled. “Astronomers you idiot. Astronomers, not astrologers.”

  “…And four: Did you know that in a
ncient Pagan cultures, the Winter Solstice marks the holiday known as Yule? I guess that means the natives will be restless tonight, huh?” The announcer chuckled at his own joke before continuing. “And here’s something about this particular Solstice: Depending on the year, they can occur either on…”

  “The twenty-first or the twenty-second,” Skip announced a bit louder, and then let out a sigh. His moist breath turned into the barest hint of steam that dissipated as quickly as it formed. With more than noticeable exasperation, were anyone there to see it, he said aloud, “Will you just give the damn weather forecast, you turkey…”

  Even though he was early and had plenty of time on his hands, Carmichael was quickly growing tired of the drone. He had little patience for unnecessary prattling, most especially if it was coming from Ron “Rockin’ Ronnie” Connelly. The only reason he even listened to K-I-M-O was that it was the only station that came in worth a damn, especially if the weather was rough. The other three on-air personalities he could handle, but this guy made him want to punch something.

  Of course, part of his annoyance certainly stemmed from the fact that “Ronnie” and he had gone to high school together and hadn’t exactly been what you would call friends. Actually, that was putting it mildly. They had been more along the lines of archrivals, all for the affections of a particular cheerleader.

  Of course, that was then, and this is now, as they say. High school was almost seven years behind them, and the competition should be a distant memory. However, it had carried on well past graduation, and though it had been moot for a good while now, time had done little to change his adversarial opinion of the man behind the drive time voice of the hometown radio station.

  At the thought, Skip once again stuffed his hand into his jacket pocket and wrapped his fingers around a small box. He’d already checked a dozen times since leaving the store, just to make sure it was still there, but so far it hadn’t escaped. Even so, it made his heart thump a bit faster each time he repeated the motion and felt the container clutched tight in his grasp. He wasn’t exactly sure if that was because he was afraid it might be gone, because of what it meant, or a combination of the two.