A Woman With A Mystery

Halloween

The pain. It dragged her up from the feverish blackness, doubling her over in a scream of anguish. Her eyelids fluttered, a flickering screen of light and dark. Three shadows moved at the end of the bed, silhouetted against a shaft of blinding light. They wavered in a whisper of dark clothing and low voices, hovering at her feet, waiting.

“Help me,” she tried to say, but her mouth was cotton, her words lost in their whispers.

The shadows moved, blocking the blinding light. She blinked, focused. A scream tore from her throat as she saw them, really saw them. Her eyes locked open, her heart clamoring in her chest at the sight of their grotesque faces as they huddled around her. The three made no move to stop her from screaming and she knew from some place deep inside her that she couldn’t be heard outside this room or they would have.

She tried to get up. Another pain shot through her. She pushed herself up on her elbows, suddenly light-headed and sick to her stomach. She could feel the agony again, coming like a speeding train toward her. She had to get away before it was too late.

One of them stepped from the bright light, face hidden behind a hideous mask, voice muffled. “It will be over soon.”

Her eyes widened, blood thundered in her ears. She knew that voice! Oh, my God!

Hands held her down as the pain accelerated, the macabre shadows a frenzied flicker of movement and whispers, the horrible whispers, suddenly rising in alarm.

She tried to see what was wrong, but her view was blocked, the hands strong holding her down. She squeezed her eyes shut against the horrifying images, against the paralyzing fear and the unimaginable pain. Gasping for each breath, she fought not to scream, fought not to lose her mind. But she knew it was already too late. The moment she’d seen their masked faces, she’d known. The moment she’d heard the familiar voice. The monsters had come to take her baby.

Chapter One

Christmas Eve

Aware only of the letter in his pocket, Slade Rawlins didn’t feel the thick wet snowflakes spiraling down from the growing darkness or take notice of the straggling shoppers scurrying to their cars.

He strode down the street toward his office, oblivious to everything but the weight of the letter pressed against his heart, heavy as a stone.

“Ho! Ho! Ho!” A department-store Santa suddenly stepped from a doorway onto the sidewalk in front of him, a blur of red in the densely falling snow. “Merry Christmas!”

Startled, Slade jerked back in alarm as the Santa, his suit flocked with snow, thrust a collection pot at him with one hand and clanged his bell with the other.

Hurriedly digging in his pants pocket, Slade withdrew a handful of coins and dropped them into the pot, then sidestepped the man to get to his office door.

The stairs to the second floor were dimly lit, one of the bulbs out. But that was the least of his troubles. He took the steps two at a time, the sound of Christmas music, traffic and the incessant jangle of the Santa bell-ringer following him like one of Ebenezer Scrooge’s ghosts.

“Bah humbug!” he muttered under his breath as he opened the door to Rawlins Investigations and, without turning on the light, went straight to the small fridge by the window. He pulled out a long-neck bottle of beer, unscrewed the cap and took a drink as he looked down on the small town from his little hole of darkness.

Outside, snowflakes floated down from a pewter sky, the cold frosting the edges of his window. Inside, the office was hotter than usual, the ancient radiator churning out musty-scented heat.

He could afford an office in the new complex at the edge of town. But he couldn’t imagine himself there any more than he could imagine leaving this town. He felt rooted here, as if some powerful force held him.

And he knew exactly what that force was.

He shook off a chill in the hot room as the phone rang. He’d been expecting the call. “Rawlins.”

“I heard you were down here a few minutes ago giving my people a hard time,” snapped Police Chief L. T. Curtis.

Slade relaxed at the familiar rumble of the cop’s voice. He’d heard it all his life. It had been as much a part of his childhood as the smell of his mother’s bread baking. The thought gave him a twinge. Had nothing really been as it seemed?

“Did anyone tell you it’s Christmas Eve?” Curtis asked sarcastically. “Why aren’t you home decorating a damn tree or something?” Slade’s father and Curtis had both been cops and best friends.

“I found new evidence in mom’s case,” Slade said, cutting to the chase. It was all he’d been able to think about since he’d discovered the letter. “I think I know who really killed her.”

Curtis groaned. “Slade, how many times have we been down this road? I don’t for the life of me understand why you keep pursuing this. The case is closed. It has been for twenty damned years. Her killer confessed.”

“Roy Vogel didn’t kill her,” Slade said, rushing on before the chief could interrupt him. “I found a letter my mother wrote my aunt Ethel before she died.”

“Aunt Ethel? The one who passed away in Townsend a couple weeks ago?” Curtis said. “I was sorry to hear about it.”

Aunt Ethel had been a cantankerous spinster a good ten years older than Slade’s mother. Because of some family disagreement years before the marriage, Ethel had never liked Slade’s father, so had hardly ever come around.

“Yeah, well, she left everything to me, which amounted to several boxes of old letters,” Slade said as he leaned against the radiator, needing the warmth right now. “Did you know my mother was seeing another man?” Even as he said the words, he had trouble believing them.

“Where the hell did you get an idea like that?”

“She as much as admits it in the letter.”

“Bull,” Curtis said. “Not your mother. She worshiped the ground your father walked on and you know it.”

“I thought I did. But it seems my mother had a secret life none of us knew about.”

“In a town like Dry Creek, Montana? Not a chance.”

While relieved that Curtis was having trouble believing it too, Slade couldn’t disregard what he’d found.

His mother’s murder was one of the reasons he’d become a private investigator. He’d been the one who’d found her. Twelve years old, Slade had come home early from school and had to call his father at the police station to tell him. That day, he’d promised himself—and her—that he’d find her killer—no matter what his father said. Joe Rawlins had been afraid that Marcella’s killer might come after his kids next and had told Slade to let him handle it.

Later that evening, the troubled young man who lived down the street was found hung in his garage. Roy Vogel had left a suicide note confessing to Marcella Rawlins’s murder. All these years, Slade had never believed it. He’d always been suspicious of anything that wrapped up that neatly. But there had been no other leads. Until now.

“I just have a feeling about this,” Slade said.

“Well, I’m telling you, you’re all wrong, feeling or no feeling,” Curtis said. “I wish to hell you’d just get on with your life and let your mother rest in peace.”

“That’s not going to happen until her murderer is brought to justice.”

Curtis swore. “Damn, but you’re a pain in the—”

“But you’ll take a look at the letter tonight at Shelley’s?” They’d all spent every Christmas Eve together as far back as Slade could remember. L. T. and Norma Curtis had been his parents’ best friends and had finished raising Slade and his sister Shelley. But they’d been like family long before that.

“You haven’t told Shelley?” Curtis asked.

“Nor do I intend to unless I have to.”

“It will never come to that,” the chief said. “Because you’re dead wrong.”

Slade hoped Curtis was right about that. But then there was the letter. The chief would know who had been friends with Marcella Rawlins twenty years ago. And if he didn’t, his wife Norma would.

“Go Christmas shopping. Buy some eggnog. Give this a rest until after the holidays,” Curtis advised, surely knowing his words were falling on deaf ears.

Once Slade got something in his head, nothing could stop him. “I’ll see you tonight at Shelley’s. I want you to see the letter. This can’t wait until after the holidays.”