Twenty-Five Detective Olivia Newhouse
Twenty-Five
Detective Olivia Newhouse
A nightmare wakes me.
I sit straight up in the bed, struggle to gain my bearings.
The darkness crushes me. I take a deep breath.
Remind myself to breathe slow and deep. Thunder booms and a streak of lightning flashes, brightening the darkness for an instant.
Rain beats against the roof. What the hell was I dreaming?
Something about that child I read about in my father’s file. I shudder.
David sleeps soundly next to me. The soft rumble of his snoring should be comforting, but it makes me shiver again, reminds me of the nightmare.
What the hell was the dream about, anyway? Beyond the girl in the file, I mean.
I can’t remember the details, only snippets. Fear . . . running. She was lost, and then the dream was suddenly about me and I was in my father’s arms. My father morphed into Walt.
Walt.
Jesus Christ. Walt has heart issues, too. He could die suddenly just like Dad.
Tears flood my eyes and rush down my cheeks. How can I lose him, too?
I push back the covers and climb out of the bed, careful not to wake David.
Dinner was less awkward than I feared it would be.
I rattled on about all the packing I had done at the farm.
I promised to unpack the boxes I’d already brought to his house within the next few days.
I assured him the news reports about my father were twisted and blown out of proportion.
Mostly I lied with every breath, saying the things I knew he wanted to hear.
He smiled at all the right times. Said “great” and other reassuring comments as I spoke.
What I didn’t do was tell him about the pregnancy . . . the baby.
I slip from the room and move more quickly along the hall, down the stairs, and into the kitchen.
I need something to help me sleep. What I would give for a couple of beers.
Can’t go there. Can’t have a sleeping pill.
I have a few of those left over from when my father died.
I think I even have a couple of Valium. Can’t go there, either.
My heart still thuds in my chest. The snippets of images and sounds from the nightmare keep haunting me.
I need to do something to work off all the adrenaline.
Wear myself out so I can go back to sleep.
Walt needs me to be strong, to take the lead if necessary.
He may need some sort of surgery or rehab.
I’m his partner. He’s counting on me. I need to be at my best in the morning.
I pad into the entry hall and stare at the boxes.
I guess unpacking a few things is as good a way as any to burn off stress.
Or I could just go out and take a nice long run in the rain—except it’s not just raining, it’s storming.
A boom crashes outside as if to confirm my assessment.
I like storms but not running in them. I have no desire to test Mother Nature.
Unpacking it is.
I pick up the knife I left here the other night.
A memory flashes—something sharp jabbing into my upper arm.
Pain spears me. I frown and pull up the shirtsleeve on my left arm to have a look.
Nothing. But then my skin on the underside seems to burn.
I toss the knife aside, walk to the mirror above the hall table near the front door, and raise my arm so that I can see the back side of my upper arm—the part I can’t see no matter how I twist my head around unless I have a mirror.
I stare at the small gash. It’s healing.
Looks days old. How the hell could I have done that and not remember?
I should have felt it every time I took a shower.
It’s a miracle it didn’t get infected. Damn.
Memories of a cardboard flap slicing my arm, me rushing for something to staunch the flow, pour into my mind.
I walk back to the stack of boxes and lift the flaps of the one I have opened.
Sure enough, blood stains one of the corners.
How in the world could I have done that and not remember?
I don’t even remember opening this damned box.
I shake off the suddenly very real idea that I’m losing my mind and force my attention to the task at hand. I pick up the knife and cut the tape over the flaps on another box. As I draw the flaps open, I think of the one file I didn’t tell Walt about. I really should have told him.
But something about it scared the hell out of me. I can’t quite label the feelings. Between that damned file and Walt’s news, I came home a mess. Holding it together through dinner must have prompted the nightmare.
Last night, after I’d sifted through the files on Fanning’s victims, I moved back to the one labeled “The Child.” The patient was obviously female, and she was my father’s patient.
But the notes weren’t like the usual office visit notes.
These were more like notes made on visits to the patient in some sort of facility.
Observations. Hypnosis therapy. Maybe the patient was in the hospital or a mental health facility.
I just need to know what my father was doing and why the files were separate from the rest of his patient files.
Unable to think about all the questions anymore, I pull a framed photograph from the box I’ve opened.
My graduation from the police academy. I smile at the photo of my parents and me.
It was the last time we were all together before my mother died.
I slide my finger across the glass as if I can touch their smiling faces. It was a really happy day.
I think of my childhood growing up on the farm. I was so protected. Even as a teenager. My parents took such good care of me. Then I think of the child in that file and how horrible her childhood was.
My father’s notes detailed the neglect she suffered at the hands of her biological parents.
The mother overdosed when the girl was only seven.
Things grew worse from there. The father was an addict and completely inept.
When it became obvious he couldn’t take care of himself, much less the child, he sold her to a man for money to buy drugs.
How could any father do such a thing?
But it happens, and as a cop, I know this better than most.
The truly bizarre part of the child’s story was the shocking detail about to whom the father sold her: Carl Fanning.
There is nothing in the case files about Fanning having a young girl with him at any time beyond his catch-and-release victims. I replay the interview with Andrea Donnelly in my head.
She remembered thinking she saw Fanning drop off a girl at the theater.
At the time, she had thought the girl was his daughter, which made her less afraid of him.
The idea was dismissed since no other victim mentioned having seen anyone with Fanning.
Then again, he moved around the tri-county area like a gypsy, never straying too far from Nashville and never staying in one place too long.
When questioning neighbors in the few places the original detectives investigating the case knew to look, they discovered very little cooperation.
No one wanted to get involved. If they dared to talk about what a neighbor had been doing, perhaps his or her own secrets would be revealed.
See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil.
People who live that kind of life have their own rules, and those rules rarely line up with the law. Fear is a powerful motivator.
Nothing in any case files related to Fanning suggest he kept a victim. My gut clenches at the memory of reading the depraved things he did to that poor girl.
There is no description of the child, only references to “she” and “her.” At the time of my father’s interviews, she appeared to be about fifteen. She wasn’t sure of her actual birth date. She couldn’t remember the names of her bio parents.
The final entry in the file states the child died.
It doesn’t say when or where she died. I have no idea how my father even knew her or came to have her as a patient.
Logic suggests that she was a patient at one of the mental health facilities around Nashville.
But her file, as well as the others who were victims of Fanning, being among my father’s personal files makes no sense.
How are those victims connected to my father? I’m certain it must be in relation to his work. But in what capacity?
A jab of pain spears so sharply and deeply into my brain that I grab the box to keep myself steady. The framed photograph from my graduation slips between my body and the boxes and bumps to the floor. Thankfully, no shattering of glass.
I take a breath, squeeze my eyes shut to ride out the wave of pain. What the hell is happening to me? How many headaches does this make in the past week? Half a dozen? Somehow I manage to pick up the photograph and place it back into the box.
The faces in the photo blur, and other images tumble one over the other through my mind. Me stumbling near the edge of the woods. The smell of freshly turned earth fills my nostrils, expands in my lungs. A mound near a copse of trees. A grave. Someone buried in the woods.
She is gone forever now, Liv. At peace. My father’s voice whispers those words to me.
I think of my mother. But wait, we didn’t bury my mother at the farm. I think of the prison guard and how he said that Fanning kept muttering the same thing over and over after the angry scene at the prison with my father.
. . . we all got bones buried somewhere.
The sound of a shovel sliding into soil cracks through my brain. The pain that follows brings me to my knees.
She’s never coming back, Liv.