Daughter Read online

  “What’s the folder for?” Sylvie asked, clearly desperate for a subject change.

  “Hmmm?”

  Sylvie reached over and with a long, manicured nail tapped the brown folder that Liam clutched between his weathered knuckles.

  “The folder. What is it?”

  “Ah, this? I was just reading it…” Liam suddenly grew serious. “I think there’s been some sort of mistake.”

  Sylvie pointed her chin toward the sky in the form of a question.

  “Missing girls… it says here that four girls have all gone missing from around Elloree this month. But that can’t be right…” Liam lifted an eyebrow and observed both Sylvie and then Stevie, who thankfully had since gotten his laughter under control. “Can it?”

  Chapter 3

  Father Larry Smith ran towards his daughter, all the while shouting over his shoulder to Ginger to call the police, an ambulance, somebody, anybody.

  “Patty!” He shrieked as he sprinted. Sweat dripped into his eyes, blurring his vision. He wiped it away and then immediately wished that he hadn’t.

  Patty was completely nude, and while this in and of itself was shocking—aside from when she was a child, Larry had never seen his daughter naked—this wasn’t what made his heart skip a beat.

  That honor was bestowed on the dozens, if not hundreds, of gashes that marred her perfectly tanned flesh.

  “Patty! Patty!” He screamed.

  Just as Patricia Smith swooned, Larry reached her. She collapsed into him, and he wrapped his arms around her protectively, before lowering her body to the freshly cut grass. Somewhere behind him, Larry heard the sliding door open, and he shouted again over his shoulder for Ginger to call somebody, to get an ambulance here, to get help.

  “For Christ’s sake, get some fucking help!”

  Larry put his hand on his daughter’s forehead, which was unnaturally cool given the hot sun above them.

  “Sweetie, sweetie, are you okay? What happened? What happened to you?” Larry’s words came out in a breathy rush.

  Patty Smith’s eyes rolled back in her head and her eyelids started to flutter.

  “Ginger, help! Help!” He screamed over his shoulder.

  But Ginger didn’t help, nor did she call anyone as he instructed. Instead, she ambled toward them as if in a trance. Then, after taking one look at Patty’s naked body, she screamed as loud and as long as Larry had ever heard before.

  “Ginger, for fuck’s sake, get some help!”

  Maybe the gravity of the situation finally dawned on her, or maybe it was his use of the curse word; either way, Ginger finally turned on her heels, dropped the glass of cool ice tea on the grass, and then hurried back to the house.

  Now that his wife was gone, Larry turned his full attention to his daughter who had started mumbling incoherently. Her lips had turned a shade of purple, which was strange given how damn hot it was. Sweat dripped off Larry’s brow and landed on her face, but Patty didn’t notice.

  Larry was at a loss; he didn’t know what to do. If Patty had been hot, he would have scooped her up and brought her inside where it was cool. But she wasn’t; she was freezing.

  “Patty?” He whispered this time. “Patty, what happened to you?”

  But his daughter didn’t answer.

  Larry pulled back to take a better look at her, fearing the worst.

  Fearing that she had been violated in some way, some way worse than all of the wounds that covered her body.

  The incisions started at her collarbone, thin lines of blood, hashtags on her skin. They continued down to her small breasts, most no more than two or three inches long, like scratches from a feral cat. One particularly deep gash had nearly severed her left nipple, while the markings that covered her lean stomach appeared more superficial. When his eyes moved lower, to between her legs, Larry could handle it no more. Her soft pubic hair, once blond like the hair on her head, was soaked in red.

  “Noooo,” Larry moaned as he reached down and embraced her. “This can’t be happening.”

  This can’t be happening. Not here. Not in Elloree. Not to us.

  Not to a priest’s daughter of all things, not to a pure and pretty and amazing and smart and—

  “Mother,” Patty Smith moaned.

  Larry pulled back from his daughter, trying to determine if she had said the word or if he had just imagined it.

  Patty’s lips were moving, but they didn’t appear to be forming words. The sound of the sliding door flying open again and Ginger rushing toward them shouting something into the telephone, threatened to draw Larry’s attention, but he wouldn’t let it.

  “Mother,” Patty whispered, and this time Larry saw her lips move in sync with the word.

  Larry, confused and perhaps a little dehydrated given the amount of sweat that poured profusely from his brow and coated his daughter’s otherwise cool skin, tried desperately to pay attention to what his daughter was muttering.

  “They’re coming—the ambulance is coming, they should be here in five minutes,” Ginger shouted from somewhere behind them.

  Ignoring his wife, Larry leaned down close to his daughter’s lips and pressed his ears against them.

  “Who did this to you?” He asked. “Patty, who did this to you?”

  And then came that fateful word again, and Larry felt his blood run as cold as Patty’s flesh.

  “Mother.”

  Something hard came down on Larry’s shoulder and he immediately pulled back from his daughters’ face and whipped his head around.

  “Did you hear me, Larry? Did you hear what I said? The ambulance will be here in under ten minutes.”

  Larry squinted at his wife, at the curly hair on her head the color of which matched her name, at her high arching eyebrows.

  Mother? She did this? How can that… how can that be?

  “She said—she said—” Larry stopped blubbering when Patty started to speak again.

  He turned around to look at her, his heart breaking at the sight of her bruised and bleeding body lying on the grass.

  At first, Larry didn’t understand Patty, and began to question if she was using words at all or if the sounds that came out of her mouth were just random syllables produced by a sixteen-year-old who was slipping into shock.

  “Mater est, matrem omnium.”

  “What? What-”

  “What’s she saying?” Ginger demanded. “What’s she saying?”

  “Mater est, matrem omnium?”

  Larry stared at his daughter’s lips, his brow furrowing in confusion. The sounds weren’t random but seemed… Latin of all things.

  “What is that? What’s she saying, Larry, what is she saying? What happened to her, Larry?” Ginger demanded, her voice acquiring a high-pitched tone that Larry Smith was all too familiar with.

  “Mater est, matrem omnium.”

  “Larry, what’s she —”

  Patty’s body suddenly tensed. It was as if every muscle in the girl’s entire body contracted simultaneously, an extreme form of tetanus, a bout so severe that her back started to arch. If it weren’t for the crown of her head and her heels, Larry would have thought that his daughter was levitating.

  “Larry!” Ginger shrieked. “Larry, what is—”

  “I have no fucking idea!” Larry suddenly exploded. “I have no fucking clue what’s happening!”

  A croak exited his daughter’s throat then, a deep resonating sound that was so horrible that it made the fillings in Larry’s teeth start to vibrate and he tasted bile on the back of his tongue.

  Just when Larry thought things couldn’t get any worse, he saw something; he saw something on his daughter’s bare hip. It was as if the slices there weren’t as random as the ones that had nearly removed her left nipple, or that had flayed the soft skin that covered her ribs, but as if they had been put there on purpose.

  The slashes formed two letters.

  Two capital letters, like initials.

  B and H.

  BH.r />
  BH? What the hell is BH?

  The wail of a siren suddenly cut through the hot summer air, and as it did, Patty’s body finally collapsed to the grass.

  Larry didn’t need to check for a pulse to know that she was gone. He crossed himself, wiped the tears from his cheeks, and gave his daughter the last rites.

  Chapter 4

  “What you mean?” Stevie asked.

  Sheriff Liam Lancaster tapped the folder with the eraser end of a pencil.

  “It’s right here… four girls all from the surrounding areas—Santee, Wells, Holly Hill, even as far as Batesburg. All gone missing in the last few months.”

  Stevie just stared at Liam for a moment, while he stared at the photograph of little Stacey Weller, her bright smile, her blond pigtails that were ridiculously short.

  Missing…

  Liam scratched his head with the pointed end of the pencil.

  “Can’t be right, can it? I mean, it must be a mistake, right?”

  It was Sylvie who answered.

  “Well, you’re the Sheriff, aren’t you?”

  Liam gave her a disgusted look.

  Yeah, I’m the Sheriff alright, and you’re the wart on Toto’s ass.

  “She’s right,” Stevie confirmed with a nod.

  Liam’s frown deepened. Of course, he was the Sheriff, this was never in question. What he’d asked is whether it was possible that four girls, all between four and eight years of age, had gone missing from around Elloree.

  “Hey Stevie, did Dwight never show you how to use that newfangled computer program?” Liam asked.

  Stevie shook his head.

  “Nope. He never told me anything about it… I don’t know how to use it, do you?”

  Liam’s frown returned.

  Of course, I don’t know how to use it. If I knew how to use it, then why the hell would I be asking if you knew how to use it, you nitwit, he felt like saying. But, of course…

  Liam looked over at Sylvie, who was still staring at him, her eyebrows seeming to migrate even further up her forehead. He thought she was perilously close to losing them in her hairline.

  “Stevie, get Dwight on the horn—tell him to come in. I want to know if he can use the computer to figure out if these cases are real or not, if maybe the dates got changed somehow.”

  Sylvie made an annoying clucking sound with her tongue, before retreating to her desk without offering any insight whatsoever. Liam shook his head as he watched her go.

  Then he turned to face Stevie again, who was looking back at him with a queer expression on his face.

  “Can I see them?” he asked.

  Liam shrugged and he turned the folder around and set it down on the man’s desk. Stevie quickly pulled out the four photographs and set them up in a square configuration. As he did, Liam realized something: the girls… they all looked rather similar. All with button noses, blue eyes and blond hair.

  It’s like the Aryan race.

  Larry shook his head in an attempt to clear his thoughts.

  It didn’t seem to help any.

  “I need a coffee,” he whispered.

  Stevie looked over the photographs for a few moments while Liam watched on.

  “How’d you come across these, anyways?” Stevie asked, his eyes still locked on the photographs of the girls and the accompanying details.

  “A friend from Batesburg called me up just the other day—Officer Ron Jenkins. He said that they’d been having a problem with people heading out for camping trips up at Stumphole and not coming back. He didn’t know if there was anything insidious going on, but he thought it was worth looking into. He said that the three couples that went missing all had little girls between the ages of five and eight, but the families also had some financial troubles so he wasn’t ruling out the possibility that they had just up and left,” Liam said, recalling the conversation that he had had with his old friend Ron Jenkins the night prior. “I didn’t think much of it, but he sent over a copy of one of the girls, the, uh,” Liam reached over and tapped the photograph of the oldest of the missing children, a one Carla Shari. “This one. I looked on the board…”

  Liam stopped when he saw a blank stare cross over the deputy’s face.

  “The board,” Liam said almost as a question, pointing across the room to the bulletin board near the front of the station. It was covered in so many advertisements—everything from babysitting to taxes to life insurance—that it reminded Liam of Bourbon Street the day after Mardi Gras. “That board.”

  Stevie shook his head.

  “Yeah, I know what the board is, boss. But what is… insidious?”

  Liam frowned again.

  “It just means that something bad is going on, Stevie. Like a crime has been committed. Just get Dwight in here and see if he can look up all those things on the doohickey comp—”

  Liam froze as the door to the police station suddenly flew wide. He spun on his heels, instinctively reaching for the pistol that was strapped to his hip. His hand fell away, however, when he recognized the man who came through the doors.

  “Father Smith?” Liam exclaimed as he rushed toward him. “Father Smith, what’s going on? Are you okay?”

  Chapter 5

  “Jesus, take a seat, Father, please,” Liam said as he wrapped his arms around the man with the red-rimmed eyes.

  Father Smith collapsed into his arms, and it was all Liam could do to hold up the man who had at least twenty pounds on him. Luckily, Stevie rushed over and wrapped his arm around the other side of the man’s waist and together they guided him towards a chair.

  “Father? What’s wrong? What happened? Everything all right?” Liam asked, his heart and his mind racing.

  He had known Father Larry Smith for the better part of a decade, having attended his services every single Sunday for the past ten years. Father Smith was well regarded in the community, and it wasn’t just because the man was a priest.

  The man was a saint; he had to be, to put up with his wife, Ginger. Ginger Smith… the only woman Liam knew with a bigger cock than Sylvie Sinclair.

  Father Smith didn’t reply right away; he just sat slumped in the uncomfortable plastic chair, his eyes downcast. Liam could see the man’s heart pounding through his sweat-soaked shirt.

  The Sheriff looked over at Stevie, his own eyes wide, hoping that the meaning behind his expression would get through to the man.

  What the fuck is going on here?

  “She took my daughter,” Father Smith said at last, slowly raising his eyes. “She took… Patty.”

  Liam recoiled as if he’d been struck. As he did, Father Smith leaned forward and if it weren’t for Stevie sitting beside him, he would’ve surely pitched out of the chair.

  “W-w-what?” Liam stuttered.

  But Father Smith had apparently said all he was capable of in this moment. He lowered his gaze again, and tears started to drop into his lap.

  Liam’s eyes darted to Stevie first, but the man was preoccupied with making sure that Father Smith didn’t fall out of his chair, vomit, or collapse, and the Sheriff was resigned to turning to Sylvie next.

  The woman stood behind her desk, hand on her hips, a stern expression on her ever-cross face.

  She took my daughter? What was Father Smith talking about?

  Liam gestured for her to come over.

  As Sylvie approached, Liam let his eyes drift back to the sobbing priest. And as he did, his gaze passed over the still open folder lying on Stevie’s desk.

  The folder with the images of the missing girls.

  Liam didn’t know Father Smith’s daughter on a professional level—by all accounts, Patty Smith was the prototypical preacher’s daughter—but he knew her to be much older than the girls in the photographs. Yet Liam couldn’t shake the strange feeling in his gut that somehow this was related.

  And then a thought entered his head, one that was wholly inappropriate given the circumstances.

  I need a coffee.

  I ne
ed a coffee with some bourbon, hold the coffee.

  Stevie gently started to rub Father Smith’s back, and Sylvie squatted down in front of them, taking up residence beside Liam.