What follows is part 12 of the re-serialization of Westville Book 1. New parts drop every Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
If you’re new to Westville and want to dive in, you can get the books on Amazon or signed copies direct from my website:
36
Casey’s lungs burned, fresh damp earth and diesel lingering in the frigid air.
His head pounded as shadowy branches of pines against a dark sky came clear out of the blur. Casey rolled over with a groan and stumbled to his feet, remembering where he was.
Elmwood Cemetery.
Crawley’s truck, which had been pulled up along the center path, was gone, and so was he. But who was the second man?
He took a couple steps, then seized in pain. His ribs were bruised. Best case scenario. Casey pressed forward in the dark, looking back toward his cruiser. He had to call it in, get an APB out for Crawley and his accomplice.
He started down the paved pathway and saw his flashlight lying there. He picked it up, and it flickered. It shined where they had been digging, right in front of a plot of dark granite gravestones, uniform in size and shape.
Daniel Thompson. Arthur Thompson. Jack Thompson Sr.
He stepped closer to the holes. They’d made a lot of progress however long he’d been out. Enough to reach the caskets.
All of which were open. And emptied.
A swarm of police and federal vehicles gathered around Erin and Joe Thompson’s place that night, their flashing lights carving through the dark.
The official assumption following the exhumation of the Thompson family graves was that someone was now targeting the entire family, and that the same parties had also taken Millie.
For Casey, it seemed open-and-shut. He’d seen Ethan Crawley. Crawley had knocked him out cold. Crawley had been at the graveyard. It should have been the simplest arrest of his career.
Problem was, Crawley had an alibi. An airtight one. He’d been on the night shift at the mill, and none other than Jack Thompson Sr. was able to corroborate.
“I was working late myself, just trying to keep busy,” Jack said, sitting stiffly in the interview room, his silver hair catching the fluorescent light. He wore a look of grim control, but Casey caught the subtle twitch of his fingers, the smallest sign of strain.
Maybe now at least he was ready to concede that someone had a beef with him and PRINCE personally.
Casey’s mind flashed back to the surreal conversation he’d had with Heiser just before his shift, the doctor and Olivia both spouting off things straight from a bad B-movie. There was a strange comfort in having witnessed what he had in the graveyard. Flesh and blood people, suspects. Not red orbs and voices and some paranormal academic researcher wanting to make his big breakthrough.
But something wasn’t right. Something wasn’t normal. He just wasn’t sure how far outside of normal it was, or how far he was willing to let himself go.
Chief Hart had been collecting a few more paltry details. He leaned back in his chair.
“And you’re sure Ethan was there from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m.?”
“That’s right. My shift manager confirmed it as well.”
“Thank you, Jack. I think that’s all we need from you for now.”
Jack rose with a nod, but as he passed Casey, he stopped.
“You put yourself in harm’s way for us,” he said softly. “For my family. I won’t forget that.”
Casey didn’t respond. He couldn’t. His eyes were glued to the holding room door, where Crawley was being released. Crawley’s pristine boots shuffled as he stepped out, his face unreadable under the harsh lights. He must have changed them. He didn’t look at Casey as he left.
Casey turned to the Chief. “You’re just letting him go?”
Hart sighed, rubbing his temples. “Casey…”
“I know what I saw,” Casey snapped. “Crawley was there. He knocked me out. He was digging up those graves. And he wasn’t alone.”
Hart raised a hand to calm him. “You got clocked in the head pretty hard. And when you woke up, maybe your mind filled in the gaps. You’ve been under a lot of stress, son…”
“That’s not what this is,” Casey said. “I’m not imagining things.”
“Maybe you’re seeing what you need to see,” Hart said evenly. “You’re chasing answers because you can’t stand not having them. I get it. But we have to go where the evidence leads. Right now, and I need you to hear me here, none of it is leading to Crawley.”
Casey opened his mouth to argue but closed it again, his fists clenching at his sides.
He followed the Chief into the lobby, his head spinning. He didn’t notice Lochlear and Reeves until they stepped into his path.
“Benson,” Lochlear said, his expression colder than usual.
“Not now,” Casey muttered, trying to push past.
“Exactly now,” Lochlear said, firm and leaving no room for argument. He held his arm out, gesturing toward the interview room. Casey shook his head, a cold resignation settling over him, mingling with an indignant fire in his belly.
A moment later, he sat at the table, glaring up at Lochlear. Reeves slid in as he closed the door behind them.
“This will only take a moment,” Reeves said, holding up a folder, the twinge of a consolatory look quavering across her lips. She unrolled a set of maps. Ones Casey had pored over the day before.
“We found these in your cruiser,” Lochlear said. “We know where they came from. Stay away from Heiser.”
Casey’s stomach tightened. “Why? Because he’s interfering with your cover-up?”
Reeves’ jaw tightened, and Lochlear stepped closer.
“Because he’s a liability,” Lochlear said. “And you’re shaping up to be one yourself.”
Casey stood, his voice sharp. “You’re not looking for Millie, are you? You’re just here to sweep this under the rug.”
“Watch your tone,” he hissed.
Reeves’ eyes darted to the ground.
Casey let out a bitter laugh. “Dimensional Containment, right? Heiser told me all about it.”
Reeves froze, glancing up, and Lochlear’s face darkened.
“You’re way out of line, Benson,” he growled.
“Am I?” Casey shot back. “Because it seems to me you’re more worried about your secrets than finding that girl.”
“You’ve been dodging our request for an interview, and now I see why. You’re unstable. At this point, I have to question trusting your judgment, and your credibility.”
“Trust. That’s rich!” he yelled. “You want to talk about…”
“Enough,” Reeves spat, her hard hazel eyes piercing. “Quit while you’re ahead.”
The door flung open. Chief Hart stepped inside, glancing at the agents.
“I need a word.”
“We’re not done here,” said Lochlear, storming out into the hall.
Reeves leaned against the wall, but after a moment, she joined her partner. The hushed voices in the hallway betrayed nothing good. Casey shot up from his chair, his ribs aching, and stepped into the doorway.
Gail was sniffing and red-faced as she brushed past, walking back toward reception at a hurried clip. Hart cradled his face in one hand. Lochlear and Reeves were jetting out toward the back entrance to the parking lot.
Casey knew. Somehow, he did.
“Where?”
Hart nodded and turned his head up toward a flickering fluorescent light.
“In the river.”
37
The sky had shifted to bright blue as the morning cleared, but the air snapped with bitterness, as if no matter how bright the sun shone, there would be no warmth to be had here in Westville.
No warmth, no comfort, no hope.
A runner had seen her first. Stopped, stared, and thought maybe it was just a wrong-looking collection of sticks and debris from the windstorm.
She screamed and ran further, toward the police station, when she realized what it was.
A frail, young gray body rolling in the frothing churn of the dam.
Olivia heard the sirens early.
She had been tired. Tired of everything. She wanted to dream of finding Millie in that in-between place. Instead, she slept deep, but not soundly. And when the sirens wailed through her window, the sound of someone else’s soon-to-be-known sorrow, she regretted every wasted second.
She felt it then. The fear of the end.
She swallowed it and marched right downstairs, straight past Kathy and Aly in the kitchen, both glancing out the window toward the sound.
Olivia didn’t pay any mind to her mother’s protests or her sister calling after her. She threw on her shoes and got on her bike, following the sound.
It was coming from the river.
✦ ✦ ✦
By the time she got there, emergency vehicles choked the street and the memorial parking lot by the dam. A firetruck, three police vehicles, an unmarked black car with a blue siren on top.
And an ambulance.
Olivia’s chest clenched, her breath coming in tempered heaves as she thought about what that meant. It meant they had found someone. An ambulance meant they found someone alive and that they needed help.
Millie was okay. She had to be.
Olivia laid down her bike along the sidewalk over the bridge and pushed through the crowd.
Then she heard it. A wail.
Not a siren but the kind that stilled the air and was all pain, shock, and awe.
Olivia felt her limbs grow heavy and numb, and with fearful eyes she scanned the area, looking for the source. Mrs. Thompson was crumpled to her knees on the pavement, near a stretcher, upon which Olivia could make out a flash of gray skin and tattered clothes.
Mrs. Thompson’s face was twisted in a silent scream, body trembling. Mr. Thompson paced in circles, hands above his head, gritting his teeth and averting his eyes from his wife and from…
Whoever that was.
Olivia sprinted forward, breaking through the crowd, but came to a line of yellow tape. A woman in an official-looking jacket with copper hair and intense hazel eyes met her there.
“You need to stay back.”
“Who is it? Who did they find?”
She frowned, then looked over Olivia’s shoulder to someone approaching.
Olivia turned to see Casey.
“I’ve got her,” he said.
Olivia was taken aback at his blackened eye and a bandage around his head. She noted he was walking with a limp.
“What happened to you?”
Casey winced and knelt down. “It’s nothing. Olivia…”
“I know. They found her,” Olivia said, her mind changing course. That was her, she decided. She just needed help. “She’s going to be okay.”
Casey shook his head.
“She’s going to be alright. There’s an ambulance. They’ll take her and…”
“She’s gone,” Casey said.
“No,” Olivia said, throat tight and burning. “She’s right there. She’s…”
She clung to the idea that the ambulance meant hope. That the gray figure on the stretcher wasn’t Millie. She needed to. But then Mrs. Thompson’s cry cut through the roar of the dam, belief shattering like brittle ice.
Olivia knew. Of course she did.
Hot tears welled up in her eyes, making the whole world bleary as the cold sun shimmered.
A pair of hands clasped her shoulders, and Olivia cried and fell into them.
Aly held her for a long time right there by the river’s edge, long enough for the ambulance to drive off and for the police to begin dispersing the crowd.
As Olivia walked to the car with her mom and sister, she saw Kyle and Austin across the road on their bikes. Their eyes met for a moment.
And in that moment she felt the cold crystalline sky shatter, and she wished for a portentous covering of cloud to shelter her from the falling shards. She didn’t want them to slice into her skin. She didn’t want to admit what the look she exchanged with her friends meant.
It was over.
38
She never had a chance.
The thought coursed through Casey’s mind like debris on the river. He stared out at the dark waters of the Slate through the windshield of his idling car parked in the funeral home lot.
Four days ago, they’d found her.
Casey stepped out of the car and joined the queue that snaked along the sidewalk. A cool breeze blew, rattling the early Christmas display on a house across the street. Another house flaunted macabre Halloween leftovers and fake tombstones.
Inside, the dim lighting of the funeral home did nothing to soften the grim mood. Casey’s eyes found Joe and Erin Thompson at the end of the receiving line, standing beside the gleaming cherry wood casket. A photo of Millie rested on a stand: her winning smile, inherited from Joe, and blonde waves, courtesy of Erin. Her blue eyes sparkled in the image, so alive it hurt.
Casey clenched his jaw and remembered the last time they’d talked.
“You keep calling me nutcase, and I just might start to believe it,” Casey had said, sitting down next to her on the deck.
Millie fiddled with her CD player. “I call ’em like I see ’em.”
“Sure you do.” Joe had gone inside to grab burgers for the grill. Casey noticed three empty Corona bottles and glanced at his watch. 4:30 p.m.
“How’s everything been?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. A little better, I guess. Mom’s picking up more shifts at the nursing home, so she’s not around as much. Which means they’re not fighting as much.”
Casey nodded. “Things will work out. Okay?”
Millie took her headphones off her neck. “Here, listen to this.”
Casey hesitated but obliged, slipping them over his ears.
She pressed play. The yodeling grit of Alanis spilled into his ears in front of phased guitars and a muted drum groove.
“Good song,” Casey said. “Sounds like she’s talking about you. Short but healthy.”
Millie laughed. “Why are you yelling?”
Casey pulled off the headphones. “Because I’m a nutcase, I guess.”
“Anyway,” she said, “a friend let me borrow the album. It helps. Everything’s gonna be alright. You know?”
Casey snapped back to the present, his chest tightening with red-hot anger.
Whoever did this to Millie was out there. He hadn’t given up on the idea that Ethan Crawley was their man. But the court of public opinion had already settled on a story, aided by the Feds. Millie’s body had simply been caught downstream and freed during the storm. Either Howard Meyers, some other unknown assailant, or just a freak accident as she walked along the North Country Trail and fell. Just plausible enough. Tragic. The kind of story people would believe.
He moved closer to the end of the receiving line, his eyes scanning the room. The funeral home had a frozen-in-time feel, its creamy white walls accented with ornate crown molding. The mold-yellow carpet and gloomy lighting made the place seem more lifeless than comforting.
“Casey,” Erin said, stepping forward to hug him.
“How are you holding up?”
She nodded vigorously. “I’m still standing.”
Casey glanced around. “Joe?”
“He needed a break.”
Casey gave her a rueful nod, and after a moment, a halfhearted ‘hang in there’ hand on her arm, he drifted toward a table laden with silver carafes and water pitchers. A figure near the green, ornate couches to the right caught his attention.
Heiser.
Casey stalked over to him, the man’s sharp eyes scanning the room.
“What are you doing here?” Casey demanded, his voice low but brimming with anger.
Heiser looked at Casey, unfazed. “Paying my respects.”
“Don’t give me that,” Casey snapped. “You don’t belong here.”
Heiser sighed, glancing toward the closed casket. “Maybe not. But I have an obligation.”
Casey’s eyes narrowed. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means,” Heiser said, his voice calm but deliberate, “if certain people get what they’re after, this town will be mourning more than this.”
Casey’s chest tightened. “You’re talking about Janus.”
Heiser’s lips quirked. “They don’t make moves that come into the public eye unless they’re after something big.”
Casey took a step closer, his fists clenched. “What are they after? What did Millie have to do with it?”
Heiser hesitated, glancing back toward the casket as if weighing his words carefully. “Let’s just say, I believe they needed someone specific and alive to pull this off. That they still do.”
Casey froze, the word alive reverberating in his mind like a struck bell. His pulse quickened.
“You don’t think she’s dead.”
“And you do?”
Casey paused. Of course he hadn’t wanted to believe it. No one did. But she’d been identified. Dental records confirmed it. He’d even seen the body, and though whatever had been done to her combined with time spent in the river made her near unrecognizable, forensics had filled in the gaps.
Heiser’s gaze was steady but distant, as though he were staring through Casey. A cold certainty settled in his gut, mingling now with indignant rage.
“If that girl wasn’t Millie, then who was it?”
Heiser turned and looked him in the eyes this time. “You’re a good cop from what I’ve observed, Casey. I think you already know the answer to that.”
The other missing girls from the greater Iron Falls area flashed through his mind. He could see some of their faces on the missing persons posters and the local news. Both had been similar in age and appearance to Millie.
“They need her alive to finish what they’re doing,” Heiser said. “Do you understand?”
Casey’s breath hitched, rearing back and feeling his own brow contort to the point he was aware of his own expression. “No. What are they trying to do?”
Heiser leaned in slightly, lowering his voice. “Open a doorway. One that should never be opened.”
Casey’s stomach churned, the image of the red light in the woods flashing in his mind. The Thompson family history. Olivia’s account of Halloween night. Heat rose in Casey’s chest. Reeves, Lochlear, and now Heiser, who were nothing but conspiratorial bureaucratic sidetalkers in equal and opposite measure.
Casey scoffed. “You’re just here to stir the pot while this town falls apart.”
Heiser straightened, his expression unreadable. “You’re not wrong about one thing. There’s a crack in the foundation of this place. A deep one. If you don’t want it to split wide open, I suggest you keep digging.”
Heiser turned and walked outside, leaving Casey standing frozen in the gloom of the parlor, his thoughts racing.
Could Millie be alive?
It was crazy.
Wasn’t it?
But then, the Feds would have been well within their power, or at least their ability with whatever government clearance they had, to make things read how they wanted them to read. Lochlear himself had made the statement to the media.
Casey’s mind swam. He wasn’t in the funeral home anymore. He was replaying that morning and the flurry of everything that had happened.
“Hey,” said Aly, walking up behind him. He turned. She was in a well-fitted black dress, her blonde hair down and loose.
Casey struggled to come to the moment and cleared his throat.
“You okay?” Aly asked.
“I… yeah. You come alone?” Casey asked.
“Mom’s here. Liv wasn’t up for it.”
“Can’t be easy for her.”
“She doesn’t believe Millie’s dead. I know denial is part of this. I felt it with Dad too. But Liv keeps saying Millie’s out there. That the body wasn’t her.”
Casey only nodded, but Aly could read him like a book.
“She keeps talking about you. And mentioned some… maps?”
Casey frowned. “Heiser, or… Greg, I guess,” he said, remembering he’d been a regular of Aly’s, “he came to me with some theories. Just left, actually.”
Aly furrowed her brow. “What is going on, Casey?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know. Look, I can talk to Liv if you want.”
“No,” Aly said quickly. “I mean, it’s probably best if she has space.”
When the silence got heavier, unspoken questions of past and present hanging in the air between them, Casey offered a quick goodbye and left Aly by the coffee.
When he reached the parking lot, he heard hard voices cutting through the cold air. He crept across the street and pressed against the wall of the funeral home.
Before he knew it, he was eavesdropping on a conversation between father and son.
“You knew this was coming,” Jack Thompson said.
“No.” Joe’s voice, low and dangerous. “This is your fault. You and your damn legacy.”
“Our legacy, Joe. I can’t afford not to deliver. Just a little longer.”
“What does it matter? How am I supposed to move on from this? How is Erin supposed to…”
“She will. In time.”
“Go to hell.”
“Joe…”
“I’m done. I don’t care who comes knocking. Let them. I’ll tear them apart.”
“Don’t do this, son.”
Joe stormed inside.
Casey leaned back against the wall, his mind racing.
What had he just heard?
Jack Thompson tore off in his red and cream Ford truck, leaving Casey with one haunting phrase: I can’t afford not to deliver.
He needed to talk to Joe. But pulling him away from the visitation in the state he was in wouldn’t do any good. It also couldn’t wait long.
Casey drove home, got the maps out again, the copies he’d made when Reeves and Lochlear hadn’t been hovering around.
He traced faint lines with his finger, his mind replaying the words. What did Jack need to deliver, and who was he so afraid of?
Janus Global was Casey’s best guess. But they were about as well-defined as the Dimensional Containment Bureau, and half the time he felt convinced all of this was some elaborate ruse he was caught in the middle of. A nightmarish prank.
None of that changed the fact that it was all too real. And, if he was going to confront Joe tomorrow, he needed to be ready for answers he might not want to hear.
He left a message on Heiser’s motel phone, his voice low but firm.
“If you’re serious about stopping whatever is going on here, I’m listening. Just come ready to explain everything.”
Casey leaned back in his chair, the maps spread before him. His eyes fell on a faint red line he hadn’t noticed before, branching off the main pipeline and marked with a single word:
CHASM, annotated with a question mark.
When had Heiser written that?
The phone line clicked as his message ended. Casey paused, unsure if it had been disconnected, or whether someone had been listening.