Crow took the mug away.
Dr. Hues stood, a blue winter scarf clutched in his hand. He’d been at the previous two sessions, brought menial things. In the first, a pen from his banker, the second was his dog’s leash. Today his hand trembled as he rested the scarf on Orla’s palm.
“Kenneth. His mother bought this for him at Bergdorf’s. He hates it but loves his mother. A woman brushed her face against the fabric. It tickled, and she laughed, put the scarf over their heads, and kissed him.”
“The woman’s name?” the doctor demanded, color flushing his neck.
Orla blinked at him, narrowed her eyes.
“Are you sure?” She glanced at the other men. Crow understood the unsaid things.
Dr. Hues did not need to hear the name spoken out loud, his wife’s name, and yet he nodded.
“Beverly,” Orla told him.
Dr. Hues face fell. He stood and ripped the scarf from her hand, shoving it into his suit coat.
Crow did not know Dr. Hues’ wife. The man worked as a psychiatrist in Pontiac. The men of the brotherhood did not socialize, but over the years, they learned things about one another. Dr. Hues’ wife worked as a secretary for a dentist. Crow wondered if the dentist’s name was Kenneth.
Orla offered Hues an expression of sympathy, which hardened when the next man, Dr. Frederic, stood. He smiled cruelly at Orla and pressed a small, sharp knife into her hand.
She bucked in her chair and gasped before emitting a loud, piercing scream.
Orla
Orla closed her eyes. When she opened them, the men waited with matching expressions of curiosity. The doctor who killed the rabbit wore perverse pleasure on his sharp features.
The same pleasure aroused him when he sliced the rabbit open, killing it not swiftly, humanely, but slowly. He had watched the light drain from its small, terrified eyes as blood seeped from its open belly.
“What did you see?” Crow asked.
She clamped her mouth closed and turned her head away from the men. Fire burned in the wall sconces, and the damp, acrid smell of the chamber conjured the memory of the rabbit’s blood, threatening to overwhelm her with nausea.
Dr. Frederic stood to retrieve the knife, but Orla closed her fingers around it. The blade cut into the flesh of her fingers. As the blood trickled from her hand, she glared at the doctor, wishing for the strength to wrench her arm free and plunge the knife into his throat.
Frederic grabbed the handle that protruded from her fist.
“I can pull it out,” he whispered, leaning close so she smelled his hot, sour breath. “Imagine the sensation as it tears through your tender palm.”
She released her fingers, and the knife fell to the floor. Her hand throbbed, and the warmth of her blood dripped into her palm.
“Tell us what you saw,” Crow hissed. He could be mean, cruel. If she upset him, he might leave her strapped to the bed and drugged for days with no food, no shower, no human contact whatsoever.
“You butchered a rabbit,” she spit at the man who’d picked up the bloody knife. “And you liked it.”
The doctor chuckled and took a seat.
“I liked the rabbit pie my wife made. But let’s not get carried away.”
They left Orla in the chair, and huddled near a huge, leather-bound book propped on a pedestal.
“We’re wasting time,” Frederic said. “I vote you reveal her to the brotherhood at the next full moon meeting.”
“That’s less than a week away,” Crow argued.
“She‘s ready,” Frederic insisted.
“The others will be angry we’ve been meeting in secret,” Knight cautioned.
Orla didn’t look directly at the men. She didn’t want them to know she was listening.
“Not when they witness what she can do,” Crow said. “I’ll write the others tonight.”
Chapter 26
Hazel
The first time Hazel saw the girl, she thought nothing of it. Orla had only been missing for hours, maybe she wasn’t technically even missing yet. But Hazel had been a little drunk on sangria, leaning her head against Calvin’s shoulder as they left Leone’s after a late dinner. It was pouring rain, but the warm rain of summer. Calvin had grabbed her hand and twirled her away from him, pulling her back in for a long kiss. As she stepped away, the rain a shock after the warmth of his mouth, she glimpsed the girl across the street. She stood along the metal fence that ridged the parking lot, and she seemed to watch them.
Through the mist, Hazel made out blonde hair and what looked like a yellow shirt, though the darkness and the storm blurred the details. Had it not been for the streetlight, the girl would have been in a pocket of darkness, and Hazel would never have noticed her at all.
Calvin had picked Hazel up, and she shrieked in delight as he ran across the parking lot to his car. He dropped her into the passenger seat, and Hazel forgot the woman.
Hazel had not given her another thought until more than a week later, when she saw her for the second time.
Hazel sat in Milly’s Bakery on Front Street, facing the river that ran behind the little shop. Docks ran the length of the river, huge wooden beams disappearing into the calm, dark water below. Two men sat side-by-side, fishing poles dipped in the water, ball caps blocking the sun’s glare.
Hazel drank coffee and ate a lemon muffin. They had been her mother’s favorite. As the anniversary of her death drew near, Hazel indulged more and more in the things her mother had loved. Later, she would go to the Cherry Bowl Drive-In to take in ‘Aloha Bobby and Rose.’ Her mother took Hazel to the drive-in nearly every weekend in the summer. They lay on the hood of her mother’s blue Plymouth Satellite, radio turned loud to hear the show, watching the larger-than-life actors fall in love, escape from spies, and battle evil.
When her mother died, Hazel inherited the house. Her father had died when she was four. Though she was only seventeen when her mother passed, Hazel had already taken over the finances a year before, when her mother fell ill. She understood how to balance the checkbook, send in the mortgage payment, tend to the lawn and garden. Within a year of her mother’s death, she’d filled three of the home’s rooms with roommates. She’d moved into the master bedroom, her mother’s room, and tried to imagine a life without her mom.
July was her mother’s month. It was the month of her birth and the month of her death.
“And now it’s the month Orla disappeared,” Hazel murmured, picking at her muffin.
She returned her gaze to the window.
A girl stood on the dock now. She was a ways off from the fisherman, turned half-facing the river. A sheaf of blonde hair covered her face. Beneath her hair, Hazel studied her yellow t-shirt depicting bright red lips and a lolling tongue. As the girl shifted, facing the bakery full-on, Hazel gasped and stood. Her chair clattered to the floor.
Milly, the shop owner, looked up startled from the register.
“Is everything okay?” she asked, hurrying around the counter to right Hazel’s chair.
Hazel stared, transfixed, until Milly brushed against her.
“Yes, I’m sorry.” Hazel stammered.
As Milly swept back to the counter, Hazel gazed at the dock, but the girl had vanished.
Abe
Abe scanned the tips his editor had dropped off. There’d been reported sightings of Orla on the day she went missing. A man driving on Road 210 who saw her riding her yellow bicycle. A family in a van called in - they too saw a young woman with long, dark hair riding on Road 210. But not a single sighting after noon. It appeared she had been riding to the park they’d already searched. But no one observed her riding back.