“Seems Elizabeth had been keeping journals. Almost daily as a matter of fact.”
“About what?”
“Merrie,” he explained. “Or Rebecca. Depends on the day.”
“I still don’t follow.”
Carmichael blew out a loud sigh through his nose, then absently brushed his mustache. After a weighty pause he continued. “Right around the time Merrie’s remains mysteriously disappeared, so did the little girl I picked up from the middle of the street.”
Constance stared back at him. Finally she said, “Are you saying what I think you are?”
He nodded. “Some days Rebecca was Rebecca. Other days, she was Merrie. The wounds would even show up on her body. Then later, of course, they were scars. But like stigmata, they were there.
“Doctors tried to treat it like some sort of multiple personality illness, but that didn’t work, obviously. Apparently they almost killed her in the process, which would have meant Tom and Elizabeth would have lost both their daughters.
“But she survived,” he breathed. “And she tried to make a life for herself. Even made it through college. Not without a few bumps, of course, but she did it.”
“So you’re saying Rebecca Callahan is the woman living in Holly-Oak now?”
“I guess it depends on how you look at it, Constance,” he sighed. “Not long after Tom and Elizabeth died, she started getting worse. She was Merrie more often than Rebecca. Folks here in town looked after her, but it wasn’t easy. By the time I moved back and ran for sheriff, she had become Merrie full time. She hasn’t been Rebecca since.”
CHAPTER 31
10:56 A.M. – December 26, 2010
Sheriff’s Department
Hulis Township – Northern Missouri
“Decided what to put in your report yet, Special Agent Mandalay?” Sheriff Carmichael asked.
“No, sir,” Constance replied. “I haven’t.”
He cleared his throat, then nodded, looking down at the ground. “Yeah…that’s pretty much what I figured. I was kinda hoping you’d say something different though.”
“I know what I saw, and I know what you’ve told me. However, I’m not sure any of it would stay in the file if that’s what I submitted,” she offered. “I get the feeling it would disappear like previous accounts.”
“True…” he said with a nod. “Of course, you know the whole story. The rest of them don’t. Well, except for Agent Graham.”
“I know,” she replied, then bit her lip. “I’m going to try to change that, but I can’t make any guarantees.”
“Yeah, I know. Not sure what good it would do anyway. I doubt it would change anything.” He paused, visibly weighing his next comment before saying it aloud. Finally, he offered, “You know it’s not just the face, don’t you? If you run it, that ten-print card for the victim is gonna match John Horace Colson’s fingerprints.”
She nodded, “I assumed as much.”
“But you and I both know that can’t be who was in that basement.”
“Under any other circumstances I’d agree, Skip,” Constance replied. “But after all this… Well…I’m not so sure.”
“So…maybe you get it now.”
“I’ll admit, I think I now have an intimately better understanding of why the bureau file on this case is incomplete.”
He snorted. “Yeah. I’m sure you do…”
“I didn’t say it was right,” she added. “I just understand the ‘why’.”
“Yeah… I guess I do too.” Changing the subject, he nodded toward her feet. “So… I see you’re wearin’ those stilts again.”
Constance looked down at her shoes and let out a shallow laugh. “Merrie liked them the other day, and I stopped by to see her this morning, so…”
“Yeah, I heard.”
“Martha?”
“Yep.”
“I assumed she would call you.” Constance shrugged. “I guess the dressing up is a carryover from my own childhood-visiting family for the holidays and such. Mom always wanted us to look our best.”
“Sounds familiar.”
“Although, I’ll be honest,” she added. “I was a bit worried about the visit. I wasn’t sure if Martha would even let me in the door, much less in to see Merrie. I was a little surprised that I didn’t meet with any resistance when I arrived. In fact, she was actually very pleasant to me.”
“She was expecting you,” he replied.
“That’s what she said. Did you have anything to do with that?”
“Maybe…” He allowed the word to dangle in the air for a moment.
Constance could sense that there was more to the story. She waited, but when nothing else was forthcoming, it became apparent that he was fishing, so she decided to chum the waters a bit more. “You know, I almost called you first before going over there. I was really expecting somewhat of a repeat of the first meeting, even though this time all I wanted to do was see how she was doing. I had honestly figured Merrie wouldn’t even remember me, since everything seems to reset for her.”
Based on his response, she had apparently used the correct bait.
“She did though, didn’t she,” Skip offered the words as a statement, not as a question.
She answered anyway. “Yes. Oddly enough, she did. I was surprised, to say the least.”
“She always does,” he explained. There was something palpable in his tone that made him sound somewhat relieved by her response. “Don’t know why. Everything else is always wiped clean, but she remembers the visits from you Feds. For a while, anyway.”
“A mystery within a mystery within a…” she let her voice trail off.
He nodded.
After a lengthy pause, he cleared his throat and said, “Since we’re being honest, that’s another one of the reasons you didn’t get a very warm reception when you first arrived in town.”
“Oh? After our talk last night, I just assumed it was the way the bureau handled things thirty-five years ago that made me a pariah.”
“Well, that didn’t help, but a lot of the folks who remember that are long gone. You know how protective we are of her,” he explained with a sigh. “Every year it’s been the same. One of you Feds shows up and insists on interviewing her. Then, come Christmas night, after everything is over, and Merrie is Merrie again, she starts talking about Mister Drew, or Mister Keene, or whoever was sent that year. For some unknown reason she expects them to be coming back to visit with her again… She gets up early on December twenty-sixth every year, then just sits there waiting for the entire day.”
“That would explain why she wasn’t surprised to see me this morning,” Constance mused.
“Pretty much. But, you’re the first to actually show up. Until now, every year she’s ended up heartbroken because they don’t come back.”
“She takes it that hard?”
Again he answered with a quiet nod. Then he said, “Not sure why about that either… Takes her awhile to get over it too, and that doesn’t sit well with folks around here, as you’ve discovered.”
“That’s a fact,” she agreed.
“Eventually, that memory fades and she forgets it too. But something tells me she’ll remember you…” Skip gave a thoughtful snort and then shook his head. “You know, I wasn’t a hundred percent sure you’d show up over there today. But like I said last night, I had you pegged as different, so I called Martha and told her to keep an eye
