"And you are confident it's her?"
"That's what it looks like, sir. But…"
The young rookie’s voice trailed off and the detective looked over at her.
"But?"
"But there isn't much left."
Fitzgerald pushed faster, his strides getting longer as he climbed up the moss-covered rocks toward the dark mouth of the cavern. It was small and set back into the rocks. The area was already separated from the more well-traveled areas of the park. It wasn’t easy to get to, or even visible from the hiking trails.
Not many came this way. Those who did were unlikely to notice the cavern. It was something a person needed to know about in order to find it.
And someone had.
He got to the threshold of the cavern and looked inside. At first, he could only see the investigative team, their backs turned to him as they examined something at their feet. One glanced over his shoulder and noticed the detective. Nudging the investigator beside him, he nodded back toward Fitzgerald and stepped out of the way.
The detective's breath pulled heavily on his lungs with each step further into the cavern. It wrapped in a tight band around his chest and slid up to the base of his throat.
The shoe they’d found wasn't Violet's. Carrie had told him that. She’d insisted.
She was right.
Violet was wearing pink sandals.
They clung around bones stretched taut with mottled, blackened tissue. If he closed his eyes, he could see her the way she should be. She was sitting on the dirt floor of the cavern, her back against the wall. A rock on the ground beside her propped her legs up. It looked almost as though she’d had them pulled up close to her chest and they’d slid down as she fell asleep.
Her head sagged down, and one hand was turned over on the ground beside her, her palm up as if she was reaching for someone. The detective wanted to hold it, to comfort her.
But there was no comfort for Violet, now.
The investigators moved out of the way and he crouched down beside the little girl. There was little left of her face. All that was there was a skull with matted brown curls. He could see her tiny white teeth where her lips should be. Lips tinged blue and chilled with sweetness.
"Any sign of the cause of death?"
"No, sir. Not yet. The body is too decomposed to make any initial evaluations right now. We'll have to wait for the findings of the medical examiner."
"Violet," he said.
"Excuse me, sir?”
"Her name is Violet. Not the body."
"I'm sorry, sir."
He turned and walked out of the cavern, pulling his phone out of his pocket as he went.
"Get me Carrie Montgomery."
Three years later…
“How many of them?”
“Four.”
Detective Fitzgerald walked over rocks his boots hadn’t touched in almost a year. That wasn’t long enough. He’d never wanted to see this place again. It had been three years since the first time he was called here. Three years since he’d spent two brutal hot months scouring the woods and ending up in a tiny, hidden cavern, where his heart was torn out and still remained.
He’d never wanted to come back after that day. But he was dragged back. Even when she was gone, even after they had taken her away and tucked her in for a final time. He’d seen her one final time before the lid closed over her. A sweet white dress covered most of the ravages of time and nature. A pink blanket to keep her comfortable. A teddy bear to keep her company.
Now he was back walking through the same cold steps of that case. Again.
"How old?" he asked.
"One eighteen, two nineteen, one twenty."
"Shit. Technically, they're adults. So, they get to wander off whenever the hell they want to and nobody can say anything about it," the detective muttered.
"But you don't think they just wandered off," the officer pointed out.
Detective Fitzgerald glared at the woman for a few seconds. She wasn't young and tender-skinned the way Officer Davis had been three years ago. That had been his first experience with a case like that. His first brush with the heavy, miserable feeling of not knowing. Then his first time being dropped, crashing into the excruciating reality that they were not superheroes.
Detective Fitzgerald had known that for a long time. It didn't stop the fury or the feeling of failure. It didn't give the closure he still so desperately needed. Even when Violet and her teddy bear were laid to rest, it wasn't over. There was still someone who knew what her eyes looked like the last second she saw anything. Someone knew the last word her voice formed, and what her breath sounded like when it left her lungs for the last time. Someone knew the last thing she smelled, the last thing she touched.
They might even know the last thing she tasted. There wasn't enough left to check the contents of her stomach. The detective hoped it was the sweet blue ice pop. But only Violet knew her last thought. And that was where he would never really get closure. Even if he could find the killer, he would never know what Violet was thinking in those last seconds. He would never be able to reassure or comfort her.
That was a feeling he was all too familiar with. It was something he’d never learned to live with. He learned to live in spite of it.
It would never go away. But he knew it would lessen some when he could put a name to the person who’d done it to her.
And who might have done it again.
"Just as none of the other ones did. When was the last time they were seen?"
"Five days ago. The youngest one is still living at home, and apparently told his parents he was going on a road trip with his cousin and a couple of buddies. They were supposed to be hiking on the other
