Stone Groove Page 4

  It looked like … a woman. But as the figure drew nearer, Dale realized that he was wrong again. It wasn’t a woman at all.

  It was a little girl.

  She was wearing something long and white—a nightgown or dress. She was barefoot.

  “It’s a child!” Dale yelled to the others. “We’ve got a child!”

  Brown waved his hands at his men. “Hold! Hold! Lower your guns!”

  The girl was now a hundred feet from the edge of the village. She was small, no more than eight years old. Her arms were outstretched, a vacant look in her eyes. She was screaming something. Dale couldn’t make out the words. Her voice was shrill, piercing, with a quality that sounded less like a girl’s and more like a woman’s. Or a witch’s. It sent a chill over Dale’s flesh.

  She seemed not to notice the men, just continued moving forward. Dale could now see painful-looking cuts and scrapes covering her arms and legs. Her feet were bloodied. She wore a nightgown that had been white at one time but was now a dingy brown. It was old-fashioned, in the style of the Marshallite clothing.

  She was one of the missing people.

  As she got closer, her screaming became clear. “Virginia! Virginia Dare! Virginia Dare!” She repeated this over and over.

  For the second time, Dale felt a chill. His brain could hardly register what he had just heard from that little girl, the name she had said …

  Wilson dropped his sunglasses and looked at Dale. “Dare? As in the Dare Stones?”

  Dale nodded slowly. “Virginia Dare was the first English child born in the New World. John White’s granddaughter. She was quite possibly killed as a little girl. The first Dare Stone was supposedly written by her mother as a memorial to Virginia and the girl’s father, who was also killed.”

  He watched as the small, screaming girl got closer and closer to them.

  Dale wasn’t a superstitious man, but seeing this spectral-looking child in antique clothing lurching through the forest screaming the name “Virginia Dare” gave him the heebie-jeebies. In the last 400 years, there was great speculation as to how and why Virginia Dare—and the rest of the Roanoke Colony—had completely vanished from the earth.

  He shook his head. It was just a little girl. This was the 1970s, not the 1590s, and something or someone was compelling her to trek through the forest toward them.

  She needed help.

  Dale holstered his gun. He stepped out from behind the house and jogged over to the woods.

  Brown yelled out behind him. “Agent Conley, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  “Conley!” Wilson said.

  Dale stopped within a few feet of the edge of the woods. He could see the girl clearly now. She continued to scream.

  “Dare! Dare! Virginia Dare!”

  She was a cute girl. Her eyes were clear blue. Freckles on her cheeks.

  Dale dropped to a knee.

  She was within fifty feet of him. There was a glazed-over look in those blue eyes. He’d seen it before, a few years back—that dead, vacant stare. He’d hoped to never see it again. But here it was, on the face of this mystery girl creeping out of the forest. It made Dale’s heart thump in his chest.

  “Virginia Dare! Virginia Dare!”

  The girl was very close now. Only a couple yards away.

  “Hi sweetheart,” Dale said. “You doing okay?”

  She stopped walking, stopped screaming. Silence rang in Dale’s ear. The girl was an arm’s length from him. Her head turned slightly toward him, but her blue eyes looked past him, through him. She remained perfectly still, her little arms at her sides. Crosshatched red scratches covered her skin. A drop of blood rolled down her left hand.

  The girl’s face was lifeless. Some sort of hell had happened to this child. If Dale could look at her just right, if she could see that he wasn’t going to hurt her, he could get through to her. He opened his eyes wide, put a small smile on his face.

  The girl’s eyes focused. She was looking right at him now. She saw him.

  He smiled bigger and slowly reached out a hand, like one would to a scared dog. Slowly, slowly.

  The girl didn’t notice his hand. She continued to look into his eyes.

  Dale eased his right knee forward. His fingers were inches from her shoulder.

  The girl opened her mouth. And screamed. A guttural, penetrating shriek. She sprang forward, knocking Dale over and latching onto his arm. Steely fingers dug into Dale’s shoulder, and small, sharp teeth bit down hard through his T-shirt.

  Dale howled.

  He thought again of the bear that he encountered when he first came to Virginia. If the bear had actually gotten a hold of him, he imagined its bite would have felt something like this girl’s. Her teeth dug into his flesh with unrelenting force. His eyes watered, and he pulled at the girl’s back.

  One of the deputies rushed over and grabbed the girl. Still clinging to Dale, she flailed out wildly at the man. Her long, sharp nails caught him across his eye and cheek, flinging blood into the grass. The deputy screamed.

  Three more men grabbed the girl’s arms and legs and pulled her from Dale. The girl writhed about viciously, thrashing in their arms like a violent cat being hauled to the vet.

  Dale grabbed his arm. The pain pulsed into his hand.

  As the men fought to control the girl, Dale noticed something—a note safety-pinned to her back. The deputies were a swarming mass of arms and legs and swear words, but for a brief moment when the girl’s back was facing him, he was able to read what the note said. It was written in permanent marker with big, scratchy letters that matched those on the stone.

  Dale’s BEI mind went to work immediately. Upend the flags … Turn the flags over? What flags? He looked around the village. There were no flags.

  Wilson came up to him. “You okay?”

  Dale nodded.

  Sheriff Brown strode over to his men as they fought with the girl, who was screeching loudly. He yanked the note from the girl’s back and looked at it quizzically. He turned to Dale. “What the hell is this all about?”

  The girl broke free from and bolted back toward the trees. She cut to the left, but the sheriff lunged forward and tackled her. She bit Brown’s hand and took off again. He caught the back of her dress.

  “Smith! Maynard! Pullman!” he yelled. “Get over here. She’s one little girl.”

  The deputies wrestled the girl from the sheriff.

  “Now put her in one of the cars and get her to the damn hospital.”

  The men pulled the girl toward the far end of the village, stopping to grapple with the deranged child every few feet. They yelled out as the girl continued to bite and scratch with animal-like brawn.

  Brown looked at the note in his hand and shook his head. “Christ,” he muttered. “Miller!”

  A young deputy—who had been standing by the vehicles and watching the chaos with unnerved awe —ran over to Brown.

  “Yes, Sheriff?”

  The sheriff handed Miller the note. “Bag this.”

  A loud shriek blasted out from the opposite side of the village. The deputies were manhandling the girl into the back of one of the sheriff’s cars. She twisted in their arms and kicked one of the men in the ribs.

  There was a creak of a branch in the forest. Dale looked. The tree limbs slowly rocked in the breeze. The cicadas continued their racket. He thought about the dozens of other missing people. If one girl had wandered back into the village …

  “Sheriff Brown,” Dale said. “There are one hundred forty-six other people. They could all be out there.”

  Brown turned and looked at the trees. “You might be right.” He cupped his hands over his mouth. “Miller!”

  Miller was on the other side of the village putting the note into a plastic bag. He jogged over again.

  “Yes, Sheriff?” he said, out of breath.

  “We’re gonna run a sweep,” Brown said, “and search the woods for any other survivors. Now, you get those other boys over here,
and we’ll fan out in one big circle, fifty yards apart. Me and the fed boys will head north. You space the rest of them around us.”

  “Yes, sir,” Miller said.

  “And give me that,” Brown said, pointing to the note that had been pinned to the girl’s back, which was now in a plastic bag.

  “Conley,” Wilson said and stepped toward Dale. “What about that car that passed by? You sure were keeping an eye on it.”

  Dale thought about it. The car had crept by slowly, deliberately. Minutes before the girl appeared.

  “Sheriff,” Dale said. “The gravel road over there. Where does it go?”

  “Along the east side of this property, going north. Then curves west. Dead ends a quarter mile from here.”

  Dale figured as much. With the shape of the hill to the east, there wasn’t anywhere else for it to go. That meant that the road would end up due north of the village—exactly the direction from which the little girl appeared.

  “A car drove by a few minutes ago,” Dale said. “That little girl might have been dropped off.”

  “Dropped off?” Brown tipped his hat back and dried his forehead. He looked to the north and sighed. “Son of a bitch. Okay, Conley. We’ll check it out. Hold this.” He shoved the note at Dale and turned to Wilson. “You stay here and help with the sweep.”

  Wilson opened his mouth as though to protest and looked at Dale.

  “Come on, boy,” Brown said to Dale before Wilson had a chance to respond. “Let’s move.”

  Brown smacked Dale on the ass and bounced off toward his car.

  Chapter 8

  Sheriff Brown slammed on the brakes, and Dale flew into the dash. Moments earlier, Dale hadn’t been able to locate the seatbelt in the split second between when he got in the sheriff’s Ford Custom 500 and when Brown spun the big boat of a car onto the gravel road.

  There was a fork in the road. Brown studied it.

  “This way.” He spun the tires, taking the left side of the fork.

  Dale crashed into his seat back. “How far is it to 81?”

  “Five miles.”

  The engine revved louder as the sheriff accelerated. They followed a paved country road that wound along the little dips and undulations of the countryside. Dairy farms and open pastures zipped by.

  Even in a tense moment like this, one couldn’t help but appreciate the idyllic beauty of the Valley. The lush green grass, the blue mountains in the distance, the clusters of cows watching the speeding car with mild curiosity. Dale was lucky enough to spend much of his formative years in this region, and he was thankful for any chance to return. Even if he was riding in a Hell-bound death machine.

  The sheriff took a sharp curve fast, and Dale slid to his left on the vinyl seat, smashing into the sheriff’s side. He sank into Brown’s big, sweaty arm. Dale repositioned himself and resumed his search for a seatbelt. Instead he found a metal peg where the seatbelt once existed.

  “Sorry about that,” the sheriff said. “Been meaning to have that replaced.” He chortled.

  Dale gripped his seat with both hands.

  They came over a rise, and the landscape opened up before them. Ahead of them was a white car—like the one Dale saw through the trees earlier. It was a Plymouth Duster.

  “That’s it, Sheriff.”

  “Okay, here we go.”

  Brown punched the gas even harder, throwing Dale back, then flipped on the lights and siren, which came to life with a blare.

  Dale put his sunglasses on and leaned forward. Though he didn’t want to believe that this person had actually dropped off the little girl, deep down part of him wanted the Duster to bolt so they could chase it.

  They were about a quarter mile away from the other car now.

  “Write this down, Fed,” Brown said. He read off the license plate number. “Alpha-Delta-1-3-2-8.”

  Dale sifted through the burger wrappers and empty packs of Marlboros sliding around the floor and found a piece of paper and a pen. The pen was sticky. He wrote down the number.

  Dale grinned. His heart pounded, and his fingers tingled. This was one of the greatest perks of the job—the thrill of the chase. “Looks like a standard Duster to me, but by the way that thing took off, I think we might have a sleeper 360. Can this girl catch ’im, Sheriff?” He smacked the dashboard.

  Brown scoffed. “Cat got an ass?”

  They barreled over a hill and lifted off on the other side. The Custom 500 sailed through the air, and Dale saw the horizon line drop. They were floating. Dale’s stomach rose up first, followed by his whole body. For a moment he was levitating above the seat. His head touched the roof.

  With a thud and some loud squeaking from the 500’s springs they came back to earth. Dale somehow landed backwards in his seat, twisted into a contorted ball. His face smashed into the headrest, and his arm whacked his crotch.

  The sheriff was laughing again, a constant he-he-he kind of laugh like he was chasing a grandchild around the backyard.

  Dale turned himself back around. Ahead, the Duster had gained some distance from them. It took a curve and disappeared from sight.

  Brown followed the curve, and when they got around it, the Duster was gone. Horizon to horizon there was nothing.

  “Dammit,” Brown said. He gunned it.

  “Where we going now?”

  “There’s only one road that goes out to 81.” He pointed to a crossroad about a quarter mile away. “That’n there.”

  Gravel spat from the tires of the Custom 500 and clattered against its underside. They came up to a corner, and the sheriff slowed down just enough to get them around it. The car fishtailed as they pulled through the other side. With a surge of gas, Brown pushed them down the road. On either side of them were open, hilly fields. But ahead the road plunged into a forest.

  They drove into the darkness of the trees, and after a few hundred feet, they exited into the sunlight again. An interstate overpass was in front of them. They skidded to a stop by the on-ramp where a cloud of the Duster’s dust lingered.

  The highway was accommodating a decent flow of afternoon traffic—plenty of cars and tractor-trailers. Dale scanned the vehicles. His eyes bounced about to the different white cars passing by, but the Duster was nowhere to be seen.

  “Dammit,” Brown said. “We lost him.” He smacked the steering wheel and cursed under his breath.

  The radio on the underside of the dash came to life. “Sheriff?” a man’s voice said.

  Brown snatched the receiver out of its cradle. “What?” His lips were so close to the receiver he sprayed it with spit.

  “That girl from the village. They got her in a bed at the hospital. They want to talk to you.”

  “Fine, Miller,” he said. “We’ll be there.”

  Brown slapped the receiver back into place then goosed the engine—whipping the car around 180 degrees—and headed toward the northbound on-ramp for the interstate.

  Dale resumed his position, clinging to the seat for dear life.

  Chapter 9

  Dale hated the smell of hospitals. The sweet, warm, putrid odor always made him queasy. Once as a young teenager, he puked all over his aunt in a hospital when he came to visit her. One wouldn’t believe how quickly a sick woman could jump out of her bed.

  Now Dale felt that same queasiness as he stood with Sheriff Brown by the little girl’s bed. The fact that his stomach had just been tossed about the cab of the sheriff’s car for the last half hour wasn’t helping matters. The room felt warm and light. There was a thin layer of perspiration on his forehead. He put one hand on the bed rail and looked at the girl to remind himself of why he was there.

  The bed engulfed the girl’s tiny frame. Her eyes were closed, and she breathed slowly and heavily. They had her in a gown. The sheets were pulled up to her chest. There was a tube taped to her right arm that traced up to an IV.

  A doctor in green scrubs and a lab coat had been talking since Dale and Sheriff Brown entered the room. He told them that the g
irl was panicked but fine. No serious injuries, no signs of sexual assault. He was short and stocky with a mop of thinning, sweaty, curly hair. A furrowed brow sat above his jowly face, and his skin was as oily as SAC Taft. The man was a troll.

  The nurse standing next to him, though, was a goddess. She stood about five-foot-seven with straight brown hair pulled into a ponytail. She had a nice figure, but it was well hidden by her outfit, a lab coat over a button-up blouse and loose-fitting, flared slacks. Her face had just a dusting of makeup, and her expression was serious, so serious that she seemed unapproachable. But Dale liked a challenge. Time was going to be at a premium during this case, yes, but there was always time for romance.

  The doctor was refusing to let Dale and the sheriff talk to the girl, and this had made Brown spitting mad. “What do you mean we can’t talk to her?” he said.

  Unlike the deputies back at the village, the doctor wasn’t intimidated at all by Sheriff Brown’s loud tone and overbearing demeanor. In fact, the little man had been downright rude to them from the moment they’d walked in. “The girl’s asleep. I think you can understand that. And keep your voice down, Officer.”

  “That’s Sheriff,” Brown said through his teeth.

  “You drugged her?” Dale said.

  “Chemical restraint,” the doctor said. “She was attacking people. I understand you were one of those attacked.”

  Dale tapped the girl’s IV with his finger. “Just clamp this thing down for a sec. We only need a couple minutes with her.”

  The nurse pushed him away. “Don’t touch that.” She had a nice voice, softer than he thought it would be.

  Dale gave her a little smile. Despite her disgusted expression, this was the first time she had made eye contact with him, and he had to take advantage of it. His smile didn’t have the desired effect, though—she looked even more aghast.

  The doctor exhaled and ran a hand through his greasy, blond hair. “Maybe this is how you two operate back at the squad room, but around here we don’t go shooting from the hip.”