A Spire to Heaven

"I don't think he's coming."

Detective Matty Ryan raised a massive forearm, pointing at the clock:

5:15p.

"He's not coming."

But Joe Wilson came every Friday. 5pm. 364 in a row. Asking about his daughter.

We found her Hello Kitty backpack...

Floating in the canal behind Worthington

"Get your coat Matty."

"We going over there?"

"That's right," I said. "We're detectives, aren't we?"

"Yessir."

"Human beings are creatures of habit, Matty. We don't break 'em for nothing...Get your coat."

"Yessir."

*****

The heat of the Kentucky noon boiled the ichor off the bayou in a redolent haze. But darkness came early in September, the sun slipping behind the Ridge, and soon the haze coalesced into a sticky, clammy sweat.

Tonight was rain, the clouds rolling in dark low battleline, swallowing the dusk. Already starting to push out drops slow and thick like molasses, pelting the cruiser's steel in an uneven and jarring syncope.

A night for hiding. For loneliness and forgetting. A night to smell the rust in an overdue rain. The taste of blood and a memory from a time when things mattered.

But we were detectives. Keepers of the truths no one should know. We put on brave faces and we lied. To protect the fallacy of innocence. To save what little hope was left for those who really needed it.

A night for detectives.

"Turn on the high beams Matty."

He obeyed without a word, and the rain jumped center stage in white relief, finding the holes in the black canopy of overgrown hemlock, smearing against the windshield in an oily slick. The sign for Blue Ridge was hidden in the morass, but Matty knew the way. With graceful ease, earned dodging IEDs in Iraq, he slung the 6000 lbs of Detroit steel around the Cinnamark gully and up the winding road to Joe Wilson's.

The asphalt under the tires trickled and faded away, where some Depression Era road crew had burned through the last of their tar, and just never came back, probably after facing the business end of Winchester double barrel. Probably toted by Joe Wilson's Great Great Grandpa. If dirt was good enough for God, it was certainly good enough for Blue Ridge.

The one exception was the single frayed and fragile overhead power line, snaking up the Ridge between a succession of old logs and railroad trestles, repurposed and pounded vertical, no two the same. Snaking towards the Wilson place. A gift from Terradyne surveyors trying to finagle mining rights from Joe after a tungsten vein had been discovered creeping up the side of old Blue.

They needed it for drill bits. For bullets and bombs. Because Tungsten was hard. Unyielding. Like Joe Wilson. Modern words dropped casually - investment returns, stock options, compounding dividends - didn't even make a dent. Not even a scratch. The metal was going to stay in the dirt. Like Joe Wilson.

But Joe had a new daughter, and Mary was able to talk him into accepting the gift of power.

For Amanda.

Then he slotted a shell of huge double aught buck with a sinister slow ratchet, and told them to get the fuck off his land.

Terradyne found other veins. Made other offers. But never again for Blue Ridge...

A land of sweat and blood and time, turning to mud before our eyes. Cut through with twin parallel trenches carved by the treads of Joe's old Ford, going up and down. Now they were filled with dancing rainwater, silver snakes caught in the headlights, chasing each other back and forth in formation. Pointing the way, curling around the Crown Vic's tires. Like a ride on rails. Only one way forward.

Actually, there was a second way. If you counted launching off the side of the Ridge as forward.

But not tonight. Not with Matty at the wheel. He didn't fight it. Didn't overthink it. Friction and inertia know their own way, ease into their natural groove. Leading us toward the destination. Here, tonight, it was the top of Blue Ridge. It was two detectives in the dark, looking for answers.

*****

Joe's old Ford was exactly where it always was. Parked on a patch of squarely laid straw so a random mudslick wouldn't carry it away. The F was old Detroit yellow, the only letter still with enough paint to exist. The rest - O, R, and D - long gone.

But not everywhere. Because there were other trucks here too. Newer trucks. Parked in the mud. Trucks with all their letters.

Trucks that didn't belong.

Matty killed the Vic's engine and she settled into the sludge. The top of Blue Ridge.

"What the hell is this boss? Some kind of family reunion?"

Maybe.

A reunion minus one.

"Let's go find out."

The slamming of car doors. Detectives in the rain and mud. Their natural element. Guided through the dark, to the porch of Joe Wilson's, with a haze of ghostly blue. The cold, underwater blue of an old fashioned thorium lantern. Not light, but not dark either. The kind used to guide pitmen through the deadly deep trench mines of Kentucky coal country. This one had miraculously found it's way back above ground - a second chance - only to find itself haphazardly hung from a makeshift hook. A last minute, temporary job to lead temporary guests to the door. To keep them from walking blindly into the pig trough, or falling down the well.

Matty was waiting back over my left shoulder. Cover position. Cool and steady. A monolith in the rain. Head cocked slightly down to keep the water out of his eyes, hiding them in the black shadows falling from his ridges. Discreetly, he had already unbuttoned his coat; now his gun hand was softly gripping his belt buckle. This was the land of moonshine whiskey and the second amendment, after all, where trouble hid around dark corners and almost never knocked.

But we were detectives. We always knocked.

The other side of the door went quiet. The end of some sound that was only recognizable once it was gone.

A man's voice? Whispering...Praying?

This time I pounded.

"Mr. Wilson! It's Detective Mitchell! I need to talk to you!"

There was a shuffle of feet inside. Then short, unintelligible words, thrown back and forth.

Men's voices.

I shot a glance back at Matty. He gave the slightest perceptible nod, hand easing up off his buckle like he was patting himself on his stomach. Ready to draw.

The slide of a deadbolt and the door swung open.

Joe Wilson was standing there. Wearing black.

Wearing a suit.

The men of the Wilson clan standing behind him. Wearing black.

Wearing suits.

Reverend Smith was there too. Wearing black. Holding the hand of the impossibly frail Mary Wilson. Wearing black.

An audience. A congregation. Arrayed in a semi-circle around a space of reverence. A space for white candles. a wreath, and a photo....A little girl.

Amanda Wilson.

"What the hell is this Joe!?"

"A funeral."

"No, it's not. Because she's not dead."

Joe looked down at his shoes for a moment. His one nice pair. The silence was total, the kind that hurt for interruption. The reverend offered a whispered prayer, something about God, but the silence only pressed worse. Finally Joe lifted his head - the weight of three lifetimes - and excused himself before stepping out onto the porch with us, under the blue, and closing the door behind him.

"Tell me why I'm standing outside Amanda's funeral Joe."

"She's dead Robert."

"Bullshit. You don't know that. What'd I tell you about those girls they just rescued in Ohio, or that Smart girl over in Utah. You gotta be patie--"

"--I gotta message Rob."

"A message?!? From who???"

"From God."

"FROM GOD!? God told you she's dead...?"

Joe looked down at his shoes again.

"You're telling me God sent you a message - spoke to you directly - and told you that Amanda is dead?"

Joe just kept staring at his shoes. His only nice pair.

"Look me in the eyes and tell me that Joe."

Joe slowly lifted his head and raised his eyes to mine. Distant and faraway, The story of two veterans considering their tragic fates across a scarred battlefield. Things that could never again be saved. Only remembered and mourned.

But Joe didn't say anything. He just reached into his pocket and fished out an old leather wallet, bulging with notes and receipts rather than cash. Hidden carefully behind it all was a business card. Crisp and new and shiny under the thorium blue.

Joe handed it to me.

"Please leave us be Robert."

He went back inside. The dead bolt slide closed behind him.

The card was embossed cerulean blue, sparkling under the light. An eye of Osiris. Almost winking.

On the back was a name:

Psychic

******

The rain was heavy now, fighting against the wipers on full blink. Swiping away, pushing waves of water from side to side. Every now and then, a second to see through the torrent, to see the road leading down and away. Before nature said enough, before the rain said no more, and Matty drove on muscle memory alone, high beams just a reflected sheet of white, falling up and down and everywhere.

Between the curves he looked over. At the card in my hand. Glistening now and then in refracted headlight. Lilly. Psychic. The answer to our questions. The end of the line of inquiry. Something on that card was the key. But Matty didn't ask. He was a marine. He knew how to wait. How to do his job, and how to anticipate, finger on the trigger.

Until the C.O. said fire.

The tires hit level ground again, and Matty had us back on the main. Back to headquarters. Back to every friday night, when we called it a week and prepared to drink the unsolved and unrequited into oblivion. He pulled the cruiser into our spot, under the hazy orange metal halide. Under the rain. He turned the key. Killed the engine. And our world went silent. Just rain and things unspoken.

I held up the card so he could see. Lilly Panoply. Psychic.

"A psychic?"

"A psychic."

Matty shook his head. "That's not right....That's the devil's work."

"I think we're dealing with the Devil's work here, Matty."

"The devil didn't take Amanda...."

"But he knows who did."

For the first Friday in years, we didn't get a drink. Without a word, we decided to search for oblivion on our own. To separate, drive away, put a period on the fate that had cursed us together, and disappear into the black.

The last Friday of hurt. Of hope. Of finding Amanda alive.

Matty drove away in his Bronco and the chapter was complete. Except for the addendum. Except for the card in my hand. Psychics stayed up late, didn't they? The light of day wasn't conducive to their business. The devil worked in the dark.

*****

Psychics didn't put up a sign in Blue Ridge. No fates were told here. No tarot cards laid on a table. No neon lights: "Fortunes Told." Not if they didn't want it burned down. Not in Christian old Kentucky.

But a call to Kentucky State Police reversed the name, threw up an address on the cruiser's laptop. The back lot of Mayfair mobile home park. Number 66. An old econoline turned to rust under years of Kentucky sun and rain. The temporary turning to permanent.

I opened the screen and knocked on the door. Then I pounded, loud even in the rain. An old graybeard from 65 stuck his head out. But he saw the cruiser and vanished, back to his liquor or his meth lab or his oxycontin. I didn't care. Let the rain swallow him. I pounded again.

In preternatural slow motion, the door to 66 opened. A beautiful young woman, her frame bracketed by long black hair. Her lips, red and sensual, pouting with the pain and potential of existence. On her chest, above the low cut V of her top: a star, upside down, tattooed in blood red. A pentagram.

Lilly Panoply.

"Hello Detective," she whispered, between the hypnotic red of her lips.

"Hello," I said, lost in her gaze. "I'm detecti...err, I'm Rob."

"I know," she said. "I've been waiting."

Sometimes,

The light of the world goes out

And the beginning seems like the end...

She led me to a table. Two chairs, and a circle. No crystal ball. No props, no strings. Just her and me. She laid out her hands, soft and lithe, and I took them.

Sometimes,

We live only to exist

And pain is the only thing real...

"Joe had a funeral," I said. "Because of you."

"She called to me, detective," said Lilly. "It wasn't my plan."

"You told him she was dead."

"She called to me. From a better place."

"A better place?! What place is better, for a six year old girl!? A muddy drainage ditch behind a Walmart!?"

"Not a ditch, not a Walmart. A grace of the eternal, a dance among the stars."

Sometimes,

Faith is all we have

A last gasp when hope is gone...

"Close your eyes," she said. "Listen to the rain."

She squeezed my hands, and the world became quiet with answers.

Pain is part of The Plan,

Hard answers live in the shadows

Under the eve of the noonday sun...

Peace is the price of mortality,

Under the spire under the sun

A shadow of something almost forgotten.

Under the shadow under the spire

The life of a six year old girl.

"She needs you to find her detective," said Lilly. "She's calling for you."

"How!?"

"Under the spire...A cross of shade. An answer to your prayers."

Save me!

Robert Mitchell

Help me!

I can't breathe...

Lilly had drawn me a picture, a black scrawl on the back of a napkin. A shadow from a spire. Marking a spot on the ground. A little girl waiting to be found.

*****

Saturday was Matty's day off. He would be sleeping right now. Next to his pregnant wife. The one day Matty override his boot camp habits and let morning come late. Let his wife sleep, with his arms around her.

Safe.

But veterans were light sleepers by nature and natural selection; sounds of potential flicked them awake and alert--a car's tires biting into the gravel outside. Someone getting out--a man.

Footsteps.

Matty opened the door before I could knock. Wearing his briefs. Holding his .45.

"Do you know what time it is?" he asked.

"Yeah," I said.

"You're wearing the same clothes."

"I was up late...I have a lead."

"What lead?" asked Matty.

I showed him the napkin. A spire, in black and white. A shadow of a cross. An X on the spot.

"What is this?"

"It's where we are going to find Amanda."

Matty shook his head, looking down. Sad. Or disappointed. Or both.

"Did you draw this?" asked Matty.

"No."

"The psychic?"

"Can I come in?"

"Yeah," he said.

I followed Matty into the kitchen. "Do you recognize it?"

"No," he said. But he wasn't looking. He was scooping heaps of Folgers, pouring water. Anything but looking.

I put the napkin on the counter next to the Mr. Coffee.

"Matty please."

He sighed and resigned himself, placing an arm on the counter and lowering his eyes closer to the sketch.

"The psychic drew this?"

"Yeah," I said. "Do you recognize it?"

Matt squinted his eyes, then shook his head slowly. About to say no. But he suddenly froze.

"Wait... I do recognize this. The cross inside the circle, the was just like that church that burned down a few years ago. Remember? Off Old Ironsides. Insurance Fraud."

"Holy Names."

"That's right."

"But it burned down."

"The spire's still there."

*****

Holy Names was built on a balloon loan. Short term cash on long term interest. The good Reverend Douglass Cotton has taken every penny the bank would give, which was a lot, knowing the back end would be enough to pay the CEO's pension. Cotton wasn't worried. He was building a monument to God. Build it and they will come. He spared no expense.

And they did come. Holy Names was towering and gothic and filled with stained glass. At once immaculate and intimidating like every church should be, a $100,000 dollar mural of the suffering Christ rising up to the top of the steeple. Blood and thorns and pain, in the brushstrokes of a master artist. And they came from far away to witness. To be blessed. To have sins forgiven.

But Reverend Cotton had sins of his own, including an unhealthy carnal desire with the female members of his congregation. And a reoccurring inability to distinguish himself from the man on the cross. A Jesus identity crisis.

There wasn't much congregation left, when the fire broke out. The pews were saturated in gasoline, and the building went fast. Reverend Cotton was never found. Some say he died in the fire. His church certainly did.

Yet the spire remained. A concrete and steel tower standing lonely in a mud courtyard, skeleton of iron rebar sticking out from the sides where the church once stood. The cross on top still charred where the flames caressed it, perfect circle encompassing the crossbar.

Just like the napkin.

A chain link fence had gone around the lot since the last time Matty and I had been here, and he stopped the cruiser at the gate.

"Property of Terradyne Industries. No Trespassing."

But we were detectives. We carried bolt cutters. And we enjoyed using them.

*****

At six in the morning, shadows were long and stretched: the shadow from the cross so oblique it landed two lots over, plastered on the side of some Terradyne warehouse.

"So where should we look?" asked Matty.

The mud lot was filled with miscellaneous industrial crap. Stacks of rusty chain link, disintegrating tires, crumbling concrete culverts and pipes. Terradyne had probably bought it cents on the dollar. A place to stow their trash.

I held up the napkin. Lilly had drawn the shadow coming down at a 45 degree angle, a vivid x marking the spot on the ground. But the sun was too low in the sky for 45 degrees. We were too early.

"We need to wait for the sun to rise," I said. "Then the shadow will point the way."

"So what time?" asked Matty.

"I don't know."

"What if it rains?"

"I don't know."

Matty just nodded once and wandered off, threading west through the garbage, unwilling to wait for shadows, or the advice of psychics. Preferring to rely on his gut. On the good old fashioned mark one eyeball.

But I waited. Waited for a sign. Waited for the sun to catch the cross and show me. Feet in the mud, waiting for the voice of Amanda Wilson to call to me again.

"Hey Boss! Over here!"

Matty was kneeling down next to some oil drums, unconcerned that his pants were covered in mud. The shadow of the cross was on the fence behind him, slowing coming our way.

"What is it?"

Matty pounded his fist on four drums in succesion. Each clanging with a deep low resonance, the oil or sludge inside echoing with a deep underwater sound. But number four was different. A sharp metallic report, higher and hollow pitched.

The shadow of the cross crept closer.

"Open it!"

Matty nodded and sprung into action, trying to open the lid sealing bolts with his pocketknife until his blade snapped. He stood up and swung his head side to side, looking for a more appropriate tool. Something caught his eye and he dashed off.

I kneeled beside the drum and knocked softly. Not filled with liquid, like the others, the sound too sharp and high. But not empty either. Something inside pressing against the drum and muffling the vibrations.

Matty returned with a piece of rebar in his hands, and I moved back to give him room to swing, his massive frame crushing metal against metal with a spray of sparks. His target was the lid bracket, roiling away under every swing, until it hung broken under a single bent screw.

"Help me get it open!"

Two men, struggling in the mud, under the shadow of a cross. Pulling for their lives, for Amanda's life. Pulling at the seal between us and everything black.

And the lid came away, fell by the wayside. And the light of day shone, inside the drum for the first time.

A little girl, peaceful and light, like she was sleeping. Like she would be getting up for school any moment.

Hair brushed, clothes neat....Skin cold.

Amanda Wilson.

Matty lifted her small frame out like it was weightless, laying her down in a bed of mud and seeping oil. CPR was second nature for him, learned beside bullets and dying friends in a distant land. But never on a child. Never on a little girl.

Frantic, tender. Not wanting to crush her tiny chest.

Fifteen compressions.

Desperate, gentle. Touching her still red lips.

One breath.

15-1. 15-1. 15-1.

Next to a shadow of a cross.

"She's gone."

Like a tolling bell, my phone rang. Like an answer before the question.

A digital chirp and a little girl dead.

Matty's phone rang next. He answered.

"Hello sir....At the Holy Names Church, sir.....We found her sir....Amanda Wilson....yessir...yessir...."

Matty's face went white, like his phone was a live grenade.

"Oh my god."

Matty hung up. His hand was shaking. Not like him.

"What is it?"

"A possible kidnapping."

"What!?"

"Sabrina Meyer. White female. Six years old. Waiting for the school bus."

"Oh my god."

*****

The scene was the same. Same as a year ago. Cops and cruisers everywhere. Flashing lights, men in blue.

Standing around. Doing what they could. Which was nothing.

The ambulance was here too. Probably for the mother. Xanax, so she could answer questions. Or take her to the psyche ward, for something stronger.

But Theresa Meyer had no answers. No leads, no suspicious persons. Just a knock from the bus driver, asking where was Sabrina? A mother's soul going cold in realization, in panic. Remembering the little girl from the year before. Crossing the threshold from life into living hell.

The Sheriff told us to canvas. Just like he had last year. Even though it had been useless.

The only clue here was the pattern.

The morbid connection between two six year old girls. One gone, one found. One year apart.

"Get in the car Matty."

"Aren't we supposed to canvas?"

"Fuck that."

I held up the scrawled address of the Mayfair Mobile Home Park.

"What's there?" he asked. But the answer dawned on him a second later, and he looked down at his feet, some internal struggle going on in his brain. He finally looked up, sad. Then he nodded once and we got in the car and drove.

*****

The park looked different in the day. The hopelessness and decay painfully evident in the bright light. Red spray paint graffiti calling someone a whore. Disintegrating garbage bags taped over long broken windows. Skeletal meth heads smoking cigarettes and fidgeting with their stringy half bleached hair.

I wondered where their kids were. Maybe they were all in drums, just no one noticed.

"Her place is in the back," I said. "Lot #66."

Matty drove slow, and the suspicious residents trickled back into their trailers, to cover up whatever illegal thing they were doing today. When we got to 66, it was a ghost town.

"So you think she knows where this missing girl is?" asked Matty.

"She knew about Amanda," I said.

"So you think she's psychic?"

"How else could she know?"

Matty just shrugged his shoulders. Then until he saw Lilly, standing in her open doorway, and she had every bit of his attention. Beautiful as ever, black hair and red lipstick perfectly in place. Dark and seductive. This time she had on a tight black top, cut high to hide the pentagram tattoo underneath.

"Come in, detectives."

She led us inside, to the same table, this time three chairs neatly arranged.

Sometimes,

Truth is hidden by faith

A circle of repeating expectation

Sometimes,

Backwards is forwards,

And up is down and what's left is right....

Lilly reached out her delicate hands and we joined them around the circle.

"You found her," she said.

"Yes," I said. "Exactly where you said."

"She wasn't breathing."

"No."

"I'm sorry."

"We're here for someone else," interjected Matty. "Another girl is missing."

"I know," she said.

"Sabrina Meyer. 6 years old," he said.

"I know."

"Well do you know where she is!?"

"Close your eyes," she said.

I did, and she squeezed my hand, the world becoming quiet with answers.

Pain is part of The Plan,

Hard answers live in the shadows

Under the eve of the noonday sun...

Peace is the price of mortality,

Under the reckoning under the sun

A shadow of something soon forgotten.

Under the shadow under the circle

The life of a six year old girl.

I felt Matty's hand suddenly jerk from mine, but I kept my eyes closed, still searching, still lost in Lilly's touch.

Save me!

Policemen

Help me!

I can't breathe...

Matty lurched up from his chair and it crashed on the floor. He was shaking, sweating, eyes wide and black like a terrified animal.

He pulled his .45 and pointed it at Lilly's face.

"GET THE FUCK BACK!"

Lilly didn't move, didn't let go of my hand. Just smiled her red lips into something unforgettable.

"GET BACK NOW!!!"

Matt was wild, scary, his gun trembling with the weight of death.

Lilly shook her beautiful features calmly back and forth.

No.

Matty pulled the trigger, and ruined her features forever, painting them across the wall.

I let go of her and she fell to the floor. Already dead.

In a fury Matty flipped over the table, launching it across the room and crashing it into the wall. Then he was down on his hands and knees, clawing at the floor like an animal.

Losing his mind.

When he found something....A ridge, a section where the grain didn't quite match.

A trapdoor.

He smashed away with his fists until he could get his hands around the end and lift it open.

The light of day, shining down for the first time, on a secret basement.

A little girl, still breathing.

"Save me!"