The Instruments of Darkness: A Thriller

Chapter XXXIV

Five-year-old Verona Walters went missing from Mill Park in Augusta, Maine, on a bright July day in 2015. She and her father, Chris, had been playing hide-and-seek among the bushes and trees, and Chris had turned his back on her while he counted down from ten to one. In reality, he’d been peeking, unwilling to let his daughter out of his sight, but she caught him looking and instructed him to cover his eyes properly. Later, he would tell detectives that he couldn’t have had his back to her for more than three or four seconds, five tops, before he went searching. By then, she was already gone.

What followed was one of the most high-profile missing persons cases in the Northeast’s living memory, extending first statewide and subsequently into the contiguous regions. The police conducted hundreds of interviews and followed up every possible lead and sighting, however tenuous or improbable. Dogs searched the banks of the Kennebec, boats worked their way up and down its length, and divers explored its depths. Known sex offenders were made to account for their movements. Weeks went by, then months, but no trace of Verona Walters was found.

Inevitably, a number of self-proclaimed mediums came forward, claiming to have received messages either from Verona or from spirits with insights into her fate. Interventions of this kind presented problems for police because they had to be treated with seriousness, even at the risk of investigators being mocked. Leads came in all forms, and who was to say that a “vision” might not be a buried memory, a minor detail witnessed and then forgotten, only to resurface in an altered form?

But there was also the fear that a lead dismissed because of its source might turn out to be accurate, even if only accidentally: the medium who claims a child is in a river, weeks before a body is pulled from the muddy bed; or the psychic who talks of glimpsing a wood or glade in winter, only for the spring thaw to reveal infant bones among pine roots. The result, if those reports had been ignored, was that the police might end up being hauled over hot coals for their narrow-mindedness, and upbraided for prolonging a family’s agony. At the same time, to follow up such claims too quickly or publicly risked appearing desperate or excessively credulous.

Sabine Drew didn’t call the line dedicated to the Verona Walters case. Neither did she send a note or an email, but instead turned up at Augusta PD headquarters on Union Street and asked to speak with Ronnie Pascal, the lead detective on the case. Pascal was off duty when Drew arrived, so Drew was asked if she’d care to deal with one of the other officers involved. She refused. She would, she said, talk only with Pascal.

Ronnie Pascal lived a ten-minute drive from the center of Augusta and wasn’t doing a whole lot that day, so he agreed to come in. Sabine Drew asked if they could sit somewhere private, and he showed her to an empty interview room. He offered her coffee, but she requested water instead. By the time Pascal returned with the bottle, Drew had placed a hand-drawn map on the table.

“What’s this?” asked Pascal.

“A map, obviously,” said Drew. “It’s where Verona Walters is buried.”

A reply of that sort might lead any detective worth his salt to wonder if he should begin recording the conversation after asking the person sitting opposite if they were waiving the right to an attorney. Ronnie Pascal did none of those things, not yet, because he’d spent too long dealing with a great many people who professed to have intelligence relating to the whereabouts of Verona Walters, a not inconsiderable proportion of whom had been wrong, deluded, or actively mischief-making.

“And how do you know that?” said Pascal.

“Because she told me.”

“Told you how?”

But Drew answered a different question.

“In my kitchen yesterday morning, shortly after breakfast.”

Ronnie Pascal was tempted to ask Drew what she’d been cooking and how strong the fumes might have been. He was a confirmed atheist who made a point of walking under ladders and was proud to have been born on the thirteenth day of the month. For this reason, he tried to leave the interviews with mediums and similar wingnuts to his colleagues, liberating him from having to mask a skepticism that curdled too quickly into contempt. Now he realized that here was time he could happily have been whiling away at home.

“You don’t believe me, do you?”

“I’m happy to listen to whatever you have to say,” Pascal lied, “but I also have to warn you against wasting police time.”

“She told me to ask for you specifically.”

“Why? Because she saw me on TV?”

“No, because she met you once.”

Pascal had been tapping his pen on his notebook—nib first, then top, twisting it between his fingers, distracting himself with the pattern. Now he stopped. This was not common knowledge. Two years previously, he had called by the Walters house to take a witness statement from the father about an armed robbery at a bank on Senator Way. Verona Walters was then three years old. She’d shown him one of her dolls.

“Where did you hear that?”

“From Verona. You handled one of her dolls. She told you the doll’s name. Do you remember it?”

“Yes.”

“Carly, right?”

Ronnie Pascal had heard of people getting chills down their spines. He’d even experienced it himself once or twice, but only in the company of violent, unrepentant men. He had never before felt it while sitting across from a mild-mannered, unexceptional-looking woman with a hole in the right elbow of her cardigan.

“Yes, that was the doll’s name,” he said. “But with respect, there are other ways you could have found it out.”

“Yes, I suppose there are.” She didn’t sound remotely offended. “I might be a friend of the family, although I’m not. I could have heard about it from one of your fellow officers, but I have no intimates in the Augusta PD. I only know the police in Haynesville, where I live.”

She concentrated, assembling her thoughts.

“Verona stated that she’d had oatmeal for breakfast the morning she died. She doesn’t like oatmeal, but she agreed to eat it twice a week—except not on weekends—because her mother said it was good for her. That morning, she couldn’t finish the bowl because she accidentally put too much salt on it. Well, she told her mother it was accidental, but in reality she loosened the top of the saltcellar so the contents would spill out. Her mother asked her if that’s what she’d done, but Verona denied it. I think she’s sorry that the final thing she told her mother was a lie.”

Pascal had no idea if this was true or not. The subject of Verona Walters’s last meal with her parents had not previously come up.

“Why don’t you check that with her family?” said Drew. “It might help to convince you of the truth of what I have to say. I don’t mind waiting. I’ve set aside the afternoon.”

Pascal still remained hopeful of finding a rational explanation for this woman’s knowledge of events. He tried to recall if the little girl’s doll had been mentioned in any of the briefings or news reports, and decided it hadn’t. The doll wasn’t in Verona’s possession when she vanished, but in her bedroom at home. He knew because he’d seen it there himself when they’d searched, in case the room revealed any previous contact between Verona and her abductor, and therefore clues as to where she might have been taken.

“I’ll do that,” he said. “I have to warn you again: there are penalties for wasting police time. If for any reason you’ve been in touch with the Walters family in the past, or have some insight into their routines through friends or associates, it would be better if you told me now.”

“I’ve never met the rest of the family in my life,” said Drew. “Just their daughter, and then only in a manner of speaking.”

Pascal asked a female officer to sit with her while he went to call the Walterses. He couldn’t have said why he wanted Drew to have company. It wasn’t that he thought she might damage police property, or harm herself out of some further derangement. Perhaps he was afraid she might begin levitating, or walking through walls.

He made the call from his desk. Larraine Walters was at home with their infant son while her husband was at work. He was a supervisor at the city’s Public Works Department, and had been offered extended compassionate leave with full pay while the search for his daughter continued. He was inclined to accept, but his wife advised him to return to his post. She loved him, but he was driving her nuts, and she was close enough to madness as things stood.

“This may sound like an odd question,” said Pascal to Larraine Walters, “but would you happen to remember what your daughter had for breakfast the day she went missing?”

Even as the last words emerged from his mouth, he was already regretting them. Dumb, so dumb. Thanks to all the forensics-led shows on TV, and the mystery section in the local Barnes Noble, everyone was now an expert on autopsies. But the Drew woman had thrown him. It was her calmness.

“Have you found a body?” Larraine asked. “My God, you have, haven’t you?”

“No, Mrs. Walters, we haven’t. I can’t even explain right now why this might be important, but I’d be obliged if you’d answer the question.”

“She had oatmeal, just a spoonful or two,” said Larraine. “She doesn’t like oatmeal, but we try to encourage her to eat it a couple of times a week. She can be fussy about food, and that’s a slippery slope. Next thing you know, she’ll be refusing to eat her greens and subsisting on fried food and Butterfingers.”

He noted her use of the present tense and wondered how often she now found herself lapsing into the past when speaking of Verona.

“Did she refuse to eat her oatmeal that morning only because she doesn’t like it?”

“No, she claimed the top had come off the saltcellar and doused the bowl, but I suspect she might have tampered with it. Verona has more tricks up her sleeve than David Copperfield. Now, can you please give me some idea of what this is about?”

Pascal contemplated just how much he should share with her: a little, and no more.

“Are you or your husband acquainted with a woman named Sabine Drew?”

There was silence while Larraine Clark rummaged through her memory.

“I don’t recognize the name. Have you spoken to Chris? She might be someone he knows from work.”

“I’ll ask him, but I wanted to talk to you first. The name doesn’t ring any bells at all? That’s Sabine Drew.” Pascal spelled it out for her.

“Definitely not. Who is she? Do you think she had something to do with Verona’s disappearance?”

“No, that’s not why I’m asking about her.”

Pascal wasn’t sure if this was true. He knew certain types of killers liked to circle a case, even involving themselves as potential witnesses. They returned to the scenes of their kills to relive the experience. They drew pictures. Maps.

“Then why are you asking about her?”

“Because she wants to help,” he said, “and before I engage with her further, I thought I’d try to find out more. Oh, and another thing.” It had just struck him. “Your daughter had a doll: Carly.”

“She still does,” said Larraine, and he experienced the correction as a slap.

Dumb again. Three strikes and you’re out.

“Of course. I apologize. Did you ever take Carly to be repaired? You know, to a doll’s hospital, or a seamstress?”

“No.”

“Did Verona ever lose Carly, only to have her returned by someone: a stranger, a woman?”

“No. These are odd questions, Detective.”

“I did warn you. If I send you a picture of this woman by email, will you look at it and tell me if she appears familiar?”

“Sure, I’ll get right back to you.”

He could hear the eagerness in her voice. After so many dead ends, here might be something resembling progress at last.

Pascal hung up, called Chris Walters, and asked him much the same questions, with much the same replies. Pascal ended the conversation and returned to Sabine Drew. She was speaking with the female officer about lasagne recipes. It helped, said Drew, to spread pesto over the top just before the lasagne goes into the oven.

“It makes it smell like Italy. Or what I always imagine Italy smells like, never having been.”

She gave her attention to Pascal.

“Well?”

“With your consent,” he said, “I’d like to send a photograph of you to Verona’s parents.”

She frowned, but not without amusement.

“You still think I might have met them.”

“I’m a rationalist, Ms. Drew.”

“And a Holmesian?”

He frowned.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“?‘When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.’?”

“Oliver Wendell?” offered Pascal.

“Sherlock,” said Drew.

“I don’t read mysteries.”

“That’s understandable, given your line of work. I presume the plots stretch your credulity. And no, I don’t mind your taking my picture.”

Pascal used his cell phone to snap three shots of Drew before emailing them to Larraine and Chris Walters. He sat at his desk to wait for their replies. Minutes later, both came back to confirm that they’d never seen the woman in the pictures.

Pascal went back to the interview room, thanked the female officer for her help, and sat alone with Sabine Drew. From now on, he informed her, he would be recording their exchanges. He surveyed again the map she’d drawn. It showed paths through trees, and a road to the west. There were also two houses, although he couldn’t tell the distance between them because the map wasn’t drawn to scale.

“Explain to me again how you knew about the oatmeal and the doll,” he said.

“Verona told me.”

“Verona Walters.”

“Yes.”

“Did you see as well as hear her?”

“Yes, briefly.”

“How did she look?”

“I’m not being facetious,” said Drew, “but she looked dead.”

“Can you elaborate?”

“I could see bruising to her neck. That was how she died. He strangled her.”

“?‘He’?”

“She couldn’t see his face, but she could hear and smell him. It was a man. She wasn’t sure if he meant to kill her. He was trying to get her out of the car and she fought him. He pressed his hands hard on her neck and she felt something break inside. Then she was gone.”

“Why couldn’t she see him?”

“He put a bag or hood over her head when he abducted her.”

Pascal was taking notes. If, by some wild stretch of the imagination, there was a shred of truth to what he was hearing, the man who had abducted Verona Walters didn’t want her to see his face. Either he didn’t wish to look at his victim as he killed her—and some killers preferred not to—or he intended to release her, possibly after sexually assaulting her or following the payment of a ransom. But the Walterses weren’t wealthy, which hardly made them an attractive target for a kidnapper.

“So you say he killed her?”

“I don’t,” said Drew. “Verona does.”

“And then?”

“He buried her.”

“If she’s underground, how could she have helped you to create a map?”

“Is that supposed to be a clever question, Detective Pascal?”

For the first time, she expressed irritation.

“Just a logical one,” he said.

“Her body is down there, but another part of her isn’t.”

“Her soul? Her ghost?”

“Call it what you like. I don’t have a name for it, or any of them, not beyond ‘the dead.’?”

“Them? You mean there’s more than one?”

“Not with Verona. I’m speaking in general terms. She’s not the first for me.”

“And do they all speak to you?”

“Only some. The rest talk to themselves, or to the people they’ve left behind. I’m not convinced all of them can see me. If they do, it may be that I’m present as a specter, a flickering in the dark, much like they sometimes are to me. The majority don’t stay very long anyway. I blink, and they’re gone.”

“Gone where?”

“Since they don’t come back, I’ve never had a chance to ask. Nor would I wish to, even given the opportunity. I try not to have unnecessary discourse with them. I find it’s best to ignore them unless they’re insistent, or I can be of help.”

“Why is that?”

“Because, Detective, the dead are very dull, and the ones that aren’t dull are frightened, angry, or sad. That’s not company anyone would willingly keep.”

“Yet you say Verona Walters spoke to you.”

“And I to her.”

“Why?”

“Because,” said Drew, “I went looking for her.”