Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

Him. Not Tabby, just as he’d suspected when he heard that she had been violated. Still, he could find out who’d raped and killed her, and then he could send her spirit to a better place. In that sense, his trip here had not been wasted.

Marcia Cordell’s spirit sighed and drifted down to sit on a flowery sofa, her pose proper. “Dennis was always such an odd boy, but—”

“Dennis. You knew him?”

Miss Cordell gave Gideon a withering glance. It was a glance she had no doubt silenced students with over the years. “Young man, you asked me to tell you what happened, and I’m trying to do just that.”

He didn’t point out that he was just a couple of years younger than she had been at the time of her death, hardly a young man. She had the spirit of an older woman, as if she’d carried something into this life too strongly from another. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said contritely. “Please continue.”

She nodded her head. “Dennis Floyd is a neighbor. The Floyd family has been living in that house going on twenty years. Dennis was in elementary school when they moved in, and he was a pupil in my English class several years ago. He was not a good student,” she said with reproach. “He stopped by that night and asked to use the phone. He said their phone was out. Of course I said yes.” Her mouth thinned. “I didn’t see the danger coming until he grabbed me and threw me to the floor like a…like a…” she sputtered, and her face grew red. Even in death, she could blush.

“I’m going to see that he goes away for what he did to you,” Gideon said. “He’ll be punished, in this life and in the next.”

She nodded, obviously relieved. “Dennis needs to be punished for what he did to me. So does she.”

The hairs on the back of Gideon’s neck prickled. “She?”

“The woman who was with Dennis, the one who urged him on. I didn’t see her, not at first. I would have had reservations about allowing a stranger into my home so late in the evening. Dennis knocked me down. He bound my arms and legs with duct tape, and left me lying on the floor while he went to the door to invite her inside.” She seemed to be as incensed at having a stranger in her home as she was at being murdered.

“You didn’t know this woman.”

Miss Cordell shook her head. “No. Dennis called her…” She wrinkled her nose in thought. “Kitty, I think, or…”

“Tabby,” Gideon said softly.

“That’s it.” Marcia Cordell pointed a fading and shaking finger. “She sat in that chair over there and watched while Dennis did unspeakable things to me. She smiled, and when I screamed for help she told me that no one would hear me way out here, so far away from everyone and everything else.” Her figure trembled, and she almost disappeared, as if she wanted to hide from the telling of her death. “When I cried, she asked me if I liked it. She asked me if I had always fantasized about having

a young stud show up at my door to make a real woman out of me.”

“She’s going to pay, too,” Gideon said. “I’ll see to it.”

Miss Cordell nodded her head. “She’s the one who killed me.”

“I know.”

“I thought it was finally over, and then that horrible woman leaned over my body and put a knife to my belly. She…she cut me, and she enjoyed it. When she was tired of cutting, she started stabbing me and…”

Gideon listened, while Marcia Cordell told him every last detail of the way Dennis and Tabby had tortured and finally killed her. He didn’t want to listen to the details, but Miss Cordell needed to tell the tale to someone who could hear her.

He listened, and then he asked, “Is there anything you can tell me about the woman? You said Dennis called her Tabby. Did he ever use a last name? Did you see what kind of vehicle she was driving? Was there anything you remember that might help me find her?”

Miss Cordell shook her head. “They left together, Dennis and that awful woman.”

Which meant Dennis was likely dead, too. He couldn’t imagine Tabby leaving a witness behind. “Time to go, Miss Cordell,” Gideon said as he stood and looked down at her. “I promise you, I’ll make sure they pay for what they did. I’ll take care of them for you. Move on to the next phase of your existence and find peace. You deserve it.”

“So do you,” Miss Cordell whispered before she faded to nothing.

Gideon left the crime scene behind. If Dennis was still alive—unlikely, but not impossible—maybe he held the key to finding Tabby. If ever there was concrete proof that this world wasn’t fit for a child, this was it.

Sheriff Webster stood by his patrol car, still working the brim of that battered hat. Gideon glanced around the overgrown yard. “Where’s Detective Malory?”

“She decided to interview some of the neighbors while we were waiting for you.” He nodded to a small white house down the road. It was almost a quarter of a mile away but still the closest house to Marcia Cordell’s. “Detective Malory seemed to think maybe they might’ve seen something that night. We interviewed them all and didn’t get squat, but…”

A knot of unease settled into Gideon’s gut.

“Dennis Floyd drove by while we were talking and…”

The sheriff didn’t get any further. Gideon turned toward the little white house and ran.