Daniel Palmer - Helpless

What was Dee doing at the icehouse?

Marvin kept clear of the meadow. He saw Dee go into the icehouse. Five minutes passed before Dee emerged from within the hillside bunker. Dee still had his headphones on. Marvin watched him walk up the hill and vanish once again into the woods. Marvin let several minutes pass with no sign of Dee before it felt safe to reveal himself. It took Marvin a minute to cross the meadow, about a football field worth of tall grass, and reach the icehouse door. A wooden fence, three posts long, stood to one side of the icehouse entrance. The icehouse door was built into the hillside. Light-colored grass grew everywhere. Bright green moss clung to the crumbling concrete of the icehouse’s outer wall. The wooden door was latched, but not locked. Marvin lifted the latch and pushed the door open. A shaft of light cut a triangular shape that widened with the opening door. Marvin stooped low to clear the door frame and stepped inside.

The room was both dark and dank. He looked to his left, saw nothing. He looked right. For a moment, Marvin couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t take in what he was seeing. Arms. Legs. A body. A girl’s body. She looked like a crumpled ball somebody had tossed aside. It had to be her—Lindsey Wells. Marvin’s heart sank.

Then she moved.

“Lindsey! Lindsey Wells! God, I’ve found you!” he cried out.

Lindsey let out a muffled sob.

Marvin rushed to Lindsey’s side, falling hard and slamming his knees painfully against the concrete floor when he reached her. He touched her shoulders. She fell against his chest. Marvin’s eyes adjusted to the minimal light. He could see Lindsey’s restraints for the first time: wrists bound, feet tied, she’d been blindfolded and gagged, too.

Marvin undid her blindfold first. He wanted her to see that she was safe.

Lindsey’s eyes were wide and filled with fear. Her head shook violently from side to side. Her screams, suppressed and unintelligible because of the gag, communicated a profound terror.

“It’s okay,” Marvin said, clutching her shoulders. “You’re safe now, Lindsey. You’re safe.”

Lindsey kept shaking her head violently, screaming through her gag, thrashing her body wildly about.

Marvin flashed on a thought. Why was the door left unlocked?

“Lindsey, I’m not going to hurt you,” Marvin said.

A voice behind Marvin answered. “But I’m going to hurt you .”

Fear swept through Marvin’s body, inducing a momentary paralysis. Marvin tried to turn around, but a thick arm wrapped around his neck and began to squeeze. Hard. The man holding him stood, pulling Marvin off the floor. The only thing Marvin could see was Lindsey, those wide eyes, frozen in terror. Marvin felt something sharp press against his side; he flinched in pain. He flailed his body about, making every effort to get free, but to no avail. Marvin felt the knife pressing harder.

“Close your eyes, Lindsey!” he shouted. “Close them tight and keep them closed!”

The tip of the knife pressed hard against Marvin’s skin. He felt it puncture, then tear, followed by an agony without equal in his memory. Marvin screamed. The sharp point of the knife ripped through his clothes and dug deep into Marvin’s belly without much resistance.

Marvin saw that Lindsey’s eyes were shut tight.

Then, blessedly, his pain was gone.

As was customary in the Jewish faith, Marvin Pressman’s funeral took place as soon as possible. He’d been dead for less than forty-eight hours. In a few hours more, he’d be laid to permanent rest in the ground. His parents lived in Connecticut, but they were too distraught to drive themselves north. Tom arranged for a car service to bring them to the funeral home. Hundreds attended—colleagues, judges, and clients—joining Marvin’s extensive family in a heartbreaking celebration of his life.

Tom sat next to Rainy in the back row of the packed funeral home. The service was brief and dignified, befitting a life lived the same way. Rabbi Toby Hurwitz delivered a thoughtful eulogy, but Tom’s tears came at the end of the service, when Marvin’s mother spoke. Afterward, people in the front rows began to file out.

Rainy turned to Tom as she pulled a tissue from her purse, and whispered in his ear, “Are you all right?”

Tom nodded. “It’s just so senseless,” he said. “So sad and wrong. It was an honor to call him my friend. But hearing his mother speak tore me up inside. It made me think about my mother. It made me miss her. No parent should bury a child. It just isn’t right.”

“I agree, it isn’t,” said Rainy.

Tom wished Jill were beside him. He wanted to hug her close and keep her safe.

Tom had rarely let Jill out of his sight since Lindsey’s disappearance. But he couldn’t make her come to Marvin’s funeral. Not with the memory of her own mother’s service still fresh in her mind.

Tom recalled the phone call from Marvin’s assistant that had shattered his world.

Marvin’s dead, she had said. Marvin’s gone.

Police had found his bloodied body on a running trail in Willards Woods. Later that day, on an anonymous tip, they arrested a serial felon in Millis and found in his possession Marvin’s wallet and the murder weapon.

A bloodstained knife.

Tom had jumped into action, planning the funeral. It was all he could do to help. Marvin’s sister, Amanda, the other lawyer in the family, and a few relatives lived in or near Shilo, but they were distraught and welcomed his help.

The planning was over. Now Tom could ponder the magnitude of what had occurred. Now he could allow himself to grieve.

The crowd soon thinned out, and he and Rainy stood to leave. Outside the morning sun gave way to clouds, and a chill fought its way into the air.

They stopped in front of a missing persons poster tacked to a telephone pole. Lindsey Wells’s cheerful face seemed to be watching them. Instructions on the poster detailed where to meet for the afternoon search.

“Is Jill going?” Rainy asked.

“No. I can’t let her. Believe me, she wants to.”

“Because you think Lindsey’s disappearance might be connected to what Jill found on Mitchell’s computer?”

“Exactly for that reason. Until I know what’s going on, she’s either with Vern and his kids or at home with me. She’s never alone.”

“I see.”

“I wish I could go on the search,” Tom said. “I’m trained, and with a phone call I can get a dozen military-trained search-and-rescue experts here in a blink.”

“Did you offer?”

“I did.”

“And?”

“Lindsey’s father wouldn’t even look me in the eyes when he said no.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s thinking what everybody around here is thinking.”

“What’s that?”

“That I had something to do with Lindsey’s disappearance. That I did something to her to keep her from testifying against me.”

“You told me you didn’t. Should I still believe you?”

Tom glared at Rainy but softened the angry look that flashed across his face.

“Yes, you should believe me,” he said. “Why do you even ask?”

“Because in my profession, I deal with liars all the time. Do you know anything about antisocial personality disorder?”

“You mean a sociopath? Some, I suppose.”

“These people make a lifestyle out of their criminal behavior. They lie without remorse. But they’re not delusional. They don’t believe their lies. They’re just unbelievably good at lying.”

“The navy trained me in kinesics. I got pretty good at telling when people were lying.”

“Well, I’ve come across sociopaths who are so good at lying, they can fool a lie detector.”