The Girl and the Black Christmas (Emma Griffin FBI Mystery Book 11) Read online

  “Roses,” I say.

  He looks at me and smiles. “You aren’t temporary. Not you or Sam or Dean.”

  He starts to say something else but stops himself. His expression falls.

  “What?” I ask.

  He lets out a breath and it’s like I can feel the heaviness it’s carrying.

  “Or Millie.”

  Chapter Ten

  I don’t know how to respond. That’s the last thing I expected to hear him say. Millie’s brutal death is still fresh in my mind, and given their history, no doubt it affected him in ways he still has yet to process. But he’s refused to open up about it. I want to be there for him, to somehow help with what he’s feeling, but I don’t even know if he’s allowed himself to feel those things.

  “Oh,” is all I can manage. “You haven’t… talked about her much.”

  “Because I don’t talk about her, she doesn’t matter?” he asks. “She hasn’t earned her space?”

  “That’s not what I mean,” I say. I pause, trying to come up with another way of saying it. But I can’t. “Actually, maybe it is. Since I met you, I have only heard you really talk about Andrew when you talk about your past. You only mentioned anything close to a friendship with Lakyn, and I know what happened between you and Millie is a long time in the past, but I haven’t heard you open up about it even once. Not in all this time.”

  “I know,” he says.

  “But I don’t understand,” I say.

  “What don’t you understand?” he asks.

  “I know Andrew was your best friend. He helped you a lot and was really important to you. Lakyn was important, too. She was helping you try to get out. And Millie was so special to you. But there has to be somebody else,” I say.

  “Why does there have to be somebody else?” he asks.

  “They can’t be the only people,” I explain. “I know going to the trial and spending all those years in jail, a lot of the people you knew before that time probably distance themselves from you. But now that you’re out, don’t you want to see any of them? Isn’t there anybody you miss?”

  He looks at me with the steady calm that I’ve only ever seen in him. It isn’t the same thing as being peaceful or even content. Instead, looks as if there’s simply no other way to feel. As if what he’s thinking is so unquestionable and clear he doesn’t need to react.

  “I miss Andrew,” he says. “And Millie.”

  “Other than them,” I say.

  He looks as if he’s trying to choose his words.

  “Emma, I don’t feel the same things you do. I have far too many crayons in my head, and it’s hard sometimes to choose which one to use. It makes decisions hard. I can’t understand things the way other people do.”

  “You’ve told me that,” I say.

  He nods. “But that means I don’t need other people coloring for me.”

  “Xavier, I don’t understand,” I tell him. “I’m trying to.”

  He nods. “I know you are.” He thinks for another second. “Everybody needs people. We’re not made to be isolated. We feed off of each other, getting validation, energy, love, support. All those things we need to thrive. You get them from a lot of people. You share the crayons you have with the people you meet, and you borrow ones from them to color your world. It’s constant. You know you can always find somebody who has the color you need. I can’t.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  He shrugs. “I don’t have enough slots in my crayon box. But I still need that. Just in a different way. You may need a lot of colors, but the ones I need are the most important ones. I only have space for those. And there is no replacing them. I don’t connect two people just because they’re people. I don’t miss people. I can find use in someone and even like them, but that doesn’t mean I attach to them. Lakyn saw me. She did her best to connect to me. But even she was temporary. I know that. That sounds harsh, but I don’t mean it to. It’s not an insult to her. It’s an awareness of my own ability to stay connected.

  “It’s different when I find one of the colors that I need. There’s a drawer; an attachment. It never goes away, and that slot can’t be just filled up again. People from my past don’t come into my mind. I wouldn’t want to see any of them because I don’t know how to react. I remember tiny details, but sometimes not the big things. I don’t know how much of me they remember.”

  “They remember you, Xavier. I’d venture to say anyone who has met you remembers you,” I say.

  “But what about me? Does the girl who sat beside me in the third grade remember that she used to fold up her gum wrappers and make them into tiny metallic bunnies that she put on the corner of my desk? Or that she wore purple on the first and last day of that year, with blue socks and a red ribbon the first day, and a green headband the last day?” he asks.

  I shake my head. “I don’t know. Probably not.”

  “I do. I remember what she ate for lunch and the grade she got on her spelling test, and that our field trip to see The Nutcracker made her cry because she wanted Clara to marry the nutcracker. But I don’t remember her name. Or her eyes. Or if she had siblings. Or anything about her beyond that classroom,” he says. “I don’t know what she remembers about me. Or if she remembers me at all. I don’t want to see her. I want her to stay eight years old, eating olive loaf and making gum wrapper bunnies. I already processed that version. I don’t want to deal with another version. It’s not worth the exhaustion.”

  I’m struck by that. I pull the coat closer around me and hope for the sun to start warming the air soon.

  “What do you mean exhaustion?” I ask.

  “From getting through figuring it out,” he answers.

  “You’re better with people than you think. I know it’s hard for you, but you cope with it really well,” I tell him.

  An almost sad look washes over his face.

  “When you say someone like me is coping well, it means we’re suffering. Everybody around me lives in a world that was made for them. And I don’t fit into it. People aren’t willing to adapt to me. So, when you say I’m coping. I’m handling something so well. I’m dealing with it. What you’re seeing is me working so hard to make other people comfortable. It’s exhausting.”

  “I’m sorry, Xavier,” I say.

  He shakes his head. “No need for you to be sorry. You didn’t make the world, and you didn’t make me. Besides, there are things that make it better. Like Dean.”

  “Dean is one of your colors?” I ask.

  “He’s more like my outline. He shows me where to go and stops me from coloring in the wrong places,” he says.

  “But you still do sometimes?” I ask.

  Xavier smiles. “Of course. All I am is God coloring outside the lines. Who am I to think I could do any better?”

  He starts to walk down the path again, and I follow him. I don’t know where he’s going, but I figure we’ll get there at some point.

  “Did everyone really believe that The Dragon was dead?” he suddenly asks after a few minutes of walking.

  “Darren Blackwell?” I ask. I blink a few times, trying to process the unexpected question. “Yes. Everybody thought he was dead. There wasn’t really anything else to think. According to his prison records, he was the only prisoner on that transport van. Including the burned and mangled corpse they found after the wreck, everybody who had been on the van was accounted for. The driver walked away alive. That could only mean that the prisoner he was transporting was dead.”

  “The driver didn’t notice it wasn’t him?” Xavier asks.

  “He’s been interviewed since we informed the authorities that he is in fact not dead. According to the driver, he had no idea. His official stance is that when they left the facility, Blackwell was alive. Surveillance cameras back it up. They show him climbing into the van under his own power and the van driving away. The driver’s report goes on to say that he was knocked unconscious during the accident, and the assumption is whatever happened that resulted i
n a living Blackwell being replaced by a blackened corpse must have happened when he was incapacitated,” I say.

  “And they believed him?” Xavier asks.

  “Apparently. No charges have been brought up. The whole matter is still kind of in a legal gray area. Technically, no one has proven that Darren Blackwell is alive. They didn’t capture him after he had talked to you and he hasn’t been seen since. All they have to go on is my testimony.”

  “Who was the body?” Xavier asks. “How does no one know someone went missing?”

  “That’s the part that’s been bothering me the most,” I say. “A person disappeared. He was taken and murdered and used as a prop. And nobody noticed. Now there’s no way we’re ever going to know who that was. The body was cremated and scattered.”

  “We’ll figure out who it was,” Xavier says.

  “We will?” I ask.

  “Of course,” he shrugs. “It’s what we do. That’s our coloring book.”

  I nod. I like the idea of a big divinely endowed coloring book. It’s a good way to look at life. And anything that helps make things make sense to Xavier makes me feel better. I glance over at him and watch as he presses his back to a tree and walks heel-to-toe to another tree, pivots around, and repeats the movement to a third tree.

  “Xavier?” I ask when he starts the fourth side of the square.

  “Hmm?” He looks briefly confused and goes back over the line backwards before starting up again.

  “Am I one of your colors?”

  Xavier stops and looks at me. His head tilts to the side, then he takes a few steps closer.

  “You don’t know?” he asks.

  “Everybody thought you were so close to Lakyn and that you were devastated by her murder,” I say. “But you just said she was just a temporary part of your life.”

  “I was devastated by her murder,” Xavier says. “And she was my friend. I just had no attachment to her. There would have come a day when we would have drifted out of each other’s lives because there would be no reason to still be connected. It isn’t a bad thing. That’s just my reality.”

  “So, that will happen to me? I’ll wear out my usefulness to you and you’ll remember weird things about me, but nothing else?”

  He takes another step toward me. “You believed me when no one else did. You listened to me. You saved me. You brought me Dean and Sam and… and Millie. Emma, you’re my rainbow.”

  Chapter Eleven

  By the time we get back to the cabin half an hour later, Xavier still hasn’t told me exactly what we were looking for, and the cold combined with the conversation has left me drained. I crawl onto the couch with every intention in the world just relaxing for a little while and watching some TV while I warm up. The next thing I know, I snap awake with a pair of wide eyes only a couple of inches away from mine.

  It takes me a breathless second to realize it’s Xavier hanging over the back of the couch to look at me.

  “Xavier,” I say. “What are you doing?”

  “Elliot the ant,” he says.

  “That’s right,” I say, starting to sit up. Fortunately, he takes the hint and moves away so I can get all the way vertical. “You never explained that to me.”

  “Elephants have their graveyard, according to legend. It isn’t scientifically proven, and a lot of people contend that it doesn’t exist. But the point is, popular notion holds it does exist, which means it has validity and the strong possibility of concurrent existence in one or more parallel universes,” he says.

  “You believe in parallel universes?” I ask.

  “It can’t be disproven. I uphold the inalienable right of all people to believe whatever they please. No matter how mind-bending, needlessly complicated, or absurdly out of reach. I won’t begrudge someone their inability to answer the simple question: ‘if there are supposedly potentially infinite versions of me in these other universes, why don’t we share the same consciousness?’ Even though that inherently creates the paradox of the self without the self, the body without the mind versus the mind without the body. How can it be me without me within me? And does that make this the master universe and the others offshoots? Or am I just being a slave to the contemporary aptitude-testing culture that wants me to box myself in while unboxing myself in inane animal analogies. I will still absolutely defend their right to believe in whatever body-thieving mutated carbon copy worldview they choose,” he says.

  I pull the blanket over my lap and give my head a hard shake to make all of that settle into whatever crevices of my brain it’ll fit in.

  “Well, that’s a hell of a demonstration sign right there,” I say.

  “The popular legend of the elephant graveyard contends there is a mystical hidden place on the African savanna, where elephants who can sense they are reaching the end of their lives travel alone to die. They separate themselves completely from the rest of their herds and go through the process of death alone. The rest of the herd processes death much like humans do, by visiting the corpses, touching them, and mourning over them,” Xavier says. “Ants, on the other hand, carry their dead away. If they die within the colony, they let them sit for approximately two days, then take the corpses out of the nest and dispose of them in a pile of other dead ants, or even bury them. If an ant dies away from the nest, others will go and retrieve the body. They keep track of every member of the colony, and if one leaves and does not return, they will send scouts out to look for it. A chemical trail leaves olfactory signals that indicate where that ant went.

  “It’s the same type of trail used to indicate where food is going to be found. In the instance of a death, ants will find the missing member of their colony, carry the corpse back to the nest on their backs, and dispose of it in the same way they would have if it had died at home. There are a few different theories as to why they do this. One is to protect the colony from contamination and illness, going so far as to isolate the corpse apart from the other ants. The other is protecting the colony from enemies by removing the corpse and eliminating the chemical trail. And another is protecting the colony by taking note of where their fallen member died and in what circumstances, so others do not return to that place.”

  “I still don’t think I’m following why Elliot is an ant,” I speak up.

  “The rescue organization,” Xavier says, as if it’s the most obvious thing in the world. “It came for its dead. They didn’t get to take his body, but they took his car and he made sure to cover up any trail of him, down to the false information on the form and taking off his dog tags. But at the same time, those cover-up measures were still a trail that led you to him.”

  “I already knew he was protecting me,” I say. “That was why he came here. To protect me from Jonah.”

  “But how did they carry him away so no one could follow him back to the colony?”

  “What do you mean? I told you he drove in and called to ask another of the Murdocks to come get his car so it wouldn’t be found,” I say.

  “Right. But where? I’ll go so far as to relent that I may be wrong about the path he took around the cabin. I don’t think I am. I still believe you would have noticed his movement in the window just like you did mine, which means he came around the other way. But I’ll go so far as to say you might have missed it. But would you have missed the sound of a car coming across the gravel? Or two?”

  “No,” I say. “I would have heard that. Tires on the gravel are so loud.”

  “Exactly. Then he must have parked in the woods and had the other Murdock come collect him from there. But where? There aren’t any access roads anywhere near the cabin. That’s why it’s such a long and complicated way to get here. Which means he had to travel a far distance on foot before encountering Jonah,” he says.

  “How do you know that?” I ask. “Jonah could have shot him right after he left his car.”

  “Jonah never would have allowed the car to be taken away,” Xavier says. “Which means, he didn’t see it. And whoever came to pi
ck it up didn’t see Jonah or the body. Besides, an injury that would cause Elliot’s death so rapidly wouldn’t allow him to travel through the woods for a long distance. He was shot close to the cabin. Jonah must have used a silencer, or you would have heard the shot.”

  “I already know Jonah was here in the woods and that he shot Elliot,” I say. “None of that is new.”

  “Jonah said he followed you,” Xavier says. “That he had been keeping an eye on you and was watching you. Right? That’s what he told you?”

  “Yes,” I say, squirming slightly. “I really don’t want to talk about this right now. I’m here to honor Elliot.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to do,” he insists. “Don’t you want to know why he gave his life rather than finding another way?”

  “You think you know that?” I asked.

  “How did Jonah follow you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s only one way to access the cabin. He couldn’t have followed you by the driveway or you would have noticed. He wasn’t parked at the cabin when you got here. Yet, he was close enough to shoot Elliot and have him still be alive when he stepped up on the porch. Why would Elliot lead Jonah back here? Or allow him to get near the cabin, when he knew that’s where you were?” Xavier asks.

  “What are you saying?” I ask.

  “Jonah didn’t lure Elliot into the woods. Elliot lured Jonah. He was already far too close by, and Elliot knew the only way to keep you safe was to draw him away. They weren’t trying to get to the cabin when Elliot was shot,” Xavier says. “Elliot was trying to get him away.”

  I shake my head, trying to understand what he’s saying. “I told you he wasn’t here. And he wasn’t standing around in the woods. I would have seen him.”

  “You’re right,” Xavier says. “You would have. If that was where he was. But Jonah was coming at him from the woods. He had to play a game and tempt Jonah out of his hiding spot. Giving his life was the only way because he knew yours was hanging in the balance.”