Monsters Exist Book 27

Raymond

Damin

Reid

John

A few weeks later…

The results from the woman’s Isotopes tests came back. This would give us a general idea of where the woman had lived both in her childhood and in the last decade. Based on the low carbon levels in her bones she was most likely from a more rural area where there were lots of trees and a low human population. That ruled out her living in cities or bigger cities at the least. This also ruled out the coastlines for the most so she probably wasn’t from Salem originally and that meant her body was transported from outside the state from the west. Her cause of death was decapitation.

The lab suspected she was from the Montana or Idaho area. If she was, she was a long way from home. The question was: Did she come to Massachusetts willingly or was she kidnapped and brought here? We sent Montana and Idaho PD facial reconstructions and dental records so they could post the photos around the states and check their dental records.

They’d given us a list of missing persons’ case files who fit her description. But that raised another problem, was she pregnant at the time of her disappearance? How much time had passed between her disappearance and killing? Had she been taken and killed quickly or held captive?

The lab testing showed that she and baby Molly had been dead for over seven years. They were killed back in 2011. I’d been reading through the case files. I’d gone through a couple hundred and none of them seem to click.

Art and John’s wedding was in a few days. I had rented suits for Damin and Danon and Kate had her dress picked out. Damin wasn’t excited by any means. He’d been quiet since returning from Marksville to see what Rave and Avery wanted.

He hadn’t said anything, Kate had tried to talk to him but he hadn’t told her anything.

My phone started ringing. It was John, oddly.

“What is it? Is the wedding canceled?” I joke.

“Damin doesn’t have to come if he’s not up to it,” John replies.

“John, he knows about you. He doesn’t care,” I reply.

“He didn’t tell you, of course, he didn’t tell you,” John muttered. “He never tells anybody anything.”

“John, what are you talking about? Did something happen?” I question.

“A hunter Damin knew and hunted with was killed a couple of weeks ago. Avery turned him into a vampire in self-defense and he attacked and tried to kill Rave, Avery and another girl who was a vampire, Damin was present, the girl ended up decapitating him when he attacked them again,” John explained.

“He saw someone get decapitated?” I ask shocked.

“That’s pretty poor for the course actually. I was more concerned that someone he knew died, he might not admit it but it hurt when he lost Tom. Tom was like a second father to him even if he did end up kicking him out,” John continues.

“If this did happen, I honestly think your wedding would be a good thing. It would distract him and get him out of the house for a day,” I reply.

“Would you honestly want to go to a wedding after losing a friend? It’s not like he’s required to be there, he’s not the ring bearer or anything,” John tries.

“It’s not good to spent hours by yourself after experiencing something like that. He needs to talk and deal with the deaths of these people,” I reason.

“Maybe we should delay the wedding, honestly—” John is cut off.

“John, no. If we don’t do it now, knowing you, it’ll never happen,” I hear Art in the background.

“Josh just died, Damin was there. He was decapitated. Either we delay it or Damin has a choice whether or not he comes, those are the options,” he explains to Art and me.

“Fine, I’ll see if he’s coming, Damin!” I call.

I hear Damin coming down the stairs.

“Yeah?” he replies.

“Are you up to going to John’s wedding?” I ask.

“Yeah, why?” he answers.

He was trying to act normal so he wouldn’t set off alarms about Josh being dead.

“Are you sure?” I ask.

“Are you on the phone with him?” Damin asks.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“Somebody called him, he knows,” Damin acknowledges. “Tell him I’m fine and that I’m coming.”

Damin leaves quickly without another word.

“He says he’s coming,” I reply.

“Just don’t drag him around, expecting him to talk to people, okay?” John says finally.

“Sure,” I answer.

“Whatever,” John replies hanging up.

I go to set the phone down when it starts ringing again.

This time it’s Reid, one of my CSIs. Most people claimed he was a genius, I found him nosey. He’d been looking into old cases mainly unsolved ones. If he looked too far, he’d fall into our reality. The reality where monsters existed.

“What is it, Reid?” I ask.

“I found the skeleton’s identity,” he answered nonchalantly.

“What’s her name?” I ask.

“Maeve Donivon,” he replies. “She grew up in rural Idaho and moved to Lynn, Massachusetts eight years ago with her husband, Calvin Donivon. At the time, she wasn’t pregnant but Maeve’s parents haven’t seen or heard from them since they moved out there, her picture matches the sketch but we still have to run DNA to be sure,” Reid replies.

“Good job, I guess I can bring these other files back to the office and contact Idaho PD for her dental record and see if they have DNA for us to match the bones to,” I answer closing the file I was looking through.

“I was also looking into the Colt family murder case, you were at the crime scene, right? Do you know how to contact their surviving son? I want to run through what he witnessed again. It says here his legal guardian is Tom Peters but his death certificate was issued over seven months ago,” he continued.

“No, I didn’t do the follow-up reports or get contacted when that happened, sorry,” I lie.

Reid was seriously going to end up being a target for supernatural beings.

“That’s okay, he’s probably in the foster care system somewhere, I’ll find him,” Reid replies.

I thought about saying something but I didn’t want to seem suspicious.

“I’ll be there soon, see you,” I end.

“Bye,” he hangs up.

I go upstairs. Despite the fact that Damin hasn’t gone out a lot in the past few weeks I decided to warn him to keep a very low profile with Reid investigating his case. Hopefully, there weren’t any traces that led him back to me.

“Damin,” I say opening his door. He’s taken apart a handgun and is cleaning it.

“I’m fine,” he says quickly.

“I’m not here to talk about Josh. One of my coworkers is looking into your case, so you need to stay low. Don’t answer the door and if you go out be careful. He’s trying to find you to ask questions,” I inform him.

“You paid for Tom’s funeral, he’s going to know you have something to do with me,” Damin reminds me.

“Just make sure you don’t mention monsters or demons if he does end up finding out, okay?” I reply.

“I’m not stupid, it’s bad enough I got you and Kate involved,” he answers.

If he looked through Ava and Lane’s family records, Reid could find out about Kate and Danon, too. I hadn’t informed Salem PD that Danon was alive even though they probably knew because I was pretty sure they were the ones who found Kate and gave her Danon.

I left Damin’s room and gathered the files I had scattered around the house of missing people. I place them back in the file boxes and give Kate a heads up that I’m leaving for work. She helped me load them into the jeep and she kissed me goodbye before I left.

I drove down the to the police station and put the files in the records room so they could be sorted later. Reid was at a desk with the Maeve Donivon file. When he saw me, he jumped up with the file.

“Maeve Donivon, formerly Maeve Harris, married Calvin Donivon in 2010, she was twenty-eight. After finding their Idaho town small and too remote they decided to move to Boston, Massachusetts after Calvin got offered a job. But finding the city life too noisy they decided to move to Lynn because it was in-between. After moving away from Idaho, Maeve and Calvin’s parents lost contact with them and reported her missing May 7th, 2011, after Maeve didn’t pick up the phone, her mother was calling to say Happy Birthday. Reports from Lynn said people saw Maeve and Calvin, they were living in a townhouse, witnesses don’t report Maeve looking pregnant before her complete disappearance from the city May 25th, 2011. Their house has since stood abandoned, no trace of where either of them went until now,” Reid read.

“Well, we know what happened to Maeve, but not Calvin. Has anyone taped his credit card?” I ask.

“The last withdraw from their account was on June 8th, 2011. It was 1,500 dollars,” Reid replied. “Do you think it was Calvin who stole the baby’s bones so he couldn’t be identified as a suspect?” Reid asked.

“They were already married, whether or not we had the baby’s bones he’d be a suspect,” I reply.

He didn’t have the bones, we’d buried them in a graveyard to give the young spirit peace.

“Considering he withdrew a large sum of cash weeks after Maeve’s disappearance that would make him seem guiltier, as well,” I continue.

“Where could he have gone, though? He’d have to have gotten a new identity to not be tracked somehow. He’d have to get a new number, credit card, ID, email, also why did he kill her? Why marry her just to kill her and his baby less than a year later?” he questions.

“Let’s try and find Calvin first before we ask questions we don’t have answers to,” I reply.

“They caught him on a security cam withdrawing the money from a bank here in Salem,” Reid continued.

“He was in the area near where Maeve and the baby’s bodies were found,” I mumbled. “I’ll be back later, keep looking to see if you can find a trace of where he went.”

“Right,” Reid answered scampering off back to his desk.

Hopefully, Maeve Donivon’s case would distract him for a while and he would forget about Damin but knowing Reid he’d get back to it eventually.