Flashback (Kendra Michaels #11)

“Are you sure?”

Chloe pointed to tiny lightning bolt decals on the left and right footrests. “Mom loves Harry Potter. She put these here herself. And these blue scratches on the handles came from our front railing at home. This chair is hers.”

Paula flinched and then nodded. “Okay.” She spoke to her partner. “Let’s make sure our teams go over this whole trail again, Williams. Maybe somebody saw this chair being moved out here today. If so, there’s a chance—”

Everyone was suddenly looking behind her. She turned to see a grim-faced uniformed officer climbing through a clump of brush and back onto the trail. “Detectives… You should take the girls away now.”

“No! Why?” Chloe screamed as she jumped to her feet. “Why do we have to leave her? I have to find my mom!”

Detective Williams put his hand gently on Chloe’s shoulder. “Let’s get back to the car and let these people do their work.”

Chloe broke free and bolted toward the brush. “Mom!”

The uniformed officers rushed toward the girl and tried to block her path, but Chloe bent over and dove into the brush. Williams grabbed her ankles at the last second and pulled her back. She was still screaming and crying as he carried her back toward her sister.

Paula looked at the faces of the officers coming back from the other side of the hill. Grimmer than grim. Shit.

She pushed through the brush and looked down the ridge.

There, hanging from an oak tree, was the body of Alyssa Morgan. Her hands and feet were bound by the same green-and-white nautical rope used to wrap around her neck and the highest tree branch.

Paula turned away. In her years on the force, she’d seen more than her fair share of monsters. But with this poor woman’s little girls now sobbing less than a hundred yards away, she was sickened in a way most of the others couldn’t touch.

She sat on a large rock at the ridge’s edge. And rocked herself back and forth. “Jesus,” she whispered. “Dear Lord Jesus.”

CHAPTER

1

FIFTEEN YEARS LATER

Kendra Michaels looked at the sea of faces in front of her. She was in the general-purpose room at the Pacific Villas Senior Living Community, where she’d set up her synth keyboard in front of a dozen residents afflicted with profound dementia. She’d greeted each of them as they were brought in, but the audience members were not even remotely responsive to her or, as far as she could tell, any outside stimuli.

“You want to hear some music?” She smiled at the group.

No reaction.

She smiled again. “I’ll take that as a yes.” She began playing Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons’ “December, 1963” on her keyboard. Aside from rhythmic swaying from a few staff members, there was still zero reaction from the crowd.

Kendra wasn’t surprised. She was a music therapist with a successful practice in San Diego, and she’d seen the same response—or lack thereof—literally thousands of times. Much of her academic research focused on the ability of music to reach and help certain patients form connections with the outside world. She’d had greater success with younger subjects, particularly autistic children, but she had recently begun a promising study involving elderly patients in advanced stages of dementia. Unfortunately, none of the seniors in front of her were exhibiting any positive signs of—

Wait.

In the second row, a woman in a floral sweater began to bob her head in time with the music.

Don’t get too excited, Kendra told herself. The woman might just be drifting off to sleep.

No. She was listening.

And feeling it.

The woman’s eyes opened wider.

And was that… a smile?

Kendra smiled back and raised the keyboard’s volume. Staff members smiled and gestured toward the woman, obviously surprised and pleased at her engagement.

But her attention faded after a couple of minutes, and despite Kendra’s best efforts to re-engage with her, the woman never responded to the twenty minutes of music that followed.