The Scream of Silence (The Little Things That Kill Series Book 0) Read online

  THE

  SCREAM

  OF

  SILENCE

  THE

  SCREAM

  OF

  SILENCE

  A Short Story Thriller

  Pamela Crane

  Tabella House

  Raleigh, North Carolina

  Copyright © 2016 by Pamela Crane

  Tabella House

  Raleigh, NC

  www.tabellahouse.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without written permission.

  The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  www.pamelacrane.com

  Cover Design: Vanessa Maynard

  Other books by Pamela Crane:

  The Little Things That Kill Series

  The Scream of Silence

  The Art of Fear

  The Death of Life (coming soon)

  The Mental Madness Suspense Series

  The Admirer’s Secret

  A Fatal Affair

  The Killer Thriller Series

  A Secondhand Life

  A Secondhand Lie

  To those of you who have stayed silent too long, this is for you.

  Part 1

  Part 2

  Part 3

  Part 4

  Part 5

  Part 6

  A Final Word…

  Author’s Note

  Want more from Pamela Crane?

  A preview of my latest release, The Art of Fear…

  There comes a time when you look into the mirror and you realize that what you see is all that you will ever be. And then you accept it. Or you kill yourself. Or you stop looking in mirrors.

  – Tennessee Willams

  Part 1

  Monday

  I came into this life kicking and screaming, and I haven’t stopped since. But a blinking moment is sometimes the only chance we get to turn life around. One opportunity, one shot at redemption. Unfortunately, I had missed my chance…

  Her face was contorted in a soundless scream, her skin a sickly marlin blue. My heart caught momentarily, but not in the same fear-struck manner that laboring mothers feel at the sound of nothingness immediately after birth. For me the silence was the gift of relief. Then a breath later her piercing wail shattered that hope.

  The wriggling limbs. The squirming body. A sharp cry.

  I couldn’t tell you what I ate for dinner last night, but twenty-three years later I remember that day in excruciating detail. 2:03 a.m., a precise ticking of the clock’s hand that announced an event that would never touch me, yet always haunt me, like prickling fingers running across my naked skin. Fingers that would never let go.

  She was a tiny, bald, pinkish creature—all 6 pounds 4 ounces of her. Eyes an iconic Indiglo blue, like her mama’s.

  Baby Girl Childs.

  That was her name, at least according to the flap of paper taped to the transparent plastic bin that the nurses called a bassinet.

  The daughter of unwedded, unwanted teenager Destiny Childs. And yes, that’s my real name. The famous R&B girl group of the 1990s was not yet a twinkle in their producer’s eye when my parents named me upon the advice of a fortune cookie: “Your destiny will be what you make it.” I could imagine it now…

  My mother, her overhanging belly quivering as tiny feet slithered beneath her taut skin, in a grimy Chinese takeout booth, cuddling in the crook of my dirt-poor father’s armpit. His fingers callused and grimy with construction work labor as they discuss baby names over kung pao chicken. Then suddenly the answer wrapped in a stale but edible pocket: Destiny.

  The irony of my name exposed itself unashamedly as life left me far behind. My destiny was little more than a remnant of a lost hope, a sliver of life that I’d never partake in. I’d only watch it from afar, like a foggy dream after being jarred awake. That baby was the only good thing I’d ever do, although I didn’t know it back then.

  I was glad Baby Girl Childs lost the corrupt part of me that day when her forever family swooped in to rescue her from my ill-equipped clutches, changing her name and identity. At the time, I was only fifteen and reckless—a “waste of space,” a “cold-hearted bitch,” a “user and abuser” as everyone who knew me or dated me or lived with me said about me. All true. I’m no saint. Wasn’t back then, still not now. But part of me hoped I could change that… just not the biggest part of me. The biggest part of me cared only about me.

  Weak, that’s what I am.

  I never looked back with regret on that day when I pushed Baby Girl Childs away as the nurse held her out to me for a last-chance embrace. “You wanna hold her, honey?”

  “No, take her away,” I insisted, wiping the sweat of labor from my forehead. Tears streamed down my flushed cheeks, but not for the loss of my child. I cried for myself that day.

  Baby Girl Childs was a lifetime-ago memory that I stuffed into the hole in my heart and sealed shut… until I heard her name for the first time in two decades.

  Clarissa Beatty.

  I knew her name, but she never knew mine. I remembered Eliot and April Beatty from the adoption paperwork, while I remained the shrouded incubation tool tucked behind the red tape. It had been a closed adoption, after all. But I had stalked the Beatty family once upon a time just to check in. Filthy rich. That’s what stuck out to me back then.

  Now all that stuck with me was the name on the television screen.

  I can’t remember the last time I watched the news, but Fate was pushing her way in to deliver a message.

  A miasma of brake fluid, burnt oil, and exhaust fumes wafted from the Sears Auto Center garage into the cement-block waiting room while the mechanic attempted to revive my POS 2004 Chevy Cavalier on the other side of the floor-to-ceiling window smudged with a collage of greasy handprints. It was a miracle the vehicle even made it to the shop as a black cloud billowed out from underneath my hood, but $600-I-didn’t-have later, I was sitting on a vinyl and metal chair watching my daughter’s name flash across the top of the television screen beside a picture of a smiling brunette, pretty in a girl-next-door way. I searched for signs of myself in the heart-shaped face and found them in the wide mouth and pert nose. And the eyes—still that unnatural blue, like charms on an Indian bracelet.

  A chyron flashed underneath the photo:

  Clarissa Beatty, 23-year-old murder victim

  I gave a little gasp. The chair belched against the concrete floor, plastic suckling my bare legs as I shifted forward in my seat toward the wall-mounted TV. The news anchor’s voice came to me as if from the depths of a black void:

  “Twenty-three-year-old Clarissa Beatty, daughter of Eliot and April Beatty, owners of the locally-owned Beatty’s Pest Control franchise, was found dead in her Briar Creek apartment yesterday evening.

  “Around ten thirty p.m., authorities responded to a call from Beatty’s roommate, Whitney Cardano, when she came home to find Clarissa lying on the floor unresponsive. There was no evidence of a break-in. According to officials, Clarissa was pronounced dead upon their arrival.

  “The investigation is ongoing. No information has been released about the circumstances surrounding her death at this time, but police say the incident is being investigated as a homicide.”

  As the anchorwoman breezily segued from an innocent
girl’s death to the devastating plight of Durham, North Carolina’s lack of funds for road improvements, I sifted through my Rolodex of feelings: an unfamiliar grieving over something I never had.

  It wasn’t that I hadn’t known grief. I’d had my fair share and then some. A mother dead from a cocaine overdose just as I ventured into adolescence, setting me permanently on the path to failure. A father who turned me into an orphan when he up and left me months later, a shattered and twisted Riddler of a child with nothing but pranks to pull. Theft, prostitution, drugs, depression—my own butterfly cycle.

  Life had left me wilted and worn, but my daughter’s death became my resurrection.

  Part 2

  Still Monday

  Nerves shuttled from head to toe, churning the stale vending-machine Oreo cookies in my stomach. On the other side of the braggy lion’s-mouth door knocker that I thudded against the Brazilian cherry wood, I could only imagine what Eliot and April Beatty were doing. Probably skinny-dipping in their Olympic-sized pool filled with hundred-dollar bills. Whatever it was, I was sure it was hedonistic.

  Too many seconds had passed, so I turned to leave. But a swoosh of linen-scented air ruffled the hair hanging lifeless down my back—raven black, like my soul.

  “Can I help you?” a pitchy voice asked, though without feeling.

  I pivoted toward the mournful sound, greeted by a woman whose seamless face suggested her gray-streaked ponytail was pulled too tight. Her skin was shiny and translucent, and her eyes bulged like a bratty child holding her breath. I could spot a botched facelift a mile away.

  “I’m here about Clarissa Beatty. I heard she passed away.” Cut to the chase—that was the kind of woman I was.

  “And you are—?” she replied, waiting for my answer. One over-tweezed eyebrow shot up in a skeptical checkmark.

  “My name is Destiny Childs. I’m her biological mother.”

  **

  Two hours later I had regurgitated my sad story of beginnings and endings—my childhood, unplanned pregnancy, Clarissa’s birth, followed by a CliffsNotes version of life after life as I lost a mother and father, skirted through foster families, and eventually fell face-first into a life of chaos. Then I concluded with a semi-morsel of truth: I was now sober.

  I omitted that I was only twenty hours in and jonesing to get totally blitzed.

  I had only needed to excuse myself once to rush to the bathroom in search of something to calm my nerves, since the cucumber finger sandwiches and chamomile tea weren’t doing the job. Sure enough, in the vanity I found an orange prescription bottle of Xanax—every trophy wife’s secret little helper—with half a dozen 2-mg white oblong pills that would smooth the edges of my sanity. I studied the label. April had been prescribed sixty pills just over a week ago—perhaps I wasn’t the one with a problem.

  I popped one in my mouth and one in my pocket, in case the visit got much longer. I returned to the great room—and truly it was great, with a cathedral ceiling adorned with polished oak beams and a friggin’ stained-glass skylight—to find palm-sized chocolate mousse tortes garnished with steroid-laden strawberries that I planned to overeat.

  “My reason for coming,” I finally got around to, “is that I never got to know Clarissa, and part of me regrets it. I guess… I just want to grieve her. I know I don’t deserve this, but… I dunno how to explain it. Does that make sense?”

  Her rosy face bobbed up and down—ponytail causally swinging—as she swiped at tears, then lurched forward to claw me into an overstepping bear hug. “Say no more, sweetie. Of course Clarissa would be honored you are here, that you’re thinking of her… if she knew you were her biological mother, that is.”

  I pulled back, partly because of the admission and partly because the touchy-feely was making my claustrophobia act up. “She didn’t know she was adopted?” I asked.

  “Well,” April sighed, “we had wanted to find the right time to tell her, but that time never came. It just seemed pointless to crash her world with news like that. It had nothing to do with being ashamed of her past or of you, but we simply never got around to it. I’m sorry to have to tell you that.” Pausing, she lifted her chin, her eyes saucily scanning me for buried secrets. “But I’m curious—how do you know for sure you’re her biological mother? I mean, your story is convincing, but without a DNA test, you can’t know 100 percent.”

  Matching her sass for sass, I stared right back, unflinching. “I’d be happy to take a DNA test to prove it.”

  My challenge defused the conflict, for April’s tension abated as she warmed. “I’m sorry to be so blunt. It’s just that with Clarissa’s murder and all, I don’t know who to trust anymore. But I would like to take you up on that offer. I hope you’re not offended.”

  “No, it’s okay. I understand. I’ll do whatever I can to help make things easier on you.”

  A wobbly smile barely creased April’s caricature-esque visage. “You’re a doll,” she said through her grotesquely inflated lips, seeming to throw her voice like a ventriloquist. “I really don’t know how you can help… other than finding who did this to my baby girl. The police don’t have any leads other than her boyfriend—ex-boyfriend. Seemed like a nice boy to me, from a good family. I don’t know why she broke up with him, but one never knows what goes on in a relationship. God knows Clarissa would never tell me things.”

  So Clarissa instigated the breakup. Was it enough to be a motive for murder?

  I checked the thought, pushing it back where it belonged—into the netherworld. I wasn’t here to solve a murder. I was here for a much grander scheme.

  And then an epiphany alighted upon me—a lightbulb moment, an opportunity-in-waiting. “Well, I’m here for anything you need. Do you need help with planning the funeral? Or what about setting up donations for a cause she was passionate about?” My breath caught in the conversational wake.

  April’s hazelnut eyes scrutinized me warily, as if assessing the phantom behind a comedy and tragedy mask. I waited for Melpomene to strike, as tragedy always had something against me. But today the Greek muse was MIA.

  “What a lovely idea, Destiny. I think she was into saving the polar ice caps. In fact, what if you set up a charity and handle the accounting for that?”

  I had absolutely no idea how one even went about saving a polar ice cap, but it didn’t matter.

  “Absolutely. I’m honored. I’ll open up a donations account and get you the information. Maybe I can even name the charity after her: The Clarissa Beatty Save The Ice Caps Foundation.” A laughable tribute, but April was already tearfully on board.

  She rose from the sterile-white stiff sofa that clearly cost more than my childhood ghetto townhouse—hell, even my current residence—and briskly strutted to a custom-crafted mahogany rolltop desk. Four-inch Miu Miu peep-toes click-clicked across the Italian calacatta marble floors, announcing classiness with every step. Through my Dollar Tree turquoise flip-flops (a shade of blue that matched my eyes) I could feel an unnatural warmth rise from the polished limestone. I imagined a two-year-old version of Clarissa sock-skating across the smooth floors, slipping along as gravity—coupled with an tenuous sense of balance—tossed her to and fro.

  A bold, bona fide Wassily Kandinsky adorned a two-story wall to one side of the room, the abstract shapes and primary colors screaming for attention amid the vast white space. Hideously amateur, I always thought. The handicraft of a precocious child with a paintbrush, if I hadn’t known better—and yes, I’m more cultured than I’m given credit at first glance, a fact belied by my thrift store tank top and ripped jeans. I’ve made it a point to school myself in the arts and the finer things of life, because a guttersnipe never knows when she’ll have to try to fit in with her “betters.” It’s amazing how much hoity-toity trivia one can pick up just reading fashion and architecture magazines.

  Clickety-clacking back to me, April held a blue fabric pouch and gold pen, her scribbles scraping against the echoing silence. A tear of paper later, she held ou
t a check. “How about I make the first donation?”

  My flesh ached over the number of zeroes: $10,000.

  And thus began the story that would sweep me from Tragedy’s grip into the abundant hands of Destiny.

  Part 3

  Tuesday

  Whitney Cardano, Clarissa’s lifelong best friend and roommate, talked a mile a minute, only occasionally coming up for air. It was astounding how much the girl could talk without saying anything. But I smiled and nodded—all part of my due diligence.

  While a murder investigation wasn’t part of my purpose, something about Clarissa’s death poked at me, egging me on to figure it out. My earlier stop at the Raleigh Police Department precinct in charge of the case provided a few bare-bones details, including that the cops ruled it a murder by alprazolam poisoning. Slipped into her drink, perhaps? Apparently it wasn’t that uncommon, the naïve desk jockey divulged, after a healthy dose of my feminine wiles. After explaining I was family—that, and a gratuitous flash of my cleavage—I coerced a glimpse of the autopsy report, which contained more information than I knew how to interpret. But the most important findings confirmed my suspicions:

  Autopsy: RPD830522-34A

  Decedent: Clarissa Beatty

  Identified by: fingerprints, dental comparison, family identification

  Age: 23

  Race: White

  Sex: Female

  External Examination: Well-developed white female with multiple subdural hematomas, one on right wrist and one on upper arm, demonstrative of a physical altercation.