Rosewood

The man in the trench coat stood on the edge of the city and watched it burn. He’d seen it all through from the beginning. His thoughts strayed back over the last few months, as he watched the flames rising from the skyscrapers and scorch the air above. Everything seemed so utterly significant now. The pieces in his head were a jumble; none of them seemed to fit, and yet...

His real name was Denzel Johns. Denny to his friends. He knew a lot of things that seemed important to him, but insignificant to everyone else. For example: He knew the words to every David Bowie song; the square root of 1971; and that his wife had not left him because of something he’d done, but more, something he hadn’t done.

He had been employed to investigate the strange occurrences across the States for quite a while now, but this assignment had truly taken home the prize for biggest kick in the ass. The situation had gone from bad to worse in no time at all, and now he found himself knee deep in chaos.

It all came back to Rosewood in the end.

Rosewood was one of those towns on the cusp of society that the rest of the country laughed at from afar. His bosses had described it as a hive of hobos and degenerates. They joked that if there was a pit stop on the way to Hell, it was surely Rosewood.

He had been sent there to investigate the disappearance of a young woman. A teenager, in fact. Mary Porter was the daughter of a renowned industrialist, who had disappeared on her way through the town. Her parents believed her disappearance to be the work of kidnappers. Denny agreed. Her father was a powerful man and his business made it almost impossible to avoid the regular onslaught of enemies.

Regardless, Denny intended to find the missing Miss Porter. He didn’t much care whether she was dead or alive. He’d prefer her to be alive, but if she wasn’t, he’d still got paid, so it was no great loss.
Upon arriving in Rosewood, the first place he made a point of visiting was a small cafe beside the bus station. The neon sign over the door flickered, on and off, so that only one of the “O”’s in “Rosewood” was illuminated against the dim light of early morning.

Once inside the establishment, his mind was overwhelmed by the combined odour of rotten eggs and charred bacon. He looked at the waitress standing behind the counter, a vacant expression on her face, as though she rarely gazed upon a new customer.

‘What’ll it be?’ she asked, after a moment.

‘Tea, please,’ he replied with a curt nod.

She shuffled behind the counter, returning after less than half a minute with a steaming cup of tea. She placed it in front of Denny, along with a small jug of milk. She continued to stare absently as he added the milk to his drink and took a sip. He smiled at her as he replaced the cup upon its saucer, and nodded politely, indicating his approval of the beverage.

‘Thank you.’

‘You staying long?’ she asked.

‘Not too long I shouldn’t think,’ he said. ‘It all depends on business.’

‘What kind of business?’

‘I’m looking for a girl. She went missing in this area not long ago. Her father is very worried. He hasn’t heard from her since before New Year.’

Reaching inside the pocket of his billowing coat, he produced a folded photograph, which he slid across the counter towards the waitress.

‘Do you know her?’

The waitress glanced at the photograph. The image was of a bubbly-looking seventeen-year-old girl, smiling and tilting her head, slightly. The waitress shook her head, sliding the photograph back across the table towards Denny, her face void of emotion.

‘Nope,’ she said.

‘Thanks,’ Denny said, placing the photograph back inside his coat. ‘You wouldn’t happen to know anyone who might know of her? As I understand it, she was just passing through.’

‘King,’ was the waitress’s solitary reply.

King, Denny soon discovered, was the local sheriff; a hard-nosed son-of-a-bitch who had no firm grasp on the concept of right and wrong. For a large man, the features on his face were remarkably small, almost compressed to the point of being disproportionate with the rest of him. When Denny came to him asking about Mary Porter, the sheriff stood up from his swivel chair behind a cluttered and dusty desk, and approached him with the air of a lion sizing up its prey.

‘You some kinda gumshoe?’ he growled. ‘One’a them private eye son bitches think they’re better’n the whole damn police force?’

Denny nodded.

‘I don’ like you folks,’ King snarled. ‘Bunch’a nose-pokin’ pansies like to wet they noses in other folks’ bit-ness.’

‘I appreciate your concern, Mr. King,’ Denny swallowed. ‘But I’m here about a girl whose parents are very dedicated to her recovery and incredibly hopeful that she is well.’

The sheriff moved back around his desk and slumped back onto the seat. He looked at Denny for a long moment before shrugging and with a wave of his hand Denny realised he had been granted permission to continue explaining the situation.

‘Mary Porter is a seventeen year old high school student, and the daughter of Manheim Porter, the industrialist. She went missing in this area, we believe, sometime between January 21 and January 24.

‘The last time she contacted her parents was on Wednesday 30 December to wish them a happy new year as she didn’t think she’d be within the vicinity of a telephone for the week immediately following that.

‘An e-mail was sent to one of her closest friends on January 20, apologizing for being away for the holidays, and promising that they would be able to catch-up when she returned the following week. That was the last time anyone heard from her.

‘Money was withdrawn from her bank account in the early hours of January 24. A rather substantial amount of money for a teenager, I might add, being that it was in excess of $25,000. This would suggest that she has been living off that withdrawal since then, or that she was forced to obtain the money by someone else. Either way, it is a genuine cause for concern as to why she would need such a large amount, leading her parents, and by extension, me, to believe that she was abducted.

‘And, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, Mr. King, we are now in March, and the girl is still missing.’
The sheriff offered nothing in the way of information regarding the missing girl. According to him, he’d seen her last on New Year’s Eve, following a disturbance at a party. The local teens had grown incredibly loud and the police had been called in to quieten them down. King wouldn’t elaborate, but he assured Denny his men’s methods were wonderfully effective.

The party had been held at the home of Bethany Trite, and when he arrived at the house, Denny was shocked to discover how out-of-place it seemed with the rest of the town. The majority of Rosewood, after all, was wood-panelled housing stretched along the blocks in rows of seven, all perfectly parallel with one another right across the town.

The Trite home, however, was a solitary red-brick dwelling, surrounded by a large portion of land, all of it fenced off; the back part of the house seemed to have been transformed into a paddock, a pair of majestic cream coloured horses clopping back-and-forth in the distance.

In contrast with the rest of the town, the place was unnatural. It didn’t feel as though it should exist in such a place. But it did.

The gate was unlocked, and Denny moves through it and up the cobbled pathway towards the front door of the house. The porch was wooden, painted charcoal black so that, were the sun to shine in the sky, it would conduct a considerable amount of heat. Reaching the door, he knocked sharply three times.

He took a step away from the door, so as to be courteous, and waited. There was the sound of shuffled movement came from inside, and a flicker of light from inside through the silk curtains of the porch window. There was a creek, and the door opened, just a fraction to reveal the sullen features of a woman who could have been no younger than seventy. She looked at him, almost squinting, for a long moment, and then spoke, and her voice was incredibly high-pitched.

‘Yes?’ she squawked.

‘Hello,’ Denny replied, offering a half smile. ‘My name is Denzel Johns. I’m looking for Bethany Trite. I do hope I’ve come to the correct residence.’

‘Bethany Trite,’ the woman repeated.

‘Yes,’ Denny nodded. ‘I was hoping to speak with her about someone she may have had contact with recently. Another young girl who seems to have disappeared...her parents are very concerned.’

The woman gazed at him for a long moment, and then took a step back, unlatching the door and allowing it to swing open.

‘You’d best come in,’ she groaned.

Denny entered the house, and was immediately met by the smell of generic soap and the feel of dust in the air. The house was old. The corridors showed that. The main hallway, itself, was filled with oil lamps and ancient furniture.

He followed the woman into the living room, and sat on the settee, in the place she indicated. She sat herself, gracefully, in an armchair beside the roaring log fire. For a long moment they sat, in complete silence, looking at one another. And then the old woman spoke, once again, her voice scraping against the air.

‘You’re looking for a friend of Bethany’s?’ she asked.

‘I am,’ Denny answered. ‘Her name was Mary. Mary Porter. And she was just passing through this area. But I have reason to believe she came into direct contact with Bethany.’

‘Mary Porter,’ the woman said, nodding. ‘I recognize the name.’

‘Well,’ he said. ‘That’s something of a relief, I suppose. Are you Bethany’s grandmother?’

‘No,’ the woman said, shaking her head.

‘But you are related?’

‘Yes,’ the woman nodded. ‘We’re of the same blood.’

The woman then stood, moving past where Denny sat towards the doorway into the kitchen. She disappeared for a few moments, and then returned, carrying a tray of biscuits with her. She offered the tray to Denny, and he took one, offering her another half-smile in return.

‘Thank you,’ he said.

He ate the biscuit, in silence, as he watched her deposit the tray gently atop the coffee table in the middle of the living room. She then returned herself to her armchair and sat, gazing at him, a determined glint in her eye.

‘When do you expect Bethany?’ Denny asked once he’d finished his biscuit.

‘I don’t know,’ the woman shrugged, and then after a moment, she said: ‘What’s so special about Mary Porter, anyway?’

‘What do you mean?’

The woman shook her head.

‘One girl causes all these problems,’ she sighed. ‘You’ve got to wonder why her parents even want her back.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Denny said, straightening up. ‘I don’t understand.’

He could feel it now. Something was clearly very wrong. He couldn’t quite work out what it was, but it was making the hairs on the back of his head stand on end. The woman had begun to stand again, moving towards him, determined.

‘If only her parents knew about all the dreadful things she’s been up to since she went away,’ the woman smiled. ‘They probably wouldn’t even want her back.’

‘I don’t understand,’ Denny repeated.

‘She brought trouble with her,’ the woman said, tilting her head slightly as she moved towards Denny. ‘She was a girl made out of every kind of trouble you could imagine. And she inflicted it on those who tried to help her.’

‘I still don’t...’ Denny began, but she cut him off.

‘I tried to help her, of course,’ she nodded. ‘But there’s no helping some. And lots of the people who were after her didn’t take too kindly to the good intentions of others. So, I was punished.’

‘Who are you?’ Denny asked finally.

‘I’m Bethany Trite,’ the woman snarled. ‘And because of her, they took away my youth.’