Lucky Number 23 Read online

  A buzzer came from the radio--the emergency alert system was activating.

  I turned up the volume a husky, male voice started the announcement.

  "Interstate 35 has been temporarily closed between exit 102 and 103 so that police can properly survey a murder scene. The murder suspect, Ivy Bell, is still at large and considered armed and dangerous. Bell was recently reported missing from a halfway house in Missouri, and was last seen driving a blue minivan license plate C-J-M-2-3-2-3…"

  I slammed on the rusty brakes and the van skid to a stop. Could it be? Scrambled out of the van and ran around to the front. The license plate was illuminated, and a wide smile crept across my face. A sob escaped my throat, then a laugh. The next minute I was on my bottom, on the side of the interstate laughing hysterically. I couldn't believe the luck I was having. C-J-M was Carter John McCourt, and 23 was my lucky number. The most important number in the world and there it was, twice, on the license plate of the minivan I had stolen, the van I would have to ditch, right here.

  I hadn't even noticed the license plate when I took the van. If I had taken my time, I would've remembered to take them off and switch them with another car in the lot. What kind of car dealership leaves the license plates on the cars anyway? A crappy used one ran by a dead guy named Rudy, that was the kind. I couldn't be too annoyed though. Rudy and fate had worked together nicely to get me into this vehicle, and now, I was only two hours at most from Cedarville.

  I got up off the ground and went back to the van. I grabbed my purse from the passenger seat, tossed the keys on the driver's like I had with the sedan, and started walking down the highway in the dark.

  This part of the highway was rural and would remain desolate until I got to Cedarville, I remembered as much from the map directions I had before tossing my phone. My boots scraped across the gravelly shoulder of the highway, and I kicked larger pieces with my foot. My mind kept drifting back to Carter, Ester, John and all the nights I had spent in the McCourt Manor.

  "You must use the light within yourself to drive out the darkness" John used to tell me.

  When everyone else thought I was an evil little girl, full of malice and hate, John and Ester knew there was still light inside of me. I just needed to be broken, cracked so that that light could come out. Thinking about the past made me angry, and the more I thought about being broken, the more rageful I became. They could have fixed me, made it so the light could come out, but I never got a chance to be saved before I was stolen away by social services once again.

  I kicked a large rock harder than I should have and yelped as I hopped up and down on the foot that wasn't in pain.

  "Fuck!" I screamed in pain.

  A cow mooed loudly in response from somewhere nearby.

  "Fuck you!" I yelled back towards the sound coming from a dairy farm a few yards up the road.

  I pinched my nose as the air began to smell of manure. The further I walked the stronger the smell became. Frustration and exhaustion were both taking hold of me, but I knew there was no other direction to go. Cedarville was only a two-hour drive. I did the math in my head and walking a mile every 15 minutes would get me there in about 30 hours. I knew I couldn’t walk for well over an entire day straight.

  I needed to find another vehicle or catch a ride with a driver.

  "Please, let a damn truck come by," I begged the stars.

  I tried to keep my mind on Carter, but when I thought I had a clear, detailed memory of his face, Rudy would invade my thoughts. His bloody, battered, face. His broken skull. The brain matter and scalp stuck to the flashlight. I could still hear the crack of his skull as I brought the metal down, his shouts slurring together as I brought the flashlight down again, and again until I heard nothing.

  I couldn’t even remember what his face looked like before I destroyed it. All I could picture was greasy, straight, black hair, and pudgy, red cheeks. It was nothing at all like Carter’s wavy chestnut locks and strong jaw. I hoped he hadn’t changed much. Even at 12 years old he resembled his father, John, so much. They had the same color hair, although Carter kept his long. Their eyes were the same sage green; they even walked the same way and used the same sideways smirk when they wanted you to trust them.

  I whirled around as a coyote howled somewhere in the distance behind me. I knew the animal was far away, but the headlights coming over the hill drew my attention away from the howling. I flipped my hair over my shoulder and brushed the gravel dust off my hoodie. A semi truck was approaching. I couldn’t tell if the driver was male or female, but it didn’t matter. All that mattered was that the truck was heading North, towards Cedarville.

  I stuck out my thumb and took a step onto the highway road. No other cars were traveling in the middle of the night, and I knew the truck’s headlights would make me visible enough to the driver who was only a few dozen yards away.

  The brakes screeched a bit as the truck slowed down and pulled over to the shoulder just ahead of where I stood. I jogged up to the passenger side. The driver wasted no time in pushing the passenger door open. The tuck sat a few feet above the ground, and I had to pull myself onto the bottom step to the cab before I could see the driver’s face.

  “Come on now sweetheart, get on up here,” A gruff, but feminine voice called from the darkness of the cab.

  She leaned forward, and I could make out her old, pasty, wrinkled face. A black wool beanie was pulled down over her stringy, grey hair and an unlit cigarette hung from her thin lips. I paused for a moment before I climbed up and looked at her face.

  “You want a ride or not?” she asked coldly.

  I smirked and told myself I would remember her face.

  “Yeah, I want a ride,” I nodded and told her.

  She flicked a zippo open and lit her cigarette without breaking eye contact. I slid into the passenger seat and took the cigarette she offered to me.

  “Thanks, for the ride and the cig.”

  She leaned towards me and flicked the lighter back open. The blue-orange flame came to life and lit my cigarette faster than I expected. I choked on the first drag, and the driver choked on her laughter. She pulled a handkerchief from her pocket and coughed into it until she caught her breath.

  “Sorry, name’s Sandy,” she said when she could finally speak. “I’m only going to Cedarville. That’s the end of my line. You’ll have to pick up with someone else up there. I don’t take no one over the border,” she warned.

  “That’s perfect. I’m going to Cedarville,” I assured her.

  She started the ignition, and the truck roared to life.

  “You got a name or what?”

  “Kaitlynn,” I told her.

  My sponsor's name was the first to pop into my head. There was no way I would tell her my real name. Everyone in Minnesota knew by now that a killer—Ivy Bell, was on the loose and dangerous. I was flattered. I had never considered myself dangerous before, selfish, narcissistic, sure. I had plenty of therapists that scrawled words like that across their legal pads, but dangerous was a word most wouldn’t associate with me. The McCourts would not think I was someone to be called dangerous. I was resourceful, determined, willful and unstoppable. If Rudy hadn’t tried to stop me, he’d still be alive. His death was his fault, not mine. I pushed the guilt aside and took a long drag of the cigarette.

  Sandy shifted the truck out of idle and pulled back onto the dark highway.

  “What’s in Cedarville? Town’s small, not much going on there,” Sandy’s voice was scratchy and deep for a woman.

  “My family,” I responded and stared out the passenger window.

  There were thousands of stars in the clear sky. I gazed out the window like I used to gaze out of my tower room at the McCourt Manor. I would spend hours plotting out the constellations that Ester taught me. I wrote stories about their meanings and allegories about the figures they represented. John didn’t want me to write, but Carter slipped papers under my bedroom door some nights until he was caught. We both learned a
powerful lesson in obedience that night.

  “I’ve lived in Cedarville for sixty-four years, and I’ve never seen your face,” Sandy answered casually. “Only got about 1,200 people up there. Figured I had seen every face there was. You lived there long?”

  I gulped and turned to face her with a smile on my face.

  “I lived there when I was a little girl, but I’ve been away for a long time. Twelve years this spring since I’ve been back.”

  “What’s your last name? Are your parents from Cedarville?”

  I shook my head and decided to give the inquisitive old woman a little bit of truth. Wouldn’t do me any harm and maybe she could point me in the right direction when we got to Cedarville.

  “I don’t remember my real parents. I lived with the McCourt’s for four years as a foster child. I’m going back to them.”

  The woman’s face went slack, and her eyes narrowed. She turned back to the road and ground her cigarette butt out in the cup holder ashtray. She drove in silence for half an hour and snuck glances at me every five minutes or so. She didn’t think I noticed, but even in the dark, her reflection was glaring in the window I rested my forehead against.

  “So, you’re going back to Cedarville to see Ester and John?” she finally broke the silence.

  I sat up in the seat and whirled to face the woman who had waited thirty minutes to announce she knew my parents.

  “How do you know my parents?” I blurted out.

  “They aren’t your parents, girl. Not fit to be parents those two. Dr. McCourt is a disgrace to our community!” She spat out the window and put another cigarette to her lips.

  “How dare you talk about my father that way! He’s the best psychologist in Minnesota!” I insisted.

  “He was maybe,” Sandy agreed without taking her eyes off the road to look at me, “but after the scandal with those little girls, well, he wasn’t going to be welcome back in Cedarville, even if he were still alive.”

  The world stopped, and all the breath rushed out of my body at once. My mouth dropped open, and I stared at Sandy in shock.

  “What?” I whispered as tears filled my eyes.

  Sandy turned and looked at me, “I’m sorry to be the one to tell you this, but that monster died five years ago. He was killed two days after they took him out of solitary confinement.”

  “He wasn’t a monster,” I whispered again, but under my breath this time.

  “Were you one of the girls? You look about the right age. I know there were a few young ones in that house when it was raided.”

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cold glass of the passenger window. Tears streamed down my face freely. John was gone. The one person who could have fixed me was dead. Maybe I wasn’t meant to be fixed. Maybe Carter could fix me. A million different thoughts raced through my head, but I finally settled on a question.

  “What about Ester and Carter? What happened to them?”

  Sandy snorted, “That no good wife of his claimed he was abusing her, claimed she had nothing to do with those experiments? She testified against him, spent a year at a mental health rehab center, then disappeared somewhere into Canada, as rumor has it. The boy still lives in Cedarville. He makes little glass trinkets he sells at the gift shop and the renaissance fair down in Bloomington every summer. Mostly keeps to himself, but we all know something isn’t right about him. I mean, look who his parents were. You know, everyone thinks John killed the girls who ran away?”

  I stiffened in the seat and turned further away from the woman who was shattering my world like it didn’t matter. Ester was gone too, but Carter was still here, still in Cedarville, and I was going to find my way back to him. Together we could find Ester in Canada and be a real family again. The family I always wanted.

  “He didn’t kill anyone,” I insisted and sniffled loudly.

  I wiped my snotty nose across the sleeve of my hoodie. Rudy’s blood had left brown stains on the wrists of the sweater, and a few splatters covered my chest like sloppy ketchup falling off a juicy hamburger. The analogy immediately took my mind back to his mashed-up face. Sandy hadn’t said a word about it.

  Sandy clicked her tongue and looked back over at me, eyeing me up and down.

  “Yeah, he fucked you, little girls, up good, didn’t he?”

  My fists balled against my thighs. The mile markers had been ticking by, and we only had another hour or so to go until we got to Cedarville. Sandy just needed to shut up.

  I stared out the window and turned my back to her. My feet were drawn up underneath me, and I tried to make myself as small as possible against the passenger door. Maybe she would get the hint that I just wanted to be left alone.

  A few minutes went by, and Sandy didn’t say another word. The clock on her dash said it was almost midnight. The temperature read only 26 degrees, much colder than just a few hours south. I knew it would only get colder though and I welcomed the long winter freeze. There was nothing better than being stuck inside McCourt Manor and listening while Ester read aloud to me by the fireplace in her room. I was the only little girl allowed in her room. None of the others had stepped foot inside. I was special—not as special as Carter, but of all the girls, I was the one they favored. I was the daughter they always wanted and couldn’t have—their lucky number 23 — the one they could save.

  I bit my lip as tears rolled down my face. John McCourt was dead. Ester was long gone, but I knew she wanted to be found. Carter would go with me to find her; I know he would. He loved his mama more than any of us; he didn’t want to go to Canada alone.

  “I know your name ain’t Kaitlynn,” Sandy broke the silence. “Ain’t none of the girls those monsters kept trapped in that house named Kaitlynn.”

  I shifted in my seat but didn’t respond. We were almost there, why couldn’t she leave well enough alone?

  “I used to have them all memorized you know. We used to make a game of it around here. See who could match all the names to the numbers. Hell, when my daughter was in high school, some asshole kids even made a card game out of it with all the girl's faces on them. Cedarville is full of sickos I tell you; the McCourt’s were just the worst of them,” Sandy rambled on.

  “Stop it! You don’t know anything about them!” I shouted. “They were good. They could heal the broken, revive the weary. They gave me a new life when no one else wanted me, and I won’t have you speaking about them like that. Calling them monsters and insinuating terrible things.”

  “Hmpf! You talk about them like they were some messengers from God. Girl, that no good quack of a doctor and his wife were playing mad scientist in that house. They weren’t saviors.”

  My face was growing hot, and my breaths were labored. Rage was bubbling up inside of me, but I knew there was nothing I could do right now. I needed her rig to get me to Cedarville. The temperatures were dropping fast, and I didn’t want to think about walking the rest of the way.

  “You okay over there?’ Sandy asked with narrowed eyes and concern etched on her face.

  “Fine,” I responded through gritted teeth.

  “Have another; you’ll feel better. We’re almost there.”

  Sandy held the pack of cigarettes out to me again. I took the pack and sat it on my lap after taking a cigarette. A lighter sat in the cup holder—a regular orange Bic, not the fancy zippo she kept in her shirt pocket. I grabbed the orange lighter and lit the cigarette. Sandy’s eyes were on the road, so I slipped the lighter in my hoodie pocket. If she saw me, she didn’t say anything.

  I leaned my head back against the window and took long drags of the cigarette to try to calm myself. Dr. Neumann’s breathing exercises were much easier and more effective with a cigarette in my mouth. I hadn’t smoked since going to jail, and we weren’t allowed in Lochnar House, but the nicotine crept through my veins like an old friend coming to town and hugging me. I sighed between drags and thought about Ester and her long, skinny cigarettes. She always looked so elegant holding the lady cigarettes
between her slender, diamond-adorned, piano player fingers.

  My hands looked nothing like Mama Esters. I looked at my short, fat fingers, holding the cheap brand cigarette from a truck driver and scoffed at myself. I was so far from the beauty and elegance of Ester, but once I was home, at McCourt Manor, I would be able to change, to get back to who John and Ester wanted me to become. Carter would help me; he had to.

  The trees on the highway slowly faded into the edge of a town. I could see the big, lit up, yellow sign for the truck stop and the farms that made up the border of the town. The highway was bright along this stretch with more lights and signs to see.

  I sat up straight and took in my surrounding. I remembered passing that same truck stop in the back of the social service worker’s car when they took me to the McCourt’s for the first time. My leg bounced in excitement, the same way it did when I was a kid. I never thought coming home could feel this way, but now, it seemed like all my troubles would never catch up with me. I wouldn’t need to worry about my parole officer, or Barbara, or Dr. Santiago or Dr. Neumann, or Kaitlynn, or the dead man at the car dealership ever again. I was in my safe place, and as soon as I got home, Carter would protect me.

  Chapter Eight

  I was out of the semi-truck and racing across the parking lot with Sandy’s orange lighter her pack of cigarettes, and a 50-dollar bill I spotted in her center console before the old truck driver could climb down and swipe her card at the diesel pump. No goodbyes were needed. Besides, she had made it quite clear what she thought about my family; I didn’t want the old bitch anywhere near McCourt Manor. I’d walk the rest of the way.

  I burst through the trucker entrance and beelined for the front door. The truck stop was almost empty. A cashier was restocking cigarettes behind the counter while a janitor was mopping the hallway leading back where the showers were. Neither of them looked up as I pushed open the glass exit doors and left Sandy long behind me.

  Regret crept in with the freezing temperatures. The last reading on Sandy’s dash I remembered seeing said 20 degrees Fahrenheit. My hoodie wasn’t going to cut it, but I couldn’t go back inside and steal anything warmer. Sandy would come in any minute. I had to keep going.