Violet 24 Read online

  Violet 24

  Baigh Queen

  Copyright 2019 by D. Miles

  All rights reserved

  Violet 24

  A lullaby is supposed to be calming, but when Gwen Weaver hears it coming from a top hat in the local park, surrounded by kids, all she can do is grab them and run. The signature is chilling to anyone who knows where it’s from; the Roundabout Bomber of the eighties. After he vanished in 1991, it seems like he’s back in Gwen’s little town of Goderich, and he’s after the children.

  But when the police department releases a statement that the bomb was nothing more than an accident, Gwen publishes her own article on her blog about what really happened. Controversy is sparked, and suddenly she has to deal with an old nemesis from high school that became the head of the police force, and a mysterious new woman with tempting words. Investigating is difficult while injured, but with help from her friends Gwen thinks she can figure out what’s going on before another bomb goes off.

  Table of Contents

  More by Baigh Queen

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sneak Peek at Rouge 52

  About the Author

  Online Details

  Cover photography copyright Unsplash.com/Eberhard Grossgasteiger.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  More by Baigh Queen

  Violet 24

  Rouge 52 (coming soon)

  Chapter One

  I’m not sure when it happened, but I’ve become a cliché. I’m the millennial that can’t hold down a job, lives in my mother’s basement, and keeps saying that my blog is going to take off. Of course, I’m the only cliché millennial I know; every other person in my graduating class is working multiple jobs while going to school, and somehow still finding time to party every other night. At least according to their social media. So while Becky Henderson is Spring Breaking in Hawaii, and my best friend Thea Henderson is with her, I’m sitting in my single Starbucks town ordering small coffee after small coffee just to have an excuse to use their Wi-Fi.

  I lean back in the chair and watch two beat cops walk by, chatting happily in the spring sun. They’re both over fifty, and probably getting ready to retire but what’s the point so young? They could work well into their nineties without having to do anything more than scold a teen for skateboarding without a helmet. As if on cue a kid rolls by with full padded armour on their knees and elbows, and a helmet. I can’t stand to look at the lack of even small criminal activity, so my eyes drift to the community board beside me. Bake Sale @ Goderich Middle, Goderich Storage Auction, Need Your Dog Walked I’m the One, et cetera, et cetera. All dated for over a month ago.

  I close my eyes instead of rolling them, letting my head sink back. When I find the strength to lift my eyelids I’m looking at Brett Ward’s amber-brown eyes. The tip of his chest tattoo pokes out on the base of his neck, something he got while drunk at art school; now he’s working at Starbucks part time waiting for his illustration career to take off. Huh, maybe I’m not the only cliché. Brett’s smiling, but the corners of his eyes aren’t crinkling.

  “It’s been nearly four hours how much longer are you going to sip at cold coffee just to steal our internet?” he asks.

  I smile back at him.

  “Ten more minutes?” I request.

  His lips purse. “You really think that the police are going to tweet about a crime within the next ten minutes? How long ago was the last major crime here? Fifty years?”

  More like 75 but I don’t correct him. “Fine.” I snap forward and close my laptop, knowing that today is going to end just like every other. Perfectly.

  I sigh as I stand, and Brett takes the cloth in his hand and begins to wipe down the table. “You know it’s pretty messed up you waiting for a murder all the time.”

  “Doesn’t have to be murder,” I say, “could be burglary, or tax fraud. It could be some guy not picking up after his dog for all I care anymore.”

  Brett shakes his head. “You want big crime? Move to a big city.”

  I want to give him a snarky comeback but he’s right. And it’s the one thing I can’t do, at least not yet. So I hike my backpack higher on one shoulder and turn around, letting the little bell on the door be my reply.

  I walk around the corner of the store and head for home, hoping the internet will finally be working. At least the only thing that can judge me at home is myself...and my mother. Taking a shortcut through the park I notice a few kids have gathered by a bench. The wind sweeps through my hair, blowing it over my shoulder and forcing dirt towards my eyes. I shield them quickly, and when I can finally reopen my eyes I see what’s drawn the kids’ attention; a large purple top-hat with a blue bow around the rim. There’s a piece of white paper on top that I can’t read, so I move closer. The wood chips that surround the slide and playground crunch beneath my sneakers.

  “You can’t touch it!” one of the kids says. Anna, I remember. The eight-year-old that the local paper claimed is destined for Olympic swimming. She’s the oldest one around.

  I step up behind them. I’m the only person over 10 in the area, typical since this is a keep your front door unlocked kind of town.

  When Anna turns to me the other five kids follow her lead. But I only notice them on the peripheral of my vision, because my eyes are glued to the piece of paper on top of the hat. “Don’t Touch”, it reads. It’s scrawled in calligraphy, elegantly dancing across the page, making it that much more tempting to inspect the hat. I gulp.

  “C-Come on guys, let’s go play in the splash park,” I say. I’m waving shaky hands because I recognize that hat. The kids are too young to know, but I’m not. I know.

  “It’s not working,” Anna tells me, “it’s not on until June.”

  I nod at her. “Okay, well how about we all go home then, yeah? It looks like it might rain soon.”

  All the kids look towards the bright blue sky. Anna opens her mouth again, the leader of the group. If I can convince her to leave, then I’m good, but she’s not one to back down. As she’s about to argue with me the hat begins to jingle a strange lullaby, the bow spinning slowly. I pale.

  “Run,” I tell them.

  The younger kids look to Anna, who’s watching me. I’m not sure what my face must look like, but the primitive part of her brain recognizes fear. I can see it reflected in her eyes as they widen. The lullaby coming from the hat gets quieter, but keeps on. The bow slows. I repeat loudly, “Run!”

  Anna grabs onto one on the kids arms and books it. Two boys follow her, while one girl runs the opposite direction. The remaining child is crying in front of me, quiet sobs. She can’t be older than four. I quickly pick her up and start for anywhere but there.

  My eyes dart towards where Anna and the other three went and they’re already leaving the park, and when I turn I see the other little girl has stopped. I turn towards her, seeing her watching me with the girl in hand. The Molson sisters.

  “Damn it,” I mutter. I take a turn and move towards the eldest child, Parker, I think her name is. She’s only seven, and she’s wearing a pretty white dress covered in dirt. Of all the things to think about, I wonder how upset her mother will be at her for getting the dress dirty.

  Within seconds I’m running up to her and scooping her into my right ar
m. She and her younger sister, Mason, are practically weightless with so much adrenaline running through my veins. My heart is pumping hard, it must be, but I can barely feel it.

  I keep running, and then I can hear the lullaby. It’s so loud it reaches across the park, and I know I don’t have much time left—I can’t keep running either. I all but dive behind the old stone pillar that used to be the entrance to the park. It’s been here since the town first came to be, and has a commemorative plaque on the side that I’ve never bothered to read in my 27 years living here. Mason is still crying and trying to push away from me. Her sister pulls on my arm to get away but I grip them tighter to my chest, crouching my head down above theirs.

  After that everything gets blurry. My vision is tunnelled, so I close my eyes and focus on keeping the girls at my side.

  The lullaby stops.

  I take a deep breath and hold it in my chest.

  Nothing.

  Then…

  The ground shakes, that’s the first thing I notice. I’ve never experienced an earthquake but I imagine it’s just like this; I’m struggling to stay upright with the girls in my lap, and they’re holding onto me now. Survival has kicked in now that the entire world is beginning to break. Things behind me are falling to the ground, and then I remember the loud explosion, the eruption of the bomb that was hidden beneath the hat.

  It wasn’t anything like the movies, and I can feel the heat from it rushing past me. I open my eyes as the shaking dies down. There’s flaming tree branches flying past the pillar I’m hiding behind, smoke and bits of metal. My vision blurs more, the smoke stinging my throat and eyes. The stones behind my back crack, and I push myself up, shoving the girls forward only a second before the pillar tumbles forward. They fall to the sidewalk with loud cries, and I’m scrambling forward to avoid falling stones.

  One smacks into my ankle and I let out a grunt. It’s small, thankfully, and I narrowly dodge the rest of the stones that come loose from the blast. I’m dragging myself backwards now, eyes looking at the devastation that could have taken my life, as well as the lives of six children. Black smoke billows into the sky.

  I cough as more of it comes towards me, and that’s when I notice my ears are ringing. I can’t hear anything else, not the sound of the girls crying or even my own laboured breathing. Nothing. But I can feel my heart smashing against my ribcage, and the tiny jagged rocks that are digging into the palms of my hands. I try to take a deep breath but instead I’m thrown into a fit of coughs. I crawl back more, hitting the curb and climbing up. That’s when I notice the girls are gone.

  I try to stand but fall back to the concrete, turning in time to see the Molson sisters running into the nearest house. The elderly couple that lives there are already letting them in, and that’s when I see more and more people coming out of their homes. The entire street that leads to the park is peeking through closed curtains or cracks in their front door. Mr. White, my old science teacher from high school, is moving down his walkway to me. His mouth is moving, and I can make out that’s asking if I’m okay, but I can’t hear anything besides the ringing.

  And the lullaby. It’s not actually playing, but I can hear it perfectly in my head.

  Mr. White has his elbows beneath my underarms and is hauling me up. I’m still looking around at the dim fires I can make out behind the smoke, and the torn apart playground that used to stand by the bench. Wood chips are everywhere, but I’m not sure if they’re the ones I was standing on moments ago or parts of the demolished trees that now lay haphazardly around. Black marks scorch the concrete pathway.

  I’m almost standing when I push Mr. White away. He’s trying to clutch me to his chest and get me inside but I shove at him just like I had the girl’s earlier. I put all my weight on my left foot, coughing so hard I have to bend over. I fall back to through ground, and Mr. White joins me there. I can make out his muffled words, just barely.

  “We need to get you inside,” he says. He’s tugging on my arm but not being as forceful this time.

  “Roundabout,” I say. I’m not sure how loud I am, if I’m whispering or screaming, but I say again, “Roundabout.”

  He shakes his head. He doesn’t understand. Why would he? Nobody in this town does as much research into twisted crimes as me. I probably know more than the police do. I suck in a lungful of air, forcing another large cough. I grab onto the collar of Mr. White’s sweater vest, desperate to make my message clear. I take in a couple more clean breaths, meeting his gaze. “It was the Roundabout Bomber.”

  I’m still a cliché, but now I’m the confused victim cliché. The deputy, a forty-something man that moved to Goderich a couple years earlier, is staring me down with a bit of pity. Maybe it’s because I’m covered in dirt and scrapes, or maybe it’s because I’m trying to tell him about a bomber from the eighties that’s resurfaced in our small town. Either way, he thinks I hit my head and is trying to get me to agree to go to leave with the ambulance. Fire Trucks, cop cars, and a single news van line the street around me, safely out of reach of what remains of the bomb as yellow tape keeps us out. Police are walking all over the scene, occasionally picking something up and sticking it in a bag.

  “I’m telling you there was a purple and blue top hat playing a lullaby,” I repeat.

  He nods, no longer taking notes. As if to try to tell me he’s done with me he sticks his notepad back into his breast pocket and crosses his arms. “And what lullaby was this?”

  “I don’t know!” I want to leap from the back of the ambulance but the paramedic is holding me at the shoulders, forcing me to stay. There’s a scratchy blue blanket around my shoulders, because I’m in shock, apparently. I don’t feel like I’m in shock, I just feel angry. “Ask one of the kids, they saw it too!”

  The man purses his lips but nods. “All right, I’ll look into it.” He looks to the paramedic, giving a silent message as he raises his eyebrows. My teeth are grinding so hard against each other I think they might break, but I manage to keep my cool as the officer walks away. I watch as he walks over to a police cruiser that just pulled up. He leans against the driver side window and talks to someone, glancing at me every so often. I turn away, pulling the blanket around me tighter.

  “You’re sure you want to refuse help?” Lily asks. The paramedic that was a year behind me in high school still looks like she should be there. She’s so petite and blonde and perky that it’s hard to believe she could be any kind of authority figure. But her perkiness is overshadowed by worry now, even though we were never friends. She was a flyer on the cheerleading squad and I was usually skipping class.

  I shake my head. “I’m fine.”

  “Your ankle isn’t broken but--”

  “It’s fine, just a twist,” I tell her, repeating exactly what she’d said to me minutes earlier. She sits beside me, letting her legs swing low on the bumper. Me and the Molson girls were the only ones to be injured by the blast, and now that our scrapes were all bandaged up Lily’s job is done. The girls were already taken away by their parents, and I’ve yet to see the other kids. All I know is they got away. I let out a sigh of relief at that thought, even if the officer wouldn’t believe my story. I know the kids will confirm it, and maybe then the case will make some progress.

  “So who’s this Mercury guy?” Lily asks.

  I look at her but she’s looking forward, watching the police wander around the area as if they know what they’re doing. Her hands are folded together in front of her, and she isn’t shaking or scared.

  “Nobody knows,” I finally say. “He planted bombs all over the country with the same signature.”

  “The top hat?”

  “Not always a top hat, just a weird hat,” I reply. I look down at my one scuffed sneaker, finding it didn’t look very different after surviving an explosion. My other foot is wrapped in brown gauze, my unpainted, and uncut, toenails out for the world to see. “The real signature was the note he’d leave, in calligraphy.”

  Lily turn
s to face me. “Was there a note this time?”

  Crap, I hadn’t mentioned the note. “Yeah. I think it was to get the kids curious about it.”

  Lily’s lips purse into a tight line. “Does he always go after kids?”

  I pause, unsure how to answer. I’m in no way an expert on the guy, and I can’t remember all the places he terrorized in the nineties, but I do remember his victims. “He goes for the innocent,” I finally whisper.

  That’s enough to make Lily stop her questions. She hops down from the ambulance and for a moment I think she’s going to tell me to screw off, but she doesn’t. She pulls her pants up a little and then faces me saying, “Looks like you got more questions coming your way.” And then she moves out of sight to the front of the vehicle.

  My brow furrows until I realize what she means. The officer I was just talking to had informed the Staff Sergeant, one Jeremy Bane, aka, the bane of my existence. At least in high school. The perks of a small town meant I constantly ran into someone I went to school with, but today seemed especially vengeful.

  “Weaver,” he said, almost professionally. He gave me a small smile. “How ya doing?”

  “Oh bite me Bane. Don’t give me that caring cop persona; I’m not going to buy it.”

  Bane’s smile turns into a frown, and then a cocky grin. He widens his stance and shrugs, making his shirt struggle against thick muscles. I swear he gets his shirts a size too small just to show off his physique. He says, “I was just trying to be nice, but if you don’t want me too…”

  “I don’t care if you’re nice or not,” I say, “I want you to listen.”

  “To your story about a magic hat?” he questions, quirking a brow.

  Of course. I wet my lips and shake my head. “Okay first of all, it’s not a story, and second, there’s no magic hat. Just a bomb hidden in a hat.”

  “Right.” He nods at me, giving me the same pitying look I’ve gotten from everyone else. “You sure you don’t want to go to the hospital?”