Eighteen years ago, twelve-year-old Brynn Wilder’s life changed forever when her father and a teenage girl were severely injured in a brutal attack in the woods.
Jonah Wilder died, but fifteen-year-old Tessa Cavanaugh survived to tell the world about her horrific ordeal, and Brynn’s devoted father was soon identified as the infamous Genessa Point serial killer. Brynn and her family fled the town, and Brynn swore never to return.
But the scars of the past won’t heal, and when Brynn’s tormented brother, Mark, goes back to Genessa Point only to suddenly disappear after telling a friend he has new information about his father’s death, Brynn resolves to find him.
She may not want to confront her traumatic past, but a series of creepy and menacing incidents show that someone is determined Brynn won’t escape it. Can she find Mark and uncover the truth about their father’s death?
Eighteen years ago, twelve-year-old Brynn Wilder’s life changed forever when her father and a teenage girl were severely injured in a brutal attack in the woods.
Jonah Wilder died, but fifteen-year-old Tessa Cavanaugh survived to tell the world about her horrific ordeal, and Brynn’s devoted father was soon identified as the infamous Genessa Point serial killer. Brynn and her family fled the town, and Brynn swore never to return.
But the scars of the past won’t heal, and when Brynn’s tormented brother, Mark, goes back to Genessa Point only to suddenly disappear after telling a friend he has new information about his father’s death, Brynn resolves to find him.
She may not want to confront her traumatic past, but a series of creepy and menacing incidents show that someone is determined Brynn won’t escape it. Can she find Mark and uncover the truth about their father’s death?
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Overview
Eighteen years ago, twelve-year-old Brynn Wilder’s life changed forever when her father and a teenage girl were severely injured in a brutal attack in the woods.
Jonah Wilder died, but fifteen-year-old Tessa Cavanaugh survived to tell the world about her horrific ordeal, and Brynn’s devoted father was soon identified as the infamous Genessa Point serial killer. Brynn and her family fled the town, and Brynn swore never to return.
But the scars of the past won’t heal, and when Brynn’s tormented brother, Mark, goes back to Genessa Point only to suddenly disappear after telling a friend he has new information about his father’s death, Brynn resolves to find him.
She may not want to confront her traumatic past, but a series of creepy and menacing incidents show that someone is determined Brynn won’t escape it. Can she find Mark and uncover the truth about their father’s death?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781847515568 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Severn House |
| Publication date: | 07/01/2015 |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 256 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.00(d) |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Can't Find My Way Home
By Carlene Thompson
Severn House Publishers Ltd.
Copyright © 2014 Carlene ThompsonAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-84751-556-8
CHAPTER 1
Present Day
A cloud moved across the moon, the shadows deepened, and not far behind her, Evangelista heard a ferocious sound – not human, not animal, not like anything she'd ever heard before ... or anything she'd ever hear again, she thought, because whatever was making that sound intended to
Brynn Wilder paused and frowned at the computer screen. Intended to what? Rip her to pieces? Tear off her head? Paralyze her and take her back to its den? Critics called her novels 'a rich mixture of supernatural and fantasy, both poignant and thrilling.' They'd change that label to 'crude, amateurish horror' if they got a look at her latest effort.
'This is awful,' Brynn said angrily, hitting the delete button. 'Even I don't know what I'm writing about!'
She'd been working on her latest book all evening and she'd completed only four awkward, emotionless paragraphs. She couldn't get into the mood. The heroine's plight seemed contrived, her fear wooden, her actions stupid. No sensible reader would care about her. At this point, Brynn didn't care about her.
Brynn leaned back in her chair, rubbed her neck and glanced at the wall clock: 10:30 p.m. Definitely time for a beer, she thought, going to the refrigerator and grabbing a bottle. She twisted off the cap. A glass? Not tonight. She tilted her head and downed a long, cold swallow. She liked gulping beer directly from the bottle. Something about it made her feel blithe and bold, like a sassy woman who didn't have a care in the world. She knew it was a childish illusion, but it was better than the alternative: worrying about her brother, Mark.
Dammit, why was he obsessed with Genessa Point? Why did he have to go back to that awful place last week?
Because it was where their father had died. Died? Brynn laughed bitterly, nearly choking on her second gulp of beer. A teenage girl named Tessa Cavanaugh had stabbed Jonah Wilder to death. Tessa's father was the president of Genessa Point's largest bank. The Cavanaughs were the town's most affluent family and Tessa's older brother, Nathan, was a close friend of Mark Wilder, while Tessa had taken piano lessons from Marguerite. Yet based on all the evidence police found at the time, the town, and later the whole country, had labeled Brynn's father Stone Jonah Wilder, the murderer of eight victims under the age of fifteen.
At first, people had thought a fifteen-year-old girl couldn't possibly win a battle for her life against a grown man. Yet it seemed to be true. Although she'd suffered multiple lacerations and puncture wounds – the most critical barely missing a kidney – Tessa had survived. She'd told police that photography was her hobby and she'd gotten an early start that beautiful day. She'd been taking some photos in the woods behind the Wilder house for the last three Saturdays. That day, Mr Wilder had been fishing nearby and had good-naturedly posed for a couple of pictures. The police had later found the shots on the film in Tessa's camera. Afterward, she'd gone into the cluster of trees.
Tessa said she was bent over, taking pictures of the fairy ring mushrooms that flourished in the woods, when suddenly someone had leaped on her, slamming her face into the moist earth. Although she hadn't passed out, the attacker had ground her face into the dirt and begun stabbing her. He'd said nothing, so she couldn't identify a voice. Still conscious, she'd fought desperately, her lean, muscular body writhing away from him for an instant and digging in the dirt until her hand closed around her camera. With all her strength, she'd struck him with it.
'I don't remember much after that except someone grunted, the stabbing stopped and the guy rolled off me,' she'd told police weakly in the hospital. 'I was trying to crawl away and something cut my hand. I knew it was a knife and I grabbed it and stabbed him, over and over. But there was so much dirt in my eyes, I couldn't see who I was stabbing.' Through sobs, she'd asked, 'Who was it?' The police said when they'd told her the person was Jonah Wilder, Tessa had gotten hysterical. 'Not Mr Wilder!' she'd cried. 'It couldn't have been! Not Mr Wilder!'
No, there had to be a mistake, most people said. Tessa was traumatized, blinded by dirt and badly injured. Jonah Wilder couldn't have attacked her. His reputation as a hard-working, law-abiding, devoted family man had never been questioned. Sometimes he seemed stiff, humorless, even quaint, but he was always kind and polite and, over time, most citizens of Genessa Point had realized that he was merely serious and reserved, maybe even a bit shy. People didn't love him like they did his best friend, the outgoing, good-natured Dr Edmund Ellis, but generally they liked and respected Jonah.
The theory of a third person in the woods emerged almost immediately. Even Tessa said it was possible – she hadn't seen who'd knocked her to the ground and rubbed her face in the dirt before stabbing her. Most people believed the Genessa Point Killer, as he'd been named, had attacked Tessa. Jonah had heard her scream and rushed to her aid, but the man who'd terrorized the town for years fled upon Jonah's arrival after being hit hard with the camera. When Tessa grabbed the knife, blinded by the dirt in her eyes, she'd stabbed Jonah by accident. Jonah's death was tragic, they'd said, but it wasn't for nothing. He'd saved a girl's life.
For two days townspeople had brought food to the Wilder home, offered comfort and praised Jonah. Although Mark would seldom come out of his room, Brynn and her mother had accepted the food, the praise and the hugs, although Brynn knew they both felt numb.
Then the police found the knife.
According to the Wilders, when Mark was fourteen he'd bought a fishing knife for his father's birthday – a Buck 110 folding Hunter knife. He didn't have much money, so he'd bought a used knife he could get cheap because of a nick in the blade. He'd spent hours carving J.W. in the wooden handle to make up for the flawed blade. Marguerite told the police that Jonah was thrilled with the knife, especially because of Mark's carving of the initials, but the knife had disappeared almost two years before Tessa killed Jonah with it.
Marguerite said her husband had felt awful about the loss of the knife and bought a new one just like it, asking Mark to put J.W. on the handle, but Mark's feelings were hurt because he thought Jonah had just carelessly misplaced the original, and he'd refused to carve initials. Although police had not found the replacement knife the family claimed Jonah had bought, they'd found the supposedly missing knife with the blade knick and the initials near the site of Tessa's attack.
The police questioned Dr Edmund Ellis, Jonah's fishing companion, who'd said he knew nothing about Jonah losing the knife Mark had given him almost two years earlier, or its replacement. The family was stunned at Edmund's statement to the police. Then, after what seemed an infinity in the earlier days of DNA testing, finally the police had received the results. Under the hinge of the initialed knife, experts had found the DNA of Jonah, Tessa and three of the Genessa Point Killer's victims.
The news about the DNA results quickly leaked from the local police and spread like wildfire throughout town. Some people, who knew little about DNA, claimed someone was pulling a chemical trick with this stuff. What was DNA anyway? Many more people knew about DNA and thought it was the be-all, end-all of evidence. Jonah Wilder's knife – the knife he kept in his tackle box, for God's sake – had been used to kill innocent kids; probably all of the GPK's victims. It seemed impossible, but that quiet, polite man had killed children. Come to think of it, they whispered among themselves, hadn't Jonah Wilder been just a little too reserved, too unnervingly calm, yet too strict with students at the high school? And those sophisticated chemical tests at a place like the FBI didn't lie.
Within two weeks, many people were certain Jonah Wilder had been the Genessa Point Killer. Sheriff Dane, convinced of Jonah Wilder's guilt, closed the investigation.
Jonah's name had become a staple on television newscasts. Later, behavioral scientists studied him. Someone wrote a book about the murders called Stone Jonah: The Genessa Point Killer, and he became almost as famous as Ted Bundy or The Green River Killer. Worst of all, in the book some 'experts' conjectured that Jonah had not worked alone. They claimed that Jonah and his son Mark had often operated as a team, like Bianchi and Buono, known as The Hillside Strangler.
Now, eighteen years later, Mark still couldn't live with the horror of what had happened to his father or the suspicions about himself. He'd struggled emotionally with the disaster since the time of his father's death. Like Brynn and their mother, he'd refused to believe Jonah was a killer. They knew that the quiet, kind, patient man they'd lived with for so long did not have murder in his soul.
Still, they couldn't change what most of the world believed. The general population of Genessa Point had turned cold and most of their friends suddenly became aloof. Within three months after Jonah's death the family had escaped to Baltimore and never returned to Genessa Point. After the first shocked year, Marguerite had gone silent about Jonah, refusing to answer if Brynn or Mark tried to talk to her about their father, and getting angry if anyone mentioned the murders.
On the other hand, not a day went by that Mark had not zealously 'worked the case.' Convinced there had been a third person in the woods who'd attacked Tessa and then Jonah when he'd come to Tessa's aid, Mark had made hundreds of notes, drawn timelines, called the Genessa Point County Police Department with his new evidence and harangued the families of victims for details until the police had threatened to charge him with harassment. Although Brynn agreed with her brother – a third person had been responsible for Tessa's attack and their father's resulting death – her mother's days of obstinate silence and Mark's frantic activity had made Brynn feel constantly tense, exhausted and bleak.
When she was fifteen, filled with grief and depression, along with the belief that they would never discover what had really happened on that awful day, Brynn decided if she was to have any life of her own she had to close a door in her mind and refuse to think about the disaster that had destroyed the world she'd loved. She didn't try to obliterate beloved memories of her father, though, and at unexpected times the image of his tall, slim frame or the sound of his deep, slow, mellow voice flashed in her mind. Often she wondered what he would have done in a bad situation, what he would have been like as he grew older, how different Mark and Marguerite would be if he were alive.
Unlike Mark, though, she had never let herself dwell on the details of how her father died. Imagining his painful death filled her with a shaking horror that shut everything else from her mind and she knew she must focus on what needed to be done now because although she was the youngest in what was left of her family, she was the strongest. Both her mother and her brother needed her. Day after day, she'd forced herself to concentrate on them, not on sorrow about her father, not on her anger toward Genessa Point, the town that had turned its back on the Wilders. Finally, in her mid-teens, she realized the blinders she'd kept rigorously in place had allowed her to develop enough resiliency to move on and function successfully, even if it was hard for her to let anyone become close or important to her.
For Mark, the battle was longer. It wasn't until he was twenty-seven that he'd seemed to tiredly relinquish his own denial and rage about his father's death as well as the rumors about himself, and settle into defeated peace. Three years later, he'd married a pretty but shallow girl neither Brynn nor Marguerite liked. Nevertheless, Brynn had hoped desperately she'd be a good wife, they'd have a child and that a family could keep Mark grounded in the present.
Unfortunately, the wife had quickly grown bored and also announced she had no desire for children. Not long afterward, Mark had learned that she was having affairs with a string of men. Soon, he had begun talking about the old murders, at first occasionally, then incessantly. Along with his renewed obsession came increased impatience, irritability and, finally, drinking binges that led to liquor-fueled fury.
The rest had followed with heartbreaking inevitability. Within the past year he'd lost his wife, most of his few friends, and, a month ago, he'd been fired from his job as a bank loan officer. He'd sunk into despair as once again he'd begun obsessing about that little town on the Chesapeake Bay where his family had been so happy, then so devastated.
One evening, obviously drunk, he'd called to tell Brynn he was going to Genessa Point to clear their father's name and, before she could argue, he'd hung up on her. For two days, she'd told herself the plan for a trip was only the result of too much liquor. Still, when she'd ceaselessly called his apartment in Baltimore, his cell phone, and texted, he hadn't answered. That was eight days ago. Now, certain he'd been serious about revisiting their hometown with some crazy, hopeless and possibly risky goal, Brynn's anxiety had grown to a fever pitch.
'I should have believed him and gone to Genessa Point. He's a damned mess and he's going to get himself in trouble, I know it,' Brynn fumed, thumping down on the couch across from the wall of windows overlooking the brilliant city lights of Miami. Miami where no one seemed to sleep. Miami where the sun blazed and winter never came. Miami where she'd fled after her mother died eighteen months ago and where Brynn planned to spend the rest of her life – a city of fun, bone-warming heat. A place where she could forget the past.
Except that, even at age thirty, and in spite of all her efforts, she'd never been able to forget that horrible day when, as a twelve-year-old, she'd run toward the beach, expecting to find her father peacefully fishing and instead heard screams coming from the cluster of trees. Then she'd seen Dad stagger onto the beach and fall. Sometimes she'd wake in a sweat after reliving the scene in a nightmare.
Now the phone rang, jerking Brynn back to the present and her Miami apartment. She nearly pounced on it. 'Hello, it's Brynn.'
Silence. Unknown caller showed on the caller ID. Usually, Brynn would have hung up on someone blocking their identity. But then she wasn't usually so desperate to hear from her brother. 'Mark?' she almost shouted. 'Mark, is that you?' Nothing. 'Mark, dammit—'
She heard music, soft at first, then growing louder. Within moments, she recognized the introduction of Blind Faith's 'Can't Find My Way Home.' Although the song dated from the late sixties, it had been Mark's favorite. Jonah had liked it, too, and played it often. Brynn hadn't been able to listen to the song after her father's death, but now she sat mesmerized as Steve Winwood sang, 'I can't find my way home,' in a haunting, lost voice.
The song played all the way through. After a moment of silence at the end, someone sighed, long and lonely. The connection broke off.
Brynn stood still, barely breathing, gripping the handset. She pressed the off button and took a deep breath, hoping desperately that the phone would ring again. Although she waited fifteen minutes, with depressed certainty, she knew it wouldn't. She was also sure the call hadn't been just a prank. It had been a message.
Her hand trembling, she immediately called the police and reported the call, asking if it could be traced and answering a number of what Brynn considered maddeningly inane questions: had she been threatened; had she been receiving calls regularly; did she have any idea who'd placed the call? Saying she thought the call had come from her brother, who might be in trouble, did not raise the cop's excitement level.
'Do you have reason to believe your brother could be in trouble, miss?' he asked calmly.
'Yes. He went back to our hometown of Genessa Point in Maryland. It's on the Chesapeake Bay. Our father was murdered there.'
'Oh. When was that?'
'Eighteen years ago.'
'Was the murderer caught?'
(Continues...)
Excerpted from Can't Find My Way Home by Carlene Thompson. Copyright © 2014 Carlene Thompson. Excerpted by permission of Severn House Publishers Ltd..
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