Forever Time

By Terry Trafton

What happens when a town loses its soul? Forever Time is a journey into the paranormal by way of an alternate reality.

After a woman is discovered hanged beneath Harker Covered Bridge in Southern Indiana, and a few days later another woman found drowned in the Anderson River, people in the scenic town of Bristow declare an ancient curse responsible. Investigating authorities have no leads and identities of the two young women remain unknown. The mystery deepens when both bodies disappear shortly after they are recovered.

Bristow is a town in the relentless grip of the supernatural. Investigative reporter Abby Kline realizes that local psychic Becca Mitchell, who is deeply troubled by visions of another time and place, resorts to deception to protect herself from Abby’s suspicions. With the help of Sheriff’s Deputy Brady Willis and anthropologist Dr. Niles Robey, the pieces of a dark and intricate narrative are slowly revealed. Even after the true identities of the Selwyn sisters are known, Niles continues his love affair with an enigmatic Emme Selwyn. But the secrets Emme conceals are the darkest secrets of all.

What is the purpose of the archaic chamber on Stone Hill and how is it connected to seven monoliths nearby? After spending an eerie night in the Chalk, Dr. Robey sees the miracle of the stones and realizes their astonishing powers. When time is bent, significantly altered, instead of passing from one minute to the next, it becomes possible to pass from one minute to the same minute and from one day to the same day.

Disillusioned, his faith faltering, Elwyn Kipps renounces the church where he served as a deacon for 30 years and declares himself the new messiah called to save the sinners of Harker’s Landing. In the great Chalk Ridge Forest, the mysterious spook lights expose the hypocrisy of this counterfeit preacher and reveal a shocking incident hidden since 1847 by the people of Harker’s Landing.

Forever Time is a suspenseful paranormal thriller which will keep the reader’s attention from its gripping beginning to a poignant and memorable conclusion.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gatekeeper Press
• Release date: Mar 1, 2021
• ISBN: 9781662902758

Book preview

Chapter 1

FOXTAIL AND GOLDENROD grew thick on both riverbanks, and nearer the water were dense stretches of cattails. As water coursed through a cluster of copper colored river rocks, something odd struck Rebecca Mitchell. Unable to see beneath the bridge, she looked at her husband seriously enough to get his immediate attention.

What is it? he asked.

Something strange, she answered.

Her eyes closed. Her face tightened. Across her forehead were those creases that appeared when she was upset. Regarding her curiously for several seconds he asked, Are you sure, Becca?

She nodded. Something alien. It doesn’t belong.

After spending most of this breezy Saturday visiting family in Jasper, Indiana, Alan and Rebecca Mitchell were on their way home. The drive on County Road 1475 was spectacular. Sharp turns through undulating hills gave way to sunny green pastures and virgin forests. Traveling the winding blacktop through miles of stately trees, they had stopped on the Spencer County line to photograph one of the few remaining covered bridges in Southern Indiana. Spanning the Anderson River and settled beneath a canopy of oak trees, Harker Covered Bridge was a popular stop for tourists. At age 32, Rebecca who preferred to be called Becca, had a rather celebrated reputation as a psychic. A clairvoyant with acute extrasensory abilities, she had twice assisted local authorities in solving cold case files.

On his hands and knees, one eye pressed against a narrow crack between planks of yellow poplar, he saw an indistinct shadow on the water 20 feet below. Her head down, Becca stood near one of the two open windows in the bridge. Doesn’t belong? he asked getting up and walking over to her.

Shafts of orange sunlight pushed through several cracks in the floor and illuminated weakly the bridge interior near them. The air was musty, and particles of dust stirred in the pale light spilling through the window. The ancient boards creaked, groaned with too much weight.

It’s more than that. I think you should call authorities.

Mitchell removed his mobile phone from his jeans and tapped in a number he had called only twice before. As he spoke, Alan kept his eyes in Becca’s. We’re at Harker Covered Bridge, and after his wife nodded, he added, better send someone out here to look beneath the bridge. A few more remarks passed between him and the officer on the phone. We’ll wait, concluded Alan flatly.

I’m sorry we stopped, whispered Becca. Until now it was such a pleasant day.

He managed a reassuring smile. It’ll be okay.

It was such a long time ago when we stood here that first time.

Look beside you, Becca.

I haven’t forgotten.

And you remember the day I carved them into the truss?

Pouring rain. The wood was damp, and you used your car key to carve our initials. Said no matter how much they weathered over the years that they would always be there. Her smile passive, Becca rubbed her fingers gently across the initials. In her eyes was a hint of melancholy which caused her to slowly turn away.

And there they are almost as bright as the day I carved them.

A new stretch of Harker Road recently constructed as a bypass left the bridge intact and easily accessible to foot traffic. Steep banks on both sides of the Anderson River were overgrown with chickweed, clumps of green foxtails and runty sassafras saplings. Even the pathway used by fisherman was concealed by ground ivy. Evening sunlight glinted on the water and exposed a ledge of limestone running parallel to the river on both sides of the bridge.

Twenty minutes later officers from the Perry County Sheriff’s Department rolled to a stop on the Harker Road Bypass. It took nearly a minute before either officer got out of the car. Standing at the northwest entrance to the bridge, Alan watched them slowly make their way toward him. One officer had his hand on the handle of his revolver and remained a few feet behind the other deputy who had been the driver. Both officers were in their early 30s, and although their movements were cautious, they approached steadily as though confident Mitchell’s call had not been another all too frequent false alarm. Following a few preliminaries during which one of the officers took down the Mitchell’s names and address, Alan was asked to remain until the two men returned from under the bridge. Carefully descending the steep embankment, the officers pushed aside as much of the scrub brush as possible and after some difficulty made their way to the river.

Arms folded, eyes fixed on the far sky, Rebecca stared out through the window. There’s a storm coming, she said calmly.

You know something, said Alan softly.

Yes.

Do you know what’s down there?

She turned to him with tears in her eyes. It is an unexpected, unnecessary sadness which I cannot explain. Hypocrisy out of a cruel and evil past. Even as she spoke, Becca knew her husband did not understand. He looked perplexed but was decidedly hesitant to ask for an explanation.

The two sheriff’s deputies spoke in voices perceptible to both Alan and Becca Mitchell. Better call it in . . . get a unit out here. It was Sheriff’s Deputy Dale Garrett speaking.

What do you make of it? asked the other officer Brady Willis.

I don’t know.

Do you recognize her?

I’m not sure, answered Garrett.

After a lengthy pause Willis said, I didn’t think these things happened in small towns.

It’s a terrible sight to be sure, admitted Garrett. To find a young woman with her hands tied in front of her has every indication of foul play.

I didn’t sign on to see this, Dale.

Yeah. I know what you mean. No note left behind, continued Garrett as though he expected to find one.

Did you see those marks? asked Willis pointing toward a large boulder that looked as though it had fallen from higher up on the rocky escarpment.

Hadn’t noticed them . . . probably graffiti.

There are other marks or symbols on the rock face, Willis noted. They look old. Weird designs, he said brushing his hand over one particular mark. They remind me of those crop circles which show up in grain fields.

But Garrett didn’t answer. Those pilings look newly cut. I don’t remember any recent renovations on this bridge, he told Brady. Do you?

No.

The entire bridge looks recently constructed, continued Dale. And there’s the smell of cut logs in the air . . . like we’re standing near a sawmill.

Strange, replied Willis who resumed his examination of the marks on the rocks. There’s something way peculiar about this place. I can feel it taking hold of me. Nearly a minute passed before he added, Why is it suddenly so much brighter down here? Looks like early morning.

Look how she’s dressed. Garrett’s voice sounded more like a distant echo. And those shoes don’t look like modern knockoffs. They appear to be the real deal, no zippers, just laces all the way up past the ankles.

I’ve only seen dresses like that in old photographs, confessed Brady.

That’s right, agreed Garrett. She reminds me of one of those turn of the century scrapbook photos.

Do you hear that?

What? Dale answered seconds later as though he had just now heard what Brady said.

That noise. Kind of a whiny sound like the hum of electrical energy and similar to discharges off high-voltage lines. It’s all around us.

That’s definitely odd, admitted Garrett. Absolutely eerie in fact. After pausing to listen to the strange noise that seemed to get louder, he added, There’s nothing more we can do here. We’ll wait for forensics and proceed from there.

Willis shook his head as he spoke. This place actually gives me the creeps.

After looking again at the distant sky, Becca told her husband, The air is colder. The storm will be here soon.

Gathering force in the late summer sky a darkening threat moved increasingly fast toward Bristow. After answering a few more questions the Mitchell’s drove off toward their home in Cannelton, Indiana, an Ohio River town southeast of Tell City. Officer Dale Garrett met Rebecca Mitchell a few years ago when authorities requested her assistance with a case that had remained unsolved for nearly three years. By no means a believer in her psychic ability he had apologized to her after she gave information that broke the case.

The sun was a rim of orange quickly sinking into a forest of primordial oak trees. In the darkened afternoon sky thin streaks of deep purple resembled delicate threads spun like spider lines across the western horizon. Along Oak Street a shadowy congregation of unassuming buildings represented the unincorporated town of Bristow. And on a green hillside at one end of the street, a white church with a fat steeple caught again the last rays of sunlight the way it had done so many other nights when Elwyn Kipps had stood there hoping for a second chance. The solitary figure of a troubled man bent under the weight of too many regrets, Kipps was now in search of a new beginning. God had called him to speak against the evil ways of a changing society. Elwyn thought himself blessed with the courage to call out sin wherever he saw it; but his was an antiquated voice unheard by those who strayed too often and too far from the enlightenment of God’s words. Kipps considered himself a chosen disciple, an emissary of God . . . a saint destined to be heard. The honorable Elwyn Kipps was a general leading an army of Christian soldiers in the war against evil. It was a brutal war and casualties were heavy.

Walking now in the evening darkness of the great Chalk Ridge Forest was a faint shape as cold and silent as the stones in the trickling creek that curled down the hillside into a narrow valley. It was a shape that the venerated Kipps had seen in rain, the same shape that left no footprints in snow, and a shape frequently observed on summer nights when stars flashed hot. Elwyn had seen trees catch fire, their branches a blistering iridescence against a starry sky. If tonight’s wind was not too harsh or clouds too heavy, Elwyn was prepared to leave behind the church that had let him down. With his immense Bible clutched in both hands, he watched and waited patiently for his chance to be somebody.

When the Mitchell’s arrived home they found their 12-year-old daughter Shella Ann reading a book about unexplained phenomena. I didn’t realize so many crazy things happened around here, she said when Becca entered the living room. Do you know about the strange lights appearing in the forest near Bristow? People call them spook lights. No one knows what causes them and some people think they’re a bad omen.

Becca sat down beside her daughter and put her arm around her. You’re growing up so fast, honey. When I look at you, I don’t see that little girl who was afraid of the dark.

I never knew what was in the dark, smiled Shella. Now I can see things.

Things? questioned Becca.

I think it’s only my imagination, Mother.

Chapter 2

AS MANY SMALL towns continued to rust and rot into the ground, nostalgic tourists took the bus from small-town obsolescence to bigger and busier cities like Indianapolis and Evansville. Scenic pastoral Bristow at the southern tip of Perry County was a sunshiny town occupied by friendly people whose lives were often lived with too much monotony. Some younger residents, many in their 20s and 30s, raised families on surrounding farms. And there were those who drove the 17 miles on State Road 145 to jobs in Tell City. Most who stayed in the area either enjoyed the privacy of this rural setting or had no reason to go elsewhere.

Things to do in Bristow, Indiana usually meant things to do miles from Bristow. Santa Clause, Indiana, Holiday World, Lincoln State Park, Ferdinand, and St. Meinrad were popular destinations not far from Bristow and regularly brought in tourists by the busloads. Nevertheless, Bristow still had that small-town charm and remoteness that some people wanted, and many on their way to somewhere else often stopped to photograph the stunning landscape—the rambling hillsides and long tranquil valleys around Bristow. The Middle Fork of the Anderson River cut a circuitous path through deep forests and across verdant farmlands as it snaked south past the city of Troy where it joined the Ohio River. It was especially common on summer and fall weekends to see kayaks and canoes, which had started their journeys either at St. Meinrad or farther north in the Hoosier National Forest, beached near Spencer’s general store while their passengers laid back on the grass or walked the couple blocks down Oak Street to Jillian’s restaurant.

Though inviting and picturesque during any season the Anderson River had a raging pulse during heavy spring rains. Over the years a few who had not survived the river washed up on the banks or were found near those large boulders partly responsible for the surging currents. Like any river the Anderson demanded respect. Near those shallow pools of calmer water high banks gave way to long flat stretches of limestone, and it was to those places that families came with picnic baskets to enjoy the water and sun. Early evenings often brought deer to the river. During the fall, young hunters who had tracked the deer sometimes waited downwind in the trees for their first kill—a hurried rite of passage that officially brought each into the illusion of adulthood.

On summer evenings many residents of the larger older homes relaxed on spacious front porches and reminisced about times when children played on green lawns, when Jiggs Spencer sat in a wicker rocker under a tin roof that was painted with a large Coca-Cola sign still visible from just about anywhere downtown. On Halloween Jiggs sponsored a pumpkin carving contest, and quickly remembered by Elwyn Kipps was that time years ago when he had cut a crooked face into a lopsided pumpkin. For over a week it had remained on the steps of Kipps’ front porch shriveling in the sun.

At age 65, his life marked by too many disappointments, Elwyn was a man looking for a miracle. As he played the piano late at night in a cold house, often in the silver glow of moonlight, his fingers were surreal against the ivory keys. The music was still sweet, every note a memory of other times when he was not afraid to sleep, when nights wore more sanguine faces. Now there were too many thoughts of the small cemetery behind the church, where sun-bleached tombstones were enclosed by a broken iron fence that no longer kept restless spirts from roaming the streets at night.

It had been rumored by many in Bristow that the cemetery was haunted. Ghostly sightings were frequently reported, especially on full moon nights when the landscape became an ethereal backdrop against which strange things happened—strange unexplained lights in the sky above the Chalk Ridge Forest, momentary manifestations, and abrupt changes in weather. As a boy growing up in Bristow, Elwyn was frequently a forlorn shape walking those moonlight hours, each footstep across the night taking him closer to his own mortality. His mother and father now interred in Tell City’s Greenwood Cemetery had left behind 100 acres of farmland on the south edge of town—property that had been uncultivated during the past five years. This was the first year Elwyn had not put in a garden. All those years of farming had taken their toll on him, and recently he had considered contracting the land to younger more prolific farmers nearby.

After graduation from a modest-sized school that had long ago disappeared from the landscape, Elwyn was one of the few who stayed in Bristow. His longtime friend Tom Arnold was another who had remained. Both Tom and his wife Bonnie found the unhurried pace a desirable place to raise a family. Others who had lived their lives in Bristow now resided in Huff and other small cemeteries among veterans of both World Wars, including SSGT William Ellis, a United States Marine who had served in Korea during the last days of the Second World War. At the back of Bristow Cemetery were the bones of people who were the first to settle in Bristow. Several of those tombstones were cracked and chipped and others broken and lost in deep grass. Rain and wind had eroded heavily many of the names and dates on most older tombstones. Those were the sacred dead, the faceless forgotten people who had lived out their days of sunshine when Bristow was called Slabtown. They were the ghosts in the old clapboard houses that were themselves relics of the past. It would not be long before Bristow’s older living residents were on their way to Huff or Greenwood cemeteries, and like others who approached the cemetery gates, Elwyn Kipps was increasingly convinced that his days too were running out much too soon

But he would not be missed. Kipps had never married. Only once had there been someone significant in his life. That was also many years ago, and during their last few months together both knew it was a relationship on the downslide, and when Janet moved to Evansville to live with her older sister, Elwyn wondered if he had ever loved her and whether or not he had even needed her in his life. Like so many others he had known, Janet was never heard from or seen by him again. Regrets for having lived such an introverted life continued to haunt him. If it had not been for the church, Elwyn might have given up years ago.

God had guided him early in life. With its commanding view of the town, Bristow Church of God founded in the summer of 1930 had been Elwyn’s salvation. Until recently he had been a deacon there for almost 30 years. As a church deacon Kipps had kept his faith private, making the determination long ago that despite the sins of a biblical Adam and Eve, freewill, even when God knew the consequences of choice, was permitted and existed without divine control or intervention. In the eyes of the small congregation, Elwyn had been as much of a fixture in the church as the stained-glass windows.

A month ago, when Pastor John Bedford had said it was the will of God that took away his younger sister Clara, Elwyn’s faith took a brutal hit and he accused Bedford of being heartless and insensitive. Faithful for so many years, Kipps had worshiped a benevolent, merciful, and judicious God. But to listen to a minister proclaim that the death of his sister was ordained by a cold calculating God was too much for Kipps to accept. Just as regrettable was the stony reaction of the congregation to Elwyn’s sudden absence in church. Not one person had called to ask why he had not been seen among the faithful during those past weeks after Clara had succumbed to pancreatic cancer. When illness and death continued to hit the elderly congregation, familiar faces were gradually replaced with younger members who endorsed Pastor Bedford’s increasingly liberal thinking.

An outspoken freethinker addicted to social media, Bedford’s wife Libby taught elementary school in Tell City and had recently endured a backlash of parental complaints for a bulletin board display that showed a young girl and boy with pictures of rainbows concealing their intimate areas. Bold red letters across the top asked students to question their gender—just a harmless inference to gender bending—and there was rapture in the eyes of the two children who were naked except for the colorful eclipses. Placed around the edges of the display were photographs of adult film stars still wearing their clothes. Creating even further controversy, some national news media had reported the story during their prime-time broadcasts with the usual commentary from both liberals and conservatives. The school board and the superintendent supported the bulletin board as freedom of expression and proclaimed rather officiously that questioning one’s gender and sexuality represented healthy mainstream thinking.

That had been their initial thinking, the thinking that preceded unprecedented parental pushback. When lawsuits were threatened liberal viewpoints and liberal rhetoric softened, and the bulletin board was immediately removed. Ms. Libby James-Bedford was a meddler who liked attention. This attention, however, was primarily negative with some parents going so far as to question the woman’s sanity. When parents with more conservative orientations began demanding reassignment of their children to another 4th grade classroom, Ms. Libby James-Bedford found herself suddenly unpopular. Almost daily the woman was heard complaining about local conservative news media, which according to her were excessively critical of her good intentions.

Many younger colleagues at Riverside Elementary continued to support Ms. Bedford and referred to her as a rising star destined to be a liberating and guiding light for the politically uninformed. They praised her forward thinking and her name had been submitted by the school principal for teacher of the month—an enviable distinction bestowed on those teachers whose brain-drain pedagogy had nothing to do with critical or reflexive thinking. Like her husband, the virtuous Pastor Bedford, Libby was a source of information for the impressionable. The Bedford’s represented progressive thinking replete with ideologies that often questioned and derided the United States Constitution. They were unapologetic broadminded thinkers whose ideas were a swinging pendulum high above the heads of the innocent and the ignorant. They were knowledge brokers anxious to apprehend vulnerable minds. But Bedford’s theology had strayed too far from those more traditional ideas long embedded in the minds of most congregation members at Bristow Church of God.

Bristow, Indiana was never a progressive small town. Its citizens were ordinary people who rarely drifted too far from their convictions. Among some senior members of the congregation and church officers was increasing condemnation of Bedford’s left-leaning messages. In fact, 67-year-old Arlen Dawson was overheard telling his wife Katherine that he had a premonition that the sinners sitting each Sunday morning in the stiff wooden pews were not going to find the absolution they so desperately needed and deserved. To say Pastor John Bedford was firmly entrenched in that small church of conservative values, and his tenure as a pastor there guaranteed, would be presumptuous.

Pastors were a dime a dozen, as plentiful as steeples on churches. Even the righteous ones had been run out of towns and cities in every corner of America. People wanted to know they could be forgiven for a multitude of sins, and Christian churches continued to proclaim exoneration through the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. That was good enough for most. That was the message that kept those good people in attendance. Any thoughts of an indignant, vindictive God were antiquated and best left to the 18th century. Though Jonathon Edwards had moved on long ago, there were still the Calvinists with their ideas of reformed theology. Not everyone was going to be forgiven. Not everyone would go to heaven.

As Elwyn Kipps waited nervously and as rain clouds darkened the hillsides, there remained a large open space in a sky filled with stars. Ahead of him the pathway brightened significantly. Even in such a dark forest the mysterious light came closer and closer until it seized the darkness settling around him. His steps wary, inspiration guiding him, Elwyn continued into the enormous Chalk Ridge Forest. Inside the light was a brighter light, a redemption light that would end that tormenting misery in his bones. At last only a few yards away was the magic he had gone there to find. A precarious shadow cloaked in salvation light reached out to him with long stiff hands and arms. Suddenly emergent in the streaming light was the faint outline of an unfinished face—a face without eyes or nose.

A misshapen mouth with copious lips parted to speak. Do not fear. It is in the light that you will find what you seek, proclaimed the protruding mouth invitingly.

Kipps’ smile stretched wide the corners of his mouth, and with his lips already shaping those words too long silent, he felt exuberance shake him profoundly and knew again that he was a man ordained by God, a holy man whose belated message to sinners would convey his unmitigated authority to exonerate each of them. It was inevitable that his work as a self-declared deity would soon be appreciated and respected. Into the golden light he proclaimed his dominion. On redemption’s path I will be the way, and the light, and through the grace of God all transgressions will be absolved in me. He raised both arms above his head. And let these words be decreed from this day forward.

Chapter 3

FIFTY-YEAR-OLD BRYAN KEELSON sat in front of a computer in his office at the Perry County Journal rereading the story he had written for the Sunday edition. Mystery at Harker’s Bridge was a front page below the fold header, and the details that followed were the known facts after preliminary interviews with the two sheriff’s deputies who had been the first investigators on the scene. Becca Mitchell was mentioned as a paranormal consultant who had assisted authorities in previous Perry County cold case investigations. The article concluded with some additional and rather opaque statements made by officers Garrett and Willis and taken from their written accounts. Although no photographs had been released, the woman presumed to be in her early 20s prompted Keelson to check for accounts of recent disappearances in both Spencer and Perry counties. He found none that fit a rather sketchy description of the victim. Forensics continued at the site after the young woman’s body had been taken down and loaded into a black hearse from Massey & Whitley Mortuary and Crematory in Tell City.

Tuesday morning, under a bright blue sky that had only a few gauzy clouds scattered above Bristow town, Keelson drove the few miles to the bridge hoping to get new information for a follow-up story. Cars parked alongside the Harker Road Bypass belonged to curious people who had come to see what they could see. Near the bridge, some among the curious shook their heads and spoke in quiet voices. Coming closer, Bryan picked up a conversation between a man and woman who stood a little off to one side away from the few others.

Who was she? asked the man.

They don’t know, replied the woman glancing at two young boys before speaking.

The man stated somewhat hastily, I heard she was not from Bristow, not from this area at all . . . that she only died here.

What a terrible thing to say, Harry, said the young woman who covered the ears of one of the young boys standing beside her.

Well that’s what I heard, added Harry. They’re saying it was suicide.

Who’s saying it was suicide? Keelson asked.

It’s just something I overheard at work, Harry clarified. From what I can see authorities remain mighty quiet about the incident.

It’s a real mystery for such a small town, added his wife Angela.

Something will eventually surface, Keelson proclaimed. Somebody out there knew her, he told them while turning away with thoughts of going beneath the bridge.

The bridge was cordoned off by yellow tape which stated in bold black letters that it was a police scene only authorities were permitted to cross. More yellow tape stretched beneath the bridge on both sides. Keelson caught sight of two men in suits. One had a camera. The other man removed a small device from a briefcase. Riverbanks were too steep and too overgrown to permit a clear view of activity beneath Harker’s Bridge. Prepared to assert his First Amendment rights as a card-carrying member of the free press, Keelson looked for another pathway that would take him down to the river. About 30 yards downriver a woman took photographs with a long telescopic lens. Bryan moved closer until he heard shutter clicks in rapid succession. She was a stranger in town. He considered again a descent through the dense overgrowth that lined both banks; but knowing the woman would eventually make her way back to the road, he waited for a chance to speak with her.

In the 30 minutes that passed, Bryan spoke with two others about what had happened, asked them if they knew anything about a young woman who had recently disappeared. As the conversation developed, an unmarked police car, the kind that patrolled cities late at night, stopped on the shoulder of the road. A man carrying a black case passed without speaking and continued clumsily down the bank. When Keelson looked for the woman with the camera he was surprised to find her gone. Thinking she had taken another pathway concealed in the trees he hurried to the other side of the bridge. The woman dressed in white blouse and dark slacks was nowhere to be seen.

People were mystified about the incident at Harker Covered Bridge. Some called what happened to the young woman the work of Satanists, going so far as to proclaim that a curse had been put on the town. Others called it an evil omen that God-fearing people should take seriously. The Indianapolis Press had reported the story in its Sunday media pages and ran another concise second page piece in the Monday morning edition. The Press had earlier that day dispatched an investigative reporter to Bristow. Bold and brassy Abby Kline, anxious to uncover any details not yet reported by authorities, avoided those third person accounts embellished by people compelled to add their own perceptions to the narrative. She had to get to those witnesses who had the facts.

One person with firsthand experience was Sheriff’s Deputy Brady Willis and already Abby had her sights set on him. Several years an investigative reporter for the Press, Abby was a woman who went where the facts took her. Never once in her career had she deliberately invented news devoid of facts. A fearless and tenacious journalist, she had exposed crime and corruption among some of the shadiest and most dishonest people in many professions, especially those in the political arena.

Before becoming an officer with the Perry County Sherriff’s Police Brady Willis was a military policeman. He had plenty of experience with traffic accidents, issuing traffic citations, hauling drunks to the brig, domestic incidents, shoplifters at the exchanges and commissaries, but absolutely no experience with murder or suicide. Officer Willis showed up at a Dunkin’ Donuts in Tell City at 3:30 that Tuesday afternoon. It was shortly after a shift change at the Perry County Sheriff’s Department, and before driving home to a wife and young daughter in rural Bristow, Willis had agreed to meet Abby Kline.

After a brief introduction during which time Abby attempted to size up Officer Willis, she asked pointedly, What can you tell me off the record?

Not much, he answered. This is one of those cases that could be open for months.

The identity of the woman remains unknown?

Brady nodded. That’s it exactly. He crunched into a donut, drank his coffee and looked closely at Abby. One thing continues to puzzle me.

What’s that?

The day before Bryan Keelson’s article appeared, we received a call from a person who said she knew the young woman.

Before the article appeared? questioned Abby thinking maybe Brady meant to say the day the article appeared.

The day before, he repeated. It was Saturday evening when she called.

I don’t suppose the woman identified herself, guessed Abby.

"Officer Garrett took the call and said later that when he asked her name, she hung up . . . said she was probably a younger woman . . . and mentioned that her voice quivered as though she was upset. I think emotional was the word Garrett used."

You surely had the telephone number in your call bank, said Abby.

The call was placed from a public phone in Tell City.

Which suggests the young woman found beneath the bridge was known locally.

That’s certainly a logical assumption . . . and one we continue to investigate. He paused several seconds as though considering how much more he was comfortable revealing. It was probably a prank call. We get them constantly.

Or it could have been legitimate, Abby replied. Why would someone call to say she knew this young woman and then immediately hang up the phone without identifying herself or the other woman?

I don’t know, he answered.

Brady Willis was slow to provide additional information, adding only that investigating authorities remained particularly confounded by the way the young woman was dressed. Willis was anxious to dunk in his coffee what was left of a glazed donut and get home to his family. Pushing him for more information was pointless—at least for now. Her arranged meeting with Brady was significant in one respect. If the woman Officer Garrett had spoken with on the phone had actually been truthful, then there was always the chance that she would eventually reveal herself. Other