Page 85 of Everything She Feared

“Aside from Bill Hooten, who was sheriff at the time, and Cal Nixon, who was deputy, no one knows thewholestory I’m going to tell you. Are you all set there, Ryan?”

“We’re all set. Go ahead.”

“Well, like I said on the phone, it was late summer that year and still warm when the four children, all of them about seven or eight, had decided to explore and play at a secluded corner of a neighboring acreage.”

“Can you confirm who they were?”

“Sure, it’s been so long and there are no statutes, and given what we now know, what the hell. I got my old notebooks to help me. Here—Judy Ayers, Bobby Rickard, Nancy Vaughan and Magdalena Kurtz. I’ll copy the spellings down for you.”

“Great, thanks.”

“So the kids go out to this section, some people called it the Old Settlement, because it was first settled by immigrants. But there’s nothing out there except for a few rickety outbuildings, overgrown by tall grass.

“The kids get out there. They said they were looking for treasure in the old buildings and playing around the property when it happened—Nancy just vanished from the surface.”

Barlow stopped to blink at the memory and stroke his mustache.

“She’d fallen down a well. It took forever for the kids to get help. Bobby ran to Red Wheelock’s place and Red called us. We soon got a team out there, paramedics, fire department, well-service experts. We could see her, and we had her mother call down to her, but she wasn’t responding, wasn’t making a sound. The rescue crew lowered listening devices but couldn’t pick up a sign of life.

“Working as fast as we could, we rigged things up, fashioned a harness chair and lowered Billy Dix, this skinny firefighter, down on a rope with water, medicine. Billy musta went down a hundred feet. We could hear him gasping, shouting—it’s bad, it’s bad!—saw his camera flash. We needed pictures for the case and for possible rescue, but—”

Barlow paused again.

“It was a recovery, not a rescue. She was deceased. Her parents were there—their screams... They wanted to go down the hole to get her. We had to hold them back. Lord, it was just so damned awful. Eventually we got her out. Later I looked at Billy’s pictures, at how she was all twisted, her feet up by her ears. Doctor said her spine was snapped.”

Barlow removed his glasses, drew his sleeve to his eyes.

“Something like that you never forget,” he said. “Later, as part of our investigation, talking to Nancy’s folks and the kids, we learned there was a bit of history between Nancy and Magdalena, or Magda, as she was called.”

“Is this about the doll?”

“You know about it?”

“I’d heard something about it. I’m trying to get a copy of a confidential report.”

“I’ve seen it and may be able to help you with that,” Barlow said. “I’ll tell you what we learned about the whole thing.”

He related an incident that happened several months prior to Nancy’s death. It concerned Nancy’s birthday party and a missing doll that Magda had stolen. When forced to return it, Magda had removed the doll’s head and hands.

“So there was some bad blood between the girls. That explained why Nancy was at first reluctant to go to the Old Settlement that day. It turned out Magda wanted her to come. Magda had convinced Bobby and Judy that she’d been to the old buildings earlier with her dad and there was likely jewels and money hidden in the building.”

“She made it sound exciting,” Ryan said.

“She did, convincing Bobby and Judy, who were Nancy’s best friends, to come, and they convinced Nancy to come. When they got there, they looked around inside, then Magda told Bobby and Judy to stay inside while she and Nancy looked outside.”

Barlow adjusted his glasses.

“Not long after, Bobby and Judy heard Magda shouting ‘I found some treasure!’ They left to join her, seeing Magda standing still and waving for Nancy to come closer to her. The place was overrun with wheat grass up to their waist so when Nancy approached she didn’t see how it canopied over a few rotting wood planks, gaps between them, covering the well. She stepped on them and went right through.”

“Bobby and Judy witnessed it?”

“Yes. The thing was, they said Magda just stood there looking down, not reacting, while they were crying, screaming down to Nancy, hysterical.”

Ryan thought for a moment.

“What was the treasure Magda found?”

“A couple of quarters.”

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