Forgotten Girls, The (14 page)

The gravelly dirt path wound its
way from the foot of the hill down to the wet earth abutting the Hudson River.
The riverbank reached for miles in both directions. The spot where they were
heading was not on the bank but adjacent to it, deep in the rocky mountain that
rose up on the Jersey side of the Bridge. Jay led the way and Ridley followed.
Mugger B had resisted meeting at first but changed his mind when he heard
Ridley was getting out of the game. He was giving him back his turf. Jay had
suggested he use that as leverage and it had worked.

Mugger showed up without his
girlfriend, but did not come alone. He stood at the entrance to the dark,
hidden mountainside with two men, one on each side, carrying guns in full
display. Ridley had never seen them before and could tell instantly Mugger was
angry as hell. For a moment he wondered if he and Jay were going to make it out
of this thing alive. Jay looked calm but Ridley could only imagine what he was
feeling. He wasn’t used to these kinds of guys and, oddly, neither was Ridley.
After all these years exposed to the worst kinds of criminals and thugs, Ridley
had yet to absorb their aggressive posture or ways. If anything, he was only
more neurotic and high-strung than ever.

“So we’re here like you asked,”
Mugger began in a nasty tone with a snarled mouth. He was about 5’ 11”,
Hispanic, with a figure buzzed into his shaved head. He had tattoos on both
hands and up his arms, plainly visible next to his white tank. His two friends
were Hispanic too but smaller. They were well built, though, and looked angry
as hell, like Mugger.

Jay looked at Ridley and spoke.

“My name is Jay and I have known
this guy my whole life,” he began slowly, pointing to Ridley. He looked nervous,
but, as he was a pretty big guy himself, he seemed to hold his own. “He got in
touch and told me what was going on.”

“Yeah?” Mugger asked
sarcastically. “What’s going on?”

Jay looked back at Ridley.

“He’s gonna be looked at for that
woman’s murder up in Greenvale, the lady killed the other night.” Jay stopped,
faltering. He suddenly felt out of his league but there was nothing he could do
about it now, so he continued. His plan was to let Mugger know Ridley was out
of the game so hopefully, if he did have anything to do with this, he would
lose interest in Ridley if indeed he had any. He also hoped to elicit
information as to whether or not he had been involved in the murder. Now,
standing there across from these three guys, he wondered what the hell he had
been thinking. Somehow in real life the guns and the mugs and the muscles all
felt much more threatening than he had imagined.

“He didn’t kill her. He doesn’t
really care who did. He wants to get out of here and not come back. He wants to
give you back your gig at the high school and get the hell out of town.”

Ridley was shaking in his boots, shifting
his weight from left to right, back and forth, over and over. It was annoying
to all of them.

“Cut it out, man, you’re making me
nuts,” Mugger growled at Ridley. “Adios, Mio. You can’t talk for yourself? You
bring a mouthpiece?”

Ridley cleared his throat and in a
jittery voice answered, “I was with Jay, down south at the shore. He thought I
should call you and just talk, man. Talk plain and simple. I want out. It’s all
yours if you want it,” he said, looking past Mugger, then back at him, then at
his guys, then at Jay.

“What, you high on your own
stuff?” Mugger laughed a sinister laugh. “You a junkie now or what?” He and his
two friends thought this was funny and snickered.

“Nah, just real nervous, man. I
don’t want that lady’s murder pinned on me, ya know? Am not going to back to
the pen, I’ll tell ya that much.”

“Yeah, well, maybe you hit her huh?
Don’t wanna do the time for the crime?” Mugger teased as if trying to provoke
him. It sounded like he was becoming more relaxed now and liked the idea of
taunting Ridley. Mugger clearly knew he was in control.

“Hey, man, it wasn’t me. I don’t
even care who it was, but it wasn’t me,” he said again.

“Look,” Jay interrupted. “You can
have the school back. I am getting him out of town,” Jay said pointing to
Ridley. You want it back or what?”

 “What’s this—y’all lookin’ out
for me now? Why the hell you care?”

Mugger lifted his gun, seething.

 “Ridley just didn’t want to
disappear without giving you a heads-up,” Jay said falteringly. “In case you
were still peeved or shit,” he added trying to sound cool.

Mugger looked suspiciously at Jay.

“You guys think I whacked her, don’t
you?”

Jay and Ridley looked at each
other. Ridley answered, surprising Jay.

“I don’t think so, man. I know you
didn’t even know her.”

“Yeah? How you so sure?” Mugger
teased.

Ridley opened his mouth then
closed it. He was scared. He didn’t know if he was being played or not.

“I don’t know, man. You knew her?
C’mon, you’re joking, right?” Ridley was starting to look really worried.

“I met the bitch last week. And who
do you think introduced us?”

The silence was deafening. All they
could hear was the sound of water dripping slowly from a boulder behind them. Mugger’s
friends were smiling.

“Your crazy bitch of a mother,
boy!” Mugger broke out into laughter.

Ridley’s face went ashen and Jay
noticed. It was hard not to.

“She drove her right up in the car
and introduced us,” Mugger sneered. “Your momma told her, right to my face,
that I was the guy she wanted, not you. Can you fucking believe that shit? I
said to your momma how the hell you even know how to find me? And the old wench
just laughed and told me she knew everything. Some broad, man. She’s some
fucking crazy broad.” Mugger laughed out loud and his friends joined him.

Jay and Ridley stood frozen in
place. His mother had brought Joslyn to meet Mugger B? Was she insane? How the
hell had she found him? She had to have known the danger she was placing Joslyn
in. Was that why she did it?

“I don’t believe you,” Ridley said
calmly. He stood absolutely still now. No more shaking back and forth, no more agitated
behavior. He was a stone statute, transfixed on something in the distance.

“No?” Mugger challenged. “You
think I’d make that shit up? You think I’d tell ya knew a lady who just got hit
a few days ago ’cause I think that’s funny?” Now he was angry.

“Let me tell you something, you
son of a bitch,” Mugger exploded, putting his gun to Ridley’s head. “You’re
gonna hightail your ass out of town, I’m gonna take back the school, and I
don’t want to hear from you or see you again, you got that? And you’re gonna
tell that loon of a mother you got she better steer clear of me as well. I
don’t like her one bit, you hear me?” Mugger looked scared when he spoke of
her. “She gives me the fucking creeps. You so interested in who hit that lady, go
ask su madre.”

He sat at a table for two in the
back sipping his usual dry martini, considering how he felt about being there.
It was especially quiet tonight and waiting for her, alone, made him
contemplative. He hadn’t seen her since their breakup and wasn’t sure how he
felt about seeing her tonight. The past month without her had been hard, much
harder than he anticipated. He had taken her to Alfie’s on their first date,
and they had sat at a table not too far from where he sat now. They had talked
for hours that night, as though making up for lost time. It had remained that
way, the two of them drawn to one another almost chemically. Seven years later
and they still had way more to talk about than they had time.

Alfie’s was his go-to place, one
of those tried and true, old-world Italian joints with superb service and even
better food. It hid on the border between little Italy and the Bowery, a real
New York hovel known only to those lucky few with the good fortune to have
discovered it. He was an NYU freshman when his tutor, a woman twice his age,
introduced him to it.

He had been new to New York
City—new to the country, in fact—having arrived straight from Dublin. Alfie’s
became his home away from home all through college and grad school. When he
finally earned his PhD in Criminal Psychology and was offered a job as adjunct
professor at John Jay, he took his mom and his buddies there for dinner to
celebrate.

His career took off almost
instantly. It didn’t take long for his class, The Criminal Mind of the Female
Killer, to become one of the most requested; and, with the publication of two
books,
The Criminal Pathology of Women
and
Profiles in Murder: A
Woman’s Guide,
his stature as an expert in this field was cemented.

These books had proven a smart
move for his career. Murders committed by women were on the rise in America. The
female prison population was growing and politicians were increasingly calling
for intervention and answers to this new wave of crime. His published research
in this niche garnered him quite a bit of attention and, before long, he was promoted
to a full professorship with another class added to his roster: Women and
Murder: A History—quickly becoming one of the most popular electives for the graduate
students.

His roguish good looks hadn’t hurt
him either: 6’ 2” and well built, he sauntered around school in his signature fitted
white button-down, denim jeans, and navy blue suede loafers. Sometimes he donned
a navy sports jacket, sometimes a herringbone vest. He never fully shaved and
his dirty blond hair usually looked like it had dried in whatever direction it was
in when he stepped out of the shower. His eyes were crystal blue and his
jawline well defined, lending a masculine look to a face that might otherwise
have been described as pretty. His one cherished accessory, a worn brown
leather satchel filled with papers and files, hugged his chest daily when he
rode his twenty-speed Schwinn racer to work each morning.  

The front door opened and in she
walked, straight toward the back, where she knew he would be. She was still in
her Friday with the girls outfit: the tight white jeans, heels, jewelry—she was
even carrying the bag.

“Is that what I think it is?” he
said, in mock bewilderment, pointing to the Proenza slung over her shoulder. “Are
my eyes seeing correctly?”

He was joking, but she could tell
he was nervous.

“Ha, ha,” she said, smiling. “Very
funny.”

She leaned over and kissed him on
both cheeks, plopped down in her seat, and sucked down the wine tumbler he had
ordered in two seconds flat.

He laughed.

“Hard day, huh?”

She nodded and exhaled.

“It must have been if you’re
dressed like that,” he teased.

She looked fantastic, and he could
feel his resistance ebbing. Their ending last month had been brutal, at least
for him. Before Bella, he had remained single by choice. Rooted to his work,
his freedom, and his friends, he had plenty to keep him busy and fulfilled. But
once Bella appeared in his life, no matter how much he told himself she was
just another girl, he was not able to believe it. No matter who else he was
with he would wonder where she was, what she was doing, how she was. He was
unable to shake the constant ache he had developed for her.

From the moment they met, there
was just that something between them. For the first time in his career, he had
trouble concentrating on his own material when she sat in his class. It had
been seven years, but he relived the night they met often. A sudden, fierce
summer thunderstorm had drenched him as he made his way to school that night
and, as he shook out his blazer upon entering class, he inadvertently sprayed the
student standing behind him with water. He heard laughter, turned, and saw a
face peeking out of a Yankee baseball cap worn backwards, a long mane of wavy strawberry
blond hair tumbling down, a dark blue police uniform hugging her body. He
actually felt nervous when he apologized for getting her wet.

“Don’t worry,” she had said sweetly,
smiling. “I won’t arrest you.”

Seven years was a long time,
though, and things had changed. Her career had grown along with her drive. He
had gotten used to her erratic schedule and the slate of unsavory men in her
life; but when she refused to take off time from work to go to Ireland with him
last month and meet his mother, it finally hit him. She would never be
available to him in the way he wanted, in the way he had grown to need. She
couldn’t—wouldn’t—rein in her drive. Her work would always come first.

Now, back in the dating scene
after so much time, he was pleasantly surprised to see how many single,
available women were floating around New York City; he heard they outnumbered
men six to one. Many were even young, beautiful, and smart.

But he had yet to meet anyone like
her.

He bolted the door to those
feelings and focused on the business at hand.

“So, how can I help?”

Ryan ordered another white wine
and a bowl of butternut-squash ravioli, even though Bella claimed not to be hungry.
He knew the second the food was in front of her she would polish it off. She dove
into the case and brought him up to speed, ending with her impression of Dr.
Weber and Joslyn’s friends.

“Look, we know we are dealing with
the same killer for all three, someone who wants us to know the deaths are
connected. And connected through the crests. The question is why?”

“What do you know about the
crests?”

“Not enough. We know the Latin
inscription reads ‘To each his own.’ Whatever the hell that means. No one we
have spoken to has ever heard of these crests before.”

“Where were they made?”

“Looking into it now. Got a hit on
a place out of Sussex, England, that might cough up some answers. Our working
thesis at the moment is that Jos and the girls got caught up in a drug ring at
school.”

He nodded and she continued, “The
kid who pushes has an alibi. He could have hired a hit, but he doesn’t seem sophisticated
enough, or old enough for that matter. He’s sixteen. We’re looking for his
supplier—working our way up the chain. I haven’t ruled out her husband either.
I am pretty sure he has something going on with one of her best friends, but I don’t
see him hurting those girls. He’s arrogant and powerful, but he doesn’t strike
me as that unhinged.”

Ryan just listened.

“Look, I didn’t call so we could
do a case overview together. There is something bothering me.” Bella sighed.
Her second glass of wine had arrived and she sipped it slowly. They sat quietly
for a couple of minutes until she spoke.

“For the past forty-eight hours, I
have been immersed in this woman’s world, a physically beautiful world, no
doubt. But so lonely and empty, heart-wrenchingly devoid of real friends and
real connection, even in her marriage.”

She stopped for a moment, as if
for effect.

“Her girlfriends are horrors. I
mean, I expected rich, shallow, sheltered—all that. But with the exception of
only one, they are truly the most emotionally closed off, narcissistic women I
have ever met. They have not shown one ounce of sadness or grief about her
murder. It’s shocking. It just does not seem that any of them genuinely care
that she’s gone, and I just can’t get past the why.”

She sounded exasperated.

“And then I meet this shrink—it’s
pretty rare for me to have chills down my spine.”

She shook her head and Ryan
listened patiently.

“It all got me thinking,” Bella
continued. “I am looking for someone who is seeking attention, organized,
angry, and knows his way around town. Someone who has no problem killing three
people—a real psychopath, right? Other than the possibility of her husband, I
haven’t come across any men in her life who fits that profile. But these women—I
mean, what if there was something going on way different than anyone would expect?
It’s girl world out there—an enclosed town where they all kind of exist trapped
together, whether they like it or not, no men around to break it up. Nothing to
focus on but how they look, how their homes look, and how well their kids
perform. It’s a warped reality in a sense—a very female-driven hamlet of
competition. A breeding ground for it, really. I mean, talk about having to
watch your back. I guess what I want to know is, what if I’m looking at this all
wrong? What if my killer is a woman?”

Ryan smiled.

So this was why she needed to
speak with him so badly. Now he understood.

“So you want a recap of what you learned
in class?” he teased.

“Luckily for me, I don’t use my
knowledge of female psychopaths very often in sex crimes. Thank god for small
favors.”

They laughed.

“Touché,” Ryan answered. “But she
was raped, no?”

“Yeah, with something, but there
were no fluids at the scene. So I’m broadening my list of possibilities,” she
said.

“Hmmm.” Ryan looked intrigued. “A
female psychopath we can cover. No problem with that. One perverse enough for a
sexual attack? We would be talking about a very rare kind of bird…” He trailed
off a minute. “That’s not the way they usually operate. Although there
certainly are instances…” He sipped his martini and got a faraway look in his
eyes. “Well, where should I begin?”

“With anything you think would
help me,” she said seriously.

He took her request to heart and
leaned back in his chair, thinking.

“Psychopathy means suffering of
the mind, as you know, though most psychopaths would argue there is anything
remotely wrong with them at all. The DSM lists many antisocial personality
disorders and the differences between them can be quite small. Borderline
personality disorder, narcissistic personality disorder, sociopath, and
psychopath can sometimes seem indistinguishable and be used interchangeably.
Diagnosing can feel more like an art than a science. But there are differences,
as there are overlaps.”

Bella took notes as Ryan continued.
“One of the biggest differences found in studies is that psychopaths’ brains
operate differently from others; the amygdala portion simply does not light up
or react when presented with gruesome photos, frightening ideas, sad visuals,
or loud sounds. They don’t process emotional material the way others do. They
disassociate. They don’t feel a thing.”

Ryan looked at Bella when he said
this as though even he, after all these years, couldn’t get over it.

“Psychopaths are not created
equal, nor are they all violent. Actually, and disturbingly, many of the most
successful CEOs, celebrities, and entrepreneurs have psychopathic qualities
which, ironically, are the very qualities that make them so successful.”

“Like what?” Bella asked.

“A total lack of empathy;
extraordinary ability to manipulate; an intense drive to get what they want. They
have a total lack of guilt, fear, or remorse. They are incredibly charming and
use this to control; they read others’ weaknesses and use that as leverage; they
flatter and pretend with precision. These qualities come in handy on Wall
Street, in politics, in business.”

“And in the suburbs.”

Ryan laughed.

“Possibly. The higher up the
ladder you go the more sociopaths you will find, claims Martha Stout from Harvard
Medical School. I assigned her book in my class,
The Sociopath Next Door
.
Did you read it?”

He and Bella smiled at one another
as he reached for his martini. She waited patiently for him to continue as she thought
about what he said. He cleared his throat and went on.

“A good way to think about it is
when you deal with a psychopath you are really interacting with their ‘Mask of
Sanity or Normalcy,’ as it has been called. They can keep relationships up for
years if the circumstances support it. But most of their relationships sour and
fail because people eventually do see through the mask to their real core:
which is pure selfishness and, many times, evil.”

“How can you tell if a person is
narcissistic, unaware, or truly crazy?” Bella wanted to know.

Ryan nodded.

“It can be hard. Patterns of
behavior emerge when psychopaths are incarcerated and studied; but, as far as
your everyday person living out in the world, they look and act normal enough
to blend in. Robert Hare famously claimed that he wished he had studied Wall
Street as much as he studied his incarcerated killers.”

Bella thought about for a moment.

“So what am I looking for?”

Ryan was quiet for a few seconds.

“I should give you the Hare
checklist, which is pretty standard operating procedure for how to smoke one
out. FBI swears by it,” Ryan laughed. “It has twenty qualities to look for, but
it doesn’t distinguish between male and female.”

“I will take a look at it.”

“As far as women in particular, one
of the most common traits the females use is to gaslight those around them.”

Bella raised her eyebrows. “I am
familiar with that term..” she trailed off as though thinking of something.

“Yeah you must be. So you know
then that it is a term that refers to manipulating a situation so much that
others begin to doubt their own perception, which is, of course, the goal,”
Ryan elaborated. “Women will use whatever weakness in another they can find and
twist it for leverage. They will look to socially isolate their prey, speak
badly about him or her, lie and twist the truth to their advantage. They seem
to crave social elevation with their peers more so than the men.”

Bella stopped taking notes and
just listened.

“Don’t all women care what their
peers think of them?”

“Yes, but a normal, healthy woman won’t
lie about what she thinks and feels, won’t pretend she is someone she is not, won’t
manipulate situations constantly to ensure she gets what she wants. A
psychopathic woman will. They are imitators,” he concluded.

“What do you mean?” Bella asked.

“They don’t feel emotions so they
don’t know how they’re supposed to act when something emotional happens. They
are completely disconnected from a real emotional life. There is a story about
a famous scientist, Essi Viding, who showed a picture of a frightened face to a
psychopath and asked him to identify the emotion. He stared at it blankly, only
to reply: ‘I don’t know, but it’s the face of people right before I kill them.’”

He paused before he went on.

“So they watch others to learn how
to act. If they see a mother comforting a child when he cries, they will do the
same; but, they wouldn’t have done that automatically and don’t really care that
the kid is crying or whether he feels comfort. In an emotional situation with
no playbook, they don’t have an innate feeling about what to say because they
truly don’t feel sympathy or grief or heartache. You know they dream in black
and white.”

“They sound like aliens.” Bella
shuddered.

“In a way they are,” he answered. “They
are in the physical form of a body—many are great looking and well put together—but
inside there is nothing but a desire to win. The question is how well the
person has learned to hide that truth.”

Bella thought about this for a
moment. It seemed to her an almost impossible feat to be able to look inside
someone and see to their core.

“Do they feel love?” she asked.

“Love?” Ryan shook his head. “For
them, love means getting what they want. Plain and simple. It is not about
giving to another or caring how another feels or even recognizing how another
feels. The psychopath will do for others, but only and always with his or her
own selfish motives in mind, and the poor soul on the other end probably won’t
have a clue what’s going on until it’s too late. They pretend like a pro, but their
love is a one-sided affair.”

Bella was fascinated.

“Remember, psychopaths are
deliberate: they know exactly what they are doing,” he continued. “They are not
psychotic. They don’t hear voices. It is insanity of the most lethal kind
because they do not feel remorse when they commit crime, and will do it over
and over again. They cannot be cured.”

“Why do some turn some violent?”
Bella wanted to know.

“The degree to which they are able
to control their violent impulses and outbursts is the determinative factor in whether
they will turn physically dangerous,” Ryan answered. “They see the world made
up of predator and prey; some will deal with their prey outside the confines of
violence, but others will feel the need to resort to it. Either way, they will rationalize
their actions and excuse themselves from liability one hundred percent of the
time. It will always be the fault of their victims. Even when they kill.”

Bella considered his response.

“Dr. Weber worked at Dunmore,” she
said out of nowhere.

“Really?” Ryan asked with surprise
and interest. “Do you know what ward?”

“No.”

“Not during the years leading up
to its closing?” he questioned.

“I don’t know. Why?” she asked.

“Do you know anything about its
history?” Ryan asked her.

“Not much,” she replied.

“It was a brutal place. It became
so inhumane toward its guests they finally shut it down,” he explained. “You
know, I went to Dunmore on a few occasions to interview a woman I was studying
during my graduate school days. Her name was Celeste McFadden. I will never
forget her. She was the most forlorn human being I have ever met. She was one
of my first case studies actually.”

“What was she in for?”

“She killed all four of her
children. Drowned them in the bathtub at the same time. When her husband
returned home they were lying one on top of the other, dead, and she was on the
floor next to the tub reading them Mother Goose rhymes.”

“Pretty chilling,” Bella
responded.

“Yeah. So was Dunmore.” Ryan
looked concerned for a moment. “It was filled with women like her. And the
shrinks who worked there were out of their tree as well. You’d have to be, to
be able to stand it all.”

“So there you go,” said Bella. “I am
telling you, Weber is not your garden-variety doctor. She and my victim fought,
she knew the murdered girls, she has access to Adderall, possibly cyanide. It’s
not a far stretch. I’m going after a subpoena for her office records, although
I might not get it. Wrestling with how to approach it. She’s steel—I need to
know what to look for.”

“It is hard to consider women as violent
psychopaths. We tend to think of them as men.”

“Why is that?” Bella asked.

“There is a bias in the
psychiatric world, and in our culture, that still views women through the
traditional lens of caregiver and nurturer. The literature feels a need to
explain away female violent behavior. It is simply too uncomfortable for many.”