Forgotten Girls, The (20 page)

The high barbed wire fence
surrounding Dunmore was crooked in some spots, but mostly stood just as tall
and erect as it had when the hospital was open. At fourteen feet high, it lent
an air of danger and foreboding to the massive red brick cluster of buildings
behind it. The windows of the main castle-like structure were boarded up,
covered in graffiti, where vandals had clearly wrought havoc at one time. In
the front yard shrubs were ripped from the ground, strewn across the property
at random. Electrical wires sliced through the air within inches of massive,
neglected trees.

The main building, with its colossal
peaked tiled roof, its numerous tiny windows, and its massive gothic front
doors anchored two other buildings, both smaller in stature, one on each side.
The planks of wood used to board up one of the windows on the smaller structure
had come undone, revealing black wrought iron bars behind it.

Whatever garden had grown in front
had withered long ago. Row upon row of dead shrubs and bushes, now barren
sticks and weeds, bore witness to what had once been an extensive collection of
plants. The main driveway curved to the left and the right, each way leading
back behind the buildings toward the forest behind, ending at some unseen point
in the dark wood. There wasn’t another building, home, or structure for miles,
just endless fields surrounded by dense forest. It was one of the most ominous-looking
places Bella had ever seen. She and Mack slowly exited the car and, instinctively,
she put her hand over the Glock in her side holster.

It was Kempner’s memory of how much
Emilie had loved Dunmore that convinced Bella to come here, on a hunch she just
might have returned.

She looked over at Mack, grateful to
have him there with her. This was not a place even she would have wanted to
visit alone.

They did not see the Range Rover they
expected to see and, for a second, she wondered if her calculations had been
wrong. They walked along the outside perimeter of the barbed wire fence, canvassing
the property on foot, looking for any sign she had been there. Or was there
again. Suddenly Bella noticed, in a heavily wooded corner of the front yard, a
swath of fence had been bent back.

She and Mack made their way over,
cautiously. Someone had put a small boulder on top of the bent fence to keep it
down. They crouched through the opening with trepidation, Mack first, as though
entering a sacred spot. Where was the car? Bella wondered.

Now on the inside her perspective
changed. The building she had peered at behind the metal mesh came into vivid
relief, a stark, gloomy, and intimidating presence up close. It towered above
them, as though reaching for the sky in its own effort to escape, commanding
respect for the years it had housed the most tortured and dangerous souls known
to man.

Bella’s heart raced a bit quicker
as she took in the energy of the place and pictured those who roamed its
hallways. The sky darkened as the sun moved slowly behind what remaining clouds
lingered in the sky.

They trod softly, and slowly, as
they made their way toward the front of the hospital, through the dead garden. They
turned the corner and walked alongside the towering structure, toward the back,
canvassing.

As they walked farther into the
property, into what looked like a desolate back yard, they saw an old,
neglected playground. A slide, a seesaw, a sandbox and one lone, solitary swing
stood inside a square area of wood chips held in by railroad ties. And on that
swing sat a woman, swaying back and forth.

Instinctively, Bella and Mack tightened
their grip on their Glocks and looked at one another at exactly the same time. The
woman’s back was toward them as she glided on the old, dented swing. If she
knew they were there, she didn’t let on.

Mack nodded to Bella to remain calm.
They approached from behind, walking quietly about five feet apart, trying not
to step on the dried twigs and branches that littered the ground. As they got closer
they heard singing. It was a song they knew well, from childhood:

“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all
dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down
her back, back, back. She asked her mother, mother, mother, for fifty cents,
cents, cents…”

The singing stopped and so did the
swing, abruptly, without warning. Bella and Mack didn’t move. The woman’s arms clasped
the chain-link ropes as she stood and turned to face them.

She was dressed in a long, black
sleeveless cotton dress with two deep front pockets, and was barefoot. Her hair
was no longer straight. It was curled and frizzy. She wore no makeup and had
nothing with her except a ratty-looking blanket on the ground a few feet from
where she stood.

At first glance, she looked like
herself, just a bit messier. But when Bella looked into her eyes, she knew
something was terribly wrong. They were black and vacant, two pockets with no
soul behind them. Not only did she not flirt with Mack anymore, she didn’t even
seem to notice he was there. One of her hands slipped into her pocket over what
looked to be something inside. Or was she making a fist? It was hard to tell.

She was smiling.

“It’s been a long road, Jenna,”
Bella said calmly, even though she felt anything but calm. “We have Weber in
custody. We know what she did to you when you were young. We understand your pain.
We just want to talk.”

Bella said this in as sweet a
voice as she could muster.

Jenna looked at Bella’s hand on
her gun and let out a high-pitched squeal. It sounded like laughter but wasn’t.
Her eyes were deadly focused as she kept smiling. When she spoke, her voice was
no longer high and squeaky. It was deep.

“You do, huh? What can you tell me
about it, Detective?”

She didn’t sound like herself at
all. She was taunting Bella. She wanted to play. Bella thought it best to go
along.

“Well, I know life here must have
been brutal,” she replied, looking around. “I know you were able to survive it
and escape. Good for you, Jenna,” she added disingenuously. “I know you made a
new life for yourself and now have a beautiful family.”

Bella was trying her best.

“You think life here was brutal? That’s
what you think?” Jenna looked amused. “Come on. I would have given you more
credit than that.”

Jenna paused for a minute.

“Tell me why, exactly, you think
life here was brutal? I’m curious,” Jenna said.

Bella wasn’t sure what to say. Her
brain went blank for a moment. She remembered what Kempner said about how much
she loved the garden and how much freedom she had.

“Well, thinking about it now,
maybe I am wrong. You probably had a lot of friends here. You had Bobby to
protect you. He loved you. There were lots of parties. And you loved your
garden.”

Bella looked at her to see if she
was making a dent. Jenna stared right through her.

“I did love my garden. It was
different from the one in Greenvale. I got to put my hands in the ground and
get dirty. I got to weed the plants by myself. I got to feel the cold, wet
earth and rub it on my face if I felt like it.” She paused. “Speaking of
which…”

She took a stick out of her pocket
and Mack jerked, thinking she might have a weapon. It was a twig. She held it
up for him to see, then put it into her mouth and slowly sucked it like a
lollipop.

“Greenvale was hell,” she
snickered in a raspy voice. “Twenty years of make-believe. My girls are fine,
but Doug’s a dud. Life here was richer, so much more colorful, so much more
fun.”

She looked sad all of a sudden,
far away. “Life with Bobby was wonderful.”

“You are very lucky you have such
fond memories,” Bella said quietly.

“They took him away. Without him,
I would have to go back to Dr. Weber.”

She got a strange look on her
face.

“She found you, didn’t she?” It
dawned on Bella now that Weber had tracked Jenna down.

“Sure did. Crazy bitch. What did
she think was going to happen? She was going to show up after all these years
and we were going to pick up where we left off? In a loving relationship filled
with rape and bondage?”

She sneered.

“I begged her to let me be, but
she threatened to undo it all for me. I was at her mercy once again, just like
in the old days. I don’t know. I might never have killed those girls if she
hadn’t found me. I may even have left Jos alone too. This is all her fault, you
know.”

Bella and Mack didn’t say a word. Bella’s
mind went instantly to what Ryan taught her.

“She wanted to be my mommy, even
though I told her I am bad to my mommies.”

She broke into an eerie smile and giggled.
She twirled her hair like a little girl then became serious.

“It’s a real art, to be a good
mom.”

She sounded as though she were
having an intellectual conversation in a classroom, discussing the nature of motherhood.

“So many moms say they would kill
for their kids. Well…I did.”

She beamed with pride for a
moment, then became sullen.

“It’s funny…I thought being on the
outside with real people would be better. I was wrong. Real people suck.”

“Yes, real people can definitely
suck. You are right,” Bella acknowledged.

“Not can. DO!” Jenna screamed and
startled Mack. She looked upset now and started moving slowly back toward her
blanket.

“You think you’re so much better
than me, don’t you, Detective?”

She was on her blanket now,
peering over her shoulders.

“I could tell from the start you
thought I was stupid. You waltzed into my home with him”—she pointed to
Mack—“questioning me. I could see how jealous you were of me, my home, my life.
He was nice to me,” she said in a little girl voice as she looked at Mack.

Bella was taken aback.

“I am sorry if I offended you,
Jenna. I was only doing my job. I was trying to get information.”

It was hard to tell what Jenna
knew or understood to be true anymore.

“Whatever.” She was perfunctory,
suddenly disinterested. Now her eyes were on Mack.

“I have taken things into my own
hands when I needed to,” Jenna explained to him. “That doesn’t make me bad. I
am not bad. I just, ya know, I was clearing the way for Jessie, doing what I
could so that my girl could have the best. Like all the moms around me—I was
doing what I could for my kid. Right?”

Her voice sounded like a little
girl now. Bella tried to follow her thinking as she watched her staring at Mack
and sucking the twig. She bit off a piece and spit some loose bark in Mack’s
direction.

“Yeah, Jenna. I get it,” Mack said
kindly. “You’ve had a lot of things happen to you that were unfair and you just
did what you had to do to defend yourself, to get by. We understand that.
Joslyn was very selfish for creating that scholarship for two underprivileged students.
It guaranteed Jessie would not get one of the spots. That was wrong of her.
Very selfish.”

They had learned about this from
Principal Harding. Jenna looked surprised.

“So you agree with me?”

She asked this so sweetly and with
such hope that Bella almost felt sad for a second.

“Yes, Jenna. I do.” Mack sounded convincing.

“Thank you,” Jenna answered
sincerely. Were they actually getting somewhere?

Mack continued, “And Sam and
Sophie. It wasn’t right of them to apply together and lock up two spots like
that. They operated as a team. It was unfair. I would be furious if my daughter
got knocked out of the running like that. Jessie’s transcript was perfect.
Principal Harding told me it was a big mistake—that Jessie should have gotten
in.”

At the mention of Harding, Jenna’s
whole demeanor changed. Her smile disappeared, her lips clenched together
tightly, and her brows furrowed. It seemed as if Mack had reminded her of someone
she hated.

“He’s an ass. He gets off on his
power. It’s probably the only time in his life he has any. I was tempted to do
him in too, but I don’t know, somehow I have more control with men. It’s
fascinating actually.”

Then, as if she thought of
something else, she blurted out, “I was loved here.”

“Yes. By Bobby and Dr. Weber,”
Bella said before she was cut off.

“Ha! Is that what you think? She
wished!”

“But she tracked you down. She
loved you enough to find you.”

“You think she found me out of
love?” Her voice cracked when she asked this. “She thought she owned me—like when
I was a little girl. I could have kept it all up if she hadn’t undone me.”

She stared at Mack as she gnawed
on the twig.

“Those crests were a neat idea,” Mack
said slowly.

“You think?” She looked really
pleased with herself. “I thought so too,” she laughed. “I knew Marion would know
it was me, and you would think it was her, and…” She stopped and giggled.

“She could have gone bye-bye,
finally.” She almost sang the words.

“Yes. It was very ingenious of you,”
Mack agreed. “So what happened? Why did you run?”

Mack sounded respectful and gentle
and caring. Jenna seemed hypnotized by him. But she didn’t answer. She just
stared.

“Was there a reason you came here?”
he tried again.

“I wanted to go home,” she
answered sadly. “I wanted to go home.”

Bella and Mack looked at one
another.

“I understand,” he replied. “I’d
like to go home too. Ya know, I think we all would.”

Jenna considered this.

“Are you here to collect me?”

“We are,” he said quietly.

She smiled bizarrely and started
humming.

“You probably don’t want to come
with us,” Mack acknowledged.

She plopped down on her blanket.
She looked tired and worn. She sat Indian style and began rocking sideways.