Last Look (9 page)

“Where did you meet? Here in Deptford?” she continued.

“Savannah. We were both working Savannah at the time.” Her voice softened and she seemed to debate with herself for a moment before walking into the small kitchen area. She returned with a wooden folding chair and placed it next to the coffee table, opposite Dorsey. “Both of us were on the street for the same guy.”

“You worked for the same pimp?”

Edith nodded. “His name was Bass. He was one mean son of a bitch. There was just no pleasing that man. No matter how hard you worked, how much you made, it was never enough, you know?”

Dorsey nodded, but Edith appeared not to notice.

“Me and Shannon got to be friends. We were always talking about moving on, moving out. Getting a place of our own, saving some money so that someday we could do something else. Something better. But we knew there was no chance of that while we worked for scum like him.”

“How did you get involved with him?”

Edith snorted. “The same way any girl gets into it. It’s such a…what you call it, a cliché? You come to town thinking you’re gonna get a nice job, and you get off that bus and realize those few dollars you got in your pocket aren’t going to be near enough. Guys hang around the station, just waiting—you know that. You know the story.” She looked directly into Dorsey’s eyes. “You know you do.”

“Young girl, no place to go. Nice looking guy promises you a job, he tells you he can get you a place to stay with a friend of his….” Dorsey nodded. Edith was right. She’d heard it a hundred times before with minor variations.

“Yada, yada, yada.” Edith finished Dorsey’s sentence. “What can I say? I was stupid but I thought I was so grown-up, you know? I thought I was leaving something bad for something better. Thought I could handle the city, thought I could handle anything.” She bit her bottom lip. “Well, I guess Bass showed me.”

“And Shannon?”

“Same story.” Edith nodded. “Way back when, some guy picked her out at the bus station, same as me. Same promises. Same job. Same yada yada. Then she comes to Savannah, same thing all over again.”

“She arrived in Savannah before you? How much before?”

“She’d been working for Bass for maybe a year by the time I got there.”

“Where had she been before Savannah, do you know?”

“Bunch of places.” Edith shrugged. “I remember her talking about being in Tennessee for a while. Nashville. Knoxville. Memphis. She said how she used to go to Graceland and stand outside the gates with the tourists.”

“Where’d you come from, Edith?” Dorsey asked.

“What difference does it make?” Edith snapped, then softened and told Dorsey, “Virginia. But that was a long time ago.”

“You have family there?”

“I guess they’re still around. Most likely.” Edith licked her lips. “Let’s stick to Shannon.”

“Did she ever talk about why she left home?”

Edith shook her head. “Shannon didn’t talk much about where she was from, except that it was called Hatton and it was in South Carolina. She talked some about her family—she said she had sisters—but she never said why she left.”

“And you didn’t ask?”

“She’d have told me if she wanted me to know.”

“She have any contact with her family that you know of?” Andrew asked.

“No. None.”

“So how do you know one of her sisters is a senator?”

“The cops said.”

“When?”

“When they came to get her stuff. Day before yesterday.”

“What stuff?” Andrew stopped writing and looked up.

“Just some stuff of hers they wanted,” Edith told him. “They said her family was coming into town and that they wanted her things. That’s when they said her sister was a senator. I heard them talking in her room.”

“What did you give them?”

“Stuff.” Edith’s mouth curved in a half smile.

“Everything?” Dorsey asked.

“Sure,” Edith replied flatly.

“So tell us how you got from Savannah to Deptford,” Andrew said, changing the subject. There was no question in his mind that Edith had not handed over all of her roommate’s possessions willingly.

“No way was Bass gonna let us go, just walk out, so we planned it. Went out one night like we always did, worked our way uptown a bit. Turned what we had to, had the johns drop us off at the bus station. Got on the first bus that was leaving, took us into Charleston. From there we took the first bus out, that took us to Raleigh. We thought maybe we’d try to cover our tracks some, in case Bass sent someone after us. We worked Raleigh for a while, then worked our way down here to Deptford.”

“Why Deptford?” Dorsey asked.

“Shannon liked that it wasn’t far from the ocean. She liked the beach. We thought if we lived here, we’d go to the beach.” Edith’s eyes grew haunted. “We did go sometimes. Not as much as we planned, but we did go a time or two.”

She got up and walked into the kitchen and ran water in the sink. When she came back into the living room, she held a glass of water in one hand. She did not ask the agents if they were thirsty.

“It’s weird, don’t you think? We moved here ’cause she wanted to be near water, and that’s where she died. Out there someplace near the water.”

“Well, we’re not really sure where she died,” Andrew told her.

“She wasn’t killed out there on that island where they found her?” Edith looked surprised.

“It doesn’t look like it. We’re pretty sure she was killed someplace else and taken there by car,” Dorsey explained.

“Damn cops tell me nothing.” She was angry again. “Like I don’t have the right to know what happened. Every thing I ask, they say, ‘We’re only releasing information to the
family
.’” She spit out the word. “I tried to tell them, I’m her family. I’m the one who cared about her. Where has her
family
been all these years, she’s missing and they don’t come looking for her?”

“I’d be happy to keep you informed of the arrangements, as soon as we find out when and where,” Dorsey promised, noting that Edith didn’t seem to be aware Shannon was supposed to have been dead for years.

“Like I’m really going to go?” Edith got up and began to pace. “I said my good-byes there in the morgue. I don’t need to say good-bye again.”

“You identified the body?”

“Well, yeah. It isn’t like there was anybody else to do it.” Edith sat back down again. “The cops called and said they’d found a body and I needed to come see if it was Shannon. And it was.”

“What identification did she have?” Dorsey asked. Edith looked up at her curiously.

“Driver’s license, what?” Dorsey probed.

“She didn’t have a driver’s license.”

“What did she have that proved her name was Shannon Randall?”

Edith frowned. “What kinda stupid question is that? She said who she was. I never asked for an ID. She told me who she was and where she was from, and that’s what I told the cops.”

“Did Shannon keep a journal?” Dorsey changed the subject.

“A what?”

“A journal. Or a diary.”

The answer came just a beat too quickly.

“No.”

“Did she ever receive any letters while she was here?” Dorsey continued. “Or e-mail? Did she have a cell phone?”

“We don’t have a computer. And the only thing the mail guy brought us was the electric bill. Mostly she used pay phones. Once in a while she’d pick up one of those disposable phones.”

“Did Shannon ever talk about her past?”

“Not really. Like I said, she never seemed to want to talk about it, and I never pushed it.”

Dorsey looked at Andrew as if to ask, Did we miss anything?

“Edith, we really appreciate your time. I know this has been really hard for you.” Andrew stood, signaling the interview was over. He closed the notebook and tucked it under his arm.

Edith stared at the floor.

“What are you going to do now?” Dorsey asked as she, too, stood.

“Not sure.” Edith shrugged.

“This might be a good time for you to think about…” Dorsey searched for a way to put it that would not offend. “About maybe moving on with your life.”

Still staring at the floor, Edith nodded.

Dorsey opened her bag and took out a card.

“Look, if you remember anything you think might be important, or if you have any questions, you call me, okay?” Dorsey handed the woman the card.

Edith took it and folded it into the palm of her left hand.

They walked to the door and waited while Edith unlocked it and released the chain. Dorsey was into the hall when she remembered one thing she’d forgotten to ask.

“When did she start cutting herself?”

Edith looked out from behind the partially closed door, clearly surprised.

“We saw the marks on her arms and legs,” Dorsey said softly.

“Just a few months ago. I came home one morning and Shannon was in the bathroom, leaning over the sink, cutting herself.” Edith pointed to the upper part of her left arm. “I said, ‘Jesus, Shannon, stop! You’re going to hurt yourself.’”

Edith hugged herself, her arms over her chest, her face reflecting confusion.

“She say why she did it?” Andrew asked.

“Yeah, but it didn’t make any sense. She said it was the only way to make the pain go away.” Edith shook her head. “Crazy, huh? Like, what kind of person does that to themselves?”

“One more thing,” Andrew said. “You said sometimes she picked up a disposable phone.”

“Yeah. She used those prepaid things sometimes.”

“Who’d she call?”

Edith stared at him, then shook her head from side to side.

“She never said.”

7

“So what’s your take on Shannon?” Andrew asked after they’d returned to his car and headed toward the highway. “Why do you suppose she did it?”

“Why did she do what?”

“Cut herself.”

Dorsey shrugged. “Something in her life was hurting her. She cut herself, bled away the pain.”

He stopped at the red light at the corner. From the corner of his eye he was watching her face. There was a lot he wanted to know, but wasn’t sure how to ask. He figured he’d just toss it out there and see what he caught.

“You know, I’ve read about it, but I don’t understand. How does causing pain make pain go away? The cutting hurts more than whatever the other pain is?” he asked.

“It’s really not quite that simple.”

“Then explain it to me.”

“Girls who cut themselves—and it’s almost always adolescent girls, by the way—mostly they’re afraid. The fear is real, generally speaking, not imagined, and usually follows some type of trauma. Could be physical, could be emotional.” Her voice was oddly detached. Andrew tried to see her eyes, but she turned her face to the window. “Could be anything from abuse, incest, parental divorce or death, to fear of being inadequate, of being alone, of being a disappointment to her parents in some way.”

“Sounds like the same things you read about that cause eating disorders,” he noted.

“Many kids who cut are anorexic or bulimic. Not all, but some.”

“So how does one of those events—say, the girl’s parents announce they’re getting a divorce—lead to the kid picking up a razor blade and slashing her arms or legs?” The light turned green and he proceeded to make a left turn.

“It’s a means of seeking relief,” she said flatly. “It allows the cutter to control the pain.”

“Is it a prelude to committing suicide?”

“No, no. Cutting rarely leads to suicide. It’s a temporary solution to a traumatic situation. Suicide is permanent.”

“But isn’t it a cry for help, like an attempted suicide might be?”

“No. If you attempt suicide with the intention of failing, you’re hoping someone stops you so that you can get help. A lot of those kids—adults, too—know they need help but don’t know how to ask. Most cutters, on the other hand, go to great lengths to hide it, even from their friends. They hide the scars, they hide whatever implement they use. It isn’t always a razor blade, by the way, though that certainly is a popular choice. They don’t talk about it. Cutters don’t want to be caught. It’s a sort of self-medicating, if you could think of it in those terms.”

Andrew reflected on this as he drove. He’d already noted that Dorsey had been wearing shirts with sleeves that rolled to the elbow, or T-shirts with elbow-length sleeves, and thick silver bracelets each time he’d seen her. Was she hiding scars of her own?

The thought of Dorsey slicing into her flesh to relieve some greater pain unexpectedly made his heart hurt. He pushed it aside and turned his focus back where it belonged, on the case.

“So you think Shannon had some trauma as a child?”

“I’d bet on it.” Dorsey turned back to him; she, too, all business again. “Something happened to make her need to take control, so she did, years ago. Judging by the number of scars I saw on her arms and legs, I’d guess that she continued this behavior into her late teens, maybe her early twenties, before she was able to come to grips with whatever was behind it, and she was able to stop. Except for the fresh cuts, most of the scars appeared to be at least ten years old or better. Then recently, I suspect something happened that brought it all back, and once again, she coped by cutting.”

“You think whatever happened that caused her to start cutting in the first place, happened again lately?”

“I think that whatever had been hurting her as a child, was hurting her again—or threatening to hurt her again. Yes, I do.”

“Guess that’s a conversation to have with the family.”

“If they knew.”

“If your daughter was into self-mutilation, don’t you think you’d know?” he asked.

“Yeah, I’d know.” She nodded. “But sometimes the source of the pain is unaware of the means the child takes to alleviate it.”

“So in other words, the source of the pain could be something or someone in the family?”

“It almost always is,” she said simply. “There’s the sign for I-95. Take a right.”

He followed the signs and merged onto the interstate. They rode in silence for a while, then he asked, “So how do you think it’s going to go with the Randalls?”

“Probably not very well.” She closed her eyes and moved the seat to a slightly reclined position. “For one thing, we represent the same agency that concluded Shannon had been murdered twenty-four years ago. Christ, if any of them knew my father was the one who investigated this and was instrumental in charging Eric Beale, in concluding she’d been murdered…”

“From what I’ve read, everyone back then came to the same conclusion. It wasn’t just your father. The locals asked the agency to come in because they believed Shannon had been killed, and they’d had very little experience dealing with homicides. There was nothing in the Bureau file or in the Hatton police file that indicated anyone had given any thought to any scenario other than Shannon’s murder.”

“Mistake number one, then, and don’t you wonder why? If no one had considered that Shannon had been abducted, or that she’d run away, then there were never any leads pursued that led anywhere other than murder.” She made a face. “If there was anything to be found back then, it’s going to be a million times more difficult to find it now. It’s just so unlike my father to jump to a conclusion without considering every possibility.”

“You don’t know for certain that he didn’t, so let’s not make that assumption. That’s one of those things you might want to ask him. Someone must have steered him in that direction. In the meantime, I think we’re going to have to take another look at the evidence they did have, maybe reevaluate it.”

“What evidence was there?” She counted off on the fingers of her left hand. “They had Beale’s shirt covered with Shannon’s blood. Her assignment book was found in his car. They had his admission he’d driven her to the park where she cleaned up, and they found the bloody paper towels in the ladies’ room there. They couldn’t find anybody who saw Shannon after Beale said he dropped her off, but somebody saw Beale driving Shannon out of town around seven, according to the file I looked at last night. There were no other sightings of this girl. The evidence shows she got into Beale’s car and was never seen alive again.”

“Well, not in Hatton, anyway,” Andrew added. “And you have to admit that all seems to point to Beale.”

“What are the chances he drove her someplace, helped her to run away?” Dorsey suggested.

“You’d think he’d have said something back then, when his life depended on it.”

“Suppose Shannon convinced Beale that something terrible was happening to her at home, that she had to run away, and he helped her.” Dorsey considered the possibility. “He was her friend, maybe she made him promise not to tell.”

“Promise or not, he would have spoken up,” Andrew insisted. “No matter how good a friend he was, no way would that kid have kept his mouth shut if it meant being executed.”

“You’d think.” She sat quietly again for a while, then asked, “So you’ve read the Bureau’s entire file?”

“Yes.”

“Fill me in on everything. I’ve only read bits and pieces.”

“Where would you like to start?” A light rain started to fall and he turned on the wipers.

“Start with the family. I remember seeing a picture of the four girls in the newspaper back then. Shannon was the second youngest, I think.”

“Right. The oldest is Natalie, now Natalie Randall-Scott, the state senator. She was twenty-one, away at college in 1983. They barely talked to her at all back then. The next sister is Aubrey—she’s not married. She’s the one who has the television show, sort of a Southern Martha Stewart, if I understand correctly. She’s rumored to be in line for a national show. She was seventeen, a high school senior, when Shannon disappeared. Shannon was the third child, and the last was Paula Rose, who was three years younger than Shannon. She’s a minister in the church previously served by her father and grandfather.”

“Mom and Dad are both still alive, I know. But what about the grandparents?”

“Martha and Paul Randall. Grandma’s still with us, Reverend Paul passed on a few years ago.”

“One of the sisters might know what it was Shannon was running away from,” she murmured, “if in fact she ran and wasn’t abducted.”

They drove a mile in silence.

“Thank you,” she said.

“For?”

“For not shutting me out of this. I know you’re letting me closer than John wanted me to be.”

He chose his words carefully.

“John didn’t exactly tell me what to do here—he rarely does. I don’t know that he’s afraid anyone would recognize you—why would they?—or figure out you’re Matt’s daughter. Your last name is Collins, not Ranieri. No one connected with the case, outside a very few individuals within the Bureau, would know, which is why he doesn’t want your name on any reports. You just don’t know who might read them inside the Bureau.”

“He doesn’t think anyone would…” Dorsey looked confused.

“Your dad had a great career with the Bureau, and left to have an even better one as a crime analyst, or whatever they’re calling him on TV these days. There might be some who are jealous of his success.”

“Jealous enough to call the media and tell them that Matt’s daughter is secretly investigating the case?”

Andrew shrugged. “Hey, people can be unpredictable, you know that. The bottom line is, we just have to play this whole thing very smart. Like I said, Mancini doesn’t want it out there that you’re Matt Ranieri’s daughter and he’s right about you not signing reports. You’re not assigned to the case. He certainly doesn’t want the Bureau to be embarrassed.

“On the other hand, Edith Chiong obviously responded to you better than she did to me. It was in the best interest of the investigation for you to do the talking, and for me to observe.” He took note of the highway sign directing them toward their exit.

“The notes will be in your handwriting and will go into the file,” she murmured. “No need to even mention that I was there.”

“For the record, I think Mancini knew going in that you weren’t going to play silent partner.” Andrew changed lanes. “And let’s face it, there are going to be times when the interests of the investigation will best be served by you doing the talking.”

“Because I’m a woman.”

“Simple fact.” He shrugged. “Some people relate better to women, some to men. We’ll go with whatever best suits the circumstances.”

“Fair enough.”

Dorsey used the controls to bring her seat back up. “Why do you suppose he agreed so quickly to let me in on this?”

“I’m sure he had his reasons. Maybe he thought you’d try to investigate on your own, and that wouldn’t have been good for anyone.”

“So at least this way he thinks he can keep an eye on me?”

“I’m not reporting back to him on what you are or are not doing, if that’s what you’re insinuating.” For some reason, the idea that he was spying for John annoyed the hell out of him.

“Sorry,” she said after a few silent minutes had passed. “But you have to admit, the devil you know, and all that….”

“I don’t really know all of his motives, but I do know he’d declined to bring another agent into the case, so as long as you’re not flaunting your pedigree and no one in the Bureau figures out you’re here, I think he’s just going to leave things the way they are. As long as it works.”

“Do you think it’s working?” she asked.

“You did a good job with Edith Chiong. The Randalls might be a little tougher. We’ll play that by ear, see what kind of a read we get on them. They’ve gone through a lot in the past few days.”

“About that.” Dorsey turned in her seat to face him. “Have you seen any news reports about this?”

“No, but I haven’t been watching television. The newspapers I read at breakfast this morning didn’t have the story, either.”

“I totally expected this to be everywhere. I even told my dad not to answer his phone unless he knew for certain who was on the other end.”

“Guess it just hasn’t been put out there yet.”

“But wouldn’t you expect it to have been? This is a story. How is it that even the local papers haven’t picked up on it? I mean, if this had been your daughter, or your sister, wouldn’t you be screaming about the incompetence of the FBI or the police or something?”

“Maybe not if I was one of the Randall sisters, and my screaming announced to the world that my sister was a hooker.”

“Still, it seems odd to me. My first thought was that this was going to be a bomb of a story, a PR nightmare for the Bureau. But then…silence.”

“Has anyone from the press tried to get in touch with your father? Has anyone contacted him?”

“He had a call from Owen Berger the other day, but I told him not to return it.”

“Are you sure that’s why Berger was calling? Your dad does guest spots on his show a lot, doesn’t he?”

Dorsey nodded.

“Well, maybe he was calling about a different case. There was that model that disappeared out in Oregon last weekend. Berger could have been calling about that.”

“It’s possible,” Dorsey agreed. “You’re probably right. It doesn’t make sense that Berger could know about Shannon and no one else in the media would know. And he certainly wouldn’t miss an opportunity to break the story. As soon as I talk to my dad, I’ll ask.”

“Then let’s assume the story isn’t out because the family doesn’t want it out there.” He slowed for the exit and eased into the far right lane. “Does that tell you anything?”

She thought for a moment, then nodded slowly. “It tells me that no one’s told Eric Beale’s family that Shannon’s been alive all these years. They’re the ones who would be doing all the screaming. They still don’t know…. God, what a horrible shock this will be to them.”

“John assured me that he’s handling that. Let’s just hope he finds them before the story hits the wires.”