Little Girls (26 page)

Karski’s house was searched, but no evidence was uncovered. He was officially dropped as a suspect . . . which meant the police no longer
had
a suspect. At one point, the FBI was notified, but details of what they accomplished—if anything—were vague at best. The only other piece of evidence ever uncovered in the case was one of Tanya Albrecht’s imitation Chuck Taylor’s, lying in a muddy ditch on the side of Kingland Terrance, only a few yards from the overpass. There were no tire tracks in the dirt, no burnt rubber on the pavement, and no additional signs of a struggle. Briefly, the neighborhood hummed with speculation that the Albrecht girl had possibly known her abductor. More locals were questioned by police, but these were all longshots that proved fruitless. In 1993, the Albrecht family relocated to Baltimore after Hal got a job with Domino Sugar. The new tenants that moved into their Highpoint Boulevard row home agreed to keep a laminated sign on their front door. It read:

The Albrechts’ new address was printed below this note.

By all accounts, the new tenants left the little laminated sign on the front door until they were evicted in 1998.

I
t was Detective Freeling who told Laurie Genarro this information. Of course, he hadn’t been one of the detectives to work the case—in 1989, Freeling hadn’t even been on the force yet—but he was familiar with it, and brought with him the original case file. Inside the file were several witness reports, along with the school photos of Tanya Albrecht that had been provided to the officers that night by her older sister Caroline. Laurie asked to see the photos, which Detective Freeling handed over with hesitation. The girl looked fragile, hopeless. For some reason, Laurie thought she also looked familiar. She thought of the skeletonized hand poking out from the tarp back in the godless, industrial mausoleum of garage 58, and shivered.

It was closing in on midnight. Laurie, Ted, and Detective Freeling sat around the kitchen table while three cups of coffee sat untouched and cooling in front of them. Susan had already gone to bed by the time Laurie had come back home, and the girl had slept through the detective’s assertive pounding on the front door. Laurie had waited to call the police until she arrived back home, her mind incapable of putting all the pieces together due to the strength of her disbelief until she was back in the house. Now, the house seemed preternaturally quiet. Laurie wished someone would speak again, but at the same time, she did not want to hear anything else Detective Freeling might have to tell her.

“Of course,” the detective said after a while, “we won’t be one hundred percent sure until her dental records are examined. But the arm—the one she had broken in two places when she fell out of the tree at age nine—still shows signs of the fractures. The body is badly decomposed, but the size of the remains looks to be about the right age. And, of course, there was the other sneaker.”

The other imitation Converse sneaker had been uncovered about an hour ago, as a search team went through the rest of the garage. It left little doubt.

“Will the family be notified?” Laurie asked.

“We’re tracking them down at the moment. It looks like Hal, the father, died a couple of years ago. Mesothelioma or something, I think. Last known address was some place out in Woodlawn. The kids would all be grown and moved on by now.”

“So who actually owns that garage unit?” Ted asked.

“Well,” Detective Freeling said, “that’s where it gets mucky. Company called Bartwell owns the land, including the shipyards, but leases the buildings—including those garages—to some Russian corporation, who has been working out of there since 2008 or so.”

“Russian?” Ted said.

Detective Freeling shrugged. “It’s not unusual. Hell, back in oh-six, George W wanted to sell off the whole goddamn Port of Baltimore to Dubai, for Christ’s sake. It was big news around here.” He sipped some of the lukewarm coffee.

“Aren’t there any records to show who owned it back then?” Laurie asked. “Back in 1989 when Tanya Albrecht disappeared?”

Detective Freeling’s lips narrowed and his eyebrows arched. He looked passively over the paperwork from the Albrecht girl’s case file that was spread out across the table. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up about that.”

“It was his,” she said flatly. “My father’s.”

She remembered the photo in her back pocket and handed it over to Detective Freeling now. The detective looked at it closely, flipped it around to glance at the back, then set the photograph on the table.

“That was with my father’s stuff,” she said. She pointed to the door with the 58 painted on it. “That’s it right there.”

“It could have gone through a dozen different hands since then,” Ted offered, but even he didn’t sound convinced.

We all know the score,
she thought.
Are we trying to kid each other?

“You said yourself there had been speculation that Tanya Albrecht might have known her abductor,” she said to Detective Freeling. “My father sold his share of the mill and retired sometime in the early eighties, but he would still have known some of the folks working there in 1989. He knew the layout of the property, knew the workers . . . but he lived out here, removed enough from their society to be forgotten.”

“But what reason would he have to abduct the girl?” Ted said. He was trying damn hard to not only convince her but to convince himself, Laurie could tell.

“What reason does
anyone
have for abducting and murdering
anyone?”
she retorted. “It would have been so easy. He lived here alone, no one ever came to visit him, and he had access to that whole facility even after he’d left. Maybe her death was an accident—I don’t think it was, but I guess it’s possible—and he just stowed her away in that garage. Maybe he meant to go back for her once things settled down. And maybe enough time finally passes and he figures, what the hell, and leaves her in there to rot.” A final thought struck her like a mallet to a gong. “Maybe he even
forgot
about her. After all that time, I mean. The dementia . . .” She looked intently at Ted. “Maybe that’s why he had been tearing this house apart. Maybe he was looking for the key, but in his dementia, he had forgotten what he’d done with it.”

It felt like bolts tumbling into place inside her head.

“Laurie . . .” Ted stood up.

“Wait.” She lashed out and gripped him just above the wrist. “The last phone call I had with him back in Hartford. He began talking nonsensically, or so I thought at the time—”

“Laurie, he was
sick.”

“He called me Tanya,” she said. “Twice. On the phone. I didn’t think anything of it then—who would?—but now . . .”

Ted went silent. Slowly, he lowered himself back in his chair. Across the table, Detective Freeling’s eyes volleyed between the two of them. After a moment, he said, “Mrs. Genarro, are you sure about that?”

“As sure as I am sitting here. As sure as there’s the body of a dead girl in that garage in Sparrows Point.” But then she paused. She glanced down at the open case file and at one of the old school photos of Tanya Albrecht. “I’ve seen this girl before,” Laurie said.

One of Freeling’s eyebrows arched. “Yeah?”

“Hold on.” She stood up and left the room. When she returned less than two minutes later, she carried with her Myles Brashear’s photo album. She set the album on the table, opened it, and flipped to the appropriate page. “Here,” she said, pointing to the photograph of a young girl peeking out from beneath the shade of a highway overpass. “That’s her. That’s Tanya Albrecht.”

Freeling spun the album around so that he could get a better view of the photo. He said nothing as he looked at it, although the exhalations from his flared nostrils were quite loud.

“Holy Christ,” Ted muttered. He looked ill.

“Yeah,” Detective Freeling said eventually. He nodded, though he seemed saddened to do it. “Yeah, that’s her, all right.”

“I think there’s more, too,” Laurie said. She went to her purse on the counter and dug out the manila envelope she had found clipped to the back of her childhood scrapbook back in that horrible place. She opened it and upended it, scattering the photographs about the table. “Tanya wasn’t the only girl I found back at that storage facility.”

Both Ted and Detective Freeling picked up a photograph each. A deafening silence fell down upon them. It lasted for several heartbeats.

“Who are all these girls?” Ted said eventually, setting the photo down on the table.

Detective Freeling looked up at her. “These were with your father’s stuff?”

“Yes.”

“What does this mean?” Ted said.

“I know,” Laurie said. “I know what it means.”

When she didn’t continue, Detective Freeling rubbed his forehead and, peering down at the display of photographs once more, said, “There were a rash of disappearances back in the eighties throughout the Delmarva area. All of them young girls. Nine, I believe, in all. Including Albrecht. None of them were ever found.”

“He was stalking them,” Laurie said. “Taking pictures.”

“Jesus,” Ted said. The word juddered out of him. “These can’t be the same girls.”

“There’s eight different girls in all those photos,” Laurie said. Then she pointed to the photo of Tanya in her father’s album. “Tanya Albrecht makes nine.”

Ted just shook his head. His eyes looked distant, unfocused.

“I’ll need to take these as evidence,” Detective Freeling said. “We can ID them at the station.”

Laurie handed him the envelope.

With a sigh, Detective Freeling filed the papers into the case file and then closed it. Along with the photos of the girls, he had included the photograph of Laurie’s father and the two other men, but she didn’t protest. When he requested the photo of Tanya from the album, Laurie took it out from its plastic sleeve and handed it to him. He stared at it in unabashed amazement, then slid it, too, into the case file.

“I’d like to have you come down to the station tomorrow and give a formal statement,” Detective Freeling said. “Whenever is most convenient for you.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“I can’t promise you what will come out in the newspapers in the next few days, though I presume you’ll be heading back to Hartford sooner than later?”

“As soon as we have a realtor look at the house,” Laurie said.

“These things can be . . . tough . . . on families.” There was more than just a hint of compassion in Detective Freeling’s voice. “I’m sure you understand.”

Both Laurie and Ted nodded.

Detective Freeling stood. “I’ll see myself out. And of course I’ll keep you both apprised of anything else we uncover.”

“Will you let me know if you’re able to contact any of Tanya’s relatives?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you, detective.”

Smiling wearily, the slender blue case file tucked beneath one arm, Detective Freeling wished them a good night.

 

“I don’t know what to say,” Ted said. When she didn’t answer, he said, “I don’t know what to do.”

“Whatever you want,” she said. She emptied the coffee cups in the sink, then wiped down the counter. Exhaustion pulled on her shoulders like a backpack full of sand. After leaving Sparrows Point in a fit of panic, she was halfway along the beltway toward home before she was able to regain some composure. When she had glanced up at her reflection in the rearview mirror, she wasn’t at all surprised to find that she had been crying. Now, just a few hours later, that trip out to the desolate factories of Sparrows Point seemed like it had happened in another lifetime.

Ted stood up from the table. “Your mind must be reeling. I can’t imagine what this is like for you.”

“I don’t need your compassion or your sympathy,” she advised him. “This changes nothing between you and me.”

“I’d like to talk about that, if you’ll let me.”

“I don’t think so, Ted. It’s very late and I’ve been through enough bullshit this evening.”

“Maybe you should rethink coming with me on Friday. You and Susan.”

“There’s nothing to rethink. Susan and I will be fine here on our own. And I think you should leave tomorrow instead of waiting till Friday.” She looked at the clock on the microwave. It was after midnight. “Today, I mean.”

“I don’t like the idea of leaving you two alone in this house.”

“It isn’t the house. There’s no menacing spirit here. I’m a grown woman and I can take care of myself.”

She threw the crusty dishrag in the sink. On the counter, the remaining items that had been recovered from the well still sat on the paper towel. There were half a dozen more keys among the swag. How many other doors were there? How many other locks waited to be opened? The possibilities were horrifying.

“At least let me come to the police station with you tomorrow,” he said.

“I can handle that on my own.”

“Laurie, you’re being pigheaded.”

“Am I?”

“Stop it. Please. Let’s talk.”

“I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

Her back was toward him but she could hear him sigh loud enough. She knew the look that would be on his face—that hurt, pouty, boyish look of indignation. She had seen it plenty of times in the past.

“It’s like you don’t even care,” he said. “Any other wife would have . . . would have asked questions about . . .”

She turned and smiled coolly at him. It took all her strength. “You want me to ask who she was? When it happened? How did it start?”

“At least we’d be talking.”

“I don’t want to know those things, Ted. I’m tired and I’m sad and I’m lonely. Thing is, I’ve been lonely for a while now. Why is it you care all of a sudden?”

“I’ve always cared.”

“Have you?”

“Stop answering me with rhetoric.”

She rinsed her hands beneath the faucet, then dried them off on a fresh dishtowel. The decapitated head of the plastic baby doll watched her from the counter with blank eye sockets. “You should get some rest if you’re going to drive back tomorrow.”

“I can leave Friday morning instead, just like we planned.”

“We planned nothing.”

“You know what I mean. Come on. Cut it out.”

Folding her arms across her chest, she turned around to face him as she leaned back against the edge of the counter. “Here’s the deal. You leave tomorrow for your big meeting. You stay there when it’s done. Once I’m able to get a realtor out here to look at this place, Susan and I will take a train back. I’ll use the money we’ve made already from the sale of the furniture, so you won’t feel it in your bank account.”

“This isn’t about
money,
Laurie.”

“No. It’s about fidelity. Or your lack thereof. Either way, once Susan and I get back to Hartford, you and I can talk. I think that’s reasonable. We’ve got a daughter to think about in all this, and it would do her no good for me to scream and shout and throw your shit out into the street. Which, truth be told, is what I’d really like to do.”