The 9th Girl (29 page)

“Is there a point to this?” Wynn Fogelman asked sharply.

Kovac ignored him. “What went down between those two at the Rock and Bowl? I’m hearing Christina started something, making fun of one of Gray’s poems.”

The one-shoulder shrug. “I don’t know.”

“You were right there, Aaron. I have a witness who puts you right in the middle of it,” Kovac lied.

The boy jumped up in his chair, all shock and righteous indignation. “Fucking Hatcher!”

“Aaron!” the father barked.

“And we have security tape,” Kovac went on.

Of course, he didn’t. The video was of terrible quality and showed only part of the room from an angle that made it virtually impossible to tell what the hell was going on, and completely impossible to pick out individuals who weren’t in the camera’s direct path. But Aaron Fogelman didn’t know that.

“I didn’t do anything!” the boy protested. “She went after Christina! I just got between them! I didn’t hit her! Did Hatcher say I hit her? I didn’t! It maybe just looked that way. I didn’t!”

Kovac sat back and digested that. He looked at Wynn Fogelman, who was glaring at his son.

“No,” Kovac said. “I’m sure your father taught you better than to hit a girl.”

The elder Fogelman turned on him. “You can’t use any of this against my son.”

“Not in a court of law,” Kovac qualified. “Your son isn’t under arrest. He isn’t even under suspicion of anything, Mr. Fogelman. Luckily for our overcrowded prison system, being a dick isn’t against the law.”

Fogelman bristled. “You can change your tone with me, Detective.”

“Why would I?” Kovac asked. “I don’t care what you think about me. You will probably find this hard to believe, but this situation isn’t about you.”

“What is it about, then?” Fogelman asked, his face stone-cold with suppressed fury.

“The truth,” Kovac said calmly. “That’s all. I want to know every possible reason a sixteen-year-old girl came to be in a position where a predator might have taken advantage of her.”

“You don’t even know that she’s missing,” Mr. Fogelman said.

“Oh, I know she’s missing,” Kovac said. “And by the end of the day I’m probably going to be sure that she’s dead and lying on a steel table in the morgue.”

“Aaron certainly had no part in any of that!”

“He was part of the little ambush that prompted Penny Gray to leave the Rock and Bowl on her own that night, Mr. Fogelman. And then she disappeared. So see? You can’t say Junior here didn’t have anything to do with that. You throw a rock in a pond, you don’t have control of where the ripples go.”

Wynn Fogelman stood up, trying not to look flustered. “I think we should go now, Aaron.”

“Kyle Hatcher followed her out,” Aaron said, happy to throw the blame on someone else.

“Kyle Hatcher doesn’t have a vehicle,” Kovac returned.

“He came with her,” the boy threw back. “Why wouldn’t he leave with her too?”

Kovac refused to react. “What time did
you
leave the Rock and Bowl that night, Aaron?”

Fogelman Sr. put a hand on his son’s shoulder. “Aaron. We’re leaving. Now.”

The boy looked from his father to Kovac, not sure which authority figure to obey. “Later. After them.”

“And where did you go?”

“Home,” his father said firmly. “He came home.”

“Well, then,” Kovac said to the elder Fogelman. “You’re a hell of a lot luckier than Penny Gray’s mother, aren’t you?”

He watched the Fogelmans exit the room—father, ramrod straight, chin up; son, looking at the ground, shoulders slouched, hands in the pockets of his hoodie. He followed them to the hall and watched them walk out as Tippen joined him.

“Which do you think would be worse?” Tippen asked. “Knowing you’re a son of a bitch or knowing you fathered one?”

“Toss-up,” Kovac said as his phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and looked at the screen. Liska.

“Do I need to help you bury the body?” he asked by way of greeting.

“No. But I’m touched to know that you would.”

“Well, in the last hour I’ve come to a greater understanding of why tigers eat their young.”

“That insight might come in handier than you think,” she said. “Penny Gray is dead.”

29

Liska marched into the
lovely offices of Dr. Bob Iverson, her heart thumping with purpose. The receptionist behind the elegant cherrywood counter looked up at her, recognizing her from before, but uncertain about the expression Liska knew she wore now. The bland, polite smile she had given the woman when she picked up the X-rays had been replaced by something harder and darker.

“Did we forget something?” the woman asked quietly.

“I would say so. I need to speak with Dr. Iverson.”

“He’s seeing patients all afternoon. I’m afraid he won’t be available to speak to you until after four
P.M.
,” she said with a practiced look of apology.

Liska pulled her ID out and thrust her badge at the woman. “This is police business in relation to an urgent missing persons situation. Dr. Iverson will see me now.”

The staff on the other side of the counter all turned and looked at Liska with wide eyes, like a small herd of gazelles suddenly aware of a lioness in their midst.

The receptionist turned to a nurse in purple scrubs. “Angie, would you please tell Dr. Iverson—”

The nurse scurried back toward the exam rooms before she could finish the sentence.

Liska glanced off to the side, to the waiting area with its mood lighting and big-screen television quietly playing a travel show depicting someplace tropical. A mix of patients sat in the leather armchairs in varying stages of misery, coughing and sniffling. Several were looking at her. Others were absorbed in their magazines and cell phones.

The door to the exam area opened and the purple-suited nurse stuck her head out.

“The doctor will see you now,” she said softly.

Liska followed her down the hall and into the doctor’s private office. Iverson, a big, good-looking man in his fifties, had already taken his position behind his impressive desk. He rose from his seat and offered his hand.

“Bob Iverson.”

“Sergeant Liska, Homicide,” she said, holding her ID out in place of the handshake.

“Homicide?” he said, his brow furrowing. “Are we talking about the same case? Penny Gray? I spoke with her mother, Julia, this morning. I thought this was a missing person case.”

“It was.” Liska put the envelope with Penny Gray’s X-rays on the immaculate desktop.

“I don’t like the sound of that,” he said. “Please have a seat, Sergeant.”

Liska perched on the edge of a chair, back straight. The doctor lowered himself into his cushy executive’s chair, his hands on the desktop as if physically bracing himself for bad news.

“Are you telling me Penny Gray is dead?” he asked.

“I’m not at liberty to tell you anything, Dr. Iverson. I need you to answer some questions for me regarding your treatment of Penny back in April of last year.”

Iverson frowned. “I’m sure you’re aware of patient privacy laws, Sergeant.”

“As I am sure you are aware of the laws regarding physicians’ needs to report child abuse to the proper authorities.”

“Penny isn’t abused!” he scoffed.

“Really? Because I had the assistant chief medical examiner look at these X-rays that were taken here in your office last April, and he tells me this injury is a spiral fracture, a torsion fracture resulting from a twisting of the limb. This is a common injury in cases of physical abuse. But neither the police department nor Family Services has a report on record regarding Penelope Gray.”

“Because Penny was not abused,” he insisted. “She took a nasty fall, twisting her arm as she came off the bike. There was no reason for me to report the incident. I’ve known Julia Gray for years. She’s a lovely woman.”

“Are you Penny’s regular physician?” Liska asked.

“No. She’s just at the age to switch over from her pediatrician.”

“Do you have a pediatrician as part of this practice?”

“Yes.”

“And is that pediatrician Penny Gray’s doctor?”

“You’ll have to ask her mother that question.”

“According to the date on these X-rays, this incident happened on a Saturday. Most people have accidents on a weekend, they go to an ER,” Liska said. “They don’t call their family practitioner.”

“This is a concierge practice,” Iverson explained. “As you may have noticed when you came in the building, we have an urgent care facility, we have our own lab facilities. We are one-stop shopping for our clients. There was no need for Julia to take Penny to an ER on a spring weekend where they would have sat for hours before being seen.”

“And you personally dropped what you were doing on a Saturday and came in and saw the girl when presumably she could have been taken care of by the on-call doc in your urgent care clinic?”

“Yes,” he said with a defensive edge to his voice. “As I said, I’ve known Julia for years. Of course I would come in when she called me.”

“And you believed the story about the bicycle.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“If you’re such good friends with Mrs. Gray, then you’re probably aware she and her daughter have a difficult relationship.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with falling off a bicycle.”

“And when you saw the nature of Penny’s injury, this didn’t raise any questions in your mind?”

“No.”

“Seriously? How many spiral fractures do you see in the course of your week, Dr. Iverson?” she asked. “How many fractures do you see at all? You’re not an orthopedist, are you?”

“No.”

“Yet you felt perfectly comfortable treating an unusual type of fracture.”

“I worked in emergency medicine early in my career,” he said. “I’ve treated every kind of fracture there is. Penny’s break was clean enough to set and cast. It didn’t require a specialist.”

“That was very lucky for Penny, considering the nature of the injury,” Liska said.

“Yes, it was lucky. Sometimes we get lucky.”

“She’s not lucky now.”

“It’s inconceivable that Julia has done something to her daughter,” he said.

“Tell me, Dr. Iverson, if you hadn’t known Julia Gray, if this had been a stranger and her daughter coming to you with that same injury . . . ?”

Iverson shrugged and sighed impatiently. “The point is moot. I
do
know Julia. I assume you’ve met her. Does she strike you as the kind of woman who would be physically violent with anyone?”

“I’ve been in this business for a long time, Doctor,” Liska said. “I learned my first week on the job not to judge a book by its cover. But let’s say for the sake of argument Julia Gray didn’t break her daughter’s arm. Let’s say Penny’s father did it, or Julia’s boyfriend—”

“Michael? That’s absurd!”

“Or one of Penny’s boyfriends, or one of the sketchy people she runs with, or someone she encountered that day.”

“She in no way indicated she had been attacked,” Iverson said.

Liska nodded and rose, picking up the envelope with the X-rays back off the table. “Victims don’t want to be victims, Doctor—especially victims of abuse. They often see it as . . . embarrassing . . . shameful . . . They blame themselves. They don’t want to admit that someone in their life values them so little or hates them so much. Or they think they won’t be believed because maybe their abuser seems above reproach. Which is why we have mandatory reporting laws. I’d be expecting a phone call about that if I were you.”

30

Christina Warner looked up
at Kovac with big, liquid, dark eyes, her expression soft and innocent. Her long white-blond hair was like something from a mermaid fantasy—tumbling waves framing her face and falling around her shoulders and down her back. Her complexion was peaches and cream, like an airbrushed photograph, complemented by the baby pink cashmere turtleneck sweater she wore.

“I want to do whatever I can to help find Gray,” she said.

“Why is that, Christina?” Kovac asked bluntly. “The way I understand it, the two of you don’t get along.”

The big eyes blinked. She had expected him to be impressed with her generosity of spirit, but she adjusted to his reaction with ease.

“Well . . . we don’t,” she admitted. “But that doesn’t mean I want something bad to happen to her.”

“Why don’t the two of you get along?”

“She’s jealous,” she said simply. “I’m popular and she’s not. I have friends and she doesn’t. I get along with my dad; she and her mom fight all the time.”

“It sucks to be her,” Kovac surmised. “How do you get along with Mrs. Gray?”

“Great,” she said, smiling—a genuine reaction. “Julia is super-nice. We have fun together.”

“You think maybe Penny resents that too—that you get along with her mom and she doesn’t?”

“For sure.”

“Right. ’Cause how’s that supposed to work when your dad and Mrs. Gray get married? Everyone gets along with everyone—except Penny, who gets along with nobody.”

“Obviously, we have some work to do in that area,” Michael Warner said. “But there’s no timetable. Julia and I haven’t set a date. We’re hoping Penny will come around in time.”

He sat close beside his daughter with a hand resting reassuringly on her back.

“She makes me angry, but I feel sorry for her, really,” Christina said.

“It doesn’t sound to me like you were feeling sorry for her that night at the Rock and Bowl,” Kovac said. “I’ve had several people tell me you were making fun of Gray and her poetry and that you and she got into it.”

She bowed her head and looked up at him from under impossibly long dark lashes, contrite. “Of course I feel bad about that now. I didn’t know she was going to disappear or whatever. I was just so mad at her—”

“Over what?”

“Some stuff she said about me in one of her stupid poems. She read it in front of half the school, practically. It was embarrassing and hurtful and mean.”

“Penny is a talented writer,” Michael Warner intervened. “She’s very good at using words to hurt people, to anger people. Words are her weapons.”

“Well,” Kovac said, watching him carefully, “she’s not big and strong enough to break somebody’s arm, after all.”