The 9th Girl (30 page)

Warner narrowed his eyes. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Everybody feels a need to strike out at some point in their life,” Kovac said. “We get angry, we feel helpless, we feel bullied. It’s a basic instinct to lash out at the one who hurt us. Right, Doc?”

“Figuratively speaking, I suppose, yes. But—”

“Were you around last spring when Penny broke her arm?”

“She took a bad fall off her bike,” Warner said. “Yes, I do remember it. She was my patient at the time.”

Kovac sighed and rubbed a hand across his jaw. “I know about the whole patient confidentiality thing and all, but did she ever indicate to you that maybe that really isn’t what happened?”

“No. Why?”

“How about to you, Christina? Did you ever hear her say anything about that? Was there any gossip about that? Was Gray maybe hanging out with a rough crowd? A bad boyfriend? Anything like that?”

He watched the girl process the question. “She hangs out with some sketchy people outside of school—or so she says. I’ve never actually seen her with a boyfriend.”

“Do you think someone attacked her?” Michael Warner asked.

“What about a girlfriend?” Kovac asked. “I’m hearing she had decided she was bisexual.”

Christina rolled her eyes. “That’s her latest thing. She’s through with men. Now she’s a lesbian or whatever.
Be who you are.
She’s always saying that.”

“You don’t believe that’s who she is? Or you don’t like what that means?”

“If that’s who she is, then why doesn’t she just go hang out with the gay and lesbian kids?” she asked. “Why does she have to throw it in our faces all the time? One minute she’s coming on to guys, the next minute she likes girls—”

“What guys was she coming on to? Eric? Jacob? Your guy, Aaron?”

“He’s not interested in her,” she said firmly. “He can’t stand her, actually.”

“I don’t know,” Kovac said. “I was sixteen once. If a girl is coming on to them, sixteen-year-old boys will overlook a lot.”

She forced a little laugh and tried to look confident. “Believe me, Aaron isn’t interested in Gray, and Gray isn’t interested in Aaron.”

“Was she interested in you, Christina?”

Michael Warner took exception. “Is this really an appropriate line of questioning?”

“What’s appropriate?” Kovac asked, lifting his hands. “Anything that has the potential to help the investigation. No one has to like it. Gray claims to be bisexual, then I have to pursue that angle.”

He turned back to Christina. She tried to look offended.

“No!”

“Jessica? Emily? Brittany?”

“No!” she said. She was getting flustered, cheeks blushing beneath the perfect makeup. “I don’t even know if she really is into girls. She’s probably just saying it to get a reaction. She just likes to mess with people. She’s just so, so—”

“Antagonistic.” Her father supplied the word. “And manipulative. That’s a good point, Christina.” He looked to Kovac again. “Penny feels a need to draw attention to herself. She gets the attention, then antagonizes the people giving it to her until they push her away. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy. She believes she is unlovable, so she goes around continually trying to prove that point by alienating people.”

“So you wouldn’t be surprised if someone broke her wrist,” Kovac said.

“That’s not what happened,” Warner insisted.

“Were you there? Did you see her fall off the bike?”

“No, but I’m sure it was an accident. Julia said—”

“It might have been,” Kovac conceded. “Stuff happens in the heat of the moment, right, Christina? Gray lashed out at you, you lashed out at her—all in the heat of the moment. That’s what people do. They react. Sometimes it gets out of hand.”

“I didn’t break her wrist!” she said, alarmed that he might be accusing her. “I didn’t do anything to her!”

“No, sweetheart,” Kovac said, smiling like a kind distant uncle. “I don’t think you broke her wrist, but I have reason to believe somebody did. And I mean to find out who. You say you want to help, so if you hear anything, if you think you might know someone who knows someone who knows something about it, you need to call me.”

He held out one of his business cards for her. She took it and looked at it. Her fingernails were perfectly lacquered with glittering rose-pink polish.

“That night at the Rock and Bowl,” Kovac said. “I heard things got a little physical, that Aaron got a little rough with Gray. Is that something he does? Smack girls around?”

“No! He was only protecting me!” she said dramatically. “Gray attacked me! She hit me and she scratched me!”

She pulled down the high neck of her sweater to reveal a trio of red marks on her skin.

“Aaron was in trouble here the other day for getting physical with another student,” Kovac said.

“That wasn’t his fault!”

“That’s not how I heard it.”

“Kyle Hatcher knocked
him
down,” she said. “And kicked him too. And Kyle punched Aaron in the mouth that night at the Rock and Bowl too.
He’s
the violent one.”

Michael Warner leaned forward. “You can’t seriously be considering any of these kids had something to do with what’s happened to Gray? There’s a serial killer running around loose! You should be out trying to find him, not accusing children, not accusing Julia!”

Kovac gave him a benign smile. “I’m paid to be suspicious of everyone, Dr. Warner. Don’t take it personally.”

“And in the meantime, there’s a maniac running around the city abducting young women.”

“We’re on that.”

“Really?” Warner asked. “How many unsolved homicides are being attributed to this man? Eight? Nine? Isn’t that what I read? Penny could be the ninth girl this animal has hurt, and you’re here questioning kids? You’re questioning her mother? This is absurd!”

“If the tables were turned and your daughter was the one missing, would you want us to leave stones unturned?” Kovac asked.

“I would want you not to waste precious time,” Michael Warner said, standing up. “And I’m not letting you waste any more of mine. Come on, Christina. We’re going home.”

•   •   •

“
A
LL THIS ANIMOSITY
and
rejection is going to fuck with my self-esteem,” Kovac said as he watched them go. He rolled his shoulders back to loosen the knots and twisted his head to one side against the kink developing in his neck.

“I checked in with Elwood,” Tippen said. “Still no luck finding the girl’s car. He’s tracking down her Facebook friends. Nothing is panning out so far. He’s spoken to a couple of them. They claim they barely knew the girl.”

“Why should we be surprised? The people who knew her her whole life don’t seem to have a clue who she really was.”

“Sometimes those are the people who know us the least,” Tippen observed. “They have all that time to build us into who they want us to be in their heads so we can disappoint them over and over. Just ask my mother.”

“Or any woman you’ve ever dated,” Kovac said. “So far, this girl was nothing but an irritation and a disappointment to everyone she knew. Miss Acceptance.”

“Life is full of little ironies.”

“Yeah. I hate that,” he said with a sigh. “Go talk to the girl’s teachers. I’ll see what more I can squeeze out of Brittany Lawler. We can both be thankful we’re not Tinks. She’s on her way to tell Julia Gray her daughter is dead.”

•   •   •

L
ISKA PULLED ONTO
Julia
Gray’s block to the too-familiar sight of TV news vans with satellite antennae raised and video cameramen roaming the street, looking for interesting angles and shots of curious neighbors. She had to slow the car to a crawl and open the window to hold up her ID—her pass to the end of the block and the Gray house.

The way the house was situated on the lot gave it a privacy that was a blessing and a curse. A blessing to Julia Gray, holed up inside, a curse to investigators. It was almost impossible to see the driveway or garage door from any other house in the neighborhood. Potential witnesses would probably have little to tell them about any vehicles parked at the Gray home on the night in question.

She pulled in the driveway beside a patrol car and behind Julia Gray’s black Lexus and sat for a moment, recalling Jamar Jackson’s scant description of the vehicle Penny Gray’s body had fallen from New Year’s Eve. A dark sedan. No make. No model.

Julia Gray drove a dark sedan. Penny Gray drove a dark sedan. Probably more than half of Minnesotans drove darker-colored vehicles. They were easier to see against the white backdrop of winter. White cars—popular everywhere south of the Northland—were undesirable here and were involved in a higher percentage of accidents during the winter.

Still . . . no coincidence was a good coincidence as far as Liska was concerned.

She got out and went to the patrol car, holding her ID up for the uniformed officer behind the wheel. He ran the window down.

“How’s it been?” she asked, glancing to the street. Reporters were coming like hungry animals to food. She recognized several. The short guy from channel eleven, the perky blond girl from the early morning news, Dana Nolan.

“Quiet,” the officer said. “Once we chased the riffraff off the property.” He glanced in his rearview mirror and made a sound of disapproval. He flicked a switch on the dash, picked up the mike, and barked an order that blasted over the speakers into the street. “Stay back, folks! This is private property. Stay back!”

He shook his head and glanced up at Liska. “Fucking vultures.”

“Is anyone in the house with Mrs. Gray?”

“I don’t think so. I haven’t seen anyone come or go since the boyfriend dropped her off. What’s the news?”

“Bad.”

“Damn. I’ve got a daughter myself,” he said. “I don’t even want to imagine. I don’t envy you being the messenger, Sarge.”

“Better giving that news than getting it,” Liska said.

She went to the front door, rang the bell, and waited. And waited. And waited.

Maybe Julia Gray was sedated and asleep, she thought. Then again, what mother could sleep awaiting news of a missing child?

Kovac had told her Julia Gray had left her phone in her car while she’d been at the station half the morning, even though she had claimed to have gotten a text message from her daughter just the night before.

She rang the bell again, her mind racing as she waited. Who scraped up their kid from a bike accident and didn’t go straight to an ER? A drug rep with long-standing relationships in the medical community? Maybe.

She rang the bell a third time, her nerves starting to itch. What kind of emotion choked a mother whose child went missing, whose last words to that child had been delivered in anger? As angry as she was with Kyle, she still felt guilty for being so hard on him that morning. To see him fight tears at her caustic recriminations was like pouring acid on her soul. If those had been her last words to him, Nikki would never have been able to live with herself.

Maybe Julia Gray wouldn’t be able to either. Maybe she would take too many pills. Maybe she would slit her wrists.

As she began to think about getting one of the uniforms to kick in the door, it cracked open and Penny Gray’s mother peered out at her with red-rimmed eyes.

Liska showed her ID. “Mrs. Gray? I’m Sergeant Liska. May I come in?”

Julia Gray stepped back from the door. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept in a week. Her blond hair was pulled back into a messy ponytail. She wore yoga pants and a sweatshirt. Her hands were red and chapped, fingernail polish ruined. The brace on her injured right hand was soaking wet. She rubbed one hand and then the other with a limp white cotton towel.

“I’m sorry,” Julia Gray said. “I was in the kitchen. I’m trying to keep busy. I don’t know what to do.”

“I’m sure it’s hard. I have two boys. I don’t know what I would do.”

Julia Gray just stared at her. Nikki could see the question in her eyes—
Do you have news about my daughter?
—and she could see the fear of asking that question too. If she asked, she might get an answer she didn’t want to hear.

“Can we sit down, Mrs. Gray?”

Julia Gray’s swollen eyes widened in alarm. “No,” she said, shaking her head. “No, I don’t think so. You should probably just go.”

Bad news was always preceded by
Can we sit down?
Or
We need to talk.
If they didn’t sit down, then she could go on thinking maybe her daughter would still be coming home. If they sat down, the bad news would come out, and there would be no escaping it.

“I have to ask you a couple of questions,” Nikki said, putting off the inevitable. Once she made the announcement, she would lose her opportunity to get the answers. “About when Penny broke her arm.”

“She fell off her bike.”

“Were you there when it happened?”

“No. She called me. She had her appointment with Michael that morning. She rode her bike over there. It’s not far. It was one of the first nice spring days. She was on her way home. And . . . and she fell. She was cutting through the park. She called me, and I called Michael. He was closer.”

“Why didn’t you take her to the emergency room?” Nikki asked.

She looked confused by the question. “We called Bob Iverson. His practice is nearby.”

“But it was a Saturday. He doesn’t normally work Saturday, does he?”

“No. But I know him. Michael knows him too. He came in.” Her eyes narrowed; confusion tugged across her brow. “I don’t understand why you’re asking me about this. He gave you the X-rays, didn’t he?”

“Yes,” Nikki said. “It just seems a little unusual—the circumstances. And the fracture was an unusual fracture. The ME told me it’s the kind of break that happens from a twisting motion rather than a fall.”

“Well, she fell,” she insisted. Then she went very still as the letters ME penetrated. Her injured hand came up to massage her throat, as if she was suddenly having trouble swallowing. “What else did he have to say?”

Nikki sighed. “Please, Mrs. Gray,” she murmured, trying to direct her toward the living room with its still-decorated Christmas tree. “Let’s sit down.”

Julia Gray stiffened. “No.”