Authors: Eric Rickstad
The Silent Girls (18 page)
R
ATH STOOD OUTSIDE
the Bee Hive, letting the cold reinvigorate him as much as it could in his state. The cars on Main Street were dusted with snow. His breath formed clouds as he tried to wrap his mind around this revelation about Mandy.
He stared at Mandy’s Post-it and the refrigerator note. The second note ended with
thx.
On the phone, Gale had read
thx
as
thanks.
Shorthand of a generation. Rachel’s generation. Rachel, who couldn’t write two words in a text without an abbreviation or an acronym. Fear rose in him like a poisonous bubble. Primordial, parental.
He grabbed his cell phone from his pocket, brought up Rachel’s text.
I’m sorry to be so lame. I’ve just been swamped. I’ll call you soon. I promise. Love you, Rachel
Not a single abbreviation or acronym. No shorthand.
Rath’s blood congealed in his heart.
Rachel had not written this text.
He worked his fingers to dial Rachel, screwed up. Tried again. Panicked. He tried to breathe slowly and stabbed Rachel’s number one digit at a time. Rachel’s phone rang.
The voice mail of the number you have reached is full and—
Damn it.
He needed to get to Johnson State, and this time he wasn’t leaving until he found his daughter.
B
Y THE TIME
he parked in the campus lot, the snow was piling up. He leapt from the Scout, grabbing the box with the jumper in it.
Inside the dorm, he stormed down the hallway. He was about to knock on her door when it opened, startling him. The girl from before, with the shaved Play Doh blue hair gave a yelp, covering her chest with a palm.
Rath peered in the room behind her. There was no one else in the room. “Where’s Rachel?” Rath demanded.
The girl shrugged, biting her upper lip and trying to push past him. Rath blocked her and glanced at the photo on the dresser behind her. It had escaped him on his first visit, the facial bone structure. The girl with the long black hair and the glasses and braces in the photo was the girl standing before him, transformed. “
You’re
her roommate?” Rath said, his surging anger only outdone by his confusion.
The girl tried again to shove past him.
He put his palm on her chest.
“
Hey,
” she snapped. “What do you think you’re
doing
?”
“Looking for my daughter. Where is she?”
“I
don’t
know. The library, probably.”
“That’s what you said last time. I didn’t find her.”
“Yeah, well, it’s a big library.”
“Why didn’t you tell me you were her roommate?”
Two boys raced down the hall, tossing a Nerf football and trailing behind them the yeasty odor of beer.
“Why should I tell you anything?” the girl said.
“You intentionally misled me.”
“I don’t have to tell a strange man
anything
about me,” she said, outraged.
She was right. She’d done what he would want Rachel to do if—
The girl jammed an elbow in his gut, making him suck in his breath as she tore off down the hall. He stood stunned for a moment, then set out after her, students in the lobby gawking as he hustled after the coed with a Dress Shoppe box tucked under his arm.
Outside, a blast of wind blew the box out from under his arm, the lid blowing off it, the jumper spilling out on the snowy walk. He grabbed it up, his eye on the girl as she vanished over the rise toward the library. He jogged after her, the snow blowing sideways.
H
E REACHED THE
rise and looked for the girl. Where had she gone?
“Dad?”
Rath wheeled around, blinking snow out of his eyes.
A tall, young woman with fogged, cat’s-eye glasses, hair as white as cake frosting cut aggressively in a sharp line along her jaw, stood gawking at him from beneath the arm of a lanky Ichabod kid dressed in a Johnson State hoodie and sweatpants two sizes too big for him.
“Dad?” the young woman said again.
Rath blinked, confused.
“What are you
doing
here?” the young woman asked.
Rachel? Was this his daughter? This girl with this
hair
and
glasses
and, he saw now, black boots with blocky heels that elevated her a good four inches. How easily a young woman could transform her identity by coloring and cutting her hair, taking off or putting on glasses. But it was more than that, too. The last of the baby chub of her face had melted away to reveal beneath it a womanly bone structure, a striking face alarmingly similar to her mother’s. There she stood in the snow and wind, her jacket unzipped and flapping away, as always. Rachel.
“Me?” Rath said, his voice weak.
“Yeah,
you.
” She held her hands out like
Who else would I be talking to?
“What are you
doing
here?”
Ichabod collected Rachel closer to him, vulture-shouldered, protective, head lolling like a sunflower, as if his skeleton were too frail to hold him fully upright, and he might accordion up on himself. He peered at Rath from under a cap with the flat broad brim that confounded Rath.
“What is that?” Rachel said, pointing at the soggy Dress Shoppe box collapsing sadly.
This was a disaster. His heart pounded to see Rachel alive and well. But now that he knew she was safe, he felt like a peeping Tom caught at the window. “Nothing,” he said, tucking the box closer to him.
“Why are you here? Is something wrong?”
“Your text message. It had no abbreviations. It didn’t seem like you
.
”
“What are you talking about?”
“I hadn’t heard back from you for days, then your text, it put me at ease for a while. But. I just realized. It, it didn’t seem written by you, no abbreviations or—”
“
Penny
wrote it. She’s an English major. She believes in grammar and language.”
“Penny?”
“My roomie. She told me she ran into you when she found me in the library cramming; I was so stressed out and busy I had her text you from my cell so you wouldn’t worry.” His daughter stared at him, caught in a limbo between being furious and mystified. “So, you
came
here because you thought the worst as always, that I’d been butchered or—”
“No, no,” he blurted, the wheels turning. He needed to salvage this scene. “I—”
“Yeah?” she said, bobbing her head, urging him on.
“I came about a case.” He swallowed hard, wishing he were swallowing back down the words before he’d spoken them. But it was too late.
“You’re a lawyer?” Ichabod said, his voice unexpectedly resonant, the voice of a midnight AM radio host. Had Rachel not told Ichabod anything about her father?
“God, no,” Rachel said. “He’d never stoop to that.” She smiled. The same old toothy smile that could melt the devil’s heart. His heart, anyway. “He solves cases the cops can’t solve,” she said with pride.
Ichabod awoke, every atom at attention. “Really? Like what?” His radio voice still ambushing Rath.
“I
help
the police. They can solve crimes themselves,” Rath said.
“Then why don’t they?” Rachel said.
“What case are you on?” Ichabod pressed.
“A missing girl,” Rath said.
“Cool,” Ichabod said. “No wonder you like all that dark crap,” he said to Rachel. “Killers and sadists and madmen and —”
“That’s
not
why,” Rachel barked, and peeled away from under his arm.
“Oh,” Ichabod said, the timbre of his voice rising, alarmed by Rachel’s detaching herself. Rachel seemed to sense Ichabod’s panic and sagged against him. The snow blew in cyclones about them, and a gang of boys tumbled down the library steps, chucking snowballs at each other as they were sucked into a whorl of darkness.
“
What
case?” Rachel said, her eyes sparkling. Rath had distracted her from his initial pathetic motivation. But he didn’t like this place any better.
“If you checked your messages, you’d know,” Rath said.
“I’m
busy
,” Rachel snapped, using a tone he’d never heard before, not the plaintive tone of teenage angst but the tone of an assured young woman:
I have my own life, and I don’t have to defend or justify any of it to you.
It stung. But it pleased him, too. What greater gift could a parent give a child than independence?
“Go easy, bumble bee,” Ichabod said.
Rath nodded, feeling an alliance with Ichabod now.
“Don’t gang up on me,” Rachel said, but the sharpness in her voice was dulled now. “You drove all the way up in crap weather because you need help on a case? Must be some case.”
“It is,” Rath said.
“You suck so bad at lying,” she said.
“Give the guy a break,” Ichabod said, and bumped his hip against hers as he squeezed her closer to him. “Who cares
why
he’s here.”
“Motive is everything,” Rachel said, her eyes glimmering.
“My folks don’t even want me home for Christmas break,” Ichabod said. “Never mind visiting
me.
I had to hitchhike here for orientation.” His voice regressed into a boy’s voice for an instant. “So. Are you close to finding the missing girl?”
“Maybe. Maybe not,” Rath said.
“That’s how all cases go,” Rachel said, gazing up at Ichabod and hunching her shoulders up against a gust of bitter wind. “Two steps forward, one step back. But he always solves them. Especially with my help.”
Ichabod looked down into her face, fawning. “Why didn’t you tell me you got this cool old man. And you
help
? How?”
“I go through reports, transcripts of interviews, and try to find LIMPS.” She smiled at Rath, and he felt his back muscles uncoil, the pain ease.
“Limps?” Ichabod said.
“Lies, Links, Inconsistencies, Manipulations, and Patterns,” Rachel said with a pinch of self-importance.
“I can’t believe you
hid
this from me,” Ichabod said.
“
You
didn’t tell me about
your
cross-country hitchhike.”
“Hopped-up truckers. Gay businessmen who wanted favors. Kids in backseats screaming like they’re being shish-kebabbed.”
“
Love
it. Except the screaming kids. Not ready for that.” A far-off look came across her face, sadness or momentary contemplation. Rath wondered what spawned it, but hoped her not wanting kids meant she wasn’t having sex with Ichabod. For an instant, Rath thought of the young women he’d picked up back in the day, used, never calling them again, never even getting their names. Never caring. Some of them had been Rachel’s age. Or close to it. Eighteen. And in a bad place, coming from shit families that had left them vulnerable and all too eager. Victims. Prey. He winced, mortified at this revelation.
He looked at Rachel. She was smiling. But he felt sucker punched.
“All I know,” Ichabod said, “is
if
I did something as sweet as solve murders, I’d have bragged on our first date.” He kissed Rachel’s forehead.
“Not
murders,
” she said. “I’d
kill
to work murders.”
Rath waited for Rachel’s face to go dark with the realization that he’d lied about her parents. His head swelled with pressure, as if he had fluid on the brain. He knew if she looked in his eyes then, she’d see it, feel it, the lie between them. His act of treason.
Instead, Rachel’s smile widened, his head left aching dully, as if in the halo of a migraine.
“So, what’s the
case
?” she said.
“Forget it,” Rath said, nearly gasping. He’d lied to spare himself humiliation. But he couldn’t actually involve her. It was wrong. “You’re busy. It was a bad idea.”
“You can’t
do
that!” Rachel said, and stomped. Her trademark stomp from age two. “You
have
to at
least
tell me what it is. I’ll tell you if it’s a time suck.”
“This isn’t rummaging through files,” Rath said, trying to push the idea from his mind, but compelled to draw her closer to him, selfishly. “It was a bad idea.”
Ichabod licked his lips, as all his energy seemed to swim into his eyes, bright silver beams of intense focus.
“
Tell
me,” Rachel insisted.
Rath looked at her. She was beaming, magnificent.
“You can’t tell anyone,” he said. “It will—”
“—
jeopardize the case,
” Ichabod said, conspiratorially.
“
Dad,
” Rachel said.
Rath knew the more he spoke of secrecy, the more it would juice up Rachel. She was already ajitter with nerves. He should have told her the truth then. That he’d been worried about her and run up here to see if she was safe. Instead, he blurted, “I had an idea about your sitting in on some meetings.” He regretted the words as soon as he spoke them, but he saw Rachel leaning in, coming closer, and his heart lightened. He took his copy of Sonja’s list of names and handed it to Rachel, who studied it quizzically.
“I want to match up a person attending the meeting with the handwriting circled in red there on the lists,” Rath said.
“Different names, same handwriting,” Rachel said. “What kind of meetings?”
“Teen pregnancy meetings.”
Rachel’s face contorted as if she’d bitten the inside of her cheek. Her free hand drifted toward her belly.
“What am I supposed to
do
there?” Rachel said.
“Pretend you’re pregnant.”
Her face puckered.
Rath realized now how distasteful his request of desperation was. He hoped the look on her face reflected her response. His way out. “Told you,” he said. “Bad idea.”
“Tell me the details,” Rachel said.
“No. It’s a really stupid, irresponsible idea as a matter of fact.” Rath drew a deep breath, the cold air crystallizing his nostril hairs.
“
Dad?
” She wasn’t going to let it go.
“We think several missing girls and one who turned up dead are linked,” Rath said. “That they were all pregnant. We think someone scouted meetings to find specific girls for their . . . needs.” He took out the photo of Mandy. “We think she’s behind it.”
Rachel looked at the photo. “She’s gorgeous.”
“Wow,” Ichabod said. “Wait. This girl is missing, too. I saw it on TV. So—”
“We don’t know how or why she’s involved,” Rath said. “There may be something more behind this. Prostitution maybe. A cult.”
Ichabod ran a hand back over his forehead, his knit cap falling off. He didn’t seem to notice. “Like, devil worship, or—”
“We don’t
know,
” Rath said. He told them the theory about babies.
“Holy cow,” Ichabod said, and turned around in a circle. “And all Rach has to do is sit there and look for this hot chick? I could linger outside, take notes on car makes and models, creeps, crazy-looking chicks. Take pics.”
Rachel zipped her jacket up, tight. “You’re right, Dad. I’m too busy.”
Rath sighed with relief. But her cool reaction was unlike her, even if she was busy. Something was off. Her face was shadowed with doubt, and something Rath could not place and had never seen before on his daughter’s face.
Ichabod looked crestfallen.
“Too
busy
?” Ichabod said, despondent, his boy voice returning. “For this?”
“Right,” Rachel said.
“Good,” Rath said, relief settling in him.