Authors: Eric Rickstad
The Silent Girls (28 page)
R
ACHEL MOVED B
ACK
to campus the next day. Felix helped her pack up her few things, loaded them in her Civic, and helped her ease into the passenger’s seat. He pulled her seat belt across her and locked it in and tugged it, checking to make sure it was secure. He loved her, that was certain. Whether it was a love that would last or be burned up by youth, Rath could not know. But Felix and Rachel shared something he’d never known, something good, and he was glad for that, at least. Maybe it meant he’d done something right. Maybe it was despite him.
He watched from the kitchen window as they drove away and noticed the hump of snow near the barn door. The deer. He’d forgotten all about it. It was surely rancid by now, having frozen and thawed several times. It was a shame.
But it was the least of his worries.
R
ATH TURNED FROM
the window and looked at the far wall, the display of missing girls’ photos and the collection of random facts, of their lives, still pinned to it. It saddened him. There was so much more to each life than
this.
Scraps.
He began taking down the biographies and interview transcripts. The photos. He took them down with care, slid each piece gently into its respective folder, gave each photo one good, last look.
He saved Mandy’s photo for last. The so-called “bad” photo. He preferred it. In it, she was less
perfect,
more human somehow. A girl. A pretty, innocent girl who’d known a hard, mean life and tried her best in the face of it. Fled, he hoped now. Left this town and her cruel family to start anew while she still could. New York, maybe. Boston. How he hoped. For her.
“Where are you?” he said, staring at the photo, of her at the beach cookout with others her age.
Something in the photo caught his eye. In the background, blurry. A couple. He peered more closely. Sat at his desk and dragged his lamp over to the photo to see it in a brighter light. Yes. In the background, just barely in focus enough to make out their faces. A young couple. Roughly Mandy’s age. The boy a bit older than Mandy, a young man. The girl a bit younger than Mandy. The young man had his arm around the girl, in a sort of playful gesture, as if they were cousins. He was laughing. But his left eye. It was cut toward Mandy, looking straight at her, and the camera. The girl was looking up at the young man with one eye, and one eye was on Mandy too, just as she caught the young man eyeing Mandy. And her face. The hatred in it. The hatred for both of them. The young man. And Mandy. Not jealousy. But raw hate. Savage hate.
He knew both of the subjects in the photo. And thought about the question he’d asked himself when he’d first seen Mandy’s Monte Carlo:
Why’s it parked like that?
And he knew, in an instant, with a cold certain dread creeping in his marrow why the car had been parked like that, and that Mandy Wilkins was dead. And who had killed her. And why.
He slumped in his chair and called Grout. Couldn’t reach him. So tried Sonja Test.
“Hey,” he said. “I got it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mandy. I know who killed her. Can you meet me?”
“Of course.”
He told her where.
R
A
TH WAITED OUTSIDE,
pacing on the street, smoking a cigarette. When he saw Sonja’s Peugeot pull up, he flicked the cigarette into the road and joined her as she stepped out of the car.
“I still don’t—” Sonja began, but Rath was already climbing the fire-escape stairs. Dad’s F150 wasn’t in the drive, but the Neon was. To be sure she was inside and alone, Rath had phoned moments before from outside. She’d picked up—and he’d asked for Dad. He wasn’t in. He was at Jay Peak, helping gear up for the ski season.
Rath knocked on the door.
“Langevine,” Sonja muttered absently. “Dressed as an old woman. I was running a while back and saw a man I thought was woman. Because of his long hair and, it bothered me, and—”
“I’ll ask the questions,” Rath interrupted. “She’s sixteen, a minor. If you ask questions as a cop without an adult present, they may not hold up. But I’m not a cop.”
“I—” Sonja began.
The door opened, and Porkchop, Abby Land, answered in a pair of sweats with
CANAAN HIGH
on the front. She looked like she hadn’t eaten or slept in days. Her eyes were bloodshot and pale cheeks hollowed.
“Jesus,” she said, “you—” She saw Sonja standing behind him then.
Sonja stepped forward and showed her badge. “Can we come in please?” she said.
Abby stared at them. “Sure. Why not?” She shrugged and went to the couch and sat on the edge of it, lit a cigarette she took from a pack lying on the old army trunk that served as a coffee table. She lit it clumsily. She didn’t look familiar with lighting it, or with smoking a cigarette, coughing slightly and blowing out the smoke in a puff. “I already told you he was here with me that night,” she said. She smacked her lips and doused the cigarette in a cereal bowl of milk.
“Right,” Rath said. “We believe you.”
“Good,
finally.
I’m telling the truth.”
“The thing is,” Rath said. He sat on the couch a foot from Abby and placed a hand on Abby’s knee. Abby flinched and stared at the hand but said and did nothing. She seemed very far away now. Rath knew the look. Reality hitting home. Taking hold of the mind.
“The thing is,” Rath said again, “you weren’t here with him.”
“What,” Abby said. “What.” Dazed. Disoriented. As if awakening in an unfamiliar bed with no memory of how she’d gotten there.
“You know you weren’t here with him,” Rath said.
“I was. He didn’t
do
it. That’s the truth.”
“I know he didn’t do it, dear,” Rath said. “I know that much is the truth.”
“Don’t you
dear
me.” She pulled her knees away from Rath’s hand, squeezed them together. She began to tremble. “Who are you to—”
“I thought maybe when you gave him an alibi you were protecting him, or scared of him, because he was dealing coke or somewhere else he shouldn’t be that night. But you weren’t protecting him by lying about being here with him that night,” Rath said. “You protecting yourself.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is,” Rath said. Abby was sixteen, but looked no older than fourteen. What was he doing when he was sixteen? Still riding his Huffy 10-speed as fast as he could onto a ramp to see how many cardboard boxes he could jump.
He took out the photo of Mandy and handed it to Sonja.
Abby was staring at her hands in her lap now. She wasn’t going to be able to keep the truth in her. In all probability, she wanted to vomit it up and out of her.
Sonja showed Abby the photo. Abby crumpled a bit when she looked at it. Then stiffened. “So,” she said, a jolt of defiance steeling her. “So what.”
“That’s you in the background,” Rath said.
“
So.
” She glared at him. “Big deal.”
“And who’s that with you?” Rath said.
She looked off toward the kitchen. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“Some guy.
So?
”
“No one important?”
“No.”
“A good-looking guy like that. His arm around you.”
“We were friends.”
“Were?”
“Are. Were. Whatever.”
“No. Not whatever. You cared about him.”
“You don’t know shit.”
“I know this. He’s a volunteer fireman. And he’s stationed in the firehouse just up and across the street a door or two from the Dress Shoppe.”
“Wow. Good for you.”
“And I know that Mandy had bought raffle tickets from him.”
“Big deal.”
“And that Mandy saw him the last afternoon anyone ever saw her. Saw him walk past. And she wanted to tell him something, but by the time she got out there, he was gone, or she had lost her nerve. Maybe she even spoke with him. I’ll know when I talk to him.”
“Go ahead, talk to the asshole. What’s it got to do with me?
“You had a crush on him. But you were like his little cousin or something.”
“Shut up.”
“But Mandy. She was nothing like a cousin to him,” Rath said.
“Shut up.” She gritted her teeth at him and looked at him with eyes lost and barren. “You don’t know
shit.
”
“I know that when we check the battery on your Neon, we’re going to see that the posts have marks on them from a recent jump start. Your car’s got a bad battery. I tripped over the jumper cables coming out of here before. And those marks will match marks on Mandy’s battery. And they’ll both line up with the battery cables in your trunk.”
Abby was tapping her bare feet on the floor now.
Tap tap tap
. Drumming her palms on her knees.
“I know it wasn’t planned,” Rath said. “I know it was a spur-of-the-moment thing. An anger rising in you, a jealousy. Your car is dead on the roadside after a party or something and along comes Mandy, and she knows you. Probably feels bad for you. She knows the shit you have to deal with being in the same house with her asshole father. So, of course, she stops and helps you out, and you can’t stand it. You can’t stand the sight of her. Little Miss Perfect. Everyone always drooling over her. Luke especially. Your Luke.”
Tap tap tap
. Abby’s whole body shook now. Sonja put a hand on her shoulder.
“When we check the trunk of your car,” Rath said, “we’re going to find hair. Or blood. All kinds of it. What’d you do, after she jump-started you, did you have her help you get your tire and cables back in the trunk, and when she bent over, you hit her with something. The tire iron? And shoved her in and—”
“God,” Abby moaned. “Please.”
“We know you didn’t
mean
it,” Rath said.
Abby snapped her head up at him, locked her eyes on his, black with death, her face wrenched and wicked.
“The fuck I didn’t,” she spat.
“Where is she?” Rath said.
“Still in my trunk. The bitch.”
“
N
O,”
R
ATH SAID
,
as Barrons swiveled in his chair. “It’s not for me.”
“You’re breaking my heart,” Barrons said, and laid his big mitt over his chest as if to prove it. It proved nothing.
“I’m not a cop,” Rath said.
“Bullshit.”
“I was a cop.”
“A good one.”
“A cop has to believe.”
“In what?”
“The law. The system. I don’t. I can’t. Not in a system that treats a sixteen-year-old girl as an adult. Or lets the Preachers of the world free to prey and victimize. Shit, even that crazy bat Malroy may have a shot at a cockamamie defense by perverting the system.”
“If—”
“No. There is no if. This is life. You can’t live life on ifs. Only
is.
”
“Listen to you, professor.”
“Yeah.”
“Yeah. Well.” Barrons leaned back in his chair and spread his arms wide. Behind him, on the sill outside, the pigeon strutted back and forth.
“Grout’s not as green now,” Rath said.
“Grout took a leave of absence after he fucked things up with that old bag in Connecticut. She nearly died. I don’t think he’s coming back. I think he’s taking a security job. In New Hampshire.”
Rath nodded. Nothing surprised him.
“Sonja isn’t green anymore, either.”
“What can I say or do to convince you?” Barrons said.
“
Nada.
You can invite me down to the Bahamas. We can fish. You can show me how to fly fish.”
“You’re ready for that? It’s pretty refined?”
“I’m ready.” He was. He needed to get away to someplace he had never been before. Someplace hot and sunny and bright. A place to clear his mind and recalibrate. So when he returned he could focus afresh on what was most important. Ned Preacher.
“I thought you were seeing someone, had some lady on the line,” Barrons said.
“That. Yeah. That I’m really not ready for.”
“Have you told her that?”
“Not yet. She’s called.”
“You haven’t called back?”
“Not yet.”
“You should.”
“She’s seen the news. She must have an inkling that I’ve been a bit distracted.”
“Call her.”
“Right. OK. Can we plan this trip? I need it.”
“We’ll make a plan. Springtime is best for bones. March. Do you good to get out of here then. Does me good. Can you wait that long?”
“Sure, yeah,” Rath said. “I’m in. Were you able to get that address?”
Barrons grimaced. “I can, but I won’t. You need to stay clear of him.”
“I just want to make sure. Keep an eye on him.”
“You can’t keep an eye on him. Not forever.”
“All I need is an address.”
“Get it off the site,” Barrons said.
“All the Vermont site for registered sex offenders gives you is the name of the town. No address. That needs to change. People don’t need an approximation of where these cretins live. They need to know
exactly
where they live.”
“You’re a detective. You’ll figure it out. But I’m a friend. I’m not helping you go down that rabbit hole.”
Rath shrugged.
“March then?” he said.
“Plan on it.”
R
ATH WAS DRIVING
home from the station feeling uplifted. The sky was blue, a fresh snow sparkling under the sun in the fields. It was, simply, a beautiful December day. His phone buzzed.
“Hello,” he said.
“How’s my girl,” a man on the other end said.
“Excuse me?”
“I said, ‘How’s my girl?’ ”
“Who is this?”
“Don’t tell me you don’t recognize me.”
Rath was about to hang up when he heard the laugh on the other end. Guttural and soulless. Rath’s blood drained out of him, and he knew if he looked down, he’d see a pool of it spreading out on the Scout’s floor.
The laugh came again.
Preacher.
Rath killed the call and stopped the Scout, staggered out into a field, tracking up the pure snow. He braced himself against a lone oak tree out in the middle of the cold field.
His phone rang again.
He let it go to voice mail.
It rang again.
He let it go.
He was not prepared for this. Of all the scenarios he had run through his head, none had involved
Preacher
contacting
him.
They had all involved Rath’s hunting Preacher, surprising him. Making his life hell. Now. This. Blindsided, he was not ready. He wanted it on his terms.
The phone rang. He turned it off and tromped back through the snow and got in the Scout and headed toward home.
At home, he plodded up the back stairs and set the phone on the kitchen table and sat with a bottle of scotch, poured a glass.
The landline phone rang on the kitchen wall.
Rath jumped in his chair and stared at the phone.
It rang and rang and rang. He’d discontinued the voice mail, so the phone would not stop ringing until the person on the other end hung up.
The phone rang and rang.
It couldn’t be him. The line was private. Unlisted. There was no way. How could he have his number?
The phone kept ringing.
Rath jumped up and grabbed it, and shouted, “Listen you piece of shit, I’ll find you, and—”
“Don’t ever hang up on me again,” the voice said, cold, reptilian.
“Who the fuck do you—”
“I asked you a question. ‘How’s my girl?’ ”
“When I find you—”
More laughter. “You? Find me? I’ve found you. Answer me. How. Is. My. Girl?”
“
What
girl?”
“
My. Girl.
”
“Who?”
“Rachel.”
Rath’s heart swelled in his chest, the blood trapped and pooling in it, the pressure terrific.
“Don’t you dare speak my daughter’s name.”
“
Your
daughter?” Preacher laughed. “You ever ask yourself why I came back, to your sister’s house?”
Rath wanted to hang up, but he heard a sound in the background that seemed vaguely familiar. If he kept Preacher on the line long enough, perhaps he’d be able to narrow down the type of place he was calling from if not an exact location.
“Well?” Preacher said.
“We know why you came back.” Rath took a drink. What was that sound in the background? Focus, he told himself. Focus and keep him on the line, ignore his games.
“No, that’s not
why.
That’s the what.
What
I came back to do; but why did I come back to do it? Hmmm.
Why?
”
“You’re evil.”
“Tell me something I don’t know, Frank.”
Rath felt filthy hearing Preacher call him by name.
“You can do math, right, Frank? Simple math.”
Rath said nothing, listening. The noise in the background sounded like a . . . he could not quite place it.
“Here’s some simple math for you. How long was I gone from Vermont?”
The sound in the background where Preacher was became clearer as Preacher moved. A high scraping?
“OK. I’ll tell you. Sixteen months.”
Not quite a scraping, more like a—
“And,” Preacher said, “how old was Rachel?”
Rath snapped to attention, his spine going cold and as rigid as bar of iron.
An icy laugh came from Preacher. “And how long is the average human pregna—”
“You shut your mouth,” Rath roared. “You shut your fucking mouth.”
“I see I struck a nerve. Apparently, you can do math.”
“You lying fucking—”
“You weren’t the only whoremonger in your family, Frank. With women, of course, they don’t call them whoremongers. No. They call them whores. Funny. No matter how you turn it, the woman is the whore. Why do you suppose that is?”
Rath couldn’t breathe. The more he tried, the more he hyperventilated until he felt the bile burn his throat, and he spit it in the sink. What Preacher was saying was only to get a rise. Rath willed himself to ignore it. He had to get a grip, get leverage, the upper hand. This was not how it was supposed to
go.
“Your silence is telling,” Preacher said. “You’re trying to tell yourself I’m lying, I’m fucking with you. But your body knows. It knows. Your sister
lied
to you. All those years. Your sister, the little angel. She didn’t put her cheap ways behind her when she met Daniel, she was just more . . . hmm . . . discreet—”
Rath could hear laughter on the line. His heart was thundering. “Listen, you soulless—”
But Preacher ignored him, his voice cutting straight through Rath: “She told me all about you: Her sad little brother nailing pussy to make himself feel like a man, like your old man. How you thought she was such a saint.” Preacher cackled. “But she. She couldn’t stay away from the bad boys any more than you could from the bad girls. Well, she picked the wrong bad boy in the end, wouldn’t you say? I came back through to give her some more of it. She turned me down. Gave me some holier-than-thou, prim-and-proper, Holly-fucking-Hobby
bullshit.
But I knew that was a mask. I fucking knew.”
Rath was shaking so hard, his legs would not hold him, and he had to sit down on the floor. He was soaked with sweat. He tried to block out Preacher’s voice and focus on the sound in the background. Focus focus focus. But he couldn’t.
“What I didn’t know,” Preacher said, sounding as if he were speaking with a clenched jaw, “was about the baby. Until later, when I read it in the papers. My girl. If Laura was such a good mother, she should have just let me take her one last time on my way through, stopped pretending she was some born-again saint. If she’d just given in to her nature, let me have her like the old days, when she wanted to slum it with the bad-boy handyman, I’d have gone off none the wiser. Instead, she had to resist. Play Good Girl. Cock tease. Force my hand.
Agitate.
” His voice was distorted. Demonic. “I can do math, Frank. Even if you can’t. I can do simple fucking math. Rachel’s mine. Ask yourself how the mess I made of Laura and her husband differed from my MO.”
Rath was gasping for breath. Every atom in him wanted to reject what Preacher said. But he couldn’t. How could Preacher know these things from anyone else but Laura? And what Preacher had said, about the MO. It differed drastically from the coldness of the rapes. And age of the victims. They’d missed it before because Preacher had been so easily caught, he’d left DNA everywhere. They’d missed it for what it was: a crime of passion. A sense of dread hardened in Rath. His worry over Rachel’s obsession with the twisted books and movies about sadists and depravity. He’d worried it had been because she’d heard about the murder of her parents. What if it was because she had Preacher’s blood running in her veins? Focus, his mind screamed. Focus focus.
Focus!
That sound. He knew it. It was coming to him.
“You won’t tell me how My Girl is doing,” Preacher said. “OK. I’ll tell you. She seems fine. From what I see.”
“How’d you get this number?” Rath said.
Preacher snorted.
“How did you get my fucking home number?”
PRIVATE
. That’s what the original call on Rath’s cell had shown.
PRIVATE
.
“Tell me! Goddamn you, tell me!”
More laughter came, ringing and echoing in Rath’s head.
When it died, Rath heard the sound again.
And suddenly, he knew what it was.
A bird. Birds. Two of them.
Canaries.