Authors: Eric Rickstad
The Silent Girls (4 page)
T
HE
D
RESS
S
HOPPE
welcomed Rath with the aroma he thought would have a name like Sandalwood or Beach Dunes. The jangle of the bell above the door brought three female clerks capering toward him in unison, as if performing a Broadway number for the easy mark: the husband in the doghouse or the boyfriend looking to get into his girlfriend’s pants, thinking the perfect ensemble would do the trick.
A woman in her forties, the oldest of the three, glided over to Rath, her canary yellow dress, splashed with vibrant daffodils, swishing at a hem, her white bangle bracelets clacking. She was tanned and fit. The tan did not have the orange tint of a spray. It was a glow he suspected came from time outdoors hiking or gardening, not splayed out on a beach towel, what was once thought of as a healthy tan
.
He imagined her calves and arms were sculpted from being active in the natural, physical world. Rath detected the faintest scent of lilac as the woman reached out a hand, her fingernails blunt, a hint of pale pink from an unassuming manicure.
Rath shook her hand to find her skin soft as a flower petal, her grip lingering for a split second.
“I’m Madeline,” she said with plucky ebullience. “May I help you?”
“A mother and a daughter were in here five days ago,” Rath said. “I’m helping the mother.” Rath handed the clerk Mandy’s photo, wishing he’d asked Doris for a “good” one.
“I don’t understand,” the clerk said.
“The girl seems to have disappeared.”
The clerk’s pupils bloomed with fear. “You’re the police?”
“I’m helping. Officially, the police can’t be involved for a couple days.”
“But by then—”
“That’s why I’m helping out.” Rath showed her his ID. “I want to find this girl as soon as possible.” He nodded at the photo of Mandy in the clerk’s hand.
The clerk seemed rightfully guarded and was about to shake her head
no
when recognition lit her face. “They were in here. Bought a few of the marked-down summer dresses were pushing.” She spread her palms over the dress she was wearing. “Thus my drastically out-of-season attire. I didn’t recognize her in the photo at first. It doesn’t do her justice. It’s like a photo of her ugly-duckling cousin.”
“So you assisted her miss?”
“Madeline. Come with me,” she said, her fingernails just grazing the inside of Rath’s wrist as she slid away. An electric warmth spread up Rath’s arm at the kiss of Madeline’s touch.
She led Rath to the back, through a curtained doorway and into a break room that consisted of a card table with mismatched folding chairs. On the table, an empty coffeepot sat ticking on a hot plate next to a microwave, electrical cords stretched to an outlet in the wall. The room smelled of burned coffee. OSHA’d love this setup. “How can I help?” Madeline said.
“Was there anything you sensed that was odd about her?”
The coffeepot ticked.
“No,” she said. “No strange vibe.”
“What
was
their vibe? In one word.”
“Alive. Whatever
IT
is, this girl had
IT.
For her mom, I’d say tickled
.
The girl went outside, and I brought the mom over to a just-the-most-perfect dress. When I glanced out, I saw the girl across the street. Just. Staring.”
“At what?”
“I don’t know.”
“No one was with her?” Rath said.
“Might have been, but not that I saw.”
“How did she seem when she came back in?”
“One word? Remote.”
“And the mother?”
“Bothered.”
Rath gave her his card and told her to call, day or night, if she recalled anything.
As he made to leave, Madeline said, “No dress for your wife?”
Rath brandished a ring finger that was not living up to its name.
Madeline’s ring finger was bare, too, a detail he’d have noted straight away in his earlier days. Since Laura’s murder, the closest Rath had come to dating were the days strolling Rachel in the park where local moms brought their kids. Flirting had consisted of asking about potty training techniques, when to bribe with stickers. If any of the mothers had hit on him, he’d been unaware in his fugue of sleeplessness and blind infatuation with Rachel. His depression had left him with barely enough energy to focus on work and Rachel, and none for chasing women, a pursuit that only sickened him now as he could not help but equate it with the death of Laura.
“Girlfriend?” Madeline said, raising an eyebrow.
Was she flirting? No. She was looking to sell a dress.
“I’m. In between,” Rath said.
“Good in between or bad in between?”
He felt the warmth wash through him as when her fingernails grazed his wrist.
“Good, I guess,” he said.
“So. No one in your life at all who could use a dress?”
“My daughter.”
“Oh. How old?”
“Seventeen.” A year older than Mandy. The thought chilled him. “I don’t know the last time I saw her wear a dress, though. I stopped buying her clothes years ago. I just hand over the money. I never got it right anyway.”
“Maybe I could help.”
“Maybe another time.” He slipped out through the curtain.
R
ATH STEPPED
ONTO
the sidewalk outside the Dress Shoppe. Dark clouds skidded across the sun, and a north wind raked down the street, snapping flags in front of shops.
He crossed the street and stood where Mandy had stood, trying to get a feel for the location. He looked up to the top of the street.
The Church of Unity served as the village’s anchor at the head of Main Street, with its majestic spire. He walked up the street toward it, passing the firehouse and a fire engine parked at the curb, around which several young volunteer firemen stood bullshitting, nodding at Rath as he passed.
Rath stood across from the Church of Unity. A sign in front announced a Ham and Bean Supper Friday at 7
P.M
.
ALL SOULS
WELCOME
. Rath didn’t know what denomination Church of Unity was but guessed it was one of those that cast as wide a net as possible to keep the coffers full.
When Rath was ten, his mother had finally decided to divorce his father and confided in Father Morency, the priest who’d baptized, confirmed, and married her in the church where she’d worshipped each Sunday of her life. Father Morency had told her that marriage was a holy bond and to break it was a sin. She’d asked if serial adultery wasn’t a sin. Of course, but her husband had the devil in him, and only her love could help expel Satan. Divorce, however, had nothing to do with possession. It was human selfishness. The graver sin. She must forgive. Pray for her husband. It was her duty. When she’d gone forward with the divorce, Father Morency said he’d pray for her but she was no longer a welcome member of his flock.
Along the street, pedestrians scurried, heads bowed to the wind as they soldiered in and out of shops. Down the street, a similar unremarkable scene. Rath waited and watched. Who or what had Mandy seen? There was the head shop, A Kind Place, masquerading as a purveyor of tobacco pipes and products. Had she gone in there, or into another clothes shop? Had she seen a friend? Who had seen her? A nagging need to call Rachel struck him, as it did about once an hour. Most often he fought it, wanting to grant her the space she needed to live her new college life. He could resist no longer. He pulled out his cell phone. Two whole bars. Miracle of miracles. The phone vibrated in his hand, giving him a start. Laroche. Rath ignored it.
He dialed Rachel’s number and waited. Johnson State was tucked in the shadow of Mount Eden, and if two bars here in Canaan was a miracle, then a single bar on campus was The Second Coming: The faithful could hope for it, but not realistically expect any hard evidence. He knew Rachel checked messages and returned them when she was in Johnson Village.
Rath was kicked to voice mail and gladdened by the simple joy of hearing his daughter’s voice: “If it’s important enough to call, it’s important enough to leave a message. Sooo, go for it. Love yah. Mwaaah.”
“Hey, sweetie, it’s Dad. Calling to see how you are. And—” He paused at a jab of guilt. He had been about to tell her he had a question about an important case. But thought better of it. “I hope classes are OK. Give a call. Sometime. Miss you.”
He hit
END
and felt nostalgia creep into him for a time when 4
P.M.
had meant Rachel would pop through the door after school to enliven the house with her enthusiastic spirit.
He didn’t have a question for Rachel about the case but knew if he had left a message saying he did, it would compel her to call. He’d done such things before and felt guilty for lying. Manipulative. He had trouble with lying. Like his father. Lying seemed so simple, even necessary, but it always led to unforeseen problems. Still, he wished he’d lied to get Rachel to call back, to hear her voice.
Since she’d been eleven years old, Rachel had assisted him on cases. At first, the simple, nonviolent cases: deadbeat dads, a town clerk embezzling $623. He’d given Rachel transcripts of interviews, phone bills, and e-mails to sift for connections and patterns. It had been something to share, and they’d work on building a case the way other families worked on jigsaw puzzles.
Even then, he’d involved her out of selfishness. When he’d felt he was losing his sunny and open daughter to a private, darker imposter, it had frightened him. So he’d lured her to the kitchen table by playing to her interest in mysteries and all things vaguely sinister. She was the kid who never covered her eyes at the scary part of a movie, but awaited it giddily. When her friends had gone through their
Goosebumps
and
Harry Potter
phases, she’d been into
Gashlycrumb Tinies
and the
Complete Works of Poe.
At work on a case, she’d hunch over files with a Fluffernutter sandwich in hand, circle details with a red pencil, and dash off notes in the Moleskine she’d bought with birthday money. When Rath had ventured over to see how things were coming, she’d shielded her work like the smart kid warding off the dimwit during finals. “Dad.
Please.
I’ll report when I’m done.”
Then, late last spring, a disturbing turn had taken place. Rath had been vacuuming under Rachel’s bed when he’d knocked over a box of books with titles like
Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters, Blood Lust, Fiend, Houses of Death, Extreme Evil. Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters.
His heartbeat had slowed, and he’d sat on the edge of her bed, terrified.
He’d fired up her laptop and found her Netflix queue showed nothing but movies like
Evil Inside Me, Black Soul, Carnage, Deranged.
No comedies, no teen flicks, no TV shows. She’d watched fifty depraved B movies and had another fifty waiting.
When he’d told Rachel he’d discovered the books, she’d laughed, “Sick, right?”
Her reaction had worried him even more.
“They worry me,” he’d confessed, afraid he’d spook her away if he pressed too hard, the ice thin beneath him.
“They’re for a school
report,
Dad,” she’d said.
When he’d told her it was a lot of books for a report, she’d moaned, and insisted, “It’s my biggest paper. I need to investigate!”
They’d not spoken of it again.
But he wondered: As a baby, had she heard her parents’ murders? Her mother’s rape? What ungodly sounds had escaped Laura? What bloody, evil thumbprint might have been pressed into Rachel’s soul? What demonic sound track recorded in the coils of her brain? How else to explain her craving for such base filth?
He’d never told Rachel the truth about her parents. He’d told her they’d died in a car crash. What good would it have done for her to become
The Girl Whose Parents Were Slaughtered
? Here was the bottom line: If you were associated with a violent murder like Laura’s, you were stained by it. It was the most powerful lens, the only lens, through which people viewed you and through which you viewed the world. This was inalterable and absolute. This was violence’s reach, and he’d wanted to spare Rachel its alienating pain.
Her parents had been killed seventy miles south, nearly seventeen years ago, and none of her friends or friends’ parents knew. When he’d adopted her, he’d changed her surname to his, so there was no connection with her mother’s married name. The only people who knew were in the criminal-justice profession, and they knew better than to mention it to Rath. The past year, she’d asked about her mother more, and he’d lived in fear that her curiosity would lead her to the truth. At any moment, she could discover something online. What would it do to her, to them, to find out the truth, learn he’d lied? Was that why she wasn’t calling him back? She’d found out?
This was the trouble with lying: it bred paranoia.
A
S
R
ATH DROVE
up into Aver’s Gore, the Scout shuddering so hard on the dirt road that his molars ached, his back pain was ludicrous.
His cell phone vibrated on the dash.
PRI
VATE.
Rachel? Calling from a friend’s?
He answered.
“A girl’s body was found, near St. J.,” Sonja Test said.
“Where?”
“Victory.”
Victory was situated twenty-five miles south of Canaan and ten minutes outside St. J. It had once been a booming logging town, but only a few folks still carved a living for Northern Dynasty Mills. A quiet town of fewer than a thousand souls, it had a Main Street of local establishments like Northwoods Outfitters and The Wilderness Restaurant alongside McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Sonja lived in Victory.
Rath pulled over onto an old logging road. “Is it Mandy?”
“I’m waiting to hear more from Lou. I gave him our girl’s description.”
Rath leaned back and stared out the windshield. The sky was a blinding blue. It was one of those days that looked balmy from inside, but bitch-slapped you with its cold hand when you stepped into it.
“I hope it’s not her,” he said. “I’m about to visit her roommate. Then her father. I can’t inform them of a death officially. That needs to come from a cop.”
“Nothing’s official. I have squat except it’s a dead girl.”
Why is she calling me and not Grout?
Rath wondered.
“Listen,” she said. “Not a word to Grout. Not until we have something. OK.” It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. And it answered Rath’s question. She was playing a dangerous game, keeping information from her superior.
“OK,” Rath said, and ended the call.
He dialed Rachel. Got her voice mail. “Hey it’s Dad. Call me.”
It wasn’t a request.
Rath drove by mailboxes crammed into rusted milk cans and boasting French names, the progeny of drunken fur traders whose feral stock lived on in a legion of loggers and roofers, masons and dairy farmers: LaSalle, Lepage, Leduc, LaValle, Lavec. The names made Rath thirst for a Laphroaig as he came upon a dented mailbox with the name Duffy scribbled on it with black marker. Which one of these names doesn’t belong?
A crummy split-level house sat atop a steep, gravel drive, the gravel washed to the side in fans by runoff. Rath pulled the Scout up the drive and parked on a patch of dead grass next to a nineties Corolla with a faded
FREE TIBET
bumper sticker. He walked past the Corolla, black beads dangling from the car’s rearview, the rear floor littered with candy wrappers and spent Diet Coke cans. A child’s car seat polluted with pet hair. The house’s cheap T-111 panel siding was diseased with lichen, skirt chewed ragged by porcupines seeking salt in the glue.
Rath glanced at the Monadnock River Valley. The river cleaved through the open farmland, its surface mirroring the afternoon sun, so it shone like a skein of molten silver. The hardwoods’ autumn colors luminescent in the golden afternoon light, a beauty discordant with the shambled house before him. The door opened, and a woman in her early twenties stood behind the torn screen, and said, “Can I help you?”
Gale Duffy had the gaping eyes of a frog. Her cheeks were peppered with moles, her lips plump and bunched like a guppy’s. She wore a pink Gronkowski Patriots jersey draped over a belly that suggested her idea of home cooking was frozen pizza and Eggos. The jersey fell to her knees. Barefoot, she seemed to be wearing nothing but the jersey, her toenails painted Patriots’ red and blue. She leaned against the doorjamb, hugging herself, her cleavage deepening. She seemed oblivious to it.
“Gronk’s off to a good start, if he can remain healthy,” Rath said. “Too bad the secondary is a sieve.”
“You lost, or just a lonely Pats fan?”
“I’m a—”
“A cop? You don’t look it.”
“What do cops look like?”
“Not you.” She peered out at the Scout, raised her eyebrows like
Really?
“I work privately,” Rath said.
“You guys actually exist?”
“I do.” He showed her his ID.
“I wouldn’t know that from a Gold’s Gym card,” she said.
“A Gold’s Gym card says Gold’s Gym on it.”
“What do you want?” she said.
So much for levity
, Rath thought.
“To ask you questions about Mandy,” he said.
“What’s she done?”
“What makes you think she’s done something?”
“Umm. You?”
“May I come in?”
She groaned and pushed open the screen door.
The house reeked of kitty litter and of the cat piss that kitty litter was supposed to cover but never did. One of many reasons Rath disliked house cats, the first reason being his allergies. Rath sneezed, his eyes weepy.
As shoddy as the outside of the house was, the inside was staggeringly tidy. The shag carpet had deep, vacuum-wheel marks running in it like ski tracks in fresh powder.
The couch and chairs had modern lines of bent birchwood arms and white linen fabric that lent an illusion of upscale Euro design. Rachel had similar furniture he’d helped her haul back from Ikea in Montreal. It looked good, but was cheaply made. He hadn’t expressed that to Rachel though, not wishing to dampen her enthusiasm.
On the wall hung photos of Gale with several middle-aged women, arms draped about one another, each a tad disheveled and sweating. Easy smiles like the women were on a tropical vacation. The women’s matching T-shirts read:
RACE FOR LIFE.
A race for curing cancer. Under the photo was a plaque with Gale as the recipient: Hero for Life 2010.
Bookcases were so crammed that books lay horizontally atop those arranged upright. Rath read a few spines.
Edie: American Girl; Vamps and Tramps
by Camille Paglia.
Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess;
Sarah Vowell’s
Take the Cannoli.
“Those are Mandy’s,” Gale said. “She into all that. Woman empowerment, sexual
revolution.
”
“Why are her books out here? It’s your place, right?”
“Her room’s a shoebox. And she sort of gamed me. I think she likes showing them off in case a smart guy ever comes over.”
“Have any smart guys come over?”
“No guys at all. Hard to believe as it is.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Have you
seen
her? She can wear a burlap bag, and still guys slobber and girls get pissy with envy.”
“Do you envy her?”
“Envy may be a sin. But. I’m only human. Imagine if you were roomies with a real slab.”
“Slab?”
She rolled her eyes. “What you old guys call a hunk. Like, say, Gronk. You know. If he were running around your apartment with his shirt off, showing off his build, and you’re like, you know,
you.
Anyway, her looks make you feel like mud. Until you get to know her.”
“How so?”
“She’s quiet. Private. She’s not in your face about her looks. Which can rankle some girls more. Because you know, if a good-looking girl is a witch, you can at least nail her on that. You know, she’s got it all in the looks category,
but what a witch.
That Mandy’s nice and seemingly oblivious to her looks makes girls go ballistic. Because how can a girl not
know
she’s
that
gorgeous? If
I
were,
I’d
be a witch. See what I mean?”
He did, and he didn’t.
She laughed. “Girls are strange.”
“You think?”
“Especially when it involves other, prettier girls. What’s this about?”
“She’s missing.”
“She’ll turn up,” Gale said.
“You seem pretty sure.” Rath studied her face, surprised by her quick response.
“When I was her age”—a lost look came over her face—“I
disappeared
a lot.”
“So. What’s she like?”
“Like I said. Freakin’
private.
She comes in, says
hey,
flashes her smile, grabs a book, and sneaks into her bedroom. Then
stays
in there and doesn’t come out. Not even for, like, snacks. I doubt she even reads half those books.”
“You said she gamed you?”
“I didn’t want the books out here. I
suggested
she put them in the cellar, but she said the cellar was damp, and her books meant a lot. I was like, they’re just books. It’s not like they’re the Bible. Then she said if I want to use her furniture . . . and I need a place to plop and watch the tube. All I had before was milk crates and beanbag chairs. So—”
“So you and Mandy don’t get along?”
“My ad said
Roommate
wanted, not
Friend
Wanted.”
“Can I see her room?”
“Not much to see.” She scratched at a rash on her neck and flung her eyes toward the narrow corridor. “Last room on the left.”
The bedroom was as promised: a shoebox. A twin bed without a headboard or a footboard was centered on the opposite wall from the door, maybe three feet of space around it. Above the bed, a faded poster of Warhol’s
Monroe
was tacked crookedly. The rest of the bare white walls were peppered with nail and tack holes.
The bedsheets were tossed back in a twisted heap. On a pink bedspread, an image of Betty Boop performed a jig. Rath pinched a corner of the top sheet between his fingers and thumb and lifted it. An open book sat beneath it.
Black and Blue.
Rath had never heard of it. He read the jacket cover. The book was about a mother who fled an abusive husband and changed her identity.
Is that what you’ve done,
Rath wondered,
fled, changed your identity
? He scribbled the book’s title in his notebook.
The drawer of an Ikea nightstand was ajar. Rath stuck the pencil in the drawer’s gap and pulled the drawer open to find a hairbrush, nail polish in hot colors named Rupture, Purge, Hipnotic. Pens and pencils, a raffle-ticket stub, Midol, a pad of paper. He paused and looked at the header of the notepad. Starmont Hotels and Resorts.
The notepad was pristine, no indentations from writing. He tucked it in his jacket pocket, then looked under the bed. A cat raked his face with its claws, then squirted past him. Wincing, Rath stood and wiped at blood on his cheek, the scratch itching and swelling. “Cat Scratch Fever.” That right-wing nutjob Nugent had gotten it right in the one crummy song on which he’d based his entire offensive life.
Rath opened the closet’s folding doors to find clothes spilling from milk crates. Acid-washed jeans in black and blue. Corduroys and sundresses. Tank tops and T-shirts with Wonder Woman, Betty Boop, and Marilyn. Black Ts that read,
JOHN DEERE
and
GOT CH
OICE?
Panties, plain white cotton, tossed in a pile. No bras.
He searched pockets and found one business card. It had been through the wash, and he could not read it. He closed the closet door.
On the way down the hall, he slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. The bathroom was spotless, the chrome-sink fixtures mirroring his distorted image back at him in miniature. The room smelled strongly of bleach though not strongly enough to cover the stench of the litter box next to the toilet. He wondered what Luminol would pick up: The place seemed somehow too immaculate. Had it been cleaned and scoured after an altercation?
Under the sink were boxes of panty liners, tampons, creams and ointments and powders, a toilet-bowl scrubber.
He opened the medicine cabinet, a metal job with a scratched mirror on the face. The interior was rusty where the shelves were riveted to the sides. The usual. Cough syrup. Allergy pills. Contact-lens solution. Pink disposable razors. Tweezers. Cosmetics. Red and blue Halloween hair dye. Birth-control pills.
He shut the medicine cabinet and stepped toward the door. Something was stuck to his shoe. A Post-it note. He unstuck it and looked at it. A childish scrawl. One word. Hard to make out. Impossible.
argtbrongcin
? He folded it and tucked it in his shirt pocket.
His heart leapt as his cell phone buzzed.
Laroche. Again. Rath wasn’t going to let the son of a bitch bail on dart night without finding his own substitute. That’s what he deserved for not having a spine to tell his wife he was owed one night out for every ten of her supposed girls nights.
In the living room, Rath found Gale slouched on the couch, watching
Judge Judy.
Evil Cat sat in her lap, giving him the evil eye.
“You scared my cat,” she said.
“Did Mandy have a laptop or a PC?” he asked.
“No way. She just got a job. She scraped together rent, but she couldn’t afford toys. Besides, we get nothing but dial-up here. It’s like watching TV with rabbit ears.”
Rath nodded. Parts of Vermont were still locked in a perpetual time warp.
“You keep a tidy house,” he said.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she quipped.
“You have reason to think she’s been hurt or in trouble?” Rath asked.
“Not unless she’s gotten over her head in something.”
“Like?”
“How would I know?”
“Are you on the pill?”
She laughed. The harsh bray of a mule, a spray of spittle misting from her nose.
“I’m a
virgin,
” she said, laughing and giving a burst of spittle again.
Rath laughed with her, sharing in the joke.
Anger seared Gale’s face. “Not every woman—”
“Of course not,” Rath said, mortified that she’d been serious. “I just—”
“Judged. Poor-white-trash girl who lives in a dump and talks about hunks must be doing half the loggers this side of Canada, right? Mandy can read all those snobby books about feminism, but I’m the true feminist. Because when you control your body, you control your life.” Her ire was up, her eyes jumpy and mad. The girl had a temper, was a hot head.
“I apologize,” Rath said.
“Don’t. You’d be right ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But you’re wrong now.”
“I only thought. The baby seat, in the car?”
“
Oh,
” she said brightly, the outrage in her face melting like snow on a sunny spring day. “Now I apologize. I can be a bit testy at times.”