The Girls She Left Behind (13 page)

The town was nearby. “Okay, that could be how he's getting around. As for why Bearkill, Jane Crimmins says it's because a woman named Cam Petry lured him here,” Lizzie said.

She repeated Jane's story. It sounded just as fantastical as before. “But what if Jane's telling at least part of the truth?” she added. “What if someone really did lure Gemerle here by using Tara Wylie as…”

She didn't want to say it. He didn't, either. But it was what they were both thinking, she could see it in Dylan's face:

Bait.

D
ark, scared…alone.
Tara Wylie fought desperately against panic, knowing now how the kitten she'd rescued must've felt when it got dropped off in the darkness by the side of the road.

She'd been here—wherever
here
was—for a long time, all last night and a whole day, too, she thought.
So by now it must be Wednesday night?

She wasn't sure of that, either. Or of anything, in fact, except that all she wanted was to go home, to feel her kitten's face rubbing against her cheek once more, his purr like an engine of happiness, and his eyes closed in contentment. She wanted to go to cheering practice, do her homework, work on an art project.

She even wanted to watch some boring TV show with her mom in their stupid half-finished living room…
Oh, I want to go home.

Instead she was buried in a box out in a field somewhere, in a hole that was blessedly shallow enough so that some air came in from above, and even a little light for a while, once day came and before it had gotten dark again.

She could have struggled out of her prison easily, in fact, if only she could get the nailed-on wooden slats of the top off. But she couldn't. Flat on her back in a tiny space with not even room enough to turn over, she'd heard through a haze of terror the heavy hammer blows, and had even dimly glimpsed some of the nails coming through, looking as big as railroad spikes.

Whoever had taken her had found her phone, smashed it on a rock, then tossed the pieces into the box and made her lie down in it. After that, the top had been nailed on; finally came the scraping, clattering sound of dirt being shoveled down onto her. Some of it kept sifting through the gaps between the slats, falling grittily into her eyes and mouth until she clamped them tightly shut.

So she couldn't even scream, not unless she wanted to choke. No light, no water, and by now she was very thirsty.
But not as thirsty as I'm going to be.

Not as scared as I will be soon, either.
The words echoed in her head from some hard, truthful place she hadn't even known she possessed.

But now she did.
This. This is how it happens. Buried in a shallow grave.

Just like her mom had said.
And no one's going to search for me. Not out here in some field, somewhere. Nobody has a clue that I'm even here, so why would they?

The thought nauseated her with fresh fear. But she couldn't give up yet. If she did, she would die here. Steeling herself, she sucked in a gritty breath. Then fury surged through her. She'd done a foolish thing but she didn't deserve this, she
didn't.

The anger felt good, like fresh blood pumping through her.

But then another slide of soil poured into her coffin and fright made her chest heave, dragging loose dirt up her nostrils.

Tara felt a shriek building inside her and struggled to keep it back, releasing it at last in a painful sob.

Please,
she thought, knowing it wouldn't help. The air in the box was stuffy, smelling of dry earth. This, she thought, is what it must be like when you're in your grave.

But up there in the air and the moonlight, everything that she loved still waited for her, as safe and good as always, and as precious. Putting her hands up, she strained against her prison's lid. But there were too many nails holding it down tight, so it wouldn't budge.

If she kept trying, though…Biting her lip with the effort, she shoved upward against the boards and this time was rewarded by the sound of a nail creaking. Encouraged, she pushed again, and one of the boards shifted noticeably.

More dirt slid heavily down onto her face, which should have terrified her again. But somehow it didn't. She was too tired and too overwhelmed to be scared.

And too pissed off,
she thought, surprising herself.

Her mom got pissed off when things got very hard. When money was short, or Tara had done or not done something, her mom started screaming about it. Blowing her top, her mom called it.

But then the hard thing got dealt with. The thought sent a strange calm flowing through Tara. It was the feeling she got when she was drawing in her sketchbook or practicing with her cheering squad, both things she hadn't been very good at, either, at first.

She'd tried a hundred times before doing her first cartwheel. She remembered the sharp, sweaty smell of her own body while she sat there in the school gym, blubbering in frustration. And now she was the team's captain, cartwheeling and somersaulting like she'd been born to do it, the phys-ed teacher said.

Oh, yeah?
she thought at the stubborn nails holding her in.
You think you can stop me from getting out of here? We'll just see about that,
she thought furiously at them.
We'll just see.

Then she forced herself to relax, breathing slowly and evenly as she lay there alone in the cramped, stifling darkness.

Resting. Only for a little while, though. Just until she was ready to try again. She let her hands lie at her sides, opening and closing them slowly, preparing herself.

And then she felt it, right there at her fingertips. Sharp, pointy-ended…a smile spread on her face as she identified the thing she had found.

It was a large, jagged-edged plastic shard of her broken cell phone.

F
ifteen years after I'd left her for dead and eight weeks after I brought her home from the hospital following her stunning rescue, my cousin Cam had her first major seizure.

By then it was late autumn, the streets slick with fallen leaves and the branches black scrawls on the gray sky. Cam and I walked together each day, working on getting her strength back, but that afternoon we had an extra reason to go out: It was the first step in the plan we'd developed for punishing the monster, Henry Gemerle.

“You're sure he'll show up?” Cam asked as we made our way into Yale's campus, past Gothic towers and elaborately scrolled iron gates, among the hurrying students in their bright scarves and jackets.

“He'll be there,” I assured Cam.

Finny Brill, I meant, the odd-duck boy from our old neighborhood. He still lived there, caring for his aging mother, and while I was back finishing the process of selling my own parents' house—Cam didn't like the place, and I didn't like her being there, either; it was full of memories, and the less she thought about the old days the better. I'd run into him.

Still odd, still desperate for friends, in his rush to update me on the facts of his lonely life Finny had dropped one fascinating bit of information: These days, he worked as an orderly at the Salisbury Forensic Institute.

“Just until I get my big break, of course,” he'd added. He still dreamed of being a filmmaker; I listened politely while he went on at length about his current project.

Around us in front of the house I'd just sold for a tidy sum, young mothers in leggings and long, baggy sweaters jogged along briskly behind three-wheeled baby strollers, while hipster dads in fedoras and horn-rims circled them on vintage bikes. It seemed that after years of slow decay the whole neighborhood had become trendy all of a sudden, and this turned out extremely well for me; the old house had been bought almost the minute I listed it, and for even more money than I'd been asking.

But while I listened to Finny, all I could think of was that Salisbury Forensic was where they had Henry Gemerle locked up until the courts and psychiatrists decided: Would he go to prison or remain in a locked hospital ward for the rest of his life?

And that's how I first got the idea of another fate for him. After all, what I wanted was to hurt him and for Cam not to hurt me. So, I wondered while Finny kept yammering on about that break of his, why not kill two birds with one stone?

“But how do you know?” Cam persisted now. “That this Finny guy will show up like he said he would?”

The way I'd presented it to her was that together, she and I would get revenge on the monster. She was on board with it right away, too—or seemed to be. What I didn't say, of course, was that my having something bad to hold over her head—that she'd helped me torture Henry Gemerle, for instance, at length and eventually to death—would in turn keep her silent about me: that I'd left her with him.

And then there was what I didn't say to myself: that I wanted Cam back. My old, funny Cam that I loved so much, whose world, so much brighter and livelier than my own, she'd let me into; I wanted that world again, and her with it.

I had, after all, no life of my own; Gemerle had taken care of that. Not that I'd ever been much for trusting people or letting them get near, even before. But now except for work and a few casual acquaintances I was as solitary as a nun in a cloistered convent, only without even the consolation of religion. He'd killed that, too.

Mostly though, what I didn't want her focusing on was my leaving her for dead. It was our revenge against him that I needed her to be thinking about; that, and my part in getting it for us. But before we could do anything to Henry Gemerle at all, we had to
have
him, and that was where Finny came in.

“He'll come,” I said again. “And when he does, you leave the talking to me.” I knew how to persuade poor Finny.

Silently she nodded agreement. Even after all she'd been through she was still very pretty with her short dark hair, pale skin, and cameo features. But her big dark eyes, once sparkling with fun, were somber now with the terrible things they'd seen and the worse ones that she'd had done to her.

“Leave it to you,” she repeated softly. “All right.”

She wore the smart red wool coat I'd bought for her, with the curly lamb collar and black buttons, stylish new leather boots, and a soft, black cashmere beret; beside her I felt like an ugly stepsister.

But I didn't care. Even though I was still afraid of her, the past few weeks had been the happiest of my life, first renting her an apartment in an old but nicely maintained building just off Whitney Avenue, then moving in there with her. The place had big windows, two bedrooms, and a leafy view, and by living there I could take care of her and at the same time keep an eye on her, I thought; not until much later did it occur to me to wonder who, exactly, had been keeping an eye on whom.

But that was later. At the time, we never talked about that night. She never asked me about it, and I didn't bring it up. For all I knew she didn't even remember; she'd had that head injury, after all, the result of the bad beatings he'd given her. Certainly she never asked what it had been like for me, grieving her loss in silence, enduring my own guilt and my mother's intense vigilance, even more constant and overbearing than before Cam's disappearance.

Feeling so sinful and no longer believing in redemption; knowing (I thought) what had happened and not being able to tell—I wanted very badly to talk about it now with the only person who could possibly understand. Still, I couldn't take a chance, since if Cam did recall, and if she told anyone what I'd done, every finger in the world would be aimed accusingly at me. My quiet, private life, the tiny safe place I'd carved out for myself, would be over. So most of all I had to keep her silent about it, and that was my real purpose that day as we carried our espressos to a table by the window.

She twisted a sliver of lemon peel between her fingers, the penetrating fragrance floating sharply up from the strong brew. Through the windowpane beside us, the blue light of autumn shone slantwise onto her face.

“Oh, I love this place,” she said, and then Finny arrived.

A loose-lipped grin stretched his freckled face when he saw us, his white-lashed eyes crinkling as he brushed back his fiery-red hair with an awkward gesture. In baggy jeans and a frayed sweater with his bony wrists sticking out of the cuffs, he still looked like a middle school kid and was as easy to persuade. Moments after joining us, he had eagerly endorsed my ideas for a documentary film about the notorious Henry Gemerle, the monster of Michener Street, as the press was already calling him.

To be directed by Finny, of course, and full of the cheesy horror elements he'd always loved. Naturally I had no such plan, but he didn't know that, and as enthralled as he was by the idea of finally becoming a real filmmaker he'd have done anything I asked; the whole thing took only a few minutes.

“Wow. Cool,” Finny said, jumping up and in his enthusiasm nearly knocking over the table. “I'll get started right away.”

Already mentally getting his gear and a shooting script ready, he didn't even seem fazed that when the time came, the first thing he'd need to do was break a violent sociopath out of a mental hospital. All he'd said about it was that he could definitely get Gemerle out of his locked ward and off the grounds of Salisbury Forensic whenever I gave the signal.

It would be easy, he said, as if for an artist like Finny it was just another creative challenge; Cam looked bemused.

“Interesting guy,” she remarked when he was gone, her arched eyebrows expressing clearly what we both thought: that Finny Brill was a complete buffoon, but a useful one.

“Yes.” I felt my worry dissolve a little. Working with me on this, she'd have little reason to tell stories about me. I'd be too useful to her—she was turning out to be just as vengeful as I remembered—and afterward she'd be as guilty as I was.

And maybe…just maybe…once it was all over she would love me a little, too. Forgive me, and love me.

But even without that, she'd keep her mouth shut. “How do you feel?” I asked.

At my urging she'd worn lipstick, just the tiniest touch; it looked good on her, and after a rough few weeks I thought that against all the doctors' predictions she might have turned the corner at last. Music came on, Ravel's “Bolero,” and the stainless-steel coffee machine behind the counter spewed steam, foaming someone's latte.

A girl laughed, and a horn honked out in the street. With a happy sigh Cam lifted her cup to her lips. Then:

“Cam?” She stared fixedly out through the café's front window but there was nothing there to see, only the constant stream of students and professors hurrying to and from the nearby Yale libraries and dining clubs. The pale stone dormitories with their arched granite entries and leaded-glass windows looked as if they dated from medieval times.

“Cam?” Her eye twitched, and then one whole side of her face cascaded into a series of grimaces, half her mouth snarling at me while the other half was as still as all that old stone outside.

Her arm spasmed violently so the espresso in her cup flew upward, the lemon peel falling into her lap. White foam seeped from between her clenched teeth, and her eyes rolled back.

The barista hurried over. “Everything okay?”

“I…I think so,” I said. It all went so fast; by now Cam already seemed to be coming around, blinking and trying to get her bearings.

“What happened?” she murmured, glancing guiltily at me as if she had somehow spoiled our outing on purpose.

I mopped at the spilled coffee, feeling the stares of other café patrons while trying to reassure Cam that she was fine, that I was with her and everything was all right.

But of course it wasn't. The damage the monster's beatings had done to her brain, as the doctors had already warned her, was getting worse. There was a blood blister in there, as dangerous as a hidden time bomb.

“I want to go home,” she whispered, and once we got there I made her lie down, of course. But she wouldn't let me phone her doctor, and against my better judgment I finally gave in, hoping it would be okay.

Later when she announced that she was taking a shower I had further misgivings, and when I heard the wet thud of her body slamming against the tiled wall I knew I never should have let her go in there alone. And naturally she'd locked the door…

“Cam!” I pounded on it while the spasms shook her. All I could think of was that her face might be under the water, that while I stood there helplessly she might be drowning.

Finally I ran for a hammer from our toolbox, the one that we'd laughed over as we stocked it with the kinds of tools we thought two women living on their own should have. With the hammer I bashed on the hollow wooden door until a hole opened in it and I could reach through to the knob inside.

“OhGodohGod,” someone kept saying, and as I scrambled across the wet tiled floor toward her I knew it was me.

“Cam.” Her eyes were rolled back again so only the whites showed, her whole body jerking like a fish dying on a hook.

I cranked the water off and grabbed a towel, covering up the freckles on her arms and legs. I'd only seen her naked once before, back in Gemerle's basement cell, and I averted my eyes from the sight as much as I could while I hauled her out of the tub, laid her on the tiles with a rolled towel beneath her head, then ran to call for help.

Even as I dialed 911 I knew she'd hate it, my seeing her like that. Cam was always as clean as a cat and as private about herself, too. But she was beautiful, the curve of her hip sloping gracefully to her thigh, her leg smooth as an artist's drawing. Even the midline scar on her belly looked perfect to me.

Afterward, when the ambulance had raced her off to the hospital where she would remain until the surgeons had their way with her, opening up her skull and removing a piece like somebody lopping off the top of a soft-boiled egg, I recalled that scar again. But the long curved line of her body kept superimposing itself on my real-life vision of her, marred only by my memory of a monster who'd seen it all, too, while he'd done whatever he wanted to her.

I despised him for it as sincerely and ferociously as anyone could. But mostly I recalled how lovely she was, even though I couldn't say so while I sat by her hospital bed. I was waiting for her to wake from a complex surgery—clipping the leaky blood vessel, cauterizing the ends, installing a shunt to keep the swelling down, and then repairing her opened skull with a surgical-grade metal alloy patch—that both she and I had feared she wouldn't survive.

Later I might have tried telling her, I suppose. But by that time she wasn't listening. Not to me, not to anyone at all.

No one but him.

“I
nmates at the Salisbury Institute aren't supposed to have computer privileges,” said Dylan, leaning back in one of the ugly plaid chairs in Lizzie's living room. “So how'd he even know what Tara Wylie looks like?”

By now it was early Thursday morning and they'd been going over the case for hours, the half-empty doughnut box and the remaining bottle of warm Coke shoved aside on the coffee table.

“They're not supposed to have escape privileges, either,” she retorted. But somehow Gemerle had managed that, too.

They'd reviewed all the facts: that Tara and Peg Wylie were from New Haven, just like Jane Crimmins, Henry Gemerle, and the hospital orderly, Finny Brill.

What connected them all, though, was still a blank. “They're all linked somehow. We just don't know what the link is yet,” she said. By lamplight the room was almost cozy, she noticed, the dark wood paneling and deep-red draperies giving it a denlike feeling.

“Yeah, you're probably right,” said Dylan. “Hey, this is just like the old days, though, isn't it?” He pulled his iPad from his soft leather briefcase, twiddling with the icons on the screen.