All The Pretty Dead Girls (20 page)

“Dad, you need to eat.”

“I’m not hungry.” He put a hand to his head again. “Damn headache. Maybe I will go lie down and take some Motrin.”

“Good idea,” Perry said. “I’ll clean up this mess. Then maybe I can make us both some eggs.”

Miles shook his finger at him. “You gotta admit I’m on to something, Perry.”

“We’ll talk about it after you rest awhile.”

His father grunted, then headed down the hall to his room.

Biting his lower lip, Perry started scrubbing the dishes in the sink. Food had dried like glue in pans. Milk rings stared at him from the bottoms of glasses. He decided just to fill the sink with hot water and let the dishes soak.

Hauling the trash out to the can, he scolded himself.
Why wasn’t I paying more attention to Dad? Why wasn’t I being a better son? Why couldn’t I see he was on the verge of cracking up before?

But he couldn’t deny that what his father had discovered was very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

A good memory was one of the most important tools in solving crimes. Perry knew that. His father was right. So he needed to pay attention to the feeling he’d gotten when he looked at one of those files. He’d seen one of the names before.

But where? When?

Back at the table, he lifted a yellowed folder he knew had come from the station files. Yes, this was the one. The girl who’d disappeared but later turned up okay at her parents’ home.

BARLOW
,
MARICLARE
was written on the tab.

Barlow? That name is familiar. Why?

Perry sat down and scratched his head.
Where do I know that name from?
He opened the file and looked at the date it was opened.

Twenty years ago.

He heard his father saying,
“Every twenty years or so something happens to the girls up at the college.”

And then it came to him.

The girl in the white Lexus. Perry had pulled her over the night before school started. Her name was Barlow. Susan Barlow, with a Manhattan address. She’d flirted a little bit with him, and he’d found her attractive.

Might there be connection between her and this Mariclare Barlow, who was also listed with a Manhattan address?

Barlow was a fairly common name, and Manhattan was a big place. But Perry had enough curiosity to read the entire file. His eyes widened as he read.

Dear God,
he thought.
Could Dad be right?

Every twenty years or so…

The overhead light flickered. Perry shuddered as he continued to read.

Ginny climbed the stairs to her apartment, spitting mad,

I should have resigned on the spot,
she thought to herself.

Fumbling with her key, she let herself inside, balancing her book bag slung over one shoulder and two paper bags of groceries in her arms.

I’ll never forgive Gregory
, she said as she stewed.
Never
.

They’d finally had their long-awaited face-to-face confrontation about Bonnie Warner, as well as a few other things.

“Do you want me to tell you I was planning on reporting her for being off campus? Is that what you want me to say, Ted?”

Ginny sat opposite the dean, who was ensconced in his tall leather chair behind his desk. His small pink hands were folded over his chest.

“I would hope that was truly what you were planning, Ginny,” he said to her. “It would have been the only responsible thing to do.”

“Fine. Then I’ll tell you that’s what I was planning to do. I never got a chance to do so, because I found out from Sheriff Holland that morning that she was dead. Or at least presumed to be, with all that blood. And frankly, that weighed more heavily on me than the fact that she’d broken one of the silly college rules.”

Gregory had smiled at her, that toothy mammal smile. “We have rules for the students’ protection and safety, Ginny. They’re not silly.”

“If I could do anything differently, it would be to have insisted that Bonnie ride home with me. If she had agreed…” Ginny’s voice trailed off. She hated thinking about that poor girl and the fate she suffered.

“She was a headstrong child,” Gregory said. “So I’ve been told. I never met her.”

Of course not
, Ginny thought.
She wasn’t the granddaughter of a rich benefactor like Sue Barlow…

“Here’s the dilemma as I see it, Ginny.” Gregory leaned forward, his beady eyes locking onto hers. “I’m sure Bonnie’s parents would be very distressed to know a teacher here saw her off campus the night she disappeared and did not report her right away.”

“Right away? The administration was closed for the night.”

“You could have called me directly.”

Ginny laughed. “And what would you have done? Gone out looking for her?”

“Perhaps.” Gregory leaned back in his chair. “The point is, if you had taken action rigft away—”

“That’s an unfair charge!” Ginny’s voice was loud, but she didn’t care. “The best I could have done was report her the next day.”

“I’m not sure if the Warners will see it that way.” He gave her a tight smile. “They’re threatening to sue Wilbourne, you know.”

“Then you’d only be giving them ammunition if you told them I saw her.”

Gregory nodded. “You’d probably be named a party in the case.”

Ginny stood, approached the dean’s desk, and gripped the sides with her hands. Her eyes bore into Gregory’s. “What is this all about? Stop beating around the bush.”

“Just a simple request that you drop the courses on the divine feminine next semester.”

“What?”

“You heard me. The board of trustees isn’t happy with such teaching at Wilbourne. Now that Fred Dodd has retired and I found Nancy Wallison to replace him, the board is quite unanimous in its desire for academic consistency.”

Ginny stood, feeling a little dizzy. “What the hell does that mean?”

“Oh, come now, Ginny. You knew very well when you took this job that Wilbourne was a conservative school. We offered you a job to keep some diversity in our curriculum. But that was a priority of the old board of trustees. Now the board is less interested in promoting ‘alternative’ views.”

“Look, Gregory, you are absolutely right. I took this position knowing that Wilbourne had a history of being conservative. I also knew that it had a history of academic freedom and a commitment to educational diversity. Being conservative, might I remind you, need not equal being small-minded or intolerant. It is only recently that the conservative movement in this country has been co-opted by Christian fundamentalists who have dictated how we must think and what we must believe.”

Gregory was looking at her almost with pity. “Dear, dear Ginny. I think you ought to stick with religious theory and not get into politics.”

“It’s become hard to separate the two,” she retorted.

“I’m not asking you to keep to any sort of line. Only that you submit to me a revised curriculm for next year.”

Ginny was astonished. “Is this how it’s going to be then? First, you personally intercede for a benefactor’s granddaughter, who happens to be a student in my class, and demand she be given preferential treatment…”

“The poor girl was sick, Ginny.”

“It was her place to work that out with me, not yours!”

He shrugged. “In any event, I do appreciate your flexibility on that matter.”

Ginny had agreed to give Sue Barlow an extension, but it had been against her better judgment. She had always liked Sue—thought she was smart—and indeed, a few days later, when she took the make-up test, the girl had aced it. How apologetic Sue had been about Gregory’s involvement. Ginny didn’t blame her. Gregory was, quite simply, an impossible prick.

“I don’t know,” Ginny said, turning to leave Gregory’s office. “I can’t commit here and now to turn over my academic authority to the administation. Frankly, I’m too angry to even discuss it further with you.’

Gregory had smiled his infuriating weasel grin. “That’s fine, Ginny. You think it over. Let’s talk again by Friday, all right?”

He was threatening me,
Ginny thought as she settled the groceries onto the counter.
He was holding over my head the fact that I saw Bonnie on the night of her disappearance.

So let him tell her family I saw her! I couldn’t have prevented what happened! They could read about it in the police report anyway.

Still, Ginny knew she should put a call in to her lawyer. Not only about Bonnie—but about the tactics Gregory was using to control her teaching. Her contract guaranteed her academic freedom.

She was tired and all she wanted to do was put the groceries away, open a bottle of wine, and find a little bit of mellow before sleep. The wind was cold, whipping against the side of the house and cutting right through to her bones. Winter, it seemed, was going to make early inroads on autumn.

She noticed the red light on her answering machine was blinking. She hit the play button as she put the groceries away.

“Oh, Christ,” Ginny said out loud, holding a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a bag of coffee beans in the other.

Angela Cohen had been her agent from the very beginning of her publishing career, back in the days when she was working on her Ph.D. at Harvard. Slogging her way through on her doctoral thesis, Ginny was advised to find a literary agent. “Publish or perish, my dear,” her advisor, Dr. Guenther, a wise old professor with a heavy German accent, had told her. “If you already
have
a contract to publish your thesis, it’s kind of hard for them to deny you not only your letters, but a teaching position here. And I’m sure there are any number of respected academic publishers who would love to have a shot at publishing you.”

It had seemed a bit premature, but Ginny had learned early in her collegiate career to listen to faculty members giving advice. She’d bought a book on literary agents, typed up a synopsis of the book, and sent it out to twenty nonfiction agents. She honestly thought nothing would come of it. When Dr. Guenther asked her about it, she could just shrug and say, “I tried.”

She was never sure how Angela Cohen came across her query letter, but she had, and she was not only interested in representing Ginny—she was excited and enthusiastic. “This book has
best seller
written all over it,” Angela had enthused over the phone after reading a few sample chapters. “I just love how you take on the guys who started the early Christian Church—it’s just great, and it’s going to be controversial, it’ll get all the fundamentalists’ panties in a twist for sure.”

“That’s a good thing?” Ginny had asked, worried.

“Honey, controversy sells books like you would not believe.” Angela had told her. “Ginny, you and I could do good things together, trust me on this, okay?”

And over lunch at a swank bistro in central Manhattan a few weeks later, Ginny took the plunge and signed a letter of agreement for Angela to represent her.

The last thing in the world she expected was for Angela to get her a six-figure contract with a major publisher in New York. But that’s what she did.
The Sacred Feminine
earned her not only the Ph.D. she had coveted for so long, not only a teaching position at Harvard, but also one hell of a lot of money. Suddenly, Ginny was in demand for talk shows and speaking engagements all over the country. Scuttlebutt around the faculty was that tenure was a given, and sure enough, it came through…but Angela and the publisher were already pushing Ginny on a second book. “I never meant to be an author,” she’d protested to Angela. “I want to be a teacher.”

“Publish or perish, dear, you know it as well as I do.” Angela was insistent, and as much as she hated to admit it, Ginny knew she was right.

For her next book, she decided to do a study of sightings of the Virgin Mary…but after getting started on the research and visiting a few of the places where shrines now stood—as well as a trip to Los Zapatos, Mexico—she stalled out on the book. She went on to write other books, but then Eric got sick, and her marriage crumbled, and Ginny, depressed and desolate, had finally fled to the wilderness of Lebanon, still unable to finish the book she had been working at on and off for twenty years.

Dan Rosen, her editor, was very understanding. “Ginny, after all you’ve been through, the last thing I want to do is push you to finish something that you aren’t ready to finish.”
The Sacred Feminine
was still selling well for them, and Ginny knew she remained an asset to the company. “Take your time,” Dan told her. “Just keep me posted on your progress.” He extended the deadline for her, and would extend it again two more times. Now the third extended deadline was coming up in March of next year, and Ginny had written little more than she had when she’d gotten the first extension.

She walked into the living room, pulling off her sweater and throwing it across the sofa as she turned her computer on. “Damn, damn, damn!”

Ever since Eric got sick, nothing has gone right.

But even as the thought crossed her mind, Ginny knew she was making excuses, yet again using Eric’s death as a scapegoat. Failing to finish the book was her own fault. Eric had been dead for two years now. She’d blown off the deadline, asked for more time, and played on the sympathies of her agent and her editor. She couldn’t play that card anymore. The truth was, she didn’t have the slightest idea how to write the damned book. Sometimes she considered just paying the advance back and washing her hands of the whole mess. There was no shame in just being a college professor.

That is, if she kept her job now that Gregory was making things difficult for her.

But what else was there? All her hopes for the book were fizzling.
I couldn’t even get Bernadette deSalis to talk to me,
Ginny thought, staring at her computer screen, her face reflected in the monitor.

In the month or so since Gayle Honeycutt had dropped that bomb on her—a local visitation, complete with stigmata—Ginny had gotten nowhere with the girl or her family. Whenever Ginny called, Mrs. deSalis hung up on her. Thanks to Gayle’s fucking article, Mrs. deSalis considered Ginny “anti-Christian,” and wanted nothing to do with her. She’d tried stopping by, but usually only found one of the deSalis boys at home, and they’d just grumble that they “didn’t know nothing.” Once, she’d lucked into Mr. deSalis, who Gayle had thought her best bet. The poor man’s eyes were bloodshot, and he looked as if he hadn’t slept in days.

“I’ve researched these kinds of cases, Mr. deSalis,” Ginny had pleaded. “Maybe I can be of some help.”

The man had just sighed. “I knew word would get out. I’m sorry, Dr. Marshall. I refuse to let my daughter become a freak in the eyes of the town.”

“She’s not that at all,” Ginny said. “If I could just talk with her…”

“My wife won’t allow it,” Pierre deSalis told her. He seemed so tired, as if all his life force was spent. “And what my wife says goes—at least concerning Bernadette.”