All The Pretty Dead Girls (24 page)

“He dropped right over there,” Marjorie was telling Miles and Perry Holland. “I came out of the kitchen and Mike was on the floor, and Wally was doing CPR.”

“Was it a heart attack?” Perry asked. “It would be strange in a kid so young, but not unheard of.”

Marjorie shrugged. “Well, that’s what they’re still trying to find out.”

Miles brought a forkful of hash browns to his lips. “Kid’s been in the hospital now for four days,” he said just before taking a bite. “You’d think they’d figure out what was wrong with him by now,” he added, mouth full.

“Well,” Marjorie said, leaning on her elbows on the counter, “what’s really odd is that at the same moment, down the street at the boutique, one of Mike’s classmates was having a similar attack. She just dropped, and she’s been in the hospital now the same amount of time he has.”

“Who’s that?” Perry asked.

“Heidi Swettenham. The girl Billy Honeycutt dumped for that Wilbourne girl.”

Perry paused, holding his cup of coffee in midair. “What Wilbourne girl?’

“Oh, I don’t remember her name.” Marj started wiping down the counter. “I’m getting old. What’s the use of being the town gossip if you can’t remember names? Susan…Sue…something.”

A little bell went off in Perry’s head. “Not Sue Barlow?”

“Yes,” Marj said, nodding. “That’s the one. Know her?”

Perry shook his head. “No. I just gave her a warning for speeding, that’s all.”

He and his father exchanged glances. Perry had filled Miles in about the daughter of Mariclare Barlow attending Wilbourne this year. But they’d both dismissed any thought of following up on the coincidence, since Mariclare Barlow had returned home safe and sound twenty years ago. Unlike the other girls, she didn’t remain missing or turn up murdered and dismembered.

Even if what had happened to her on campus was surely horrendous enough.

But now…there was Sue Barlow’s name again. Perry couldn’t help thinking that there was something about her that he needed to find out. But what?

“Okay, Marj,” Miles was saying, pushing back his plate. “It’s time for us to start our shifts. Thank Wally for another superlative high-calorie breakfast.”

Marjorie cleared away their plates. “I’m just glad to see you cleaned up for a change, Miles. That scruffy look went out with Don Johnson.”

Miles clapped Perry on the back. “The boy here is keeping me in shape.”

Perry smiled. He was pleased that his father seemed back to his old self. He was eating better, taking care of himself. Working together on this case seemed to have galvanized him. Without telling the state cops in charge of the investigation—big lard-asses who were doing nothing to find Bonnie Warner—

Perry and Miles had trudged down to the basement of the town hall and begun pouring over old death records.

It hadn’t taken them long to find something. “Lookee here,” Miles had said, his voice low. “Millicent Berwick. October 18, 1887. Cause of death, multiple stab wounds. Found on the Wilbourne campus.”

“And here,” Perry had said. “Just a week later. Phoebe Singleton. Wilbourne student. Cause of death.” He’d gulped. “Severed head.”

“Every twenty years or so,” Miles had said, awed.

They had been right.

But what did it mean?

They headed out of the diner. Perry zipped up his nylon jacket. A sudden cold wind had whipped up, swirling leaves in the street.

“Early winter this year,” Miles observed, shivering.

The trees were a riot of color, mostly oranges and yellows. There was nowhere more beautiful than upstate New York in autumn, Perry’s mother used to say. The morning sun sparkled through openings in the leaves.

“I’m going back to the station to make a few calls,” Perry told his father.

Miles nodded. “I’ll take the first patrol around town. Make sure nobody’s robbing the bank or slaughtering any more pretty co-eds.”

Perry smiled. “I’m glad you’re feeling better, Dad.”

Miles shrugged. “It’s been good spending these last few days with you, son. And I think your mother is happy about it, too.”

“You never stop thinking about her, do you, Dad?”

Miles’s smile faded. “No, I don’t. But lately…” His smile flickered again. “Lately, it’s been getting easier.”

Perry gave him a thumbs-up. He watched as his father slid behind the wheel of his patrol car and drove off. They exchanged a wave. Then Perry hopped into his own car and drove back to the station. He nodded at the secretary, checked to make sure he had no messages, then closed the door to his office and sat down on his desk.

He looked down at the file marked
BARLOW
,
MARICLARE
.

He opened it and read it again. It still had the power to sicken him.

He’d found a number for her parents in New York. They’d be Sue Barlow’s grandparents. He’d thought about just calling Sue herself and asking her a few questions about her mother, but he suspected she didn’t know what had happened to her mother on campus twenty years ago.

So he picked up the phone and called New York.

“Hello?”

“Mrs. Barlow? This is Deputy Sheriff Perry Holland from Lebanon, New York.”

The line went quiet.

“Mrs. Barlow?”

“Has something happened to Sue?” the woman asked in a small voice.

“No. ma’am. Your granddaughter is fine, as far as I know.” He could understand the woman’s fear when she heard his voice. Had she gotten a similar call twenty years ago?

“Then why are you calling?”

“Mrs. Barlow, you may be aware that a girl has gone missing from Wilbourne. In fact, three girls are missing, although that hasn’t been publicly acknowledged yet.”

Perry knew that within a day or so the state police were planning on holding a news conference to disclose the names of Joelle Bartlett and Patricia Lewis. The families were exerting pressure, and word had leaked out on the Internet. He decided telling Mrs. Barlow about it now wouldn’t matter—in fact, it could only help to explain the reasons behind his call.

“So I’m looking back into the files of the department, and I’d like to ask you a few questions about your daughter Mariclare.”

“But Mariclare came home.” The woman’s voice was icy.

“Yes, I know, but I thought she might be able to tell me a little about what happened while she was missing—”

The woman on the other end of the phone line made a clucking sound in her throat. “She simply ran away from the school. There was no kidnapping or anything like that! She ran away and came home to us.”

“Still, I’d like to talk with her,” Perry said. “I mean, about what happened to her on campus…” His voice trailed off, unable to articulate the words. “There was some thought here in the department at the time that it might be related to the other girls who went missing and then were killed. That the same perpetrator who—”

“You’ll need to talk with my husband, and he’s not home,” Mrs. Barlow said tersely.

“Well, actually, it’s your daughter Mariclare I’d like to speak with…”

“Mariclare is dead!”

Perry was silent for a moment. “I’m very sorry, Mrs. Barlow. I didn’t know that. Could you tell me when she died?’

“Years ago. Many years ago.”

“When your granddaughter was very young?”

“Right after she was born.”

Perry was doing subtraction in his head. A horrible thought came over him.

“Mrs. Barlow,” he said. “If you can’t speak with me, maybe you’d give me a number where I can reach your husband?”

“He’s a very busy man. He doesn’t have time—”

“Mrs. Barlow,” Perry interrupted. “Did you hear what I said?
Three girls have gone missing from the campus where your granddaughter is living.
We suspect there may be some kind of pattern going on. Every twenty years—”

“That is absurd!”

Perry was losing his cool. “Are you not the least bit concerned about your granddaughter, given that twenty years ago your daughter was brutally raped on the very same campus?”

There was no hesitation in the old woman’s reply. “Wilbourne takes good care of its girls,” she said.

Perry couldn’t believe his ears. “I’m sorry to have bothered you, Mrs. Barlow. I’ll be calling your husband at another time.”

She hung up on him.

She might call the state police and complain, Perry knew. But at the moment, he didn’t care. He knew now his father was one hundred percent right.

They were indeed on to something.

Perry’s eyes dropped back down to the file spread out on his desk. He read again the paragraph at the top of the report.

“Hey, Danny,” Miles called from his police car window. It was Saturday, and the kids were riding their skateboards on the sidewalk in front of the post office. “Careful you don’t run that thing out into the road.”

The boy nodded. He was probably eight years old by now, Miles reckoned. The sheriff could remember when Danny was born, and when his older brothers and sisters were all born. He had a good memory. That’s why he was a good sheriff.

“Whatcha gonna be for Halloween?” he asked Danny.

“Spider-Man,” Danny shouted.

“Good for you,” Miles said. “He was always my favorite.”

Halloween. Miles couldn’t believe it was almost here. How fast time went. He rolled up his window and continued his cruise down Main Street. He’d put an extra deputy on for Halloween night. There was occasionally some vandalism—soaping car windows, smashing pumpkins, that kind of thing. Nothing too bad. Lebanon was a quiet, well-behaved town.

Except every twenty years or so.

Why hadn’t anyone made a big stink about this pattern before? One of the selectmen, one of the town officials? There were ladies over at the Lebanon Historical Society who made it their life’s business to know every scrap of history that happened in this town. They could rattle off statistics for every presidential election back to Lincoln—but no one had ever mentioned that every twenty years, a handful of college girls went missing or were found brutally murdered. Of course, every time it happened, there was a big fuss, with a town meeting being held the last time it happened, with feminists rallying against the rape of Mariclare Barlow and pressuring Wilbourne to beef up security. Miles remembered the rally—his wife had taken part, in fact—and the newspaper coverage was still there, for anyone to read, on micro-film. But within a few weeks, the town stopped talking about it, and then it all just seemed to slip from collective memory. Even Miles’s memory—at least for a time.

“Not anymore,” he whispered to himself as he drove, his eyes gazing out at the golden trees that lined his vision. “I’m not forgetting anymore.”

He turned down Laurel Grove Road, a narrow, winding, mostly dirt road that cut from the center of town through the woods to the Wilbourne campus.

What was it? What went on at that college? Some kind of ritualized killings? Some secret group? Some kind of sect?

And why did everyone forget?

Who had the kind of power to cause that?

“State cops would call me nutso,” Miles said out loud.

But he wasn’t crazy.

He knew that much.

Even as he saw the figure on the side of the road, he remained convinced of that.

It was a girl, riding a bike—except she had no head.

“Dear God,” Miles breathed, slowing the police car to a stop.

Then he heard the roar. He bolted from the cruiser, gun drawn. The sound came from behind him. He turned to see what it was—

And a hand—more like a talon—gripped his throat. It lifted the sheriff off the ground.

Miles, in excrutiating pain, looked down to see his assailant.

What he saw was indescribable.

Not human.

Not animal.

Not—of this world.

It was darkness—darkness come to life—that was the only way Miles could perceive it.

Miles screamed.

“Scream all you want,” the demon told him. “It is music to hear.”

But there was another sound, too. That same roar. The creature that held him seemed concerned by it. Miles was able to see in the periphery of vision what it was—

A lion.

Dear God…

And a woman beside it, armed with a sword.

The thing holding Miles hissed, snapping the sheriff’s neck before disappearing.

The last conscious thought Miles had before plunging to the earth was that he was dead—but that the lady with the lion had saved him.

And brought him home to be with his wife.