The Silent Girls (10 page)

An odor reached Rath’s nose, stale and oniony. The dorm monitor’s breath. She was standing just behind him, breathing through her mouth.

He took a step and looked around, at the photo of a girl hugging a dog, some sort of mutt. The girl wore ink black hair long and straight, and big, bookish glasses. She was smiling, wearing translucent braces. She must have been Rachel’s roommate.

“Don’t touch anything unless it’s your daughter’s,” the voice behind him said.

Rachel’s laptop was nowhere to be seen. He peeked up at her bed. Pulled back a tousled sheet to see several books:
House of Horrors: True Life Accounts of Sadist Killers, Urges: The Compulsion to Kill, Pure Evil.
Rath stared at them, dumbly. He flipped open
Pure Evil.
The pages were littered with notes in a frantic hand. What was this? She certainly didn’t have a report due on such subject matter. Through his shock, he felt fear and confusion. He stepped over to Rachel’s desk and pulled open the drawer, afraid of what he might find.

“That desk hers?” the voice said.

“I bought it for her.”

“Students aren’t allowed their own furniture. I’d like to know where the college’s desk and dresser are.”

Rath’s back ached, a hot spark of pain bellowed into flames by the monitor’s tone.

There was nothing in the desk drawer but pocket change and paper clips.

Perhaps it was a good sign that Rachel and her roommate’s laptops were not here. Perhaps they were actually squirreled away in the library. Rachel was an industrious and serious student who worked hard, even if it did not always result in straight As. She put herself into her studies. How was her not answering his messages any different than when she’d deemed her bedroom
off-limits
while boning up for high-school exams?

Nurse Ratchet cleared her throat. Rath glimpsed her reflection in the window, seeing the stab wound of her impatient mouth.

The room offered nothing. He turned slowly, in a circle, taking it in, Nurse Ratchet sighing with dramatic relief.

“Sorry to exasperate you,” he said.

“No need to be nasty.”

“If you see her, give me a call.”

She nodded primly.

Rath gave his number and stepped into the hall.

For the next hour, he searched the library exhaustively, for his daughter. Nothing. But the library was a labyrinth and swimming with students. She had to be there somewhere, studying like the rest of her peers. Finally, he set out for the long drive back toward his empty house.

M
OOSE
A
LLEY
WAS
a hazard of black ice covered with falling snow, making travel treacherous. All Rath wanted was to get home and into bed. Sleep, if he could. He drove in a near-catatonic state, drained from searching for Rachel and feeling squeezed dry of all emotion save a raw rage from the news of Preacher’s parole hearing. If that monster ever saw the light of day. The Scout felt claustrophobic and hot. He reached across the cab, cranked down the passenger’s window to get a good bracing dose of night air.

Monday Night Football
resumed from halftime as Rath turned north off Moose Alley. The Pats received the opening kickoff, as usual. Why Welker was returning kickoffs was beyond Rath. Welker was driven to the ground at the thirty-yard line and was slow to get up. Great.

As Rath came back into cell range, his phone buzzed. A text from Sonja:

meet me & grout @ the station 10AM

developments with dead girl had 2 clue him in

Rath rolled the window back up, and the Scout hit a patch of ice and slid sideways. The Scout spun into the oncoming lane. As it did, his headlights illuminated a bull moose standing in the road. He counter-steered, the moose looming, unfazed as the Scout skidded toward it then whipsawed back into Rath’s own lane, just missing the moose. Rath let the Scout come to a rest alongside the road, his heart crashing in his chest.

Chapter 19

G
ROUT SHOWED
S
ONJA
and Rath into his office, which offered all the square footage of an ice-fishing shanty, his crowded desk a shipwreck of exploding folders. The shelves on the left wall showed off his son’s sports trophies among a stack of books on home brewing.
When did eight-year-olds start getting trophies?
Rath wondered. The wall to the right was peppered with tiny holes as if a woodpecker had been at it, a dartboard at the center of it. The threadbare carpet stank of sour beer, likely spilled by Rath himself. Many nights, he and Grout had shared a pop here before heading out for darts.

Sonja and Rath kept their coats on, the office situated at the farthest end of the hall from the sole thermostat, which clicked on about once every space-shuttle launch, which was now never.

Rath sat, and the chair, an ergonomic torture device from Staples, tilted wildly. The room swam. His throat felt as if he’d swallowed bits of shaved steel. Even his eyelashes hurt. After arriving home, he’d spent the night out on his steps with the rest of the Lagavulin, his body numb by the time the dawn sun lit the frosted tree branches into a world of delicate spun sugar. The pain in his back radiated down his legs. He was famished too. His MRI was scheduled for the afternoon and he could not recall if he was allowed to eat beforehand or not, so he’d skipped having as much as toast this morning to quiet his stomach.

Sonja unpeeled the wrapper from a Power Bar, and Rath felt his stomach turn.

Grout shut the door and sat in a swivel chair behind his desk. He shot Sonja an icy gaze. “Apparently we have a dead girl found in Victory, who’s not Mandy?”

Sonja nodded.

“So, tell me again,” Grout said, “why we’re talking about her? Don’t get me wrong. It’s sad. But she was found in another county. She’s not our problem. It’s a state police matter.”

“I think maybe she’s connected to Mandy,” Sonja said.

“We don’t even know if Mandy was abducted. You said yourself, Mandy’s forty bucks could have fallen out of her purse by accident.”

“Forty-three bucks,” Sonja corrected. “Three fives and twenty-eight ones.”

“I don’t think three bucks will keep me awake at night,” Grout said.

They should keep you up at night
, Rath thought. “Let’s hear her out,” he said.

“Fine,” Grout said. “Proceed Detective Test.”

Sonja drew a deep breath and opened the folder to photos of the girl’s corpse. If Rath had not known he was looking at a bloated corpse, it would have taken him several minutes to figure it out. Grout glanced at the photos and looked away.

“The body was found two days ago in Victory,” Sonja said, “Her name is Julia Pearl. She was seventeen, reported missing last March, the eleventh. The ME report states the body was exposed to the elements for six weeks, tops. As decomposed as it is, it would be far more so if it had been any longer than six weeks because at the end of August and start of September, we had ten straight days in the nineties.”

“There’s no such thing as global warming,” Grout said.

Sonja gave him a schoolmarm’s frown.

“Sorry. Photos like this make me nervous,” Grout said.

Rath didn’t think Grout had ever seen photos like this. The girl’s stomach was torn open and her internal organs and viscera, what little were left, were slopping out of her gaping cavity. Her swollen body was twisted in an unnatural pose of torment. He could not help but think of Laura. And Preacher. He began to sweat in the cold room.

“This girl disappeared six months ago?” Rath said.

Sonja turned to Rath, her eyes bright. “Seven.”

“And her body is dumped six weeks ago?”

“At most,” Sonja said.

Rath leaned forward in an attempt to relieve his back pain. No such luck. He was trembling with exhaustion and pain and hunger. “So. Where did he keep the body for the six months, a meat locker? And what did he
do
to it while he had it?”

Grout pulled a pack of Big League gum from his desk drawer and grabbed a tangled wad, popped it in his mouth, and chewed like a cow with cud.

“Lou says she died just before the body was dumped,” Sonja said. “Close as he can gather, the death and dumping were on the same day. Forensics says the body wasn’t kept frozen. And it would be far more decomposed if this girl had been killed soon after her original disappearance. So she was kept alive for six months, give or take. Likely tortured. Then killed and dumped.”

Grout tossed his wad of gum toward the overflowing wastebasket in the corner. It stuck to the rim, then peeled away onto the floor. “We’re overlooking entirely the possibility that the girl wasn’t abducted when she first went missing. She could easily have run away. Then trouble found her, months later. Runaways have that vulnerable look about them. They’re a trouble magnet. There was no indication she did anything but run away at the outset, was there?”

“No. But—” Sonja cleared her throat and drank from a bottled water she pulled from her backpack.

“There’s nothing here to connect her to Mandy. Nothing.” Grout turned to Rath, dismissing detective Test. “Sunday, I checked on that lead at the Double Black Diamond. You’d have known about if you hadn’t blown off darts. The resort held model searches and casting calls for production companies out of Boston. Nothing for Mandy comes up, yet. Patrol Officer Larkin is digging around for me.”

Larkin was a young officer that looked nineteen years old but was serious-minded and earnest, if dull. He spent most days at road-repair sites or speed traps.

Sonja took another sip of water. “There’s more,” she said. “Julie was cut open navel to sternum. With a
very
sharp blade,
not
by sharp rocks as first thought. More forensics is needed to determine what kind of blade. But it was as if she were, well, unzipped. But, because the internal organs are so decayed and many consumed by animals, Lou can’t determine if this killed her.”

“
Unzipped
? Seems pretty clear to me,” Grout said.

“It may not have been deep enough,” Sonja said. “May not have hit a vital organ or artery. And. There’s this.” She plucked a photo up, another blowup of sallow and purpled suet flesh.

Rath and Grout leaned in.

Part of the purple was not bruised flesh but a—

“If you look closely, you can see—” Sonja said.

“What is
that
?” Grout said, sucking in a breath.

Sonja spun the photo around. “There,” she said.

Grout whistled a long, slow, graveyard whistle.

Silence bloomed, the walls pressed in. A fly ticked in the ceiling light fixture.

“Is that—” Rath began.

“A goat’s head,” Sonja said.

“I don’t see it, ” Grout said, wiping his mouth, “But whatever the fuck it is—”

A strand of hair fell across Sonja’s eyes. Rath sat up straight, focusing on the photo.

“And,” Sonja said, “the girl’s heart is gone.”

Rath felt his throat clench. “Her heart?” He and Grout said it at the same time.

“That’s what killed her then,” Grout said, grasping, clearly wanting this to go away.

“We’re not sure if it was taken. Purposely,” Sonja said. “What with the animals. But. Add the carving. The thing is, most of her lungs are gone, too. Intestines. Stomach. Uterus. Not entirely. There’s some of each organ left, though clearly eaten by wildlife. The heart, though. No trace. We can reason that perhaps whoever carved her might may have taken her heart for, well. Purposes unknown.”

“Are you seriously positing rituals or sacrifices?” Grout mumbled. “What is this, 1987?

“Far-fetched. I
know
. The heart could’ve gone the way of the raccoon, she’d been picked over pretty good.”

“So we have a girl who disappeared seven months ago,” Rath said. “Maybe abducted, maybe she ran off, then was abducted. Murdered. Maybe from being cut open. Maybe not. What else could she have died from?”

Sonja shrugged. “Lou will let us know. But there’s no blunt-force trauma to the cranium that could have caused her death. All the damage done to the crushed zygomatic bone would have been nonlethal. Besides, that was done by her being washed down the stream postmortem. That’s conclusive.”

“So, what do we think she has to do with the others?” Rath said.

Sonja winced, and Rath realized his slipup too late.

“Others
?
” Grout said, his eyes sharp.

“Three other girls about the same age have gone missing within seventy miles of here in the past year or so,” Sonja said.

“Christ.” Grout flicked his hand at papers on his desk. “I should have been informed. Why the hell was I not informed?”

“I’ve found no links between them,” Rath said. “But my gut—”

“
You?
Maybe I would have found something. And fuck your
gut.
I hired you because—”

Sonja held up a hand to stop him. “Look. I set Rath on it because
he’s
not getting paid, and
you
can’t afford to be casting such a wide net, budget-wise or politically, especially while Barrons was gone. You can’t look like you’re playing gunslinger.”

She was smart, playing the exact cards she needed to play.

“That’s
no
reason not to keep me apprised,” Grout snapped. “I’m your superior.”

“You’re right,” Sonja said, saving face. Rath was impressed. Most people would not have said it, preferring to save their pride. “I should have brought you in. I was wrong.”

“Damn right,” Grout said, and glanced at Rath, letting out a sigh. “Barrons will want to hear about it, but officially we can’t try to make a link if there is no proof. You’re casting far too wide of a net here, Detective Test. We can’t afford that. We’ve got Mandy missing.”

“I hate to think what that poor thing—” Sonja began.

Grout locked eyes with Sonja. “Shove that out of your mind.”

Rath saw he was clearly sore. But he was right. During a cop’s training, it was hammered home to avoid emotional ties to victims. The victim was an object to provide evidence of the crime against it and could not exist as a human being in the cop’s mental or emotional world. To sympathize was to jeopardize objectivity. If you couldn’t manage it, it would be your ruin.

Rath was glad he did not have to play by these flawed rules. The photos of Julia, combined with the idea of Preacher’s release, were working him into a heady lather of anger. And he worked best angry; it brought a pure clarity.

“Right,” Sonja said to Grout, “best to stay detached. To your point: If Mandy, or these other girls are linked—”

“No,” Grout said. “Rath said himself he couldn’t find a link.”

“I just started, ” Rath said. “I think there’s something there. If they
prove
to be linked, and Julia was kept alive for months, there is a chance that Mandy, if she was taken by the same perp, is still alive.”

Grout brightened at this. But said: “I won’t make that leap. We don’t have jack. If Barrons asks, we play it tight. He should be in by now. I’ll go see if he’s rolled in. This will make him bullshit, our first briefing on his return. Lovely.” He got up and pushed past Rath to exit the office.

“Pissy,” Sonja said to Rath.

“You should have brought him in on it.” Rath stood.

“I just did.” Sonja rose and adjusted the file under her arm. “And I think I subjugated myself plenty in here. You think the part about my worrying about Mandy’s possible suffering was laying it on too thick to pump his superiority complex?”

Rath blinked. Stunned. She had purposely played up her empathy for a victim to let Grout scold her. She was more politically oiled than Rath thought.

As Rath and Test entered the hall, Grout strode toward them. “He’s in. I can’t tell if he’s happy to have had ten days in fishing nirvana or pissed it’s over.”

They strode down the hall in silence.