What Has Become of You (27 page)

It was the end of her first semester at college, the beginning of Christmas break. Her weight had fallen to seventy pounds. She could barely walk from class to class. She had told the college that she wouldn’t be back for the spring semester, and when her parents drove up to get her, loading all her things in their trunk, she could feel only as though she’d been rescued. Riding away in her parents’ car, she had settled against the back seat cushions and seen her bony chin reflected in the passenger window. She had been grateful to know she was going home. She had just enough strength left for gratitude. The feeling was much the same now, riding in the back of Detective Ferreira’s car on the way to the station.

Vera had never been to a police station before, and despite her penchant for true-crime cases, she had never been a fan of TV shows about cops. She didn’t know what to expect as Ferreira and Cutler brought her past the front desk manned by a boyish-looking officer and down a hallway broken up by cramped, pedestrian-looking workstations that hummed with energy and tension. She didn’t know if she would be searched or fingerprinted—was that only for people who had been booked? And what did it mean to be “booked,” exactly? Cutler opened the door to a small, plain room, mostly empty except for a round table; the plastic chairs tucked into it were the same as those in Vera’s own classroom. “Have a seat,” she said.

“Am I being recorded?”

“Do you have an objection if you are?”

“No. I was just asking. Would you like some cookies?” Vera was still holding Amy’s bag of leftovers, which the detective had glanced inside when she’d gotten into his car—looking for weapons or drugs, probably, and finding wholesome baked goods instead.

“You’re kidding, right?” Ferreira said.

“No,” she said. “I’m sorry. I just thought . . . I don’t know what I was thinking.” She put the bag down on the table.

“Let’s get right down to it,” Ferreira said. “We’re here to follow up about your student Jensen Willard. I’m going to ask you one more time: Did you see Jensen at any point after that?”

“No, sir,” Vera said. She moistened the outer corner of her lips with her tongue and thought:
It’s pointless. They know something.
Hesitating, the words catching in her throat before they broke free, Vera looked the detective right in the eye and corrected herself: “Yes, sir. Yes, I actually did. And I do know that you’re expecting me to say something. I’m just not sure where to start.”

“My suggestion? Start by changing the story you told before, and make it factual this time. Otherwise this isn’t looking so good for you.”

Vera tried to tell him. “On that Friday . . .” she began, but her throat again clenched around the rest of her words. Propping her elbows against the circular table, she covered her face in her hands. “I’m so sorry. I don’t think I can explain.”

“All right. If that’s how it’s going to be, I have a little something I’d like to show you.”

Lifting her face, Vera belatedly noticed the TV set and the video equipment on a wheeled stand in the corner. Detective Ferreira turned on the TV and slid a tape into the player. From the picture quality, Vera knew she was looking at a surveillance tape. The still, grainy image on the TV was that of a glass door—a door with no one behind it. It reminded Vera of the cheap scares prevalent in horror movies, when a quiet interlude is followed by a killer blasting in. A shadow appeared in the frame, advancing toward the door until the shadow was a person: no killer but Vera herself, recognizable in her distinctive coat and hat. Before disappearing from the frame, the grainy onscreen version of Vera looked up, almost as though acknowledging the surveillance camera above.

“Notice the time and date in the corner,” the detective said. “Eight thirty at night on Friday, March thirtieth. This was at the Roundview Hotel, as I’m sure you’re aware. Let’s fast-forward to ten fifty-eight p.m. on that same evening and see what we see.”

While he advanced the tape, she knew already what she would see: the glass door again, a view of two females exiting. Herself, and a slightly smaller girl in a long black coat who was carrying an army knapsack. As the sliding door opened for them, the girl turned as though she was saying something to Vera; even in the grainy footage, the lines of her profile were sharp.

“That look like anybody you know?” Detective Ferreira asked.

Vera nodded. “It’s Jensen Willard.”

“See, the kid who was working the night shift at the Roundview has been in Vegas for a nice little vacation,” Cutler spoke up. “He wasn’t around to see the local news stories. But he got back last night and happened to see a paper. He recognized Jensen Willard’s picture as being a girl he’d checked in a few days before. He remembered something else, too: a woman coming to meet her in the lobby, then leaving with her a little later.”

Cutler paused, clearly leaving an inroad for Vera to say something. She kept her mouth shut.

“And one more thing,” Ferreira said. “We’ve got a truck driver who said he saw two females heading toward Pine Street on the night of the thirtieth, sometime before midnight. He said that one had a long, dark coat and the other had a paler coat with a fur collar. Just like the one in the surveillance tape. Just like the one you’re wearing right now, as a matter of fact.”

Vera almost said,
It’s
fake
fur
—a reflexive response, meaning nothing—but caught herself just in time. She did not want the detective to think she was being either flippant or combative.

“You have nothing to say for yourself?” the detective prodded.

In a weary but resolute voice, Vera said, “I do, actually. I do have something to say.”

It took some time as she attempted to fill in the gaps of the narrative told by the video: how she had gone to the hotel because she was concerned that Jensen had checked into a room to kill herself that night. She told him of how she had convinced her to check out and walked the girl home as far as Middle Street.

“How did you know she was going to be at this hotel?” Cutler asked.

“She wrote it in her journal. She more or less said where she was going to be, almost like she wanted me to find her there. I have two handwritten pages that you didn’t see. They’re at home now if you want them.”

“Didn’t you think this information could be valuable? Why didn’t you mention any of this when I spoke to you before?”

“I thought I might be in trouble with my boss and . . . I don’t know, maybe legally. My first instinct was to protect Jensen, which is why I didn’t tell about what she wrote in the journals. My second instinct was to protect myself, for not having spoken up right away. But I really have been thinking every single day that tomorrow would be the day I’d tell you. I really did.”

“Funny how tomorrow never came along. You’ve made a poor decision, as you’ve doubtless figured out,” Ferreira said.

“I know.”

That pause again, and that penetrating look. It took all of Vera’s self-control not to squirm around in her chair. “You’re known to have some weird hobbies. What’s that all about?”

“Hobbies?”

“All these books about serial killers you’re always checking out from the library.“

Vera wondered how he had known. She wanted to ask the detective if he found serial killers interesting, too; she imagined that he did, or he wouldn’t be in his profession. But again, such a comment might be misconstrued. Best to keep her answers clipped and straightforward. “I just find serial killers interesting,” she said.

Detective Ferreira settled back in his chair. He looked as if he was holding back a smile; it was the same smile Vera sometimes held back when her students stumbled upon a truth more profound than even they realized. “Do you know what
I
find interesting? Getting answers. And seeing justice done.”

“As do I, Detective.”

“I see that Ivan Schlosser’s another one of your hobbies. My father worked on that case, just so you know.”

Vera furrowed her brow, thinking. “Your father worked on the Schlosser case? Was his name Ferreira, too?”

“No. Vachon. I was adopted by my stepfather.”

“Oh, right . . . Vachon. I remember reading about a Vachon who worked on the case.” Vera looked up at the detective, abashed. “I’m sorry . . . it’s just that I know a lot about the Schlosser investigation.”

“I doubt that very much. I know things you’ll never know, even if you read all the articles ever printed on the subject. Maybe you’re thinking you’re going to write a little something about it. Maybe a book to titillate the masses. But you know what’s not titillating? Finding a twelve-year-old girl with her head cut off and having to tell her parents what you’ve found.”

Vera could not argue with this. She could only nod, unsettled by where this line of conversation might be going.

“That could be Jensen Willard now. She could be in that same condition. But we don’t know, do we? We don’t know because you left her there on Middle Street after dark.”

“And I hate myself for it, Detective.” The unplanned words came out in a rush, and once they began Vera was afraid she might not be able to stop them. “I look back at that night and wish I could redo it. I think: What if I had insisted on walking her all the way to her door and making sure she got inside? Or what if I’d stayed overnight in the hotel room with her, in the next bed, which was what she suggested at first? Then I’d never have to wonder if my actions caused all this.”

The detective was tapping a pen back and forth between thumb and forefinger, looking at Vera more intently than anyone had looked at her before. Cutler, too, looked highly engrossed in what she was saying.

“Vera,” Ferreira said, “you’re a smart enough woman. You’re a smart woman who does stupid things. I’ll be honest with you—I don’t think for a minute that you have much of a role in the Willard kid’s disappearance other than what you’ve told me. In terms of being
directly
responsible for that girl going missing . . . I just don’t think it’s likely, even though we have some unanswered questions still.”

“So I’m not a suspect,” Vera said. “But I’m a person of interest. Do Jensen’s parents know this?”

“They’ll be brought up to speed soon enough. And in case you were wondering, you can expect your employer will be notified, too. I have a feeling they’re not going to risk the well-being of another one of their students in the future.”

Hearing this, something inside Vera snapped loose. She lowered her head, scrunched up her face into its least attractive expression, and let the tears come down, trickling along her chin and onto her dress front.

The detective pushed a box of tissues toward her, and she scrabbled for a handful.

Cutler spoke up then. “You do understand, I hope, that all this has to be looked into. Especially since you haven’t been straight with us. We have a warrant to search your apartment. We’re expecting your cooperation.”

“Of course,” Vera said, laughing hollowly behind her tissue at the thought of police detectives searching her tiny place. “There isn’t much to search there. But please search all you want.”

The detective made a phone call, short and cryptic on his end, and into the room came a third face Vera had seen before—sad-eyed Officer Babineau, who reintroduced himself to Vera in a manner that struck her as being close to apologetic. She allowed the three of them to lead her out of the room and then out of the building, not daring to ask where they were going; with two detectives on one side of her and a police officer on the other, she sensed that some of the employees at their workstations were looking at her as they passed. She wondered if they already knew who she was, knew the story that the rest of Dorset was about to know.

She said nothing as they drove back to her apartment. She took them up the three flights and unlocked her door for the detectives and the officer—a model of graciousness for one whose residence was about to be searched. For the first time she was conscious of how truly small her studio looked, with the big mattress and box spring filling up most of the space. There really wasn’t room enough for all of them. Ferreira and Babineau both stopped in the kitchen, and Vera followed the line of their gaze to the four printouts of the four girls taped above her laptop.

“Take these down, Gerry,” Detective Ferreira said with something like disgust, and as the officer peeled back the tape and put the pages in a clear folder, Vera said, “It helps me to look at the pictures. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a connection between these last three girls. Don’t you think it’s striking, two girls dying by strangulation in the same town? And now a third is missing. One can’t help but wonder.”

The detective grunted. “I need those journal pages you said you were going to hand over,” he said.

Going over to her worktable, she felt around under some ungraded papers and handed him Jensen’s last entry. “The last two pages are the handwritten ones I told you about,” she said. “Have you guys . . . I mean, have the police looked into any possible links between Angela and Sufia? I know you have one man in prison now. I just hope you have the right one. If there’s
any
doubt . . .”

“Ma’am?”

“Yes?”

“I’d like you to step aside and be quiet.”

She nodded shamefacedly. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to stay in the studio or excuse herself, perhaps go sit on the stoop so they could search in peace—not that her presence seemed to inhibit them. Watching Ferreira, Babineau, and Cutler mauling her belongings was not something she wished to oversee. She pressed herself up against the window in her room as the detectives worked around her, looking out and trying to pretend that nothing unusual was happening. She observed the normalcy on the sidewalk below, hoping it might somehow rub off on her: a woman struggling with a baby carriage as she talked into her cell phone. A rangy kid wobbling along on a skateboard—not the same boy she had seen on the street while hanging flyers, Vera determined. Cars stopping to refill their tanks at the gas station across the street, and a blind man with a white cane a few yards away, waiting for the streetlights to change. Behind her she heard the sound of milk crates being dumped on the floor, milk crates holding various lesson plans from all her past semesters of teaching, and a rustling as they leafed through an envelope of photographs taken of herself and her few friends at Princeton.

“You were right,” Detective Ferreira said a short while later. “You don’t have much to search.” Vera saw that he was holding her laptop under his arm.

“When will I get the laptop back, Detective?”

“When we’re done with it, that’s when. I don’t expect it’ll be a long time. We can see that you get a search warrant inventory.”

“Thank you,” she said, as though the detective were a handyman who had come in to repair something.