Текст книги "Where They Found Her"

Автор книги: Kimberly McCreight

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Текущая страница: 16 (всего у книги 20 страниц)

RIDGEDALE READER

ONLINE EDITION

March 19, 2015, 8:27 a.m.

At Ridgedale Community Meeting Police Announce DNA Testing

BY MOLLY SANDERSON

Police officials held a public meeting last night at the Ridgedale University Athletic Center to discuss the ongoing investigation into the death of the infant found near the Essex Bridge. Chief of Police Steve Carlson answered questions for over an hour. The baby’s cause of death has not yet been determined, and she remains unidentified.

In an effort to assist in identification, the Ridgedale Police Department is to begin voluntary, community-wide DNA testing. It will take place at the Ridgedale Police Department over the next three days. Hours of testing, as well as a detailed explanation of procedures are available online at www.ridgedalenj.org. David Simpson, Esq., a criminal defense attorney and Ridgedale resident, has invited anyone concerned about the legal implications of DNA testing to contact him for a free consultation.

COMMENTS:

Marney B

2 hours ago

DNA testing??? Are they insane?

Gail

1 hour ago

Seconded. This can’t be legal.

Stephanie

57 min ago

They are definitely trying to scare whoever is responsible out of the closet. It’s probably not even really the girl’s fault. Who knows what her life is like? Maybe her mom has to work three jobs or something. Bad parents aren’t born, you know, they’re made.

Mom22

52 min ago

I don’t have a teenager, but if I did there is no way I would let them give a “sample.” What is this? 1984?

LifeIsLiving

47 min ago

I would have my children give a blood sample if it would help find out who did that to their baby. Someone needs to send a message to these kids who apparently aren’t too young to have sex, but think they’re too young to be held accountable.

SaranB

45 min ago

Are you telling me you think that this was just some teenager who couldn’t be bothered to put her child up for adoption? Do you really think people are that cruel?

246Barry

42 min ago

SHUT UP. AND FIND HIM. BEFORE HE FINDS YOU.

Carrollandthepups

37 min ago

Ugh, not this jerk again. 246Barry, no one wants you here.

Samuel L.

25 min ago

Just called you in to the police 246Barry. How you like that? Turns out they already know about you. It’s all fun and games until you get arrested for harassment and your name is plastered all over the place. Because then it won’t matter if the police don’t do anything about you, because the rest of us will.

JENNA

JUNE 11, 1994

The Captain is coming at 8 p.m.! He said he’s totally up for meeting my parents, too. I just hope they don’t mess it up for me by acting like they think I’m a total nut bag. At least my dress is so cute. It’s red and has this deep V that totally shows off everything. My mom didn’t even give me crap about it.

It’s because she knows who the Captain’s family is. I think she hopes I’ll snag him for good. Then maybe she’ll stop spending all her free time praying for my mortal soul.

And I’m just not going to think about Tex being at the party. Because he will be. And he’s totally going to try to kill my buzz. Telling me to be careful and whatnot. Like THAT’s the real point and not that he wants me putting out for him instead of the Captain. But I’m not going to let him make me feel bad for getting the guy I always wanted. The kind nobody, not even my own parents, thinks I’m good enough for.

It would be a lot easier if I just hated Tex, though. If I didn’t kind of also like that he cares about me. Then I could tell him to get the hell away from me forever. But it’s not that simple. Nothing ever is.

Sandy

Sandy sat in a sticky booth at the back of Pat’s Pancakes, waiting for Molly. The place was practically empty, unlike on weekends, when a line snaked out the door. A half dozen mostly old people were in the booths, eating their omelets and pancakes so slowly it was like they were being paid by the minute.

“What can I get you, hon?” The waitress snapped open her pad. She was pretty, or used to be. Now she had a fuzzy ponytail and a super-wrinkled face, but didn’t seem that old. That was what Jenna would look like eventually. If she got the chance. Someday, Sandy thought, I’ll probably look like that, too.

“Can I have coffee?” Sandy asked.

“Just coffee?” The waitress wasn’t trying to be a bitch, Sandy knew. She was just trying to pay her bills.

“Yeah, for right now,” Sandy said. “I’m waiting for somebody.”

She’d have to hope that this Molly woman would order some food when she got there. Sandy couldn’t afford to waste money eating when she wasn’t hungry even to keep a fellow waitress happy. And she hadn’t been hungry in days. Of course, that hadn’t stopped Aidan from trying to stuff her like some overprotective grandmother the night before.

“I got crap for a sandwich, and some chips and cookies and an apple,” Aidan had said, tossing a bunch of food into a pile on his bed.

He had been right about it being easy to sneak in the back door, and Sandy felt almost safe now that they were upstairs in his bedroom, behind his locked door. She looked down at all the food Aidan had swiped from the kitchen. There was even lettuce and a tomato and some pretty little jar of something that might have been mustard, because people who lived in houses like Aidan’s didn’t make ham and white bread sandwiches with French’s mustard, the way Sandy always had. Aidan was staring down at the pile like he’d never made his own sandwich in his entire life. Like he had no goddamn idea where to start.

“Thank you,” Sandy said, keeping her eyes on the food. Because she couldn’t handle looking right at Aidan. “For letting me come here.”

Because where the hell had she been planning to go? She hadn’t been planning, that was the bottom line. She’d just wanted to get away from Hannah’s dad, lurking outside Ridgedale Commons. And so she just kept pedaling until she was sure no one was following her. She didn’t realize until too late that it was getting dark and she didn’t have a plan. Despite what she’d been thinking, she couldn’t sleep outside. Amazing how something like that could seem like a legitimate fucking option—whatever, I’ll just sleep outside if I have to—until you started working through specifics. Where outside? In the woods? On the sidewalk? To begin with, it was too cold. And it wasn’t like people in Ridgedale wouldn’t notice another person sleeping on the street. There weren’t any other people on the street.

Sandy was hoping Aidan wasn’t going to make her eat. She wasn’t sure she could make herself swallow anything. But she was thirsty as hell. Couldn’t remember the last time she’d had something to drink. Felt like never. Sandy polished off two of the fancy glass bottles of lemonade Aidan had dropped on the bed, one after the other, before she looked back up. When she finally did, Aidan was staring at her with wide, freaked-out eyes. For the first time, he was getting just how fucked she was. She must have seemed like some kind of animal, drinking like that. She sure as hell felt like one.

“Sorry,” she said, wiping at her dirty mouth with the back of her dirty hand.

“Nah, it’s cool,” Aidan said quietly as he sat down on the bed next to her. He was looking down at his own perfectly clean hands, probably wishing he’d never invited Sandy over. He’d said he wanted to help, sure. But it was one thing to play at the edges of her fucked-up life. It was another thing to take up center stage.

“I can take off, you know,” Sandy said. She felt bad, putting all this shit on him. “No hard feelings. I don’t want you to feel, like, necessary.”

Aidan took the bottle of lemonade—Sandy’s third—from her hands, took a sip, and handed it back to her.

“Oh, I’m not necessary,” he said, turning to look at her. “I’m fucking essential.”

In the morning, when Aidan kissed Sandy goodbye on his way to school, she knew it might be the last time she’d see him. That maybe it should be. But the plan was for Sandy to slip out later, after Aidan’s mom and little brother had gone; she was supposed to meet up with Aidan after he was out of school.

“See you later,” he said. “I’ll text you.”

It had made a difference, Aidan being there. But when you lived in the middle of a shit-storm, the question wasn’t whether things were going to fly apart, it was when. The least Sandy could do was keep Aidan clear of the shrapnel.

After he was gone, Sandy pulled her mom’s journal out of her backpack and lay on the floor, tucked behind his bed, praying his mother didn’t charge in to toss the place for drugs or something while she was there. Jenna had already told Sandy some of what was in the journal, enough for Sandy to have known the exact place where the whole fucked-up story ended. Enough that Sandy would have sworn nothing she read could make it worse. But she should have known better. With Jenna, things could always get worse.

What if Jenna had decided that she couldn’t take the memories anymore? That was all Sandy could think once she was done reading the journal. What if coming back to Ridgedale had been about Jenna finding an ending instead of a fresh start? No, Sandy didn’t believe that any more than she believed that Jenna had taken off. And maybe that made her as stupid as anyone else who fell for Jenna’s shit. But she didn’t—wouldn’t—believe it.

Sandy had a flash of a memory then: her and Jenna dancing. She’d been barely ten, and they’d been in their shitty apartment in Camden, the one with the gas stove with only one burner that worked and that wack-ass blue-green mold streak on the living room wall. That day the sun had been so bright in the window that the place hadn’t looked so bad, especially with Jenna trying to teach Sandy how to cha-cha. Jenna had her black hair piled on top of her head, a cigarette pinched between her red lips, as she swung her hips back and forth in her worn, skintight leggings, trying to get Sandy to match her steps.

There wasn’t much that Sandy remembered from her childhood, but the particular bump in the road that came before that dancing stood out because it had rolled right over her tenth birthday. Her welcome into double digits had been totally forgotten in the three straight days Jenna hadn’t gotten out of bed and wouldn’t stop crying even though Sandy brought her endless Diet Dr Peppers and wine and Cheetos. Some guy—another guy like all the other guys—had broken Jenna’s heart. But by that afternoon—when Sandy was ten years and four days old—they were dancing. And Sandy knew once again that they’d make it. At least this time.

“You’re getting it! You’re getting it!” Jenna had squealed with delight when Sandy had been able to follow along. “Look at you! That’s it!” Jenna had looked so happy as they’d danced to the blasting Kid Rock that was definitely not meant for the cha-cha. So happy she might burst. Because that was Jenna: so bad and then so, so good.

Jenna wouldn’t kill herself. It wasn’t possible. She always rebounded. And she rebounded hard. She might have come back to Ridgedale looking for something or someone, Tex, maybe. If he’d looked out for her back then, maybe Jenna thought he’d do it again. That Sandy could see Jenna doing—dragging them here because she had some twisted idea that her knight in shining armor would still be hanging around all these years later, waiting to rescue her once and for all.

“Sandy?”

When she looked up, there was a woman standing next to the booth in Pat’s Pancakes. Pretty, with pale skin and long curly reddish hair. Molly looked nice and normal. Like a regular mom, but not in a bad way. It had been Aidan’s idea to text her the night before. She was a reporter, his mom’s friend. Somebody who might be able to help.

“Yeah.” Sandy nodded, feeling a lot more nervous than she’d counted on.

“I’m Molly Sanderson.” The woman reached out a hand as she sat down in the booth across from Sandy. “I don’t know if you remember, but I actually called you a few months ago when I was doing a story on the Outreach Tutoring program. Rhea gave me your number.”

“Oh, right,” Sandy said, even though she didn’t remember. At least that explained how the hell Molly had tracked her down so fast.

“Jenna is your mom, I’m guessing?”

Sandy nodded, then shrugged. “But she’s not your usual kind of mom.”

“I’m not sure there is such a thing,” Molly said, which was nice. She didn’t have to say that. “So you said she’s missing?”

“She left Blondie’s after work a couple days ago and never came home,” Sandy said. “She’s kind of a screwup. Totally a screwup. But not like this. She would call me.”

“I believe you,” Molly said. And it actually seemed like she did. “It sounds like you went to the police already.”

“I did. The chief of police, Steve. He was nice and everything, and he said he would help. But then I found this in his house.” She put the necklace on the table and slid it across. “It’s my mom’s. She never takes it off.”

Molly reached forward to take it. She looked concerned. “Why were you in his house?”

“I didn’t break in or anything.” I was just looking through his shit to steal drugs. “I know his daughter.”

“Would your mom have any reason to know Steve?”

“I don’t think so, unless he arrested her. That could be, except she never mentioned it. And she would have. She tells me everything. But he definitely had this weird look on his face when I said her name.”

“Did you ask his daughter?”

“Ask her what?”

“If her dad knows your mom.”

“I can’t really ask her anything right now.” Sandy shook her head, tried not to notice how raw her throat felt. “She’s kind of checked out.”

She’d been lying when she’d texted Molly that she would tell her what happened to the baby. Sandy was going to get what she needed from this reporter, and then the woman could go to hell—no offense. What had happened to that baby was a secret Sandy would take to the grave. She hadn’t even explained it to Aidan, who’d been nice enough not to ask how the hell she could have known what had happened to the baby’s head.

“You could go to other police, you know,” Molly said, like she was really trying to help. “The state police, maybe.”

“I can’t.” Sandy shook her head. She had to hope this woman would drop it. “I mean, I really can’t. Trust me.”

“Okay,” Molly said, backing off the way Sandy had wanted her to. “Let me just think for a minute.” She stared at the table. When she looked up, she crossed her arms, her face tougher. “I’ll do it. I’ll ask him why he had the necklace. And if he doesn’t have a good answer or he hasn’t done enough to find your mother, I’ll go to the state police myself. One way or another, we’ll find out what happened to her, Sandy. I promise.”

Then Molly leaned forward and put her hand over Sandy’s. And there were the tears in Sandy’s eyes again—seriously? Was this all it took? For some nice, normal-looking woman to be a little bit kind to her, and she totally fell apart?

“Okay,” Sandy said, and that was all she could manage. She nodded and turned toward the window.

“But, Sandy, whatever happened to the baby—and I’m not saying it was you—whoever, whatever was involved. These things don’t just go away, no matter how much you hope they will. And the harder you try to force them down, the harder they push their way back to the surface. I’m saying that from personal experience.” Molly looked sad. “It can help if you tell someone what happened. I can be that person for you, Sandy. And I’m a lawyer—or I used to be a lawyer. I can be your lawyer for the purposes of this. That way no one can make me tell them what you told me. All you have to say is that you want me to be your lawyer.”

“I want you to be my lawyer,” Sandy said.

But that wasn’t what she was thinking. She was thinking: I want you to be my mother.

Sandy hadn’t wanted to go to Hannah’s house for their tutoring session. She’d been hoping she’d never have to see where Hannah lived, never have to feel all that cozy love pouring out from the walls. But Hannah had said she was stuck home, watching her brother. She offered to reschedule, but Sandy wasn’t ready for her math quiz, and if she wasn’t prepared, if it didn’t seem like she’d tried, Rhea would be crushed.

The house was basically the nightmare Sandy had dreaded. Nothing fancy, like Aidan’s, but cheerful as all fuck. To-do lists and chore charts and newspaper articles labeled with Post-its and highlighting. There was one of those personalized calendars, with pictures of Hannah and Cole and a big red circle around March 31: “Hannah’s Recital!”

“My parents won’t be home for at least an hour and a half, and Cole’s watching TV. If it’s okay with you, could we study here at the table? In case he needs anything?” Hannah moved a stack of place mats and a little vase of flowers, then dropped her books in the center of the table. “Do you want something to drink or anything?”

“I’m good,” Sandy said. She just wanted to get the whole thing over with and get the hell out of that house. Because it was so fucking hard to breathe in there. It was how Sandy always felt whenever she was anywhere too normal for too long. Like someone was crushing her chest in a vise.

They were about half an hour in when Hannah went to check on her little brother. “I’ll be right back,” she said. “Do these problems while I’m gone.”

But Hannah was gone forever. Long enough for Sandy to do all the problems and then wait and wait for her to come back. Sandy listened to see if she could hear Hannah talking to her brother, but there was only the sound of the TV. It wasn’t until Sandy checked her phone that she realized more than fifteen minutes had passed. They needed to finish before Hannah’s parents got home. It was one thing for Sandy to deal with being in Hannah’s house, but she wouldn’t be able to cope chatting up her parents.

After a few more minutes, Sandy didn’t have a choice. She had to look for Hannah. Though it wouldn’t be some kind of disaster if Cole saw Sandy, she was hoping to avoid talking to the kid, too.

When she peeked out into the living room, Hannah’s brother was sprawled out asleep on the couch, light off, TV on. Hannah was nowhere in sight. Where the hell had she gone? Sandy made her way around the rest of the downstairs looking for her, wanting to call out but not wanting to wake the kid. And she hated the feeling of going somewhere in the house she hadn’t specifically been invited. If something got stolen, guess who would be to blame?

At last Sandy spotted a door with a light on underneath it. The bathroom. “Are you okay?” she called through the door, knocking gently.

Hannah didn’t answer, but Sandy could hear this noise inside, a steady thud, thud, thud.

“Hannah?” she called again. “What the hell are you doing in there? I’m going to have to take off soon.”

Thud, thud, thud, quiet. Thud, thud, thud.

“Hello?” Sandy called more loudly when Hannah didn’t answer. “Jesus. I’m going to open the door, okay?”

Sandy turned the doorknob, waiting for it to be locked. In which case, she’d just go, before Hannah’s parents got home. But the door wasn’t locked. Sandy pushed it slowly, waiting for Hannah to shout for her to stop, to say that she needed privacy. That she would be out in a minute.

There was no shout. No Hannah. Nothing except thud, thud, thud.

Sandy saw the puddle of bright red paint first. It was on the white tile floor, coming from behind the door. She saw it on the toilet, too, as she pushed open the door. More paint. On more of the floor. What the hell was paint doing all over the place? Hannah was painting something?

Not paint. It’s not paint. Sandy was thinking those words before she could figure out what they meant. Not paint. She was still pushing open the door. And there was more and more of it, there was red all over everything.

Blood.

It’s blood.

And then there was Hannah, crouched on the floor in the corner behind the door, naked from the waist down, rocking so hard that her elbows kept whacking against the tile wall behind her, thud, thud, thud. Her face was snow-white and still. Her hands were clenched into blood-covered fists. And there on the floor next to her was a pile of lumpier blood and something else coiled.

Attached to it was something that looked like a baby, except it was grayish-purple. Covered in blood and white waxy-looking stuff, too. And not moving.

“Holy fuck!” Sandy said, rushing over, slipping on the blood-slicked floor. She grabbed the towel ring, almost ripping it off the wall. “Hannah, what happened?”

Hannah just kept rocking.

“Are you okay?”

“I tried to get the cord off her neck,” she whispered finally. “I did it. I did. But it was so . . . my fingers kept . . .” She stared out. “Slipping. But she was alive for a minute.” Hannah gazed up at Sandy, her face equal parts wonder and horror. “She opened her eyes. She looked right at me.”

“We have to call an ambulance.” Sandy looked down at her blood-soaked shoes.

“She’s going to kill me.” Hannah clamped a hand over her mouth suddenly. Like the thought of her mother had only just occurred to her. “She’s going to kill me. She’s going to kill me. She’s going to kill me.”

“But you’re bleeding.” Sandy pointed toward the floor. Her hands were trembling. “And the—” She was going to say “baby.” But one look at the gray-purple skin and it was obvious that if she’d ever been alive, the baby was long past saving.

“She’s going to kill me.” Hannah lurched toward Sandy, wrapping her bloody hands around Sandy’s wrists. Her eyes were huge. “Please, you have to help me. She’s going to kill me.”

All Sandy had was questions. Did Hannah know she was pregnant? Did she hide it on purpose? Did she invite Sandy over because she knew she was going to have a baby? Who the hell was the father? What about that saving-herself-for-marriage bullshit? All of it, lies.

But then, Sandy knew about lies. The weird way they had of seeming just like the truth. And she knew about being scared and feeling so totally alone that you pray you’ll disappear. Sandy looked around at the bloody floor. And again at Hannah, a girl who’d never been anything but nice to her. Who’d tried to help her when most people never bothered. Hannah wasn’t a strong person. She wouldn’t be able to do this alone. And she was right about her mother—she was going to kill Hannah.

But Sandy could do this. She could sweep up all these broken pieces. She could clean up somebody else’s mess, like she’d done for Jenna a thousand times before. And so Sandy sucked in some air and swallowed down all of it—the fear, the blood, the actual dead human baby on the floor, inches away from her.

“We need some towels that your mom won’t notice missing. Show me where they are,” Sandy said. “And a bag you can get rid of. Paper towels and cleaning supplies. You should go take a shower.” She checked the clock on her phone, already smeared with blood. “We don’t have much time.”

It wasn’t until Sandy was almost done cleaning all of it up that she saw Hannah’s little brother standing there behind her. She had no idea how long he’d been there or how much he’d seen.

“Sorry I made such a mess,” she said to him. Because she had to say something.

But he didn’t say a word. He just faded back into the darkness, then disappeared.

Sandy had raced out of Hannah’s house with all that death around her neck. She jumped on her bike and she rode like the fucking wind. What she hadn’t factored in was the rain. Or the way the duffel bag Hannah had given her—way too big for her back and heavier than she would have thought—would leave her so off-balance on the bike. It wasn’t like she could go slow either. Not if she was going to get through this. Because there were things Sandy had seen and done in her life, things that a girl like Hannah would never survive. Not this, though. Never anything like this.

But Sandy had learned a long time ago that you could put a box around the things that you didn’t want to become a part of you—seeing your mom naked on top of some drunk, the popular kid in your eighth-grade class telling everyone you had AIDS, holding your mom’s head over the toilet while she puked. You couldn’t get rid of those things completely, but they didn’t have to seep out, mix with the rest. They didn’t have to become a part of you.

So Sandy put her head down and rode as fast as she could. And she tried not to notice how her back seemed extra wet under the bag, she hoped not from the blood seeping through. Ten minutes, maybe fifteen, and she’d be there. And this would be something she’d be on her way to forgetting.

At least Sandy had known where to go. A place she knew from Jenna was dark and quiet and kept all its secrets. A place where no one could see a goddamn thing.

It was pouring by the time Sandy made that last turn toward the Essex Bridge, but her bike felt steady and her legs felt strong and she was almost there. It was almost over. And then she would make it like none of this had ever happened. She started pedaling even harder down that last hill, even though it was pouring rain, like maybe if she pedaled hard enough, she would take flight.

The animal came out of nowhere—a chipmunk, a squirrel, a possum. A shadow, maybe. It was too dark to know for sure. Too late to stop. Definitely too late to recover. Too late to stay on her bike. The rest happened in slow motion, the bike flying out in one direction, Sandy in the other. And the whole time her thinking only one thing: Hold on to the bag.

And she had, despite the burning pain in her knee and her arm. But the bag had gotten tangled beneath her as she fell and slid, her full weight crushed against it. And the baby inside. It wasn’t until Sandy stood up, covered in blood—hers and maybe the baby’s—that she knew: There are some things too horrible for even the strongest box to contain.

There had been one good thing about all that rain. It had made it easier to dig. Not a hole big enough for the bag or the towels. Just the baby. Because all Sandy had was her bare hands. Looking back on it now, the ground being so soft and loose, so easy to move, right up there near the edge of that creek, made it the last place she ever should have put a thing she wanted to stay buried.

Molly must have gotten up and come around the booth to sit next to Sandy while she was talking.

“It’s going to be okay,” she said, reaching forward to wrap her arms around Sandy. “I promise.”

It wasn’t until Molly was hugging her that Sandy realized she was shaking. Or how hard she was crying.