Текст книги "The 9th Girl"

Автор книги: Tami Hoag

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Текущая страница: 17 (всего у книги 24 страниц)

“We try to make sense of things that can’t be made sense of. All we can do is the best that we can. The rest is out of our hands. And if our best wasn’t good enough, we try harder the next time.”

“Gray doesn’t get a next time,” he said quietly.

“No. But all we can do now is try our best to catch her killer.”

“When you said you texted Gray and tried to call her. Was that the night she went missing or after that too?” Nikki asked.

“After too,” he said. He dug his phone out and checked the text messages he had sent to the girl. “I tried to text her this morning. I kept thinking she just went off somewhere to be alone. I thought maybe if I kept bugging her, she would answer.”

Nikki absorbed that and put it away in her head, too tired to think it might be significant. All she could think was that she was raising one hell of a good human being and that it was a pure damn miracle considering how little time she spent doing it.

“I love you so much,” she said, hugging him.

Kyle hugged her back. “I love you too, Mom. I’m really sorry about this morning.”

“Me too,” she said, squeezing him tighter. “We’ll both do better tomorrow, right?”

That was the thought she carried with her to bed. That they would all do better tomorrow. And hopefully that would mean finding Penny Gray’s killer.

34

How f’d up was that 2day? Cops! :O

Brittany sat on her bed, tucked up against the headboard, her legs curled beneath her, unconsciously making herself small. She looked at the text from Christina, not wanting to answer. She’d had a stomachache ever since the afternoon, ever since she had to talk again with the police.

She couldn’t believe any of this was really happening. How could someone she knew get murdered? How could she be involved in something so sick and twisted and crazy? All she’d done was try to be friends with a girl she felt sorry for. She was a good person. She tried to do the right thing. Usually. It was just that sometimes that was so much harder than it should have been.

She couldn’t stop feeling responsible for what had happened to Gray. It was her fault they had gone to the Rock & Bowl that night. She should have just told Christina no. Or better yet, she should have just ignored Christina’s text messages.

She was so stupid, always answering her texts like somebody was watching her and would know that she hadn’t turned her phone off or left it in her purse or something. How pathetic was she? So desperate to be liked by Christina that she jumped every time Christina looked her way. Why couldn’t she be stronger? Why couldn’t she be more like Kyle?

Kyle didn’t care that the cool kids didn’t like him. Or if he cared, he cared more about his integrity and being true to himself. He had pushed her to do the same, but she wasn’t like Kyle. She wasn’t strong. She wasn’t brave. The idea of not being liked, not being popular, was terrifying to her. And look where that had gotten her.

Her phone vibrated again in her hand. Another message from Christina.

Where R U? R U OK?

Even as she told herself not to, her thumbs moved over the keyboard.

OK.

Can U Blieve it? A serial killer! It could’ve been any of us!

No, it couldn’t, Brittany thought, angry. It couldn’t have been any of them. They had been with each other. Only Gray had gone off alone. Because of the rest of them. Nothing like that would ever happen to Christina Warner because she was always the center of attention, always surrounded by the people who feared and adored her.

No. It would happen to Gray, who had nobody to prevent it and nobody to care afterward. Gray, who counted Brittany as a friend. One of her only friends. They weren’t close the way Brittany had been close with other friends in her life. They didn’t confide secrets in each other the way best friends usually did. And yet Gray had chosen to come to her after the last fight with her mother.

And look what I did to her.

Brittany looked over by the big chair in the corner of her room where Gray’s duffel bag sat on the floor, half-hidden by a menagerie of stuffed animals. She should take it back to Gray’s mom, she supposed. The idea of facing Gray’s mother made her feel sick.

Hello, Mrs. Gray. I’m Brittany. I’m the reason your daughter is dead. Here’s her stuff.

Her phone vibrated again. She wanted to throw it across the room, but she didn’t. Gray would have. No. Gray would have typed FUCK U and then thrown it across the room. Brittany looked at the message.

What did they ask U? what did U tell them?

I told them you’re a bitch, Brittany thought. I told them you’re mean. I told them it’s my fault Gray got killed because it was my fault she was there. Of course she hadn’t told them any such thing. She had told the detective the same thing everyone had told the detective. What difference did it make, anyway? Gray had gone out into the night alone, never to be seen again. That was all that mattered.

She looked down at her phone and typed Nothing.

Her stomach cramped like a fist. You make me sick, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if the thought was directed at Christina or herself.

All Christina was worried about was how this made her look. It had to be Gray’s fault that Christina had made up that horrible poem. Gray had to be the bad one for starting the fight between them. It had to be Gray who lunged at Christina because God forbid anyone thought Christina would lose her cool and do something like that. But she had.

It was Christina who had started everything that night. It was Christina who had planned the whole thing, Christina who had humiliated Gray, Christina who had flipped out and thrown herself at Gray.

It was Christina who had told everybody to say that Gray attacked her. She didn’t want to look bad. She didn’t want to get in trouble. She didn’t want her precious creepy father to think the sun didn’t rise and set on her. And if Gray was dead anyway, what did it matter that they made her look bad? She was bad.

At least she wasn’t a hypocrite, Brittany thought, like you, Christina. Like me.

The phone buzzed again.

Did U tell what she said?

Did I tell them Gray said you’re a phony and a fake, and everything she said about your phony fake Barbie doll life? That people don’t really like you, that they hate you behind your back but they’re too afraid to say it?

Did I tell them the truth?

She texted back: No.

Brittany wanted to scream. She pictured herself like Gray had been that night—in Christina’s face, shouting at her. It’s not about you, Christina! No one cares how this makes you look. No one cares if Gray had sex with your boyfriend or father or you or anyone else.

Her phone buzzed in her hand yet again.

UR the best Britt. I <3 U.

Me 2 U, she typed. Then she turned her phone off, went into the bathroom, and threw up.

35

Fitz had grown up the child of a single mother who had spent all her free time in the local American Legion tavern, shooting pool and tequila and picking up men. In contrast to her lifestyle, she had enrolled Fitz in the Cub Scouts and then the Boy Scouts.

Of course, he had seen that for what it was: a conduit to men who didn’t hang out at the American Legion. Still, he had applied himself to the role of Scout, taking advantage of the opportunity to learn interesting things, like how to tie knots, how to use a knife and an ax, and, most important, to always be prepared.

He took his time getting ready, making certain everything was in place, that he was forgetting nothing. He had to be especially diligent in his planning and execution because he was deviating from his normal way of doing things. This was when mistakes could be made if he wasn’t careful.

He would be using his small van. He never used the small van. When he worked on the road, he used the box truck, which was set up for the purpose. He went through the van methodically, checking his tie-downs, arranging the blanket, making sure the duct tape was where he needed it to be.

He double-checked the small gear bag on the passenger’s seat. Hand tools, knife, plastic zip ties. Good to go.

The adrenaline was beginning to flow. He couldn’t rest. He couldn’t sit down. He was like a shark, moving constantly, as he visualized what would happen tonight. He could feel the cold air on his face, freezing his nose hair. He could see Dana Nolan’s face—the split second of confusion, then the spark of recognition, then the flash of fear and panic.

He could the feel the rush of power, the sexual excitement. He went through the scenario over and over in his head.

This too was different for him. He had always trolled for victims, capitalizing on opportunity. The adrenaline rush was quick and explosive. This excitement of anticipation was almost too much to stand.

He checked his watch.

Go time.

Careful to stay just under the speed limit and to obey all traffic laws, he drove to Dana Nolan’s apartment complex. He made sure not to arrive too early. He backed the van into the parking spot beside her car and settled in to wait under the harsh glow of the security light.

Every second seemed like a minute. He tried to listen to the radio. Music annoyed him. People talking annoyed him. He worked on taking slow, deep breaths, concentrating on trying to lower his heart rate. He had once read that Shaolin monks could use their minds to slow their heart rates to practically nothing.

He checked his watch.

He tried the radio again. Hits from the eighties. Hits from the nineties. Hits from today. NPR. Delilah.

He was a sucker for Delilah. He found it kind of comforting that no matter where he traveled, he could always get Delilah’s syndicated show on the radio. It was like traveling with a friend.

She had a soothing voice. There was something sweet about all her corny love talk. He didn’t believe in any of it—not for himself, at least. An argument could be made that falling for the idea of true love made people weak and ultimately miserable. Still, he listened to Delilah.

She was talking about love being an action rather than an emotion when Dana Nolan emerged from her apartment building.

Fitz took the small bottle of chloroform out of his coat pocket and poured some on a washcloth as he watched her come toward him. He stuck the washcloth in his pocket and got out of the van, keeping his head down, and opened the hood as if he was having engine trouble. As she got within earshot, he groaned: “Oh, man! Not again!”

He stepped back from the vehicle and flopped his arms helplessly at his sides.

“I can’t believe this!”

He could see her in his peripheral vision. She had slowed down but was still coming toward him. He heaved a big sigh and shook his head at his phony misfortune as he turned in her direction and began to trudge toward the buildings, hands in his coat pockets, shoulders hunched against the cold.

“Dead battery!” he said.

She was going to walk right past him; she had quickened her step, anxious about meeting someone in the parking lot at this time of night.

Fitz slowed down. “Miss, you couldn’t help me out with a jump start, could you? I’ve got cables. My wife is going to kill me.”

She glanced at him, slowed her step. She looked a little annoyed, a little uncertain. Then there it was—the spark of recognition.

“Oh, hey!” he said, feigning surprise. “What the heck? You’re Dana! Oh my God! Remember me? Fitz. From the Holiday station.”

She relaxed a little, stopped moving. “Oh, yeah.”

They were just a few steps from the van.

“What are the odds of this?” Fitz asked, chuckling. He moved back toward the van. “I hate to impose, Dana, but if you could just give me a jump—”

She hesitated. “Oh, gee, I’m really sorry,” she said. “I have to get to work.”

“It’ll just take a second,” Fitz said, opening the sliding side door of the van. He leaned inside as if to get the jumper cables.

“Hey, I saw you on the news this afternoon,” he said. “You’re covering that missing girl case. That’s something, huh? Did she turn out to be that dead girl? The zombie?”

“It looks that way,” she said, coming a little closer.

Even if she didn’t want to help him, she had to come closer to get to the driver’s side door of her car. She was only a few feet away.

“That’s terrible,” Fitz said. “Some lunatic going around abducting young women. What’s the world coming to?”

In the next second he turned and lunged at her, and that familiar panic flashed in her eyes. She tried to turn away. He grabbed her ponytail in his left hand and shoved her backward into the side of her car, pinning her there. She tried to draw breath to scream, and he shoved the chloroform washcloth over her mouth and nose.

The struggle was over in seconds. He had only to turn with her in his arms and shove her inside the van. He went in after her and slid the door shut behind him.

Duct tape across the mouth.

Zip tie the hands together.

Tie her up. Tie her down.

Cover her over with the blanket.

He got out and closed the hood of the van, then squatted down beside Dana Nolan’s car to glance over the things she had dropped during the struggle: purse, makeup bag, tote bag with papers spilling out of it. He pulled one of the papers out and smiled to himself. It was a flier with a photograph of a young woman. HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL? A missing persons flier for Penelope Gray.

Struck by inspiration, Fitz fished a fat marker out of a side pocket on the tote bag, wrote a note on the flier, and tucked the page beneath a windshield wiper on the Mini Cooper. Then he got behind the wheel of his van and calmly drove slowly out of the parking lot. In his rearview mirror he could see other fliers from Dana Nolan’s tote bag taking flight as the cold wind kicked up a gust.

He smiled and turned up the radio and sang along.

36

Three hours of sleep. A shower. A shave. A small bucket of coffee from 7-Eleven. A couple of doughnuts to perpetuate the stereotype. Back to the job.

Kovac stood in front of the whiteboard, taking in the timeline and the notes. He played the possibilities through his head. Doc Holiday. Michael Warner. A friend. An enemy. A stranger. The kids who didn’t like her. The mother she rebelled against. Who would have thought a sixteen-year-old girl could have so many people in her life who might want her dead?

He made additional notations on the board: Kyle’s version of events at the Rock & Bowl, the fact that Christina had started the physical altercation with Gray, that Aaron Fogelman had struck the girl, and the fact that both Christina and Aaron Fogelman had blamed Gray for starting it. Kovac knew which version he believed.

It probably didn’t matter. Two living kids putting the blame on a dead kid to make themselves look better. So what? But it bothered him, just the same.

Christina Warner and Penny Gray were enemies. Whatever the Gray girl had said to Christina had provoked a violent reaction. Now Penny Gray was dead, and Christina Warner and her boyfriend were both lying to the cops. Not a big lie. A lie of perspective. A reinterpretation of history. It wouldn’t have mattered except that after Penny Gray left that place she disappeared. She had an altercation with a known enemy, and then she disappeared.

Not like Kovac wasn’t used to getting lied to. Everyone lied to the cops—not just guilty people. Innocent people who didn’t want to get involved lied to the cops. People afraid of getting other people in trouble lied to the cops. People afraid of retaliation lied to the cops. Kids and adults and blue-haired old ladies lied to the cops about all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. Bald-faced lies and white lies, twisted truths and sins of omission.

Videotape, however, always told the truth. He put a cassette in the VCR and watched Penny Gray leave the Rock & Bowl over and over—with Kyle leaving shortly after her. He never saw the other kids leave. He played the tape backward and forward, and he never saw them leave. Which meant they had to have gone out the side exit, which meant he couldn’t pinpoint the time they left.

The Lawler girl was the weak link in the chain of students. She wasn’t very happy with her so-called friends and the circumstances in which they found themselves. She had been vague and evasive at different points in his interview with her that afternoon. She didn’t remember who started what. She was looking the other way when the scuffle broke out.

She had turned her head and looked away from him when she said it.

“You’re a poor liar, Brittany,” he’d said calmly.

Big tears had flooded her blue eyes, but she hadn’t changed her tale.

Brittany had ridden to the Rock & Bowl with Gray. Gray had been staying with her. They were friends enough that Brittany’s house was where Penny Gray had sought sanctuary after the fight with her mother. And yet Brittany had convinced Gray to drive them to the Rock & Bowl, where Christina Warner and her minions lay in wait.

None of that was sitting well with Brittany now, which meant she had a conscience. A conscience Kovac could exploit.

He watched the security video from the Holiday station again. Penny Gray buying beer and walking out, hesitating as she started out of the building, almost turning and going back into the light and safety of the busy store. Who had she seen standing just out of reach of the camera? A stranger? An enemy? Doc Holiday? The kids she had just fought with?

He rewound the tape to five minutes before Penny Gray came into the store. People came in, bought things, left. Women, kids, men. Ordinary people. Odd people. A couple of rough-looking customers.

One man caught his eye, not for being suspicious in his behavior, but for seeming vaguely familiar—a short guy, stocky, thinning dark hair, a close-cropped beard and mustache. He got something from the automotive supply aisle, chatted up the customer ahead of him in line, walked out. Kovac couldn’t place him. He encountered so many people on a daily basis, everybody started looking familiar.

Several minutes later on the video, Penny Gray walked into the store. Kovac let the tape run on past her leaving. People came, people went. Five minutes after the Gray girl left the picture, Aaron Fogelman walked into the station with his buddy Tweedle Dumb. Fogelman bought cigarettes. The cohort shoplifted a bunch of candy bars. They walked back out of the store, carefree.

Where was Penny Gray at that point in time? Gone? Snatched by Doc Holiday? In the trunk of Aaron Fogelman’s car?

Kovac got up from his chair, went to the timeline, made a note. He stood back, ran his tongue over his teeth, and tried to rub the grit out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. It was nearly five A.M.

In need of a break to reboot his brain, he turned the VCR off and changed the channel on the TV. He would run through the local stations and see what was being said about the case. In the back of his mind he considered what might happen if Dr. Michael Warner’s name “somehow” got attached to the case in the media.

A lawsuit and the loss of his job and his pension, probably.

The guy had never had a criminal complaint made against him. Elwood would call any organizations and ethics boards Warner had to answer to in his professional life, but he’d found nothing against the man yet.

Warner had said the reason he had stopped seeing Penny Gray as a patient had been her issues with men and her constant attempts to manipulate him. He had dumped her, not the other way around. If he had been abusing the girl, it seemed that she would have been the one to quit the situation and raise hell.

Then again, just who was she supposed to raise hell to? Her mother? The mother who found her irritating and aggravating? The mother who was now engaged to Michael Warner?

Elwood had taped copies of Penny Gray’s poems to the wall at the far end of the room. Kovac browsed over them now, his eye catching on one titled “Unloved.”

I’m a bother

I’m a burden

I’m a liar

Close the curtain

Don’t wanna see it

Don’t believe it

Shut your mouth

She can’t conceive it

I’m not the dream

I’m just a nightmare

I’m in the way

Life’s just so unfair

I should come first

But I’m called

worst

Just a problem

She can’t solve

Unloved

Just who was Penny Gray supposed to turn to if her therapist abused her and her mother didn’t want to hear it? People didn’t like her. Warner had said so himself, the girl drew people in only so she could alienate them. How much of that did anyone tolerate before they just stopped listening?

Or had Warner bought the girl’s silence with a car? People sold out for less. It seemed pretty damned generous to buy your girlfriend’s daughter a car for her birthday. Then again, a mobile teenager was out of the way. Warner’s decision might have been strategic to getting more alone time with Julia.

Kovac turned back to the TV and changed the channel again. So far, he’d heard virtually identical reports on the case from three of the local stations. On the fourth he expected to see perky little Dana Nolan—the girl he crabbed at every morning when he woke up and turned on his television.

As much as the news media irritated him, he had never been able to shake the habit of beginning and ending his day with the news. He usually chose Dana Nolan in the morning just because she was so fucking chipper and optimistic. Her happy mood antagonized him into setting his personal dial at “curmudgeon” before he even got out of bed.

But it wasn’t Dana Nolan’s angelic face that greeted him as he changed to her station. A slightly older woman with thick maroon hair and a worried expression had taken Dana’s seat at the desk. She seemed flustered and distracted.

Even as Kovac began to form the thought that something wasn’t right, a photograph of Dana Nolan filled one corner of the television screen. He turned up the sound.

“Breaking news: Foul play is suspected in the apparent disappearance of NewsWatch 3’s own Dana Nolan,” the woman reported. “Police were dispatched to Dana Nolan’s Minneapolis apartment just an hour ago when Dana failed to show up for work and failed to respond to numerous phone calls and text messages.”

Kovac could see the fear and panic building in the woman. Her eyes gleamed with tears. Her voice tightened and trembled as she spoke.

“Personal belongings found in the parking lot of the apartment building near Ms. Nolan’s abandoned vehicle seem to indicate she may have been taken against her will.”

The screen filled with the image of the missing reporter.

“Her most recent assignment has been covering the disappearance of Minneapolis teenager Penelope Gray, and the possible connection between the discovery of the murder victim known as Zombie Doe and the serial killer law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest have come to call Doc Holiday. Anyone having any information as to the whereabouts of Dana Nolan is asked to call the number posted on the screen.

“Please, please,” the woman implored, her tenuous hold on her emotions quickly eroding. “If anyone watching has any information at all, please call this number as soon as possible.

“Dana, if you’re somehow seeing this broadcast, please know that we’re all looking for you and praying for you to come home safe.”

The station went to commercial as the reporter broke down sobbing.

Kovac swore, grabbed his coat, and bolted for the door.

•   •   •

“WHY THE FUCK WASN’T I called the minute this came in?” Kovac snapped at the young detective who had caught the call. “I was right down the fucking hall!”

They stood in the parking lot of Dana Nolan’s apartment complex. The early morning darkness had been banished by portable lights from the crime scene unit, and from the half dozen news vans that had circled the scene like wagons in an old Western movie.

The detective—Dickson—barely looked old enough to have a job. Kovac had come out of the womb older than this kid. Still, the young detective tried to put up a tough front.

“Since when do we have to clear our calls through you? It’s not even your shift.”

“Oh. It’s not my shift?” Kovac thought his head might explode. Acutely aware of the cameras and microphones trained on them, he leaned in close. “It’s a fucking abduction, you fucking moron! I’ve got half the fucking department working an abduction/homicide that’s all over the goddamn news, and you think you don’t have to bother telling me? The fucking janitor would know enough to tell me! You’re a fucking idiot! And where’s your partner? He’s a fucking idiot too.”

One of the uniforms who had responded to the initial call intervened, wedging himself between the two detectives.

“Sarge, the newsies are getting restless. They’re asking for a statement.”

“They want a statement?” Kovac asked, feigning shock. “It’s a clusterfuck. That’s my statement. They want a statement, they can pull one out of my ass. I just got here. I don’t even know yet what young Dickhead here has managed to fuck up in my absence.”

Dickson waved him off. “Fuck you, Kojak.”

Kovac turned and looked at the center of their crime scene: a dark green Mini, parked near the security light. Dana Nolan had parked exactly where young women were supposed to park their cars for safety—under a pool of light where they would be able to see danger coming.

Nothing good ever happened in a parking lot after midnight. It was unlikely there had been any witnesses. This was a quiet residential neighborhood. Dana Nolan’s belongings still lay on the ground where she had dropped them. She probably had seen danger coming. There just hadn’t been a damn thing she could do about it.

Kovac walked over to the car and squatted down for a closer look at Dana Nolan’s abandoned belongings. A purse. A makeup bag. A tote bag with papers spilling out of it. He picked one of the papers out and frowned as he looked at it—the missing girl poster of Penny Gray.

He stood up and looked at Nolan’s car, at the piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper. A sick feeling began to stir like a snake waking in his belly.

Careful to touch just the edges of the page, he took it from under the blade and looked at it.

HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

Penny Gray looked at him over her shoulder. The photo he had gotten from Brittany Lawler.

At the bottom of the page scrawled in black magic marker were two words and a smiley face.

HAPPY HOLIDAY.