All the Missing Girls (15 page)

“It's up to them to prove that,” I said.

“Is it? Is it really? If everyone already believes it and then you show up at my work in the middle of the day?”

“I'm sorry,” I whispered, heat rising to my face. “I'm sorry I came. I just needed to know.”

He nodded. “No, I'm sorry. I'm pissed. I'm pissed at them. Not at you. It was probably the police in her place, Nic.”

“No, not the police. There weren't any cars. Someone on foot.” Someone who didn't want to be seen. Someone who had a key. Someone who knew the woods by heart.

“Her family, then.”

“Through the woods, Tyler. Someone walked through the woods.”

Then he stared again, walked toward the door, readjusted the brim of his hat so it was perfectly centered. Nodded once. “It wasn't me.” He looked me over once more. “Go home,” he said. “Get out of here before they come knocking on your door, too.”

I followed him out the trailer door into the sunlight, the work site too bright, like an overexposed photo.

MEALS STARTED BLENDING TOGETHER,
along with the hours, losing structure, just as the days had been. Sleep was hard to come by, and I overcompensated with too much caffeine all day. It was after nine
P
.
M
. by the time I remembered to eat. There were too many possibilities. All those names and events tied together in that hypothetical box, weaving around, untangling in my mind. And more—the stories that never made it inside the box. The things we never asked each other slowly unraveling.

To solve a mystery, to solve a mystery
here,
you can't come from the outside.

There were people here who knew more than they said, who
chose to keep it silent, like Jackson seeing Corinne. Like me seeing them together. There must be more of us. I had to understand the silence. With Corinne comes Annaleise. With Annaleise comes Corinne.

Apply one filter to the next, watch it all slide into focus.

THERE WAS A LIGHT
outside the window, in the woods. Someone near her place again. I didn't bother grabbing my phone, just the flashlight that had been in the drawer beside the microwave as long as I could remember.

I was losing them, and I couldn't. I had to know.

The new cop from State, staying at the motel in town? Someone else? Annaleise?

Find them. Find answers.

I sneaked through the yard like I used to when I was a kid, keeping silent and to the shadows until I reached the tree line. I saw the flashlight bobbing periodically in the distance, and I sprinted toward it until I got too close. I kept my own light off. The moon was enough for my footing, or maybe that was my memory.

But the light wasn't moving toward Annaleise's place anymore, or my own. It was heading away. Backtracking. Moving sure-­footedly and with purpose through the forest. Toward a hiding spot, maybe. Or a car on the other end.

We'd been moving for at least half an hour, and a sliver of panic had wedged itself inside my chest. I was at the disadvantage, I was alone, I was unarmed, unprotected—with no phone, or map, or GPS. My options were to keep following the flashlight or stop with no sense of where I was.

And yet.

I had the sense that I knew where we were heading. Not from the direction but from the timing. I'd taken this trek before at night.

But it wasn't until we reached the clearing that I was sure. Big open space set back from the road. Small narrow path, cordoned off, leading to the caverns. I stayed in the woods, watching the flashlight. Eventually another light appeared on the path, and I willed it closer until it shone on the person I was following.

For a moment I think I expected to see skinny arms and blond hair and huge eyes; pale skin and dirty clothes. Maybe it was nothing but hope, but there it was: I expected to see Annaleise.

But it was a boy. A teenager.
Her brother.
And the person with him was a tall girl with dark hair, an arm held up to shield her eyes. “God, you're blinding me, asshole.”

“Where's David?”

“Bringing the drinks. Carly's in the car. She doesn't like it out here when it's just us. Says it's not safe.” The girl paused. “Any word about your sister?”

“Nah,” he said, lowering the flashlight.

“I'm sorry, Bryce,” she said.

Bryce. Right. He didn't look particularly shaken up by the fact that his sister was missing. And they didn't look the same—not like Daniel and I used to. Bryce was stocky, had inherited his father's square jaw and broad shoulders.

“Could still turn up,” he said.

Nine days, and that was all he could say. I'd find it suspicious if I didn't already know his type—part of a generation of kids expecting everything handed to them: the missing people, returned. The mystery, solved for them. Ten years ago, we'd torn these woods to pieces. We'd followed the cops to the places they searched, and we'd searched the places they didn't. But not these kids. Apparently, they could just shrug it off, give their condolences, wait for the beer to arrive.

Maybe it was that Annaleise wasn't theirs. A little too old, she'd already left, gone to college, come back. She didn't belong to them or to us. Lost in the gap with no one to seek her out.

I heard an engine and shrank away from the flashlights and headlights. “There he is,” the girl said. “Come on, the woods creep me out. My brother used to tell me there was a monster.”

Bryce nodded and followed her.

If you let yourself get swept away in legend, let it become more than story, then it's not such a stretch to imagine Corinne disappearing without a trace. It happens all the time, all across the country, especially in the woods, in the middle of the night. And if Corinne did, then so could Annaleise.

Wasn't a stretch to imagine a monster, even. Watching and waiting and making you do things. Breathing in the lick of smoke as the teenagers made a fire. Watching them fall all over each other in a heap of beautiful limbs. Feeling the cold dirt settle under its nails as it waited, listening to the theories and the stories and the bullshit. Waiting until they fell asleep so it could creep back to the caverns and see what—if any—secrets they had to offer.

It's not so hard. From where they were sitting, there was something doing the same, and they had no idea.

Right then I was the monster.

The Day Before

DAY 9

I
had my back pressed
against the bedroom wall, ear to the open window, like a kid eavesdropping on the conversation outside. Daniel trying to send the police away, to stop them from dragging us into yet another investigation.

Stay out of it,
he'd said to me, and he was right.

I'd already given my statement to Officer Fraize, useless as it must've been.
Did you see anything in the woods? Hear anything that night? Anything at all?

No sir, no sir, no sir.

I had no relationship with Annaleise. There was nothing on paper tying us to each other, except in that hypothetical box in the police station from ten years ago, and that was just a corroboration of alibi. And yet here was a new cop out front, asking to speak with me.

His voice was gravelly but tentative. Careful. “If I could just ask her a few quick questions about her relationship with Tyler Ellison . . .”

And there it was.
Tyler.
Tyler ties to me and me to Daniel. Suddenly, the whole knotted mess of us is sucked down, prodded and pried until we reveal something unintentional. Something used to break apart the other. Hannah Pardot was an expert at that. This guy, not so much. He was tripping over Daniel, or Daniel was overpowering him. Either way, this cop wasn't getting in to see me.

“I think she's sleeping,” I heard Daniel say. “Look, I'm on my way to work, so I can't stick around. Maybe try again this afternoon.”

“It's important. A woman is missing, and every day she's not found, she's more at risk. It's our moral duty to track down every possible lead.”

Like it had come straight from Witness Questioning 101. What was he, a month out of training? Moral duty. Hilarious. Like it was their
moral duty
to crack open every facet of anyone's life, anyone who came within three degrees of separation. To destroy the living to find the dead.

It had been eight days since Annaleise was reported missing. Asking me questions about Tyler now wasn't going to change the outcome for her. They weren't looking
for her.
They were looking
at him.
Despite Daniel's good intentions, despite his warnings, if I didn't go out there, the police might think I had something to hide.

I pulled on fresh clothes and padded barefoot down the stairs, the conversation muted behind the wood and plaster. I pushed open the screen door and shaded my eyes from the sun. “Daniel?” I called.

The unmarked car was parked halfway up the driveway. This cop wanted it to seem like he was just dropping by, just in the neighborhood, nothing serious. It was navy blue with tinted windows, and it needed to be washed.

“Is everything okay?” I said.

The man wasn't in uniform, and he was bigger than I'd thought,
and younger, given his voice. About my age or younger—­Annaleise's age—which made him too young to be part of Corinne's investigation. The way he spoke made me think he wasn't from here. Not this town, anyway. An hour east was all it took to make a difference. The mountains and the single winding road kept this place separate, insular.

“Nicolette”—he checked his notepad—“Farrell?” Definitely not from here. Even if he was too young to know me personally, the names go with the houses. It wouldn't be a mystery. The Carter property backs to the Farrell property, and the McElrays own land on both sides, though neither was built on yet. The Lawsons made a bid for the house and land across the lane when Marty Piper, the last of the Pipers, passed on after his third and final heart attack, but the house and the land were unoccupied, tangled in legalese and court paperwork.

I was staring off through the woods, in the direction of Marty's place, when the cop said, “Miss?”

“Yes?” I said.

Daniel rolled his neck and came to stand beside me on the porch.

“You're Nicolette Farrell?”

“I am.”

“My name is Detective Charles. I was hoping to ask you a few questions about your relationship with Tyler Ellison.” He seemed to be waiting for something—maybe for me to be the Southern hostess, like Laura, open the screen door and beckon him inside, offering him some tea. Outsiders only come in when the investigation shifts. Detective Charles, I was sure, was the new Hannah Pardot.

After he took a few hesitant strides toward the house, I walked down the porch steps, meeting him in the middle of the yard, my feet sinking into the ground, moist from last night's rain.

“How's the motel?” I asked, just to check. “Or are they putting you up someplace nicer?”

His mouth twisted. “I'm sorry, have we met?” he asked.

“You're not from here, are you?” I countered.

“No, ma'am,” he said, flipping through his pad. He towered over me, so I couldn't see the writing. He cleared his throat, pen poised over the paper. “This will just take a moment. I'm following up on some questions, here. Heard this might be a good place to start.” He didn't look up the entire time he spoke. Not until he said, “Please describe your relationship with Tyler Ellison.”

“This will be really fast, Detective. We have no relationship. Sorry you wasted your time coming out here.”

His eyes flicked up to mine, then back to his paper. “How about in the past, then?”

“He was my high school boyfriend,” I said. “I'm twenty-eight.”

He flipped pages back and forth, umm-ing and uhh-ing, before finding what he was looking for. “You've been together since?” he asked. “It's my understanding that you've been seen with him since then.”

I smiled up at him. “I live in Philadelphia. But when I used to come visit, sure.”

“Not anymore?” he asked.

“I'm engaged,” I said, and I saw his eyes drift to my bare finger.

He flipped the pages again. “Uh, he's been seen around your house. More recently. Very recently.”

I was getting irritated, and I didn't make any attempt to hide it. “He's been helping—”

Daniel stepped forward, cut me off. “I asked him to. He runs a construction business. We're fixing up the house. Nic's only home for a little while. He's helping
me
as a favor.”

Detective Charles faced my brother. “You're friends?”

The briefest of pauses, but I felt it. “Yes,” Daniel said.
Be smart.
Give the most finite possible answer. Close the loop, don't make unnecessary openings, because they will seize them. They will fill them.

“So, the thing is . . .” Detective Charles flipped pages, and I caught a glimpse of a blank sheet. The jerk was playing me—­playing us both. The pages were nothing. A few words scribbled in the margins. It was an act to pretend he didn't know who we were and all our history. In truth, he had it filed away in his head. He'd been studying us, and he was playing his angle. God, how long had he
been
here?

I put a hand on Daniel's arm and applied the faintest pressure before Detective Charles looked back up. “The thing is, we can't find Annaleise's cell—and it appears to be off. But we did get a look at her phone records. And the very last call she answered, the night before she was reported missing, was from Tyler Ellison. Around one
A
.
M
.”

“It's my understanding that they were seeing each other,” I said.

He tapped his pen on the page. “No, see, that's the other thing. Tyler said they broke up. And when I looked into why that might be—because that's an awful big coincidence, break up with a girl and then she goes missing—talk around town is that it probably has something to do with you. And why do you think that might be?”

I felt my jaw tighten, my hands tighten. “Because historically, that's what happened. And in this town, what happened in the past is all that will ever happen, Detective. If you were from here, you'd know that.”

“No need to get defensive. I'm just trying to understand.”

“Then ask Tyler.”

“I did,” he said. “Though he's a hard man to track down.”

There was a time when all I had to do was conjure him to mind—just the wisp of a thought—and there he'd be in the flesh, as if I had summoned him. But now I had to agree. Tyler was starting to feel like a ghost, like if I blinked for too long, he might slip away for good.

Detective Charles tapped his pad. “He says he called Annaleise at one
A
.
M
. and that, let me see, he decided to break it off. Because, quote, ‘She wanted more than I was willing to give her.' What do you suppose that means?”

“I'm assuming exactly what he said. He doesn't like to be tied down.”

He smiled and it was unsettling—the shark ready to play his winning card. “That's quite the opposite of what I've been hearing. Looks like he's tied down really good here.”

I shifted my weight from foot to foot. “Look, up until last week, I hadn't talked to Tyler in over a year. I have no insight into the inner workings of their relationship.” The detective caught the inflection in my voice, I was sure, and I fought to keep it steady as Daniel put a hand on my back.
Calm down.

“Ms. Farrell, I'm not trying to get him into trouble or anything. I just want to get a feel for Annaleise's state of mind that night.”

Lie.

“When were you and Tyler Ellison last . . . together?” he asked, keeping his eyes on his notepad.

“If you're asking what I think you're asking, that's kind of a personal question.”

“This is a missing persons investigation. Of course it's personal. Think of the girl, Ms. Farrell.”

Think of the girl.
“Last year,” I said.

“Not last week? Not when you returned home?”

“No,” I said.

“You return home, and Tyler allegedly breaks up with Annaleise the same night, and then she's reported missing the following morning. You can see how this looks.”

I could see what stories they had concocted, and the one they wanted me to feed back to them. But I'd been through this before. We all had. This kid, he didn't have a fucking clue. “I understand
that when the police have no leads, they become desperate, trying to find meaning where there's nothing. Trying to connect unrelated dots into a picture they can understand. Whether it's true or not.”

Daniel's phone rang and he answered it right then without excusing himself. “Hello?” he said. “What?” He continued listening, and I kept my eyes on his face so I wouldn't have to look at Detective Charles, whose gaze I could feel burning a hole into the side of my skull. “I'll be right there,” he said. Then, to the detective, “Our dad isn't well. We have to go. Good luck with the case.” He turned to face me. “They need us to come in. Right now.”

“Oh, God,” I said, running into the house, locking the doors, grabbing my shoes and purse. Daniel already had the car running by the time I was outside, on the phone with the insurance company he was working with as a field adjuster, explaining that he couldn't make it to the site.

Daniel assessed damages for a living. Worked out of his home, going wherever one of several companies sent him in the region. Everything was a checklist—there was a formula to disaster, misfortune, and tragedy. Everything had a value and a cost. I suppose he got accustomed to digging through facts, assigning blame, detecting fraud. Or he found out he was good at it. After he'd lived through Corinne's case, maybe it was a comfort to him—finding the logic in the chaos. Finding the truth.

“No,” he said, “I won't make it out today at all. I'll double up tomorrow. Yeah, call it a sick day.”

He was calling Laura as we drove down the road. The detective was sitting in his car, making notes to himself, pretending not to watch us as we drove away.

DAD WAS IN RESTRAINTS,
flat on his back, eyes fixed on the ceiling. The room was full of people, all of whom worked there in one
capacity or another. When Daniel and I barged in, the doctor made a show of placing his fingers on the inside of Dad's wrist, which was limp and restrained by a thick ivory strap.

“What the hell are you doing to him?” I asked, pushing past the doctor and working on a restraint that had been buckled around Dad's other wrist.

“Ms. Farrell.” There was a hand on my shoulder but the voice sounded farther away. “Ms.
Farrell.
” A woman's voice, more forceful now, and then the hand moved to my wrist, restraining my own movement. “It's for his safety. And ours.”

I looked at the hand on my wrist, at the long fingers and cracked knuckles leading to the knobby wrist and the slender arm. Daniel.

It was then that I got a good look at everyone in the room. A nurse looked shaken, half her hair pulled free from a bun. There were two men in the room who didn't appear to be doctors or nurses, and were watching Dad carefully. And the woman who'd spoken my name, dressed in business attire and standing near the doorway.

“He's sedated now,” the woman said. “But we don't know what shape he'll be in when he wakes up.”

The air was stale and cold and seemed so impersonal. No scents of home. Medicine, cleansers, bleach. It couldn't be good for his memory. He needed to smell the wood floors and the forest behind our house. He needed the exhaust from his crappy car and the grease from Kelly's Pub. “Well, when he wakes up to find himself physically restrained, I can tell you right now it won't be good,” I said.

She pressed her lips together and stuck her hand out in my direction, not giving me any choice but to take it. “I'm Karen Addelson, the director here. I don't think I've had the pleasure of meeting you yet, Ms. Farrell. Come, please, to my office, both of you.” She didn't let go of my hand, instead taking hold of my elbow with her other hand. “He'll be fine. Someone will stay with him.” Her hand
on my elbow moved to my lower back, and she led me out of the room, Daniel at my side.