Forgotten Girls, The (10 page)

Carly and Alex entered the room
soon thereafter, and snuggled on the couch wearing workout shorts and oversized
hoodies over their thin, athletic bodies. At 5’ 9” with long wavy blond hair
pulled back in a ponytail, Carly looked like the older sister. Alex leaned in
next to her, her long, wavy, deep auburn hair framing her face, her big blue
eyes dazed. Jamie sat next to Alex with his arm around her and Carly rested her
head on Lillie’s shoulder. Bella would have preferred Jamie not be there, but she
had no choice.

Bella leaned forward and gently began
by asking if there was anything upsetting their mom lately. Alex looked at
Carly with a worried look on her face as Carly described how upset her mother
had been about the suicides in town, how she blamed it on Adderall, and how she
had fought with Dr. Weber last week. At the mention of a fight Jamie jumped in.

“What do you mean she fought with
your doctor?” Jamie queried.

“A fight, Dad. It was crazy. And
embarrassing. She wanted Dr. Weber to stop giving me Adderall,” Carly whined.

Jamie looked at Bella and seemed
embarrassed.

“Why didn’t I know about this?” He
sounded like he was in a boardroom.

“Are you serious?” Carly rolled
her eyes like it was the most obvious thing in the world. Before he could say
anything she continued, “I can’t function at Vanderbilt without my Adderall. Mom
suggested a gap year to get it out of my system, or that I go to my safety school
so I could have less pressure. She was actually serious!” She looked desperate,
her eyes widening as she spoke. “Four years of killing myself to get in only to
turn it down? OK, that’s a good plan,” she railed, but she wasn’t finished yet.

“You both told me I needed it all
these years, so I took it and did what I needed to do. And I got into
Vanderbilt—wasn’t that the point? Everything was fine until Sam and Sophie
killed themselves and all of a sudden Mom reconsiders? She gets it into her
head it’s a bad drug?”

Lillie looked straight at Bella. Jamie
looked straight at Carly. Alex looked down.

“Carly, I didn’t know your mom was
so upset. I wish you had told me,” Jamie barely spit out.

“How can I tell you when you are
never here?” Carly exploded. “Leave a message with your secretary and hope you
call me back?”

Her voice was loud, her tone caustic.
Jamie was clearly trying to remain calm.

“Carly, now is not the time to
yell and argue. I—”

But before he could finish she
blasted him again. “And why is it my job to tell you? She was your wife! Why
didn’t she tell you? Why didn’t the two of you discuss your own daughter?”

Jamie looked startled by her
anger, and her bite. He said nothing.

Bella knew it was risky, but the
moment was ripe. “Carly, did Dr. Weber increase your dose of Adderall to thirty
milligrams recently?”

A silence descended. Carly’s eyes filled
with tears and she looked away.

“It’s OK, sweetie,” Bella said,
trying to calm her. “You are not in any kind of trouble here. All of this
probably has nothing to do with what happened last night. We are just trying to
get a sense of what was going on in your mom’s life these past few weeks,
that’s all.”

“I take ten milligrams and I never
took a thirty-milligram pill before in my life,” Carly answered firmly. “Maybe
I took one when I needed to stay up late and study,” she added, immediately
contradicting what she had just said. “But Dr. Weber did not give them to me.”

“Hadn’t your mom found some in
your room?” Bella smiled sadly when she said this.

Carly looked shocked that Bella
knew that. So did Jamie.

“They weren’t mine,” Carly replied
nervously.

“OK. Whose were they?” Bella
gently prodded.

“Why does it matter? What does
this have to do with anything?” Carly started crying again. Lillie put her arms
around her.

“I need to know, Carly,” Bella said
as mildly as she could.

“I don’t know. I have friends who
take thirty milligrams. One of them must have left some in my room,” Carly said
sullenly.

Bella didn’t believe her, but decided
now was not the moment to push it.

“OK, girls. What about your trip
to Mexico Christmas break?”

Lillie gave Carly a glass of water
to help her calm down.

“What about it?” Jamie answered
for them.

“Did your mom have a good time?
Did she and her friends seem happy?” Bella kept her focus on Carly as she asked
this and tried to sound lighthearted.

Alex lifted her head and she and
her sister looked at one another.

“Not so much.” Carly shrugged. “There
was stress because that’s when we found out I got into Vandy ED. My best friend
Jessie’s dream was to get in, but she got deferred. We all heard at the same
time. We were on the beach. It sucked. For her.”

She looked at her father, who was
stoic. Alex spoke up for the first time.

“Jenna was so mean to Mom, right,
Dad?”

Jamie opened and then closed his
mouth as if he didn’t know what to say. He looked confused.

Alex continued, “When everyone was
congratulating Carly, Jenna got up from her lounge chair without saying a word
and walked off the beach—she didn’t even congratulate Carly. I feel bad for
Jessie to have her as a mom. She’s such a bitch.”

“Alex!” Jamie interrupted. “Please
don’t talk that way.”

All eyes were on her.

“Oh please, Dad. Mom put up with
so much. Are you seriously pretending Jenna was her good friend? Do you not remember
when you made a toast to Carly in Mexico and Mom was desperately trying to get
you to stop? She was getting nonstop glares from Jenna and couldn’t take it
anymore.”

Jamie looked down. “I didn’t
notice. I wasn’t really paying attention to Jenna,” he answered.

“Well, could you have paid attention
to Mom?” Carly interrupted angrily.

Before he could respond, Alex
added, “Jenna wouldn’t speak to Mom that whole night. Neither would Stephanie
or Kim. I love your friends, but their moms are just not good people,” Alex
remarked as she looked at Carly.

“I know. I hate them.”

“Girls!” Jamie sputtered
uselessly. “Your mother considered them close friends.”

Both girls looked at him with
wonder.

“Mom hated them. Jenna is a
nightmare. Stephanie and Kim are desperate wanna be’s. She kept things copasetic
for my sake, Dad. Mom had no friends in this town—no real ones anyway. Except
maybe Erika.”

Jamie jerked his head up like he
had been slapped.

“We spoke to Erika today,” Bella
quickly jumped in. “She told us your mom left her tennis team after the trip to
Mexico. Do you know why?”

Bella was wondering if she would
get anything out of them about Stephanie and deliberately did not look at Jamie
when she asked this. The room was quiet. The sky outside had darkened.

“Did something else happen on that
trip that upset your mom? Anything you know of?” Bella asked again, looking at
both girls.

The tension in the air was palpable.
Bella snuck a peek at Jamie, who had his head down, staring at the floor.
Lillie stared blankly out the window. The girls looked at one another and shook
their heads no. Maybe Jos hadn’t shared with them what she had witnessed in the
lounge. Maybe they did know, but didn’t want to say anything in front of their
father.

“Mom hardly came down for dinner
the whole trip,” Alex added sadly.

“That’s because she got a stomach
bug from the water,” Jamie added, looking nervous.

“No, Dad, Mom was fine. She just
didn’t want to be with anyone.” Carly looked at him incredulously when she said
this, as though he were the dumbest person on the planet. “Did you seriously
think she had a stomach bug?”

Jamie stared, mouth open. It was
pretty clear how out of touch he had been in his own home. Bella realized these
girls were way more astute than their father when it came to their mother—they had
paid attention. His face and jaw were clenched as he looked down at Alex, who was
burrowed in his arms. When he lifted his head he looked at Lillie. She stared
at him for a few seconds then looked away.          

It was 10 p.m. when Bella and Mack
walked through the heavy double steel doors emblazoned PRECINCT 109 straight
into Billy’s office, each in their own head. Billy sat in his office devouring a
bucket of KFC, a six-pack of Dr Pepper prominently displayed on his desk. Back
in the Bronx, she felt like herself for the first time all day, relieved as
hell to be out of Greenvale. She breathed in the smell of cigarette smoke and
cheap cologne and smiled, knowing if anyone saw her happily doing so they would
think she was crazy. Maybe she was. To think people yearned to live in places
like that—she just didn’t get it. The American dream—what Ryan had once offered.

Ryan.

Suddenly, she ached for him.

“Janey, bring it in here,” Billy
bellowed as he dug into a drumstick. Janey was Billy’s beloved secretary of twenty-three
years. Five feet tall, supremely overweight, she’d had her world turned upside
down six months earlier when she unexpectedly became a widow. These days she
hung around the precinct later than ever and spoke of retirement with dread.

“Aright, alright, no need to
holler,” Janey said as she waddled into his office, report in hand, and gave
Bella a quick squeeze on her way in. She had a soft spot for Bella—most people
did.

The preliminary report from the medical
examiner’s office had arrived and Billy pored over it as he devoured the greasy
chicken. Bella helped herself to a piece and Mack popped open a soda, sat back,
and drank. It was dinner the way she liked it—yummy and relaxed.

“Well, I’ll be dammed.” Billy
sounded genuinely surprised. “Our girl was poisoned.”

Mack looked at Bella and nodded,
impressed.

Billy paraphrased the report:

“Asphyxiation from cyanide
poisoning. Blood analysis shows a lethal level—eight point three grams’ worth
running through her veins. Jesus Christ.” Billy paused, shaking his head. “A
woman of a hundred twenty pounds could die from a hundred sixty-eight milligrams—eight
point three grams is about fifty times the lethal concentration. Talk about
overkill.”

He stopped reading and looked up
at them.

“Who told them to test for cyanide?”

Bella smiled.

“Good job.”

“Just a gut feeling,” she replied,
winking at Mack slyly.

Billy kept reading. “Lactate
levels in blood extremely high…increased proportionally with the amount of cyanide
levels due to metabolic acidosis…yada, yada, OK, this is pretty technical. It’s
like reading a goddamn chemistry manual. We got what we need.”

“That amount of cyanide would have
killed her instantly,” Bella remarked as Mack downed his soda.

“Gave it to her on the boat then,”
Billy commented.

“There was vomit on a path heading
down to the water,” Mack pointed out.

“Does the report say how she was exposed?”
Bella asked.

Billy looked down at it. “No, just
that it was in her blood. Big time.”

“She would have collapsed
instantly. He had to have poisoned her on the boat. The sexual assault?” she
added as an afterthought.

Billy looked down at the report.

“Postmortem,” he replied in a
sullen voice.

“Motherfucker,” Mack said quietly
under his breath.

“So she was raped afterwards,”
Bella said more to herself than anyone else in the room. “An extraneous gift.”

“No semen inside or out. But she
was torn up with something sharp.”

“So he rips her up but doesn’t
rape her?” Mack asked.

“Or raped her with a blade. A
sexual attack fueled by anger, not arousal,” Bella explained.

“Then he had a specific beef with
her, ’cause he didn’t mark up the girls,” Mack pointed out.

“This isn’t Ridley’s MO,” Billy
remarked grumpily. “Too violent.”

“Don’t forget what ten years in
the slammer can do to a person,” Mack pointed out.

“We’ll find out what it did to him
soon enough,” Billy replied.

“Any news on where he might be?”

“Still looking,” was all Billy
said. “What did you learn about Powell?”

“He’s a pretty boy from Kansas—meek,
small. Found him taking a nap when we visited. Looked scared as hell, swore up
and down he’s not involved. This ain’t his MO either. He was collared for
raping a young boy and trying to strangle him to death. I don’t think he’s our
guy, but we got him on radar. He’s not going anywhere.”

Billy shook his head with
impatience. “What’s the husband like?” he asked.

“Typical hedge fund titan,” Mack
answered.

“And? Any shot?” Billy pressed.

“Maybe,” Bella answered. “If they split
she stood to gain a lot. Was with him from the beginning. No pre-nup. Sounds
like she was pretty lonely. Saw him with her best friend in a lounge in a
Mexican resort when he should have been sleeping.”

Billy lifted his eyes.

“And?”

“Might be something there. Joslyn’s
sister said she suspected something. Gotta find out more,” Bella said. “The
valet guy remembers Jamie left early—well, he remembers the Maserati. But he
was home for a midnight conference call. It checked out,” Bella said, looking
bummed.

“He could have taken care of her
then jumped in his car for an alibi,” Billy remarked.

“ME puts time of death between twelve
and two,” Bella remarked. “He was out of there by eleven. One of her buddies says
Joslyn was in the bathroom at eleven thirty. I don’t know. She may have her
timeline off. It’s possible, for sure. But,” she paused, “I don’t know that I see
him whacking those girls.”

Mack nodded his head in agreement.

“Any other Mr. Right?” Billy
looked at them both.

“We got a possible Mrs. Right—actually
a bunch of them,” Bella suggested.

She and Mack shared a tired laugh.

“Yeah? Anyone special?” Billy
asked. He was relieved to see they were getting along.

“Ahh, nothing but a bunch of super-rich
broads who live in their own world,” Mack said dismissively. “They are what
you’d expect.”

“You expected that?” Bella asked, incredulously.
“I sure as hell didn’t.” Turning to Billy, she added, “None of her friends give
a shit she’s been murdered. None of them. Except one.”

“Why do you say that?” Billy
asked.

“Trust me, these women were not
feeling grief. I also think the shrink in town is certifiable. She knows more
than she’s saying,” Bella added.

“What shrink?” Billy wanted to
know.

“The one she fought with last
week. Over her daughter’s prescription meds.”

She told Billy what they had
learned.

“I don’t know, Billy. There’s
something about her. She’s so cold she needs a freezer to warm up in. She’d
give our local psychos a run for their money any day.”

He laughed. “Who the hell is she?
Maybe we can hire her.”

“She doles out Adderall to all these
type A competitive families desperate for their kids to get into a top college.”

“Well,
it’s a schedule II controlled substance she’s playing with,” observed Billy.

“It’s actually the latest drug to hit
the black market,” Mack added. “Calling it an ‘upper’ doesn’t do it justice. It’s
made of pure amphetamine.”

“And we think she might have been
writing fake scripts, overprescribing or what? Our girl found out?” Billy
asked.

“Don’t know,” Mack answered. “These
pills go for thirty to forty bucks each. Students are making a lot of dough. True
blue drug dealers are getting into the game. Maybe someone discovered
Greenvale. It’s the perfect demographic.”

“Maybe Weber’s in on the game,”
Bella added.

“Maybe it started as a good
business opportunity—all those college-bound Einsteins with money in their
pockets and a lot to prove. Parents willing to shell out whatever it takes so
their kid gets noticed. Addiction rate’s high so they keep coming back. Maybe
it just got out of control,” Mack conceded. “But I am not putting my money on
Weber for the murders.”

“Wouldn’t be her first exposure to
criminals,” Bella reminded him.

“Why do you say that?” Billy
asked.

“Spent some time at Dunmore
Psychiatric,” Bella said with gravity.

“
The
Dunmore?”

“The one and only,” she answered.

“As a patient or for work?”

“Did her graduate residency there.
But one sit-down with her and you’ll wonder if maybe she should have been the
one being treated.”

“Well, can’t blame her for
leaving,” Billy pointed out.

“I don’t. I just think there’s
something seriously off about her. I want to know more.” Bella was serious.

“She’s a woman, for Christ’s sake,”
interrupted Mack. “And not one to blend into a crowd. She would have been
noticed by someone at the club last night, don’t you think?”

“She could have easily manhandled
Joslyn,” she replied without answering him directly.

“And raped her?” Mack looked
disgusted.

“Hey, you just heard there was no
semen. Any set of hands could have used that blade,” Bella countered.

“This job’s getting to you, honey.
That’s a sick thought,” Mack responded, looking upset.

“She fought with Jos, she knew the
two girls, she’s a shrink with a medical background. Might have access to
cyanide. Certainly has access to Adderall. You don’t want to pursue it?” she asked
in disbelief.

“I just think we’re wasting time
looking into a woman, no matter how messed up she seems.”

“I am telling you, Cap, she’s
sitting on something.” Bella ignored Mack’s comment.

Billy looked back and forth
between them.

“Female shrink kills two girls
then rapes and kills a mom? Sounds like a stretch, even for you, my dear. But OK,
I’ll have Mikey look into her background to make you happy. See what we come up
with,” Billy said. “Let’s talk about tomorrow. Mack, I want you focusing on
this Adderall angle—spend time at the high school with the kids. Go relive the
glory days.”

“Hey, man, I won’t be reliving
nothing. My high school wasn’t like that from the little I remember,” Mack
replied.

Billy turned to Bella.

“Bella, get inside her life—do it however
you think best. Find out why her friends don’t miss her, get under their skins,
the daughters too. All of them. I want to feel intimate by dinner time tomorrow.”

*

As Bella drove home, an idea that
had been percolating all day slowly began to process itself more fully. When she
hit a red light she looked at her cell, went into contacts, and pressed R. The name
RYAN lit up. Immediately she pushed END. She was nervous, she realized,
surprised at herself.

Was
this phone call necessary, or was she simply looking for an excuse to call? She
hadn’t spoken to him since their break up last month. She thought of him every
day, as she knew she would, but as long as she remained busy she was fine. That
was how she had gotten through most of her life, and this time would be no
different. The non -stop frenetic pace of work provided solace, affording no
time to think. It was only when quiet came, when she found herself alone with
her thoughts, that the uneasy feeling of regret flooded over her. 

No, she reassured herself. She knew
this was the right call to make—he was the only one who could help her with
this. If her instinct was right, she needed a road map for how to proceed, and
no one better than Ryan could give her one. No one knew female psychopaths like
he did.

She dialed again, and this time
she didn’t hang up.