Read The Girl in the Woods Online
Authors: David Jack Bell
The Girl in the Woods (6 page)
And she knew that Kay Todd wasn't telling her everything. Not even close.
Diana clicked on another bookmark at the top of the page. This one took her to her own site, the one she had created in the weeks after Rachel's disappearance. It was a low-budget production, as most of them were, and featured more photos and information than the national sites. But not much more about the actual disappearance since Diana didn't really know anything else. Over the past few years, Diana had given serious thought to shutting it down, not renewing the domain name fee and letting the whole thing fade away into the vast reaches of cyberspace.
But she just couldn't bring herself to do it.
The website also had an added benefit. It allowed Diana to set up an email account, a tipline through which people could send information about the case to her, and then she could pass it along to the police if it seemed at all important. In the first months after Rachel disappeared, the tips came in fast and furious, and they helped Diana and her mother reconstruct the details of the last night Rachel was known to be alive. After a few months, the emails turned weird, as Diana expected they would. People claimed to have "seen" Rachel in every part of the country, doing everything imaginable. Working as a waitress at a truck stop in Utah. Working as a stripper in Texas. Diana tried not to let her hopes rise with each of these emails, but she couldn't help herself. A little thrill rose in her chest at each new piece of information—no matter how far-fetched—and she asked the police about it only to be told that there was no sense in checking these "leads" out. A few times she considered getting in her car and going herself, driving all the way to some out-of-the-way restaurant or strip club to lay eyes on the woman who might just be her sister, but when she wrote back to the people who provided the initial information, no response of any merit came. Just a strange joke, a strange sense of humor. Move along, nothing to see here.
So why did she think Kay Todd was different?
Maybe it was the ferocity of the woman, the way she had acted when Diana grabbed her arm. She would have burned Diana if she had to. Diana had dealt with violent, desperate people on the job, knew the look of someone backed into a corner and willing to fight because they had nothing left to lose. That's what Kay Todd looked like in the Courthouse Diner.
Diana needed help. She needed another set of eyes to look at the situation and offer an opinion. She checked the email account associated with her sister's website. Nothing. She logged off and stood up, began to pull underwear, bra and socks out of her drawer. She didn't know many people in New Cambridge, and those she did know were all on the police force. Most people would see that as a good thing given the circumstances, but Diana wasn't so sure. She hadn't been back there since she quit, hadn't talked to most of them since she turned in her badge and uniform. She didn't like going back to places she had already left, didn't like the feeling of covering ground that had already receded into the past.
She pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. While she laced her sneakers, she thought about who she might see and what it would be like. She stood up from the side of the bed, but didn't leave the room. Her shoulders slumped a little.
Who are you kidding?
She knew there was only one person she didn't want to see.
And she knew he was the person she had to start with.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Diana parked in a visitor's space behind the boxy, limestone building that housed the New Cambridge Police Department. She could have walked, since the station sat only six blocks north of her apartment, but thinking about walking up to the building and then having to flee on foot made Diana feel exposed. The car provided a certain amount of cover, as well as the ability to make a fast getaway. And there was something else, too, something that lurked beneath the surface and made her feel even more uneasy. Diana didn't feel comfortable walking the streets of New Cambridge the way she would have in the past. Her night of bad dreams as well as the visit from Kay Todd had conspired to make New Cambridge seem like a slightly alien, slightly unsafe place all of a sudden, as though the town had been tipped on its axis a few degrees, and nothing really seemed the same.
She saw when she pulled in that Captain Berding's car was in its assigned spot, which meant he was in the office. Diana sat in her car for a long moment without turning the ignition off. She knew she could still just back away and leave. She had meant to spend the day looking for a new job and exploring the possibility of returning to school part-time for the spring semester. She knew she could fill her days with any manner of small chores, the kinds of things that everyone else did in the process of constructing what they called their lives. Why did she have this compulsion to make hers about something more?
Oh, grow up
, she thought.
It was only sex.
, she thought.
It was only sex.
At least, that's what
he
thought of it.
he
thought of it.
She turned the car off, took a deep breath like someone about to jump into a deep pool of water, and climbed out.
Diana went in the back entrance, the one used mostly by employees, and the one that afforded the most direct access to the Captain's office. Once inside, she was greeted by the familiar sounds of the station, the clattering of keyboards, the ringing of phones. She recognized the odor of the endlessly brewing coffee and the cheap floor polish the cleaning crew applied at night. Diana reached up and rapped lightly on the open door.
"Yeah?" Dan said, then he looked up through the reading glasses perched on the end of his nose. "Oh. Diana."
"Got a minute?"
He took the glasses off. "Is something wrong?"
"No. I just needed to ask you about something." Diana felt the need to clarify. "It's professional, not personal."
"I'm not worried about that," he said and waved her into his office.
Diana considered closing the door but thought better of it. That might seem too weird. Too intimate? But if he wasn't worried about it, why should she be...
She took a seat on the near side of the desk. Behind Dan, the wall was decorated with plaques and ribbons attesting to his thirty years of service to the citizens of New Cambridge. An American flag stood in the corner mounted on a wooden pole, and in the other corner, on top of a metal filing cabinet, there was a picture of Dan with his wife and two sons. The room smelled like a combination of manly aftershaves: Canoe and Brut and Old Spice.
"So?" he said.
"I'm fine," Diana said. "How are you?"
He sighed. "I have a meeting at the courthouse in fifteen minutes. I don't have much time." He was a broad-shouldered man a few inches over six feet tall, with just a hint of thickness through his middle. His dark hair, with a sprinkling of gray that added a layer of dignity, was parted to the side and perfectly in place. His face had been neatly shaved that morning as it was every morning, and the creases in his uniform sleeves looked like they could slice paper. He gave the impression that in his fifty-three years on the earth he had never once been at a loss for what to do or say. He looked like a man born to command. "So, what can I do for you?"
"Okay. Have you ever heard of a girl named Margie Todd? Margaret Todd would be her full name."
For just a moment, and almost imperceptibly, Dan's face altered. He moved his head back about an inch, and the mask of professional composure he always wore—what Diana thought of as his "cop face"—was replaced by a look of genuine surprise. Then the professional look quickly returned. "Why do you ask about that?"
"So you have heard of her?
"Sure. She's the girl who ran off a number of years ago. Why do you ask?"
"You think she ran away?"
"In the absence of any other information, yes. You still haven't answered my question."
Diana nodded. Fair enough. "I ran into her mother."
Dan's face twisted, like he had eaten something sour. "That crazy old lady. She's still kicking?"
"Barely. She has terminal lung cancer."
"Oh." He didn't seem bothered by the news.
"She wants to know what happened to her daughter before she gets her ticket punched."
"And she came to you for help? Why?"
Diana looked down at her hands, which were clutching the armrests on her chair.
"Diana?"
"She says she'll tell me where Rachel is if I find out what happened to her daughter."
"Aw, Diana. And you fell for something like that?"
"Don't patronize me, Dan." Diana felt her cheeks flush. "I know how to read people. She seemed like she really knew something."
Diana's voice must have gone higher than she intended. Dan held his hands out in a placating gesture, then stood up and came around to her side of the desk and shut the office door. Only a few people in New Cambridge knew about Rachel's disappearance, and of them, Dan certainly knew the most. When he sat down again, his face showed something that might have been compassion and might have been pity. Diana couldn't decide which.
"I'm not questioning your judgment," he said. "I am suggesting that it might be clouded by your desire—"
"Dan—"
He held up his hand again. "...clouded by your desire to find your sister as well as your own guilt over what might have happened to her. It's impossible for this woman to know anything about your sister. Think about it for a minute. How could she?"
Diana didn't respond. She knew Kay couldn't know anything worthwhile. In the cold light of Dan's office, through his eyes, Kay Todd's promise did seem far-fetched and ridiculous. "I don't know," Diana said finally. "She didn't say."
"How are you, Diana? Really?"
"I'm fine. Really."
"I've meant to call or email to check in..."
"But Janine wouldn't like that very much, would she?"
Dan stiffened, and Diana knew she had crossed a line by saying his wife's name out loud. She wasn't sure she had ever spoken it before. Certainly not in Dan's presence. And ultimately, he decided to ignore her transgression and move on.
"I suggest you not get tangled up in helping this Todd woman. She isn't right, and this case is ancient history. You don't want to go poking around into things like that. The girl's long gone, and you have better things to do with your life."
"And you're qualified to know that?"
He leaned back. "You're right. I can't tell you what to do. But you came here asking me about the case..."
"And that's all you know about it? She's long gone, presumed to be a runaway, and her mother's a kook. You were on the force then. You must remember something."
Dan took a deep breath. He brought his right hand up and rubbed his chin, pinching the loose skin that hung there between his thumb and forefinger.
"I was one of the first officers to respond when her mother called us."
"You were?"
"Yeah. Her mother didn't hear from her for a week or so, so she decided to come down. No one had seen her, so the mother called us. We went through her room, canvassed the neighbors and all of her friends. Nothing."
"And that was it?"
"No. We kept the file open. Hell, the file's probably still open. For years we'd get reports of unidentified Jane Does from all over the country, and we'd check them out as best we could. We had her dental x-rays." He cleared his throat. "I'm just saying that it was a different time. It was a different time in the life of this town. We didn't have cell phones and email. People didn't talk to their parents every day. A lot of kids dropped out and ran off. Every other week we had a parent in here who couldn't find their kid. We'd take the report, ask a few questions, and then a few days or a week later we'd get a call. 'Little Muffy was in Denver seeing the Grateful Dead and forgot to tell us.' Or 'Junior came home and all is forgiven. We bought him a Porsche to make him feel better.'"
"And you don't think there's any way to find out what happened to her?"
Dan shook his head. "No." He leaned forward again and spoke in a low voice. "Either one of two things happened here. Either that girl wanted to run away, she wanted to leave behind her kooky mother and whatever trailer park they were living in, and she's off in Oregon or Florida living a life of some kind. It might not be a good life, but it's hers and she's living it."
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