The Girls She Left Behind (9 page)

From whom she learned that there had been a mistake.

A
ching and bleeding, still so scared out of my mind that I could barely recall who I was—
Jane Crimmins,
I kept reciting to myself idiotically,
my name is Jane Crimmins
—I made my broken way home late that night after my narrow escape.

We lived—my parents, my mom's parents, and I—in an old blue-collar neighborhood of New Haven, street after shabbily-neat tree-lined street full of small brick houses built years earlier for factory workers with lunch pails and union cards, breadwinners supporting whole families on a single paycheck.

Although by the time I lived there, that era was long gone. Under the weakly glowing, infrequent streetlights junk cars stood on blocks, torn blue tarps stretched across roofs, and cast-iron railings bled rust onto cracked-concrete front steps.

As I crept guiltily along the dark, silent street I kept waiting for one of the neighbors to call out to me. Old Mrs. Watterston, maybe, whose swollen legs kept her up most nights. Or Finny Brill, a boy from my class whose bad skin and worse breath made him a pariah around school.

Finny stayed up late, too, watching old horror films whose cheesy plots he would recite the next day, trying to convince everyone that he'd made them up himself. He was a braggart, sure he would one day be a famous film director, and always trying and failing to be in on the doings of the more popular kids.

His bedroom window flickered with blue TV light as I snuck under it, feeling like a criminal. Any instant I expected to hear his voice, full of triumph as he caught me doing something that I shouldn't be; Finny was so pathetic, he actually thought he could make friends that way. As if him spying on you was just the same as you telling him your secrets.

If Finny saw me I was dead. But he didn't, and no one did call out. I slunk up to our house, identical to the rest on the street except for the old Chris-Craft motorboat hulking amid the weeds at the rear of our yard, perched atop a rotting trailer whose long-flat tires were peeling away in thick gray strips. The back door was open; I slipped inside.

The house smelled like cat box and the Hamburger Helper we'd had for dinner. Going upstairs I held my breath, not from the odor but so I wouldn't sob out loud.
Cam…
But there was nothing I could do for her, and now I heard her voice again telling me what would happen to me if anyone learned what that man had done to me.

“Examine you,”
she'd said.
“Instruments.”
It was as if she'd been cautioning me about what more could be inflicted on me and how I could avoid it: by keeping my mouth shut. And now that she was dead she was somehow even more of an authority than before, so I decided to stay silent.

In the upstairs hall I heard my parents and grandparents, early-to-bedders all, snoring behind closed doors. Not until I glimpsed myself in the bathroom mirror did the fear I'd been holding back hit me so hard again that it nearly swamped me.

My clothes were bloody and torn, nails broken and filthy, and the palms of my hands were scraped raw from scrabbling away from him. Or trying to; bruised, reddened finger marks around my ankle showed where he'd caught me. But my eyes were the same: wide, dark brown, seemingly as untroubled as before. My mouth, a thin pink line just like always, gave me hope as well.

Because it needed not to have happened, this nightmare more terrifying than any of Finny Brill's productions. It needed to be taken back, rewound like a horror film.

Not for Cam, of course. She was murdered, beyond my help. But for me, it had to be made so it wasn't real, and I had a bad feeling that this time, praying wouldn't do the trick.

Or any time, actually, from now on. Thinking this, I took a hot shower, then filled the bathtub and lay up to my chin in it for a long time, letting the hot water penetrate every sore fold and crevice. My father's Gillette razor blades were in the medicine cabinet, I knew, in a small flat dispenser, and it seemed clear to me that if I thought at all it would have to be about them.

So I didn't. Instead I soaked thoroughly, then soaped and soaped again, scrubbing until my skin pruned and the water began cooling. Shivering with misery I dried with a clean towel; then, in my own bed at last, I was asleep almost at once, falling into it with a final sob as if hurling myself off a cliff into the soft black nothingness.

Cam,
I thought as the darkness closed around me.
Gone.
And then,
Her mom's going to be so mad.

And after that I didn't think at all anymore.

B
earkill, Maine's only bar, Area 51, had a griddle, a deep-fat fryer, and a refrigerator—just enough to meet Maine's rules about food being available where alcohol was served.

Still, the burgers were decent, and to Lizzie's surprise it was already Wednesday noon. “An orderly got him out,” she said, repeating what the forensic hospital's security guy had told her.
A mistake.

After that conversation it had taken a couple of hours to get the word out to state and local cops, get a photograph of Gemerle, and start distributing more flyers. The rest of the morning had been taken up with paperwork.

“From what I can understand, the orderly either threatened or bribed another inmate to impersonate Henry Gemerle for just long enough to fool the rest of the staff,” she said now. “Not that it was difficult, I guess. It was after lights-out so the other inmate was just a shape in Gemerle's bed. And after that it took a while for them to realize they should call me.”

Trey Washburn's lips pursed thoughtfully. “So they thought the wrong guy was gone. And the orderly would do this why?”

Wearing his usual work uniform of Carharrt overalls, boots, and a denim jacket, the burly veterinarian hunched beside Lizzie at Area 51's long, polished wooden bar.

“You got me,” she replied. Why did people do any of the damn fool things they did, after all? Like her forgetting her date with Trey last night, for instance.

Now the smell of the french fryer floated unappetizingly from the bar's tiny kitchen, and she wasn't hungry anyway. But at the moment she felt lucky that Trey was still speaking to her, so she'd let him persuade her in here.

The TV over the bar showed a map of the state thickly dotted with blazing campfire icons.

“Anyone seen him?” Trey bit into his burger.

She shook her head. “Seems the orderly got him dressed up in a staff uniform and slipped him past security. Had an ID badge for him, too, they think. Here's his picture.”

She slid the eight-by-ten glossy fresh from her office printer down the bar's polished surface.

“Yeah, I see the problem.” Trey pushed the photo back. “Guy's got a normal haircut, regular features. Nothing weird looking.”

She nodded grimly, chewing. “Uh-huh. Trouble is he's not just anybody. He's a dangerous predator who's already victimized three women that we know of. And he's got at least one connection who's right here in Bearkill.”

There was no concrete reason to think Gemerle was on his way here. But she couldn't ignore the coincidence of Jane Crimmins, a close associate of one of his victims, arriving just as Tara Wylie, also a former New Haven resident, went missing.

“You talked to Peg about this yet?” Trey wanted to know.

The bright-blue eyes that met hers in the mirror behind the bar were smart and kind. She looked away, made shy suddenly by the directness of his gaze; since they'd first met he'd made no secret of how he felt about her.

“No, I haven't seen Peg today,” she replied finally. “State cops are with her right now making up for lost time, and after that DHHS wants a crack at her.”

The child welfare people always got involved when a kid went missing, which when it was a little one actually made sense. But when the missing kid was fourteen and the original theory was that she left on her boyfriend's motorbike, not so much.

“The boyfriend's still gone, too. Aaron DeWilde,” she said.

“What do you make of that?” He'd finished his burger and when she looked down she found that she'd eaten most of hers, too, plus all the fries.

“No idea. I'm going to the hospital when we're done here, to try to find out more.” By now Jane Crimmins's psych exam should be complete. “And then I'll head up to Cross Lake where the boyfriend lives, talk to his folks.”

She wasn't looking forward to it. “They've been watching a few too many cop shows,” she added, having spent time on the phone with them this morning.

Aaron's dad in particular seemed fully convinced that there was an FBI lab somewhere that could take a few unrelated bits of physical evidence, punch a set of data into a computer, and come up with the precise current location of a rural Maine kid.

“Listen,” she added, “I'm so sorry about last night. Leaving you in the lurch like that.”

“Yeah, well.” He brushed pale hair back from his forehead. “Things happen.” Then he grinned. “Or they happen when you're sweet on a cop, anyway. Want to try again tonight?”

The bar's TV switched to a live shot of racing flames just as a siren howled outside. Beyond Area 51's front window the haze had thickened noticeably again just since they'd come in here.

“What?” She dragged her mind back from the sudden mental picture of a girl dead in a ditch, surrounded by fire. Then:

“Sorry,” she said. “I can't tonight. I need another raincheck. With plenty of rain to go with it, if possible.”

Trey was the kind of guy who could spend all day wrestling large farm animals into swallowing medicine and holding still for shots, then go home and do miracles with kitchen implements she had only seen used in fancy restaurants: copper whisking bowls and long-handled sauté skillets.

And on top of that, he understood the unpredictable hours of cop work. His own didn't follow a set-in-stone schedule, either.

“Just until this is over,” she added. Trey nodded agreeably. Really, it was too bad that agreeable wasn't all she wanted.

Really too bad. Out on the sidewalk she watched Trey's pickup truck pull away. The wood-frame buildings of downtown cast bluish shadows as the winter sun, already more than halfway through its short winter arc, fell behind the high hills to the west.

In the office Missy Brantwell looked up. “Peg Wylie stopped in with more pictures.”

They spread across Lizzie's desk: Tara riding a bike, flying along no-hands with her arms spread wide and her eyes as bright as stars. Carving a pumpkin, up to her elbows in it.

“So d'you think she's okay?” asked Missy.

“I don't know.” Lizzie sank into her chair. Once upon a time the only predators you had to worry about were the ones who could physically get to the kids. But with computers, an entirely new category of slimeballs was on the rise.

In Boston a few weeks before Lizzie's last day there, a girl of twelve had been found boarding a flight to Brazil. It turned out that a registered sex offender posing as a sixteen-year-old from Rio de Janeiro had bought her the ticket.

“State cops took Tara's laptop this morning,” Missy added. “Maybe they'll still get something off that.”

But Lizzie didn't think so. An online predator could have deleted his or her Facebook profile by now. If Tara hadn't already cried wolf a few times, the investigation might've begun in time to catch something like that. But Tara had used up all her get-looked-for-right-away cards by running off twice before.

“Uh-oh,” said Missy suddenly. Following her assistant's gaze, Lizzie watched a fragment of flaming ash spiral down outside.

“Get your stuff,” Missy snapped. Grabbing her purse, she slammed her desk shut and locked it. Lizzie snatched her own bag, too, and all the Tara photos, plus her personal weapon.

Because the early part of a case always felt like wading through molasses, and if you came upon something as you slogged forward, who knew what it might be? Two firearms—her duty weapon and her personal piece—could end up being laughably too many…or not enough.

Outside, Missy locked the door as more ash floated down.

“Jeffrey at daycare?” He was Missy's little boy. Lizzie slid her work gun into her duty belt and snapped the safety strap, put her personal weapon into her bag.

“Yeah. I'm going to the daycare to check on him. Probably this is nothing,” Missy said, “but…”

But no one else thought so. Up and down the street people were shutting up shop and heading for their cars or standing on the sidewalk, gazing unhappily into the blue sky.

Blue except for the ash falling out of it. Another flaming fragment swirled to the sidewalk; Lizzie scuffed it out with her boot as a sick orange glow flared in the west.

“A ridgeline flamed up. They'll do that,” diagnosed Missy. “Sulk and smolder out there in the puckerbrush, and then—”

“There's a plan, though, right? I mean, if a fire does get going here in town?”

Missy grimaced. “An
evacuation
plan, yeah. Anything starts burning here, this whole place is gonna go up like a bonfire,” she finished, getting into her car.

As Missy drove off, Lizzie's cell phone trilled. “Hey, it's me, Dylan.”

She turned her back on the western horizon, where the sight of a line of evergreen trees behaving like turpentine-soaked torches unnerved her more than she liked admitting, even to herself.

“Where are you?” A helicopter whap-whapped overhead, laden with firefighting chemicals, the heavy beat of its rotors blocking out Dylan's voice for a moment.

“…Augusta,” Dylan replied. “Listen, that Crimmins woman? The one from last night…have you seen her yet today? And is she by any chance talking about an escaped inmate? Because I just got a call from…”

He named the security guy at the Salisbury Forensic Institute, the one she'd spoken to, also. “You talked to him about a perp named…how do you pronounce it, again?”