Next Girl to Die

by Dea Poirier

  I go over more of the details I was too rushed to cover during the first call.

  “We found a can of gas a few streets over. We think it was related. But we didn’t find anyone trying to get away from the fire. Don’t you worry, though—we’re going to figure out who did this.”

  CHAPTER 12

  August 2004

  A warm glow seeps out from beneath Rachel’s door, lighting my path in the dark hall. Behind me, snores echo, and I wonder for the three millionth time how my mother can sleep through it. I turn the handle slowly—not that Rachel would notice; she’s always got her headphones on. She bobs along to a song I can’t hear, her long blonde hair dancing across her back. Though it’s eleven o’clock at night, she’s still dressed—or, I should say, dressed again. She changed into pajamas for our parents’ benefit. Now she’s all gussied up to sneak out, like she does almost every night. Rachel’s second life, the one she leads after they go to sleep, would give them a heart attack. This second version of Rachel, the one who only exists after she sneaks out the window and crawls down from the second floor, has a different wardrobe, different friends, and a different attitude.

  They’ll never know that, though, because I’m not going to tell them, and if Rachel’s history is any indication, they’ll never find out.

  She pulls on socks, and I glimpse something on her ankle, something I’ve never seen before. I slip inside and shut the door behind me. Rachel jumps nearly a foot in the air, then glares at me as she clutches her heart. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?” she asks, a sharp edge to her voice.

  “What’s on your ankle?” I ask, crossing my arms as I lean against the door. There’s nowhere she can go to avoid the question.

  “None-ya,” she says as she pops her gum at me and throws her iPod on the bed.

  “Don’t be a bitch,” I say. I’m sick of her acting like we’re on separate teams. For years, we were best friends, and then suddenly, it was like I was a leper or something. Everything changed after Rachel turned twelve. Before that, Dad said we were as thick as thieves, and honestly, we were. Rachel told me everything. I knew about her friends, the rumors spreading about the middle school girls. Hell, I giggled with her when she told me about her first kiss with Scott Walker. I’d talked my dad into getting us walkie-talkies so we could keep talking even when we were in our rooms. I got them for my tenth birthday. Rachel and I used them every day, until one day she turned hers off. I kept mine on, waiting, hoping she’d start whispering midnight secrets to me again. When the batteries went dead, I gave up on the walkie-talkies—but I never gave up on the idea that Rachel might share her secrets with me again.

  And eventually she did.

  The first secret Rachel shared with me: she’d been shoplifting from all the stores downtown and was desperate to show me her stash. She bribed me to not tell Mom by letting me pick out anything I wanted. I chose a bracelet that I knew came from Mrs. Taylor’s shop. I felt so bad about it that the next day, I went in the store and dropped it in the back. For the next few weeks, I took small things from her stash and returned them to where she’d taken them from. If she ever noticed, she never said a word to me about it.

  “Don’t be a narc,” she says, her words almost a question.

  “You know I’m not going to say anything.” I try to keep my words even, though it bothers me that she doesn’t trust me at all. I’ve kept a thousand of her secrets.

  She looks away and furrows her brow, like she’s trying to decide if it’s a good idea or not. Finally, she tugs up her pant leg, revealing a crudely drawn cross tattoo. It’s obvious it’s a real tattoo, not just marker; the edges are red and crusty.

  “When the hell did you get that?” I ask. I know people have tons of tattoos in New York and LA, but here, the only people who have tattoos are the fishermen. They’ve all got sparrows, naked ladies, anchors, you name it. Our mom made it clear, though, that tattoos aren’t for those of us who belong on the island. A tattoo brands you as an outsider.

  “I might have skipped class with some friends and gone to Bangor,” she says with a wry grin as she brushes the hair off her shoulder.

  I roll my eyes at her. “How the hell did you manage that without Mom finding out? She’d know what I was up to before I even stepped on the ferry.” I plop down on the end of the bed and fold my left leg beneath me.

  Rachel always has a way to get what she wants. She wants to skip class? She’ll talk a teacher into giving her the hour off for some insane reason. Hell, I’m sure she could have talked our mom into taking her to get that tattoo, if she’d wanted. Of course, she didn’t, though. Getting away with things Mom doesn’t know about fuels her. All she’s ever done is test Mom’s patience. Some days, I think that’s what she lives for. She’s talked Mom into letting her skip class, giving her money, giving her a car on her sixteenth birthday. I don’t test Mom like that because I know there’s a shark lingering beneath the surface.

  “We didn’t take the ferry. Cameron’s mom has a boat, so we took it.” Her voice tells me it’s not the first time they’ve done it, and her grin goes from wry to downright devilish.

  “One day, you’re going to get caught,” I warn her.

  “Not today, though.” She slides off the bed. After brushing the curtain away from the window, she looks down into the backyard.

  “Where are you going?” I ask.

  “To the park, meeting up with some people from class to drink, hang out.”

  “So there’s no one in particular you’re going there to meet?” I ask pointedly. There have been rumors running rampant at school about Rachel hooking up with someone, but no one knows who. Rachel is a flaunter; she’s not the type to hide a boyfriend. If she’s started, that scares me.

  Her face falls, like I’ve stumbled on something she doesn’t like. Maybe she didn’t expect me to figure it out. “No, there’s not,” she snaps after a few seconds too long. “I’ve got to go,” she says as she slides the window open. She disappears into the night. After I count to a hundred, I follow down after her.

  Though darkness shrouds me, and Rachel is nowhere to be seen, every crunch of dried leaves beneath my feet threatens to give me away or send my pounding heart straight through my chest.

  A swift, cool wind cuts through the backyard and makes me wish I’d put on a heavier coat. I pull my hoodie closer, hoping it will help. I jog across the dark lawn, a moonless sky above me, and skirt the streetlights on my way to the small park where my sister usually meets her friends. This time of night, this far from downtown, her friends don’t have to worry about being found. They’re loud, but they haven’t been caught yet.

  The park is quiet and empty when I peek through the trees ringing the small playground. Next to the swing set, beneath the awning-covered park benches, I make out the shadowy figure of my sister and someone across from her. I weave between the trees, watching, staying out of view as I try to see who she’s with. It isn’t until they leave together, hand in hand, that I see she’s with the one guy in town she shouldn’t be with. If my mom saw, she’d kill them both.

  I lie awake in bed, the memory burning in the back of my mind. It’s a night that would have faded away in time, a night of little consequence. That is, if Rachel hadn’t died.

  I pull myself out of bed and throw on clothes for work. It’s too early to go in—the sun isn’t even up—but I’m too keyed up to even think about getting another minute of sleep.

  I grab Rachel’s file from its hiding place and tuck it into my bag. I still haven’t been able to bring myself to look at it, but today I’ll have to bite the bullet.

  I drive the few minutes to the station. Several men in bulky jackets stroll toward the marina, getting ready to start their day on the boats. As I slide out of the car, I wave to Frank Miller, the town boat mechanic. Frank has a little shop off the marina. He hobbles a bit as he walks, though he doesn’t look old enough to hobble. My mom mentioned something about Frank having cancer, and I wonder if this limp
has anything to do with it. He offers me a half wave and heads on foot to the docks. I fish my keys out of my pocket and unlock the station door. Icicles hang off the edges of the roof, producing a drip, drip, drip as they melt into puddles that gather along the edges of the building. The shadow of a large oak tree dances across the side of the station like skeletal arms reaching across the facade.

  The fluorescent lights buzz above my head, and I lock the door behind me. It’ll be a few hours at least before anyone else gets into the station. I need to go take a look at Madeline’s body, but to do that, I’ll have to see which medical examiner’s office we use on the mainland. It takes some digging through files, but I find the address in the paperwork. The ME is two hours away in Augusta.

  My stomach churns with unease, and sweat prickles the back of my neck. There are enough similarities between Rachel’s, Emma’s, and Madeline’s deaths that I can’t ignore the connections. But talking to the ME will tell me how many there really are. After the sergeant finally gets into the office, I inform him of my plans. Sergeant Michaels tells me that he sent Jason to the burned-out store yesterday. All that was left was a smoldering shell. Though the cabinets didn’t burn, all the files inside were destroyed. Jason wasn’t able to find a single screw, and the windowsill was wiped clean.

  With the questions about who could be responsible in the back of my mind, I pull out of the station and drive down the street to the ferry. I’ve got fifteen minutes to kill until the boat arrives. There’s a line of six cars waiting, and I pull in behind them.

  The ferry churns slowly across the bay. I know if I don’t look at the file now, I won’t be able to until I get to the ME’s office. My stomach tightens as my fingers brush the folder. Part of me doesn’t want to see inside. It’s something I never wanted to face. Hell, it’s something I thought I’d never have to look at. For six months after Rachel died, I honed my skills at tuning out anytime someone talked about her. I just couldn’t stomach it. After that, I tried to ask my mom about it, my dad, but every time I was told that we didn’t talk about that anymore. I wanted answers; I wanted to know what had really happened to my sister. But everyone treated me like I was too delicate, like I couldn’t handle it. What I couldn’t handle was pretending like she’d never existed.

  I take a deep breath to settle my nerves, but it does nothing to uncoil the anxiety wound inside me. Carefully, I open the folder, as if I’m afraid jostling it too much might trigger something. A picture of Rachel’s lifeless body lies on top, as though warning me about the other horrors waiting inside. It’s different seeing her laid out like this, her neck purple, her lips blue. She’s so pale that she’s nearly the color of the fresh blanket of snow beneath her. All at once, the breath goes out of me. I knew what had happened to her, but I’ve never seen the pictures—I’ve never had the evidence scattered across my lap. My stomach bottoms out, and a bolt of pain hits my heart. I look away and catch my breath. I’m not sure this is something I can compartmentalize, but I’ve got to try. Her body is laid—no, posed—exactly like Madeline and Emma. The folder is as heavy as it would be if her body were laid across me. I’ve seen pictures like this a thousand times, victims, cases I had to solve—but this is different. This is my sister.

  I flip the pictures over and thumb through the police report. Strangled to death. In most cases like this, it’d be a ligature strangulation—a clothesline, a rope—but these girls were strangled with someone’s bare hands.

  There’s something that sticks out about the file. There’s no list of suspects, no interviews. Maybe it’s because they didn’t have any suspects. It’s still highly unusual for a file to not have interviews. No interviews, no suspects—and the ME’s report seems far too light. The full autopsy isn’t here, just a few of the details. There are notes about some of the investigation details: where she was found, when, concerns about Rachel, details that were withheld from the media. There’s a note toward the end of the file that the time of Rachel’s death—between eleven p.m. and one a.m.—was kept as holdback information, along with the fact that flesh was removed from her ankle. A wave of nausea crawls its way up from the pit of my stomach. All I can see in my mind is someone peeling away the flesh, the tattoo from my sister’s ankle, blood blooming from her pale skin as they cut the flap away. I clench my fists, waiting for the wave to pass. I can’t let this get the best of me. I won’t.

  I can’t imagine that these girls could have made someone angry enough to do this to them. Everyone loved Rachel; she rarely even got into spats at school. No one on the island hated her enough to do this to her.

  The ferry pulls into the dock, and I take one last look at the file before tucking it away. I drive the car off as soon as I’m waved on. It takes an hour and a half through the winding roads to reach Augusta and the office of the medical examiner.

  I pull in to the nearly empty parking lot and shut off my GPS. Three deep breaths later, I finally feel settled enough to get out of the car. It might be in my job description to march in there and look over the body—but that doesn’t make it easy. I force myself out of the car, gripping the door a little too hard before I slam it. Turning toward the building, I take it all in. The Maine State Police crime lab is a small brick building off Hospital Street. The door is a cheery shade of blue, as if it might distract anyone from the building’s grim contents. As far as these places go, the office is tiny. The ME’s office in Detroit was four times the size of this one.

  The lobby looks like it could double as a dentist’s office. Uncomfortable-looking plastic chairs line the walls, and a receptionist sits behind a waxy wooden desk. After showing her my badge and signing in, I wait for the medical examiner to collect me. The air is sharp with chemicals, but it still manages to smell vaguely stale, bottled.

  A tall woman in a white lab coat strolls through the double doors and glowers over her glasses at me. She looks frazzled, like she doesn’t even have time to breathe. The thick lines on her wide face make it look like she hasn’t smiled in a long time—not that I blame her. I’m not sure how often I’d smile if I had to cut up murder victims all day. She’s got dim green eyes, the kind of eyes that have no life left behind in them, no spark. I guess everyone here is dead.

  “Detective Calderwood?” she asks, as if she’s skeptical I’m actually a detective. I take no offense to it, though. It’s not the first time it’s happened. My first sergeant told me I looked like I should be teaching preschool. There’s nothing about me that screams intimidating like most of the others I encounter on the force. I’ve considered dyeing my hair brown a thousand times so people will take me seriously, but I know it won’t do me much good. I’d need to grow a dick for the guys on the force to see me as a real cop.

  I hold my hand out to shake hers. She has a firm grip and papery, delicate skin. Her hands are covered in powder, the result of wearing latex gloves all day. I expect her hands to be cold, a symptom of working in a morgue, but they’re surprisingly warm.

  “Dr. Sabrina White,” she says as she nods at me.

  “Dr. White, I’m here to see the body of Madeline Clark and pick up her autopsy report,” I say as she leads me down a long hallway lined with doors. We pass labs filled with technicians and head down to the morgue.

  “You’re not new to bodies, are you?” she asks as she peers at me over her shoulder. With the way she looks at me, she must think I’m sixteen.

  “No, ma’am. I’m originally from Detroit PD,” I explain.

  She chuckles. “Ah, so you’ve seen more bodies than I have.”

  “Probably not that many.” I’ve seen quite a few, but I doubt it compares to what any ME has seen.

  Three metal tables stand empty in the middle of the morgue. The mixture of antiseptic and alcohol in the air prickles in the back of my throat. One of the guys I made friends with at the Detroit ME’s office told me they do that on purpose to stifle the stench of some of the riper corpses. Though I’ve got a jacket and a long-sleeved shirt on, the cold creeps beneath
my clothes and settles under my skin.

  Dr. White walks along a wall filled with small metal doors and slides the body out. “Do you need her on a table?” she asks.

  “Sliding her out is enough.” I step closer once she walks across the room to grab a clipboard.

  She flips through the pages, then reads, “Five foot two, ninety-five pounds, COD manual strangulation,” she rattles off.

  “Any thoughts on time of death?”

  “Most likely between ten p.m. and two a.m.,” she says as she flips to the first page.

  All the similarities are enough to make the back of my neck prickle. I brush my hand along it, trying to smother the feeling. It does me no good. What if the person I’m after is Rachel’s killer? I never thought I’d have the opportunity to hunt down her murderer. The thought overwhelms me, tightening my throat. I’ve always hoped that somehow they’d track down Rachel’s killer. But bringing him in myself? I’m not sure I could arrest him and not seize the opportunity to snuff out the bastard myself. I want justice for her and justice for me. My entire life has been defined by my sister—or the absence of her. Maybe with this I can finally be set free.

  “Anything else?”

  “There was a four-inch-square incision made on her back, removing a strip of flesh there entirely,” she explains, flipping through the pages. “There are pictures, if you want to see.”

  I know immediately what it was; Madeline told me about the tattoo she shared with Emma. The idea of the killer cutting flesh from these girls makes me queasy. “Was the flesh cut off pre- or postmortem?” For Rachel’s sake, I hope it was post.

  “Post,” she says.

  Deep down my instinct says the killer is keeping the flesh as a trophy—sick bastard. “Was she sexually assaulted?” I ask, though at the scene it didn’t look like she had been.

  “No. There are no signs of assault. She was around fourteen weeks pregnant, though.”

  My heart nearly stops. Madeline was pregnant? Is this serial killer hunting teenage mothers?