Next Girl to Die

by Dea Poirier

  “There appears to be blood all over the inside of it and down the side of the hull.”

  “Is there a body?”

  “Not that we saw, no, ma’am.”

  Just because they didn’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not there, unfortunately. He gives me the coordinates. I’m going to have to use the station boat to head over there.

  My heart pounds, and my mouth goes dry. Thoughts swarm in my mind, clotting together. Is it the same killer? Was it someone from our island on that boat? Whose blood is it? No one else has been reported missing. Bile floods my mouth. I clench my fist, cutting half moons into my palm.

  The second I hang up the phone, Noah takes a step closer. “Is everything all right?” His brows are furrowed, and concern swims in his eyes.

  I shake my head. “The coast guard found a boat we’re looking for off the coast.” A shiver creeps up my spine. Though the coast guard didn’t find one, I have to wonder if there’s a body in or near that boat. All the murders I dealt with in Detroit were revenge, gang violence, or crimes of passion. Honestly, those are easier to deal with. They’re cut and dried. A serial killer is a whole new ball game. I want to bag this motherfucker, but a thought nags at the back of my mind. Am I even capable of finding this guy? Sure, most serials get sloppy, and that’s how they get caught. But for that to happen, more girls have to die. That idea is enough to turn my stomach.

  “Are you okay?” he asks as he cups my cheek. “You’re really pale.” His thumb brushes against my cheekbone, the gentle caress grounding me.

  “I’m floundering. I should have something by now—a hunch, a thread—something should point me in the right direction. There isn’t a single lead that’s taking us anywhere right now.” With every word, I expel some of the weight piling up around me. I’m so used to bottling things up that I forget how good it can be to purge some of the toxic thoughts I have swimming in my head.

  “You’re being way too hard on yourself. Do you have any idea how many murders go unsolved every year?”

  “One-third.” I remember the figure from a test in college. I don’t give a shit what the averages are. What’s good enough for other precincts isn’t good enough for me. Having cases go unsolved for years would eat away at me. Maybe that’s why I focused on working homicides where things were pretty clear cut—or maybe before now I’ve gotten lucky.

  “Correct,” he says with a smile. “I believe in you. I know you can do this. I don’t think you’re ever going to see yourself as part of that one-third, but if you don’t give yourself a little bit of a break here, you’re going to drive yourself insane before you get a chance to solve this.”

  “Thank you. I needed that,” I say as I sigh.

  This is a side of Noah I didn’t expect. Not that I mind.

  Noah heads back to the hotel as I call the CSI team and coordinate for them to meet me at the cove. Though I don’t know what we’ll find out there, we need to process this as a crime scene.

  Low gray clouds roll across the sky, warning that rain or snow might be closing in. I need to get to the cove where they found the boat fast, before any evidence washes away. Back at the station, I grab Jason, a tarp, and the keys to the boat. While Jason drives the boat over the choppy waters, I keep an eye out for other boats, scanning the sprawl before us intently. We cross the open water, Vinalhaven shrinking behind us before being swallowed entirely by the gray mist filling the bay. It takes fifteen minutes to start closing in on the cove, and the whole time, my nerves gnaw at me. The moment the cove appears in the distance, my heart starts to gallop, and a few fat drops of freezing rain land on my arms, warning me we’ve only got minutes to preserve evidence.

  These aren’t ideal conditions for a crime scene. The evidence has already been exposed to the elements. Some of it could have washed away. But my plan is to set up the tarp over the boat to at least protect what we can until the CSI team gets here. Jason and I pull the boat up and tie it to the small dock on the cove. During the summer, some of the tourists who journey to Vinalhaven for small-town charm and to get away from it all end up at this cove. It’s a great beach when the weather is warm. In the off-season some of the high schoolers come out here to party. The beer bottles that lie half-swallowed by the sand are evidence that’s still true.

  My feet sink in the wet sand as I walk toward the large fishing boat with School Marmalade painted on the side. Jason and I work quickly to put the tarp over it. When the coast guard mentioned blood, I wasn’t sure what to expect. There’s brown smeared all over the floor in a few spots, and there are smeared handprints, too large to be from Madeline or Emma. I lean in for a closer look, trying to discern if we could get fingerprints from this evidence, but they’re too smudged. We won’t be able to get anything from these. Is this where the killer was cutting flesh from the victims?

  After we’ve got the tarp set up, we take some photos of the scene. And I notice something odd. Near the steering wheel, there’s a floral backpack shoved under the controls. The pattern looks familiar, but it takes me a minute to place it. It looks similar to the pattern that Madeline had on her shoes. I won’t be able to check the bag until after CSI gets here to take in all the evidence. Jason and I take photos as the rain pelts the tarp. About thirty minutes after we arrive, the CSI team pulls up in their boat.

  We hang back as they catalog the scene, take swabs and photos, and gather all the evidence they can. They unzip the backpack and sift through the things inside. I flip through a notebook once CSI is done with it, sift through some papers, and it becomes clear the backpack belonged to Emma Carver.

  After the CSI team is done, I head back to the station with Jason. As we pass through the doors, he says, “Allen sent me the interviews for the rest of the choir girls you requested. If you don’t need me here for the boat, I’ll finish the rest of those.”

  It annoys me that Allen blew off his assignment, but I’ll let it go for now; I have something more pressing. I need to talk to Sergeant Michaels about Paul’s boat. No matter what Paul might say, finding his boat covered in blood doesn’t look good.

  I rap my knuckles lightly on Sergeant Michaels’s door and offer him a pained smile as I peek my head in. Over the stacks of folders, it’s clear he had an accident with a cup of coffee this morning but hasn’t bothered to change his shirt. A trail of brown circles in varying sizes leads down the front of his yellow button-up. I give him a rundown of what we found at the cove.

  “There’s not enough here to arrest him. But I could go to his place to ask him a few questions,” I offer.

  He steeples his fingers on top of the desk. “It’s going to be a week at least until we have the forensics back on the boat. Even then, it’s not going to be enough to pin it on him, since he reported it missing,” he explains, like I didn’t know all that. “We have to be careful how we handle this since it’s Mayor Clark’s brother. I think it’s best if you talk to him at his house; that way it’s not going to come off like he’s a suspect. We can’t afford to raise any red flags for him if he knows what happened.”

  “Are there any other reasons he might be looked at that I don’t know about?” I ask.

  He points toward the door. “Shut that.” Once I’ve shut the door, he continues. “Three girls have made allegations against him, but they all ended up recanting. Without evidence or a confession, there isn’t much we can do.”

  “Allegations of what, exactly?” My stomach shifts, and I swear I know what’s coming.

  He clears his throat and leans closer to the desk. “Sexual assault. The girls said he raped them. But they changed their stories.”

  “They recanted?”

  He nods. “And afterward they all left the island,” he explains.

  Did they really leave? Or did they end up dead? The Jane Does Noah told me about linger in the back of my mind.

  “Who were they? Do you have files on them?”

  He shakes his head. “That outage about six months ago. Wiped out everything we didn’t h
ave paper copies of. And apparently our backups weren’t working properly.”

  “Perfect,” I mutter to myself. Is this really bad police work, or is this something else? “Do you have their names at least so I can look them up?” Heat flares under my skin, and my pulse pounds in my ears. I clench my fists against the thoughts raging in my mind.

  “I’ll look through my files to see if I have them written somewhere.”

  Everyone knows everyone here. How could he not know their names? All of this is adding up to spell something really bad.

  “I’ll stop by today to ask Paul some questions.”

  His eyes narrow. I hold up my hand, because I know what he’s thinking. “I know. I’ll be careful about what I ask,” I say before he gets a chance to warn me.

  Clouds blanket the sky when I leave the station. I timed it so Paul should be out of school and back home. The air is crisp, the way it always is before it snows. The only snow so far this year was the night Madeline died. I hop in my car and snake my way up the long winding roads of the island. My phone vibrates in my pocket as I pull in front of Paul’s house. I sit in my car and finish my coffee, letting my nerves settle before I head to the door. I grab my keys from the ignition, throw open the door, and walk up the path to Paul’s house. I have to keep knocking for a while, and by the time he answers, I’ve almost given up.

  Paul eyes me up and down, making my skin crawl. He tightens his robe around himself, plaid pajama pants sticking out from the bottom. “Sorry, you’ve caught me relaxing after a long day. It’s good to see you, Claire,” he says without an ounce of sincerity to his words. “What do you need?”

  “I’m very sorry to hear about your niece. How are you holding up?” I ask. I’ve never been great with my bedside manner, so to speak, but I want to be as compassionate here as I can—before I have to ask him about the boat, anyway.

  He gives me a smile that looks forced. “As well as can be expected, I suppose. My brother and I aren’t incredibly close, but the loss has been very hard on him. We’ll all miss Madeline. But I’m sure you didn’t come over here just to talk about that.”

  “I was hoping I could talk to you for a few minutes about your boat,” I explain and take a step toward the door. I’m not going to give him a chance to say no.

  “Of course.” He waves me inside, and we take a seat in his living room. “Did you find it?”

  “Yes, we did. That’s what I’m here to talk to you about.” I look down, taking a moment to gather my thoughts. “We found your boat in Arey Cove. We’ve had to take it in as evidence,” I explain.

  “Evidence? Why?” he asks, and I have to give it to him—he does seem genuinely baffled. But I still don’t buy it. Being in the same room with him makes my skin crawl. I’ve always felt something off about Paul, and now I know what it is. Beneath that calm demeanor lurks a predator. If he’s been assaulting girls on this island and silencing them, I have to ask myself, What else is he capable of?

  “It’s clear a crime was committed on the boat,” I say. And that’s all the information I’m willing to give him. I need to know if he’s involved in this or if someone really stole it. “Can you tell me again about the last time you used your boat?” I ask without skipping a beat.

  His eyes narrow, and he looks away, staring off into the distance. For a long time, he says nothing, and then he scratches his cheek when he looks back at me. “I can’t remember. It’s been a while. I think the last person who used it was Madeline; sometimes she and Emma would borrow it, go out on the water.”

  “Weren’t they a little young to be out on the water alone in a boat?” I ask as I quirk my eyebrow. Though I saw it plenty when I was growing up, you’ve got to be sixteen years old now to operate a boat, and you have to complete a course to get a card to drive one. Even with that, most people don’t want to turn their boats over to sixteen-year-olds.

  He shrugs. “They had sea legs just like everyone else on this island.”

  “What did they use it for?”

  “Just relaxing with friends on the water.” He clears his throat as soon as he’s done speaking and crosses his legs.

  So was that the boat in the background of the pictures that Noah showed me?

  “Do you think they would take your boat without permission?” I ask.

  He shakes his head. “I don’t see why. I’ve always let them use it whenever they wanted.”

  “Did either of the girls ever leave anything on the boat while they were using it?”

  He crosses his arms and furrows his brow. “Yeah, now and then.”

  “How well did you know Emma Carver?”

  He looks toward the windows and picks at his left knuckle. “She took driver’s ed with me a few months ago.” Just as I finish making a note of that, he adds, “I’ve taught driver’s ed to nearly every kid on this island.”

  “Is there anything else that you think could help?”

  He shakes his head. “If I can think of anything, I’ll be sure to let you know,” he says as he stands up, signaling our conversation is over. Paul rushes me out. I get the impression he’s got no interest in helping. If my boat had disappeared and the police were investigating a murder, I’d have a million questions. I’d be doing everything I could to help the cops.

  After talking to Paul, I spend most of my day downtown, checking in with the shop owners and combing the park again. Being in the park, standing in the spot where Rachel, Emma, and Madeline were found, makes a bad feeling slither beneath my skin. Even though this isn’t where they’re buried, it’s their final resting place. I can still feel them here. Before I sweep back through Main Street toward the station, I pop back into the café to see if Morgan has the security footage from the night of Emma’s murder. As soon as I ask, she grabs the SD cards for me and hands them over.

  I shove them into my coat pocket and head back out onto Main Street. Downtown is nearly empty as I cross the street back to the station. Mindy smiles at me as I throw the front door open and walk back toward my office. When I pop the first SD card into the computer, it chimes in response. It takes a few moments for the files to appear, broken up into one-hour increments. It’s likely that Emma died between eleven p.m. and three a.m. based on what we know.

  The first icon I click on is for ten to eleven that night. As before, the angle faces down Main Street toward my rental. The hotel and the police station sit behind the camera, out of view. Most of the cars are already gone from the sides of the darkened streets of downtown. At around ten thirty Morgan locks the café and walks to her car. But nothing else. I click to the next video, from eleven to midnight. A few fishermen stroll down the street toward the Sand Bar; one diverges, crossing the street to see if one of the other restaurants is open, before returning to his group. I move to the next video. At 12:13 a.m. Emma strolls down the street, her hands shoved in the pockets of her dark coat. She stops about ten feet from the camera and glances back over her shoulder, like someone might be following her. But from this angle, I can’t see anything. She continues walking a moment later, passing out of view, and a figure emerges at the end of the street, cloaked in shadows. The figure is wide, tall, definitely a man. My heart pounds as I move to the next video, but he’s gone. He never walked past the camera.

  I may not know who he is—it’s impossible to tell—but my gut tells me that’s him. That’s Emma’s killer.

  CHAPTER 19

  The next morning, I walk into the station with a box of muffins and a coffee for each of the guys. When I get in, Jason’s already at his desk, typing away. In all the years that I’ve worked in law enforcement, he’s one of the few people I’ve encountered who actually make it to the office before I do. Hell, from what I know about the guy so far, I’m not sure he ever actually sleeps.

  “Morning,” I say as I hand him a coffee.

  “Donuts?” he asks as he glances at the box.

  “Muffins.” I set the box down and take a sip of my coffee.

  “Thank God. With a
ll the donuts around here, I feel like I’m sweating frosting.”

  I dig in my bag and pull out a printout of the man from the surveillance video last night. It’s a blurred mess. The chances we can get anything out of this are pretty slim, but we have to try.

  “I know it’s a long shot, but could you take a look at this, maybe ask some of the fishermen if they saw this guy the night of Emma’s murder around midnight?” I ask.

  He takes the paper from me and scrutinizes it. “I’ll try, but I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

  “Thanks,” I say as I start to turn toward my office.

  “Oh, Claire,” he says, and I turn to face him again. “I conducted some of the interviews with the girls from the choir, and two heard the argument between your mother and Emma. Both think Madeline may have been there as well.”

  “And?”

  “Jenna Arey said that your mother was mad at Emma because she had told Father Samuel that your mother treated them poorly. But your mother also yelled at Madeline and Emma because she thought they’d stolen money from her purse.”

  Stealing from her purse? I could see how that would get a rise out of my mother. She will not abide being disrespected. My mind reels as I try to figure out what role—if any—she could have played in this. “Thank you, Jason. I’m going to give her a call. Please let me know if you find anything else.” I head back to my office. There’s a voice mail waiting for me, a doctor from the hospital notifying me that it’ll be at least a week before I can talk to Ryder. Though I’m frustrated about the holdup, there’s nothing I can do about it.

  I call my mother while debating if I should just show up at her house—I really don’t have time for that today, though. She picks up on the third ring.

  “Hello, Claire,” she says in a distant tone, like she could just be speaking to a gardener or a stray cat.

  I don’t have time to draw this out, so I cut right to the chase. If I surprise her, she’s much less likely to lie to me. “What do you think Emma and Madeline stole from you?”