Next Girl to Die

by Dea Poirier

  How long has she been in the water?

  The hoodie she’s wearing leads me to believe it’s been a while. It’s not thick enough for how cold it’s been lately, but there’s no telling until the ME takes a look. Even then, pinpointing this might be dicey. It’s cold enough in the bay to preserve a body perfectly.

  “She looks just like the other girls,” Jason says as he stands over her crumpled body, the water slowly lapping against her cheek. She may look similar, but none of us know this victim.

  Rachel, Madeline, Emma, Piper, all these girls—they all look exactly alike.

  It takes a couple of hours for the CSI team to get the body. We take turns sitting in the car to warm ourselves up until they finally take her away. The CSI team warned me that there’s likely no evidence left on the body, but the ME might be able to give us an estimated amount of time she was in the water. Jason and Sergeant Michaels seem to think there’s no hope with this one, that there’s no chance of recovering any clues—the case is starting to wear them down. But as their hope fades, the fury inside me grows. I won’t give up.

  I get a call from the CSI lab in Augusta. It’s the analyst who’s been assigned to the info about the Jane Does I sent over.

  “I went through the dental records you sent over and looked at the database. We were able to match two.”

  I only sent over three sets: two of the missing girls my grandmother mentioned and another Carver girl. “Which girls matched?”

  “Camille Norton and Vera Arey.”

  The dates they left the island were 1988 and 1980. Vera must have been related to Jenna’s father. It’s no wonder that no one really thought much of these girls running away in the eighties. Back then it happened all the time. I finish taking down the details from the analyst and ask him to email the data to me. Then I cross the hall to Sergeant Michaels’s office.

  “We need to talk.” I shut the door.

  “What’s up?” he asks and takes a long sip of his coffee.

  I need to be careful how I phrase this, because an accusation like this is pretty serious. But so far, there’s no other conclusion I can draw. These girls had family, friends who checked up on them. And in every single case, Sheriff Dyer assured these families that the girls were fine.

  “I’ve been looking into the Jane Doe database and the girls that seem to keep running away from the island.”

  He sits back and crosses his arms.

  “We’ve had a few matches come up,” I explain and read him off the names and dates I’ve got so far. “I’ve confirmed with the ME that she notified Sheriff Dyer of each of these Jane Does when they came in. He looked at each of the bodies, and every time he said they weren’t from Vinalhaven. Several parents of these girls eventually came to the station and told him that their daughters had run away or disappeared. He relayed information to the families that the girls were fine.” I pause to gather my thoughts.

  “He went to see these Jane Does?”

  I nod. “The old ME confirmed it.”

  “Were they in a state of advanced decomposition?”

  “No. I’ve seen pictures of these women. If he knew them, there’s no reason he shouldn’t have been able to identify them.”

  If Sheriff Dyer were still alive, my hunch would be that he was involved in all these deaths. So are these new killings a copycat after all?

  He looks down at the desk, as if grasping for what to say.

  “Did you know anything about these girls back then?”

  “I’m sure I did. But kids always leave the island. Some eventually come back. They need to get it out of their system,” he explains. “There’s an officer up in Belmont who used to work with Sheriff Dyer,” he says as he writes an address down for me. “Mack Carver. You might want to talk to him, and if he doesn’t give you anything, talk to Frank.”

  “Thank you.” It means a lot that it’s clear Sergeant Michaels sees this as my investigation. In Detroit, it was such a big force that sometimes people would get in your way, question your perp. If he wanted, Sergeant Michaels could step in and question this guy. But him trusting me to keep going when I could expose a much uglier side of this than we ever imagined—it boosts my confidence.

  “I’ll give him a heads-up you’ll be calling.”

  I say my thanks. And before I leave, I remember the other thing I’d planned to talk to Sergeant Michaels about. “We need to start a nightly rotation of patrols on the water. We know this guy is out there on a boat, taking the girls out there. If we’re patrolling the water, we might throw him off, keep him from killing for a while.”

  “That’s a good idea,” he says as he offers me a gruff smile. “I’m going to check with Frank to see if he can get us a couple more boats to use for a few weeks. It won’t do us much good if there’s only one of us on the water.”

  I finish up with Sergeant Michaels and head back to my office to call Mack. In a few minutes I introduce myself and set up a time to talk with him. He’s got nothing going on, so I grab my stuff and head to my car. If I’m lucky, I’ll be able to make it there by noon.

  After I’m in the car, I pull up to the dock to wait for the next ferry. It takes nearly an hour for me to reach the old folks’ home the officer lives at. Anxiety gnaws at me. This is the first person who might really have some answers about what happened when Rachel died and about the other girls. If he has nothing on Sheriff Dyer, this could lead me in a completely different direction. There have been so many dead ends lately—I just can’t let myself get excited about this. It could easily lead me nowhere.

  I check in at the front desk and wait for a nurse to lead me back. We weave down a long hallway, passing rooms with TV volumes so loud that the sounds all blur together in a dull roar in the hall. Each room looks like the typical hospital variety, but they’re decorated to disguise them as little apartments.

  “Mr. Carver, you’ve got a visitor,” the nurse says.

  “Thank God. If I have to watch one more minute of these damn house-hunting shows, I’m going to jump out the window,” he says flatly.

  “Mr. Carver, you can change the channel,” she offers in a voice that hints she’s probably already said this same phrase to him twelve times today.

  “The batteries are dead.”

  “I’ll find you some new ones,” she says as she waves me in. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  “Thank you,” I say as she disappears down the hall.

  The room is decorated sparsely. A few family photos are arranged on a shelf on the right wall. Below that there’s a love seat, and a twin bed sits in the corner next to the small window. All the furniture is arranged so that it faces the small TV. Mr. Carver is sitting on the edge of the bed in a plaid robe that’s tied over pajamas.

  “Claire?” he asks as he squints his eyes.

  I nod. “Yes, Claire Calderwood. Are you still okay talking about your time with the Vinalhaven PD?”

  “Of course,” he says, a little laugh slipping out.

  “How long did you work there?”

  “About thirty years,” he says. He pushes off from the bed to grab a small bottle of water from his nightstand.

  “And why’d you leave?” According to what Sergeant Michaels told me, he quit a few years before Sheriff Dyer retired.

  “Had some disagreements with the sheriff.” He shakes his head. “That schmuck.”

  I raise a brow at that, and I can’t deny the excitement rising at the back of my mind. “About?” I ask, sliding my notebook from my pocket. I want to be sure I write down all the details of this conversation.

  “There were things I thought should be investigated, and he didn’t. He let a lot of things go. He knew the Warrens were running drugs on the island, but he wouldn’t do shit about it. His daughter was causing all kinds of trouble, and we couldn’t do anything about that either. It just started feeling like all we could do was sit in the station all day.”

  So along with ignoring or covering up murders, he had a hist
ory of not investigating things that should have been investigated? Someone get this guy a medal, I want to growl.

  “Was there anything else?”

  He chuckles. “You’d need a week to hear all of it. If you knew what went on after Rachel died . . .” he says as he crosses his arms.

  “What do you mean? What happened?”

  “We had a list of suspects. We were doing interviews based on what we’d seen downtown around the time of Rachel’s murder. He told us that the investigation was over.”

  Anger flares. “So he stopped the investigation?”

  He nods. “That’s exactly right.”

  That’s not the way investigations work. Even if a case goes cold, it’s not stopped. The only time an investigation should be halted is when it’s closed because we’ve found the perp.

  “What reason did he give you?” I ask, trying desperately to keep my frustration from reaching my words.

  “He said that other girls had been murdered in Bangor and that the police department there informed him they had a killer who admitted to killing Rachel. But we needed to keep it quiet because he was pleading to two other murders in exchange for not being charged with Rachel’s murder.”

  “Let me get this straight: he said they found Rachel’s killer, but no one in town could know?”

  “That’s right. That was really the last straw for me. It didn’t add up.”

  “Do you remember the suspects that you had for Rachel’s murder?” I ask. That’d be a good place for me to pick back up.

  “Sure do. Paul Clark, Jacob Warren, a couple of the fishermen who had domestic abuse problems in the past, Frank Miller, and your mother,” he says.

  Parents are always on the initial suspect list, but if they had no involvement, they get taken off pretty quickly.

  “Why were Paul and Frank on your list?”

  “Paul was her driver’s ed teacher, and he’d been seen downtown the night she died. Frank was also downtown, but we determined he was just headed to his shop,” he explains.

  “Why was Paul downtown?”

  “He was meeting someone for a drink.”

  I nod and make a mental note of that. I’ve got plenty of issues with Paul given his past, but I find it doubtful he killed his niece. So far, I’ve seen no motive. “And my mother? Is that because family is always on the suspect list? Or is there another reason?”

  He shakes his head. “There were a few things that alarmed us about your mother. She didn’t seem as upset, as rattled as we’d expect for a parent who just suffered a loss. She was very evasive in questioning, and she had a motive. She’d just found out that Rachel was dating Jacob Warren and was very upset about it. But we didn’t have anything else on her. There was nothing to link her to the crime; no one saw her out that night.”

  “How did you find out that Rachel was dating Jacob Warren?”

  “Your mother knew; she told us she’d overheard a conversation between them.”

  If she already knew about Jacob, why did she never say a word about it to me? That doesn’t seem like the kind of thing my mother would let slide.

  “Were you ever able to rule her out?”

  He shakes his head. “Not fully, no.”

  “Was there anything else like this from Sheriff Dyer? Did he make a habit of ending investigations?”

  “He told us we were to stay away from the Warrens, to never touch anyone in that family. That always made me wonder if they had something to do with her death.”

  Mr. Carver doesn’t have much else for me, so I head back to Vinalhaven. By the time the ferry crosses the bay, the sun is hanging low in the sky. As I drive back toward the office, I see Frank heading into his shop near the docks. Instead of going to the station, I turn right and pull in to the small parking lot next to Frank’s. The gray wood siding of the building is starting to peel toward the bottom. I eye the dirt caked in the frayed paint as I walk toward the door.

  Instead of knocking, I head right in. There’s no bell on the door to chime my arrival, just the yawn of the aged metal hinges. Frank is behind the counter when I walk in, looking over an engine part. He glances over his shoulder at me and offers me a smile. “Hello, Claire,” he says, wiping the oil from his hands on his pants. They’re already covered from top to bottom in stains.

  “Evening, Frank. Do you have a few minutes? I was hoping to talk to you about your father.”

  The smile disappears from his face, and his eyes narrow with suspicion. “My father?” He croaks the words like his throat has shrunk around them. “Why?”

  “I was wondering if he ever spoke to you about his work,” I say, wanting to start out easy so I can gauge what he’ll tell me. Questioning family members can be perilous.

  He crosses his arms, his muscular forearms resting atop the bulge of his stomach. “No, he didn’t talk about his job when he was at home.”

  “So you never heard anything about it, then?”

  “Not anything that I can remember. It’s been quite a long time.”

  “How would you classify your relationship with your father?” I ask. If he can’t give me any details about his father’s work life, I’ve got to try and get other information out of him.

  “Strained,” he says, his words more honest than I expect.

  “And why would you say that?”

  The muscles in his arms twitch. “We never saw eye to eye on anything. He was always disappointed in me, no matter what I did. My sister, though, he worshipped her.” He glances toward the clock hung on the wall behind him. “Look, it’s getting late. I need to close up for the night.”

  “I just have a few more questions—” I say, but he holds a hand up.

  “Really, I need to close up. Maybe you can stop by another time, and we can talk more.”

  Reluctantly, I head toward the door, the blast of winter hitting me the moment I open it. I drive back to my rental, creating a list for myself in my mind. If I can’t get answers from Frank about his father, I know exactly where to look next.

  CHAPTER 29

  With the killings escalating, we’ve ramped up the number of patrol boats on the water. Vince, Allen, Marshall, Jason, and the coast guard take turns keeping eyes on the water twenty-four seven. Noah and I stay late in the office digging into all the files about Sheriff Dyer after my conversation with Mr. Carver. My office is half-filled with old white cardboard boxes, the kind you’d imagine an accountant keeps tax records in. The air is thick with dust, but I find the scent comforting, like a library.

  A few days ago, at my request, Sergeant Michaels dragged out boxes of case files from the seventies and eighties from an old storage facility in city hall. Noah and I have been slowly thumbing through the files, trying to see if we can find anything that mentions the missing girls. Deep in one of the boxes from the early eighties, a file from one of the old officers mentions Frank Miller aboard someone else’s boat. The owner, Susan Woods, wanted to press charges, but Sheriff Dyer intervened, making sure his son wasn’t charged.

  “How many other times did you get him out of trouble?” I mutter to myself.

  “What was that?” Noah asks.

  I show him the files I’ve found so far.

  “And I’m sure that’s just the beginning,” he says with his brows furrowed.

  “My thoughts exactly.”

  In the files I find three similar incidents, all minor, but they establish an alarming precedent.

  Noah clears his throat and catches my attention when I’m halfway through reading a file about a missing car on the island. “What’s up?” I ask, glancing over my desk at the folder, though I can’t see anything about it from where I sit.

  “It looks like Kassie Mulholland was attacked in the late seventies. Someone tried to choke her. There are notes in here referencing parts of the file that are gone. There are several names blacked out.” He pulls a sheet of paper from the file and sets it on my desk. “But you see right here,” he says, pointing toward the bottom of the page. />
  I eye it, trying to determine what he’s looking at—and I see it. A mention of Frank’s name.

  “It looks like he’s been removed from the rest of the file, but they missed this one.”

  My heart pounds as I consider the evidence in front of me. I wish I had more to go on, but this is what I had a feeling we’d find eventually. Now I know what direction I have to go in. I’ve got to question Frank again.

  After finding that last bit of evidence, Noah and I emerge from the station after midnight. The air is crisp, clear, and so cold it feels like my eyeballs are turning to ice cubes. We walk toward the parking lot, and I head to my car. “I’m going home. I’ll see you in the morning, okay?” I say.

  “Want me to come with, just to make sure you get home all right?”

  I shake my head. “I appreciate the chivalry, but I’ll pass. Thanks. Good night, Noah,” I say, and he reaches for me as I start to walk away.

  He folds me into his arms for just a moment, but I still feel the need to squirm away. Though I appreciate the sentiment, I can’t help but think Noah wants this to go in a direction I don’t. As I climb into my car and Noah walks back to the Tidewater, I worry that he deserves better than this. Better than someone who is going to keep shutting him out like I will. I’ve got more walls than a labyrinth, and every time he knocks one down, I know I’ll just build another. They say that the heart is a muscle and that you can strengthen it. But what they don’t tell you is that when your heart is broken by a loss as splintering as Rachel’s, it never heals right. Some days I swear I can still feel the shards, the remnants of the pain woven into me the day I lost her forever.

  As I drag myself back to my house, the whole city is swallowed by darkness, enveloped by the vacuum of night. I shove my key into the lock and turn, but it doesn’t click open. It’s like the lock is jammed. I jiggle the handle, trying to force it, but the door holds firm. It’s too late for me to call Mrs. Peterson to get it fixed. I walk to the rear of the house, toward the basement door. The door has been a fickle thing since I moved in. If you nudge it and jiggle the handle just right, it can be slipped open. I’m glad I didn’t ask Mrs. Peterson to fix it yet.