Girls on Film

by Gregg Olsen

  When I deplete her tray of cookies, she gets more. She is as nice as she’s beautiful and my questions, I have no doubt, are torturous at best. It’s like pulling the wings off a baby bird, but I carry on. I need to find out what my mother saw in terms of a link between her abduction, Megan’s, Shannon’s, and Leanne’s.

  As I already know, the case was attributed to Arnold Cantu, a serial killer who plagued the Pacific Northwest for more than a decade. Like many of his kind, Cantu preyed on a particular type of victim—the blonde, slender, pretty. Leanne was the youngest of his victims and the only one not abducted from a college campus in his murder-spree—a spree that spanned eight terrifying years. At first, Mr. and Mrs. Delmont resisted the notion that their Leanne had been brutalized and killed by Cantu. She was too young. She wasn’t a college student. When it came out that there had been a period of time when Leanne had run away from home and crashed at a house not far from the University of Washington campus in Seattle, they stopped their insistence that she did not fit Cantu’s victim profile and began their focus on victims’ rights.

  “Those were really hard times for us, dear,” she says. “I was embarrassed about some of Leanne’s choices and I didn’t want the world to think I was a bad mother. I made it sound as though she was a selfish, indulgent girl who didn’t follow rules whatsoever. Now I am revolted by my characterization of my daughter, but that’s how I felt. She was a wild girl from a privileged background. She never thought of anyone but herself”

  Her heels play like raindrops as she walks over to a portrait of her daughter. It’s propped on the grand piano among other family pictures.

  “This is the last photo we ever took of her,” she says. Her tone is wistful. She runs her fingers along a thick braid of gold chains that flow from her neckline.

  For the first time, I notice Mrs. Delmont’s fingernails are bitten too.

  I gently, reverently, touch the edge of the gilded frame.

  “She was beautiful”

  And she was. In the photo, Leanne Delmont sits on a massive driftwood log at Point Defiance Park, an irony not lost on her mother. Or me. She looks over her right shoulder at the camera with a wary, but somewhat shy pose.

  I move my gaze from the photo to Mrs. Delmont.

  “When did you say this was taken?” I ask.

  She takes a breath, remembering. “The week she went missing. She and her father moored off the point and took the skiff in for a picnic”

  I take a deep breath. Then I ask, “Did she have a tattoo?.

  Mrs. Delmont looks at me with a searing gaze.

  “How did you know that?” she asks.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I just wondered”

  She knows I’m lying, but she doesn’t press me for more.

  “Yes, that awful tattoo. A heart with a 16. She must have gotten it right before she disappeared. Barely healed. I haven’t thought about it in years. Of course, no one knew about it. Another girl, years ago, called me about that very thing. I don’t know why, but I denied it”

  I get up to leave. It’s an awkward retreat. But I know that the other girl who called her was my mother. I know that Leanne’s killer had marked all of his victims. It was gross and disgusting like the way a dog pees on a bush to remind others that the shrubbery is his domain.

  “Just who are you?” Monique Delmont asks as I ricochet my way from the great room to the front door.

  I don’t answer. Not because I’m rude or ill mannered. But because I don’t really know.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Cash: $20.

  Food: Three apples and a banana from the front desk. Six or seven almond cookies.

  Shelter: Best Western Motel, Kent, Washington.

  Weapons: Gun, scissors, ice pick.

  Plan: Get a grip on what I need to do.

  THE RED MESSAGE LIGHT BLINKS at me as I throw myself on the bed neatly made by the woman I stole tip money from this morning. That doesn’t feel particularly good. As the events of the day sink in, I know one thing for certain—I cannot stay here another night. Despite the fact that I’ve already paid for the room, I have to get on the move. I need to find Alex Rader. I’m all but certain that Mom’s carefully scattered breadcrumbs have taken me as far as I can go. I know now without any trace of doubt that the three girls plus Mom were linked by the actions of a very sick man. My father. I get that. I don’t need to run around playing reporter to find out any more about that. There’s nothing to find. I ignore the blinking light as I lay out my weapons. The gun, the bullets—those were gifts from Mom. I also have the scissors I bought at the drug store in Port Orchard; the ice pick taken from my aunt’s house. Joining my pitiful arsenal is a bottle of xanax that I liberated from Monique Delmont’s medicine cabinet when I used her bathroom. It isn’t a poison and I can’t imagine exactly how the drug would help me when I intend to put a bullet through the very center of bio dad’s forehead.

  Maybe the Xanax is something I need for myself.

  In order to kill him, I have to know where he lives. I unfold the Western Washington map taken from the brochure rack in the lobby. I already know that Alex Rader is not listed in any online directory—somehow he’s managed to elude any kind of an internet trail. I’m guessing that’s because he’s connected to law enforcement and they have people on staff to—in the irony of all ironies—ensure that he’s safe from the creeps he’s sent to prison.

  I go over the events as I know them.

  Shannon was taken on Saturday, July 6th and found ten days later, on Tuesday, July 16th. She had been dead for a while—maybe as long as three days.

  Megan was taken on Saturday, July 13th, and her body was found twelve days later, on July 25th, a Thursday. She had been dead a few days.

  Leanne was likely taken on Saturday, July 20th and her body was found twenty-two days later, on August 11th, a Sunday. She was pretty badly decomposed, likely a result of the warm weather that hit the Seattle area. I’d seen another article from the same date when scanning the material online at the North Bend library. It featured a Bellevue couple that had painted their brown lawn green in protest at HOA restrictions on watering in their exclusive neighborhood.

  It passes through my mind that some people have no ability to measure what’s truly important. I’m not sure I do, but I think I’m on the right track.

  It dawns on me then that I don’t know for sure when Mom was abducted, but I know it had to be after Leanne’s vanishing. I’m thinking Saturday, July 27th. Alex Rader, it seems, had kept his Saturdays very busy during that particular month of July. In addition, I think that there may have been an overlap in the victims. I remembered Mom’s note about Leanne with a shiver.

  I saw her.

  Maybe Mom wasn’t the only one who saw another girl wherever it was that he’d kept them.

  WHEN I CAN NO LONGER avoid the staccato strobe of the blinking light, I pick up the phone and it goes to voicemail immediately.

  “Ms. Lee, this is Debra Blume. I was going to try your office number, but I remembered you said you were staying at the Best Western. I need you to call me back as soon as you get this message”

  The tone in her voice is anything but calm.

  I dial the number she leaves at the end of her message.

  “Mrs. Blume?” I ask, when she answers on the first ring, trying to keep my ever-increasing anxiety on my side of the phone line.

  I might need that Xanax after all.

  She says hello and then launches into the reason for the call.

  Her words seem off a little, like she’s unsure if she should be calling. Or, I think, like she’s afraid to call.

  “I don’t know if this will be helpful,” she says, “but something strange happened this afternoon”

  I’m hanging on every word, but I don’t urge her on. She’s going to get where she’s going as soon as she can. She’s a little unnerved. I hope her husband is okay, though I don’t know why I would think she’d call me to tell me that.

/>   “After you left, that detective I was telling you about called”

  My heart sinks. He’s following me.

  “The one whose name you couldn’t recall?” I ask.

  “Yes, that’s the one. Alex Rader. He’s the one from the sheriff’s office. Anyway, he came to our house and asked me questions about you. He told me that you were an imposter bent on stirring up trouble”

  My pulse quickens at the mention of his name. Alex Rader is trailing me. Who will find who first? Seems like my biological father and I are in a kind of competition to see who can find the other. I intend to win. I have to win.

  “I wonder why he said that?” I finally say as though the accusation seems incomprehensible, when deep down I know it is an astute observation. The truth is that I have been an imposter my entire life. But so has he. He’s lived among the shadows, doing evil at night. During the day, he masquerades as an upstanding citizen. A cop. I know that he’s killed all those girls. Maybe others. I know he has my mother right now. I just don’t know where.

  “You didn’t tell him where I was?” I ask, trying to hold the heaving of my heart inside my ribcage.

  “Oh no,” she answers. “I never trusted or liked him whatsoever. Neither did my husband. He was nothing more than a conceited snot that never gave one whit about Shannon. He said all the right words, but I knew he was just a climber looking for a notch on his detective shield”

  “I know the type all too well,” I say, as I cradle the phone and look over my weapons. “Such a fraud”

  “I wanted you to know that he’s after you”

  And I’m after him.

  “Thank you, Mrs. Blume,” I say doing my best impression of a warm and unworried tone. “I appreciate that”

  She thanks me and ends our conversation with, “I could tell when we talked that you care about Shannon”

  Though unintended, her words are a dagger to my heart. I know she means to comfort me, but I don’t care about Shannon. I don’t care about anything other than finding my mom and killing my bio dad. Now he’s tracking me. I guess it wouldn’t be hard. He probably knew what car Aunt Ginger drove. He might have followed her to see my mother, watching her afar that Labor Day when the two sisters met under the arches at the Pacific Science Center in Seattle. Maybe a police traffic camera caught the plates of the Ford Focus? It wouldn’t be hard to find me. As careful as I’ve been.

  I hang up. My heart’s pressing harder against my ribcage. I’m only certain of one thing. I have to leave. First I go downstairs to the front desk and tell the clerk that my suitcase is jammed and I need a screwdriver to get into the lock. She pulls one from the top drawer and hands it to me. I go outside, looking north, then south in the parking lot. It is empty. I hurry over to the car closest to mine and remove my Idaho plates. I remove the plates from a blue Dodge caravan, hoping the mother and father will be so distracted by their brood that they won’t notice their missing license plates until long after I’m gone. After screwing their plates on the Focus, I toss the Idaho plates into the trash and return to my room to get my things. I already paid for tonight’s stay, but I can’t remain here.

  Exactly two minutes later I’m on the road.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Cash: $20.

  Food: Nothing.

  Shelter: The car.

  Weapons: Gun, scissors, ice pick, bottle of Xanax, screwdriver.

  Plan: Pour gas on my dad’s body and light him on fire. Not really. But something dark inside me tells me that would be permissible. Maybe even fun.

  A DENNY’S RESTAURANT SIGN BECKONS. I haven’t eaten a real meal since Aunt Ginger’s place in Wallace. My eyes look hollow and I know that’s a symptom of both hunger and my escalating anxiety. I find a spot at the counter next to an old man nursing a hangover. I spread out the map with xs indicating where Alex Rader’s victims were last seen and found. When a heaping platter of scrambled eggs, silver dollar pancakes, and a rasher of bacon arrive, I devour it all. If heaven was real and if it had a flavor, it would be bacon swimming in maple syrup. I order coffee too. I let the hot drink roll down into my stomach slowly. Caffeine will help. When the man next to me leaves, I reach for his butter-stained newspaper.

  And immediately I see my face. My old face, that is. The face I had before I did the Mom makeover. The headline makes me nearly toss my breakfast up on the counter, but I manage to keep it in my stomach.

  kitsaP teen wanted For questioning in Father’.

  murder inquir.

  I read the article in the Seattle paper—the same paper I was mad at for denying my stepfather’s murder any coverage—and I’m completely aghast. The story indicates that evidence at the scene has led to the case being investigated as patricide— murder of a father by his child. While investigators couldn’t rule out the missing wife and mother, there were indications that “the daughter was deeply troubled and showed signs of rage.”

  . . . Caradee Hagen, a sophomore at the high school and close friend of the missing teenager, indicated that Rylee Cassidy was “a strange loner. She really never had anything to say. She kind of just clung to the background. Probably waiting and plotting”

  Another student, Marilee Watson, said that Cassidy was often seen in the school bathroom. “She was always in there, sulking around. I hope they find her soon because, well, I don’t know that she’s a killer but I do know that she never, ever talked about her family. She must have really hated them”

  One student had a different view. Caleb Hunter said that Cassidy was just another misunderstood teenager.

  “Rylee is a lot of things, but she’s not evil. Not at all,” he said.

  Caleb was always there for me. He still is.

  The article concluded with a mention that an anonymous tip to the Crime Stoppers police-line changed the course of the investigation.

  Said a police spokesperson: “We were thinking that it was a homicide and abduction. That’s not the case right now”

  I sit there in stunned silence. The cooks in the serving window between the kitchen and the counter move in slow motion. The lights above me rise further away and darkness overtakes me. I don’t know for how long. I don’t really know what happened. I hear someone speaking but I can barely register what he or she is saying.

  “Lady! Are you all right?.

  It’s a young man’s voice. A teenager. His voice crackles a little.

  I open my eyes. I’d reached overload. I’d blacked out. The idea that I could hurt my family and that those awful so-called friends would say those things about me was like a sucker punch to the gut.

  “I’m pregnant,” I quickly say. “Just a blood-sugar imbalance. Or hormonal”

  The kid turns a shade of red I haven’t seen since the year Mom and I pickled beets.

  “You need a doctor?” he asks.

  I shake my spinning head. “No. More coffee, please”

  He disappears to the coffee station and I pull myself together. I know damn well who the anonymous tipster was. There’s no denying it. Alex Rader. Has to be. That twisted piece of garbage is toying with me. He knows I’m looking for him.

  When the busboy returns and fills my cup, I point at my purse.

  “My phone’s dead. I think I should call my doctor. I’m worried about the baby. I’ve never fainted like that before”

  “Uh—sure,” he says. “My parents put me on some mega plan and I never use all my minutes. Have at it”

  I’m going to give that kid a really good tip.

  He hands me his phone and says it’s not password protected.

  “Call’s kind of personal,” I say. “I’m going to use it in the bathroom”

  “Uh. Okay”

  It’s a unisex rest room, of the type that I normally loathe for the same reason I hate sharing a bathroom with Hayden. His habit of not flushing and dribbling on the toilet seat seems to be a guy thing that starts at an early age. From the unisex bathrooms I’ve visited, it doesn’t get better with practice. I flip the l
ock. I know that I have an advantage over other people. I am very good with remembering numbers. Most kids I know can’t even call a friend from any phone but their own. Apparently, they have no capacity to store information like that. I think of the time that Caradee couldn’t phone Gemma because she’d left her phone at home, and nearly lost it in the school cafeteria. Thinking of them brings me right back to the article I just read.

  Caradee. That bitch. Marilee that fountain-puker. They both trashed me good in the paper.

  I fume a little as I dial Aunt Ginger’s number, which is a bit of a wild card. I’ve never called her before, but I can see the digits on the slip of paper she gave me with the ten twenties.

  She answers.

  “It’s me. Rylee”

  “Where are you?” she asks, desperation in her voice. “They are looking for you. I saw on the news. They say you did it”

  I’m surprised that she already knew. For the past couple of days I’ve been running around so much, trying to figure out why and what Alex Rader did sixteen years ago, that I didn’t stay current on what was going on at the moment.

  “I know,” I say, not adding that I just found out fifteen seconds ago. “I’m okay”

  “Have you found your mother?” Ginger asks.

  “No. Not yet”

  I’m not on the phone for chitchat and I have another call to make before I give the phone back to the red-faced busboy at the Denny’s counter.

  “Did Mom have a tattoo?” I ask before Aunt Ginger tries to work in a topic of her own.

  A beat of silence fills my ear.

  Aunt Ginger exhales.

  “Yes,” she says. “That’s one of the things he did to her. Not one of the worst things, but one that was meant to be a lasting reminder”

  Like me. That’s what I am. A reminder too.