Little Girl Lost

by Wendy Corsi Staub

  Her gaze shifts to a faded drawing of two smiling female stick figures connected by ten carefully aligned fingers. Wobbly crayon letters spell out To Mommy Love Jessie.

  “Hey, Amelia, let’s go!”

  She turns away and follows Jessie into a small mudroom and across another Happy Halloween doormat. Jessie grabs a key ring from a row of hooks beside the back door and they step outside.

  Sunlight filters through high branches, glinting on golden leaves that dance toward a foliage-drifted lawn fringed by a dazzling red shrub border and colorful fall flowerbeds. Amelia takes in the swing set by the garage and the basketball hoop suspended above the door, thinking of the crack-dealer-infested playground by her apartment back home.

  Jessie opens the driver’s-side door of a Horizon hatchback parked in the driveway.

  “You’re . . . driving?”

  “Unless you want to?” She dangles the keys toward Amelia.

  “No, I don’t . . . I mean, I can’t . . .” She just shakes her head and climbs into the passenger’s seat. When Jessie said they were going to cruise around town, Amelia had assumed she meant on foot. Back home, no one she knows has a car, and certainly no one her age has a driver’s license.

  “Do you like U2?” Jessie asks, ejecting a cassette from the tape deck, and pops in another.

  “Um . . . yeah, sure.”

  “I figured you would. We have a lot in common, you know?”

  Not nearly as much as she thought. They were both abandoned, but only Jessie was rescued in the truest sense of the word. She grew up in this lovely home with a real family, while Amelia was raised in urban poverty, isolated by rules and lies.

  “Bet I can guess your favorite song on Joshua Tree.”

  “Bet you can’t,” Amelia responds, because that’s what you say, and she can’t admit that she’s never heard the whole album. There’s no tape deck at home. She doesn’t even have a Walkman.

  “Here, I’ll play it for you.” She presses a button and a low, familiar rhythmic guitar intro comes from the speaker.

  As it builds to the opening lyric about climbing the highest mountain, Amelia is relieved that at least it’s one she knows.

  “Was I right? Is this your favorite song?”

  Amelia asks, “You mean because of the choir?”

  “Choir?”

  “The Harlem Gospel Choir just performed this a few weeks ago with U2 at Madison Square Garden. I know a few people in it.”

  “You know Bono and the Edge?”

  “No! I know people in the Harlem Gospel Choir.” Well, one person—a cousin of a friend who’d worked with her at the ice cream shop last summer.

  “Amelia! No way! This is totally unbelievable!”

  “Well, I live in Harlem, so it really isn’t. Why did you think this was my favorite song if you didn’t know about the choir?”

  “Listen to the words!”

  Jessie barrels backward out of the driveway and slams the brakes at the curb as a redheaded kid whizzes past on a bike, inches from the bumper. Jolted, Amelia braces herself against the dashboard. She’s ridden in cabs a few times, but it never occurred to her to check for a seatbelt. She buckles herself in now, hoping Jessie won’t be insulted.

  Jessie doesn’t seem to have noticed. “This is us, Amelia! We still haven’t found what we’re looking for!”

  Amelia grins. Yeah. “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” is definitely her favorite s—

  What in the . . . ?

  She gapes at the familiar figure on the sidewalk opposite Jessie’s house.

  “Wait! Stop!”

  Jessie doesn’t hear her above the music or her own voice singing. As they tear off down the street, Amelia swivels to look through the back window, heart racing. How can it be?

  It can’t be. And it isn’t.

  The sidewalk is empty. No sign of her now.

  But Amelia would swear she’d just glimpsed Marceline LeBlanc standing in the shadows of an overgrown shrub, the red satchel and woven basket at her feet.

  “Okay, thanks. I’ll fax you the pictures in a few minutes.” Heart racing, and not from the twenty-five or so cups of coffee he’s had today, Barnes disconnects his call with Boston Homicide.

  Seated at the adjacent desk with his own phone pressed against his ear, Stef shoots him a questioning look.

  He nods and mouths Got it.

  “Something just came up. I’ll call you back in a few minutes.” Stef hangs up and looks at Barnes.

  “It’s true. Tara Sheeran and her daughter, Emily, were murdered sometime overnight, and her boyfriend is in custody.”

  “Mother’s boyfriend, or daughter’s?”

  Barnes flips back through his notes. “Must be the daughter’s, based on his age. His name is Liam Smith. He was sneaking into the house through an upstairs bedroom window when he saw the victims.”

  “Sneaking in? What the hell?” Stef rubs his mustache with his thumb and forefinger.

  “Yeah. He ran down to the corner bar and told them to call the police. But it sounds like he’s got a strong alibi leading up to that. They’re looking into it.”

  “It’ll check out, if history repeats. Back in ’68, a lot of guys on the force were sure Christina Myers’s boyfriend killed her family.”

  “They were the Butcher’s first victims?”

  “Right. His parents swore he was home in bed, and he was cleared, but not everyone was convinced he hadn’t snuck over there in the night. Month or so later, it happened again—that was the Sheeran case. They hauled in her boyfriend, too.”

  “Alibi?”

  “Home in bed, just like the first kid, and the next two,” Stef says. “All four girls had boyfriends. There were crazy theories that they were in cahoots.”

  “The boyfriends? You mean with each other?”

  “Yeah, or the girls with each other, or the couples.”

  “For what possible motive?”

  “You name it. I don’t think anyone was convinced at least one of them wasn’t an inside job till they nailed Matthews after the fourth killing.”

  Barnes frowns. “Is there any chance they arrested the wrong—”

  “Not a chance. Oran Matthews was a psycho religious freak. Thought he was the second coming.”

  “Like Charles Manson.”

  “Right. Manson might have been inspired by the Butcher murders when he went on that killing spree a year later.”

  “Only he got his followers to do the killing. What about Matthews?”

  “Not a cult thing, just him. Confessed, convicted, sentenced to death, but in ’72, when the Supreme Court decided capital punishment was unconstitutional, that was converted to life without parole. While you were on the phone, I confirmed that he hasn’t escaped Sing Sing.”

  “They don’t call it that anymore, do they?”

  “I do.” Stef shrugs. “Anyway, he didn’t go back to finish off Tara Sheeran nineteen years after the fact. So who did?”

  “Did Matthews have followers, like Manson?”

  “You’re thinking Wayland?”

  “You’re not?”

  “He was just a kid in ’68. What about the boyfriend in Boston?”

  “He’s a little younger than me.” Barnes consults his notes again. “Twenty-four.”

  Stef spares him a joke about his age, asking, “What about the girl, Tara’s daughter—she’s how old?”

  “Eighteen. Her name is—was—Emily.”

  “Then she’s the kid who came from the rape. Oran Matthews’s biological daughter.”

  “I didn’t put that together. You’re right.” He pauses, thinking about the murdered young woman.

  The Butcher’s Daughter . . .

  She entered this world because of a violent act, and she left it the same way.

  He thinks of his own daughter, born not of rape, but reckless indifference.

  The Heartless SOB’s Daughter.

  “Barnes?”

  “Yeah. Sorry. I just
. . .” He shakes his head, lights a cigarette, takes a deep drag, and goes back to his notes. “Tara and her daughter were going by the last name Kelly. The cops had no idea of the connection to the Butcher case until they started digging to reach next of kin. Sounds like the boyfriend didn’t know, either.”

  “Did anyone?”

  “I get the impression that they’ve been living under the radar in Southie all these years.”

  “Bub had cousins up there. Not a great neighborhood. Maybe it was a random thing. Armed robber breaks in, mother and daughter get in the way. Maybe it had nothing to do with their past.”

  “Or with Wayland going missing Thursday?”

  “I’ve seen bigger coincidences. Tell me about the crime scene.”

  “They found a set of muddy footprints to and from the bedroom window. Forensics is checking them out to see if they can match the boyfriend. Victims were side by side on the bed. Stabbed. Not shot. With a gun, you can take out two victims almost simultaneously—bam, bam—no one has a chance to get away. But with a knife? Crime scene should’ve been a mess.”

  “It wasn’t?”

  “‘No sign of a struggle,’” Barnes reads from his notes, and takes another deep drag on his cigarette. “Maybe because they knew the attacker, and they didn’t die at the same time. Could have been spaced out. Guy sneaks into the daughter’s bedroom, kills her, waits around for the mother to show up, kills her, too.”

  “So it would have been premeditated, and the motive’s not robbery.”

  “Right. But what is it?”

  “Finish what the Butcher started twenty years ago,” Stef says. “And that means the other three girls need to be notified.”

  “The ones who survived?”

  “Yeah. I pulled this list together while you were on the phone.” He hands over a sheet of paper.

  Barnes scans the names, places, and dates.

  Myers Family, February 13th, Sheepshead Bay—survivor: daughter Christina, 16

  Sheeran Family, March 22nd, Bay Ridge—survivor: daughter Tara, 17

  Costello Family, May 10th, Bensonhurst—survivor: daughter Margaret, 17

  DiMeo Family, June 6th, Dyker Heights—survivor: daughter Bernadette, 17

  Barnes taps his cigarette into the silty remains of his coffee, and looks up at Stef. “Where are the other three now? We need to find them and let them know they might be in danger. And what about their kids? If Tara’s daughter was targeted, the others might be, too.”

  “Yeah, no kidding. I’m already on it.”

  Stef gets back to it, and Barnes goes through the pictures Kirstie Wayland gave them yesterday. He’s going to fax some to Boston Homicide in case anyone’s seen Perry in the area, maybe with a female accomplice. A variety of images would be ideal, but he looks virtually the same in all of them—wedding day, holding newborn twins, corporate headshot. Posed, poised, wearing his signature dark suit and a smile that never seems to reach his pale blue eyes, even when he was young and presumably in love with his bride-to-be. In fact . . .

  Barnes takes a closer look at a candid shot Kirstie said had been taken at the annual Brown University Campus Dance in 1972. Unlike the rest of the crowd, Perry and Kirstie weren’t feeling groovy. No bell bottoms and piped, ruffled placket cascading between wide lapels for him, no psychedelic miniskirt and plunging décolletage for her.

  Maybe that’s why he’s looking past her, at a woman standing off to the side. Her go-go boots, bare legs, big blue eyes, false eyelashes, and cascading black hair are a stark contrast to Kirstie’s knee-length white taffeta and ballerina bun. She’s wearing a cinched purple suede thigh-length coat with fake fur trim and appears to be on her way out, as if she has better things to do than drink spiked punch with preppy Ivy Leaguers.

  Back in those days, Barnes watched Soul Train on TV with his father. In that outfit, oozing sexy attitude, the girl in the purple coat would have fit right in on the glittering dance floor.

  Except, she’s white.

  White . . .

  Barnes grabs a magnifying glass and leans in for a closer look.

  Wayland is definitely looking at her. She isn’t returning the favor, but her body language—coy posture, and the hint of a smile at her lips—seem to indicate an awareness of the man.

  He’s infatuated with her, and she knows it. I see her seeing the way he looks at her, but she pretends she doesn’t.

  Liz had been describing Perry Wayland’s attitude toward Miss White, not the woman in this photo. Unless . . .

  What if they’re the same person?

  Chapter Seventeen

  On a high after Sheepshead Bay, Red takes the subway back to Manhattan.

  Only one other New Yorker seems to grasp the telltale signs that Judgment Day looms. A wild-eyed man boards the downtown local. Barefoot, wearing ragged trousers and a tattered army coat that reeks of sweat, he looks like a panhandler. But he isn’t asking people for money. He’s warning them.

  “Repent! Repent, ye sinners, for the end is nigh!”

  The other passengers ignore him, staring vacantly at the graffiti-painted ceiling or burying their noses in the New York Post, the Daily News, and Newsday. Ironic, since the tabloids are crammed with stories about warships in the Persian Gulf, unprecedented drought and famine, the freak hurricane in England that took dozens of lives, the mysterious epidemic that’s killed tens of thousands, primarily homosexuals and junkies—and the pivotal event, Monday’s catastrophic stock market crash.

  It was just as foretold in Revelations: “Woe! Woe to you, great city, where all who had ships on the sea became rich through her wealth! In one hour she has been brought to ruin!”

  Preparing to disembark in the East Village Red offers the subway prophet a couple of fifty-dollar bills and a bit of advice, with a nod at the other passengers. “You can’t help them. They’re not believers.”

  “Do you believe?”

  “I do.”

  “Have you repented?”

  “I have, my brother.”

  They wish each other peace and shake hands. The prophet’s is crusted with filth, Red’s with dried blood.

  The gloves! You forgot to wear the gloves!

  The doors slide closed between them. Red watches the dark tunnel swallow the train, then heads out into daylight toward Alphabet City, where seedy gives way to disturbing.

  Bent in rigor mortis, a young woman’s needle-tracked bare arm rises from the puke-splashed sidewalk. A herd of bleary club kids step around and over her, faces smeared with ennui and eyeliner. Perched on the hood of what’s left of a Ford Fiesta, a strung out street poet narrates an expletive-laced missive about zebras and marigolds. The car’s hubcaps and innards are long gone, a parking ticket wiper-pinned to the brick-broken windshield and an antitheft device clamping the steering wheel like a condom on a corpse.

  “Help me? Please?” A bedraggled panhandler in grimy fatigues and a black bandana do-rag shakes a change-filled paper cup.

  Red stops short with a curse.

  “Hey! What’d you call me?”

  “Not you! I just remembered something.” It’s not just the gloves—Red left the collection can behind at the Myers house.

  “I remember something every day!” the bum shouts. “No matter how much I want to forget, I remember a nightmare.”

  “Makes two of us.”

  He waves that off with a grimy hand. “You weren’t in Nam.”

  “You were?”

  “Got shot up good.”

  There’s a dog tag around the man’s neck. Something twitches in Red’s soul.

  Daddy had been part of the 173rd Infantry Brigade. He was mortally wounded in a Vietcong ambush near Saigon in November 1965. The news of his death didn’t reach home until the following month.

  Yeah. Merry Christmas.

  “Help a wounded vet buy a hot meal. Please? I’m starv—”

  “Here.” Red hands him several of Perry Wayland’s fifty-dollar bills.

  “Thank you! Go
d bless you! Bless you!” He scurries away.

  The street poet breaks off his rambling recitation to say, “He got shot up over there, and now he shoots up over here.”

  “So?”

  “So he’s just gonna buy crack with your money.”

  “Not my money.”

  “Well, if you’re handing it out—”

  “I’m not.”

  Red moves on and settles in to watch Margaret’s building, back to worrying about Sheepshead Bay.

  How could you have forgotten the gloves? And left that damned collection can behind?

  Come on, you know how. Because you were flying high on amphetamines—way too high, and you got reckless.

  At least you closed and locked the door behind you when you left, right?

  You did, didn’t you?

  Those damned pills are making everything a blur.

  Beyond this nook, the block writhes with depravity. Rats scuttle around a ripped bag of fetid garbage. Junkies shoot up, trip out, pass out. Crack whores turn tricks in an adjacent alley. On the stoop next door, a drug dealer haggles with a pair of kids fresh from the suburbs. They’re trying to play it cool in their acid-washed designer jeans and vibrant-hued Benetton sweaters with crisp button-down collars poking out, mullets combed just so. But they’re in way over their moussed, blow-dried heads.

  “We can pay!” One waves a wad of cash at the dealer.

  The other, alarmed, says, “Put that away, Todd!”

  Too late. The dealer whips out a switchblade and demands the money.

  “What about the coke, man?”

  “First, you pay.”

  “Give it to him, Todd!”

  He does. The dealer grabs the cash, slashes him in the face, and takes off toward Avenue D.

  “Oh, my God! Noooooo! I’ve been stabbed!”

  The taller kid pulls a white handkerchief—for real?—from his pocket and hands it to his friend, who waves it around, shouting for help.

  “Shut the hell up!” someone calls from an open window above the street.

  A pair of young women, nostrils pierced and long hair spiked in Mohawks, stroll past, laughing.