The 9th Girl

by Tami Hoag

  Kovac stood in front of the whiteboard, taking in the timeline and the notes. He played the possibilities through his head. Doc Holiday. Michael Warner. A friend. An enemy. A stranger. The kids who didn’t like her. The mother she rebelled against. Who would have thought a sixteen-year-old girl could have so many people in her life who might want her dead?

  He made additional notations on the board: Kyle’s version of events at the Rock & Bowl, the fact that Christina had started the physical altercation with Gray, that Aaron Fogelman had struck the girl, and the fact that both Christina and Aaron Fogelman had blamed Gray for starting it. Kovac knew which version he believed.

  It probably didn’t matter. Two living kids putting the blame on a dead kid to make themselves look better. So what? But it bothered him, just the same.

  Christina Warner and Penny Gray were enemies. Whatever the Gray girl had said to Christina had provoked a violent reaction. Now Penny Gray was dead, and Christina Warner and her boyfriend were both lying to the cops. Not a big lie. A lie of perspective. A reinterpretation of history. It wouldn’t have mattered except that after Penny Gray left that place she disappeared. She had an altercation with a known enemy, and then she disappeared.

  Not like Kovac wasn’t used to getting lied to. Everyone lied to the cops—not just guilty people. Innocent people who didn’t want to get involved lied to the cops. People afraid of getting other people in trouble lied to the cops. People afraid of retaliation lied to the cops. Kids and adults and blue-haired old ladies lied to the cops about all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. Bald-faced lies and white lies, twisted truths and sins of omission.

  Videotape, however, always told the truth. He put a cassette in the VCR and watched Penny Gray leave the Rock & Bowl over and over—with Kyle leaving shortly after her. He never saw the other kids leave. He played the tape backward and forward, and he never saw them leave. Which meant they had to have gone out the side exit, which meant he couldn’t pinpoint the time they left.

  The Lawler girl was the weak link in the chain of students. She wasn’t very happy with her so-called friends and the circumstances in which they found themselves. She had been vague and evasive at different points in his interview with her that afternoon. She didn’t remember who started what. She was looking the other way when the scuffle broke out.

  She had turned her head and looked away from him when she said it.

  “You’re a poor liar, Brittany,” he’d said calmly.

  Big tears had flooded her blue eyes, but she hadn’t changed her tale.

  Brittany had ridden to the Rock & Bowl with Gray. Gray had been staying with her. They were friends enough that Brittany’s house was where Penny Gray had sought sanctuary after the fight with her mother. And yet Brittany had convinced Gray to drive them to the Rock & Bowl, where Christina Warner and her minions lay in wait.

  None of that was sitting well with Brittany now, which meant she had a conscience. A conscience Kovac could exploit.

  He watched the security video from the Holiday station again. Penny Gray buying beer and walking out, hesitating as she started out of the building, almost turning and going back into the light and safety of the busy store. Who had she seen standing just out of reach of the camera? A stranger? An enemy? Doc Holiday? The kids she had just fought with?

  He rewound the tape to five minutes before Penny Gray came into the store. People came in, bought things, left. Women, kids, men. Ordinary people. Odd people. A couple of rough-looking customers.

  One man caught his eye, not for being suspicious in his behavior, but for seeming vaguely familiar—a short guy, stocky, thinning dark hair, a close-cropped beard and mustache. He got something from the automotive supply aisle, chatted up the customer ahead of him in line, walked out. Kovac couldn’t place him. He encountered so many people on a daily basis, everybody started looking familiar.

  Several minutes later on the video, Penny Gray walked into the store. Kovac let the tape run on past her leaving. People came, people went. Five minutes after the Gray girl left the picture, Aaron Fogelman walked into the station with his buddy Tweedle Dumb. Fogelman bought cigarettes. The cohort shoplifted a bunch of candy bars. They walked back out of the store, carefree.

  Where was Penny Gray at that point in time? Gone? Snatched by Doc Holiday? In the trunk of Aaron Fogelman’s car?

  Kovac got up from his chair, went to the timeline, made a note. He stood back, ran his tongue over his teeth, and tried to rub the grit out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. It was nearly five A.M.

  In need of a break to reboot his brain, he turned the VCR off and changed the channel on the TV. He would run through the local stations and see what was being said about the case. In the back of his mind he considered what might happen if Dr. Michael Warner’s name “somehow” got attached to the case in the media.

  A lawsuit and the loss of his job and his pension, probably.

  The guy had never had a criminal complaint made against him. Elwood would call any organizations and ethics boards Warner had to answer to in his professional life, but he’d found nothing against the man yet.

  Warner had said the reason he had stopped seeing Penny Gray as a patient had been her issues with men and her constant attempts to manipulate him. He had dumped her, not the other way around. If he had been abusing the girl, it seemed that she would have been the one to quit the situation and raise hell.

  Then again, just who was she supposed to raise hell to? Her mother? The mother who found her irritating and aggravating? The mother who was now engaged to Michael Warner?

  Elwood had taped copies of Penny Gray’s poems to the wall at the far end of the room. Kovac browsed over them now, his eye catching on one titled “Unloved.”

  I’m a bother

  I’m a burden

  I’m a liar

  Close the curtain

  Don’t wanna see it

  Don’t believe it

  Shut your mouth

  She can’t conceive it

  I’m not the dream

  I’m just a nightmare

  I’m in the way

  Life’s just so unfair

  I should come first

  But I’m called worst

  Just a problem

  She can’t solve

  Unloved

  Just who was Penny Gray supposed to turn to if her therapist abused her and her mother didn’t want to hear it? People didn’t like her. Warner had said so himself, the girl drew people in only so she could alienate them. How much of that did anyone tolerate before they just stopped listening?

  Or had Warner bought the girl’s silence with a car? People sold out for less. It seemed pretty damned generous to buy your girlfriend’s daughter a car for her birthday. Then again, a mobile teenager was out of the way. Warner’s decision might have been strategic to getting more alone time with Julia.

  Kovac turned back to the TV and changed the channel again. So far, he’d heard virtually identical reports on the case from three of the local stations. On the fourth he expected to see perky little Dana Nolan—the girl he crabbed at every morning when he woke up and turned on his television.

  As much as the news media irritated him, he had never been able to shake the habit of beginning and ending his day with the news. He usually chose Dana Nolan in the morning just because she was so fucking chipper and optimistic. Her happy mood antagonized him into setting his personal dial at “curmudgeon” before he even got out of bed.

  But it wasn’t Dana Nolan’s angelic face that greeted him as he changed to her station. A slightly older woman with thick maroon hair and a worried expression had taken Dana’s seat at the desk. She seemed flustered and distracted.

  Even as Kovac began to form the thought that something wasn’t right, a photograph of Dana Nolan filled one corner of the television screen. He turned up the sound.

  “Breaking news: Foul play is suspected in the apparent disappearance of NewsWatch 3’s own Dana Nolan,” the woman reporte
d. “Police were dispatched to Dana Nolan’s Minneapolis apartment just an hour ago when Dana failed to show up for work and failed to respond to numerous phone calls and text messages.”

  Kovac could see the fear and panic building in the woman. Her eyes gleamed with tears. Her voice tightened and trembled as she spoke.

  “Personal belongings found in the parking lot of the apartment building near Ms. Nolan’s abandoned vehicle seem to indicate she may have been taken against her will.”

  The screen filled with the image of the missing reporter.

  “Her most recent assignment has been covering the disappearance of Minneapolis teenager Penelope Gray, and the possible connection between the discovery of the murder victim known as Zombie Doe and the serial killer law enforcement agencies throughout the Midwest have come to call Doc Holiday. Anyone having any information as to the whereabouts of Dana Nolan is asked to call the number posted on the screen.

  “Please, please,” the woman implored, her tenuous hold on her emotions quickly eroding. “If anyone watching has any information at all, please call this number as soon as possible.

  “Dana, if you’re somehow seeing this broadcast, please know that we’re all looking for you and praying for you to come home safe.”

  The station went to commercial as the reporter broke down sobbing.

  Kovac swore, grabbed his coat, and bolted for the door.

  • • •

  “WHY THE FUCK WASN’T I called the minute this came in?” Kovac snapped at the young detective who had caught the call. “I was right down the fucking hall!”

  They stood in the parking lot of Dana Nolan’s apartment complex. The early morning darkness had been banished by portable lights from the crime scene unit, and from the half dozen news vans that had circled the scene like wagons in an old Western movie.

  The detective—Dickson—barely looked old enough to have a job. Kovac had come out of the womb older than this kid. Still, the young detective tried to put up a tough front.

  “Since when do we have to clear our calls through you? It’s not even your shift.”

  “Oh. It’s not my shift?” Kovac thought his head might explode. Acutely aware of the cameras and microphones trained on them, he leaned in close. “It’s a fucking abduction, you fucking moron! I’ve got half the fucking department working an abduction/homicide that’s all over the goddamn news, and you think you don’t have to bother telling me? The fucking janitor would know enough to tell me! You’re a fucking idiot! And where’s your partner? He’s a fucking idiot too.”

  One of the uniforms who had responded to the initial call intervened, wedging himself between the two detectives.

  “Sarge, the newsies are getting restless. They’re asking for a statement.”

  “They want a statement?” Kovac asked, feigning shock. “It’s a clusterfuck. That’s my statement. They want a statement, they can pull one out of my ass. I just got here. I don’t even know yet what young Dickhead here has managed to fuck up in my absence.”

  Dickson waved him off. “Fuck you, Kojak.”

  Kovac turned and looked at the center of their crime scene: a dark green Mini, parked near the security light. Dana Nolan had parked exactly where young women were supposed to park their cars for safety—under a pool of light where they would be able to see danger coming.

  Nothing good ever happened in a parking lot after midnight. It was unlikely there had been any witnesses. This was a quiet residential neighborhood. Dana Nolan’s belongings still lay on the ground where she had dropped them. She probably had seen danger coming. There just hadn’t been a damn thing she could do about it.

  Kovac walked over to the car and squatted down for a closer look at Dana Nolan’s abandoned belongings. A purse. A makeup bag. A tote bag with papers spilling out of it. He picked one of the papers out and frowned as he looked at it—the missing girl poster of Penny Gray.

  He stood up and looked at Nolan’s car, at the piece of paper tucked under the windshield wiper. A sick feeling began to stir like a snake waking in his belly.

  Careful to touch just the edges of the page, he took it from under the blade and looked at it.

  HAVE YOU SEEN THIS GIRL?

  Penny Gray looked at him over her shoulder. The photo he had gotten from Brittany Lawler.

  At the bottom of the page scrawled in black magic marker were two words and a smiley face.

  HAPPY HOLIDAY.

  37

  “That’s not his MO,” Liska said.

  “It is now.”

  John Quinn stared at the photocopy of the note left on Dana Nolan’s windshield, frowning darkly. He needed a shave. Kovac had called him from the scene and asked to meet him downtown. Quinn had thrown on jeans and a sweater and drove in from his cozy home in the suburbs to join the madness.

  Kovac didn’t want the press seeing Quinn at the scene. Or, more to the point, he didn’t want Quinn being seen on the news. Speculation would come quickly as it was. He didn’t want to pour fuel on the fire. Doc Holiday was sure to be watching the news. He hadn’t chosen Dana Nolan by accident. Kovac wanted as much control as possible over what went out over the airwaves. If Quinn thought it would be useful to include his name, that was what would happen. If he thought it was better to stay out of the spotlight, then so be it.

  “I guess it’s safe to say he’s liking the attention,” Kovac said.

  “Loving it,” Quinn replied.

  They sat in the war room, surrounded by everything to do with Penny Gray’s case. They were going to need another room dedicated to Dana Nolan. They would have to reassign the manpower to divide their efforts between the two cases. Penny Gray was dead. To the best of their knowledge, Dana Nolan was still alive. There was a chance they were dealing with the same perp. If so, then one effort benefited both cases. They would have to shift the manpower to benefit the victim who was potentially still alive.

  Quinn sat back against the table and crossed his arms over his chest. “He’s taking it to a whole new level. With the others it was enough to dump the victim and then read about it in the paper. Now he’s getting cocky. The media has given him a name. He wants to be a star.”

  “This is why I didn’t want to challenge him,” Kovac said. “I was afraid he would take me up on it.”

  “What do we do now? Do we acknowledge him?” Kasselmann asked. He looked harried for the first time in all of this. “Do we keep the note to ourselves? If we let the media run with this, they’ll have the public in a panic. I can’t have that, and I guarantee that’s not going to fly upstairs.”

  “It’s going to be bad enough as it is,” Liska said. “First we’ve got a dead zombie, then a missing girl, now this. One of their own snatched out from under our noses. The news media is going to connect the dots and come up with Doc Holiday anyway. They already have. They don’t need to see the note for that.”

  “If you don’t acknowledge him, he’s going to get frustrated,” Quinn said. “Frustrated could be good.”

  “Not for Dana Nolan,” Liska pointed out.

  “Dana Nolan is dead,” Quinn said bluntly. “I don’t mean to be a pessimist here, but that’s a foregone conclusion. Unless you can find her within the next twenty-four hours or so, she’s dead. He kidnapped her to kill her. That’s what he’ll do. That’s where the payout is for him. The buildup is just foreplay.

  “He might drag it out longer this time because he has a stage,” he said. “That’s the best you can hope for.”

  “That’s a hell of a thing to be optimistic about,” Kovac muttered. “If we’re lucky, he’ll spend more time torturing her before he stabs her to death and beats her head in with a hammer.”

  “It’s more time to look for her,” Quinn said.

  “Yeah. If we had a freaking clue where to look.” Kovac turned to his boss. “I’ve got a small army canvassing Dana Nolan’s neighborhood. They’re knocking on every door that has a sight line to that parking lot and the street.”

  “And you h
aven’t found anything to go on from the previous cases?” Kasselmann asked.

  Kovac shook his head. “Nothing. I’ve got guys double-checking, triple-checking, quadruple-checking everything from each of those cases—every report, every statement. They’re calling the families of the victims. They’re reinterviewing the people who reported finding the bodies. Nothing.”

  “He’s smart, he’s careful, he’s experienced,” Quinn said. “But he just changed the way he does things. That’s when these guys make mistakes. He’s always hunted victims of opportunity, but he singled this girl out. He knew where she lives. He knew her schedule.”

  “He stalked her,” Kovac concluded. “He singled her out because of the coverage of the Penny Gray case.”

  “This is his big moment to show the world he’s smarter than everybody.”

  “So far,” Kasselmann said, “he is.”

  “We’ve got to trace Dana Nolan’s every move over the last few days,” Kovac said. “If he was stalking her, someone might have seen him.”

  “He might have even interacted with her in the days leading up to this,” Quinn said. “He was able to get right up to her in an otherwise abandoned parking lot. He’s either a master of the blitz attack or she didn’t feel threatened. And the only way she didn’t feel threatened in this circumstance was if he was somehow familiar to her.”

  “So he’s probably not a scary-looking guy,” Liska said.

  “Probably not. Probably average size or smaller,” Quinn said. “He’s probably friendly, smiling, familiar. He could be using a ploy, like he needs help with something or he needs directions, or something like that.

  “I got that feeling looking at a couple of his older cases. The Rose Reiser case, in particular. She disappeared walking out of a convenience store, and no one saw anything, which means she didn’t struggle. He had to have gotten right up to her without causing alarm. Then he probably used a stun gun or some other quick way of subduing the victim.”

  Kovac looked up at the wall and the photos of Penny Gray and thought about the video of her walking out of the Holiday station down the street from the Rock & Bowl.