Lost Girls

by Andrew Pyper

  The offstage yowl of a backyard cat fight. A car washes past in the street, brake lights glaring. Nobody looks my way.

  After a while I stop at the playground at the side of St. Mary’s Elementary, plant myself into one of the canvas swings. Hold my legs out straight and creak back and forth through solid air.

  I’m thinking: this is where kids play. Watched by parents standing on the other side of the fence or from their idling minivans, believing that if they could just manage to be around their children enough of the time they might afford them some protection. But how can you protect them from something you can’t see? What defenses can be drawn against the anonymous monster that lives three doors down the hall, delivers your mail, gives you a smile on the way to the bus stop, lies next to you in bed?

  I’m thinking: maybe this was Tripp’s daughter’s school. Maybe he even pushed her on this same swing once, or stood below her as she clamored over the bars of the jungle gym to make sure he’d be there if she fell. Maybe this was the same place where he stood outside in the rain, looking up at her face in the classroom window. Thinking of how much he loved her, how desperately he missed her and the injustice of being denied her company. But who knows? Maybe he was thinking to hell with all the goddamn lawyers and cunning ex-wives and court orders that say you can’t come within two hundred yards of your own child. Maybe he was already working on alternative plans. How he would take her away and nobody would ever see either of them again. How maybe he’d do something bad to somebody else if it all didn’t work out. Or then again it could be that he was just another awkward father who didn’t quite know how to love.

  Nobody really thought it was the English teacher anyway until he was arrested. Up until that point Tripp had been an Invisible Man too. He looked normal enough. So why are we always surprised when normal-looking people do terrible things? Almost all of my clients have been the sort about whom it is said that they look and talk just like you or me. Because they are you and me. And this is the only really startling thing about the evil of the world: not that so much of it exists, but that nobody ever expects it.

  Later that night I dream of being asleep in my bed in the honeymoon suite. I know it’s a dream even as it’s happening. Everything as it actually is but with some of the details slightly altered: the distance between my feet and the windows the length of a bowling alley, the desk looming with stacked paper on the verge of collapse, the moon hanging like a paper plate over the town but casting no light into the room. Yet when I look up at the ceiling I know where I am. The feeling the same as looking at your own reflection in a mirror: I know I am here; I know I am there.

  There’s the room’s coolness that keeps me from sleep even with the covers pulled around my ears. The newsprint on the walls that in the dark gives the appearance of a papier-mâché cave. A nearly human sculpture that is my clothes thrown over the back of a chair, the papery breath of air up through the vents, a squirrel digging through the eavestrough outside the window.

  Then a new sound. So distant at first it could just be another layer I’ve added onto the others but slowly coming forward, distinct. The brush of something soft against wood, the squeak and snap of the floor taking on new weight. Outside the bedroom door, moving down the hallway. Closer.

  Now I wish the dream was boring again, that I could go back to being an insomniac in an imagined room. But this wishing doesn’t stop the sound from filling out, unmistakable footsteps landing slow but heavy through the walls. I turn my head—the rustle of hair over the pillow loud enough for the whole hotel to hear—and keep my eyes on the door. Just enough space to slip a note under but it gapes wider even as I watch it. A hand could fit through now. An entire arm, reaching up to the doorknob to let itself in.

  But when there’s something to see it’s not a hand or an arm but bare feet. The skin pale orange in the antique light.

  Then I do just as I would likely do in real life: close my eyes and hope it goes away. But it doesn’t. It’s too real. It is real.

  That’s why I’m pulling back the sheets, sitting up on the edge of the mattress with eyes locked on the bottom of the door. The feet disappeared from view now; I’m up too high and the angle’s changed. But the sound is clearer. A living thing that knows I’m here, waits for me to stand and go to the door.

  And then I’m standing and going to the door. My own steps far louder over the floor than whatever waits for me in the hallway although I’m barefoot as well, frozen bones that can no longer feel where the air stops and floor starts.

  Hold my ear flat against the wood. My breath a tuneless whistle up through my throat, tight as a straw.

  And another’s from the other side. A low, sickening rattle.

  So cold.

  The liquid clack of tongue. Words so unclear they don’t even sound as words do but I’m still certain what they are.

  Watch as my arm drifts away from my side. The fingers snapping back the bolt, pulling the door open wide and closing my eyes against the staggering wash of frigid air. At once acrid and sweet, bushels of cotton candy thrown onto a fire.

  And a woman.

  Standing in the middle of the hallway wearing nothing but a moldering hospital gown with holes rotted through to the body beneath. Her face bloated, broken open, envelopes of skin hanging across the dull ivory of her skull. Water still dripping off the long strings of her hair and down her stomach, her knees, collecting in a greasy pool around her feet. Stepping forward to take me in.

  Hold me.

  Raises her arms and her body enlarges to fill the door frame. Then her mouth. A space the size of my fist, and wider. The size of my head. A mouth stretched to break into laughter or a scream that beads my face with the bitter moisture from her lungs.

  Close my eyes and wish it away. But again it’s not my wishing that does anything, but a voice. Here in this room where I’m asleep, calling myself out from inside the mirror, from what you know can’t really be there but is there nevertheless.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  Both the quiet of Murdoch’s streets and the more or less steady rain that’s fallen upon them over the preceding weeks are interrupted on the morning of the first day of trial. As soon as I turn outside the doors of The Empire to walk up to the courthouse I can see the clog of vans with satellite dishes rigged up on their roofs parked out front as well as an orange tarpaulin shelter that’s been erected on the lawn to protect the TV reporters’ hair from the wind. Two of them out there already, one man and one woman standing next to the war memorial that lists the bronze names of the local dead. Both applying hairspray, daubing at blackheads with makeup-smeared cotton pads and snapping orders at clipboard-holding assistants. Still, now that I’m up here I can see that only a couple stations have decided to make the trip. Maybe the Lost Girls story has been losing momentum in the editorial boardrooms where such things are decided. Or maybe it’s been replaced with some other garish tale, one better able to deliver compelling visuals, violent details, and isn’t so inconveniently far from downtown.

  Even though I’m wearing my barrister’s robes and swinging a heavy leather document bag at the end of my arm, neither of the primping reporters seems to notice my arrival. And that’s fine with me. I’ve been instructed by Bert that the best approach in this case is to lay as low as possible. “Don’t give the fuckers anything,” were his exact words. “They’ll only turn whatever you say around and make it worse for us.” His “us” left me with the distinct impression that he meant “me and Graham.” Nevertheless, it was probably good advice no matter whom it was meant to serve, and as I bound up the front courthouse steps and push open the main oak doors I’m fully prepared to “No comment” my way through the throng of hacks and photographers waiting in the marble mezzanine for their first glimpse of Bartholomew Christian Crane, the young turk they’ve come all the way up here to see if he’s got what it takes.

  But there’s nobody there. Just a couple of robed lawyers laughing to themselves, their clients following unce
rtainly behind them, and a janitor buffing the floor with one of those machines with spinning cotton mop heads that hover silently back and forth. But no reporters gathering in for the scrum. In fact the only ones who look my way as I walk down the hall to Courtroom 109 are the whiskey-faced regulars sitting on the benches, eyes bleary with hangover, wondering if I was to be the one to try and put them away for longer than the last time.

  Inside, the courtroom gallery is half full: Mr. and Mrs. McConnell straight-backed in the front row immediately behind Goodwin’s table; Brian Flynn on his own in the back at the furthest point from the McConnells he could find; Doug Pittle with a notepad teetering on his crossed legs; Laird Johanssen grinning over at me proudly as though he’d just released a prodigious fart; a half-dozen members of the press, three crime reporters I recognize from the Toronto dailies who, as is their habit, sit, one behind the other, making too much noise.

  With a “Good morning” to Goodwin I take my place at the defense table and arrange the contents of my document bag around me like a fortress. Then we all wait. And when the clerk’s voice finally booms, “All rise!” enough time has passed in silent tension that I can feel the entire courtroom jolt back to full consciousness and stand on legs weakened by being crossed too long. All watch the judge come in and take her position in her high-backed chair, and by the time she grumbles a “You may be seated,” maybe ten seconds after being told to stand, it’s as though we couldn’t have held ourselves up a moment longer, as all our asses crunch simultaneously back down on padded chair and wooden bench.

  Then from a side door Tripp is brought in, shuffling over to his seat next to mine, his ankles polyester sticks in iron shackles. Once Tripp is seated the bailiff removes them and hooks them to a metal clasp on his belt to be put on again at Tripp’s exit.

  “How are you doing, Thomas?” I whisper over to him, and he manages to turn, part lips coated white with unrinsed toothpaste and whisper, “Yes.” Yes to what? I’m not about to ask.

  The jury is then ushered in from a door on the opposite side and the twelve of them, more bewildered by the feel of their clean-shaven faces and laundered clothes than the unfamiliar surroundings, take their places in the box. Some look Tripp’s way, squinting him into focus, but most keep their eyes on the bench. From her elevated seat Goldfarb scans the room, peering over our heads as though trying to find her husband at a cocktail party. Finally she turns to the jury, closes her eyes in the gathering of strength, then opens them at the same moment as she opens her mouth.

  “Members of the jury, today is the first day of the trial for which you will serve as jurors for as long as this proceeding requires. Before you hear any of the Crown’s witnesses and, if they elect to call any, the defense’s witnesses, you will first hear opening submissions from both counsel. I must instruct you that the things they will say today are not statements of proven fact. What you will hear today is just argument, theories of what did or did not happen in relation to the accused. So just sit back, keep an open mind and try to pay attention. O.K.? Now, without further ado, Mr. Goodwin, are you prepared to deliver opening submissions for the Crown?”

  “I am, Your Honor.”

  “Then we’re all ears.”

  Goodwin lifts himself out of his chair, places his fingertips on the table’s edge to feel where it is in case he needs it. Nods once to the bench then turns to face the jury, taking a few seconds to look directly into each of the twelve sets of eyes that goggle back at him.

  “We live in a society of advanced technology. Of TVs with two hundred channels, computers that can speak to each other, even genetic cloning. And I can tell you, every scientific and technological resource was employed in the search for Ashley Flynn and Krystal McConnell. But it still wasn’t enough. At first the police classified them as ‘Missing.’ Then ‘Disappeared.’ And finally, after enough evidence was collected, they were led to conclude that the girls had been murdered. But as my friend for the defense will no doubt repeatedly remind you, their bodies have not been found.

  “You may well ask yourselves, ‘How can two people just go missing in today’s day and age?’ And it would be a perfectly reasonable question. But I can tell you, Krystal and Ashley are not exceptional cases. Despite the breakthroughs of science people still disappear. All the time. In Canada, for example, sixty thousand children are reported missing each year. In the United States, it’s twenty-three hundred every day. Of course the majority of these people eventually come home, but not all of them. In fact, chances are greater than one in thirty that a year later that child will still be missing.

  “And when they go, too often it’s at the hands of a murderer. But even this isn’t uncommon. Would you imagine that in our sparsely populated country there are, on average, over 700 homicides a year? And that’s nothing compared to the States, where they manage to get that number up to well over forty times that. And here’s a couple other things you might not have imagined: ninety percent of murderers are male, and the number one motive given for why these people decided to take the life of another is “love.” Love. Members of the jury, I needn’t tell you that there’s something wrong about that. What happened to Krystal McConnell and Ashley Flynn was terribly wrong. And while it’s too late to save them now, it’s not too late to do something for them. We can’t change the world through what we do here in this courtroom, we can’t make those numbers smaller. But we can do one right thing, make one right decision. And that is to find Thomas Tripp guilty of first-degree murder.

  “But don’t just take my word for it. There’s going to be plenty of evidence to support the Crown’s claim that these girls were brought to their ends by the man who sits at the table next to me. To show that what happened was this: on Thursday, May the twelfth, Ashley and Krystal went to Tripp’s classroom after school as usual to attend a meeting of the Literary Club, of which they were the only members and Tripp their sole supervisor. At the closing of their meeting, he offered to drive them both home in his car, and they accepted. But this wasn’t unusual; he drove them home after school quite a lot, actually—him up front and the girls in the back. In fact, they sat in the backseat so much they both left strands of their hair on the upholstery.

  “So it is on this Thursday in early spring that Tripp decided not to drive the girls home, but take them out to Lake St. Christopher. The end of the road. Gets out the driver’s side, opens the back door where the girls sit wondering what they’re doing out there when their parents would be worrying about them and their dinners getting cold. Then Tripp grabs them. There’s a struggle. One of the results of this struggle is that Krystal is cut, dripping blood on the backseat. How do we know this? Because she was blonde and Ashley was dark-haired. Because both blonde and dark hair was found in the backseat, and both were sent for DNA testing along with the bloodstains. Because the blonde hair and bloodstains matched.

  “And now Tripp is dragging the girls off into the woods down toward the lake. But with their attempts to fight him off and all the spring meltwater flowing down the hill—well, you can imagine that it would be quite a muddy business. So muddy, in fact, that the pants and shoes Tripp wore that day were later found caked with it. But despite the girls’ struggles and the slippery path he finally manages to get them down to the water’s edge where he—well—what did he do? Only the accused who sits there before you knows for sure. But Lake St. Christopher is wide and one of the deepest bodies of water in the region. Deep enough to never have something put down in it come back up again, even with all the technology in the world.

  “We’ve come to the end of the story and we’re still left with the question that any right-thinking person must ask. Why? Why would Ashley Flynn and Krystal McConnell’s teacher, their mentor, their friend, do this terrible thing? Members of the jury, nobody can know for sure what goes on in the mind of a killer, but the answer may just lie in those numbers I mentioned earlier. Maybe he did it out of love. Not the love you feel for your husband or wife or kids or friends. But a per
version of love that’s been twisted by a very sick mind. Think about this: Tripp kept pictures of girls cut out from catalogs pasted to the wall in his bedroom. Girls the same age as his victims. Girls modeling underwear.

  “Members of the jury, that’s our story of what happened and why. Over the course of this trial you will see and hear evidence to substantiate this story. But even more important than the evidence is making a difference. It’s giving some peace to the dead and to the missing.”

  Goodwin collapses back into his chair and takes half a dozen noisy gasps for air. I have to hand it to him: he made it through the whole of his opening submissions without physical disaster. But it’s still early yet. And now it’s my turn.

  “Mr. Crane?” The bench nods, and with a humble thank you, I rise.

  “Those are undoubtedly some very disturbing statistics Mr. Goodwin cited for you all just now,” I start, trying to keep things slow, half drawled. “I make my living in this business, and I can tell you that I’m still shocked whenever I hear them. Shocked, yes, but I have no doubt that they’re true. Because we live in a terrible world. That’s quite a thing to say, isn’t it? But we know it’s true. You can hardly turn on the local news these days without hearing about children gone missing—most often girls, isn’t it?—and even though the police and the volunteer search parties are doing everything they can, you know if it’s made it on TV it can’t be good.

  “No, you won’t find me agreeing with Mr. Goodwin very much over the days and weeks to come, but I certainly agree with him that it’s a terrible world with enough terrible things in it to give anyone a million lifetimes worth of nightmares. I have those nightmares myself. In fact, I’ve been having more than my fair share since I started working on this case. And not because I have any misgivings about defending my client, Mr. Thomas Tripp. No. It’s because two young girls have been lost and so far they haven’t been found. But all we can do, friends—all anyone can do—is be good citizens, be vigilant, and do our jobs well.