Immoral

by Brian Freeman

  Bird squeezed his tall body into his usual chair. He rubbed one hand back over his shaved scalp and glanced at his suit to make sure his pockets, handkerchief, and cuffs were in place. He cleared his throat and draped one bent arm over the left side of the chair.

  He gave his guests a last sympathetic smile. The red light went on.

  “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen,” Bird said. “I’m Jay Finch, and tonight I bring you a very special interview with two families from Duluth, Minnesota. These four people only met for the first time tonight, but they share a bond that brings them closer together as each day passes.”

  The camera backed up to reveal the Stoners and McGraths sitting across from Bird on the set.

  “Fifteen months ago, Kerry McGrath, the daughter of Mike and Barbara McGrath, disappeared off the streets of Duluth. Three weeks ago tonight, Rachel Deese, daughter of Emily Stoner and stepdaughter of her husband, Graeme, suffered the same terrible fate. Two teenage girls who went to the same school and lived only a few miles apart. Both missing persons. We all pray for their safety, and we all fear for their lives.”

  Bird’s voice hardened. “The police will not tell you these crimes are related. They say simply that both investigations are continuing, although they release no evidence to suggest they are any closer to solving these awful mysteries. Meanwhile, the families of Duluth face another night of uneasy sleep. Each time one of their girls goes off to school, they wonder if she will return home safely. Each time their daughter leaves them to visit a friend, they call to make sure she arrived on time. This is what fear does. This is the price of not knowing. Because everyone in Duluth is whispering the same question: What happened?”

  Bird focused his eyes into the camera, as if he were standing in the living room of every viewer.

  “What happened? Is there a serial killer stalking the young women of Duluth? Is someone else in danger? Will a year pass this time between crimes, or has the killer’s patience been exhausted? Is he back on the street tonight, cruising in a lonely vehicle, slowing down at each person he passes?”

  The words burned on his tongue like sour candy. He could feel the fear like a tangible thing, and he knew he was spreading it throughout the state. Bird didn’t feel guilty. They needed to be afraid.

  “We don’t know the answer to those questions,” Bird said softly. “We don’t know what really happened on those two nights a little over a year apart. God knows we all hope that Kerry and Rachel are both safe somewhere and that in the very near future we will see them back home with their parents. But in the interim, the citizens of this state are looking to the police for answers—answers that are long overdue.”

  Bird turned to Barbara McGrath. “Now let’s hear from the other victims of these crimes, the families who suffer and wonder. Mrs. McGrath, do you believe in your heart that Kerry is still alive?”

  Emily heard the woman answer. She said the expected thing. Yes, Kerry was alive; she felt it keenly in her soul; she knew her girl was out there somewhere; she would never give up hope as long as Kerry was missing. Then this stranger next to her, Barbara McGrath, turned and stared at the camera and spoke to it, pleaded with it.

  “Kerry, if you’re out there,” Barbara said, “if you can hear this, I want you to know we love you. We think about you every single day. And we want you to come home to us.”

  With a sigh, her emotions overran her, and Barbara buried her face in her hands. Her husband leaned over, and Barbara let her head fall against his shoulder. His hand nestled in her black hair and caressed her gently.

  Emily stared at them with a curious detachment. She felt far away. When she looked at Graeme, he was studying them, too, with an impenetrable expression on his face, devoid of emotion. She wondered if he was feeling what she felt—envy. She envied these people their pure, uncomplicated grief and their ability to find comfort and strength in each other. She had none of those things. That was why she had resisted the interview for so long, because she knew she would have to lie about so many things. She would have to say the expected things, even if she didn’t feel them. She would say how much she missed Rachel, while wondering if she really did. She would hold Graeme’s hand for support and feel nothing in his lifeless grip.

  The only person who understood, who could help her, wasn’t there.

  Like a ghost, she felt herself floating above the set. She heard Bird Finch talking to her, his voice echoing from the end of a long tunnel.

  “Mrs. Stoner, is there anything you want to tell Rachel?” Bird asked.

  Emily stared at the camera and the red light glowing above it. She was frozen. It was as if she could really see Rachel, somewhere in the dark reflection of the lens, and as if Rachel could see her, too. She didn’t understand what she was feeling now. The hostility had been an ache inside her for so long that she still didn’t know how to live without it. Rachel was gone, and so was the bitter war. It was unimaginable that she could want it back.

  Did she? Or was it really better this way?

  There had been many times when she had wished that Rachel would disappear. She fantasized that her life would finally get better when the weight was lifted. Maybe she could have a marriage again. Maybe she could love her daughter better when she was gone.

  What happened?

  “Mrs. Stoner?” Bird asked.

  Maybe she should tell them all the truth. If only they knew the secret, maybe they would leave her in peace. And the truth was that Rachel was evil.

  Emily had been working two jobs in the years since Tommy died, grinding the debt down, climbing out of the hole in which he had buried them. From eight o’clock to five o’clock, she was a teller at the downtown branch of the Range Bank. Then she jumped in her car, hurried up Miller Hill, and sold romance novels and Playboy magazines from the bookstore until the mall closed at nine. The world was a perpetual haze, in which she felt drugged by stress and sleeplessness.

  The only bright spot in her life had arrived three weeks ago, when she brought home a West Highland terrier from the pound. After years of coming home to silence, or to Rachel’s quiet hostility, it was refreshing to have the noise and playfulness of the dog filling the house. Originally, Emily had bought the dog with Rachel in mind, but Rachel ignored him, and Emily was the one to take him into the backyard at night to chase down the blue chew-toy she threw for him again and again.

  That was when she made a surprising discovery. The little white dog, with its cropped legs and scruffy fur, had cracked her own facade. She realized she looked forward to coming home again. The dog welcomed her maniacally, as if she were the best, most important person on the planet. He slept in her lap and in bed with her. On the weekends, they walked together, the dog leading the way, tugging at the leash, pulling her up and down the streets.

  Rachel didn’t offer any names. So Emily called him Snowball. He was small, white, and fast, and his cold nose on her face in the morning felt like winter.

  Driving home, even half asleep, she began to smile. Thinking of Snowball did that to her. Only when she thought of Rachel did the lines of worry creep back into her face and the smile fade into a weary frown. In the early days, after Tommy’s death, she had taken Rachel to a psychologist, but the girl refused to return after a few sessions. Emily talked to her teachers. She talked to Dayton Tenby at church. They were all sympathetic, but no one had been able to reach her. As far as Rachel was concerned, the hurt of Tommy’s death would never go away, and the only solace seemed to be to punish her mother over and over again.

  Emily pulled the car into the narrow driveway of their tiny house, two stories with two bedrooms upstairs, with a yard that had long been neglected. The driveway had deep cracks with grass sprouting in tufts through the cement.

  Inside, she expected to hear the thunder of paws as Snowball pounded to greet her.

  “Snowball,” she called. Emily listened for a distant bark, assuming that Rachel had banished the terrier to the backyard.

  She continued do
wn the hallway to the kitchen. Her stomach growled. She retrieved a plastic tub of cut broccoli from the refrigerator and munched a few florets. Emily heard her daughter clump down the stairs. Rachel joined her in the kitchen but didn’t greet her. The girl tucked her sweatshirt underneath her, slumped in one of the kitchen chairs, and sifted out a Victoria’s Secret catalog from the pile of mail. She reached into Emily’s bucket and retrieved a piece of broccoli.

  “Looking for a Wonderbra?” Emily asked, smiling. Rachel looked up and gave her mother an unpleasant stare. Emily was feeling tired enough not to care what she said.

  Emily pushed her nose up against the back window. “It’s getting cold,” she said. “You shouldn’t leave Snowball outside.”

  Rachel turned a page in the catalog. “He’s not outside. He got loose out front earlier.”

  “Loose? How?”

  “He ran through my legs when I came home.”

  Emily realized she was frantic. “Well, did you look for him? Is he lost? I’ve got to go find him!”

  Rachel glanced up from the catalog at Emily. “He ran into the street. A car hit him. Sorry.”

  Emily fell against the back door. Her hands flew up to her open mouth. A giant pit welled in her stomach, and she felt her chest heaving. Then the sting came to her eyes, and she sobbed uncontrollably, tears flooding down her cheeks and through her fingers. She bit her tongue and ran out of the kitchen. When she tried to suck air into her lungs, nothing happened. She staggered to the front door, tore it open, and fell against the porch railing. She hardly noticed the cold wind. Leaving the door open, she stumbled into the driveway, then felt her knees give way under her. She sank down on the cold pavement and leaned against the car, which was still warm. She closed her eyes.

  Emily wasn’t sure how long she lay crumpled in the driveway. By the time she thought to move, the car was cold again, and so was she. Her fingers were stiff. The tears had frozen into icy streaks on her face. It was only a dog, she told herself, but that didn’t matter at all. At that moment, she felt worse than if she had come home and found that Rachel had been the one to die in the street.

  She wandered aimlessly down the driveway. There was no evidence of the accident in the street. She slid back to her knees and stared vacantly ahead. She was so distracted, and the streetlight was so dim, that she barely saw the tiny thing nestled on the opposite curb. It was almost invisible, like a piece of junk that had fallen from a garbage can and been left there. She almost missed it, but something about it caught her eye and held it. Through her tears, a puzzled expression crept onto her face. Then the puzzlement turned to horror.

  She knew what it was. But it couldn’t be.

  With a burst of strength, Emily pushed herself to her feet. She crossed the rest of the street hesitantly, not wanting to look into the gutter, but she couldn’t tear her eyes away. Finally, she stood over it and shook her head, still not believing. Even when she bent down, picked the dirty thing off the street, and held it loosely in her hands, she wanted to be wrong.

  Then her hand curled around it into a fist.

  The grief subsided and became rage. She had never felt such basic hatred filling her soul. It wasn’t just Snowball. It was years of cruelty coming to roost in a single crystallized moment. Emily trembled, almost washed away by the flood of anger inside her. Her jaw clenched. Her lips tightened into a thin line.

  She screamed, dragging the name out into a wail. “Rachel!”

  Emily sprinted back across the street, up the driveway, and into the house, slamming the door behind her with such ferocity that the whole frame of the house shook. She didn’t care if the neighbors could hear. She kept bellowing her daughter’s name. “Rachel!”

  With deadly intent, she stormed into the kitchen, where Rachel was still calmly flipping pages in the Victoria’s Secret catalog. The girl looked up, utterly unfazed by Emily’s screams. She didn’t say anything. She just waited.

  “You did this!” Emily shouted in an agonized voice. “You did this!”

  Emily stuck out her hand and uncurled her fingers, in which lay the grimy blue chew-toy that Snowball happily fetched on command. “He didn’t get loose,” Emily hissed. “You let him out in front. And then you tossed the toy for him when the car was coming. You killed him!”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Rachel said.

  “Don’t give me that innocent shit,” Emily exploded. “You killed him! You heartless fucking little bitch, you killed my dog!”

  The years of restraint gave way. Emily bent down and yanked Rachel bodily out of the kitchen chair. She swung her arm back and slapped the girl fiercely across the face. “You killed him!” she screamed again, and then hit Rachel again, harder. “How could you do this to me?”

  She hit her again.

  And again. And again.

  Rachel’s cheek was beet red and streaked with the imprint of Emily’s fingers. Blood trickled from her lip. She didn’t fight back. She stood there, her eyes cold and calm, not flinching as each blow pounded her face. She absorbed the punishment until Emily finally ran out of fury. Emily staggered backward, staring at her daughter, then turned away and buried her face in her hands. The room was suddenly quiet again.

  Emily nursed one hand in the other. She felt Rachel’s eyes boring into her back. Then, without another word, her daughter stalked out of the kitchen. She heard Rachel climb the stairs, then heard the clanging of pipes as she ran water in the bathroom.

  It was the one thing Emily had sworn to herself she would never do, no matter how bad things got between them.

  And she had done it.

  “Mrs. Stoner?” Bird Finch repeated. “Is there anything you’d like to tell Rachel right now?”

  Emily stared hollowly into the camera. Tears filled her eyes and burst onto her cheeks. To everyone watching on television, it was the pain of a mother faced with the ultimate agony—the loss of a child. They didn’t need to know the truth.

  “I guess I’d tell her I’m sorry,” Emily said.

  9

  Stride sat alone in his basement cubicle at city hall on Friday night. The chrome desk lamp cast a small circle of light over the files he was trying to read. He had returned to his office in order to catch up on paperwork and review reports on the other crimes that had occurred in the weeks since Rachel disappeared. Most were straightforward domestic disputes, auto thefts, retail break-ins—the kind of investigations he could delegate to the seven sergeants he supervised. But the sheer volume was catching up with him. He couldn’t see the pockmarked wood of his desk underneath the files and papers.

  The downstairs headquarters of the Detective Bureau was quiet. His team had gone home. Stride liked it here at night, when the silence was complete and the phone didn’t ring. He only had to worry about the buzzing of his pager, like a mosquito biting him to alert him to bad things happening in the city. He didn’t spend much time in his office during the day. The bureau was small, and he had to share the weight of serious investigations himself. That was fine. He liked being in the field, doing the real work. He squeezed in the administrative half of his job at odd hours when he wouldn’t be interrupted.

  The city didn’t pay for plush quarters anyway. The foam tiles over his head were water-stained from the many times that pipes had leaked and dripped down onto his desk. The industrial gray carpet carried a faint aroma of mildew. His cubicle was large enough to squeeze in a visitor’s chair, which was the only real difference between a lieutenant’s office and a sergeant’s office. Stride didn’t bother personalizing his space with posters and family photos the way most of his team did. He had only one old picture of Cindy tacked to the cork bulletin board, and even that photo was half covered by the latest advisories from Homeland Security. It was a messy, cold place, and he was happy to escape from it whenever he could.

  He heard the ding of the elevator a few feet away. That rarely happened at night. It meant someone from above, in the real city offices, was coming downstairs. He waited for the doors
to open and recognized K-2’s dwarflike silhouette.

  “Evening, Jon,” Deputy Chief Kyle Kinnick said in a reedy voice.

  K-2 used an open-toed walk and strolled through the open door of Stride’s cubicle. He looked down, frowning, at the pile of papers in the empty chair. Stride apologized and moved the stack to the floor so the chief could sit down.

  “So you think she’s dead?” Kinnick asked, cutting straight to the point.

  “That’s the way it looks,” Stride said. There was no point in sugarcoating what both men knew. “Nine out of ten don’t come back alive at this point.”

  Kinnick yanked on the knot of his tie. He was dressed in a charcoal suit, which was baggy on his tiny frame, and looked as if he were just coming from a city council meeting. “Shit. The mayor’s not happy about this, you know. We’re getting queries from the national press. Dateline. They want to know if this is a serial killer story, something they can run with.”

  “There’s no evidence of that.”

  “Well, since when did evidence mean a damn thing to these people?” Kinnick warbled. He dug a finger in one of his ears. They flapped from the side of his small head like cabbage leaves.

  Stride smiled. He was remembering the leprechaun parody of K-2 that Maggie did at a bureau party the previous St. Patrick’s Day.

  “This funny to you?” Kinnick asked.

  “No, sir. Sorry. You don’t have to tell me about the media. Bird’s all over me.”

  Kinnick snorted. He was gruff with his lieutenants and an easy mark for jokes, but Stride liked him. K-2 was an administrative cop, not a field detective, but he defended his department fiercely with city officials, and he made a point of meeting with every interest group in the city, from kindergarten classes to the Rotary, to talk up the police force. He was loyal to his team, and that went a long way with Stride.