(2001) The Girls Are Missing

by Caroline Crane

  He finished his second cup of coffee and pushed back his chair. “Better get that lawn mowed.”

  “It’s awfully early, Mr. Suburbanite.” Even after a year, they were still getting used to the routine of lawns, clogged gutters, and oil burners.

  “If I wait, the kids will be trampling it down and then it won’t cut properly.” He went upstairs to put on his lawn-mowing uniform, as she called it: grass-stained work pants and a pair of tattered sneakers.

  As she loaded the dishwasher and set the table for the next sitting, Gail came downstairs in her thin, too-small pajamas and silently helped herself to half a bowl of cereal.

  “There’s bacon,” said Joyce.

  “Mmm,” Gail muttered.

  “Aren’t we bright and sunny this morning.”

  “Mommy, did they find out who that person is?”

  “What person? Oh—yes. It was one of those missing girls. The older one.”

  “I’m glad it wasn’t Valerie.”

  “Who’s Valerie?”

  “That’s the other girl that’s missing. Anita’s sister knows her. They’re in the same class.”

  Outside, the lawn mower started with a roar. It drowned out her half-formed answer, which was just as well. Good luck, Valerie. She went upstairs to change her clothes.

  The newspapers were still on the bed where Carl had left them. The Times was folded open to the article she had already seen. She turned the pages of the News.

  MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD. And a blurry photograph of Joan Danner in life, a smiling, oval-faced blonde.

  An autopsy revealed that the hyoid bone in the throat was broken, which indicated death by strangulation. It seemed clear that the mutilation had been done afterward. In a sexual rage, perhaps. It could not be determined whether the girl had been raped.

  Of course not. The body had been around since May 29.

  A freak. A real freak. How did nature ever come up with things like that?

  Quickly she put on her clothes, made the bed, and took the newspapers down to the living room. She did not want them in the same room with Adam. She placed them neatly on the coffee table—as Barbara said, Carl liked things neat—and glanced out at the lawn, where the mower stood alone in the middle of the half-cut grass.

  8

  He saw them moving about in the meadow, the shapes of men, and he knew what they were doing. They must have been all over the place, all through the woods, down by that little brook. Probably searching the ruins near Lattimer, the cellar that remained, filled with rubble and fallen beams from some long-ago fire; the old springhouse, and the newer garage. He switched off the mower and left it there—he could finish it later, this wouldn’t take long—and walked toward the meadow.

  By the time he reached the stone wall, they had vanished. He followed the path until he saw one, a cop. The man wore his summer uniform, a short-sleeved blue shirt, and mirrored sunglasses so you couldn’t see his eyes. He had arms like a pair of clubs.

  “Morning,” said Carl.

  “H’lo,” said the policeman. “You live around here?”

  “Right over there.” Carl nodded toward his house. “Gilwood’s the name. You picked a nice hot day to be out here trekking through the woods.”

  “Didn’t exactly pick it,” the policeman replied. “It picked me.

  Cliches were a sign of a limited mind. Carl managed to conceal his distate.

  “What are you looking for?” he asked. “The other little girl?”

  The mirrored glasses reflected the sky. “What other little girl?”

  “The other one that’s missing. Isn’t there another girl missing?”

  “Got no way of knowing she’s anywhere around here,” said the cop. “Or even dead.”

  “Right. That’s why you have to look, isn’t it? Need any help?”

  To his surprise, the cop accepted. “All the help we can get. You probably know this area better than we do.”

  “Be glad to. I was in the middle of cutting my grass.” He hated to think of that scraggly, unfinished lawn. But this could be important.

  “When you guys get thirsty,” he suggested, “how about coming over to my place for a beer?”

  “Thanks,” said the cop, “but we got rules about that.”

  Carl didn’t have his full attention. The man kept looking off in the distance, studying the trees, the knolls, the rocks—at least as far as you could tell from behind those glasses.

  He wasn’t going to find it there. Not in the trees.

  “Coke, then,” Carl said, as a way of calling him back. “We’ve got kids, we have plenty of soft drinks. My wife’ll even make you some iced tea. It’s her specialty, that powdered stuff.”

  The cop granted him a moment of notice. “That’s real nice. Maybe we’ll take you up on it.” Somebody must have flattened his nose once. It had a pushed-in look.

  “Meantime,” Carl reminded him, “you’d better tell me what we’re looking for.”

  “Anything. But just look. Don’t touch. Don’t disturb anything. Mostly what we’re trying to find right now is some sort of cool place. A cave or a cellar, something like that.”

  “What do you want a cave or a cellar for?”

  “Want to know where the body was kept. The girl disappeared the end of May. You got a strong stomach? The corpse wasn’t as far gone as you’d expect in that time.”

  “Really,” said Carl. “What makes you think she died the day she disappeared?”

  “We’re not ruling out anything. It’s just not so easy to keep somebody a prisoner without people knowing.”

  “Okay. And how’s it going to help if you find this place?”

  “It’ll help. Now remember, don’t touch anything. That’s important. I appreciate this, Mr. Gilwood.”

  What a farce, Carl thought as he and three other men fanned out across the meadow, looking for rocks and cave formations—when he knew there weren’t any.

  Small-town cops. Probably never had any case bigger than a lost dog before.

  Down over the next stone wall he could hear the gurgle of the brook. He wondered how long it would take them to start thinking about that brook.

  9

  As assiduously as he scoured the woods and fields, Frank D’Amico watched the people who were temporarily and informally under his command. Some were only high school kids out for a little adventure. Others were red-necks from the lower village, eager to “get” the killer. They were the kind who saw the victim less as a woman than a stolen object.

  Both those types bore watching. So did the people who lived in the immediate area. There was Foster Farand, an unassuming-looking man with a big voice and slight build. D’Amico had known him for many years, but that didn’t let him out of the picture.

  There was that Gilwood guy, relatively new in the community. Even with the grass stains on his pants, Frank had him pegged as a compulsive man, a very controlled sort of person. Too controlled, perhaps.

  It was Gilwood’s wife who had reported finding the corpse, he remembered.

  Then there was the big fellow Cheskill, a brute of a body if ever he saw one, but mild enough on the surface. Except you never could tell what lay below the surface.

  “Hey, Chief, I think we’ve got something here.”

  That was Finneran. Without betraying anything, Frank sent his searchers down the brook, away from its source, and followed Arthur up the slope to the Lattimer ruins.

  It was cold inside that shed where the spring bubbled up, like being in a refrigerator on a hot summer day. A scrap of white fabric lay in the dirt, and in one corner, with his flashlight, Herb Mackey had caught the glitter of something that might have been part of an earring.

  They couldn’t tell about the floor, not without a lab test. There was something on it—or in it, rather, since it was a dirt floor, but it could have been anything. They might have used the room for slaughtering chickens a hundred years ago, it looked that old.

  “Okay, you guys,” he said to Finn
eran and Mackey, “we’ve got a big one here, and we’re keeping it to ourselves. We’re going to watch this place day and night, and nobody’s going to know about it. That includes the newspaper, the mayor, and especially those civilians out there, understand?”

  They understood. They were good men, even if they’d never worked on anything like this before.

  “Think maybe the guy is going to try and come back?” Mackey asked.

  “You never know. Every one of those guys is aware we’re looking for a place like this. If he’s one of them, he might want to come back and check it over.”

  “You don’t think it’s Lattimer,” said Finneran.

  “I’m not playing it by guesswork.”

  “That guy gives me the creeps.” Finneran crawled to the door of the hut and looked out. “He’s been standing up there watching us and he hasn’t said a word all day.”

  “Can he see us now?” asked Frank.

  “I don’t think so. But here we are, going all over his property—he owns this place, doesn’t he?”

  “He knows what we’re doing. We have what they call

  his ‘tacit consent.’ And it’s tacit, all right.”

  “You didn’t get a search warrant, did you?” Finneran needled. D’Amico did not reply. He poked around further, although there was nothing else in the hut, or shed, or whatever it was, except bits of debris from ages past, and the captive spring where the brook came to life and started its run down the slope into the woods.

  He’d have to get some lab boys in here. He hadn’t any of his own, he’d have to borrow some, but the first thing to do was clear those civilians out of the area so as not to arouse their suspicion about the place. So far, it was the only lead they had.

  He didn’t worry about Lattimer. The old man wouldn’t talk to anyone. He never spoke at all except to chase people away, maybe once or twice a year. Even when he walked into town for his groceries, he was quiet as a clam. Whether he was the killer or not—and Frank doubted it, although they couldn’t rule him out—at least he wouldn’t go around blabbing that the police had been in one of his outbuildings. Or all of them, actually.

  Herb Mackey said, “Chief, I just thought of something.”

  “What’s that?” Frank studied the earring without picking it up.

  “That piece of white cloth there. In the missing person report, Joan Danner wasn’t wearing anything white. And the kid, Valerie Cruz, had a white blouse.”

  Frank rocked back on his heels. He knew Valerie Cruz. He had watched her cross that big intersection on her way to school every morning. Every day, where three main streets crossed, she had made it safely, from the year she was in kindergarten and let go of her mother’s hand for the first time. Every day—for what?

  It didn’t mean anything, of course, just because a piece of white cloth turned up in some frigid, musty shed. But

  it figured. They had found the one girl and there were two of them missing.

  “Damn,” said Herb Mackey. “The kid’s father and her brother are out there with those civilians.”

  10

  Carl was up just as early again the next morning. It made a little more sense for the Sunday paper, but seven o’clock seemed a bit unnecessary. Joyce was surprised they even had it printed by then, much less that the drugstore was open at that hour.

  She roused herself when she heard his car drive away. This time she had reminded him to close the garage door. The request seemed to amaze him. But he had been willing to do anything she asked, for today his mother was being inflicted upon her.

  “And I don’t mind telling you,” she said to Adam, who stared at her with misty blue eyes, “your grandmother scares me to death.”

  Cold and critical was Olivia Terry Gilwood Dunn. And yet she must have had a human streak, inviting herself over to see all two of her grandchildren for the first time under one roof. Or had Carl invited her?

  No, not all her grandchildren. Joyce tended to forget about Daniella, Carl’s older sister, who lived in Tucson and had three nearly grown children of her own. It was easy to forget Daniella, for Carl never had anything to do with her, although each year she sent him a beautiful, homemade Christmas card. When he spoke of her, he spoke ruefully. Joyce often

  wondered what Daniella had done to earn that rue, but he would never tell her.

  She was in the kitchen setting up the coffee maker when he returned.

  “It’s funny,” he said, “they didn’t find anything yesterday, even with all those people looking around. If you ask me, it was a big fake. The police sent them on a wild-goose chase.”

  “What did you expect them to find?” she asked.

  “I know what they were looking for. The other little girl. But the police weren’t going to admit it. They tried to throw everybody off the track.”

  She did not reply. It bothered her when he talked that way. He sounded almost paranoid. The best thing to do was ignore him.

  After breakfast, she went upstairs to dress. Gail emerged sleepily from her room. “Mommy, is Olivia coming today?”

  “Yes, honey. I think she’s probably ‘Mrs. Dunn’ to you.”

  “I don’t care. I’m not going to call her anything. I’m not going to talk to her.”

  Carl bellowed from the foot of the stairs, “Are those kids up yet?”

  “One of them is,” Joyce replied.

  “What about Mary Ellen? Dammit, her grandmother’s coming.” He climbed the stairs two at a time and flung open Mary Ellen’s door. Joyce caught a glimpse of a thin pink nightgown and a sheet pulled hastily over it.

  “What do you think you’re doing,” he thundered, “wasting everybody’s time lolling in bed? Get up and get dressed.”

  She answered with a little squeal, “I’m not wasting anybody’s time except my own.”

  “You get up and get your clothes on. Your grandmother’s coming.”

  Gail, rummaging through a dresser drawer, asked, “Mommy, where are my blue shorts?”

  “Probably in the laundry,” Joyce replied.

  “Why didn’t you wash them?”

  “I haven’t had time. There’s been too much going on around here.”

  “I don’t have anything to wear”

  Carl, his attention drawn from Mary Ellen, stood observing the exchange. “Just why are you giving your mother a hard time?” he inquired.

  “Because she didn’t do the laundry, and I don’t have any clothes.”

  Joyce said, “You must have something.”

  “Well, I don’t!” Stamping into the bathroom, Gail raged, “I’ll take my dirty stuff out of the hamper. It’s all your fault!”

  Carl made a dive for her, seized her by the arm and gave her bottom a loud slap.

  “That’s for being fresh with your mother,” he said, as drops of perspiration appeared on his forehead.

  Gail stared at him in speechless outrage. Then she fled to her room, gasping in huge sobs, and slammed the door.

  Joyce said, “You didn’t have to spank her, Carl.”

  “I don’t like her talking to you that way.”

  “But to spank her?”

  “How else is she going to learn?” He seemed quite calm, now that he had blown off steam. But Gail needed a chance to blow off, too.

  “I know she was fresh,” Joyce sighed, “but I hardly think it was worth a spanking. And I do understand how she feels, with Adam, and your mother, and Mary Ellen. It’s all your family. She feels left out. That’s really what she was saying.”

  “Listen,” he said, “forget about ‘my’ family. We’re all one family now. I acted in loco parentis.”

  “What’s that?” she asked grudgingly.

  “‘In place of a parent.’ And I’ll thank you to back me

  up. Otherwise we’ll have a bunch of outlaws on our hands.” He turned abruptly and went downstairs.

  Gail’s door remained closed. Joyce knocked softly, and from inside, heard a sob. She opened it a crack. “Honey?”


  Gail lay on the bed, her face puffed with tears. Joyce sat down and tried to take the unyielding body into her arms.

  “Honey, I’m sorry Carl’s in such a rotten mood. He just yelled at Mary Ellen, too. I think he’s nervous because of Olivia coming.”

  “He—spanked—me,” Gail sobbed.

  “Yes, but I’m sure he didn’t mean to.”

  “I hate him.”

  Gail felt very thin and small inside her pajamas, and had taken such a buffeting from life. My fault, thought her mother. She hoped Carl would come to his senses and apologize. But she knew Carl. He might come to his senses, but never apologize.

  She had given Adam his mid-morning feeding, which was gradually working its way closer to noon, when Olivia arrived in her banana-colored Granada.

  Carl, Joyce, and Mary Ellen trooped outside to meet her. Olivia looked crisp in a white dress with green polka dots, a string of pearls, and packages under her arm.

  “There’s dear Mary Ellen,” she caroled as they enveloped her and led her around by the flagstone path to the front door. “How are you, dear? How’s your summer?” She planted a dry kiss on Mary Ellen’s cheek.

  “Oh, fine.” Mary Ellen danced along beside her. “It’s okay here, and Adam’s adorable, and yesterday there were police all over looking for a body and Daddy went out to help. Gail and I went, too, but they wouldn’t let us help.”

  Frowning slightly, Carl said, “I told you about that on the phone.” Joyce hadn’t known he had phoned his mother last night, probably to prepare her for this.

  “It was in the newspaper, too,” said Mary Ellen.

  Olivia asked, “Are you sure you want to go on living here?”

  “Why not?” said Carl. “It’s home. That kind of thing can happen anywhere.”

  “Well …” Olivia presented her cheek to Carl. His kiss was as dry as hers had been. She handed the smaller of her two packages to Mary Ellen. “For you. And this one’s for Adam. Where is Adam?”

  “I just put him to bed,” said Joyce.

  In a hushed herd, they went up the stairs. Adam, still awake after his feeding, blinked at them and kicked his legs. Olivia reached into the crib. “Hello, darling. Come to Grandma.” She scooped him up and held him stiffly.