(2001) The Girls Are Missing

by Caroline Crane

  “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t—It just sounded—”

  “We’re asking everybody the same kind of question, if that makes you feel any better.”

  She was surprised to find that it did. “But I still don’t like it. Do you really think it’s somebody from around here?”

  “Chances are, it isn’t,” he said. “It would have to be somebody awfully naive—or pretty damn clever—to commit that kind of mayhem in a place where he’s known and recognized, and expect to get away with it.”

  “If he thinks at all,” put in Finneran.

  At D’Amico’s request she went to find Mary Ellen, so they could ask her if she had seen anything noteworthy while riding around on David’s motorcycle.

  Boy crazy, Joyce thought as Mary Ellen’s eyes widened at the sight of the youthful Art Finneran. No, she hadn’t seen anything. She had been on the back roads halfway to Peekskill, and they had stopped for frozen yoghurt someplace way out in the country, but she couldn’t say where. She spoke breathlessly, more to Art Finneran, who silently jotted a few notes, than to D’Amico, who was questioning her. Finally they dismissed her, but she remained in the kitchen. The policemen rose to leave.

  “Thanks, ladies,” D’Amico said with a weary smile. “We’ll

  try the other people around here, and hope this guy might have made at least one slip somewhere.”

  “I wish I could help you,” Joyce said.

  “Not your fault. The guy just doesn’t want to be caught, and so far he’s been smart enough, or lucky enough, not to leave any traces.”

  “But he must be insane,” she said. “Mustn’t he? To do all those things? Would he even think about being caught?”

  “He may, in the long run, want to be caught,” D’Amico replied, “even though he doesn’t know it, and that’s why he keeps doing this. But he can’t recognize that. It’s all part of it.”

  “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Of course it doesn’t make sense. We’re dealing with an irrational mind. In his own twisted way, though, it makes sense to him. This could be his release. His safety valve. The rest of the time he could be walking around looking as normal as the rest of us.”

  “Really? Then it could be—anybody.”

  “I wouldn’t say anybody. I’ve got my doubts it could be you, for instance. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.”

  “Are you saying the person might not know himself?”

  “That’s possible. Or if he does, he wouldn’t see it the way we do. He may even know it’s against the law, but to him it isn’t wrong. Or if it’s wrong, it’s still something he has to do, you know what I mean?”

  After they left, Mary Ellen sighed. “Did you see him?” As though Joyce might not have. “Isn’t he cute? All that curly hair, and I just love uniforms. It makes people look so—capable.”

  “A little young for my taste,” said Joyce. “If I had to choose, I’d take D’Amico. He’s a real man.”

  “Who, the old one?”

  “Old? I doubt if he’s forty.” She took a breath to say something more. To tell Mary Ellen, Please don’t be so boy

  crazy that you get carried away with the wrong person. But to start lecturing would only make Mary Ellen stubborn.

  With the police coming right on his heels, she had almost forgotten about the reporter. By the time Carl came home she was thinking of it again, and had worked herself into a state of pique. Almost triumphantly she related how she had chased him away.

  “We really ought to get a dog, Carl, there’s too much going on here, and this house is so isolated. I’d feel a lot safer.”

  He was unpacking his briefcase, taking out all three daily papers, the Times, the News, and the Post.

  “I suppose I never told you,” he said, “I’m allergic to dogs.”

  No, he hadn’t told her. The subject had never come up, and his bland statement made her feel oddly deflated.

  “Well, then, maybe a Pinkerton guard.” She started toward the stairs to remind the girls about setting the table.

  He called her back. “Did you see this in the paper?”

  She approached it with dread, for she caught a glimpse of a photograph. But it was only the site where the third girl had been found, not the body itself. Below it were three smiling portraits: the victims. What if somebody came to the door and asked for a picture of my daughter?

  He motioned her to sit down and read it with him.

  “Later,” she said. “I’ve got dinner almost ready.”

  With a final, questioning look, he laid the papers on the sofa and went up to take his shower. When they gathered at the dinner table, he was silent at first, apparently disappointed that she had not shared his fascination with the murder story. She hoped he would not talk about it in front of the girls, and felt relieved when he did not talk much at all.

  After the meal was over, the dishes cleared away, and

  the children watching television, she picked up the paper. Carl gave her an approving glance across the sofa. It was the excitement that got to him, she supposed. The mood of crisis. He wanted to share it.

  The victim was a girl named Toni Lemich. She had a round face, short dark hair worn like a cap, and heavily outlined eyes.

  Joyce skimmed the columns. It was disgusting the way the newspapers latched onto these things. Like vultures.

  Carl moved over beside her and pointed to a block of print set apart.

  “Look, did you see that? A letter. The man wrote a letter to the paper.”

  “The murderer? Why can’t they catch him from that?” For some reason she had never pictured the killer as an actual person, with the ability to get up in the morning, dress, buy groceries, or write a letter like anybody else.

  Carl looked at her with a slight frown.

  “How could they catch him? The letter was typed. It says so.”

  “I read somewhere that even a typewriter has its individual quirks,” she said, “and they can identify it almost like handwriting.”

  He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe with a manual you can. Even then, you’d have to start with a suspect. But I doubt they can identify something like an IBM, with that type ball. There must be millions of them in use. You can change the typeface, and the print’s too even to have individual quirks.”

  “Did he do it on an IBM? I should think even that would narrow it down, at least to somebody who had access to one.”

  “Millions of people have access to them. Go on. Read it.”

  Dear Sirs,

  The Cedarville police are too slow. They don’t even start to get warm yet. So in the meantime we have three cold bodies, maybe more to come, ha ha. Its getting to be a habit. Theres never any shortage of girls. When I want one I can always get one.

  Your friend The Cedarville Slasher

  “What do you think?” Carl asked.

  She closed her eyes. “I think it’s obscene.”

  “Obscene? How?”

  “Carl, really, how can you be like that? Don’t you think of these girls as people?”

  “Of course. But how is my thinking of them as people going to change anything?”

  She didn’t like this. Not at all. It wasn’t Carl. She turned back to the paper, if only to avoid talking to him.

  There were two articles, one a straight news story about the Lemich murder, the other an analysis of the crimes to date. All three murders, it quoted the police as saying, were undoubtedly linked. And all were obviously sex crimes, although only in the third case were they able to establish that the victim had been molested.

  They had called in a psychiatrist to try to analyze the murders and the murderer.

  This was clearly a man with sexual problems, Dr. Ronald K. Ballard stated. Possibly a man in his thirties or forties, plagued with fears of impotence or homosexuality, or with occupational or marital problems leading to a loss of self-esteem. He could overcome his impotence with sudden attacks on women.

  A paranoid personality with deep ex
plosive urges. Where

  did they come from? He may have felt betrayed at some time in his past by an important female figure. In cases like this it was most often the mother—desertion or remarriage—but from the ages of the victims, the possibility of someone younger could not be ruled out.

  The murderer, the article continued, was probably an ordinary member of the community, undetected because he carried a veneer of social acceptability—a job, a nice home, may even have been married.

  Could be functioning on two levels. Possibly a split personality, but Dr. Ballard doubted it. The murderer, he thought, knew what he was doing.

  She felt too sick to read about the finding of the body. That deep internal pounding had started again. She wondered how she had ever passed the doctor’s exam, even though it was not exactly her heart, it was something deeper and even more fundamental. Her life, perhaps.

  She looked around the living room at her home, her shelter, where everything was normal. The girls sat in the television corner, giggling at some comedy. The lamplight cast a warm glow over the room, but outside those black windows, somebody could be watching.

  Carl was not there. While she was reading, he had gotten up and left. The kitchen door was closed. Faintly, through the sound from the television, she could hear his voice.

  She pushed open the swinging door and went into the kitchen. It was dark, but she could see him sitting at the table. She reached for the light switch. He caught her wrist. His grip was steel, implacable. Then it dissolved and she thought it trembled a little before it released her, like the jelly of her own arms and legs.

  He said into the telephone, “Yes, well, I just wanted to let you know I’m with you. I won’t bother you anymore now. Good-bye.”

  She heard the click as he hung up. Her eyes were adjusting

  to the darkness. She saw him take a handkerchief from his pocket and mop his face.

  “What was that?” she asked.

  “Why do you come barging in here when I’m on the phone?”

  “I didn’t know you were on the phone. I heard your voice, and I thought it might be the police, or another reporter.”

  “Police?”

  “They came today, right after the reporter. To ask if we’d seen anything. You know, because all the bodies were found near here. I’m sorry I interrupted.”

  “It was a private phone call.”

  “I’m really sorry.” She edged toward the door.

  This time he caught her with his voice.

  “You know, I knew that girl.”

  “You did?”

  “We used to ride the same train out from the city. I didn’t know her very well. Just the same face night after night. A few words now and then. I think I sat next to her once.”

  Joyce waited, letting him speak.

  Finally he said, “I was calling her family. I thought I’d let them know they’ve got a friend.”

  “That was nice, Carl. I’d be afraid to call somebody who just—you know.”

  “Why be afraid?”

  “I’d just be afraid to call. I even hate writing notes. You’d think I’d be used to it, after it happened to me.” She gave the door a gentle push.

  “Sit down, why don’t you?” he said.

  “Can I turn on the light?”

  “What for? It’s cooler without it.”

  “It’d be cooler if you didn’t have the door closed.”

  “All right, then, open it.”

  She pushed open the door and joined him at the table.

  Light and sound flowed in from the living room, but it flowed past them and did not disturb them.

  “I can’t help wondering what happened to her,” he said.

  “Is that what you wanted to talk about?”

  “I saw her get off the train and start walking. She only lived a few blocks from the station, but she had to walk along River Street, and it’s pretty lonely there.”

  “And it was late,” Joyce said. Odd that they should both have been late, both on the same train. Something went bump inside her, and she wondered for a moment whether Toni Lemich could have been more to him than just someone he saw on the train.

  She almost asked. And stopped herself. He hadn’t seemed to notice her remark.

  ‘I worried about her sometimes,” he went on. “I thought of giving her a ride home.”

  “Maybe you should have.”

  Why hadn’t he? It would have been natural. Unless he wanted to avoid being seen with her.

  “I offered. She said she’d be all right.”

  “But she wasn’t. Maybe—somebody else—”

  He shrugged. “We’ll never know.”

  “I should hope we’ll know. I hope they catch that creep, and damn quick. You don’t realize what this is doing to us. To the girls, and me, and Sheila—To everybody, I guess.”

  “You’re afraid?”

  “What do you think? Especially here, in this house that nobody can even see.”

  “What do you mean, nobody can see?”

  “It’s hidden. Nobody else can see this house. Remember, we thought that was lovely when we bought it, but now I wish we lived in a nice cozy development with the neighbors squeezed in on both sides.”

  “She lived in a house like that. It didn’t help her.”

  “Toni Lemich?”

  “You know, when I think of her all tied up like that—”

  “Carl, stop!” A wave of something passed over her, nausea and something worse—fear.

  “How do you know she was tied up?”

  “It says so in the paper. Didn’t you read the paper? Didn’t you read how—”

  “Stop. I don’t want to talk about it, ever. I don’t want to know.”

  He stared at her for a moment. Then he said, “You’re an ostrich, darling.”

  It was a hollow “darling,” almost as meaningless as Larry’s show-business endearments, but it was a step in some sort of direction.

  Encouraged, she said, “I saw the doctor today. My six-week checkup, remember? I’m all back to normal.”

  She waited for him to respond. She wondered if he had even heard her.

  “You’ll find out,” she said, “if we can pry those kids away from the television and get them to bed.”

  But later, when the television was off and the house silent, and she slipped into bed beside him, he lay with his back to her. She reached out and touched him, running her fingers along his side, under the arm. She could almost feel him shrink away from her.

  The room was hot and close, except for a breeze from the electric fan on the dresser.

  “Carl?”

  “Mm?” he grunted.

  “I’m here.”

  “Go to sleep.”

  She propped herself on her elbow. “What’s the matter? It’s been almost a year.”

  He half turned his head. “Sshh, do you want the kids to wake up?” “They can’t hear, the doors are all closed. And anyway, they must know. They know where Adam came from.”

  His head returned to the pillow. She waited for some response. He ignored her.

  She reached out again. “Carl, what’s wrong?”

  Again he seemed to shrivel under her touch. She pulled back her hand. It was as though she repelled him.

  Perhaps … those evenings coming home with Toni Lemich … Maybe there was something there.

  “Listen,” she whispered, “aren’t you ever going to—I mean—”

  “Not now. Just not now. Go to sleep.”

  He was unnatural. Larry had always wanted her, even when she knew he had others. She began to feel ashamed of herself, pleading like this.

  For a while she lay in the dark, with tears just behind her eyes. It wasn’t that she was horny. It was the closeness she wanted, the love between the two of them. They had created a baby together. They had a family, a home. There should have been love.

  She moved closer to him, so that her voice would fall into his ear, even though he might be drifting off to
sleep. But he wasn’t. She could still feel the tension.

  “Carl—honey—is something wrong? Just tell me. Something you might be afraid of, or worried about?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “I just want you to know that you can be free with me. I know some men worry if they think, you know, they’re not going to make it. They think the woman’s going to laugh at them, or get angry. They don’t want to try.”

  Perhaps he was influenced by that newspaper article, about the killer who might have a problem with impotence. Surely Carl would not identify with that. But it might play into a fundamental fear.

  He said, “That’s too ridiculous for words.”

  Was it really another woman? She hadn’t taken the idea seriously before.

  “Is there somebody else?” she asked, and was amazed at how calmly she managed it.

  “Joyce, go to sleep.”

  Not “darling” this time, nor “sweetheart.” Just Joyce.

  “You’re in love with somebody else, aren’t you?”

  “I’m not in love with anybody,” he told her angrily.

  She nodded sadly to herself, thinking that he may have spoken the truth without meaning to. Not in love with anybody.

  Still, to her way of thinking, a man was not like that. He never rejected a woman just because he didn’t love her. She went back to her original idea.

  “You know, it could be just a little thing. Have you thought of seeing a doctor?”

  He turned to her with such vehemence that his elbow jabbed into her rib.

  “What the hell do I need a doctor for? What are you talking about? Why don’t you shut up and go to sleep?”

  “I just thought—”

  No, she couldn’t talk to him now, he was too angry. She expected him to get up and leave the bed. He simply lay as he had been, facing away from her.

  She lowered her head to the pillow and closed her eyes.

  After a while he said, through clenched teeth, “Don’t need a doctor.”

  She forced herself to answer. “I didn’t say you need one. But sometimes if you’re worried about something, and you go to a doctor and they tell you you’re all right, it helps you feel better.”