Silenced Girls

by Roger Stelljes

  “Or maybe, rather than all that bullshit you just rattled off, you’re just afraid it is connected and what that means.”

  That got Braddock’s up out of his chair and nose-to-nose with her. But he didn’t yell as she’d anticipated and expected. “Fear is not my issue, Agent Hunter,” he growled quietly and then went for her Achilles, “but objectivity is clearly yours.”

  “Now wait a minute…”

  “No, you wait,” Braddock countered coolly, his eyes boring in on hers. “There’s a lot that says Lash and Jessie Hunter are and are not connected,” the detective noted, towering over Tori even though he was on the other side of the desk. “So, despite you flying a couple thousand miles, I can’t just drop everything on your say-so and go down only that rabbit hole. I’m investigating all possibilities.”

  “Rabbit hole? Rabbit hole! How dare you,” Tori barked back. “This is my sister’s killer we’re talking about here.”

  “Maybe!” Braddock replied. “Maybe.” He took a breath. “This is personal for you. And your history here, and that of your family, that buys you some accommodation I’m sure from Cal. From me, too. And getting something like that in the mail…” his voice trailed away. “Well, I can only imagine that ripped open some old wounds. Right?”

  Tori nodded.

  “But let’s get something straight right here, right now. If this is how you’re going conduct yourself, you might want to take that very nice Theory open blazer pantsuit, Movado watch, Versace eyewear, the string of pearls, the Jimmy Choo stiletto heels, the whole Miranda Priestly power ensemble meant to overwhelm me and anyone else here in your little wayward hometown, take all of it and march it all right back out of my office and catch the first flight back to America’s favorite airport, LaGuardia.”

  Tori did a double take. He knew the high-end brands she was wearing, the watch, even the shoes.

  She’d underestimated him, despite Cal and Steak’s warnings, not to mention her own initial assessment.

  He had her back on her heels, muted, unsure of what to say. Braddock skillfully filled the silence.

  “Look, Agent Hunter,” Braddock started, sitting back down and relaxing in his chair, easing the tension, his territory and authority established. “I think the two cases are most likely related and that is…” Braddock slowly shook his head and exhaled, “not a comforting thought at all. And while this might sound harsh to you, the fact of the matter is your sister has been gone twenty years. Genevieve Lash two days. Which trail is warm right now?”

  Tori was irate with herself. The no-nonsense, laser-focused investigator was all emotion and fury and the guy applying cool logic was kicking her ass. Way to go, Tori. Brilliant, piss the guy off you need to not piss off, she thought.

  It was time to start digging out of the hole she’d dug for herself. “Look, on that point, you’re right,” she conceded.

  “I’m sorry I had to say that. I didn’t like doing it,” Braddock stated, extending an olive branch.

  “Oh, I think you liked it a little bit. I mean, the Miranda Priestly shot was kind of harsh.”

  Braddock chuckled and shrugged. “Maybe.”

  “However, when you’re as direct as I am, you ought to expect it back on occasion,” Tori replied knowingly, extending an olive branch of her own. “And you’re also right, it is personal to me and that perhaps affects my objectivity. But at the same time, I still think I can help. I want to help. I’m dying to help.”

  “Are you sure you can handle it?”

  “Yes,” Tori replied. “I am sure.”

  Braddock nodded. “And I assume that if I don’t accept your desperate offer of assistance, you’ll just end up providing it anyway, right?”

  Tori shrugged. “Yeah.”

  “That’s what I figured,” the tall investigator replied with a wry smile. He made an offer. “It’s my case, I run it. We’re agreed?” he asked, extending his hand.

  “Yes,” she replied, taking Braddock’s hand, holding it for an extra second. “Thank you.”

  With the turf battle over, Braddock gestured for Tori to take a guest chair, which she did. “Now, at this point I think this thing is now a homicide, not a missing person case.”

  “She was dead by the time you found the car.”

  “That’s my thinking, as well,” Braddock tipped his head toward the hall behind Tori. “Those folks are Lash’s parents. Steak and his partner, Sheryl Eggleston, are…”

  “Steak and…Eggleston?” Tori asked.

  “Yeah,” Braddock smiled, “I know, Steak and Eggs. In any event, they’re re-interviewing Lash’s friends and I’m going to take another run at her parents. You can watch if you like. What evidence we have, which to be honest, ain’t much I’m sorry to say, you are free to look at. Sheila?” Braddock bellowed out the door. A moment later a woman that Tori recognized as Sheila Cassidy, who graduated three years ahead of her in high school, walked into the office.

  “Tori, I heard you were in the building.”

  “Hi, Sheila.”

  “Good, you two know each other,” Braddock noticed. “Sheila, can you get Tori set up on a computer with access to everything on Lash, and on her sister’s case? She’s going to be helping us out for a stretch.”

  While Sheila went to work on setting her up on a computer, Tori kept her promise and went back to see Cal.

  Shepard County Sheriff Cal Lund had been her father’s best friend and second in command. He took over when Big Jim died. Tori’s parents were both only children. As a result, when her father died, she had no other family or relatives to lean on. All she had was Cal and his wife Lucy.

  Cal helped Tori bury her father, sell the house, collect the life insurance and even drove her down to the airport in the Twin Cities when she flew back to Boston after her father’s funeral. The last time she left she doubted Cal thought that would be the last time he’d see her until now. He spent some time catching her up. Cal’s three children were now all grown and had moved on, all living elsewhere. “It’s just Lucy and I these days,” he said. “I was re-elected two years ago. I think this is my last term. Then it’ll be Tucson in the winter and up here on the lake in the summer.”

  “Sounds like the good life, Cal.”

  Cal said he’d followed her career from afar with interest. “Although it’s funny, nobody around here seemed to know you’d gone into law enforcement. I had to stumble across your name in the headlines once to learn that.” It was a gentle gibe.

  “I haven’t kept in contact with anyone from here, Cal.”

  “Nobody?”

  She shook her head. “I should have kept in contact with you and Lucy, though. I’m so sorry I didn’t. It’s just that…” her voice trailed off and she looked to the floor.

  “I understand.”

  “I don’t know if I never planned to come back, but initially I just couldn’t bring myself to do it. After a few years I got so wrapped up in my job that after a while it was just easier not to, the thought of it just kind of drifted away. At least until yesterday.”

  Cal simply nodded, knowing that there was little in Manchester for her but pain. “The sheriff would be proud, Victoria, he really would. I hope you know that. And,” he added with a whimsical smile, “I imagine he’d be amused, highly amused that his daughter who always asked a million questions is an FBI agent.”

  The two of them chatted for a few more minutes and Tori promised she would come over for dinner if there was a good time to do that. Tori finally turned to leave the office, eager to get into the investigation when Cal offered a final warning. “You may have broken off contact with everyone here, but someone kept track of you. Watch your back.”

  After Tori walked out of Cal’s office, Sheila had a visitor’s badge made for her. “Will’s in interrogation room one. You can observe from the booth,” Sheila pointed out while opening the door to a narrow room that contained a cabinet with a computer monitor and recording equipment. Tori clipped the badge onto the pocket of her
blazer while stepping into the small room, standing behind the one-way mirror. Braddock and another detective were interviewing Lash’s parents. Or was it the other way around?

  “Dammit, Braddock, where’s my daughter?”

  “We’re doing everything we can, sir…”

  “It sounds like you’re questioning me…us. Some crazy man out there took my daughter. And some crazy man took the Hunter girl on that same day twenty years ago. Isn’t that what you should be concentrating on?”

  “We are strongly considering that connection and I have someone very well-versed in that case who has joined our investigation. But I also think there is the possibility that there isn’t a connection between the two cases and I need to be able to eliminate other possibilities, ones that would be fresher than a connection to a twenty-year-old cold case. So, the reason I’m pursuing this line of questioning is that yes, we might just have a killer out there or that crazy someone could have some sort of beef with you.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means,” Braddock replied calmly, “that you probably didn’t get to where you are without making a few enemies along the way. We’re looking at whether Genevieve’s disappearance is connected to that of Jessie Hunter. But we’re also looking at whether what happened to Genevieve has something to do with you, your business, or whatever she might have been mixed up in. We’re looking at it all.”

  “You think this has something to do with my business?” Jerry Lash barked defensively. “That this has something to do with how I do business? What kind of question is that? Don’t you think, Detective, that you should be spending your time finding my daughter rather than putting us through some sort of inquisition?”

  “Jerry, I just think the detective is just doing his job,” Dorothy Lash interjected calmly, reaching for her husband’s arm. “He’s trying to help.”

  “Sounds like the son-of-a-bitch is coming after me! Coming after us!”

  Braddock put down his pen and leaned forward, his elbows on the table, his hands lightly clasped, eyeing up Jerry Lash and said, “Mr. Lash, I’m not coming after you or blaming you. This is not your fault. I just want to find your daughter and I’m exhausting every possibility, but…let me be honest with both of you. Genevieve was last seen sixty-two hours ago. Her car was found abandoned in an isolated area and by the time we found it, she’d been missing eleven to twelve hours. We’re investigating every possible lead we get, but to be honest, there are few promising leads right now.”

  I can think of one, Tori thought as she watched from the observation room, thinking of her presence and what brought her home, but she also understood where Braddock was going and why he was doing it. Process of elimination.

  “My daughter isn’t coming back, is she?” Jerry Lash asked directly of Braddock.

  Tori winced, thinking, No, she’s not.

  “We have to keep up hope,” Braddock replied evasively. “You want answers and so do I, and I’m not going to stop until I get them. That’s why I’m doing what I’m doing. So again, tell me, is there anyone you’ve done business with that I should be looking at?”

  “You can look at my business, my finances, my deals, anything you want. My books and records are open to you, no restrictions. Send your people over, but…” the father slowly shook his head, coming to the realization his daughter was gone. “I play hardball in business, Detective. I always have. It ain’t beanbag, it’s construction. Shit gets broken, you know what I mean?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And I have no doubt that some of those people would absolutely rip my head off if given the chance, but to go after my daughter in retaliation? I just don’t see it.”

  “And in my experience, when people lose a lot of money to someone, when they are put out of business, when they’re bankrupted, when they think they were robbed or scammed, they want nothing more than payback,” Braddock cautioned. “And often they want to see people suffer in the process and be as mentally and emotionally destroyed as they were. And what way can you make a parent suffer more than by going after their children?”

  “You really think this has anything to do with something I’ve done?”

  “I don’t know yet. There’s only one way to find out.”

  Sheila stuck her head into the observation room. “Tori, I have your desk ready.” She led Tori to a cubicle back in a corner. “This spot should give you some privacy. This sheet explains how you access the computer and create a password, and this file is where you can find the case evidence, notes, reports and whatnot.”

  “And physical evidence?”

  “There really isn’t any right now other than the car, which is at the BCA forensic lab in Bemidji.”

  “Has there been a forensic report on the car yet?”

  “No,” Sheila answered. “Will expects the report any time now.”

  Tori sat down at the cubicle, logged into the computer and began reviewing the case file. Her first move was to review the photos of the car. As she did, she couldn’t help but think back to Jessie and their car, with the right front flat tire out on County Road 48. Lash’s car looked eerily similar, listing to the right on the shoulder, otherwise undamaged. The case notes revealed Lash did not try to access the spare tire. Neither did Jessie. Lash’s car was empty, no purse or other personal items were left inside. It was the same with Jessie.

  The note she received was hauntingly correct: It will be familiar.

  It all was.

  One thing that was different was the existence of a cell phone. In 1999, neither Jessie or Tori had one. In fact, Tori didn’t buy a cell phone until her junior year of college. However, Lash had a cell phone, so it was interesting to Tori that Lash had not made a phone call. Her phone had not been found and the phone company records listed her last location as on County Road 163. The last message activity was an innocuous text from a friend named Kelly Orville asking where Genevieve was. There was a one-word text reply: Mannion’s.

  Mannion’s On the Lake.

  Back in the day, it was one of the few restaurants around. From what she’d seen driving into town, there now existed a great deal of competition.

  Tori clicked on the file for Mannion’s surveillance camera footage. It took her some time to orient herself to the black and white surveillance video. Mannion’s was clearly the place to be. It was jam packed with hardly any room for people to move.

  There were four surveillance cameras, two in corners of the restaurant and the other two in the bar area proper: high one on the end of the bar and the other from the wall opposite the bar, looking back across the room to the bar. After a minute or two she found Lash on the feed from the camera on the end of the bar. She was mixed in with a group of people at the far corner of the bar.

  A small smile creased her face a moment later when she identified an old friend. “Eddie.”

  Eddie Mannion was sitting near the same far corner with another man that after a few minutes of observation Tori thought she recognized as Gunther Brule, another high school acquaintance. Also walking by at one point was Kyle Mannion, chatting for a moment and then there was also Jeff Warner, who stood for a few minutes with Eddie and Gunther before strolling away.

  “It’s old home week,” Tori murmured as she watched the footage for a while longer before tiring of it.

  Tori knew that Lash’s friends were being re-questioned. She stepped into a different observation booth to watch Steak and his partner, Detective Sheryl Eggleston, conduct the interviews.

  She observed for a few hours as a parade of people came through to be interviewed. While Steak and Eggs were able interrogators there was an unsatisfying pattern to it all. Most people had been at the party in downtown Manchester just like she and her sister twenty years ago. Lash and her small pack of friends eventually made their way over to Mannion’s. Everyone had a lot to drink. Most left by twelve or twelve-thirty a.m. and Genevieve and Tessie Joyner were still there when they left. Nobody noticed anyone that caused any sort
of alarm or concern. As one person said, “It’s our usual hangout. Everyone knows everyone. It was the typical crowd at Mannion’s on the weekend or a holiday.”

  The last two to come into the interview room were Genevieve’s friends, Tessie Joyner and Sarah Mueller. Steak and Eggleston ran through the drill with them again, and the answers all seemed rote now. They didn’t see anything or anyone that caused them any concern. They were partying and having a good time. Everything was normal.

  “Just like always,” Tessie stated. “There was nothing unusual. Gen took me to my parents’ cabin, we made plans for the next day, said goodnight and that was that. Same as always. It was normal.”

  “No it wasn’t!” Steak barked frustratedly as he sat back hard into his chair. “It wasn’t normal. It wasn’t the same, Tessie.”

  “She’s gone. Genevieve is gone. Gone! You two were with her all night,” Eggleston railed, equally aggravated. “You two were with her the most and you’ve got nothing for us?”

  “Come on,” Steak pressed, slamming his hand down on the table. “There wasn’t something that surprised you? There wasn’t something out of the ordinary? There wasn’t one thing that was maybe weird, abnormal, unusual? There wasn’t someone hanging around that you didn’t recognize or that gave you pause? No incidents, nothing? I’ve seen the surveillance footage from Mannion’s, and Genevieve was dressed in a way that was going to draw attention and you’re telling me there wasn’t a guy or two who made their way over, tried to make some time with her?”

  “I’m telling you there was nothing, nothing out of the ordinary,” Tessie answered emphatically. “I want to help, but—”

  “Well, there was that one thing,” Sarah mentioned, looking over to Tessie. “That guy who pinched Gen on the ass.”

  “Pfft. That happens all the time,” Tessie responded with a dismissive wave.

  “Who was that?” Eggleston asked.

  “It was the guy sitting with Eddie Mannion. What was his name?” Tessie said, trying to think of the name.