Dedication
For Meridith, Samantha, and Ethan
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Part I 1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
Part II 18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
Part III 31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
Part IV 59
60
61
62
63
64
Part V 65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
Author’s Note
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Praise for The Names of Dead Girls
Also by Eric Rickstad
Copyright
About the Publisher
Part I
The winter of imprisonment is over, freedom his again after years of forced dormancy.
Freedom.
The taste bright and metallic, like a drop of virgin’s blood on the tip of the tongue.
Freedom.
The sight irresistible, like the first flourish of pale, young female flesh in spring.
Freedom.
The sound musical, like the simper of the meek begging release from the mighty.
Freedom.
The odor intoxicating, like that of sweat shimmering off the skin of the terrified.
Freedom.
The feel intimate, like fingernails of the desperate raking runnels in the flesh of his face.
He watches, his head bowed, hat pulled tight to his brow, cracks his back and stretches his arms above his head taking in the expanse of his domain. Emperor. Lord.
He radiates with freedom, exalted.
Saliva pools in the fleshy pockets at the back of his mouth, where once he extracted wisdom teeth with pliers for the sole, sweet, excruciating ecstasy of it.
He reaches a hand into his trousers, feels himself, dreaming of what is to come.
Freedom unleashed.
1
Thursday, November 3, 2011
Rachel Rath’s flesh knew before her mind did that she was being watched.
Her face flashed hot, and the skin on her back prickled, terror trickling down her spine as if her backbone were being traced with the crooked, grimy finger of a letch, one single vertebrae at a time.
This was not the creepy sensation she and girlfriends endured when ogled by middle-aged but decidedly milquetoast men. This was an instinctive caution the body signaled for its survival.
Be aware.
Beware.
Rachel turned, incrementally, as if in a nightmare, her arm slipping from her boyfriend Felix’s arm as she pivoted.
The sensation of being violated scurried over her skin and sank in her belly, leaving her exposed.
She saw no one, yet she shivered, as attuned to her surroundings as a rabbit hidden in a screen of brush.
She reached to tug Felix’s sleeve as he busied himself with a bag of birdseed for his canaries—and stopped.
Seized with terror.
There.
There he was: the one whose gaze drained her blood.
2
Canaries.
Frank Rath stared at the disconnected landline phone in his hand.
Ned Preacher had just hung up on him, the echo of his strained breathing and lecherous laugh echoing in Rath’s bones.
And another sound, too.
Canaries.
Where had Rath heard canaries? He pounded a fist against his forehead, tried to remember.
Had to remember.
It was imperative. Where—
It struck him like a blow. He’d heard canaries in his daughter Rachel’s new place, the apartment she’d moved into just days ago to live with her gangly boyfriend, Felix.
Felix owned two canaries.
Preacher must have called from Rachel’s place; he must have been hiding and watching Rachel in her place, called to torment Rath who was an hour away and would never reach Rachel’s apartment before Preacher—
Rath tried not to imagine what Preacher might do. Did not have to imagine. He had seen it firsthand, Preacher’s work.
Sixteen years ago, Rath had been first on the scene to his sister Laura’s murder; not as the young state police detective he’d been at the time, but as Laura’s younger brother. He’d been an hour late. Instead of showing up on time to help Laura with the birthday dinner she’d planned for him, he’d been with a woman in a motel room. He was allowed, he’d reasoned. It was his birthday. As he’d parked in Laura’s driveway he’d rehearsed the lie he’d tell his sister for being late: he’d been working on the Connecticut River Valley Killer case.
Her front door had been open and he’d stepped inside, calling out: “Sorry, I was—”
Her body had lain at the bottom of the stairs, legs pinned abnormally beneath her torso, her lacerated face turned to the side as if in shame, the once white carpet now so drenched with her blood it squished underfoot. Clots and strings of blood slopped on the walls. Her neck had been broken and she’d been rudely violated with objects other than the male anatomy, though that would prove to have been used too. Her husband Daniel’s body had lain draped over her as if trying to protect her even in death. He’d been viciously and repeatedly stabbed.
This was Ned Preacher’s work.
Preacher: Laura and Daniel’s former handyman who’d skipped town sixteen months earlier. Preacher, now just paroled after serving only sixteen years of his twenty-five-to-life sentence for the murders. Preacher, who now claimed on the phone he was Rachel’s father, claimed he’d had an affair with Laura before leaving town. Preacher who’d exulted: Your sister couldn’t stay away from the bad boys any more than you could from the bad girls. Well, she picked the wrong bad boy, wouldn’t you say, playing with her handyman while her pretty boy husband was away? Then, I came back through town to give her some more. And she gave me holier than thou, Holly fucking Hobby bullshit. A mask. I fucking knew. What I didn’t know was about the baby upstairs. Until later, when I read about it in the papers. She should have let me take her one last time. Given in to her nature. I’d have gone off none the wiser. Instead she had to play Good Girl. Agitate. His voice had sounded distorted. Demonic. I can do simple fucking math. Rachel. Sh
e’s mine. How is she, Rath, your daughter? She seems fine. From what I see.
Rath’s brain crackled with violent thoughts.
He had to get to Rachel’s place.
The caller ID showed PRIVATE. Rath pressed *69. A mechanical voice droned: “This number cannot be reached by . . .”
Rath slammed the phone receiver down so hard it cracked.
On his cell phone, he dialed Rachel’s number. He should have called her first. He wasn’t thinking clearly.
Rachel’s phone kicked to voice mail.
“Call me!” Rath shouted.
He dialed 911.
A woman’s measured voice inquired: “911. What’s—”
“I need to report a break-in.”
“What’s the address, sir?”
“I don’t know the exact address.”
“The break-in isn’t taking place where you’re calling from?”
“No.”
“And you don’t have the address?”
Rath’s heartbeat accelerated.
“How do you know someone is breaking in if you don’t know where it is occurring, sir?” the woman said.
“I— It’s in Johnson. Up a hill by a—” He had to think. His brain fritzed with adrenaline. “I know where it’s happening. My daughter’s apartment. I got a call.”
“From your daughter?”
How could he say he got a call from the person who had broken in and have this woman believe he wasn’t a lunatic?
“Sir? If this isn’t a serious call—”
“My daughter is in danger,” Rath barked. He took a deep breath. Whether Preacher planned to harm Rachel physically or not, whatever he had in mind was meant to cause pain. “I’m a retired detective, my name is Frank Rath, and my daughter is in trouble. Someone is at her apartment. Right now. Someone who intends to hurt her. A man who—” Raped and murdered her mother, and now claims he’s . . .
“But you don’t know where your daughter lives?” The woman’s voice was bright with suspicion.
“She just moved there. I don’t know the exact address. It’s off—I’m trying to remember the road, it goes up a hill in Johnson, near where the post office is—” His mind careened. He needed to slow his thoughts. The microwave clock showed five minutes had elapsed. What Preacher could do in five minutes— “Forget it.”
“Sir. If you hang up we have to—”
He killed the call and charged out the kitchen door, no time for a jacket. No time for anything. He’d lost too much time already.
A bitter rain battered him. The clear skies had fouled in the time he’d been home, the deep snow starting to melt as fog reached its tentacles across the old farmyard.
In his ’74 Scout, Rath took his .22 revolver from the glove box, checked that it was loaded, cranked the ignition key.
The engine sputtered.
He cranked the key again, worked the choke.
The engine caught.
The Scout juddered down his sloppy, muddied dirt road. Rath tried to dial Sonja Test, the Canaan Police detective he’d recently worked with as a consultant on what the media called the Mad Doctor case, macabre murders involving teenage girls. Test could call ahead to colleagues in Johnson for him, except Rath’s nerves were too splintered and the Scout shaking too hard for him to work the phone.
At the end of his dirt road, he dialed.
Test’s phone went to voice mail.
“Call me,” Rath said.
He speed-dialed another number, Harland Grout, a friend and former Canaan Police senior detective who’d quit his post following the Mad Doctor case.
The phone rang and rang.
A logging truck hurtled out of the forming fog, rocking the Scout on its aged springs, strafing it with road grit.
“Rath?” said Grout. “If you shot another deer and called to beg for help hanging it—”
“Call the sheriff’s department in Johnson. Soon as we hang up. Someone you know personally, have them get to a— There’s, um, a red house. It’s on a dirt road. I think the one that that winds up past the post office. Whichever one runs along Gihon Stream.”
Rath pulled onto the road and hit the gas, much to the Scout’s protest. “Get a car there ASAP.”
“What is this?” Grout said.
“Preacher, he called me,” Rath said. “He’s at Rachel’s.”
Silence bled on the line.
“On it.” Grout hung up.
Rath pinned the gas pedal. The Scout bucked so hard it felt like it would fly apart. Still, it managed just 53 mph.
Not fast enough.
Not nearly.
3
Harland Grout could not concentrate on the White Mountain Mall’s security camera feeds in the mall security office. He had never heard fear or panic in Frank Rath’s voice in all the years he’d known him. Going back to seventeen years ago when Rath had served as Grout’s mentor as a state police detective in the ’90s, Rath had always been stoic and composed in the face of any atrocity. Yet in their phone call just now Rath’s voice was cut through with both fear and panic. It unnerved Grout so much he’d called the deputy in Johnson and told him to get up to the house Rath had described, like yesterday.
Ned Preacher meant Rath’s daughter harm. Preacher: serial rapist who’d gamed the system and served a third of the time he should have for multiple rapes and murders by pleading to lesser crimes and being the golden boy saint while inside prison to reduce his time served for good behavior. Preacher: slippery, evil con man and murderer of Rath’s sister and her husband while their baby, Rachel, had slept upstairs. Rachel left for Rath to raise alone, the reason he’d quit as state police detective sixteen years ago. Preacher: paroled early from prison. Preacher: in Rachel’s apartment, and calling Rath to torment him.
When Rath had said those two names together—Preacher and Rachel—Grout’s initial fear had been replaced by disgust and the need to act. Then, futility. Because Grout was stuck here, unable to act. Stuck in a mall in northwestern New Hampshire watching the camera feeds until a rogue form of OCD compelled some poor woman to take a five-finger discount on a tchotchke from the Hallmark store, so Grout could bust the poor soul as if she’d committed infanticide.
Grout was stuck wearing a uniform that made him look and feel like a Webelo. No sidearm. No cuffs. All the legal authority of a dormitory monitor. No ability to do what was in his nature, what he was good at, being a detective. He’d quit his position as the Canaan Police senior detective following the Mad Doctor case and taken this gig to do what he believed was best for his wife and two kids, all for an extra $75 a week. He’d known it was a mistake his first day on the job. He might as well have lopped off his own nuts with pruning shears.
How could he just stand here, rooted like a potted plant?
How could he—
A voice spoke to him.
Grout blinked.
“Sir.” The newest and most earnest of the young recruits from Granite Private Security addressed Grout from his CCTV station that covered the C Quadrant of Spencer Gifts.
“What?” Grout said.
“We’ve got a live one, sir.” The newbie could hardly contain his prideful and slippery grin. “A red hander.”
On the monitor, a teenage boy slipped an item in his hoodie’s front pocket. The item looked like a pet rock.
“That’s the second one he’s put in his pocket,” Newbie said, his voice trilling. He was all but drooling. “He’s making his way out, sir!” He stabbed a finger at the screen as if Grout couldn’t see the shoplifter. Newbie’s body coiled. “Soon as perp exits premises! And . . .” His body coiled tighter. “We got ’im DTR.”
“DTR?”
“Dead to rights, sir.”
“Go get ’im.”
“Really, sir?” Newbie’s eyes gleamed.
Grout nodded.
Newbie broke for the door and exited in a blur.
Grout looked at his car keys on his desk. Do it, a voice said. The voice of the detectiv
e he’d once been, still was. Do it. Just go.
Instead he sagged in Newbie’s abandoned chair and moaned for Frank Rath and for his daughter, Rachel, who in all likelihood was dead by now.
Or worse.
4
Rath drove the Scout as fast as he could without crashing into the cedars along the desolate stretch of road known as Moose Alley that wound through thirty miles of remote bog and boreal forest. The rain was not as violent here, the fog just starting to crawl out of the ditch.
Rath hoped the police were at Rachel’s and had prevented whatever cruelty Preacher had in store; but hope was as useful as an unloaded gun.
The Scout’s temperature gauge climbed perilously into the red. If the engine overheated, Rath would be stuck out here, miles from nowhere, cut off from contact. In this remote country, cell service was like the eastern mountain lion: its existence rumored, but never proven.
Finally, Rath reached the bridge that spanned the Lamoille River into the town of Johnson, his relief to be near Rachel crushed by fear of what he might find.
At the red light where Route 15 met Main Street, he waited, stuck behind a school bus full of kids likely coming from a sporting event.
He needed to get around the bus, run the light, but a Winnebago swayed through the intersection.
The light turned green.
Rath tromped on the gas pedal. The Scout lurched through the light. On the other side of the intersection, Rath jammed the brake pedal to avoid ramming into the back of the braking bus, the bus’s red lights flashing.
A woman on the sidewalk glared at Rath as she cupped the back of the head of a boy who jumped off the bus. She fixed the boy’s knit cap and flashed Rath a last scalding look as she hustled the boy into a liquor store.
The bus crept forward.
No vehicles approached from the opposing lane.
Rath passed the bus and ran the next two red lights.
The rain was a mist here, and the low afternoon sun broke briefly through western clouds, a silvery brilliance mirroring off the damp asphalt, nearly blinding Rath.
Rachel’s road lay just ahead.
Rath swerved onto it and sped up the steep hill.
Names of Dead Girls, The Page 1
