Names of Dead Girls, The

by Eric Rickstad

  The wind shrieked and rattled the windows, in each of which hung a dream catcher. The dream catchers appeared homemade: rough, asymmetrical hoops constructed of birch twigs strung with a spiderweb of beaded wool thread decorated with crow feathers.

  Rath understood from his layman’s knowledge that most people had dream catchers wrong; the dream catcher did not catch dreams, it caught nightmares. The crisscrossed wool thread, originally dried gut string, was a spider’s web. The Ojibwe of western Quebec believed Asibikaashi, a spider woman, oversaw the safety of women and children; so mothers wove the webs to catch their children’s nightmares and leave pure thoughts when the children awoke.

  These dream catchers had failed. Whatever nightmare might be unfolding had not been snagged.

  Why do I think this is a nightmare unfolding? Rath thought. Tammy’s mother had only been out of contact for a few hours. Likely, she was creeping her car along in this fog or pulled over with no cell service. Yet, the fact that Barrons ordered Test to come out here, in this storm, let alone Rath himself, disturbed Rath, made him believe this was indeed a nightmare unfolding.

  Tammy Gates eyed Rath, and again Rath sensed he had met her, long ago.

  What is going on here? he wondered.

  Perhaps, he was just exhausted. The day’s events had left him wiped long before he’d driven here. And now it was approaching midnight.

  “What’s strange?” Test said.

  Tammy Gates spoke without looking at Rath or Test. “That’s what my ma said. It’s strange. Or something like that. About the man.”

  “What man?” Test said.

  “I don’t know. I couldn’t make out much of what Ma said.”

  She’s stunned, Rath thought. Her understanding of her world has lost its context.

  “Sorry,” Tammy said. “I’m out of it. All Ma said was a man, she couldn’t see his face, was standing close to her. But then she calmed down and said it was nothing. So—I thought the fog had rattled her. I mean she was on the steps of the Wayside General, with people inside working so what was some guy going to do?”

  “The store is closed,” Test said.

  Rath cringed. He would not have divulged this information. It set the daughter more on edge, caused her to focus less and worry more. Worry’s uselessness was an enemy. Just as hope was.

  “Closed?” Tammy Gates said.

  “We sent a trooper to look for your mother’s car. The place closed early,” Test said.

  “My mother’s car? Was it there?”

  “I don’t know,” Test said. “Waiting to hear.” The car wasn’t there, Rath sensed. Which meant what? Surely this strengthened the possibility that the mother was simply very late because of the weather and was out of cell service or had her phone off while driving.

  “My mother was out there alone, with him,” the woman said. She said him as if she knew who the man was.

  She looked at Rath. Recognition in her eyes. Fear, too. She was nearly catatonic with fear.

  “Why are you so scared?” Rath said. “I understand being worried in weather like this, about your mom driving and being late, as far as maybe an accident, and the incident on the phone doesn’t help. But she could easily be late due to the weather, or out of cell service. Why are you so scared—”

  “Because of who my mom is.”

  “Is she a public figure or—” Test said.

  “It’s not like that. She’s a nurse on the maternity floor at Valley Hospital.”

  A nurse? Rath thought. At Valley Hospital.

  “It’s because of what was done to her. Not what she’s done.” The daughter stared at Rath, as if she expected Rath to know what she was talking about.

  Rain raged against the windows. Rath wondered if the wooden bridge he’d taken across a creek to get here would be swept away, cut him off from Rachel.

  “She’s dead,” the daughter said. “We can at least admit that. My mom’s dead. He got her this time. I have to face it. I won’t be one of those people who cling to delusional false hope year after year until I see a body. I won’t torture myself on top of everything else, waiting for someone to come back who is never coming back.”

  “I understand your concern, but you can’t think—” Rath said.

  “Of course you understand.”

  “Why? Why does he understand?” Test said, sounding as perplexed as Rath felt.

  “Because he was there. When I was six and I found my mother in our garden.”

  No, Rath thought. No.

  “Stabbed so many times. There was so much blood,” the daughter said. “Like she’d been dunked in a vat of blood. She was facedown. I couldn’t see yet that it was blood, that her face was covered in blood too. I thought she’d changed out of her pale yellow sundress she liked to wear gardening, and into a red dress I’d never seen.”

  No, Rath thought. It can’t be.

  “I thought she’d fallen and hurt herself,” the daughter continued. “Or was sleeping. I was only six. Sometimes she fell asleep out on the lawn by the garden. I didn’t know what to think when I saw her red dress was blood soaked through her yellow dress, and the dress was torn at the neck and at one sleeve. And her underwear was— Nineteen times, she was stabbed. It was— I was in shock. And now. This. You understand. Now this. She’s not late. She’s not out of cell service. My mother is dead.”

  Holy Christ, Rath thought. It’s her.

  Rath knelt before the daughter where she sat on the edge of the couch and laid his hands on her wrists. He felt Test watching him.

  “Your maiden name is Clark. You’re Tammy Clark. Your mom is Dana Clark,” Rath said. “I didn’t know.”

  That’s why Barrons called me out, Rath thought. Barrons thought I knew who Tammy was, knew her married name. But why hadn’t Barrons mentioned that the missing woman was Dana Clark?

  Test looked bewildered, as if she’d just walked in late on a movie with no context or perspective to understand the drama unfolding.

  Tammy clasped her hands over Rath’s hands.

  “I didn’t recognize you,” Rath said.

  “What is this?” Test said.

  Tammy nodded at Rath. “I’m not six anymore. And if it weren’t for you being in the news recently for those murder cases, I would never have recognized you, either,” she said. “As you said, I don’t have the same last name anymore. How could you recognize me, if the chief didn’t make it clear. I assumed he had.”

  He should have, Rath thought.

  “I sensed I knew you,” Rath said. “You look like your mom, but I haven’t seen her in—far too long.”

  Rath took Tammy Clark’s hands and looked into her eyes as if about to propose. He sensed Test’s embarrassment now competed with her confusion.

  “She’s dead,” Tammy said. “I know it. You know it.”

  Rath looked her in the eye. “We don’t know any such thing. The troopers will look for her and her car and she’ll be back tonight.”

  “The man she was talking about, it’s him, isn’t it?”

  “We don’t know that,” Rath said, lying. He patted her knee and stood, glanced at Test and back to Tammy.

  “Will you give us a moment?” Rath said.

  Tammy nodded.

  Rath motioned for Test to join him in the kitchen.

  The kitchen smelled of onions and burned toast.

  “What the hell is this?” Test said. “Were you and her mother involved?”

  “In a way.”

  “I need context. If it has any impact on the investigation—”

  “It was years ago.”

  “You meant something to her.”

  “It goes both ways.”

  “I see.”

  “You don’t,” Rath said. “Her mother was the only woman to survive an attack from the Connecticut River Valley Killer. At least that’s who we thought it was. As the lead detective, I was the first person she shared the heinous details of her attack with. Sharing like that can create a sort of macabre intim
acy. It forged a bond between us.”

  Test nodded. It was a nod to encourage Rath to continue, not one of understanding.

  “I kept in touch,” Rath said. “We did. For years, long after I left the state police, after my sister’s murder.”

  “That’s why Tammy said you understand.”

  Rath nodded. “Occasionally, Dana and I met for coffee and I had to explain nothing had developed in the case. Eventually, I lost touch. The CRVK murders stopped after Dana’s attack. Which made us all the more certain her attacker was the CRVK, that Dana being the only victim to survive to even vaguely, partially describe him had scared him out of the region. Or into hiding.”

  “And Tammy was six when she discovered her mother like that?” Test said.

  “It was hideous.”

  “What were the other theories about who had attacked her, and the connection with the CRVK?” Test said.

  “That the CRVK had moved or stopped for other reasons. Got sick or died. Went to jail for another crime. Something happened. Changed.” Rath sighed, glanced out at Tammy who sat with her face in her hands, an unlit cigarette dangling between two fingers. “There was a suspect we had in custody, about a year later, for a short time. A Vern Johnson fit Dana’s very loose, practically useless, description and had been in the area for certain for two CRVK strangulations. After questioning, he was released. He drove from jail to Pennsylvania where he tied up his estranged wife and their son, lit the house on fire, and burned them all alive.”

  Rath looked out again at Tammy, to make certain she was not listening.

  Rath lowered his voice. “I told Dana that this suspect, Vern Johnson, was our man. I wanted to give her peace. She was suffering extreme PTSD. Nightmares, depression, anxiety, paranoia. She had her daughter to raise, her husband had been laid off. She needed to feel safe again, and nearly all regional cops believed Johnson—the CRVK—had died in that fire. I was the odd man out. Barrons and I. So—. Who was I to dissent?”

  “You didn’t believe he was the CRVK?”

  “Dana needed to heal. She was dying. The injuries alone had nearly killed her, left her in a coma for weeks. And in the hospital for months after she awoke. It was as if she were dying a long slow death believing he was out there. Could come back and harm her. Or worse, harm her daughter. But. No. I never fully believed it. And I still don’t.”

  “And now this.”

  “Now this.”

  “But Dana Clark’s car isn’t at the Wayside. If a lone stranger pulled up in his own car and did something to her, where’s her car? The odds of two predators working together is astronomically low,” Test said.

  “But possible. Maybe the person moved her car just down the road, off into the woods,” Rath said. “In the crap out there you wouldn’t see a car pulled off the road, even in daylight.”

  “She’s only been missing a short time. We don’t even usually look into a possible missing person for seventy-two hours.”

  “This isn’t a usual case. It’s a priority. Seventy-two hours is out the window on this one. Barrons knew who she was. Tammy. But I can’t figure why he didn’t tell me the missing woman was Dana Clark. It bothers me. But that’s why he made it a priority. Because the missing woman is Dana. The CRVK case plagues him to this day.”

  “What is it you’re not telling me?” Test said.

  Tammy moaned. Rath and Test looked, but Tammy still sat, rocking now, cigarette unlit.

  Test shook her head. “Six years old, and she finds her mother like that.”

  “And she had to walk two miles to her neighbors, carrying a Polaroid of her bloodied mother the whole way so they would believe her, know she wasn’t joking around.”

  “She took a picture of her mother like that?”

  “She didn’t take it. The last sounds Dana Clark heard before she fell into a coma were the click and whir of a Polaroid camera. Over and over and over. Click. Whir. Click. When she awoke weeks later, it was the first thing she remembered. The click and whir of that Polaroid camera, as her attacker took photos of her. And the attacker accidentally left one photo behind. But with no useful print on it.”

  “You’re still not telling me something.”

  “There was one other theory.” Rath scratched his jaw. “The CRVK killings stopped after Dana’s attack, but also coincided with Preacher’s arrest for the murder of my sister. We, Barrons and I, thought the CRVK might be Preacher but could never prove it. But there were no CRVK killings after his arrest.”

  “And now he’s out.”

  “And now he’s out.”

  17

  Friday, November 4, 2011

  Fuck, Rath thought. That fuck.

  Preacher. Weeks out of prison and Preacher was at it again. Who knew what he’d done to Dana Clark; but no doubt he was behind it. He had to be. Didn’t he? Fuck.

  The microwave clock pulsed in the kitchen’s darkness.

  3:12 a.m.

  Rath had returned home an hour ago and insisted Officer Larkin remain on his detail in the farmyard until dawn. Rachel and Felix had been asleep, and Rath had been sitting here at the kitchen table ever since.

  Rath wanted to believe Dana Clark’s car had broken down or she’d been forced to pull over in the fog and would reveal herself come morning or be found and helped by a state trooper or a fellow citizen.

  He wanted to believe that if he found his daughter a temporary place in Johnson, close to her friends and campus, a place Preacher would not know about, she’d be safe.

  He wanted to believe that Preacher had nothing to do with Dana Clark going missing.

  He wanted to believe all of this.

  But he couldn’t.

  He’d be fooling himself, and he knew it.

  It was said among cops that when it came to casework, there were no coincidences. This wasn’t true; meaningless coincidences happened all the time, and to believe otherwise was to believe everything was connected and everything had meaning and equal weight. It was a detective’s job to discern between coincidence and true connections in a case.

  Was it a coincidence or a connection that the CRVK murders stopped after Vern Johnson had killed himself? Or after Dana Clark’s attack left her as possibly the sole living witness?

  Was it coincidence or connection that the CRVK killings stopped after Preacher was arrested for the murder of Rath’s sister a week after Dana Clark was similarly attacked?

  Coincidence or a connection that the day Preacher called Rath and stalked Rachel, Dana Clark went missing?

  Since the different theories pointed to two separate killers—Preacher or Vern Johnson—some had to be meaningless coincidences.

  The microwave clock changed to 3:15.

  Rath crept down the hall to Rachel’s bedroom door, opened it a crack, and peeked in. She lay sound asleep on her back, snoring, a forearm tossed over her face. Felix lay beside her, asleep yet still clothed atop the bedspread, his head on her stomach, arms wrapped around her waist.

  Rath needed fresh air.

  Outside, he glanced at Larkin’s cruiser, lurking in the fog, invisible save for its blue flashing lights illuminating the fog.

  The rain fell as a drizzle, for now.

  Knowing his way blind, Rath picked his way across the back field to sit on a stump beside Ice Pond where he often sat to unkink his knotted thoughts. Out here, the night was so black the fog was rendered invisible

  Until recently, Rath would have brought a bottle of scotch with him to help, and fail, to allay the back pain he’d suffered; however, a steroid shot had sent his back pain into hibernation, his thirst for drink along with it. He lit a cigarette and drew in a deep drag, smoke searing his lungs. Immediately, he crushed the cigarette on the bottom of his boot; it seemed he’d lost the taste for self-destruction and was glad for it.

  In the distant northwest horizon, a pale yellow glow throbbed, even the dark night and fog unable to keep at bay the distant lights of Montreal, ninety miles away. A trout splashed near the shore
line of Ice Pond. Big wild brookies dwelled in there. Carnivores. They crashed baitfish and crayfish against the shore, stunned them, then fed on them ravenously. Rath had caught brookies up to seventeen inches in there, but suspected some bettered twenty inches, weighed up to five pounds. Nocturnal predators. One night, Rath would venture out here with his old Scott fly rod and strip a mouse pattern across the surface to discover what monster he could trick into attacking.

  Thoughts of Preacher and Rachel and Dana possessed him. There was no forcing Rachel to stay here or to abandon her studies and leave the state. She was right: even in the short term she could not maintain her grades from here. Yet what purpose did good grades serve if she were harmed? For the first time, Rath regretted living so far out in the country that cell-phone and Internet service were as trustworthy as a politician’s campaign promises. His remoteness was costing him. If he lived where the twenty-first century reached him, where Rachel could Skype into her classes and research efficiently online, it would be easier to coax her to stay here, keep an eye on her.

  If you can’t keep an eye on her at all times, keep an eye on Preacher. The thought sprang into Rath’s mind.

  He needed to know where Preacher had landed after his parole, into what hole he’d slithered. Preacher would be listed online any day now as a registered, violent sex offender.

  Rath couldn’t waste another hour.

  He needed to know where Preacher lived now. He’d stick to Preacher like bluing on a gun. Whatever Preacher did, or tried to do, Rath would be there. And when Preacher committed the slightest violation of parole, and he would, he’d be put back behind bars, Rachel safe again, from a serial rapist and murderer, who, despite lack of hard evidence, may well have attacked Dana Clark and been the CRVK, too; and never paid for it.

  Rachel was all that mattered. She was also the reason Rath had to be careful, resist his urge to hurt Preacher, or worse. If he succumbed, he’d be suspect number one. Caught and convicted. He would not shame Rachel like that, nor risk sabotaging a case to put Preacher away again, this time for good. He had to let the law run its course. Unless Preacher tried to harm Rachel, which he couldn’t do if Rath watched him.