Names of Dead Girls, The

by Eric Rickstad

  The home was much like Test’s, alarmingly so, what she thought of as adorable, a mid-1800s eyebrow Cape that, she could tell even in the fog and rain, was lovingly tended while maintaining the rustic integrity of the farmhouse. Dried cornstalks framed the black main door on the front porch. A wreath of bittersweet adorned the center of the door itself, and a wicker cornucopia of pumpkins, squash, and gourds rested at the sill.

  Test walked up the driveway to the side door; no one in Vermont used the front door. The side kitchen or a mudroom was the everyday entrance. The front door was used by distant relatives converging for the holidays, peddlers of obscure religions, kids pushing candy to fund D.C. trips. Test’s kids had been drilled to never, ever, answer a knock at the front door.

  Test knocked, her chest tight.

  A dog barked once; the door opened.

  A couple, midforties, stood before Test, the man tall and lean, his posture erect, proper, though his maroon cardigan sagged on his frame to give a false impression that he was slouching. A black Labrador retriever sat at the man’s bare feet, leaning slightly against his owner’s legs, wetting the man’s trousers with drool.

  The woman, petite with alert blue eyes, offered a smile of teeth as white as cream as she squeezed her husband’s hand in hers. The couple were not exactly the picture of grief a layperson might expect, but as a police officer Test knew grief had as many outward appearances as there were people grieving.

  “Detective,” the man said and held out his hand for Test to shake. “Stephen Drake. My wife, Shirley.”

  Shirley Drake kept smiling, as if afraid to stop.

  “Come in,” she said.

  Shirley asked Test if she would care for anything to drink. Test declined, then wished she’d accepted. Ritual tended to calm the bereaved. The Drakes sat on a love seat across from her, the Labrador retriever collapsing in a heap at their feet with a dramatic sigh.

  Test expressed her condolences. The parents of the murdered Jamie Drake nodded. Shirley Drake went on smiling as if she were stoned.

  “I have to ask insensitive questions,” Test said, wishing again she’d accepted the offer of a drink. Her throat was dry. The air dry in a way only a house heated by a wood stove could be dry.

  “We understand,” Stephen Drake said. “But we were asked many questions already by the state police, late into the night.”

  “I apologize to have to ask again,” Test said, taken aback, not realizing the state police had already been so thorough. Whatever the case, Test was here now, forward her sole option.

  “When were you last in contact with your daughter, in person or otherwise, by phone or texting?” Test said.

  “We saw her just yesterday morning, just two hours before—” the mother said. “We both went to work. I work at the Connecticut River Bank, as a teller.” She said this as if she were apologizing for her chosen work. “My husband has his own accounting practice. We said good-bye, left Jamie at the breakfast table.”

  The dog whimpered at the mention of the Jamie’s name.

  “And did you notice anyone strange, men in particular, near the house or near your daughter, or did she mention anyone or anything that had bothered her lately?”

  “Nothing,” the mother said.

  “Was she upset, angry, or blue?” Test asked.

  “She was normal,” the father said. “Upbeat, for the most part, into her music and acting, frustrated she didn’t get the lead in the school play, typical stuff.”

  “I hate to ask,” Test said. “But I need to. Was your daughter involved in anything you disapproved of?”

  The mother blinked, in a way that made Test think she wanted to glance at her husband but did not dare. The father blinked in the same manner and his head had started to turn toward his wife, but stopped.

  “We all do things as kids,” the father said. “I think of the way I behaved as a teen and I pity my poor parents.”

  “Did she do things?” Test said.

  “Like what?” the father said.

  He and the mother shifted uncomfortably. Perhaps the state police had asked only rudimentary questions.

  “Drinking? Drugs?” Test said.

  “Our daughter’s murder is not her fault,” the mother said.

  “Of course not,” Test said.

  “Even if she’d been a junkie,” the father said, “or promiscuous or— Which she wasn’t. She—”

  “We don’t know if she did drugs or drank,” the mother said. “We assume she did to some extent. Drank anyway. She’s a teenager. We kept a close eye on her. She gave us access to her Facebook account; we let her stay out to eleven on Saturday night. We’re firm but open. And never saw any crazy posts. We didn’t see any signs of her being in trouble despite who she’d started to hang around with.”

  Test’s antennae raised. “Who had she started to hang out with?”

  The mother and father looked at each other with what appeared to be confusion.

  “We’d have thought the state police would have told you. Aren’t you in communication?”

  “We haven’t been on this precise point yet. I’m sorry, but you’ll have to fill me in.”

  “We had no signs of, as you put it, things to disapprove of. But the girl she took up with. We knew she—”

  “No,” the father interrupted. “We didn’t know.”

  “I did. I knew,” the wife said. Her hand slackened its hold of her husband’s.

  “To be honest,” the father began, “my wife did suspect. We talked about it, though not to Jamie. Because there were no outside signs, not even subtle ones, that this girl Jamie had become friends with was influencing her in a bad way. We were apprehensive, naturally. You want your kids to hang out with so-called good kids from so-called good families. But you also want to give the benefit of the doubt to a kid who comes from a tougher, more challenging situation. Those kids get ostracized enough. I know. I was one. Had a single mom. Poor. Anyway. We gave Jamie’s friend the benefit of the doubt.”

  “You gave her the benefit the doubt,” Shirley said.

  What are these two going on about? Test wondered.

  “But neither of us,” the father said, “knew our daughter’s friend was that kind of trouble.”

  “Of course not,” the mother said. “Who would ever think that? But now—” She wiped at tears.

  “Who is this friend?” Test said. “Who are you talking about?”

  “She and our daughter both loved acting and bonded because of it, despite having absolutely nothing else in common.” Shirley Drake glanced at her husband. “Despite my knowing nothing good could come of that girl.”

  “What girl?” Test said.

  32

  8:07 a.m. Unslept and famished but without appetite, Rath sat in his Scout outside the Canaan Police Department, wondering about Barrons’s mysterious need to see him first thing this morning, and his mention of Rath’s arrest. Before he went into the station, Rath phoned Rachel. Incredibly, she picked up. “Hey,” she said. “Sorry my message last night was so sappy.”

  “Sap makes sweet syrup.”

  “Now that’s sappy,” she said. It was an old exchange, comforting. Normal. “Where were you when I called?” she said. “You always pick up.”

  Her question surprised and pleased Rath. It was the question he was supposed to ask her, most often receiving a sigh that implied she didn’t have to keep her father abreast of her every move.

  He pondered confessing to her that he had been watching Preacher. It might put her at ease; it might upset her, too, to know he felt Preacher needed constant observation.

  “I fell asleep. You OK?”

  “I had pretty much a normal day yesterday, other than living among doilies at the inn.” She laughed, her signature snort that reminded Rath of the times as a kid she’d laugh so hard she’d snort strawberry milk at breakfast. Except the laugh felt false now, a cover for worry. She was worried.

  “Those dastardly doilies,” Rath said.

>   “They’re awful,” Rachel said, pausing, tentative. “When you go grab me new clothes, could you maybe see about a jacket? My peacoat is drenched and weighs a million tons. I can’t put it in a dryer, and I can’t wear Felix’s jackets, I swim in his clothes and— If you can’t, I’ll figure it out. There’s a secondhand shop in Johnson that’s—”

  “I’m on it. Promise.” He’d forgotten about the Dress Shoppe, but he was happy to perform a common act of devotion, especially now when every exchange with Rachel, every deed carried out on her behalf, felt tainted with the radioactive presence of Preacher. He knew his daughter well enough to realize her mention of the clothes and jacket was not out of a real pressing need for new clothes, but an attempt to establish normalcy amid lunacy.

  “OK?” Rachel said. But Rath had missed what she said.

  “What? You broke up for a second,” Rath lied.

  “I said sorry. I swear I didn’t call to pester you about clothes or a jacket, really.”

  “I’m on it. Promise.”

  “I just wanted to check in.”

  Check in.

  She was beyond worried.

  She was scared.

  33

  “What’s this about?” Rath stood in Barrons’s office, declining the chief’s offer to sit. He wanted to get the mystery over with and see Test about the body she’d mentioned. He was anxious to get back to watching Preacher, too. And somewhere in his day, somehow, he needed to hit the Dress Shoppe. “And what’s this about a body?”

  “Test will fill you in.” Barrons finished the cookie he was eating and stood brushing crumbs from his sadly wrinkled chinos. He’d not shaved his normally bald head this morning, and a stubbly horseshoe of hair, silver as a dime, was making a rare cameo on his skull.

  “As I said. We have a problem. Or you do. Your old friend, Dr. Langevine, wants to press charges against you for your past misdeeds: criminal trespass, B&E, and your attempted murder of him in his manor.”

  The investigation of Mandy Wilks a few weeks ago had led Rath to interview Langevine in his secluded mountain manor, where Langevine had laced a scotch he served to Rath. The doctor had meant to disable Rath and dispose of him, perhaps in the incinerator in which the ashes and bones of three girls he’d murdered had been discovered.

  “He’s no doctor.” Rath started to leave. He didn’t need this shit, not with Preacher unwatched.

  “This is serious,” Barrons said.

  Rath turned on Barrons. “He poisoned me.”

  “Your blood work was inconclusive.”

  “Because I heaved his poison up.”

  “Nevertheless.”

  “Not nevertheless.”

  “You did break into his house.”

  “Legally, I didn’t. I slipped through his Rottweiler’s back pet door, which is the same as an open door.”

  “You beat Langevine badly.”

  “In self-defense.” Rath tapped his fingers against his skull where Langevine had bashed a cue ball. It was still knotted and tender. The wound in his side where Langevine had stuck him with a knife burned like fire ants chewing his flesh.

  “That’s not his story,” Barrons said.

  “Of course not. He’s innocent. Misunderstood. I guess the girl he was about to give an involuntary C-section to, and the remains of the three girls in his backyard incinerator got there by magic.”

  “Magic or not. Langevine’s a citizen. With rights.”

  “What is it with these psychopaths, believing they’re the victims?”

  “They’re psychopaths. The center of their universe, empty of empathy, with the emotions of toddlers. I’m speaking for the law here only. The D.A. sent word to arrest you. Peaceably. Respectfully.”

  “Respectfully? That’s a good one.”

  “I haven’t gotten back to her, but she doesn’t want this shit show either. You plead to misdemeanor charges of trespass and simple assault, we’re done. You get fined.”

  “No,” Rath said.

  “You did trespass.”

  “I thought Rachel was in there.”

  “She wasn’t.”

  “And the girl who was? If I hadn’t—”

  “I get it. But your motive is as legally moot as Langevine’s motive for murdering those girls. You broke in. Accept it, move on. There’s not a person who wouldn’t do what you did, if they had the balls.”

  “If the D.A. wants to make a mockery of the system, she can charge me—the guy who got Langevine—with the full charges, and deal with the media backlash. It’ll ruin her.”

  “I knew you’d do this.”

  “Good.”

  “Not good. When it makes the papers, it will give Langevine what he wants. Exposure. He wants his idea out there, that his crimes can be defended through Vermont’s Defense of the Defenseless law; that he acted in defense of the young girls’ defenseless fetuses when he abducted them to change their minds about aborting. If you don’t plead, he gets exposure. Credibility. Interviewed by a dozen outlets. That’s how it works.”

  Rath knew how it worked.

  “There is another way.” Barrons sounded like a car dealer saying “one more thing” just before he pitched a cockamamie warranty. “You weren’t deputized when you went into Langevine’s home.”

  “So?”

  “If you had been, you’d have had legal authority to reenter Langevine’s house, through the dog’s flap door or down the fucking chimney. Making everything else that ensued legal action as a law officer.”

  “So we tell the DA I was deputized, my entry legal.”

  “One condition.”

  Rath waited.

  “You take the senior detective role I offered you when Grout first left,” Barrons said.

  “Forget it. I don’t want structure. I don’t want to have to wear chinos. I like working in my pajamas and Carhartts when inclined, which is daily. And I don’t want to have to deal with politics or paperwork or—” Each of these reasons was valid, but none would have normally kept him from helping his friend get this nonsense off his back. The real reason was he could not let anything keep him from watching Preacher. He should have been at Preacher’s place right now, since dawn.

  “Your only responsibility would be the Dana Clark case,” Barrons said. “If she shows up today, I’ll still tell the D.A. you were deputized. Problem solved.”

  “Dana Clark isn’t showing up today, or any day, on her own power. We know that.”

  “All the more reason for you to be involved. You have a deep personal connection with her. We both do.”

  I have a deep personal connection to my daughter, Rath thought. And to Preacher. Those are the only two. One for the better. The other for the worse. Outside those two, and a few guys with whom he played darts on Thursday—guys busy with jobs and wives and kids still at home—Rath had no relationships. He felt for Dana Clark. He owed her, especially if Preacher were involved in her disappearance. Her death. Let’s not kid ourselves. But Rachel needed to be his focus.

  “Why the fuck didn’t you tell me it was Dana who was missing when you sent me over to her daughter’s house?” Rath said.

  Barrons scratched at the sprouting ring of hair at the back of his head. “I thought Dana was just trapped in the fog on the roadside. I believed that. I wanted you to go in fresh, not see it through the lens of the past crime against her, and see if you would read it the same. And however it turned out, I wanted you there. Now that we know she’s not just lost in the fog, I know you want to find out what’s happened to her. If it’s linked to the CRVK, or to Preacher. Both. You want Preacher back inside as fast as you can make it happen. Take this post, you’ll get him there quicker.”

  “I can’t believe you’re playing this card.”

  “Of course you can. I’m doing you a favor.”

  “I’d be doing the favor.”

  “We’re both doing a favor. Your other two options are untenable. I appoint you, we move on. You get Dana Clark’s case. That’s it. Unless you
want more.”

  “What more would I want?”

  “The case Test fell into yesterday, the body in the woods. It might be linked to Preacher. Like Clark might.”

  “What was the time of death?”

  “Yesterday, midafternoon, I gather.”

  Damn it. If Rath had stayed awake, he’d know if Preacher had left and committed a murder, or stayed and made Rath his alibi.

  “So,” Barrons said. “You play senior detective for a spell, and maybe get Preacher— However this nut cracks, and it will crack, when you crack it, when you’re done, we both get on a plane to the Bahamas and do some serious fishing for bones and permit, relax with cold Kaliks and warm Bahama mamas. Meantime, all the official connections and power you need are at your disposal, for Dana and this new body, if you want. Records. Files. If it’s Preacher, you’ll get him faster than you will alone.”

  “What makes you think I’m trying on my own?”

  “Please.”

  “I can access records as a citizen,” Rath said.

  “Not information not made public. And you’ll have Test and Larkin at your disposal to investigate leads you might not get as quickly, or at all on your own.”

  “I haven’t been a real cop in sixteen years. I can’t just be appointed. I haven’t carried a sidearm bigger than my rat shooter twenty-two in ages.”

  “I’ll iron it out. I have ironed it out.”

  The idea of hauling Preacher in, caging him in a holding cell, it was worth something. Everything. Even with Preacher detained for twenty-four hours, it would be twenty-four hours Rath would not have to worry about Rachel.

  “Appoint me junior detective and Test senior detective,” Rath said.

  “Not negotiable.”

  “When I step down, Test gets the position.”

  “I can’t just appoint—”

  “You’re appointing me.”

  “It’s temporary, interim, that’s how I can get away with it, that and cashing in ancient favors on the select board, for approval. I can promise to give Test the fair consideration she deserves.”