Names of Dead Girls, The

by Eric Rickstad

  “You misunderstand, non?”

  “No. No. I don’t misunderstand. Who are you?”

  “I am exactly who I says I am: Inspector Gerard Champine, retired fifteen years. I call because of likeness for our cases.”

  “There are no cases. There is no mention of any murders in Iberville or Henryville, Quebec, this month, November, as you said, or any recent months, let alone involving hangings.”

  “Mais non. The most recent one, Lucille Forte, is not reported yet as I say. Should be today. Et Rochelle et Vanessa, they are not this month.”

  “You said November.”

  “Oui. November.”

  “This is November.”

  “Non, non, Detective. Ma faute. Pardonnez-moi. Rochelle Beauchamp and Vanessa Lancaume were murdered in November. Oui.” The inspector smoothed the feather tucked in his fedora’s band. “November of nineteen ninety-three and -four.”

  51

  “Ninety-three and -four?” Rath said.

  “I should have made clear as crystal, the time line.”

  Rath took out his phone. Googled the names of the two dead Quebecois girls + murder + Iberville + Henryville. Not much came up, but enough to confirm what Champine claimed.

  “Goddamn it,” Rath said. If the killer north of the border and down here were the same, it meant Preacher, if involved, had to get a fake ID to cross the border as a felon. Extremely difficult, but possible, if he’d made the right contacts in prison. Rath and Test still needed to check out Timothy Glade and the other released convict.

  “The girls from the nineties. Why the connection to the girls now, if they were not hanged?” Rath said.

  “I see a connection to your killer back then. The Connecticut River Valley Killer. I see you in the news then. I remember you on TV for the CRVK case. And for your sister. I would say it is a tragedy, but, as police, we know murder is not tragedy. A tornado. A flood. They are tragedy. They do not know what they do. A murderer. He knows. He is no tragedy.”

  “What else do you know about the CRVK?”

  “A man suspected was killed in a fire. Killed himself and family. Your killings stopped. Ours, too. We only had the two, that we know. But. A lot of girls, they go missing but are not missed. You understand. From the city. The clubs.”

  “Were your girls from clubs?”

  “Non. Families. Good girls.”

  “Did you ever contact us, the state police in Vermont, or in Canaan, about a connection?”

  “Mais oui. A Barrons. I left many messages to him. And to Richard North.”

  “Barrons?” Rath and Barrons had worked closely, shared every fleck of evidence, every theory. So Rath had believed. “And what happened?”

  “I never hear back. The man in the fire. I believed it was him, as you did.”

  “I didn’t believe it, neither did Barrons.”

  “I did not know this. But. The killings stopped. But now. These two. Mine and yours of recent.”

  Rath needed to speak to Barrons. Ask him why he never got back to Inspector Champine.

  “The case was yours back then?” Rath said.

  “Mais oui. Mine. There is now the new one too for us, or for them, the Service de Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu. She is not my case. Évidemment. But I see your girl on the news.”

  Three more girls, Rath thought.

  The prospect exhausted him.

  Sadly, more girls meant more evidence, a mistake made, DNA left behind, a pattern of behavior and motivation that would reveal an identity.

  Even if DNA were found, without a match for it in the criminal database, or a suspect to swab, it was as unusable as a blind eyewitness. Preacher, though, he was in the database.

  “You’re retired, why not have the current inspector contact me?” Rath said.

  “En calvaire. I am pissed off. These girls are mine. If this new girl is the same killer, she is mine, too. Should be. I have no, traction, in the force. Mais!” His index finger metronomed in the air to emphasize: “If I come to Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police with information, a lead American inspector, they may let me be more than a shadow.”

  “I see,” Rath said.

  “Bon. Can you get me your case files?”

  “There isn’t much. I can see. I want to know about your hanged girl. Forensic comparisons will establish certainty or not. Though with the snare . . .” Rath shook his head. A snare used to strangle coyotes along fence lines. “Officially. This. It may be for— I don’t even know. FBI? I don’t know.” Coordinating with the Vermont State Police was a sinkhole of politics and tender egos itself; waiting for information and evidence to be shared through the bureaucratic chains was as slow as trying to run in water and demanded the patience of a bomb defuser. How would it be to work with a police force in another country, in a province whose people were schizophrenic over which language to speak? Rath didn’t know. “Let’s work it out between the two of us, for now,” Rath said.

  52

  Nearly seeing double from driving in the fog, Rath made his way to Johnson.

  In town, he texted Rachel to tell her he was parked just outside the inn on Main Street, too tired to even get out of the Scout. But he had her clothes. And coat.

  She appeared from the inn a minute later and hurried to the Scout in the rain, hopped in.

  “Whoa,” she said, her nose scrunching like a rabbit’s. “You really need to clean your car out. It smells like— I don’t know what. An old bowling shoe.”

  “Smelled a lot of those, have you?” Rath said.

  “It’s putrid.”

  “It may actually be my jacket that stinks.”

  “Jeez, Dad. Burn it. And sell this heap. Get a real car. A reliable car.”

  “What, a RAV4? This rig is as reliable as they come. How many RAV4s will you see in forty years?”

  Rath pointed to the Dress Shoppe bags in the backseat. “I think I did a good job,” he said.

  “You mean the clerk did?” Rachel smiled.

  It was good to see her smile.

  It was good to know Preacher was being watched by Larkin.

  Rath’s phone buzzed. GROUT. Rath answered.

  “Hey,” Grout said. “I read about a body of a young girl found in the woods, and with this thing with Rachel and Preacher, I—?”

  “She’s right here,” Rath said.

  Rachel wrinkled her brow, curious.

  “She’s OK then?” Grout said.

  “For now.”

  “What are you doing about him, Preacher?”

  “I can’t say, right now.”

  Rachel’s look of curiosity became one of suspicion.

  “If any asshole messed with my daughter, never mind Preacher,” Grout said. “I don’t know.”

  “I hope to nail him on new charges.”

  “You think he’s the doer for the girl in the woods?”

  “We detained him for questioning, and he’s under surveillance.”

  “I heard you took my old gig.”

  Grout could not have masked his regret at leaving his position if he wanted to, so didn’t bother trying. Not with Rath at least.

  “I don’t even want it,” Rath said, making the same mistake he’d made with Test: speaking dismissively of a position others coveted. “Barrons had this idea that—”

  “You don’t have to get into it. It’s good if it means you can pressure Preacher. It was me I’d find charges. If not, make him vanish. This girl you found? Is Preacher the doer?”

  Rath could feel Rachel’s eyes on him. The more cryptically he spoke, the more Rachel perked up.

  “We suspect. Maybe teamed with someone else, too.”

  “He doesn’t strike me as the sharing type.”

  “Prison changes a man. We also have a possible link that involves Abby Land—”

  Rachel stared, incredulous.

  “Why her?” Grout said.

  “She and our girl in the woods were unlikely friends. Could be a dead end. But they were tight over a love for ac
ting.”

  “Acting,” Grout said. “That’s fucked up.”

  “A lot of girls get the bug.”

  “Not the acting. Remember that lead from the Wilks case? It went nowhere, but . . .”

  “Which lead?” One had to follow scores of leads that dropped off a cliff to nowhere if you wanted to find the few leads that took flight from the edge.

  “You wanted to follow up with the notepad Wilks had from the Double Black Diamond Resort in Stowe,” Grout said. “It was odd, a broke kid like her having a notepad from a five-star resort an hour-and-a-half drive from Canaan.”

  “I’m not following.”

  “I’m not done. Remember. A production company held auditions in conference rooms there. A crappy movie being shot in Boston. Affleck or some shit. Auditions for extras, whatever—”

  Shit, Rath thought.

  “Mandy Wilks wasn’t on the list. But we didn’t check for Drake or Land, of course. We were thinking maybe someone was running a scam that lured Wilks. But now . . . Land and Drake. Actresses? And Wilks had a notepad from the Double Black Diamond? Maybe you want to check for Land and Drake on the list. It’s weak as a well drink, but maybe you’d get a hit. That rich prig was there at the Black Diamond, too, the one I suspected for doing Wilks for a half a second.”

  “Who?”

  “Boyd Hale Pratt the Third. He was there to meet that crazy old bitch about him and his wife adopting a baby. I dropped him as a suspect when Land was pegged. You got my wheels turning though. I miss this shit. We should meet. I wanted to talk to you about . . .”

  Grout kept talking but Rath wasn’t listening. His wheels were turning, too. In a direction he welcomed and dreaded. “Let’s meet in person; what day do you have off from the mall?”

  “Don’t use that four-letter word mall with me. Tomorrow? Noon? I can take a long break. I’m the big chief of the mall rats.”

  “The old site along the river work?”

  It did.

  Rath hung up.

  “What was that all about?” Rachel said.

  “That was Harland Grout.”

  “I know. What was it about? What aren’t you telling me?” Rachel said. “I have a right to know.”

  “The girl that was found in the woods. She was hanged. Tortured,” Rath said.

  “And it was Preacher?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “But you believe it. Is he going to try to torture me?”

  He already is, Rath thought. “It may not be Preacher.”

  “May not be? The only reason he could be following me is to kill me. Hang me or torture me or— What other reason could a man like him possibly have?”

  Rath couldn’t say.

  Rachel took the bags from the backseat and gave Rath a peck on the cheek and left.

  Rath watched her walk safely back into the inn before he started the Scout.

  On his way out of town his phone rang. Inspector Champine. Rath pulled over to the shoulder.

  “Inspector,” Rath said.

  “Detective,” Champine said. “Can you pay a visit tomorrow? At Service Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu?”

  “Name the time.”

  Inspector Champine named the time and bid Rath adieu.

  53

  Tuesday, November 8, 2011

  The border crossing was quiet. Only one car idled ahead of Rath’s Scout at the patrol booth. When the car accelerated away, Rath crept the Scout forward. His driver’s window’s crank hadn’t worked since toothpaste came in a metal tube, so he cracked his door open to hand the patrol officer his enhanced driver’s license.

  “Roll down your window,” the patrol officer demanded, motioning.

  “I can’t.” Rath tried to open his door farther.

  The officer marched out to the Scout. “Do not open your door,” she said. “Roll down your window.”

  Rath gave her a helpless look. “The crank’s broke.”

  The officer rested her hand on her holstered stun gun that she wore opposite her handgun. “Roll the passenger window down.” She came around as Rath cranked down the window and handed his driver’s license to her.

  “Turn off your engine, put your hands on the steering wheel,” she ordered then strode to the booth and ran Rath through the system. She walked back to the passenger window. “What’s your business in Canada, Mr. Rath?”

  “A meeting with the Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu police.”

  “Nature?”

  “A murder investigation.”

  She squinted at Rath as if he were putting her on.

  “May I?” Rath glanced to his wallet on the seat.

  “Go easy.”

  Rath slowly picked up his wallet and handed her his fresh detective’s ID, the ink still wet.

  The officer inspected the ID.

  “Should have shown me this straightaway. Who are you meeting with in the police?”

  “Retired Inspector Champine and Inspector Hubert.”

  “This is about the girl in Henryville?”

  “I can’t say. But, yes.”

  She smiled, handed Rath his ID. “Fix the window.”

  Rath drove 147 Nord, passing the currency exchange building, which was barely more than a hut.

  As teens, Rath and his buddies had made the currency exchange their first stop after crossing the border. The American dollar was worth $1.50 Canadian back then, but businesses treated the American dollar as par, so if you didn’t exchange American for Canadian, you got screwed.

  After exchanging their money, Rath and his buddies would drive farther north and west to attend concerts in the now defunct Montreal Forum, and to hop from one Henryville and Iberville roadside dive to another to drink Brador and Seagram 7, shoot stick and throw darts until they had enough liquid courage to stop at Chez Darlene or one of the other strip clubs patronized by local farmers and laborers, American kids and businessmen. Rath recalled the intense swell of anticipation as he’d walk into the clubs about to see women strip for a cover charge of $2. Canadian. He wondered if Chez Darlene still existed.

  Rath drove 10 Ouest through one drowsy, agricultural ville after another, surrounded by dairy farms and cornfields. The flat landscape’s only meager elevation was the Montérégie Hills to the north that broke the surface like humps of breaching whales on a calm ocean. The hills were not visible today in the fog. Rath had hoped the rain would turn to snow and the fog abate as he drove north. It hadn’t.

  He passed split-level brick ranch homes painted pastel colors—tangerine orange, mint green, Pepto pink—as if the palette were restricted to those of a pack of Necco wafers.

  It was hard to believe Montreal was now just a half hour north.

  Just past a sign that read saint-jean-sur-richelieu 5 km was the classic old sign for chez darlene, a twenty-foot silhouette of a naked woman, her legs and fingers wrapped around a pole as she leaned so far backward her long hair nearly touched the backs of her stilettos. Rath was tempted to stop in on the way back, to see if the place was the same.

  Rath took the exit.

  Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu was not a farming ville. It was a bedroom community to Montreal, a vibrant small city of nearly one hundred thousand, built up around a textile manufacturing industry that still thrived among what some folks considered the northernmost finger of Lake Champlain and others considered the headwaters of the Richelieu River, which flowed north a hundred miles to the St. Lawrence.

  The self-proclaimed Hot Air Balloon Capital, Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu had hosted the International Hot Air Balloon Festival going on thirty years. Rath had mocked the festival when he was a kid, dismissed it when he was a single cop in his early twenties, and embraced it as a father. He’d brought Rachel to the festival each summer from the ages of seven to twelve. She’d been giddy when she’d first laid eyes on the spectacular vision of a hundred colorful goliath balloons drifting in the blue summer sky.

  In the several years that followed, Rachel had been raring to go again, talked about th
e festival throughout the winter and spring. He’d been proud of himself to find a tradition they could share for years to come and imagined her bringing her own children when she had them, his grandchildren; however, the winter Rachel was thirteen, she’d gone without mentioning the festival, and when he’d brought it up in the spring, she’d said, Oh. Yeah. Are we going again this year? In years prior the “again” was said with exuberance: We’re going again, right, we wouldn’t dare miss it. That morning, “again” was said with a sense of obligation.

  Parenthood, at its best, Rath thought, is a perpetual recovery from minor heartbreaks, each leaving its own tiny scar. At its worst, it ended the way it had for parents of the dead girls.

  Nearing the police department for Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Rath drove down an avenue now home to a Marriott, a Riverview, and a Double Tree, new since he’d last been up this way. In the distance the prominent, jade steeple for the Cathedral of Saint-Jean-l’Évangéliste thrust skyward, above all else. He’d never been certain if the steeple was constructed of weathered copper, or green slate.

  The Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu Police Department was housed in a three-story building; its nondescript façade of square windows and gray brick screamed municipal mundanity.

  The day was still foggy, but the drizzle was partly snow now. For a moment when he stepped out of his Scout, he let falling snowflakes land on his face and cool his skin.

  54

  Rath had barely stomped the slush off his boots and started to look for the welcome desk when Inspector Champine and a man perhaps in his midthirties, who looked like a teen next to the aged Champine, bustled toward him from a side corridor.

  “Bonjour,” the man said, smoothing his tie and working the bottom two buttons of his gray tweed sport coat. Rath imagined he’d just finished a midmorning snack at his desk and was pulling himself together for the meet. In one hand he held a green folder.

  He extended his free hand and pumped Rath’s hand with vigorous, dutiful haste.

  “Inspector Rath, I am Inspector Hubert,” he said, dropping the H and the T. Ew-bare.