Names of Dead Girls, The

by Eric Rickstad

“And instead of sharing, you torture her? Upstairs. Come on.”

  With the kids stomping and muttering their way upstairs, Test took another bite of the apple and was about to return to studying the list when it struck her.

  Jesus.

  She picked up her phone and called Rath. When he picked up, she said, “Why do we torture?”

  “What?” Rath said. “What are you saying?”

  “Why do we torture?”

  “To get sick kicks out of seeing a person suffer.”

  “You’re seeing it wrong. Like I was. Why do we torture? Entities? Governments? The mob?”

  “Shit,” Rath said.

  “Right. To extract information. Maybe Jamie Drake and Lucille Forte were targeted. Because they knew something?”

  “What information could teenage girls have?”

  “No clue. But maybe he targeted them specifically. Because they knew something. About him. Somehow. He tortured them not for kicks or pleasure. For information. Maybe Dana Clark is being held somewhere and— ”

  “But both girls are so far apart, different countries, can both have the same important information? And the same info a woman in her forties would have? Where does that leave us with the Quebec girls from the early nineties? And Preacher?”

  “I don’t know. But it doesn’t exclude Preacher, necessarily.”

  “True. Keep after it. Dig and find the girls’ common ground, if there is any, and we may get an idea about who they knew in common and what they might know.”

  Test hung up.

  She returned to the files in peace, underscoring each name with a ruler as she went so as not to miss any.

  She searched for Abby Land and Jamie Drake.

  Halfway through, she found both. Jamie Drake right above Abby Land.

  Test’s breathing slowed. Both names. Right there in black ink.

  The two girls had befriended each other over acting, so why was Test surprised to see their names on this list? Why wouldn’t the girls travel a couple hours to audition for a movie?

  The two names did not give her as much pause as the notepad from the Double Black Diamond Rath had found in Wilks’s bedroom. Wilks might have acquired the notepad anywhere—Test owned plenty of pens and notepads from places she’d never visited. That theory didn’t float anymore. It could not be coincidence that Mandy Wilks had a DBD notepad, and both her killer and a friend of her killer, now murdered herself, had been to the same resort.

  In the file, there was one more person of interest mentioned linked to the resort at the time Mandy Wilks’s case was being investigated.

  Boyd Pratt.

  Grout had run into Pratt at the DBD when there to interview staff about Wilks’s notepad. Pratt had later proved he was at the DBD to meet a woman about a private adoption he was trying to arrange for him and his wife. The adoption agency was under investigation, but Pratt was dropped as a suspect.

  Test opened her laptop and typed in notes.

  Mandy Wilks: DBD notepad. No witnesses put her at DBD. Murdered by Abby Land.

  Abby Land: Attended audition at resort October 12. Murdered Mandy Wilks.

  Jamie Drake: Attended audition with Abby Land. Oct 12. Tortured and murdered by hanging. Murderer unknown. Suspects? Ned Preacher? Luke Montgomery????

  Boyd Pratt III: At DBD Resort for adoption. Not a suspect for Wilks’s murder.

  Luke Montgomery: no connection to DBD. He is Abby Land’s supposed “motive” for killing Mandy Wilks. He claims he doesn’t know Land or Wilks.

  What did any of this prove?

  Not a thing.

  Test looked deeper into Grout’s notes about the Double Black Diamond.

  What was this?

  Boyd Pratt had been at the DBD at least three times: the day Grout had run into him, as well as earlier on September 26 and October 12.

  The day of the audition.

  Pratt, Land, and Drake were all at the DBD on the same day? And Mandy Wilks had a notepad from the resort.

  Test took a bite of apple. Its punky flesh had gone brown and nasty where it was exposed to the air. She tossed it in the trash and did what she thought inconceivable just minutes before: she called Grout.

  “I didn’t trust that prig from the start,” Grout said when Test asked him about Pratt. “But I chalked my prejudice up to disgust for all pricks born with a silver spoon up their ass.”

  Test had to admit part of her missed Grout’s unvarnished takes, even if she disagreed with him most of the time. He was irascible, even more so than Rath, who somehow managed to remain cool while simmering. Not Grout. His evisceration now of the wealthy, and his jealousy of them and insinuation that money scrubbed life of all problems, was naive. Its parallels to Abby Land’s jealousy over Mandy Wilks’s beauty were not lost on Test.

  “What made you suspect Pratt, besides the spoon up his ass?” she said.

  “Besides the fact he was at the resort that matched Mandy Wilks’s notepad, a resort nearly a three-hour drive from his estate, a long drive for a big step down in luxury and privacy from the estate? The way he is. Arrogant. Entitled. Superior. A wolf in creep’s clothing.

  “He and his wife lost their only child, a young teenage daughter, a year ago and were desperate to have another, but couldn’t. So they sought adoption. Pratt didn’t want to adopt just any baby. He demanded a white, American male from ‘good stock.’ After losing a daughter to leukemia? It was as if he finally had a chance to correct the mistake he believed his daughter was.”

  “But you had no evidence?”

  “If I’d had evidence, I’d have brought him in for questioning, if not arrested him. I interviewed him at his estate. The family’s estate—thousands of acres on the lake, guest houses and cabins. Technically I guess half of it is his, though Pratt himself seems to have no job. He’d probably be homeless if he hadn’t won the parent lottery.”

  “You really like this guy,” Test said.

  “He’s a catch, if you like a pompous ass in tweed and moleskin and Chameau boots who looks like he just got back from a driven shoot in the Hebrides.”

  “A what? Where?”

  “Skip it. Why call me? It’s all there.”

  “Abby Land and Jamie Drake. They were on the audition list. The same day Pratt was there. That’s not coincidence.”

  “I agree.”

  “That’s a first.”

  “As your boss, I took the other side to keep you thinking of theories other than your own. On your toes. I don’t have to bother with that shit now. You’ll want a chat with him. How I’d love to grill him like a cheap steak. I miss that part. I miss most of it.”

  Test wondered if Grout were being more agreeable the past five minutes than in the previous five years because he wanted back in.

  “What should I expect from him?” Test said.

  “Arrogance, deflection. BS and subtle threats.”

  “You found no one who could ID Mandy Wilks? No indication she’d been there at all? You have no notes speculating if you thought Wilks was at the resort or not.”

  “I had no evidence. I suspected. With the notepad from the resort. It’s not a place she could afford. But no proof to suggest she’d been there. Now, though, with the other two girls being there, same day as Pratt, I think it’s a lock she got the notepad from the resort herself. She was there.”

  “Were the pads available in the rooms or out in common areas, or only at the concierge? Only for employees?”

  “They’re called team members. But the notepads are in the rooms.”

  “All of them, or just business suites?”

  “You have a lot to look into. I wish I could help more.” Grout sounded forlorn.

  “I wish you could, too,” Test found herself saying, despite her self-interest.

  57

  Test decided to surprise Pratt. Catch the target unaware. She thought about doing it alone. Decided against it. She’d agreed to work together; she needed to honor it, even if Rath did not.

 
She phoned Rath and informed him of what she’d discovered, and her plan to surprise Pratt.

  “Tomorrow?” he said. “We need to meet with Preacher’s other prison buddy, Glade, in Concord. We can’t sit on that.”

  “We will, first thing, day after. And I’ll put Larkin and another officer on alternating shifts on the main drag out of Forgotten Gorge Road. Preacher won’t be able make a move. I expect the affidavit to be processed and Preacher made an official material witness any time. When it is, we haul him in and keep him for seventy-two.”

  “What time do we hit the road for Pratt.”

  “Before first light. This fog is a bitch.”

  58

  Rachel lay awake, unable to sleep as Felix snored beside her. It was not his snoring that kept her awake. It was every other noise. Each tick of the radiator, rattle of wind at the window, or footstep outside in the hallway made her suck in her breath in the dark, afraid to move, certain she and Felix were not alone, that the sound of her very next heartbeat would incite an intruder to leap from the shadows and prey on her.

  It was insane, of course. The door was locked. She had a gun. They were safe. That’s what she told herself over and over, her new mantra: You are safe. You have a gun.

  Rachel sneaked out of bed and sat perched at the edge of a chair at the window table, feet lightly drumming on the floor and fingernails tapping on the track pad of her laptop as the laptop warmed up.

  She opened her Internet browser. She checked the site she’d checked a hundred times in two days.

  There. There it was. Finally.

  She exhaled with the kind of relief she had not felt since receiving her acceptance from Johnson State the previous spring. In fact, it was a kind of relief she had never known. It left her exhilarated and washed out all at once.

  Preacher’s picture and rap sheet were up on the sex offenders website.

  Preacher. And his address.

  Her skin itched as she considered what she was going to do now that she had his address.

  She wanted a look at his location. She used Google Earth to zoom in the satellite image. Preacher had chosen a remote, private spot to live. The house was barely visible through the screen of trees at the end of a trickle of a dirt road in the woods. Mud now, with this rain. She had no car, and even if her Civic were running, she’d need four-wheel drive to get up there in these conditions.

  Rachel took the revolver out of her backpack, checked that it was loaded. It was. She’d known it was; she’d loaded it herself and checked it at least a dozen times already since breakfast yesterday.

  She zoomed in on Preacher’s residence.

  She did not know what she was going to do, exactly. But she was going to confront him. She had to do that, at least. Blindside him.

  If she were able to disarm him with surprise, and was literally armed herself, she felt confident whatever needed to happen, whatever was destined to happen between them, would. She could not just hunker and hide. Wait it out. Expect Felix or her father to do something.

  Why should everyone else act on her behalf?

  She looked at the satellite map of Preacher’s lair once more. The nearest house was two miles away.

  Rachel tucked herself back under the bedcovers and fell asleep wondering if a gunshot could be heard from that distance.

  Part IV

  59

  Wednesday, November 9, 2011

  Test and Rath watched the entry gate of the estate from Test’s Peugeot wedged between two luxury SUVs in the visitor lot of the estate’s Farm Stand Gift Shop. The estate was, for tax purposes Test supposed, not officially called an estate but an “agricultural education center.” Put a few cows and sheep in a field, make some maple syrup and cheese, and presto, a family who can afford fifteen hundred acres and five miles of premier lakefront that sells for twenty grand a square foot is now a nonprofit with no property taxes.

  Test sipped coffee from her Thermos as Rath ate a nasty-looking sandwich smelling of pickles. She hoped the scent of pickles cloaked her car’s ripe odor that had proved to be a pair of old running shoes after all. She’d cleaned out the car of kids’ toys and gear, crayons and coloring books, as best as she was able in a hurry. Found a few crayons that had melted in the summer, then hardened to globs that she’d need a chisel to remove. So be it. Rath looked like he’d showered, but a certain queer stink rose from that awful Johnson wool jacket of his.

  “I can’t believe there’s fog here, too,” Test said. She and Rath had not spoken most of the long drive, except to strategize about who would ask Pratt what. It was decided that Test would lead.

  “It’s following us,” Rath said. “The fog.”

  Test had not known fog to ever be so widespread, so seemingly permanent. The weatherman, meteorologist, had explained it was a rare phenomenon due to a rainy mild front stalled over northern New England, combined with all the snow melting from the cold ground.

  A wind hammered out of the west, off the nearby lake, thinning the fog, enough to make out the massive, stately oak trees along the stone drive that led through rolling hills to the heart of the estate.

  A Range Rover appeared at the crest of the road, working its way toward the gate.

  Test screwed the cap back on her Thermos and started her car.

  The Range Rover raced through the gatehouse at a reckless speed.

  Test checked the license plate number. It was Pratt’s. Test caught a glimpse of the driver. Boyd Pratt III. A woman rode shotgun.

  Test pulled out and followed at a distance.

  The vehicle rode south along a road bordered with oaks not nearly as impressive as those of the estate.

  Pratt drove fast, too fast. Fifty miles per hour in a 35 zone. In the fog.

  Test could have pulled him over, but that would have gone against her plan.

  The road took a lazy bend out of the trees, passed a school, and crossed railroad tracks to bring Test to a red light, just behind the Range Rover. The town center. An inn with Adirondack chairs aligned on its massive porch occupied the near corner out of Test’s window. A stone building whose sign announced wine & coffee sat across the intersection.

  The light changed. The Range Rover charged across straight into the parking lot of the wine shop.

  Before the Rover was settled to a stop, its two front doors were slung open.

  Pratt stepped down from the vehicle and pulled on a tweed driver’s cap, giving it a contrived cockeyed angle over one eyebrow. He peeled leather driver’s gloves off his fingers and tucked them into his Barbour coat’s pocket. He wasn’t wearing the moleskin trousers Grout had described, but his wide-wale cords, of a goldenrod hue, ballooned absurdly, tucked into Le Chameau rubber boots. He looked like he should have a pair of spaniels leaping at his heels, a shotgun broken over his shoulder. Test wondered where his pipe was. Surely he smoked a pipe.

  “Fucking dipshit,” Rath said.

  Victoria Pratt, tall, fit, and statuesque, looking a good fifteen years younger than Boyd, was dressed, unlike her husband, in line with the fashions of the present century. She pulled the collar of a Marmot jacket to her throat, the jacket’s fit impeccable, as if custom tailored. She was the rare and reviled type of woman on whom any article of clothing fit precisely, effortlessly, like the riding jodhpurs and the leather riding boots she wore now with a casual grace absent any of the haughtiness with which anyone else wore such attire. Her hair could be a mess, Test mused, but it would be a glorious, perfect mess. Tousled. Her hair was not a mess now; it was slung back in a long sleek ponytail of a magnificent blond shade that, if not natural, had cost her hundreds of dollars to look as if it were. Test stamped out a hot ember of jealousy as she got out of her car between the shop and the couple, Victoria Pratt striding toward the store as Pratt reached for her elbow but missed it.

  Rath got out of the Peugeot just as Pratt and the woman approached and Test said, “Excuse me.”

  The couple ignored her.

  “Excuse me,” Test sai
d, louder, and stepped in the path of Pratt. “Boyd.”

  Victoria Pratt eyed Test with the leery look of a wife whose antennae are raised by a strange woman who addresses the husband yet pays no mind to the wife.

  Rath hung back, as discussed.

  Boyd Pratt glowered at Test. What is this? Who is this woman in a baggy, pilled EMS fleece jacket, shouting at me?

  His wife studied Test with eyes as green as the Caribbean.

  Pratt started to power around Test and charge inside, as if the store were about to close and if he didn’t get inside he’d lose the deal of the century.

  “Mr. Pratt,” Test said.

  “Boyd,” the wife said. “Hale.”

  Test thought for a moment that Victoria Pratt had said “heel,” and in fact was not certain she hadn’t. Whatever the case, Boyd Hale Pratt III heeled as his wife shot Test an apologetic look of futility. Husbands.

  Pratt stopped. With a huff, he pivoted to face Test and Rath. “Yes?” he said.

  “I’m Detective Sonja Test.”

  Pratt raised an eyebrow, doubtful. “I know the police in town. I don’t believe you’re one of them.” Pratt made to turn away.

  “And this is Detective Rath,” Test said. “Canaan Police.”

  “I see.”

  “I’d like to speak to you,” Test said.

  Pratt sized up Rath. “You, I know. I’ve seen. On television.”

  “What is it, Officer?” Victoria Pratt said with the faintest shadow of an accent Rath could not quite place.

  “I’ve never been to Canaan,” Boyd said. “What could you want a word with me about?”

  Test spotted a picnic table on the shop porch. “Let’s sit. I’ll explain. I won’t keep you more than ten minutes.”

  “I don’t have ten minutes,” Pratt said.

  “Yes, we do,” said his wife.

  Test and Rath sat on one side of the picnic table, Victoria Pratt on the other side. Boyd remained standing. He pulled back his coat sleeve and glanced at a gold watch gaudy with diamonds and gems. “Nine and a half minutes.”