Names of Dead Girls, The

by Eric Rickstad

  In the hush of the stylish lobby with its blond wood accents, modern furniture, high ornate ceiling, and a wall of exposed brick as a gesture to its past, Rath handed a ten-spot to the doorman who took it with a nod and a merci.

  Rath rode an elevator to the third floor. Its rise was so silent and rapid, he thought for a moment he was still on the ground floor when the doors opened.

  He stepped into a quiet hallway, his footfalls silent on the silver carpet as he walked to a red door as described by the bartender.

  He knocked on the door, alone in the empty hallway.

  The door opened, and an Asian woman, perhaps in her sixties, stood before him, her hair white as snow, her silver metallic eyeliner flickering so much at first Rath thought she was about to cry. “Bonjour. Monsieur Rath, entrez.”

  Rath stepped inside.

  The woman closed the door behind him. Her silver toenails matched the carpet into which her bare feet sank as she minced across to the French windows that looked out to what would have been a view of the St. Lawrence if not for the fog.

  The suite featured more blond wood, the kitchen all stainless steel and hard edges, opening to the living area where the sharpness softened to sculpted colorful furniture and the requisite exposed brick wall. Flames jigged in the fireplace. A gas fire. On and off with a switch. No calming scent of wood smoke, no dancing sparks or snap and hiss and sigh of sagging logs as they burned down and collapsed. No ashes. Just clean orange flames tinted blue at their roots. The woman stared at him from across the room in her black tailored suit. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to see Alex.”

  “Yes.”

  She continued to stare at him, still as a deer, one eyebrow arced as if to prompt him to say more.

  “He was expecting me,” Rath said.

  “No, he wasn’t.”

  “He was. It was set up by Inspector Hubert, but wires were crossed as to where to meet. Alex told a woman at his . . . establishment, to come within a half hour and—”

  “Hmm. There is no he. I am Alex.”

  Rath’s confusion cleared.

  “My parents did not possess forethought,” Alex said, as she’d likely said a thousand times. “What do you want?”

  “To speak to you about a girl.”

  “Mai oui. Always. Les filles.”

  “Not girls. A girl. She worked at your club.”

  “Hmm. Which club? Not that it matters. I don’t know the names or the faces. I don’t hire them. I pay people to do that, operate, oversee. Hmm. I own the business so I do not have to run the business. You understand.”

  “How does a woman end up owning a place like that?” Rath said before he’d thought better of it.

  “A place like?”

  He should have known. Whatever justification she’d encased herself in to operate a place like Chez Darlene was impervious to banal questions from the outside; her stock defense was in ready supply. And who was he to ask, a guy who’d once coughed up thousands of dollars for lap dances over a half-dozen years at Chez Darlene and a dozen clubs like it, never a thought where his money went. His justification was the same as Alex’s: the clubs were legal. The girls were adults. No one forced them to do what they did. Excuses. And lies.

  “I know what happens in those places,” Rath said.

  “Mais oui.”

  “It’s one thing for a man to operate a—” Rath said.

  “Oh? Is it? Is it one thing for a man, and another thing for a woman? What would you know about being a woman? Hmm. You’re a man, you can’t know what it is to be a woman. Even if you were one of those poor confused trans darlings I keep for certain clientele, you still could not know. Feel? Perhaps. But feeling is not knowing. You can’t know what it is to be something if you are not that thing.”

  “I mean, how did you come to own Chez Darlene.”

  “I own it, and many others, because it was my husband’s. He was shot in the back of the head. Three blocks from here, three years ago, along the banks of the river. They suspected me, for a while. Of course. I took his businesses over. I used to dance. Formally trained in ballet. But that kind of dance leaves you with broken-down ankles and a broken-down bank account. Hmm. Now look at me.”

  She looked around the penthouse that had to run a grand a day. “It’s not all sob stories. Girls come. Girls go. Some are alcoholics. Some addicts. Some abused. Raped. Some make horrible, immature, infantile, decisions. Are their own worst enemies. Date dicks. Some have their shit together. Save money. Stay straight. How does that make them any different from other girls their age?”

  She had her spiel down all right. Hermetically sealed against argument, she supposed.

  “You think the girl who works in a bookstore or a coffee shop has no booze problem or pill problem or coke problem?” she continued. “No strange kinks? She’s never been abused or raped or made bad decisions, dated dicks. No daddy issues? She’s a square, straight-A saint destined to live happily ever after. Is that it? Is that the drivel you’re pushing?”

  “I’m not pushing anything. I want to know about one specific girl. Lucille Forte. She worked at Chez Darlene.”

  “If she worked there, she isn’t a girl. She’s eighteen, minimum, a woman.”

  “She didn’t dance. She was fifteen; she worked in the kitchen. I can’t get anywhere with the people who oversee your place. She was found dead alongside the road. Hanged. Tortured. Like someone wanted to get information from her.”

  “Maman.”

  Rath wheeled around to see a teenage girl, a young woman, as Alex would have it, shuffle into the kitchen from the hallway that must have led to the bedrooms. She stood at the slate counter, palms pressed on its surface as she stretched her neck to work kinks out of it. Her long black ribbed turtleneck draped down to the top pockets of baggy pants of the kind Rath had not seen since Lake Placid hosted the Olympics. Cargo pants. She was barefoot. Like her maman. Her eyes and cheeks were puffy with sleep, her face bare of makeup. She chewed on a strand of her straight black hair as she looked past Rath at Alex. “Avez-tu vu le chargeur de mon téléphone?”

  “Vérifiez la prise près de mon bureau.”

  “J’ai fait.”

  “Votre sac d’école.”

  “J’ai fait.”

  “Je ne sais pas.”

  “Oooph. Puis-je utiliser le tien?”

  “Il est dans mon sac Longchamp bleu. Dans ma chambre.”

  “Merci.” She shuffled back down the hall without a glance at Rath.

  Alex rolled an eye. “You have kids?”

  “A daughter about that age,” Rath said. “She was my niece. Her parents, my sister and sister’s husband, were murdered when she was a baby. I adopted her.”

  Alex Poitras stepped from the window and flipped a wall switch. The fire in the fireplace died. “This explains your need of saving girls and your distaste for my business.”

  “I don’t have to have a daughter to have a distaste for your operation. And I think the person who killed Lucille Forte could be the man who killed my sister. Or he’s at least may be involved, somehow. I think he intends to harm my daughter if I can’t get a reason to put him away again.”

  “Why don’t you put him away? My husband would have put him down like a dog. Never let him walk around. Free.”

  “I can’t risk getting caught, my daughter—”

  “Don’t get caught.”

  “Criminals always get caught.”

  She laughed. “I hope you don’t believe your own lies. So many girls killed by perverts who are never caught. Never pay. How many girls were ruined at the hands of your man? And you do nothing.”

  “I’m here to do something. To build a case. I can’t risk the shame my daughter—”

  She laughed harder. A bark. “You’d rather your daughter be killed by the animal who killed her parents than have her live with petty shame? You are only shamed if you let yourself be shamed.”

  “That’s not it.”

&
nbsp; “No. You are afraid. That’s it. Afraid of prison. Afraid of your conscience. Afraid to pay for your daughter’s true safety. You’d rather she die than go to jail for her. You are un lâche. Hmm. A coward.”

  Rath felt dazed, enraged. How had he let the conversation spiral into this cesspool?

  He took out a photo of Lucille.

  Alex looked at it. “Never met her. I’ll take it, see that staff sees it. You sure she worked for me?”

  “She did. Maybe under a different name.”

  “Not with us. Hmm. Everyone, dancers included, is legitimate. Taxes. Specific hours. Citizen or immigrant. Proper papers, work visas. If she worked for me, she worked under her real name, unless she got fake papers she can pass off to a place that can sniff out the best of fakes. I don’t need to be shut down for hiring the paperless. Do you have a photo of this man you fear?”

  “I don’t fear him.”

  “Hmm.”

  Rath handed her a photo of Preacher.

  “Good looking,” she said.

  Rath bit back his anger and handed her a piece of paper on which he’d written his name and phone number. He didn’t have a card yet, wouldn’t be getting one. As soon as this case was closed, he was done. He’d escape into the deep woods to find some peace, track a big buck on the snow, if any snow ever fell. If the case went beyond the end of deer season, maybe he would hop that plane to the Bahamas and try his hand at bonefish and Kaliks, as Barrons had proposed.

  Alex took a cell phone from her hip pocket, snapped a photo of the scrap of paper, balled up the paper, and tossed it in the fire place. She hit the switch and the flames leapt up and turned the paper to ash. “Where is this Canaan, Vermont? Near Burlington? I go to Burlington many times.”

  “It’s not anywhere near there.”

  Alex twitched an index finger toward the door, to indicate it was time for him to leave.

  “Your daughter,” Rath said. “She work at Chez Darlene?”

  “She works for another business I run.”

  “Why not a club?”

  “Hmm. It is not what you think. That I think she’s better than that, the clubs are beneath her. No. It would not be right for her to take a shift from girls who need the money. And she dances like a water buffalo.”

  “What’s this other business you own?”

  “Run. It’s mine. Not my husband’s. I’m late now to meet with my buyers and sellers.”

  “What do you buy and sell?”

  “Many things. But mostly books.”

  “Books?”

  “We tend to sell a lot of books at a bookstore.”

  63

  The world was watery and opaque with fog in a way that reminded Rachel of the jars of water in which she’d rinsed watercolor brushes when she was a girl.

  The rain pounded, wearying. Rachel had slept in all day, too wiped out from being awake all night after finding Preacher’s address. She’d told Felix to go to his earlier and midday classes and she’d meet him on campus for her 4:15. Not to worry. The campus shuttle shelter was fifty feet from the inn. She could manage it. He’d insisted on staying for a while. Missed his two morning classes. But when Rachel still hadn’t left bed for so much as her ritual coffee, he’d reluctantly headed out for his midday class.

  Rachel had a back-to-back 4:15 English Comp and a 5:30 Soc 101 class. She didn’t intend to stay for her 5:30 Soc; she wouldn’t have time. She’d meet Felix dutifully before the 4:15, and let him see she was OK. Then, after it, she’d come back to town. Her handgun class was at 5:30. What was more important: a class on sociology, or a class that could save her life?

  Ahead on the corner, the shuttle was pulling out from the curb. Rachel ran, too late.

  “Damn it,” she muttered.

  Now she was going to be late. The next shuttle wasn’t due for twenty minutes. It would be quicker to hoof it up the steep hill to campus. She might meet Felix in time if she hightailed it.

  As she hiked up the hill the box of ammunition rattled and the heavy handgun thwacked against her side.

  The trek was perilous in the fog, the shoulder a spit of gravel the width of a bicycle tire. The few cars that drove past were unable to see her until right upon her. She kept pinned to the roadside brush.

  She was halfway up, sweating and chugging breaths, when a car slowed beside her. She glanced at it as her hand rested on the zipper of her backpack. The car was an old job. Something her dad would like.

  She could just make out enough through the fogged windows that the driver of the car was a man.

  The car’s window lowered with a squeak.

  “Would you like a ride up the hill?” the driver said.

  “No,” Rachel huffed without giving him a second look, increasing her pace.

  “This hill’s a killer.”

  “I’m good.”

  “Enjoy,” the driver said. The car accelerated out of sight. Rachel’s heart rattled. If that man had been Preacher, and he’d wanted to hurt me, he could have done it and no one would have seen it. And I’d never have had a chance to get my gun. The gun was as useless as a brick in her backpack.

  She pulled her jacket collar up tighter to her neck. Not long ago she’d have trusted the stranger and hopped in without a thought, been on campus by now, in time to meet Felix and allay his own fears. No more.

  She trudged up the hill as fast as she could.

  Toward the top, her cell phone burbled in her jacket pocket; Felix’s text tone. She did not take her phone out in the rain. She was all of five minutes late and he’d be after her: WRU? U OK?

  Rachel tramped across the muddy green, saw Felix on the steps of Dibden as he searched for her in the crowd of students hustling for the doors from the rain and fog.

  She ran up the steps to him, against the flow of students exiting Dibden and put on a smile as she tapped his shoulder. She expected a smile in return, but did not get one. Felix’s face was strained with worry and agitation. It pained her to see it, but she did not know what to do to relieve it. If she let him in on everything she was feeling and planning, he would try to stop her, or, worse, try to solve it for her. One trait that attracted Rachel to Felix was he never interfered. Never tried to solve her problems for her. He trusted she could take care of herself. Now. Now, she sensed his wanting to help too much, save her. Make all her worries go away with a magic wand.

  As many books as she’d read and movies she’d watched about depraved killers, she’d never read any serious, academic, scientific literature about men of Preacher’s nature. It had all been true crime books, pop culture and exploitative, she realized now. Her interests prurient, entertainment. Now, she sincerely wanted to know, needed to know, the real, latest science behind what made men like Preacher tick. What drove them to do what they did? She needed to know so she could prepare herself. Do background research before she went ahead with her plan.

  Even now she doubted she could do it, see her plan out to the end. It chilled her. She doubted she was brave enough, or dumb enough, to do what she had in mind. Fear knotted in her gut and left her blood cold at just the thought of ever facing him. But she had to face him. She felt compelled to confront him, to know why he had been in the pet shop. She had gone over and over it. If he’d wanted to hurt her that day, or since, he could have. He would have. Wouldn’t he? She could not help but think he had another reason that day other than to hurt her, or even to frighten her. Part of her—the part that was brain-dead, obviously—sensed Preacher wanted to tell her something, in person. Did he want to apologize? It made her sick to think it. What he’d done was far beyond the reach of apology. An apology would cheapen his crime. Still, she wondered, what did he want? What did he have to tell her, or was she simply delusional because she was so exhausted and distraught? And why did she have such a fascination with depraved men like Preacher? Was her obsession a coincidence or born out of her being just upstairs while Preacher murdered her parents and raped her mother? Even if she had no conscious memory, she’d
heard it all, what must have been savage screams of pain and fear. How terrified her mother must have been. For herself, and for her baby. Had she died believing her baby was Preacher’s next victim?

  Rachel wondered now if she was doing exactly as Preacher had hoped, letting him consume her thoughts? Until a few days ago, Felix had been the person other than herself she’d thought of most. He’d been the most important person in her world, the one with whom she’d been most honest. She’d become remote, and deceitful by way of omission. She’d bought a gun without his knowing, was carrying it in her backpack, had been researching Preacher and her parents’ murders, making plans, all while pretending she’d been going about her day as she always did. She’d become someone else.

  She could not continue the deception. Did not want to continue it. It was not fair to Felix. It was not fair to her, or to them, as a couple. It was not right.

  There was only one true way to overcome fear and take away the hold it had on you. That was to face it. To face him. That was Rachel’s plan—to confront the man who’d murdered her parents and ask him: Why?

  She’d borrow a friend’s car, take the gun with her, she’d follow him from his home, and take him by surprise in public. And—

  “Why are you soaking wet?” Felix said. He did not lean to wrap her in his arms as he always did. “I texted you.”

  “I missed the shuttle,” she said. “I didn’t want to take my phone out in the rain.”

  “You hiked up the hill? Alone? You could have—”

  “I wasn’t alone. Two other girls missed the shuttle. The damn thing was early. Again. You know how that driver is. Never waits a second.”

  “Tell the truth.”

  “I am,” she said.

  “You’re not.”

  “So I’m a liar?”

  “Come on. Don’t be like that. Are you depressed about all this business, sleeping all day? Or pissed off? I don’t blame you. I am. It’s messed up. I’d be freaked out. I am freaked out. But mostly by you. How you’re acting because of it.”