The Forgotten Girl

by Rio Youers

  “You did the right thing,” I said again.

  “But it meant bringing the danger close,” Sally said, clutching the bed sheets to her breast. “And, in all likelihood, saying goodbye to my life in Green Ridge.”

  “You had no choice.”

  “I didn’t want to run away, Harvey. Not again. I didn’t want to lose you.” Another glance at the clock. She wiped her tired eyes. “So I decided to lure Swan away from Green Ridge, to where the hunt dogs would spend a long time chasing their tails.”

  “New York City?” I asked.

  “Right,” Sally said. “They would eventually spread out, of course: Yonkers, Westchester, Jersey, but they might never think to look in Green Ridge. Even so, giving Lang my approximate location was a risky move, but what choice did I have? Swan was a monster, and I had to stop him.”

  * * *

  He lured all his victims the same way: with charm. He became a face they recognized and learned to trust, then he’d wait for the opportunity to strike. His first victim, Melissa Wynn, had been walking home from the grocery store and was crossing Reed Avenue—a quiet street with lots of tree cover and several properties set back from the road—when Swan pulled up in his spacious Cadillac. “You need a ride?” Melissa declined to begin with—she was only ten minutes from home, and it was a beautiful August day—then changed her mind. Perhaps she was running late for the babysitter. Or perhaps it was Swan’s charming smile, or his propensity to share amusing stories about seventies R&B icons. Whatever the reason, she fatefully got into his car, and the next time anybody saw her, she’d been raped, beaten, stabbed twenty-three times, her body wrapped in garbage bags and dumped in the Shoe-Nuff parking lot.

  Swan’s second victim, Latisha Paffrey, was similarly abducted. Swan was a customer of the bank at which she worked, and would occasionally come in with a box of Munchkins from Dunkin’ Donuts, and the tellers would uniformly trill and gather around and Swan would regale them with celebrity anecdotes and exhibit photographs of him with various luminaries from the music industry. One sleepy evening in July 2013, Latisha was standing on the sidewalk outside her apartment, waiting for a taxi that was running late, when a red Cadillac CTS pulled up to the curb. The passenger window buzzed down and Swan Connor smiled at her. “Hey, Latisha. You need a ride?” Eleven months had passed since Melissa Wynn’s body was discovered, and Latisha—her guard lowered—accepted Swan’s kind offer as readily as she accepted the Munchkins he occasionally brought into the bank.

  Grace Potts—victim three—knew Swan from Dreams With Subtitles, a group for foreign film enthusiasts. It was a relationship Swan nurtured over many months, so it did not appear at all odd when he told her, in the utmost confidence, that doctors had discovered a tumor on his liver. He confided how frightened he was, and asked if she would accompany him to the aptly named Grace Medical Imaging in Newark, where he had to undergo a CT scan. “But please,” he added, folding his soft hands over hers. “Given how sensitive this is, I have to insist you don’t tell a soul.” Grace had made a zipping motion across her lips, and then hugged him, and on the afternoon of April 12, 2014, met him at the agreed-upon location. “How are you feeling, Swan?” she’d asked, getting into his car. Swan told her it was going to be a wonderful day, and drove her not to the clinic in Newark, but to a condemned, isolated house on the outskirts of Green Ridge, where she screamed and screamed and screamed.

  Swan was meticulous in his approach, attentive to the smallest detail. Colleagues in the music industry had often remarked on his patience—a quality he brought to every abduction. He was, then, taken aback when Sally leapfrogged several months of relationship-building and suggested they go out for dinner.

  “I’d like to discuss my options,” she said, and forced a smile. “I mean, being a session singer has to be better than stacking shelves, right?”

  “Absolutely,” Swan agreed, his own false smile firmly in place. He was thinking that being seen so publicly with a potential victim was not a smart move, and that a sixty-six-year-old man having dinner—not lunch, dinner—with a twenty-something-year-old woman was sure to draw attention. And attention, as Sally knew for herself, was not good.

  “My treat, of course,” Sally added.

  “I would never dream of letting you buy me dinner,” Swan said, and took a furtive glance around the store. Joy Brady was at the cash register, lost in her own world. There were a few other customers, equally preoccupied, not one of them within earshot of their conversation, and that was good. “This is a small town. Tongues wag. I’m afraid that if we’re seen having dinner together, prior to you finding work in the music industry … well, that may send the wrong signal.”

  “We don’t have to stay in Green Ridge,” Sally said. “In fact, I’d prefer we didn’t. And nobody needs to know about this. It can be our little secret.”

  She had put herself on a platter for him, and while he cautioned himself to be patient, another voice—BLEED you and BASH you and FUCK you—chugged through his mind like a smoky little train.

  “I’ll think about it,” he said, selecting a packet of brown rice pasta from the shelf and dropping it into his basket. “In the meantime, we should keep this conversation between us.”

  “Shhhh,” Sally said, and pressed a finger to her lips.

  * * *

  Swan returned to the Health Nut later that week and found Sally singing to herself at the back of the store.

  “You really do have a special voice.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Little bird.”

  “You’re not the first person to call me that.”

  He looked pale, tired. Sally saw in his mind that he hadn’t slept much. He’d been thinking—obsessing—about her.

  “So where do you want to go?” he asked.

  “Manhattan,” Sally said. “It’s far enough from Green Ridge, and big enough that we won’t easily be noticed. We’ll find somewhere secluded, but classy…”

  “Would you like me to drive you?”

  “Let’s play it safe and meet there.”

  “Yes. Good.” Swan rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I know a wonderful little Greek restaurant in the Flatiron District. It’s tricky to find, but we can meet nearby and I’ll walk you there.”

  He’ll walk me to his car, Sally thought, and she didn’t need to read his mind to know this. He’ll say he’s remembered an even better restaurant, just a short drive away. And once the doors are locked …

  “Tomorrow night?” she asked.

  “Perfect,” Swan said. “We’ll meet on the northwest corner of Madison Square Park. How does eight o’clock sound?”

  Sally smiled. “I’ll wear my prettiest dress.”

  * * *

  And she did: a lace sheath dress the same color as the bird in her head. An expression of strength and femininity, Sally wanted it to flash in Swan’s eyes as his wicked brain was crushed to all but a thread of light.

  She arrived at the meeting point ten minutes early. Swan was right on time. He crossed Twenty-Sixth Street toward Madison Square Park, with his neat white hair combed across his scalp and his icy eyes glimmering. He wore a suit, with no tie and an open collar, revealing a sprig of silvery chest hair and a thin gold chain. A handsome man, no doubt, but about to become a deadened one.

  He saw Sally—her red dress no doubt catching his eye—and the hunger in his expression was unmistakable. His lips sneaked up at the edges. The bridge of his nose wrinkled deeply. Sally waited for him to mount the sidewalk, then opened the cage door in her mind. She almost heard the flap of wings as the bird—furious—took flight.

  Swan stopped, raised one finger to his temple, and gave his head a wee shake. His left eye twitched and blood trickled from both nostrils. “I need…” he said randomly, and these were the last normal words he ever spoke. His mouth collapsed and he teetered sideways, bumping into a punk-haired New Yorker jabbering into her cell phone, who brushed him aside without missing a beat. Swan slumped the other way, his
legs sagging, but managed to stay on his feet. A single drop of blood dripped from his chin and splashed into the downy hair on his chest. “Flurp,” he said, or something like that, then he shouted it, “Flurp!” and pressed his hands to either side of his head as if trying to keep it from splitting open. Several pedestrians were on alert by this point, most of them backing away. Swan rolled one eye toward Sally, and she saw amid the terrible confusion a world of agony and horror, nothing compared to what he’d inflicted, but deeply satisfying nonetheless. Fuck you, she mouthed, and Swan went down. He hit the sidewalk with a wretched, boneless thud. His legs scissored and shook. Someone shouted, “Whoa, buddy,” and laughed. Someone else screamed. Within moments a circle of onlookers had formed. Several people employed their cell phones to dial 911 or to immortalize the moment on social media. Sally lowered her head, gathering Swan’s memories—his many cruelties—and locking them in the room at the back of her mind. Then she turned and slipped quietly from the scene.

  Her heart trembling with emotion, and from knowing that somewhere, Dominic Lang was approximating her location, she hastened to Penn Station and caught a train across the river.

  She looked over her shoulder the whole way.

  * * *

  The story I gave Newirth and the detectives was tweaked—to put it mildly—in places, but the bottom line was the same: Swan Connor was their man. When I’d finished, Lambert and Sharpe looked at each other for a long time. Their expressions told me nothing. I wished for Sally’s ability to dip into their minds.

  “Who is Swan Connor?” Sharpe asked Newirth.

  “He’s a killer,” I replied on the chief’s behalf.

  “That’s enough, Harvey,” Newirth snapped. His brown eyes, always so calm, were now bulletlike. He inhaled through his nose and turned to Sharpe. “He’s a local celebrity. Former record producer. A pretty big deal back in the day, but he had a stroke earlier this year and now all he does is sit on Main and wave at passing cars.”

  “Is he aware?” Sharpe asked. “Compos mentis?”

  “No.”

  “Single man, living alone?”

  “He was at the time of the murders,” I said. “Now he has a live-in nurse.”

  Sharpe turned to Lambert. “Do we have anything on him?”

  “I’ll check,” Lambert grunted, and sauntered over to their vehicle to run Swan’s name through the law enforcement databases. I nodded at Sharpe to show my gratitude, but there was still a long way to go.

  “Quite the ordeal for your girlfriend to go through,” she said to me. Despite her willingness to hear me out, her voice could still cut through steel. “Abducted. Abused. Escaped by the skin of her teeth.”

  “Yeah,” I said. I didn’t feel bad about the fabrication; it was necessary to explain how Sally knew who—what—Swan was. I couldn’t exactly tell them she was psychic.

  “So why,” Sharpe asked, “are we only hearing about it now?”

  “I only found out this morning and called Chief Newirth right away. Then this happened”—I pointed at my face—“and everything went to shit.”

  “A remarkable coincidence that you should find out within hours of us coming across your father’s confession.”

  “I know how it looks,” I said. “But I’m telling the truth.”

  “Why didn’t your girlfriend come forward at the time?”

  “I asked her that. She was scared and confused, she said. Not the first victim of abuse to remain silent.”

  “We’re talking about a serial killer. Not a heavy-handed husband.”

  “You can’t categorize abuse,” I said firmly. “It’s all fucked up. It’s all terrifying. From Sally’s point of view, Swan Connor was a respected member of the community, and she was afraid no one would believe her—that she’d have to relive what happened and be vilified afterward.”

  “And the possibility of Swan killing again wasn’t incentive enough for her to come forward?”

  “It was all too raw, I think. Too close. Sally needed to pull herself together before she could consider anybody else.” I hated making her appear so weak when only the opposite was true. “Anyway, Swan had his stroke a couple of days later. Sally figured it was God’s way of stepping in. The son of a bitch got what he deserved.”

  “And where’s Sally now?”

  “I don’t know,” I said, and pointed at my face again. “This happened, remember? Sally was involved with some real douchebags.”

  “Let me get this straight,” Sharpe said, taking a step toward me, her dark eyes narrowed. “You want us to switch our focus from a confessor with a clearly dangerous disposition”—she drew a circle in the air with her forefinger, indicating Dad’s house, his garden, the whole shitshow—“to a stroke victim without the mental capacity to defend himself?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Based on your troubled ex-girlfriend’s accusations, who didn’t come forward at the time, and who can’t provide a statement because we don’t know where she is?”

  “All I’m asking is that you keep an open mind,” I said. “And that you don’t pull the trigger on my father until you’ve at least checked Swan’s house for evidence.”

  “This is a very serious accusation,” Newirth said.

  “Do you want to catch the right guy?” I asked.

  Lambert returned, perusing his notes, pressing his tongue against the gap in his teeth. “Douglas ‘Swan’ Connor,” he began. “Born two-twelve, forty-nine, East Brunswick, New Jersey. Acquitted for rape in 1974. Was questioned in regard to the Green Ridge murders in August ’twelve, and again in July ’thirteen. Came out squeaky both times.”

  “Rape,” I said. Acquitted or not, I thought it worth mentioning again.

  “This is a waste of time,” Lambert snapped. Thith ith a wathte of time. Asshole sounded like Sylvester the cat. “Where’s your old man, kid?”

  “But Swan—”

  “We can’t very well question him again,” Sharpe said. “He doesn’t even know his own name. And we can’t search his property without a warrant, which means we need something more solid.”

  “Right,” I said, and puffed out my cheeks. “Anybody got a cell phone I can borrow?”

  * * *

  Chief Newirth accessed the Internet on his cell and handed it to me. I brought up Google and entered “swan connor producer discography” into the search field.

  “We’re wasting our time with this,” Lambert said.

  “Swan Connor produced his first album in 1977,” I started. “It was called Breathe with Me by Marlene Starr, a then-unknown African-American singer out of Detroit. It reached number twenty-three on the ‘Top LPs and Tapes’ chart—what is now called the Billboard 200.” I flipped the screen, showing them the album cover and chart position. “Twenty-three. I want you to remember that number.”

  Lambert shuffled his feet. Sharpe inched a little closer.

  “His second album as producer,” I continued, “was Get Down with the Groove by the Groove City Players, an African-American band out of Philly. It was a big hit. A top ten album, peaking at number six.”

  I flipped the screen again.

  “The stab wounds,” Newirth said, the penny dropping with a sound like soul music. “Vic one was stabbed twenty-three times. Vic two, six times.”

  “Don’t tell me,” Sharpe said. “Connor’s third album reached number eleven.”

  “San Francisco Morning by Sweetie Day, a Caucasian singer-songwriter from San Fran.” I held out the cell phone so they could see for themselves. “So not only do the stab wounds match the chart positions, but the ethnicity of the victims matches that of the artists.”

  The three policepersons looked at each other, saying nothing, but I could almost hear their minds grinding through the gears.

  “I don’t like the word motive,” I continued. “It suggests a degree of logic, when most homicides are acts of irrationality and anger. But if Swan Connor had a motive it was to express his disillusionment with the music industry.
He was left behind in the nineties, and by the two thousands—the new media age—he was a dinosaur. But to hell with Swan; I don’t want to credit him with any logic. These murders are an irrational, angry attempt for one shitty little man to reenact his greatest hits.”

  “Or it could be a strange coincidence,” Lambert said. Thtrange cointhidenth. Even Sharpe rolled her eyes.

  I Googled again. Brought up an image. Showed them.

  “You know what this is?”

  “A Grammy award,” Sharpe said.

  “Right,” I said. “It has a wide, flat base so you can sit it on your mantel and show all your friends how great you are.” I found a picture of Swan holding up the Grammy he won for producing Marlene Starr’s Ain’t Nothin’ Sweeter in 1981. “It’s a heavy little sucker, too—weighs four and a quarter pounds. That’s about the same as four claw hammers strapped together.”

  “Are you saying that Swan Connor bludgeoned his victims with a Grammy award?” Sharpe frowned, her eyes flicking between me and the screen. “How would you know that?”

  “He told Sally everything he was going to do to her,” I replied smoothly. Another necessary variation of the truth. “I wasn’t there, of course, so it’s her word. But hey, you might want to revisit the forensic pathologist’s report—see if the victims’ wounds are consistent with the trophy’s specs.”

  They looked at each other again, gears still grinding. I handed Newirth his phone with the picture of Swan brandishing his Grammy still on screen. He muttered something—thank you, I think—then gave his head a tired shake.

  “We can look into this, Harvey,” Sharpe said, still with that razor tone. I couldn’t work out if she liked me or not—if she liked anybody. “But let me be clear: Your father is our priority. We need to find and interview him. We’ll then proceed with Mr. Connor, as necessary.”