The Forgotten Girls

by Alexa Steele

  “What was she in for?” Mack asked.

  Kempner looked back and forth between the two of them, his face flushed.

  “She killed her mother with a butcher knife when she was sixteen,” he answered solemnly. So this was the girl they had heard of.

  “Do you have any idea where she went when she got out?” Mack asked.

  “That I do not know. I didn’t ask,” Kempner replied.

  “Did Bobby help her when she was on the outside?” Mack pressed.

  “I assume so,” he answered. “He paid me to sign the papers and remain silent. It was enough money that I was able to retire.”

  “What do you remember about her?” Mack asked quietly.

  Kempner took a deep breath and exhaled loudly. He squinted, looking pained.

  “What don’t I remember about her? She was a kid when she arrived. A damaged one, that’s for sure. A very, very sick girl. But a girl nonetheless.”

  “Wasn’t Dunmore a facility for adults?” Mack looked perplexed.

  “It was for patients eighteen and older. But word was she had relatives locked up in the place, some there since it opened its doors. She knew the place well. Had visited many times as a child. She actually requested it. Crazy judge agreed.”

  “She asked to be sent to Dunmore?” Bella said with disbelief.

  “Sure did. She would tell everyone it was her real home.”

  The three of them looked at one another somberly.

  “Do you remember her name?” Bella asked.

  Kempner almost looked scared.

  “Emilie LeCourt.”

  “Was she even close to fit for release when you let her go?” Mack asked. Bella knew the answer before she even heard it.

  Kempner paused, shook his head no, then closed his eyes.

  “She was one of our most vile patients. A true psychopath. The girl was truly, truly crazy. Spending all that time with Bobby only made her more so.”

  “How so?” Mack asked.

  He answered solemnly. “She joined the nurses when she wanted to, preyed on the more vulnerable patients in every which way. One time a female patient called her a name—snaggletooth, something like that. Emile beat her so badly she fractured her skull in four places. The woman was in a coma for months before she died. No one ratted Emile out. They were too scared.”

  “Why snaggletooth?” Mack wanted to know.

  “She had one very crooked tooth on top. It was horrible.” He looked down in his lap when he spoke.

  “So she killed her? And the staff kept quiet?” Bella was shocked.

  “She was one of the forgotten girls, Detective. Come to think of it, so was Emile.”

  “The what?”

  “The forgotten girls. That’s what we called them.”

  Bella looked quizzically over at Mack then back to Kempner.

  “Why?”

  “There wasn’t a soul left in the world that cared what happened to them,” he said plainly.

  He saw the look of disapproval on Bella’s face.

  “These girls—they were lunatics,” he rationalized, still, so many years later. “Bobby protected Emilie. He was the hospital’s savior. I had a wife and kids to support.”

  What a coward, Bella thought. She would have left the place and returned with the cops.

  “There were rumors her psychiatrist and her had a thing,” he continued. “Before Bobby showed up, that is.”

  Bella thought about the notes in Weber’s file, the rumors of an affair with a young patient. So the shrinks at Dunmore were in on the party too.

  “Who was the psychiatrist? What was his name?” Bella asked.

  “Her name, you mean.”

  “Her?”

  “Yes. Her.”

  He looked embarrassed.

  “So Emilie liked women?”

  “So it seemed.”

  “And her female doctor liked her?” Bella raised her eyebrows. Pieces of the puzzle were coming together.

  “What do you remember about this doctor?” Mack jumped in.

  Kempner closed his eyes again.

  “She was a big, ugly woman. I remember that.”

  Bella caught Mack’s eyes and Kempner noticed it.

  “If we showed you a photo of a girl, do you think you would be able to identify whether it is Emilie?” Mack asked.

  “I will try,” Kempner said quietly.

  Mack went to the car to get Weber’s photos and Bella stayed at the table with Kempner.

  “Anything else at all you might remember about Emilie?”

  Bella knew they were pretty much at the end of their rope. Kempner looked tired and frail to her now.

  He closed his eyes deep in thought.

  “The only other thing that stands out in my mind was she loved gardening. I do remember, very vividly, that she was a real horticulturalist. She spent hours in Dunmore’s makeshift garden and really turned it into something.”

  Bella nodded, interested.

  “But she was a different girl once she got inside. Believe me,” he shivered, his hand gripping his arm tightly.

  “Did Bobby ever say anything to you that might shed light on where Emilie went? I know it was a long time ago. Think hard,” Bella requested.

  Kempner gazed out the kitchen window, his old worn hands cupped around the rim of his mug. “I don’t really recall. I do remember hearing he got her some surgery, her teeth fixed like she always wanted.”

  “Braces?” Bella asked, surprised.

  “Nahh, not braces.” Kempner brushed off this suggestion. “A whole new set of teeth. I remember hearing she got a mouthful of pearly whites that didn’t look natural, something like that.”

  He sounded sorrowful as he said, “She was a pretty girl until she smiled but, when she did, it was hard not to stare. Bobby liked it though. He had a nickname for her. I can’t remember it,” he said, looking as though he were trying to remember. He rubbed his chin warily.

  “Hey, at my age dentures are a given,” he chuckled solemnly. “But ever see anyone that young with a mouth full of fake teeth?”

  As a matter of fact, she had. Mack came back in with three photos in his hands. He lay them down on the table.

  Kempner looked at the pictures they had retrieved from Weber’s memory box—in one, the girl sat alone in a chair and in the other two she sat with Weber.

  “Well, I’ll be dammed—that is Emilie. And that’s the shrink I told you about.”

  They were in the driveway a moment later when Kempner appeared at his front door waving his cane. “Wait! Wait!” he yelled after them. Bella and Mack walked restlessly back to his front porch and stood on the bottom step.

  “What’s wrong?” Mack asked.

  “I just remembered Bobby’s nickname for her,” he said, looking at Bella.

  He took a moment and leaned on the screen door with one hand and his cane with the other, to steady his balance. Then he looked Bella right in the eye.

  “He called her Fangsy.”

  CHAPTER 35

  The high barbed wire fence surrounding Dunmore was crooked in some spots, but mostly stood just as tall and erect as it had when the hospital was open. At fourteen feet high, it lent an air of danger and foreboding to the massive red brick cluster of buildings behind it. The windows of the main castle-like structure were boarded up, covered in graffiti, where vandals had clearly wrought havoc at one time. In the front yard shrubs were ripped from the ground, strewn across the property at random. Electrical wires sliced through the air within inches of massive, neglected trees.

  The main building, with its colossal peaked tiled roof, its numerous tiny windows, and its massive gothic front doors anchored two other buildings, both smaller in stature, one on each side. The planks of wood used to board up one of the windows on the smaller structure had come undone, revealing black wrought iron bars behind it.

  Whatever garden had grown in front had withered long ago. Row upon row of dead shrubs and bushes, now barren sticks and
weeds, bore witness to what had once been an extensive collection of plants. The main driveway curved to the left and the right, each way leading back behind the buildings toward the forest behind, ending at some unseen point in the dark wood. There wasn’t another building, home, or structure for miles, just endless fields surrounded by dense forest. It was one of the most ominous-looking places Bella had ever seen. She and Mack slowly exited the car and, instinctively, she put her hand over the Glock in her side holster.

  It was Kempner’s memory of how much Emilie had loved Dunmore that convinced Bella to come here, on a hunch she just might have returned.

  She looked over at Mack, grateful to have him there with her. This was not a place even she would have wanted to visit alone.

  They did not see the Range Rover they expected to see and, for a second, she wondered if her calculations had been wrong. They walked along the outside perimeter of the barbed wire fence, canvassing the property on foot, looking for any sign she had been there. Or was there again. Suddenly Bella noticed, in a heavily wooded corner of the front yard, a swath of fence had been bent back.

  She and Mack made their way over, cautiously. Someone had put a small boulder on top of the bent fence to keep it down. They crouched through the opening with trepidation, Mack first, as though entering a sacred spot. Where was the car? Bella wondered.

  Now on the inside her perspective changed. The building she had peered at behind the metal mesh came into vivid relief, a stark, gloomy, and intimidating presence up close. It towered above them, as though reaching for the sky in its own effort to escape, commanding respect for the years it had housed the most tortured and dangerous souls known to man.

  Bella’s heart raced a bit quicker as she took in the energy of the place and pictured those who roamed its hallways. The sky darkened as the sun moved slowly behind what remaining clouds lingered in the sky.

  They trod softly, and slowly, as they made their way toward the front of the hospital, through the dead garden. They turned the corner and walked alongside the towering structure, toward the back, canvassing.

  As they walked farther into the property, into what looked like a desolate back yard, they saw an old, neglected playground. A slide, a seesaw, a sandbox and one lone, solitary swing stood inside a square area of wood chips held in by railroad ties. And on that swing sat a woman, swaying back and forth.

  Instinctively, Bella and Mack tightened their grip on their Glocks and looked at one another at exactly the same time. The woman’s back was toward them as she glided on the old, dented swing. If she knew they were there, she didn’t let on.

  Mack nodded to Bella to remain calm. They approached from behind, walking quietly about five feet apart, trying not to step on the dried twigs and branches that littered the ground. As they got closer they heard singing. It was a song they knew well, from childhood:

  “Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black, with silver buttons, buttons, buttons, all down her back, back, back. She asked her mother, mother, mother, for fifty cents, cents, cents…”

  The singing stopped and so did the swing, abruptly, without warning. Bella and Mack didn’t move. The woman’s arms clasped the chain-link ropes as she stood and turned to face them.

  She was dressed in a long, black sleeveless cotton dress with two deep front pockets, and was barefoot. Her hair was no longer straight. It was curled and frizzy. She wore no makeup and had nothing with her except a ratty-looking blanket on the ground a few feet from where she stood.

  At first glance, she looked like herself, just a bit messier. But when Bella looked into her eyes, she knew something was terribly wrong. They were black and vacant, two pockets with no soul behind them. Not only did she not flirt with Mack anymore, she didn’t even seem to notice he was there. One of her hands slipped into her pocket over what looked to be something inside. Or was she making a fist? It was hard to tell.

  She was smiling.

  “It’s been a long road, Jenna,” Bella said calmly, even though she felt anything but calm. “We have Weber in custody. We know what she did to you when you were young. We understand your pain. We just want to talk.”

  Bella said this in as sweet a voice as she could muster.

  Jenna looked at Bella’s hand on her gun and let out a high-pitched squeal. It sounded like laughter but wasn’t. Her eyes were deadly focused as she kept smiling. When she spoke, her voice was no longer high and squeaky. It was deep.

  “You do, huh? What can you tell me about it, Detective?”

  She didn’t sound like herself at all. She was taunting Bella. She wanted to play. Bella thought it best to go along.

  “Well, I know life here must have been brutal,” she replied, looking around. “I know you were able to survive it and escape. Good for you, Jenna,” she added disingenuously. “I know you made a new life for yourself and now have a beautiful family.”

  Bella was trying her best.

  “You think life here was brutal? That’s what you think?” Jenna looked amused. “Come on. I would have given you more credit than that.”

  Jenna paused for a minute.

  “Tell me why, exactly, you think life here was brutal? I’m curious,” Jenna said.

  Bella wasn’t sure what to say. Her brain went blank for a moment. She remembered what Kempner said about how much she loved the garden and how much freedom she had.

  “Well, thinking about it now, maybe I am wrong. You probably had a lot of friends here. You had Bobby to protect you. He loved you. There were lots of parties. And you loved your garden.”

  Bella looked at her to see if she was making a dent. Jenna stared right through her.

  “I did love my garden. It was different from the one in Greenvale. I got to put my hands in the ground and get dirty. I got to weed the plants by myself. I got to feel the cold, wet earth and rub it on my face if I felt like it.” She paused. “Speaking of which…”

  She took a stick out of her pocket and Mack jerked, thinking she might have a weapon. It was a twig. She held it up for him to see, then put it into her mouth and slowly sucked it like a lollipop.

  “Greenvale was hell,” she snickered in a raspy voice. “Twenty years of make-believe. My girls are fine, but Doug’s a dud. Life here was richer, so much more colorful, so much more fun.”

  She looked sad all of a sudden, far away. “Life with Bobby was wonderful.”

  “You are very lucky you have such fond memories,” Bella said quietly.

  “They took him away. Without him, I would have to go back to Dr. Weber.”

  She got a strange look on her face.

  “She found you, didn’t she?” It dawned on Bella now that Weber had tracked Jenna down.

  “Sure did. Crazy bitch. What did she think was going to happen? She was going to show up after all these years and we were going to pick up where we left off? In a loving relationship filled with rape and bondage?”

  She sneered.

  “I begged her to let me be, but she threatened to undo it all for me. I was at her mercy once again, just like in the old days. I don’t know. I might never have killed those girls if she hadn’t found me. I may even have left Jos alone too. This is all her fault, you know.”

  Bella and Mack didn’t say a word. Bella’s mind went instantly to what Ryan taught her.

  “She wanted to be my mommy, even though I told her I am bad to my mommies.”

  She broke into an eerie smile and giggled. She twirled her hair like a little girl then became serious.

  “It’s a real art, to be a good mom.”

  She sounded as though she were having an intellectual conversation in a classroom, discussing the nature of motherhood.

  “So many moms say they would kill for their kids. Well…I did.”

  She beamed with pride for a moment, then became sullen.

  “It’s funny…I thought being on the outside with real people would be better. I was wrong. Real people suck.”

  “Yes, real people can defi
nitely suck. You are right,” Bella acknowledged.

  “Not can. DO!” Jenna screamed and startled Mack. She looked upset now and started moving slowly back toward her blanket.

  “You think you’re so much better than me, don’t you, Detective?”

  She was on her blanket now, peering over her shoulders.

  “I could tell from the start you thought I was stupid. You waltzed into my home with him”—she pointed to Mack—“questioning me. I could see how jealous you were of me, my home, my life. He was nice to me,” she said in a little girl voice as she looked at Mack.

  Bella was taken aback.

  “I am sorry if I offended you, Jenna. I was only doing my job. I was trying to get information.”

  It was hard to tell what Jenna knew or understood to be true anymore.

  “Whatever.” She was perfunctory, suddenly disinterested. Now her eyes were on Mack.

  “I have taken things into my own hands when I needed to,” Jenna explained to him. “That doesn’t make me bad. I am not bad. I just, ya know, I was clearing the way for Jessie, doing what I could so that my girl could have the best. Like all the moms around me—I was doing what I could for my kid. Right?”

  Her voice sounded like a little girl now. Bella tried to follow her thinking as she watched her staring at Mack and sucking the twig. She bit off a piece and spit some loose bark in Mack’s direction.

  “Yeah, Jenna. I get it,” Mack said kindly. “You’ve had a lot of things happen to you that were unfair and you just did what you had to do to defend yourself, to get by. We understand that. Joslyn was very selfish for creating that scholarship for two underprivileged students. It guaranteed Jessie would not get one of the spots. That was wrong of her. Very selfish.”

  They had learned about this from Principal Harding. Jenna looked surprised.

  “So you agree with me?”

  She asked this so sweetly and with such hope that Bella almost felt sad for a second.

  “Yes, Jenna. I do.” Mack sounded convincing.

  “Thank you,” Jenna answered sincerely. Were they actually getting somewhere?