by Dea Poirier
PRAISE FOR NEXT GIRL TO DIE
“Dea Poirier delivers a pitch-perfect procedural with a strong-willed and relatable lead in Claire Calderwood—a big-city cop who returns to her small hometown when a fresh homicide echoes the long-ago murder of her sister. Bolstered by a romance and atmospheric prose that turns setting into character, this debut hits all the right notes.”
—Loreth Anne White, international bestselling author
“In Dea Poirier’s exceptional debut, Claire Calderwood is a detective in Detroit who is relieved to have miles and years between herself and her hometown of Vinalhaven, Maine. This is an evocative debut with exquisite writing that indulges your senses and compels your investment in Calderwood’s emotional journey as she races against time to solve a case that has haunted her for more than a decade. Calderwood is a worthy addition to the genre. Her spirit, like Poirier’s voice, is tenacious and captivating, compelling the reader’s investment in her journey, and Calderwood is determined to hold her own against her male counterparts.”
—Sandra Ruttan, author of Suspicious Circumstances
“Next Girl to Die is a smart, fast-paced, and intensely well-written procedural thriller, and it takes place in one of the best settings I’ve had the pleasure of reading in a long time: a lonely island off the coast of Maine. The island has more secrets than residents, with each character more ominously suspicious than the last. Poirier is a diabolical plotter, and this tight debut is fraught with tension and mystery.”
—Wendy Heard, author of Hunting Annabelle
OTHER TITLES BY DEA POIRIER
Next Girl to Die
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2019 by Dea Poirier
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Thomas & Mercer, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Thomas & Mercer are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781542092784
ISBN-10: 1542092787
Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson
CONTENTS
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
CHAPTER 1
In my mind, the corpse is hers. It doesn’t matter that it won’t be, can’t be her. From the moment I hear that the victim is suspected to be a teenage female, she’s all I can see. The other victims—the ones from months ago—they should cross my mind too. They don’t. That’s par for the course, though. If nothing else, my sister, Rachel, has always haunted my thoughts. Maybe she always will. I thought once I found her killer, things would change. But they didn’t. Sometimes, I still see her staring back at me in mirrors. Sometimes, I realize there are shadows so big they’ll eclipse your entire life, all that you are.
Though she died fifteen years ago, I only found her killer a few months ago, after taking a job as homicide detective back in my hometown of Vinalhaven, when another girl was killed in a manner eerily similar to Rachel’s. But finding my sister’s killer didn’t give me the closure everyone expected. I’m relieved he’s off the streets, but the fifteen-year-old wound is still as fresh and raw as if it happened yesterday. Closure is a goddamned fairy tale, if you ask me.
Cold wind whips off the water, covering my face in a spray of fine mist. It’s enough to pull me from the thoughts of her, my sister.
The call from Camden PD I got earlier today replays in my mind. We’ve got a body here in a motel, rough shape. We need someone experienced to take a look at this. Given all the recent media attention on my last murder case, and as they were without their own homicide detective, they called me in hopes that I could help. Camden, Maine, isn’t exactly spitting distance from my hometown—well, home island, really—of Vinalhaven, Maine. The bay separates the island from the coastline on which Camden sits. It shouldn’t be far, but with the ferry ride to contend with, it can take an hour and a half or more. I’ve been on the ferry for twenty minutes, churning my way across Pen Bay from the island to Camden. In Maine, when you have the misfortune of living on one of the islands, the ferries are your only ticket to the outside world, unless you have the money for a water taxi or the luxury of your own boat. This was the bane of my existence as a child and one of the many reasons I swore I’d never come back here.
The ferry horn bellows, and my jaw tenses at the sound so hard my teeth ache. From far away, I may love the call of the ferries, but while I’m aboard, it’s so loud it echoes to the sinew of my soul. Around me, beyond the far-reaching grip of the black water, the world is still veiled in snow. Though we’re reaching the end of February, winter still has Maine in its grasp. The streets are clear, a blessing, but the trees and houses are so heavy with snow that from a distance they almost look like gingerbread. A frigid wind kisses my cheeks. Though I’m sure my face is red, angry from the winter’s assault, the weather tethers me somehow, makes me feel present. My thick coat is tight around me, but chill still sneaks in.
My phone dings with a notification. Snow is coming hard tonight. If you can’t get out of Camden by 4, you may want to stay there tonight.
The mask I wear for the job cracks, and a smile teeters on my lips as I reply to Noah’s text. Thank you. I’ll let you know how it goes. Noah and I have been dating for four months. We met last year while I was working a case. Noah is a reporter, and he was hell bent on cracking open my sister’s cold case and solving it. Though I hated him at first, he got under my skin in the best and worst ways. He still does—and I wouldn’t have it any other way.
As soon as I clear away the text notification, I see the icon for my email. There are seven unread messages in my in-box. I tap on the icon and glance at the list. Two emails are promos, trying to get me to purchase shit I don’t need, and five are interview requests to talk to the media about my sister. Since Noah’s article came out a couple of months ago, I’ve been getting requests almost daily for interviews, exclusives, quotes. Though some of them have offered me a hefty payday, my assistance with Noah’s story is as far as I’m willing to go to help the media. After all, they just want to profit off my pain. None of them give a fuck about me or Rachel. Pages over people, revenue over relationships—that’s all they care about.
In the months since the story broke, Noah’s been on podcasts, sat for interviews, you name it. He’s stood in the spotlight and handled it like it’s what he was born to do. And I hate to admit it, but he’s damn good at it. Better yet, he’s so good it’s kept off a lot of the pressure for me to stand in that spotlight with him. I’m more of a behind-the-scenes kind of woman.
I shove my phone in my pocket, and the grin I held for Noah goes with it. I need my game face on while I’m on the scene. The town of Rocklan
d grows out of the mist ahead of me. The ferry platform is the first thing I make out, followed by the huge warehouses that fill the streets near the bay, the arms of the dock stretching out into the dark waters, and then the peaks of the sloping roofs beyond. When I finally drive off the ferry, I turn onto Port Terminal Road and roll to a stop at a traffic light. My fingers drum against the wheel as I wait to turn onto Main Street.
I follow the directions on my GPS heading north—I haven’t been up here much, and I’m not familiar enough to make my way without a little electronic help, but I remember the area. I drive through the small towns of Rockland and Rockport before reaching Camden. The motel, Millay Inn, is at the foot of Bald Mountain Preserve, far enough from the ocean that the prices drop. But so does the quality of the clientele. Once I make it to Howe Hill Road, I shut off my GPS. A huddle of cop cars sits at the far end of the motel parking lot in front of a room with the door yawning open. The building itself is the kind of low-rise motel you’d see at a truck stop in the Midwest, though this one has a bit more curb appeal with its baby-blue paint and white trim. The kind of place that’s kept up just enough to still be charming. Though it may be inexpensive, it’s clear whoever owns this place is trying.
A low crop of evergreen trees, dusted in frost, surrounds the building and grows up the side of the mountain until the foliage and the rising expanse beyond both blur into a gentle slope of white. I grip the door handle harder than I need to and shove it open. A blast of cold air hits me in the face, and I pull on my coat before slamming the door. My driving up didn’t make any of the officers glance my way, but the noise sure does. They eye me as I approach. I flash my badge out of habit. Beside the cars stands the CSI van, its doors wide open, displaying the gear inside, and I grumble under my breath. They can get out here this quickly for Camden? It always took them nearly five hours to get to Vinalhaven. As bitter as I’d like to be about it, I don’t have time for that now. The sound of engines, like roaring snowmobiles in the distance, snares my attention.
As the growls of the engines fade, I turn my attention back to the other officers. “Sergeant Pelletier called and asked me to head over here from Vinalhaven,” I explain as I approach. Their eyes all cut to me.
The guy to my left is squat with shaggy dark hair that’s too long to be allowed on most forces. His eyes crawl up and down my body, like he’s sizing me up. I grit my teeth, waiting for him to open his mouth, but the guy to my right speaks first.
“Detective Calderwood?” he asks, and I introduce myself.
“I’m Clint Wilkens,” he explains. Clint extends his hand to shake mine.
Clint is about six inches taller than me, with broad shoulders. His skin is dark, umber, his hair shaved. When he smiles, dimples etch themselves into his face on either side of his wide mouth. He’s got on the typical police coat, a poufy hunter-green thing, with the police force patch over the heart.
“Nice to meet you. Where could I find the sergeant?” I ask, glancing toward the motel.
“I’ll walk you,” he says as he motions toward the room with the door open.
“What do we have?” I ask as we walk. This isn’t the kind of situation where you default to the weather, so I skip past the small talk and niceties.
“Body of a woman, we’re guessing between sixteen and twenty-one, found bound to the bed, no identification.” We reach the door together, and I glance inside. There’s no way more than a few people could fit inside at a time. I can make out the burnt-orange shade of the carpet, wood-paneled walls, and the corner of a floral comforter, but I can’t quite see the body.
As I look around, I hope they’ve followed proper protocol to secure the scene. Finding a body in a motel isn’t ideal as it is. There will be latent evidence everywhere—hair, fingerprints, likely even semen. The sergeant didn’t give me any details, and I’m going to need information fast to be of help here. The first forty-eight hours of an investigation are the most crucial. I hate showing up to a crime scene this late. There’s so much I’ve already missed out on. Now I’ll have to play catch-up.
“No one has identified her yet?” I ask. I find it odd that in a town of this size no one has recognized her. This town has double the population of Vinalhaven, but it’s still small enough that surely someone would know her. Was the body of someone from out of town dumped here?
He shakes his head. “Sarge, got Detective Claire Calderwood here for you,” he says into the room.
As I stand, waiting for the sergeant to emerge, the tape woven around the posts outside the door flickers in the breeze. Markers have been placed on the floor, cataloging where evidence was found in the room.
Roxie, my old partner from Detroit, would have a field day with this.
The sergeant glances toward us, then walks over. He’s probably in his midforties, lean with wide-set brown eyes. His lips press together in a firm line, the sadness still clearly etched on his face. I have to look up to meet his gaze. He stands about eight inches taller than me.
“Sergeant, this is Detective Calderwood,” Clint says, introducing us.
Sergeant Pelletier extends his hand, shaking my gloved one firmly. “Thanks for coming.” His voice is gravelly, low, aged beyond his visible years.
“Of course,” I say, because I feel the need to say something. “Can you catch me up?”
He doesn’t start speaking right away. Instead, he waves some of the others from the room, making room for us, and I go in after him. “Housekeeping found her body this morning after dawn.”
When I enter the room fully, I’m finally able to see the victim and recognize why exactly no one has been able to identify her. Plastic sheeting is looped and secured over the victim’s head, obscuring it completely. The naked woman is tied to the bed, legs and hands bound to the head- and footboard with yellow, rough nylon ropes. It’s not the kind of rope you’d typically see on a scene like this. This close to the water, I expect to see ratty old rope that’s been on the deck of a ship for half a decade. Nylon is far more expensive than standard rope. On her left hand, a brace wraps around her wrist and loops her thumb. Did she break or sprain her wrist?
Flesh around the ropes has been rubbed raw, so raw, in fact, that the nylon is tinged red in places. Gray debris covers her torso, and it isn’t until I step closer that I can make out what it is—cigarette butts and ashes. Her milky-white skin is feathered with bruises, some fresh, some in various stages of healing. The wounds stick out to me, and I can’t help but wonder what this woman went through before all this. How much did she suffer? Was she held somewhere? My heart aches for her. This job is a constant reminder that so many people die in ways they don’t deserve. As I look down at her, I consider who she might be, whose life will change forever when we discover her friends and family.
“What the hell happened to you?” I mutter.
“It appears that an ashtray that usually stands outside the room for patrons to use was brought inside and dumped over the body postmortem. We were considering that this might be a sex act gone wrong until we figured out that part. It seems unlikely that the suspect would have dumped the ashes if that were the case. It seems more like they’re covering up a crime.”
I glance at him, sure that my skepticism is written all over my face. Sex act gone wrong? There’s no way in hell that’s what this is. Plastic sheeting over the head isn’t a sex act. That’s homicide. This killer knew what they were doing. They had a plan. And based on what I’m seeing here, I don’t think it was their first time. This looks too methodical. A motel is already a compromised crime scene on its own. But this? This is something entirely different. I’ve seen perps leave evidence at scenes before, and it’s usually so obvious that it sticks out—gum, a cigarette, a small trinket that holds a perfect fingerprint. The dumping of cigarette ashes reminds me of Gary Ridgway. In the eighties and nineties, the Green River Killer would strangle his victims and leave gum or cigarettes at the scene to mislead police. Is our killer a copycat? A fan? Or just trying to ob
scure DNA?
“Clint told me there’s no information about the victim in the room. No purse, wallet, phone?”
“That’s correct. We haven’t been able to look at her face because of the plastic, and there’s nothing in here to indicate who she was.”
Whoever did this also robbed her, then. Based on what I’m seeing, there’s nothing left of hers in the room. Not even her clothes. Did the killer take them to hide evidence or keep them as a trophy?
“When is the coroner going to take out the body?” I ask. Usually, by now the body would have been cleared out. And considering the coroner’s van is right outside, I’m surprised they waited for me.
“As soon as you’re done taking a look. I thought it’d be more helpful if you could see the scene as it is, rather than the pictures.”
I step closer to the bed, and the toe of my boot hits something underneath. On instinct, I take off my leather gloves, grab the latex gloves I keep in my pocket, and slide them on. “Has anyone swept under the bed yet?” I ask.
“No, not yet. We were going to have CSI do that after the body was removed.”
Carefully, I lift up the bed skirt, hoping we’ll find something useful—maybe scissors he used to cut the plastic sheeting or the rope. But it’s not scissors I find. Instead it’s a brown shoulder bag. I grab the purse and bring it over to a table alongside the wall, hoping to find identification inside.
“Looks like her pocketbook,” I say to the sergeant. Inside I find a gold wallet and extract it. “Melanie Thomlinson,” I read off the ID inside.
His voice is low when he says, “She was a high school student from Camden.”
The dark thoughts of Rachel, the memories of her murder, press into me from all sides. But I push back against them. I can’t let the thoughts in. I won’t. My mind flashes back to the victims in Vinalhaven next. All the girls who died. This hits too close to home.
“I’ll get someone on notifying her next of kin and officially identify her,” he says.
