The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” I ask as the bartender sets my drink in front of me.

  “The chair of the Margaret Reese Foundation personally invited me,” he replies.

  My mother. Jesus Christ, that woman will be the death of me.

  Of course, it’s my own fault for not realizing Olsen would be here. After all, Detective Richards attended every year, a guest at the foundation’s table. But I assumed that invitation was particular to him and would not necessarily extend to the next man assigned to Maggie’s case after Richards retired. After all, Detective Richards was the CPD’s favorite detective to send into any dog-and-pony show, especially when press was involved. He had an old-school charm to him, and he was polished enough to move in even the wealthiest and most political of circles. Now I wonder if his charm was a cover, if he was just as ruthless and single-minded as all the rest of the CPD. Still, I think of the blacked-out tattoos beneath the sleeves of Olsen’s uniform and wonder how a boy from Canaryville will fare amid the wolves that raised me.

  “At least you clean up well,” I say, motioning to his uniform. He does. He really does.

  “Well, this is slightly different from where I usually spend my Saturday nights,” Olsen replies, taking in the splendor around him, his pale eyes pulled dark by the navy of his uniform.

  “Don’t let the décor fool you,” I say. “These people are as vicious as they come. They’re just better dressed.”

  “Apparently.” He motions to the raw knuckles on my hand. A couple of them are shadowy, like ink stains faded by repeated washing. “Disagreement over a mutual fund, perhaps?” Olsen says, wry and authoritative, his best patrol cop impression.

  “Didn’t wrap my hands well enough at the gym,” I reply.

  “And here I thought I missed you flattening another guy twice your size.”

  “Not this week,” I say. Behind Olsen, on the screen above the stage, a photograph of Maggie materializes. Maggie, grinning at the camera, wet hair blown back, Lake Michigan behind her. I took that photo, at the beach by our house, the summer she disappeared. The last time she went swimming, maybe. I can’t remember now.

  A cold certainty hits me again, as it always does, especially when I’m caught off guard. The knowledge that I’ve already seen every photo ever taken of my sister. It’s a thought that’s occurred to me before, one that spread like the heavy creep of mustard gas, blistering my lungs, as I searched through video after video of blond teenagers bent before rough-faced men with tattooed fingers. Ukrainian amateur pornography, circa 2005, a tip I couldn’t ignore. Sick with the fervent desire to see an unfamiliar image of my sister. Equally sick at the prospect of finding it there.

  “Hey.” Olsen’s touch brings me back to the present, his careful hand at my arm. “You all right?” he asks, glancing at the screen behind us.

  “Sure.” Across the room, I catch my mother watching us. I turn to sip my drink, moving my arm away from Olsen’s touch. “You’re sitting at my family’s table?”

  He holds up a place card with the number four on it.

  “Are you wearing a bulletproof vest under that uniform?” I ask, and take the opportunity to look him up and down, pointedly. A shifting of power, back into my favor.

  “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

  “You think I’m kidding?”

  “They can’t possibly be that bad,” he replies.

  “You have no idea,” I say. “I’m talking about a group of incredibly privileged, emotionally stunted, phenomenally traumatized people who have a lot of baggage with cops.” I lean down to adjust the ankle strap on one of my heels. His eyes flick to the slice of leg that shows through the high slit in my dress and then return to my face.

  “Marti,” he says, his voice revealing a trace of amusement, “have I mentioned that I spent two years hanging out with actual white supremacists? I promise you, I’m not afraid of your family.”

  “All right,” I reply, taking my drink and hooking my arm around his, leading the way to our table. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

  My mother, my grandmother, and my uncle Perry are already seated when we approach. I pause to kiss my grandmother on the cheek as I pass, and then introduce Olsen to the table.

  “I didn’t realize you two knew each other,” my mother says, looking between me and Olsen. I can see the wheels turning in her mind already. The blessing and the curse of my family is that any investigative instincts I have, I’ve inherited directly from my mother.

  “Should we call you Detective?” my grandmother asks, taking his hand between hers. She’s statuesque as always, in a dark purple Donna Karan, the very picture of graceful aging, despite her wheelchair.

  “Kyle,” he says as she gives him a decisive, two-handed shake.

  “So you’re assigned to Margaret’s case?” Uncle Perry says as we take the remaining two seats at the table. “No offense, but you look a little younger than the detectives we’re used to.” Uncle Perry, my mother’s younger brother, works in insurance. He’s the sort of man who organizes the world into categories like “alpha” and “beta” and seriously considers himself a member of the former. He actually touches the band of his Omega Seamaster as he speaks, peacocking without the benefit of the bright fan of feathers.

  “I spent a couple of years working with the FBI,” Olsen says. “It put me on the fast track within the department.”

  “The FBI,” Uncle Perry says. “I used to play golf with the Chicago station chief. Mitch Bresner. You know him?”

  “Only by reputation,” Olsen replies. “But I was mostly working with the agents assigned to the task force.”

  “Of course,” Uncle Perry says, touching his watch again, as if he’s trying to make sure the light reflecting off its face flashes in Olsen’s eyes. Still, Olsen maintains his easy calm.

  “Did you see the write-up of the foundation’s quarterly luncheon in the Trib?” my mother asks as the emcee makes her opening remarks and we wait for our entrées to be served. My mother is clearly also growing tired of Perry’s preening. Ever the older sister. “Eric made his usual donation, you know,” she continues, cannily watching Olsen as she speaks. “I signed your name to the thank-you note as well. I hope that wasn’t overstepping.”

  “That’s fine,” I reply, hoping to curtail the conversation she clearly wants to have.

  “I mean, I wasn’t sure if you two are on speaking terms or not. But I thought, what with him continuing to be so generous to the foundation, things can’t be so bad, can they?”

  I see my grandmother lean ostentatiously toward Olsen and stage-whisper, “Her ex-husband,” in his ear. My grandmother, always one to stir the pot for her own amusement. Thankfully, Olsen doesn’t betray any surprise at this revelation. Turns out, a man with undercover experience might be perfect for occasions like this.

  “We’re on speaking terms,” I reply. “I just talked to him a few days ago.”

  “Oh, wonderful,” my mother replies. “Did you two discuss . . . you know, next steps? Moving forward?”

  “We discussed our divorce papers,” I reply, and watch my mother’s forehead tighten, her eyebrows threatening to arch. Her hopes of grandchildren evaporating, once more, before her eyes. “And we talked about the next season of the podcast.”

  “Oh, lovely,” my mother says, her sarcasm so thick, it’s as if she doesn’t quite believe that we’ll fully understand her displeasure otherwise. “It’s not enough that you have to rehash all our family troubles in public. But now you have to take on other people’s problems as well?”

  “Do you think that’s quite safe?” Uncle Perry asks, ready anew to throw his manly, manly weight around. “I mean, I would make sure to have a talk with your doorman about security measures, if you’re going to be working in this . . . field.”

  “I don’t have a doorman,” I reply.

 
“You’re not living in a doorman building?” He’s turning his concerned gaze back and forth between me and my mom. “What sort of hack divorce attorney did you hire? Did they negotiate on alimony?”

  “Not that I really feel like getting into it, but we came to a settlement on our own,” I reply.

  “That’s a no,” my mother says helpfully. A few choice terms one should never call her own mother splash through my brain.

  “Why in the hell wouldn’t you go for alimony?” Uncle Perry asks.

  “Because I didn’t want his money,” I reply as the old anger kicks to life, muscle memory tightening my shoulders, fingernails cutting creases in my palms. The seed of my impulsiveness, the desire to tear away the foundation of my life with Eric, let the rest crumble. Because I do not want a life that would make these people proud of me. These people, who set up a foundation in Maggie’s name because they didn’t want to have to look for her. Not if they could pay other people to do it. I want to clear the crystal and fine china from the table with a swing of my arm.

  And then I feel it. Olsen’s hand, under the table, coming to rest on my knee. His thumb tracing the lower curve of my kneecap. And my rage shivers to a halt.

  “Well, I don’t think that anyone in this family should be living in a building without some sort of security,” Uncle Perry says, as if this is an edict that must now be followed.

  “Bartenders don’t make enough to afford doorman buildings in Chicago,” I reply, distracted by the need to keep still. A meager, last effort, even as Olsen’s touch turns my spine to wax.

  “Bartenders?” he repeats, in the manner another person might say “porn stars”—all haughty, horrified skepticism. My mother must tell him nothing, content to let his image of her remaining daughter be as flat and staged as the family Christmas cards. My parents and I, baring our teeth at the photographer, clothes all silk and velvet. A ribbon in my heat-curled hair. Grouped so close together, a denial that there was ever space for anyone else in our compact trio. As if we were better off that way.

  There is no slack in my leash, no matter what might have happened to Maggie. If I must fall apart—as I have—I am to do it as secretly as possible. Those Christmas cards were my first lesson. Our lives must still be perfect, no matter the damage we’ve incurred. No matter what the world has done to us.

  * * *

  * * *

  IT’S AFTER DINNER, after the speeches, after my third drink, when my grandmother motions to me from across the table. A beckoning. I rise from my seat and kneel beside her, so I’m looking up at her, perched in her wheelchair.

  “Have you been back to the woods?” she asks, her voice low, so as not to interrupt the conversation of my mother and uncle.

  “What?”

  “The woods,” she says, her eyes glassy, peering into the middle distance, her gaze not quite meeting my eyes, though mine meets hers. “Have you been looking there?”

  “For Maggie?” My hands go cold. The blood drops from my head. I grip the arm of her wheelchair, though my palm is clammy against the padded vinyl armrest.

  “No.” She shakes her head, strands falling from her loose updo at the movement. Her gaze clearing a bit. Refocusing on me. “The other one.”

  “Who? Sarah Ketchum? She was already found.”

  “I don’t know,” my grandmother replies, all her wistfulness gone, replaced with her usual impatience. “It’s not like I get name, rank, and serial number with this.”

  “Okay, which woods?” I ask, feeling suddenly at sea. Wondering if it’s possible my grandmother is crazy. Wondering if I should try to catch my mother’s attention, alert her that my grandmother isn’t making much sense.

  “Isn’t it your job to find out which woods?” she replies, her voice loud enough to catch Olsen’s attention.

  “Grandma,” I say, almost chiding. Because I don’t believe in any of this, not really.

  “Fine,” she says, waving me off. “Never mind.”

  But even as I return to my seat, I can’t help but replay it in my mind. The scene of the car, parked right at the tree line. Beige, or silver, or blue. The man in the front seat. My sister telling me to run. The woods, I think. But people have searched those woods a hundred times over, since Maggie disappeared. She’s not there. I know she’s not there.

  It’s only when my mother gets up to speak, with a large school portrait of Maggie projected onto the screen behind her, that I realize what my grandmother may mean. The woods. Back to the woods. And a chill so potent runs through me that I actually shudder, my skin prickling to life under the soft lights of the banquet hall. She means Dylan. It’s a sudden, heavy realization.

  Dylan Jacobs is in LaBagh Woods.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE WRONG THINGS excite me. Things that should be horrific send a charge through me, as if all my synapses are wired wrong. My grandmother’s words, the potential of finding Dylan dead, in the same place Sarah’s body was dumped, should have sickened me. I understand that. I am still the sister of a missing girl, a murdered girl, perhaps. I am not so heartless as to have no reaction to the dark gravity of the situation.

  But it is also thrilling. The idea of it, of solving it, of finding an irrefutable connection between the two. Of proving Colin innocent. Of getting justice for Sarah and Dylan and Colin and Ava, instead of letting the question of their fates linger, lost in the fickle winds of the legal system. That possibility puts me in thrall to adrenaline. And, as with panic, as with a cascade of fear or a rush of love, there is a point where you can do nothing but surrender to your own excitement.

  Olsen just happens to be there when it hits. Outside the Palmer House, when the rain starts and he pulls me back under the awning while I wait for my Uber.

  “So you were wrong about your family,” he says. “They’re way more interested in torturing you than me.”

  “A slight miscalculation,” I reply. I clear my throat, suddenly very aware of Olsen’s hands. One in his pocket, one holding his phone. Calling a ride, probably. “So was that your idea of a distraction?”

  “What?” Olsen says, playing innocent, letting it show.

  I wonder how much it would take, to shake this man’s easy confidence. I imagine telling him the things I never told Eric. Describing the hours I watched those blond teenagers. In green-tiled bathrooms or on rumpled, blotchy satin sheets. Some of them playing for the camera. Some vacant, their quiet a warning of its own. Olsen seems like he could stand to listen to those things.

  My ride pulls up to the curb, casting a spray of water onto the sidewalk, and I ignore Olsen’s question and take him by the hand, pulling him through the rain and into the muggy back seat. Even though he’s already called a car, even though fraternizing with a witness in an ongoing case could certainly get him fired. What silly games we play, I think as he kisses me in the back of some stranger’s Altima, tasting of heat and rain and cheap table wine. As he kisses me up the two flights of gritty carpeted stairs that lead to my apartment door. As his hand breaches the slit in my skirt while I fumble to unlock my door.

  “What do you want?” he whispers as the door shuts behind me and he presses me back against it. Unzips my dress, peels it down to my waist. I have his shirt unbuttoned, but he won’t let go of me long enough to allow me to shove it down his arms. Instead he leans down, running his tongue over the lacy edge of my bra. My head drops back against the door.

  I used to want escape. To slip the binds of a marriage I could no longer sustain. To tempt fate with my own defiance, to be a slut and see what price the world would make me pay for it. That was what I looked for in those other men. But this is different. An unfamiliar need. Like the memory of a desire I’ve never actually felt, not even in my earliest of sexual experiences. A desire uncoupled from fear, unconcerned with proving my mettle in a world always canted toward the destruction of girls like me.

 
I want to be someone else. It’s at the root of the games I play and the men I choose and the way I dress. I do not want those people for a family. I do not want to be Eric’s ex-wife. Maggie Reese’s sister. A girl who searched out sex that scared her a little, always too close to the edge, the vindication of escaping unscathed more potent than any part of the act itself.

  I don’t tell him any of this. Instead, I kiss him until I’m blinking back darkness, and nothing feels real anymore.

  * * *

  * * *

  OLSEN WAKES ME up halfway through a nightmare, pinning my wrists to the mattress when I mistake him for the faceless man and go for his eyes.

  “Jesus,” he whispers when I am finally still. “What the fuck was that?”

  I recognize him as my vision adjusts to the dark. “Bad dream,” I mumble.

  “Yeah, no shit,” he replies. He lets go of my wrists and I sit up, combing my hair back off my face with my fingers. Sticky. The sheet beneath me icy and damp. The streetlamp outside my bedroom window casts tracts of murky amber light across the far wall. Sometimes I don’t recognize this room. Sometimes I wake and don’t know where I am.

  “I have to tell you something,” I whisper. I feel his fingers brush over my lower back, but I don’t turn to look at him. “Sarah Ketchum’s roommate is missing.”

  “I know,” Olsen replies. I can feel him watching me.

  “You know?”

  “Milwaukee police contacted us.”

  “I think he might be here,” I reply. “I think he might be in LaBagh Woods.”

  Olsen is still, quiet, for a moment.

  “What makes you think that?” he finally asks.

  “If the cases are connected, the killer might have buried him in the same place,” I say. “If he’s dead.”

  “What makes you think they’re connected?”

  “You know what,” I reply, glancing down at him over my shoulder. Only briefly, not indulging in a longer look. I know he overheard my grandmother at dinner. I don’t want to have to say it out loud.