The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  “I’ve been lucky,” he says. “I’ve only seen it a couple of times, in my career. A true psychopath. But I’ll tell you, it was chilling. I remember looking into that boy’s eyes and thinking, Nobody’s looking back. It was like, he was a machine that wanted things. And sometimes what he wanted was to hurt someone.”

  “So you pitted evidence?” I ask, motioning to the case file again. “The hair in the shower drain? Because you were so certain that he killed her?”

  “Yes,” he says, and his certainty is unnerving. “I knew all the guys who worked in evidence. They knew enough to trust me when I asked for a favor.”

  “Even though pitting evidence might have helped with Colin’s appeal? Even though it cast doubts on the way the CPD handled the case?”

  “He lost that appeal because everyone knew he was guilty. You weren’t there, Marti. You didn’t see . . .” He trails off. “You have the benefit of hindsight. The remove.”

  “So if the verdict was so certain, why not include it in the evidence report and take your chances?”

  “Because when you have someone like Colin McCarty, you don’t take chances,” he says. “You don’t give the defense a chance to muddy the investigation with questionable evidence.”

  “What do you mean?” I ask, and he shrugs.

  “I’ve seen a lot of crime scenes in my day,” he replies. “And never before have I seen a dry hair lying flat across a drain like that. Not caught in the hair trap. Just lying there across the drain. And it was blond, when Colin McCarty wasn’t. Neither were Sarah Ketchum or the roommate. I thought it was one of my guys’ hairs, at first. I thought someone leaned over to look in the drain and”—he slaps his hand flat onto the coffee table—“bam. Contamination. False evidence. But do I think it was from someone showering there? No, I don’t.”

  “So you decided not to even test it?” I asked.

  “Not if it was planted,” Detective Richards replied. “After she was killed. To mess up our case against Colin.”

  “Who would have put it there?” I ask.

  He gives another little shrug. “There was an hour and a half between the time when she supposedly left to meet her friends and the time when the roommate got home. Anything could happen in that span of time.”

  I think about that span of time, too brief for Colin to have moved Sarah on his own. I’ve never before considered that perhaps he wasn’t alone. Perhaps he called someone, after he killed Sarah. Someone he trusted more than anyone else. Someone who would know what to do.

  “That hair is being used right now to bring a case against Colin’s brother-in-law for Sarah’s murder,” I say, my voice coming out choked. As if there is something constricting my windpipe. My own panic, perhaps. “And you’re saying, in your official capacity as a former police detective, that you thought it was planted there?”

  “That’s what I’m telling you,” Detective Richards replies, a picture of absolute certainty.

  * * *

  * * *

  TED LOOKS TERRIBLE the next time I visit him in prison. Peaked, with dark circles beneath his eyes. His skin taking on a yellowish tinge against his orange jumpsuit under the fluorescent lights. I can see the weariness in the way he moves, crossing the room to sit down on the other side of the table. He looks like he’s aged a decade. He looks like all the fight has gone out of him.

  “I’m taking a plea,” he says, before I even have a chance to share what I know.

  It feels like getting hit, unexpectedly. A shot to the stomach.

  “What?” I ask, everything I had planned to tell him flooding out of me. My plan to expose Ava and Colin. My plan to get Ted out of jail. “What kind of plea?”

  “Thirty years,” he says, holding up a hand, even as I begin to shake my head. “It’s nothing, compared to the time I would serve if we go to court and lose. I could get out and still have some time. A little time, at least.”

  “Thirty years?” I hiss at him, trying to keep my voice low. “Are you insane? You didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Oh, so you believe me now?” he says, and I know I deserve the bitterness with which he says it.

  “I do,” I say, because it’s the only way I can convince him not to fold. To tell him everything I know. “Ava lied to me about the connection between Sarah and my sister. Sarah’s father never lived in Sutcliffe Heights. It was all fabricated to get me involved.”

  Ted folds his hands on the table between us. “Okay.”

  “When I first visited Ava and Colin in prison, Colin said something to Ava in Portuguese. She played it off like he made a shitty joke about me, but he actually asked her if everything was in place. I have this on tape.”

  “Marti—” he says, dragging one of his hands wearily through his hair, a move that strikes me as something a teenager might practice in front of a mirror. I don’t let him finish.

  “She lied to me, when she didn’t have to. He was asking her if everything was in place with Dylan’s murder, with setting me up to think that you did it. I know that now. I’m certain of it. Because killing Dylan was the only way they were going to get the CPD to look back at the DNA evidence they pitted the first time around. If there was another body, connected to Sarah, found in the same place Sarah was. They would have no choice but to consider the cases connected.”

  “So what?” Ted asks.

  “So what?” I repeat back, feeling my voice rise again, trying to keep the enraged excitement bubbling up in me from boiling over. “So, we can go to the police with what I know. Ava created that email address to impersonate me, because she knew I’d get involved with the case. She knew she could convince me to investigate if she linked Sarah to my sister. And then she drove your car to kidnap Dylan, right? It doesn’t make sense that Dylan would have trusted you for a second, when he was expecting to meet me.”

  “Marti, stop,” Ted says, reaching forward now, putting a hand on mine and then pulling it away before the guard has a chance to admonish him. “You think I haven’t considered all of this? My wife, the woman I loved, was planning this for years. Setting a trap for me. Ever since she planted that first hair in Sarah’s shower.”

  “So you know she planted the hair?” I ask. I remember her telling me that she brought Ted’s hairbrush to the police for DNA. “Which means Colin called her that night, after he killed Sarah.”

  “He did call her,” Ted says. “It showed up in his phone records from that night. He told the police he called her because he didn’t remember what time the reservation was.”

  “And Ava helps him hide Sarah’s body in her car, she goes to the restaurant, he follows in a cab. After dinner, they dump the body in the woods. Simple,” I say. So simple, yet it never occurred to me, in all the time I spent thinking about it. I feel like a fool. “But the cops pitted the hair evidence that was supposed to implicate you, and Colin was convicted anyway.”

  “Right. She had to find another way, give them another chance to test the DNA and match it to me,” Ted says. “And when your podcast went viral, she saw her opening.”

  “So that’s the story we tell. Publicly. People will believe it, if we lay out the facts of the case.”

  “They won’t,” Ted says, shaking his head. “Or, at least, not enough people will believe it. Not when you’ve been championing Colin’s innocence for weeks now. And Ava would do everything in her power to stop you.”

  “What is she going to do? Kill me and dump me in the woods too?” I ask, a bit more cavalier than I probably should be. To hide my desperation.

  “She sent that email, didn’t she?” Ted asks. “Do you think that’s the last piece of evidence she might have fabricated to link you to the case? I mean, can you imagine the cold-blooded dedication it took to frame me? For years, she knew it would come to this. And she did it fucking perfectly. Everything, all the evidence, it lines up against me.”

  “She m
ust have gotten something wrong,” I reply, feeling the tears that threatened to fall with Detective Richards welling up again. “I know if I tell a friend of mine, a detective, he’ll believe me.”

  “Will he?” Ted asks. “Or are you just an unstable amateur journalist with a crazy theory?”

  I flick away a tear that begins to draw a path down my cheek. I won’t give myself over to helplessness, not yet.

  “Because that’s what it is. It’s a crazy theory,” Ted says, his hand again reaching to cover mine. “I’ve gone over it a hundred times. I’ve gone over it with my attorneys, even. I have nothing but my word and yours to line up against Ava’s.”

  “It’ll be enough,” I say.

  “Marti,” he says, his voice soft, as if I am the one who needs to be comforted here. “How many drinks do you have on an average day?”

  I shake my head, because I don’t trust myself to speak without devolving into tears.

  “Add to that the fact that the state just had to release Colin from prison. They’re not going to risk looking like they’d go to any lengths to put him away again, not after they hid evidence in his case. I’m sure they’re terrified of Ava filing a lawsuit as it is.”

  “So that’s it, then?” I say, not even trying to stop myself from crying at this point. It’s too late. The floodgates are open. “You’re not even going to try and fight this?”

  “With what?” Ted asks. “They have my DNA in Sarah’s apartment and Dylan’s blood in my travel case. And with Ava against me? Think of the things she could say, if she got up on the stand. Think of the lies she could tell. She could hang me. She would.”

  “You really think Ava killed Dylan herself?” I ask. Still, almost inconceivable, even as I say it out loud. “You really think she’s capable of it? The woman you married?”

  He presses the back of his hand to his mouth.

  “I think Ava is capable of anything. Especially when it comes to her brother,” he says. “She spent her whole childhood trying to protect the two of them from their father. And she blames herself for not being able to stop Colin from becoming what he is.”

  “What is he?” I ask, but I’m nearly certain I already know the answer.

  “I don’t know,” Ted replies. “I don’t know why he killed Sarah. But it wouldn’t surprise me if he killed her to see what it was like. I tried to warn you.”

  The wire inside me tightens further. Constricting my stomach, sending acid into my throat. This is the man I’ve released, back out into the world. Through my actions, Colin is loose.

  “What about Ava? Is she dangerous? Like Colin?” I ask, feeling sick, my heart pounding.

  Ted pauses. “No,” he replies. “I don’t think so. I think she feels enough like a god saving people’s lives at her job. That’s the awful thing—I don’t think she ever would have had reason to hurt anyone, if this hadn’t happened. I think we might have been happy. If it wasn’t for her fucking brother.”

  But that’s Ava. Devoted to the things she loves, in spite of their faults. Unconditional love, I think, for the first time, can be a truly terrible thing.

  “How dangerous is he?” I ask.

  “Colin?” Ted asks, shaking his head. “I think he sees other people as insects. Some are fine, just out there, existing. Some he’ll leave alone. But if one starts to bother him?” He gives an exaggerated shrug. “Like his sister, I think he’s capable of anything. But he doesn’t have her intelligence. And he doesn’t have her restraint.”

  “Do you think that’s why he got beat up in prison?” I ask, remembering his splinted fingers. The broken ribs. The fractured eye socket. “Because people were bothering him?”

  “When did Colin get beat up in prison?” Ted asks, his eyes narrowing as he considers me.

  “A couple of weeks after I first met him,” I reply. “Right before Dylan’s body was found. Ava visited him in the infirmary.”

  Ted shakes his head. “You’re wrong about that,” he replies. “We visited him the weekend before I was arrested. He was fine.”

  “Are you serious?”

  He nods.

  “Ava told me . . . It’s why we fast-tracked the podcast. To put pressure on the state to release Colin. We thought he was in danger.”

  “Yeah,” Ted replies. “That sounds like Ava.” He gives an angry little laugh. “I’d almost admire her, if it wasn’t so fucking sick. If I wasn’t going away until I’m eligible for Social Security.”

  “If you take a plea, that’s it,” I say. “There’s no hope, then, for correcting this. There’s no chance of proving what really happened.” I know he can hear it in my tone. I’m begging him to let me try to set this right. To give me a chance to help bring Colin and Ava to justice. But he just shakes his head.

  “I can’t risk it, Marti,” he says. “If I roll the dice in court, that’s it. I could get life, I could die in prison.”

  “We can’t just let her win,” I say, still pleading.

  “She wins,” he replies. “That’s what she does. She played all of us. It worked out this way because that’s what she wanted.”

  “So what am I supposed to do with that?” I ask, scrubbing the tears from my eyes with my sleeve.

  Ted just smiles bitterly. “Get used to it, I guess.”

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY

  I can’t get used to it, of course. I can’t get used to any of it. That I’ve destroyed my life, that Ted will spend the next three decades in prison, that Sarah and Dylan are dead and my sister is still missing and Jane Doe has a son who will never know her. None of it feels bearable.

  I can’t get used to it. But I can drink.

  Andrea and Trish are visiting Andrea’s parents out in the suburbs for the weekend, so I go out by myself. Venture out to Mathilde’s, already drinking from a water bottle full of vodka as I get on the L. So much of this started at Mathilde’s, after all. Sometimes I think if I hadn’t gone out on a run that night, perhaps I never would have had sex with Carey. Maybe I never would have opened the floodgates of my own infidelity. Maybe I would have stayed married, asked Eric to reconsider his desire for a baby, told him about the breadth and depth of the wound my sister had left in me. Told him the truth. That I may never heal from it.

  I want to go somewhere familiar. Where I can sit and remember the life I had once, which didn’t involve hang-up calls and prison recordings and women zipped into body bags. And I wonder if, by going back to the beginning, back to that first move in the game of chess that followed, I might be able to undo some of it. Or learn something from it, at the very least.

  I think I see Carey behind the bar when I arrive at Mathilde’s. But it’s an unfamiliar bartender, and he shakes his head when I ask after him.

  “Doesn’t work here anymore,” he says over the noise of the jukebox, smelling of hops and cheap body spray.

  I order a vodka tonic, which tastes like candy compared to the straight vodka I’ve been drinking. I drink three at a pretty decent clip, until I sway a bit when I rise from the barstool to go to the bathroom. The girl sitting next to me catches my arm to steady me.

  “Thanks,” I shout over the music, perhaps a bit too loud. The bartender gives me a look, likes he’s anticipating that I might become a problem.

  In the bathroom I splash water on my face, considering my dour countenance in the mirror. My hair is starting to grow out of its pixie cut, and now it just looks shaggy, like a child’s unruly bowl cut. And I look puffy—my face, my eyes, everything. I’m not sure if it’s from the booze or the sleeplessness or what, but it’s not very cute. I wish I had one of my wigs on. I wish I’d painted up my face like a goth girl and put on my best leather jacket. I wish I could be the girl I want to be instead of the waterlogged, sad, divorced waif I see looking back at me. Someone gullible. Someone you look at and immediately know that all she wants is to be loved. Pathetic
in her obviousness. Garish in her desire to be noticed, to be wanted. Such an easy mark. For Ava. For Olsen. For anyone.

  Before I can think too much about it, I fish my phone out of my purse and call Ava. Even though she’s probably at the hospital on a Saturday night. Another twelve-hour shift. Still, I’m prepared to tell her what I think of her. Prepared to tell her that while she’s made a fool of me, I’ve figured her out. I know her for what she is. A killer. A liar.

  “Marti?” Her voice comes over the line. “I’m at work, can I call you back?”

  “Saving lives?” I ask, slurring a bit. I giggle at the way the words come out, amused by my own ineptness. This seems to give Ava pause, because suddenly she’s willing to talk.

  “What’s going on, Marti?” Ava says, her voice cautious.

  “I’m at Mathilde’s,” I say. “I was thinking I’d come here, because the first guy I cheated on Eric with works here. But he doesn’t anymore, though.” In my head, the words come out eloquently. But I can hear in the tone of her response—like she’s talking to a child—that I must sound pretty altered.

  “Are you there by yourself?”

  “I wasn’t supposed to be,” I reply. “But that looks like how it might turn out. Unless I can find a good pinch hitter.”

  “Listen, I’ve got to go in a minute, but how about I call Andrea to come and get you?” Ava asks.

  “She’s out of town. Family trip. Wish I had one of those.” I cackle a bit, to myself.

  “Is there someone else I can call?” she asks, but then a group of girls bangs their way into the bathroom, letting in the noise of the bar and the jukebox with them, and suddenly I can’t hear anything on the other end of the line anymore.

  “Sorry, I gotta go,” I half-shout into the phone, before I hang up and go back out into the fray.

  * * *

  * * *

  TWENTY MINUTES LATER, Colin McCarty comes into the bar. For a moment, my drink-numbed brain thinks it must be a coincidence, that shock of red hair, the inmate pallor. But then he catches sight of me and gives me a strangely boyish wave from where he stands at the bar’s entrance, as the bouncer considers his ID. Before I can stop myself, I wave back. I watch as he exchanges words with the bouncer, points in my direction. But the bouncer just shakes his head. After what seems an unreasonably protracted amount of time, I grab my purse and approach the two of them.