by Ronald Malfi
For the first time since my arrival, Lovering’s eyes fully engaged mine. “Then what the hell was she doing out here following up on a murder?”
“I think she believed Holly’s murder was connected to the murders of some other teenage girls she’d been researching,” I said, placing the accordion folder on the table. “I found all her research in a trunk in our closet after she died. There are six girls in total, going back about thirteen years. They’re spread out up and down the east coast and separated by a few years.”
“What are you saying?” Lovering asked.
“I’m saying Holly Renfrow’s murder might be the work of a serial killer.”
The rail-thin waiter in the stiff white apron arrived, a mug of steaming coffee in each hand. He set them on the table. “There you go, Chief,” the waiter said. His voice was reedy, like a woodwind instrument.
“Hey, Tyler. How’s your momma?”
“Oh, she’s feeling better. Much better. Still achy though.” Almost apologetically, Tyler swung his gaze in my direction. “She’s had both knees replaced,” he informed me, wincing as he said it, as if he shared his mother’s pain.
“Give her my regards,” Lovering said, not looking at him. In fact, he was still staring at me. I couldn’t read his expression.
“Oh, absolutely. Can I get either of you anything else? A menu?”
“We’re good,” Lovering said. He began to systematically tear open sugar packets and, one by one, dump them into his coffee.
The waiter executed an uncomfortable little bow and then departed.
I met Lovering’s rail-spike gaze. “I take it my wife didn’t bring this up with you when she was out here.”
“No, son, she did not.”
“Maybe it sounds crazy to you, but Allison had always been something of a… a victim’s advocate, I guess you’d say.” I was thinking of our third date again, Allison, and how you’d clobbered that asshole with the novelty oar in the parking lot of the Docksider.
Lovering folded his arms over his chest and leaned back in his seat. I hadn’t expected him to be so standoffish at the news. Maybe he thought I was crazy.
I cleared my throat and said, “Look, this folder is filled with information on all six murders, including Holly’s. And it’s not just stuff printed off the internet. Allison had been traveling to these places and talking to people about these murders. She did the same thing out here; you weren’t the only person she spoke to here in Furnace after Holly was killed. My wife, she was invested in this. She was making connections that I don’t think anyone else was making. And I didn’t even know she was doing it until after she died and I found this stuff.”
“What connections?” Lovering asked.
“Well, the girls, they all look the same.” I described them while simultaneously reaching for the file so I could show him the photographs, but his big hand fell atop the folder, suggesting that he rather I not open it here. I withdrew my hand, feeling somewhat admonished. I said, “Holly’s was the most recent murder Allison had been looking at. That’s why I came here to speak to you about this. I’m no police detective, but I can go through the files with you, help decipher my wife’s handwriting. Whatever you need.”
Lovering’s nostrils flared as he exhaled across the table. “Just how many people did your wife talk to out here?”
“Well, uh… let me see…” I reached for the accordion folder once more, waiting to see if he’d stop me again. He didn’t. I took out the mini-file on Holly Renfrow’s murder, flipped through the pages of photocopied news stories, internet printouts, and handwritten notes, saying the names as I came across them in your nearly illegible handwriting. “Rita Renfrow, who I assume is a relative of the… uh, of Holly.”
“She’s the mother,” said Lovering, flatly.
“Right. Okay. Her. Then my wife, it looks like she made several phone calls to the medical examiner’s office, but I can’t say if anyone had ever called her back or spoken to her. There’s not much information on that. Then there are the two fishermen who found Holly’s body in the river—uh, who are—”
“Geoff Rupp and Richie Dolan,” Lovering provided.
I glanced up at him. “Right. Right.” Peering back down at your notes, I said, “Then there’s a list of names here, labeled as friends of Holly’s, but it’s unclear whether or not Allison actually spoke with any of them. Also, there’s a woman named Denise Lenchantin. According to my wife’s notes, she was an eyewitness who might have had contact with Holly Renfrow’s killer the same night Holly was murdered?” I looked up at Lovering, who was gazing out the window. I could see the tiny red scab beside his left earlobe where he’d cut himself shaving, delicate as an eyelash.
“That must be the waitress,” he said.
“She had contact with Holly’s killer?”
“No, she didn’t. There’s no connection there,” Lovering said. “This Lenchantin woman, she’s over in Hampshire County. She came forward once news of Holly’s murder hit the media. Claimed someone tried to abduct her the same night Holly was killed. Something about a flat tire and a guy pulling up around eleven o’clock or so. But the distance is too far and the time is a bit too close to work out. Hampshire’s three counties over, and this Lenchantin woman, she lived just beyond Romney, if I recall, so we’re talking maybe like an hour and a half from here. The timeline is too tight.”
“Right, okay.” I looked back down at your notes. “And then there’s another guy on here, name of Dean Partridge. Is that right? Partridge? My wife’s handwriting is terrible. Not sure who—”
“Oh, for shit’s sake,” Lovering said, pushing himself back from the table. He raked a set of blunt fingers along the ridges of his brow.
“What?” I said. “You know him?”
“He’s one of my goddamn officers.”
“Oh.” Trying to backpedal, I said, “Or maybe I’ve got it wrong. Like I said, my wife’s handwriting is for shit, really…”
Lovering swatted at the air between us. “Forget it,” he said. “Dean’s my wife’s nephew. It’s not like I’m gonna give him the boot, for Christ’s sake, much as I’d like to.” He slurped his coffee then set the cup down on its saucer with a clink. Grimaced. “What do you say we grab a couple to-go cups for these coffees and take a drive, huh? This ain’t really the place to jaw about this.”
2
“Holly Renfrow was with some friends at the Exxon station over the bridge the night she disappeared,” Lovering said as we drove back down Main Street in his police car. “You probably passed the place on your way into town. Her friends said she split around ten that night after she got into an argument with one of them.”
“What’s a bunch of teenagers doing hanging out at a gas station at night?”
“There’s some of those old arcade games in the back,” Lovering said. “They were drinking, too. Fella owns the place, he don’t pay much attention as long as they’re feeding quarters into the machines.”
“This looks like a pretty small town. Did you know the Renfrows? Holly?”
“I did,” he said, then corrected: “I do. Went to school with Rita, the mother. This whole thing, it hit us pretty hard. We’ve all had a time of it.” He cleared his throat and said, “Anyway, there’s not much to do around here if you’re a teenager unless you’ve got your driver’s license, which Holly had, although her mother was using the car that night. Holly got a ride out there with one of her girlfriends but split on foot after the argument.”
“What was the argument about?”
“Some shit about a boy. What else? Her friend had been seeing some guy she liked. You can imagine.”
We were headed now in the direction I had come when I’d entered town, approaching the stone bridge. Directly ahead, the landscape opened up and hinted at a great height below which the Potomac River churned and frothed and carried unnamable things far downriver. The police car thumped onto the bridge and coasted along until we were at the midway point—the zenith of th
e arch—and overlooking the wide reach of the river.
“How long was she missing before her body was found?”
“Two days,” said Lovering. “The ME determined she’d been in the river for about that long.”
“How exactly was she killed? The newspaper articles weren’t very detailed.”
“She drowned.”
“How does murder factor into a drowning?”
Lovering slowed the cruiser to a stop. The sky above the river was a cold gunmetal color, the water below like chiseled slate. Lovering looked at me, those gemlike eyes gleaming. “She had her hands bound behind her back before she was thrown in the river to drown. When those two fishermen found her, her hands were still bound at the wrists behind her back with electrical wire.”
“Oh. Jesus Christ, I didn’t know that.”
“I’m sure your wife learned about it, talking to all those people like she did. It ain’t in her notes?” I couldn’t tell if he was being facetious or not.
“No, it wasn’t in her notes.” My voice was small.
Lovering geared the cruiser into Park then got out of the car. I set the stack of papers on the passenger seat and then followed him out.
It was like standing at the top of a skyscraper, the wind was so fierce up here. Lovering had parked in a narrow breakdown lane. There was a sidewalk here, which we both stepped up on to, and a concrete railing that looked down on the rapids below. I peered over the edge and saw a number of large black rocks cresting above the whitecaps, sleek as obsidian. It was maybe seventy feet to the water from this spot on the bridge.
“Locals call this the suicide bridge, even though we haven’t had a jumper since the eighties,” Lovering said. Then he pointed due west along the rocky bank. “Body was discovered about a mile up that way, along the west bank of the river. Snarled up in the branches of a big deadfall that was partially submerged.” He ground some sidewalk grit under one boot. “Her cell phone was found right about here. Screen was smashed. It either happened by accident when she came into contact with her killer, or it was busted on purpose by the guy. People know they can be traced by phones, so the guy probably wanted it gone.”
“Right,” I said. I couldn’t say much more, for fear I might cause myself to be sick.
Lovering gestured to the open sky above our heads next. “Notice there’re no lights out here? No lampposts on the bridge? It’s dark as hell on this thing once the sun goes down. This is probably where he approached her.”
I glanced down the length of the bridge, from one side to the other. The whole span was maybe a quarter-mile at most. But the height was dizzying; vertigo wrapped its chilly arms around my throat.
Lovering gazed over the railing and down at the turbulent waters below. It was brief, but I caught it nonetheless—a distant look that clouded his otherwise sharp blue eyes. “My guess is he got her in his car and took her someplace first. Maybe he intended to rape her, but the ME could find no evidence of sexual assault. Small favors, right?”
I couldn’t muster a word.
“He pushed her into the river somewhere farther along the bank somewhere, is my guess. Guy was probably thinking she’d drown and the body might coast all the way out to the Chesapeake and get lost for a while. Probably would have, too, had that tree not been there to catch her.”
“How do you know he took her someplace else? How do you know he didn’t just push her over the side of the bridge right here?”
Lovering jerked his square head toward the concrete railing. “Those big rocks down there? My guess is she would’ve gotten caught up on one of them, maybe would’ve landed on one if she’d gone over here. That she was found a mile west of here suggests he’d dumped her beyond the rocks where the river flows deeper. Was probably hoping she’d never be found.”
I considered it all. After a moment to catch my breath, I said, “How come you’re telling me all this when you wouldn’t tell my wife?”
“Because this was still an open investigation when your wife came out here.”
Surprised, I said, “Wait, what—you’ve solved the case? You caught the guy?”
“In a manner of speaking.” Hercel Lovering looked at me, gave me a humorless smile. The tip of his sharp nose was red and there was now a prominent vein, shaped like a wishbone, at the center of his forehead.
“I don’t get it. What’s that mean?” I said.
“Das Hillyard,” he said. “Local sex offender. Was convicted for diddling a couple of underage boys when he was working over in Preston, spent time on Misery Mountain.”
“What’s Misery Mountain?”
“Hazelton Penitentiary. Anyway, he’s on the security footage from the Exxon station that night. Maybe twenty minutes before Holly leaves on foot, he shows up, buys some lottery tickets and a can of chewing tobacco. He’s there on videotape eyeballing Holly and her friends. So naturally, I grilled him over and over on the Renfrow murder and he started doing the tap dance. He broke down in tears a few times. Those kiddie-diddlers, they can really turn on the waterworks when they want to. It’s second nature to ’em, like how a squid will shoot out black ink.”
“He confessed?”
“Nope. He just had the good sense to drop dead.”
“What do you mean?”
“Back in January, we get a call from Hillyard’s mother. It’s her house; Hillyard was staying with her. She’s upset, says her son’s dead. Me and Dean—loose-lips Dean, remember?—we go up to Hillyard’s place out on Farmington Road and find him stiff as a board in his La-Z-Boy recliner. Looked like he’d been dead for days, rigor mortis locking up his knees. Old mother’s blind, so Lord knows how long he’d been dead in that house before she started to smell him. His feet were about six inches off the floor. He had a syringe poking out of his arm.”
“Holy shit,” I said.
Lovering rubbed the back of his neck with one hand. “Heroin overdose. Looked like a rabid dog, all that dried foamy shit around his face. He’d pissed himself, too, and the whole place stank to high heaven.”
“But he didn’t confess,” I reiterated.
“We didn’t need a confession,” Lovering said. “We found Holly Renfrow’s sweatshirt inside his house.”
I opened my mouth, but all that escaped it was a hiss of air.
“Not as neat and clean as I would have liked, but there it is, Mr. Decker. Case closed.”
“So what do we do now?” I asked.
“Do now with what?”
“The other murders,” I said. “You need to contact the other police departments and let them know that this Hillyard guy might have been responsible for killing those other girls.”
“Das Hillyard wasn’t no serial killer, Mr. Decker.”
“But if you’d just look at my wife’s research—”
“You got any proof other than these girls look somewhat alike?”
“No, I don’t, but it’s a start. Like I said, I’m not a detective. You guys can investigate. That’s what you do.”
“Let me ask you, Mr. Decker,” Lovering said, planting his hands on his hips. “What timeframe are you looking at for these other murders?”
“The earliest was in 2006.”
“Well there you go,” Lovering said. “Hillyard went to prison in 2005 for what he done to those boys over in Preston. He served thirteen years and was released at the end of last summer, a few months before he got the itch and killed Holly. Whatever connection you think you see here—whatever your wife thought she saw—it just ain’t there.”
“Well shit,” I said. Something akin to a laugh juddered up my throat, but there was no humor in it. I turned away from Hercel Lovering, planting both hands on the cold concrete railing of the bridge. On the horizon, a chevron of birds carved a passage across the gunmetal sky.
“You want to know what I think, Mr. Decker?”
“Yes, of course.”
“I think you’re looking for something that isn’t there, son. You’re missing your wife and trying
to hold on to something.”
“Maybe you’re right,” I said, not facing him. The wind was drawing water from my eyes and I didn’t want this guy looking at me like that.
Lovering said nothing for a while. We listened to the wind rattle the trees along the shore. After a time, he said, “It’s been solved, Mr. Decker. If your wife was trying to get to the bottom of these murders, she can at least rest easy on this one.”
“Thank you,” I said, but kept my gaze averted. Seventy feet below, the rushing of the water sounded like television static. Suddenly, it was all I could hear.
3
There is a word in Japanese, ukiyo, which has no English equivalent. In Japanese, it means “the floating world,” and in essence it refers to living in the here-and-now with complete and utter detachment from the rest of the surrounding universe. This was how our cruelly brief marriage had been for me: a dome beneath which we were fully immersed in each other and the rest of the world be damned. Everything we did—every dream and idea and epiphany we ever had—we shared with each other. This was my understanding, anyway. I had thought you’d felt the same way. I would have bet on it. But as we’d made love and shared meals and curled up on the couch together to watch movies and spent fall afternoons tossing a Frisbee at Quiet Waters Park—all those things beneath and within and surrounded by our dome—a part of you, Allison, was elsewhere. How else can I say it? A part of you was navigating unfamiliar interstates, probably with a revolver in the glove compartment of the Sube, a small spiral-bound notebook tucked inside your coat pocket or wedged inside your purse. A part of you crept into the hills of West Virginia or traversed the muddy riverbanks of southern Maryland, hunting for the stink of death in the air. A part of you had collected and studied photographs of victims who had met untimely, brutal deaths, young women for whose murders no perpetrators had ever been apprehended. There you were, having lukewarm coffee at some dreary hour of the morning with a police deputy of some rural backwater, discussing how long it would take to strangulate someone with your bare hands and whether or not submergence in a river would wash semen off a corpse. While I cooked dinner and bought concert tickets online and mowed the postage stamp of our backyard, you were surreptitiously examining maps of West Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, so many remote places, marking circles where victims had gone missing and etching crosses where, presumably, their bodies had ultimately been found. A chronicler of death—who would have thought? Certainly not me. Certainly not the man to whom you’d been married for five years. That when we held hands in the park or in a movie theater, some clandestine part of your mind was occupied with thoughts of pale, water-bloated corpses or frail bodies left to decompose in the woods. That when we kissed, a part of your mind was consumed with the amount of pressure it took to crush a windpipe. That maybe your occasional bouts of insomnia had not been a result of too much coffee or stress from work but the repercussion of a mind frantic with the details of some young girl’s final moments on this planet—of silt and grit beneath purpled fingernails, dead leaves snared in moss-slickened hair, eyes recessed into sunken jack-o’-lantern sockets. You kept all this stuff in our house; you kept all this stuff in your mind. I could decipher the progression of your thoughts—laid out for me in your frenetic, slapdash handwriting on sheets of yellow legal paper and charted by the dates of countless newspaper articles, some more than ten years old—as you pursued some dark and unfathomable obsession further and further into the shadows.