Little Girls

by Ronald Malfi

  In 1988, Hal Albrecht was laid off from his job at the steel mill. He put on a good face and even fantasized about picking his family up and moving them out of Dundalk and away from Sparrows Point for good. He said he’d like to go to Florida, which is where some older friends of his had relocated after retirement. But Hal hadn’t retired—he’d been laid off in the wake of big changes in the industry. He needed to find another job, just as most of his coworkers needed to find other jobs after facing similar layoffs. Hal did not have a college education—he’d just barely made it through high school—and the job search in 1989, despite economic prosperity for much of the country at that time, was demoralizing. Hillary Albrecht began taking in “homework”—mending dresses, suits, slacks for local neighbors who felt sorry for them—as did their eldest daughter, Caroline. Hal got a job working nights at a 7-Eleven while going on job interviews during the day. On weekends, and because he knew some of the dockhands from his days at the mill, he picked up some hours at the shipyards. It was untaxed pay, under the table as they say, and although it helped put food on their table and while Hal was genuinely grateful, he didn’t know how long he could keep up such a sleep-deprived schedule. As it turned out, he maintained that impossible schedule up until the day his daughter disappeared.

  On April 28, 1989, around eleven-thirty in the morning, Hillary Albrecht handed a brown paper bag to her daughter Tanya. It was Hal’s lunch, which he had forgotten to take with him to the shipyard that morning—a corned beef sandwich, a plastic cup of apple sauce, a wedge of apple streusel wrapped in cellophane that Hillary had baked the night before, and a can of Diet Coke. It was not the first time Tanya—or one of the other girls—had to run lunch to their father. The man had become a roving zombie and he had begun to forget a good many things, Hillary knew, and the thought was not without compassion.

  “You know the way to go,” Hillary said to Tanya as the girl pulled on her sneakers at the kitchen table, her father’s brown bag lunch balanced in the crook of her lap.

  “Yes,” Tanya said, exasperated. They had gone through this a hundred times before. “Be like Dorothy. I remember.”

  To “be like Dorothy” meant that once she crossed Kingland Terrace and stepped foot into the industrial park, she was to locate the cement path that had been spray-painted bright yellow—the “yellow brick road”—until she reached the bank of terminals down at the port. To veer off the yellow brick road could be dangerous—there were too many things out there that eagerly awaiting the nimble fingers and tasty toes of a curious young girl.

  Hillary watched her daughter lace her sneakers while she cleaned the countertop. Later, when describing to police what her daughter had been wearing, she told them of the sneakers. They were fake Chuck Taylor’s—the Albrechts could not afford real ones—which the kids endearingly referred to behind their parents’ backs as “Fucks.” Before leaving, Tanya offered her mother a sweet smile. Hillary knew her daughter might never be what society considered a “real beauty”—June was the prettiest of the three girls, at least in the traditional sense—but Tanya had a brilliance inside of her that sometimes managed to shine out, usually when you least expected it. Her smile held that brilliance, radiating it across the tiny kitchenette in the Dundalk row house. And although she had no idea why, Hillary forced herself to take a mental snapshot of that smile, impressing it upon her brain the way prehistoric bugs impressed themselves into sediment which, over millennia, fossilized to permanence. It was the last time Hillary Albrecht would see that smile.

  The last person on record to see Tanya Albrecht alive was a man named Chester Karski. Karski lived by himself in a one-bedroom flat on the corner of Kingland Terrace and Highpoint Boulevard. His front windows faced Highpoint, which was a crumbling tributary of a roadway through which patches of blond grass sprouted in the summer. His single bedroom window looked out upon the more nicely paved blacktop of Kingland Terrace and the plateau of parking lots of Sparrows Point beyond. This section of Kingland ran beneath an overpass—one of the extensions off the Key Bridge—and even in broad daylight, Karski could see people moving around beneath the shade of the overpass, no doubt up to no good. On this particular afternoon, Karski had been sweeping grit off his front porch when little Tanya Albrecht came walking up the street. She was carrying a brown paper satchel and wore a pleasing little smile on her face. From where he stood on his porch, Karski could hear the girl humming happily to herself while she kicked the occasional pebble out of the road.

  “Hi there, Dorothy!” he called to her. “On your way to see the great and powerful Oz?” Chester Karski was in on the yellow brick road game; he had walked it a few times in his life, too, back before he retired from the shipyards.

  “Yes, Mr. Karski!” Tanya called back. “My dad forgot his lunch again!”

  “You tell him I said hello.”

  “I will.”

  “And you be careful, darling, crossing that road.”

  “I will!” She raised a hand high and waved it back and forth over her head.

  Karski returned the gesture. When the girl reached the intersection of Highpoint and Kingland, Karski paused in his sweeping to make sure the girl made it across safely. He did not realize he’d been holding his breath until she reached the opposite side of Kingland. Yet it wasn’t the road Karski worried about. As Tanya crossed beneath the shade of the overpass, Karski went back inside his house, down the hall, and into the bedroom. He peeled the plastic shade away from the window and peered out. Tanya was a speck on the roadway, her shadow stretched out of shape and trailing behind her on the pavement. Karski averted his eyes, peering now into the dark depths beneath the overpass. It was just about noon, still a bit early for the hoodlums to take up residence beneath the overpass, but that didn’t mean some strung-out crackhead hadn’t spent the night down there. She shouldn’t walk through there on her own. Not at her age. She’s a little bit of a thing. On this morning, however, Chester Karski could see no one. By all appearances, it seemed the Albrecht girl was alone. It gave Karski much relief.

  Tanya never made it to the bank of terminals down by the port. In fact, there was no evidence Tanya ever crossed onto the factory grounds. Had the overpass not been there, and had Chester Karski kept watching out his bedroom window, he might have seen what had happened to the girl. But the overpass was there, and by the time Tanya Albrecht had encountered her abductor, Charles Karski was making himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.

  After an hour had passed without Tanya’s return, Hillary went out onto the porch and peered down Kingland Terrace toward the intersection of Kingland and Highpoint. She saw no sign of her daughter, although this did not worry her. It wasn’t unusual for one of the girls to spend the lunch hour with their father before heading home. But when another hour ticked by, Hillary began to worry. Again, she went out onto the porch and looked toward the intersection. Again, there was no sign of Tanya. This was when panic set in. Even if the girl had decided to share her father’s lunch, she should have been back by now.

  Hillary called Merle Daniels, who rode dispatch in the shipyard’s front office. Yeah, Hal was still on the docks. No, he hadn’t seen Tanya come through. Sure, he supposed Tanya could have gotten through without him noticing—“It ain’t like I’m Saint Peter keeping guard over the Pearly Gates, Mrs. A,” he said—and promised he’d check with Hal and call her right back.

  When the phone rang five minutes later, it wasn’t Merle Daniels, but Hal himself. “No, I worked through lunch and never saw her,” he said. “What time did she leave the house?”

  Hillary told him.

  “Maybe she cut a detour over to the Barrows’ place,” Hal suggested, though his own voice did not sound very hopeful. Tanya was friends with Jennifer and Anne Barrow.

  “Maybe,” Hillary said, twisting the phone cord around her index finger. The silence that followed this comment hung between both of them like the aftermath of some tremendous explosion. “I think—”

&n
bsp; “Call the Barrows,” Hal said. “If she ain’t there, let me know, and I’ll come home.”

  Tanya wasn’t at the Barrows’ house. Gloria Barrow answered the phone and advised that she hadn’t seen Tanya all morning, and that her own two girls were up in their bedroom playing Chutes and Ladders. Hillary thanked Gloria, hung up the phone, and once again found her talking to Merle Daniels in the dispatch office. This time, even Merle sounded unnerved. “I’m sure she’s fine, Mrs. A,” he promised her, though Hillary thought she sensed a different truth in his voice.

  Hal arrived home ten minutes later. By this time, the two other Albrecht daughters were standing with their mother on the porch while, in the kitchen, the two Albrecht boys ate late lunches of tuna fish sandwiches and chocolate milk. Hal drove around the neighborhood in his Ford pickup, cruising down every dead-end street and alleyway. He must have crossed over Kingland Terrace five or six times. Once he reached the old railroad tracks, it felt like his stomach was full of live snakes. He didn’t want to head home; he thought heading home would be akin to accepting this horrible reality, and he didn’t want to accept it. Yet he knew the police would have to be called. Had it been one of his older daughters, he might have neglected to call the cops, choosing to wait for his daughter’s return in a folding chair on the front porch, a Camel smoldering between his lips, a switch from the birch tree out back in his hands. Hell, June and Caroline missed their curfew three nights out of the week on average, and couldn’t be counted on to show up for dinner without rolling through some tall tale about why they were late. Tanya, on the other hand, was never late. She respected her curfews—she respected her parents—and she was not apt to get caught up along the way like her sisters. Which was why Hal Albrecht had a very bad feeling when he ultimately turned the pickup truck around and headed back toward Highpoint Boulevard.

  His bad feeling only increased when, halfway down Montclair Street, he saw a crumpled brown paper bag on the side of the road. Hal pulled over, got out of the truck, and picked up the bag. He opened it. Had it not been for the block of apple streusel wrapped in cellophane that Hillary had baked the night before, he might not have broken into a full-fledged panic.

  The cops arrived at the Albrecht house at approximately 3:45 P.M. Hillary gave the officers a description of the clothes Tanya had been wearing while Caroline hunted for some recent photos of the girl. The officers took a lot of notes then radioed in for assistance. Caroline turned over a few school photos of Tanya to the officers. Since this was a time before AMBER Alerts, the best the officers could do was issue a BOLO through dispatch with the girl’s descriptors. When a second patrol car showed up, rack lights flashing, the officers took to the streets. Hal got back into his pickup truck, along with Tom Murray and Will Williams, and resumed his own search. A few of the other neighbors began walking through the neighborhood, which was not a particularly good neighborhood to walk through after the sun went down. Two more officers went door-to-door, asking residents if they had seen Tanya Albrecht that afternoon. The officers only got one confirmed sighting, from Chester Karski. In the days that followed, Karski would be the closest thing the county police had to a suspect in the disappearance. Karski knew they were suspicious of him, but he also knew that he had done nothing wrong. If it took subjecting himself to the cops’ redundant questioning in order to put them back on the right track and find Tanya Albrecht, so be it. He was interrogated—interviewed, the police detectives called it, always a friendly smile on their face—three times. The third time, Karski brought his rabbi with him, a wizened relic in a black tunic who spoke with a heavy Polish accent. Throughout the interview, the rabbi said nothing. Karski was amiable enough, answering all of their questions . . . or at least the ones he was able to answer. Yes, he had seen the Albrecht girl earlier that day. Yes, he had spoken to her. Yes, she had spoken back. No, the Albrecht girl had never been in his home. Yes, the police were more than welcome to search his one-bedroom flat. No, they wouldn’t even need a warrant—he would give them permission. When the interview was over, Karski left without a word, feeling the worse for wear. His rabbi followed him out, saying, “Shalom” to the detectives as he went.

  Karski’s house was searched, but no evidence was uncovered. He was officially dropped as a suspect . . . which meant the police no longer had a suspect. At one point, the FBI was notified, but details of what they accomplished—if anything—were vague at best. The only other piece of evidence ever uncovered in the case was one of Tanya Albrecht’s imitation Chuck Taylor’s, lying in a muddy ditch on the side of Kingland Terrance, only a few yards from the overpass. There were no tire tracks in the dirt, no burnt rubber on the pavement, and no additional signs of a struggle. Briefly, the neighborhood hummed with speculation that the Albrecht girl had possibly known her abductor. More locals were questioned by police, but these were all longshots that proved fruitless. In 1993, the Albrecht family relocated to Baltimore after Hal got a job with Domino Sugar. The new tenants that moved into their Highpoint Boulevard row home agreed to keep a laminated sign on their front door. It read:

  Tanya baby we moved to a new house in baltmore.

  We didnt never give up lookin for you. We always love you.

  You come find your way home you come to the new house

  We got your old bed and all your toys here waiting for you

  Tanya baby.

  We love you!

  The Albrechts’ new address was printed below this note.

  By all accounts, the new tenants left the little laminated sign on the front door until they were evicted in 1998.

  Chapter 27

  It was Detective Freeling who told Laurie Genarro this information. Of course, he hadn’t been one of the detectives to work the case—in 1989, Freeling hadn’t even been on the force yet—but he was familiar with it, and brought with him the original case file. Inside the file were several witness reports, along with the school photos of Tanya Albrecht that had been provided to the officers that night by her older sister Caroline. Laurie asked to see the photos, which Detective Freeling handed over with hesitation. The girl looked fragile, hopeless. For some reason, Laurie thought she also looked familiar. She thought of the skeletonized hand poking out from the tarp back in the godless, industrial mausoleum of garage 58, and shivered.

  It was closing in on midnight. Laurie, Ted, and Detective Freeling sat around the kitchen table while three cups of coffee sat untouched and cooling in front of them. Susan had already gone to bed by the time Laurie had come back home, and the girl had slept through the detective’s assertive pounding on the front door. Laurie had waited to call the police until she arrived back home, her mind incapable of putting all the pieces together due to the strength of her disbelief until she was back in the house. Now, the house seemed preternaturally quiet. Laurie wished someone would speak again, but at the same time, she did not want to hear anything else Detective Freeling might have to tell her.

  “Of course,” the detective said after a while, “we won’t be one hundred percent sure until her dental records are examined. But the arm—the one she had broken in two places when she fell out of the tree at age nine—still shows signs of the fractures. The body is badly decomposed, but the size of the remains looks to be about the right age. And, of course, there was the other sneaker.”

  The other imitation Converse sneaker had been uncovered about an hour ago, as a search team went through the rest of the garage. It left little doubt.

  “Will the family be notified?” Laurie asked.

  “We’re tracking them down at the moment. It looks like Hal, the father, died a couple of years ago. Mesothelioma or something, I think. Last known address was some place out in Woodlawn. The kids would all be grown and moved on by now.”

  “So who actually owns that garage unit?” Ted asked.

  “Well,” Detective Freeling said, “that’s where it gets mucky. Company called Bartwell owns the land, including the shipyards, but leases the buildings—including those
garages—to some Russian corporation, who has been working out of there since 2008 or so.”

  “Russian?” Ted said.

  Detective Freeling shrugged. “It’s not unusual. Hell, back in oh-six, George W wanted to sell off the whole goddamn Port of Baltimore to Dubai, for Christ’s sake. It was big news around here.” He sipped some of the lukewarm coffee.

  “Aren’t there any records to show who owned it back then?” Laurie asked. “Back in 1989 when Tanya Albrecht disappeared?”

  Detective Freeling’s lips narrowed and his eyebrows arched. He looked passively over the paperwork from the Albrecht girl’s case file that was spread out across the table. “I wouldn’t get your hopes up about that.”

  “It was his,” she said flatly. “My father’s.”

  She remembered the photo in her back pocket and handed it over to Detective Freeling now. The detective looked at it closely, flipped it around to glance at the back, then set the photograph on the table.

  “That was with my father’s stuff,” she said. She pointed to the door with the 58 painted on it. “That’s it right there.”

  “It could have gone through a dozen different hands since then,” Ted offered, but even he didn’t sound convinced.