The 9th Girl

by Tami Hoag

  Brittany looked around the room. The seats were filled with students and teachers. One section had been reserved for parents. Some people were listening. Some weren’t. Some were on their phones, texting, playing Angry Birds or Words with Friends.

  She glanced at the people sitting in her row—Emily, Jessie, Christina—and wondered what they would do. If I was missing, would they care about me?

  The answer sat like a stone in the pit of her stomach.

  Sonya Porter got up next and talked about social media and social consciousness and the obligation young people—and particularly young women—should have to one another.

  Brittany watched her, taking in the avant-garde style, the piercings and the tattoos juxtaposed against the sleek haircut and the retro-chic outfit. She listened to Sonya Porter speak with passion and conviction. Gray might have turned out like this, she thought. She might have channeled her anger into passion and honed her self-expression into style. Gray might have grown up to be a Sonya Porter, but she would never have that chance.

  “I want to finish by reading you something,” Sonya Porter said. She adjusted her cat-eye glasses and began.

  “Fight

  Struggle

  Clash

  Square peg, round hole

  Force to conform

  Blend in. Fall in line

  Stifle

  Smother

  Hate each other

  You’re red

  I’m blue

  I don’t want to be you

  You don’t want to look at me.

  Stop

  Shift. Now. Change.

  Look

  See

  Everybody be free

  Open hearts

  Open minds

  See what’s real

  Listen

  See me

  Unique

  Special

  Unlike another

  Be who you are

  Live

  Acceptance.”

  When she finished, she looked up, her gaze scanning from one side of the silent room to the other.

  “That poem was written by Penny Gray,” she said. “This is who your school lost. This is who the world lost. Whether you liked her or not, approved of her or didn’t, she had a unique voice, and a unique talent, and a unique view of the world. Just like each one of you. You should be angry that someone took her away.”

  Jessie Cook leaned into Christina, rolled her eyes, and whispered, “I wish someone would take her away.”

  The two of them giggled under their breath.

  Brittany gave them both a look of irritation. She wanted to get up and leave, move to another seat in another part of the theater. But she could imagine everyone looking at her, and she could imagine what would be said about her by Jessie and Christina and the rest of them.

  Be who you are.

  If she only had the courage. If only she could be more like Gray—the girl nobody liked.

  The counselors spoke. People asked questions. Business cards were passed out. Phone numbers and e-mail addresses were posted on the projector screen.

  Brittany counted the minutes until they were told they could leave. When that moment came, she popped out of her seat and started up the aisle, not even looking to see if Christina and company were behind her. Let them think that she wasn’t feeling well, that her headache was making her sick, that she had to go to the bathroom. She just wanted out and to be away from them.

  She hurried to her locker, got her coat, grabbed her purse. It was lunchtime. They were allowed to leave the campus. Lots of kids did to go to the nearby restaurants and coffee shops. Brittany had no interest in lunch. As much as her mother thought it was the last thing she should do, she just wanted to go home and be alone and not have to pretend everything was all right.

  She didn’t care that it was a cold, long walk. In fact, she thought it was all the better to feel cold, to feel the pain of numbing fingertips and tense shoulders hunched against the wind. Head down, she put one foot in front of the other and just kept going, away from school, across the parking lot, heading for the street.

  “Britt! Brittany!”

  She didn’t want to look up or acknowledge the person calling her. She didn’t want to be recognized. Of course, it did her no good to ignore him. If she knew one thing about Kyle, it was that he didn’t give up.

  He caught up to her and fell in step beside her. She glanced at him. His cheeks were red from the cold, but he’d had sense enough to put on a gray watch cap with the letters UFC embroidered in red. He wore an old letterman’s jacket from some school in St. Paul over a gray hoodie. It irritated her that she thought he was cute.

  “What are you doing here, Kyle?” she asked, annoyed. “I thought you were suspended.”

  “I am,” he said. “But I got the text about the assembly. I wanted to come.”

  “Your mom is investigating Gray’s murder. That must be weird.”

  “Yeah. What part of any of this isn’t weird? Someone we knew was murdered. I can’t get my head around that, can you?”

  “No.”

  “Where are all your good friends?” he asked sarcastically.

  “Don’t give me a hard time,” she said, annoyed with him for asking, more annoyed with herself for suddenly feeling like crying. She had no “good friends.” She was stupid for ever thinking otherwise.

  “Want to see what Jessie was tweeting during the assembly?”

  “No.”

  “You get that it’s their fault, don’t you?” he asked, then corrected himself. “Our fault. You got her to go there. I didn’t stop her from leaving.”

  Brittany stopped and faced him. “Yes. I get it, Kyle. It’s all I think about. Does that make you happy? I’m sick about it. I wish I’d never moved here. But what do you want me to do?”

  He looked back toward the school. She had left. Literally. She had walked away from Christina and the rest of them. What more could he call her on?

  “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I don’t know either. I feel like we should do something. Go see her mom or something. Tell her we’re sorry.”

  From the corner of her eye, Brittany saw the car approaching—Aaron Fogelman’s midnight-blue Lexus, cruising slowly toward them. The window on the passenger’s side ran down as the car came alongside them at the curb.

  “Hey, Britt,” Christina said. “Need a ride?”

  It wasn’t a friendly offer. There was accusation in Christina’s expression and her voice. It wasn’t hard to imagine what she thought—that Brittany had ditched them to meet up with Kyle.

  Brittany hesitated. She didn’t want a ride. She didn’t want to be with those people another minute. And yet, there was a part of her that was afraid to say no. She hated herself for it, and she hated Kyle for putting her in this position.

  Aaron put the car in park, got out, and looked at them across the roof. “Jesus, Hatcher, don’t you ever take a hint? Leave her alone. She doesn’t want to be with a loser like you.”

  “Fuck you,” Kyle said. “I’m looking at the loser. You got your boyfriends in the car with you?”

  “You’re so funny. You’re such a funny little shit,” Aaron said without a hint of humor. He came around the hood of the car, moving with a menacing swagger. His leather coat hung open, emphasizing the width of his shoulders and chest. “You’re living in quite a fantasy, faggot, drawing pictures like that one you put on Twitter.”

  “Yeah, I thought you’d like that,” Kyle said.

  Butterflies swarmed in Brittany’s stomach. “Kyle,” she said under her breath.

  Aaron looked at her as he came forward. “Brittany, get in the car.”

  Kyle stood his ground with his chin up. “You’ll have to come through me.”

  “I’m gonna like kicking your ass again,” Aaron said with a nasty smile.

  “You can’t do it again if you never did it in the first place,” Kyle shot back.

  Brittany shrieked and jumped back as Aaron charged tow
ard Kyle, his right arm pulled back, bare hand balled into a fist.

  Much shorter, Kyle easily ducked the punch and threw one of his own. Aaron’s momentum carried him right into it, and his breath left him in a hard whooosh! as his solar plexus met Kyle’s fist. He dropped straight to his knees on the sidewalk and made a terrible alien sound as he tried to suck in a breath.

  Christina screamed, “Aaron!”

  One of the back doors of the Lexus opened and Eric Owen started to get out.

  Kyle took a defensive stance, hands raised, knees bent, his gaze going from Eric to Aaron, who was already pushing himself to his feet.

  “I’m gonna fucking kill you, Hatcher!” he said, his voice hoarse and thready.

  Before anything more could happen, a maroon sedan with a flashing light on the dash pulled to the curb behind Aaron’s car, and the big detective, Knutson, got out on the passenger’s side and came toward them, an authoritative figure in a leather trench coat and a porkpie hat. Kyle’s mother sat behind the wheel of the car but made no move to get out.

  “Is there a problem here?” Knutson asked.

  Kyle dropped his hands. “No, sir.”

  Aaron shook his head even as he pressed a hand across his stomach.

  The detective gave Aaron a cold look. “Then you’ll get back in your car and move along, won’t you, son? There’s no parking on this street.”

  Aaron cut Kyle a narrow-eyed, nasty look as he got back in his car. Christina shot Brittany the same look and ran up her window.

  Knutson looked at Kyle and Brittany as the Lexus pulled away. “You two kids look like you need a ride somewhere.” He hiked a thumb in the direction of the car. “Get in. Let’s go.”

  39

  Dana Nolan was the happiest, friendliest, most generous, optimistic, talented, well-adjusted, well-loved person in the Twin Cities. To say nothing of beautiful and kind to human beings and small animals.

  Kovac spoke to one after another of the young woman’s coworkers. No one had a bad word to say. No one had a story of a jealousy or an office rivalry. She had a sunny smile on the darkest day and never complained about anything, not even driving to work in the dead of winter at three in the morning.

  She had been working at the station for nine months, had come to Minneapolis from a small town in Indiana, had aspirations to be a host on the Today show someday. Her relationship with her college sweetheart had ended three months past, not strong enough to hold up long distance. The breakup had been amicable, according to Dana. She lived alone—not counting her cat—because of her odd schedule.

  She had many male admirers, but friends only, no one special at the moment. To the best knowledge of her many friends at work, there were no angry exes, no disgruntled would-be lovers.

  Like many women in broadcasting, she had her share of weirdos who called, wrote, e-mailed the station wanting to convey their affections, but none of them had threatened anything violent. Station management was more than happy to compile a list of names, addresses, and phone numbers for further investigation.

  She had voiced no concerns in the last few days about anyone bothering her or following her. She had been wrapped up in her extra assignment, reporting on the disappearance of Penelope Gray—an assignment she had lobbied hard for. She had been one of the first newscasters to report the story, and she saw the opportunity the extra exposure might provide her. According to Roxanne Volkman—the woman who had taken over that morning’s broadcast when Dana Nolan had failed to show up for work—Dana had expressed a small sense of guilt that reporting on a tragedy might, in the end, be the break that furthered her career.

  The irony hung in the air like a foul odor: that her big break had probably attracted the thing that could end her career in tragedy.

  Kovac took it all in with a familiar sense of déjà vu. Tragedy, loss, fear, grief, disbelief, anger. The cycle repeated itself crime after crime. The emotional undercurrent was essentially the same. Only the faces changed.

  He learned as much as he could from the people Dana Nolan worked with. He looked over her messy work cubicle, finding nothing of real interest. Snapshots of family and friends. Assorted trinkets and odd keepsakes. The usual.

  When he didn’t think his head could hold any more detail, he took himself outside into the cold surrealist landscape of a television station under the scrutiny of other television stations. Several competition news vans sat across the street, recording footage of their brethren’s misfortune.

  Kovac dug a cigarette out of a coat pocket and lit it, taking a deep drag and watching the bitter wind take the smoke on his exhale. Hell of a world, he thought. News people reporting on news people missing because they were covering the news so people sitting in the safety of their homes could dig up some sympathy while secretly feeling glad their lives were so mundane they would never make it on the news themselves.

  In need of food, he got in the car and drove away from the station. There was bound to be something nearby—fast food, a coffee shop, a convenience store.

  A Holiday station.

  He saw the sign as he cruised under the freeway. A left instead of a right at the bottom of the exit Dana Nolan would have taken every day to get to work.

  The gas pumps and the store were busy with lunchtime customers. Kovac went inside and scoped the place out, looking for the security cameras. There were two clerks working the registers—a tall, bone-thin man who looked like his dour face was carved from ebony, and a short, doughy-looking kid with a shaved head and earrings that looked like miniature walrus tusks had been driven through his earlobes.

  Kovac showed them Dana Nolan’s picture.

  The kid with the earrings didn’t recognize her. The other man nodded.

  “Oh, yes,” he said slowly, his somber expression never changing. “The lovely lady.”

  “Has she been in here recently?”

  “Nearly every day,” he said. His speech was heavily accented, some African dialect, but carefully enunciated. “Very early. Not today.”

  “In the last few days have you noticed anyone with her, bothering her, talking to her when she was in here?”

  “She is very friendly,” he said. “People know her. They speak to her always. She always has a smile.”

  Kovac thanked him and stepped away from the counter to let him tend to his customers. He couldn’t imagine the place had too much traffic at three in the morning. Then again, there were enough people up at that hour of the day to warrant every TV station in town having an early news program.

  God forbid we let any hour of the day go by undocumented, unrecorded, or without scrutiny, he thought. Then again, if not for that conceit and paranoia, there would be no surveillance tapes.

  Needing fuel, Kovac got himself a hot dog off the carousel and loaded it up with condiments, ready to settle in front of another bad TV in another cramped back office to look for another predator.

  • • •

  “WE’RE CONCERNED, Mrs. Gray, that Penny might have been victimized by a sexual predator at some point over the past year or so,” Nikki said carefully.

  It was important to be diplomatic in the wording of these things, though she felt as if she had already used up her quota of diplomacy for the day. Dealing with Principal Rodgers had taken a good share of it. Dealing with Kyle’s situation had taken the rest.

  She wasn’t angry. She understood his desire to attend the assembly. In fact, she was proud of him for going. God knew, most of the kids who had been in attendance would have cheerfully gone off and done something else with that time. She felt sad and frustrated that so few of them seemed to care about what had happened to their schoolmate in any way other than how what had happened might directly affect them.

  She was frustrated with Kyle’s ongoing problems with the Fogelman kid. She didn’t know what to do about it. She didn’t know that there was anything she could do about it. And for the time being, she couldn’t allow herself to be distracted by it.

  Now she sat in the
living room of the woman who had punched her hard enough that she still had half a headache from it, trying to scrape together the last of her diplomacy reserves. The Christmas tree had dried to a fire hazard, no doubt neglected for the past few days. The festive tree skirt was littered with needles. Julia Gray gripped the arms of the chair she sat in, as if she were afraid it might eject her at any moment.

  They had arrived just minutes after calling. A surprise appearance had seemed the way to go, rather than requesting Julia Gray come downtown and allowing her time to get her guard up. As cruel as that seemed, they needed a genuine response from her, whether it was shock or outrage or whatever the emotion that came instantly.

  “No,” she said emphatically, shaking her head. “That can’t be. I don’t believe that.”

  Nikki and Elwood exchanged a glance. They sat side by side on the sofa. Elwood had set his laptop on the coffee table. He lifted the screen and turned it on.

  “She didn’t give you any indication of something being wrong?” Liska asked.

  “Something was always wrong,” Julia said impatiently. “She was always unhappy. She’s been like that her entire life, always angry and difficult. Even as a baby. She cried all the time. Then came the temper tantrums. She never got along with other children. She was too shy or too sensitive. It was always something. I don’t know why, but it was nothing like that. No one ever abused her.”

  “When she was in therapy with him, Dr. Warner never gave you any indication—”

  “No.” She put her hands in her lap and turned her engagement ring around and around on her finger.

  “And you said she never really spoke to the therapist she saw after him.”

  “It was a complete waste of money,” she said. “Don’t you think if she had been abused she would have told one of them? She didn’t.”

  Elwood turned the computer on the table so she could see it. “We found an online video account where your daughter posted videos of herself reciting some of her poetry. This poem in particular caught our attention. She posted this in April.”