The 9th Girl

by Tami Hoag

Nikki looked at Kyle as he came into the kitchen, her brain shifting gears awkwardly. He was in his coat and putting his watch cap on.

  “No,” she said. “Of course not. It’s late.”

  He gave her that look of incredulity perfected by teenagers everywhere. “But, Mo-om—”

  “Where do you think you have to go all of a sudden?”

  His cheeks flushed. He wanted to look away from her, but he didn’t. “I can’t get Brittany to answer my text messages. I’ve sent her a million of them. She hasn’t answered. I’m worried about her.”

  “And you’re going to track her down?” Nikki said. “That’s called stalking. No. Absolutely not.”

  “You don’t understand!” he said. “She said she would text me and she hasn’t.”

  “Kyle—”

  “She said she would text me when she got back, and she should have got back by now. But she hasn’t texted and she isn’t answering. I even called her,” he said, as if that was the surest sign of desperation. “She’s out alone and there’s some crazy serial killer running around loose! She shouldn’t have gone by herself. I was supposed to go with her.”

  “Go where?”

  “To see Gray’s mom.”

  49

  “We can’t let her go, Michael!”

  “Oh my God, Julia. What have you done?”

  “She had Penny’s computer. They were friends. She knows everything!”

  The voices brought Brittany’s consciousness rising to the surface like a leaf floating up from the depths of black water. The pain in her face and her head was so terrible, she couldn’t even feel the rest of her body. Blood pooled in her mouth. She could feel chips of broken teeth against her tongue. She wanted to cry out, but she couldn’t move, couldn’t open her mouth, couldn’t seem to form sound.

  “Oh my God.” The man’s voice was strained, frightened. “What are we going to do? Look what you’ve done, Julia!”

  “But I had to. Don’t you see that? If Penny told her. If she wrote about it on her computer . . . I had to, Michael. To save us.”

  “Us,” the man said, incredulous. “Oh my God.”

  “You have to help me,” she said. She sounded almost childish.

  “We can’t do this, Julia,” he said. “I helped you with Penny. I had to. I know you didn’t mean for that to happen. That was— That was a—a tragedy. She was your daughter. She pushed you to it. You snapped. I understand that. I understand why. But this? This is murder.”

  “And it’s your fault,” Julia said bitterly. “You know it’s your fault. You slept with my daughter!”

  “One time! It happened one time!” he said. “I made a mistake. I told her it could never happen again.”

  “She would have ruined you! She would have ruined us! You thought you could buy her off with a car? She would have held that over our heads for the rest of our lives!”

  Brittany tried to move—just her fingertips, just her toes. She lay on the floor. She opened her eyes to the narrowest of slits. She could see tile, a piece of a rug, the tip of a shoe.

  As she slowly became aware of her body, she became aware of lying on something, something pressing into her stomach. It vibrated against her. Her phone.

  She lay with one arm outstretched, the other half beneath her. If she could get to the phone . . .

  “Penny was an accident,” Michael Warner said. “You acted in the heat of the moment. This is murder, Julia! I can’t help you kill an innocent girl!”

  “Then what are we supposed to do, Michael? She’ll ruin our lives! We can’t let her go now!”

  There was a long silence. He moved, walked away. Brittany could hear him pacing.

  She tried to lift her belly from the floor, to slip her hand into the pouch on her sweater.

  “If we take her to the lake house,” Dr. Warner said quietly. “We can put her in Penny’s car . . . and run the car into the lake. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’m saying this! This is insane!”

  “We don’t have a choice!” Julia whined.

  “No,” he murmured, “we don’t. God help us.”

  50

  “We were going to go together,” Kyle said. “To give Mrs. Gray our condolences, you know, tell her we’re sorry about what happened to Gray. Then you asked me not to,” he said, looking at his mother. “But I should have gone with her anyway. I could have just walked her over there. She had some stuff of Gray’s. She wanted to take it back. Clothes and stuff Gray left at her house.”

  “Clothes and what stuff?” Sam Kovac asked.

  Kyle shrugged. “I don’t know. Makeup. Her laptop. Stuff.”

  Kovac swore under his breath and rubbed his hands over his face. “Brittany has had Gray’s computer all this time?”

  “I guess.”

  Kovac looked at Kyle’s mom. “That first night we talked to her, Brittany told us Gray had stayed a couple of days and then left. We just assumed she took her stuff with her. Her mother said she carried her computer with her everywhere. If she left Brittany’s house, why wouldn’t she take her stuff with her? We assumed the laptop was with her, in her car or that whoever killed her took it. It never occurred to me—”

  “It doesn’t matter now,” Nikki said.

  She was punching a number into her cell phone. Her hands were trembling. Watching her, Kyle felt more nervous and more nervous. She pressed the phone to her ear, avoiding eye contact with him and turning toward Sam.

  “She’s not answering,” she said.

  Kovac got off his stool.

  “What’s wrong?” Kyle asked. “Who’s not answering? Britt?”

  “Sam and I will drive over and make sure Brittany gets home.”

  “I’ll come with you,” Kyle said.

  “No. You stay here with R.J.”

  “He can stay with Marysue. I want to come—”

  “I said no,” his mother said in a tone of voice that meant he shouldn’t ask again.

  Kyle followed them into the hall. Sam was shrugging into his coat.

  “But, Mom—”

  “Stay here with you brother,” she said, grabbing her coat from the hall closet. “I’ll call you.”

  51

  She should have been dead. After everything he had put her through, she should have died hours before. He had done things to her she could never have imagined, would never have wanted to know one human being could be capable of doing to another. She had tried to resist the overwhelming desire to break down mentally but had learned resistance was rewarded only with pain. The pain had been like nothing in her most terrible nightmares. It had surpassed adjectives and gone into a realm of blinding white light and high-pitched sound. There were no words. She had ceased to fight and had found that in seemingly giving up her life, she was able to keep her life.

  Where there is life there is hope.

  She couldn’t remember where she had heard that. Somewhere long ago. Childhood.

  Where there is life there is hope.

  Those words had played through her head over and over. They played through her head now as she lay there on the floor of the van. Where there is life there is hope.

  She was more alive than he knew. In giving up, she had reserved strength. She had stopped him short of rendering her completely incapacitated. She could still move. She could still think.

  The cold floor beneath her was numbing the pain. The blanket thrown over her offered a cocoon, a place to be invisible. Her wrists were only loosely bound together in front of her with a red ribbon, her elbows bent, her hands tucked beneath her chin as if in prayer.

  Prayer. She had prayed and prayed and prayed.

  No one had come to save her. And yet, she should have been dead, but she wasn’t.

  He was singing in the front seat, happy, elated, proud.

  She was his masterpiece.

  She was alive.

  She moved her hands and felt the ribbon loosen.

  Where there is life there is hope. Where there is life there is hope. . . .


  The van hit a pothole, jolting her world, rocking her violently side to side. And next to her the collection of tools he had brought bounced and rattled in their open tote.

  Where there is life there is hope. . . .

  • • •

  FITZ WAS EUPHORIC. High as a frigging kite. He didn’t even bother to curse this wretched pockmarked stretch of road that was going to ruin his wheel alignment by the time they arrived at their destination. It didn’t matter. Nothing could spoil his mood. He turned the radio up and sang along.

  He had chosen his perfect spot , the perfect stage for his show. Fucking genius, that’s what it was. Every major news outlet in the country would be flocking to Minneapolis to cover the story. He would be the subject of a Dateline NBC special.

  He had chosen the Loring Park sculpture garden for the setting of what would be his most famous tableau. Amid the huge and whimsical works of art he would present his masterpiece, wrapped in a beautiful bow no less.

  He smiled and laughed and glanced in his rearview mirror to check on her.

  His smile died. His laughter caught in his throat.

  His eyes met the eyes of a zombie.

  52

  Michael Warner picked Brittany up off the floor like she was a rolled-up rug or a corpse already. Better if he thought she was, if he thought she was dead he wouldn’t have to kill her.

  The pain in her head was like an explosion. Every muscle in her body tightened against it. She pressed her hand hard against her stomach, holding her phone tight against her. If it wasn’t broken, if she could see to use it, she could call 911 from the trunk of the car.

  She had never imagined being so terrified in her life. She had never imagined what that felt like, what that did to the body. She was trembling all over. She had wet herself. Nausea choked her like a ball in her throat. Dizziness swam her head in circles.

  Michael Warner swore as he carried her. Julia Gray kept telling him to hurry. Who might know the girl had come here? she said. Someone could come looking for her. They had to hurry. They had to get rid of her quickly. They would say they had been out for the evening, that they had never seen her. She must have been snatched off the street.

  Dr. Warner swung sideways and Brittany’s feet hit the frame of the door as he carried her into the garage. Julia Gray stood beside the car. Hurry, hurry, hurry! He dumped Brittany like a bag of trash into the trunk of the car, threw a blanket over her, and shut the lid.

  They were going to kill her. These people who seemed so ordinary. Parents of kids she went to school with. Michael Warner was a doctor. Brittany had come to this house to give Julia Gray her sympathies. It was all so crazy, she wanted to think it wasn’t real. She must have been dreaming, having a nightmare. And yet it was all too real.

  Her heart was racing wildly. She could hardly see the illuminated screen of her phone through her tears. Her hands were shaking so badly, she couldn’t work the keyboard. Fingers on her left hand were broken and useless; only her thumb was functional. Over and over she tried to get the numbers keyboard to come up. Nine-one-one. That was all she needed, but she couldn’t do it.

  The car dipped as someone got into it and started the engine.

  They were going to take her someplace, put her in Gray’s car, and run the car into a lake.

  Brittany managed to hit the phone icon. Contacts came up. The letters were a blur. She tried to hit a name. Whoever answered could call 911. If she could speak. If they could understand her. She touched the screen again and again, but nothing happened.

  Nausea swept over her like a crashing wave, and she had to turn her head and vomit. The pain in her broken jaw was like being hit with a hammer over and over. She cried and retched and choked on her own blood and vomit. Her ribs hurt so badly from being kicked, she could hardly draw breath. Panic followed the nausea, another wave to drown her. She had to fight to keep from dropping the phone. Her hands were shaking so violently she thought she might fling the thing away.

  She was too young to die.

  She touched the screen again and a list came up. She couldn’t read it.

  Her fingers shuddered against the glass.

  Oh, please, God, please, God, please!

  She could hear the garage door opening. The car lurched backward.

  She could hear a phone somewhere ringing at the other end of her desperation.

  Please answer, please answer, someone, anyone.

  The voice that answered was familiar.

  “Britt! Where are you?”

  Kyle.

  She managed the only words she could.

  “Help me.”

  53

  The words of Kyle’s text message seemed to leap off the screen of Nikki’s phone: MOM HURRY!!!

  Kovac drove. Pedal to the metal, careening around corners, running red lights. They were in his own personal vehicle. They had no dash light. They had no siren. They had no radio.

  Nikki used her cell phone to call for backup and braced a hand against the dashboard as they hurtled through the streets. For once, she didn’t complain about Kovac’s driving. She egged him on.

  It wasn’t that far to Julia Gray’s house as the crow flew. Driving was another matter. One-way streets, stoplights, pedestrians, cars double parked. It would have been faster to fucking run. A child was in danger.

  “If she’s hurt that girl, I’m gonna fucking shoot her!” she said.

  “I’ll get rid of the body,” Kovac growled as they made a hard left onto Julia Gray’s street.

  They were going too fast. The car skidded sideways on the rutted, icy pavement and the rear passenger quarter panel pounded hard into the front end of a BMW SUV parked at the curb. It was like hitting a tank.

  “Fuck!” Kovac shouted as they came to a hard stop.

  Headlights were coming at them from the end of the street.

  He gunned the engine and spun his wheels, the cars locked together where wheel met wheel.

  Nikki scrambled out the door and ran toward the oncoming vehicle.

  Weapon in hand, Kovac planted himself in the middle of the street beside her.

  Both of them were shouting at the tops of their lungs.

  “Police! Police! Stop the fucking car!”

  The car kept coming.

  • • •

  KYLE HAD NEVER run so hard or so fast in his life.

  He stayed in the street when he could, avoiding snow banks, cut through yards when he had to, jumped fences when he had no choice.

  The cold air burned his throat and lungs. He was freezing cold and sweating all at once. His legs felt huge and heavy with the buildup of lactic acid, but he kept running. He kept running and thinking of Brittany.

  He was never going to forgive himself if something bad happened to her. He never should have let her go to Gray’s house alone. He didn’t know what could have happened to her there. All she had been able to say over the phone was Help me, and that was muddled and garbled. If not for her name showing up on the screen, he never would known the caller was her.

  What could have happened to her? What was happening to her right that minute as he was running? He couldn’t even really know where she was, he realized. He only knew where she had been. If she had been taken, she could be anywhere. In his imagination he saw her getting grabbed off the street by the serial killer they called Doc Holiday.

  How crazy would that be? She would be kidnapped by the maniac who had killed Gray, the maniac his mom was trying to catch. And she would be in the clutches of this madman because Kyle hadn’t gone with her to and give her condolences to Gray’s mother.

  It wasn’t that far to Gray’s house. A mile, maybe. The longest mile he had ever run. If he got there too late, he was never going to forgive himself.

  • • •

  THE DRIVER JERKED the wheel at the last second, trying to shoot between them and the tangle of crashed cars on the side of the street. The Lexus slid sideways on the icy ruts created by the herd of news vans that had clogged
the street just the day before.

  Metal crashed on metal as Julia Gray’s car plowed into Kovac’s.

  The car alarms were screaming. A horn was blaring. Nikki ran toward the mangle, gun outstretched in front of her.

  The passenger’s door opened and Julia Gray flung herself from the vehicle looking dazed.

  Nikki shouted at her: “Up against the car! Get up against the car, you fucking bitch!”

  The woman looked at her with wide, blank eyes. “What’s happening?”

  “I’ll tell you what’s happening,” Nikki barked. She grabbed Julia Gray by one shoulder and spun her around, shoving her roughly up against the Lexus. “You’re under arrest. Where’s the girl? Where’s Brittany? Answer me!”

  “I don’t know! I don’t know what you’re talking about!” she cried.

  Michael Warner was sobbing as Kovac hauled him out from behind the wheel of the car. “She’s in the trunk! Oh my God! I’m so sorry! I’m so sorry!”

  “Not as sorry as I’d make you if I could,” Kovac said. He dragged the doctor by his coat collar away from the car, shouting, “Get down on the ground!”

  Sirens were wailing as radio cars sped toward them.

  A man came running from one of the houses shouting, “I’m a doctor! Is anyone hurt?”

  Nikki had hold of Julia Gray by a handful of blond hair. She leaned in close and spoke directly into her ear. “If you killed that girl, I will personally see you in hell.”

  • • •

  IT LOOKED LIKE a scene from a Die Hard movie, Kyle thought as he turned onto Gray’s block—a chaos of flashing strobe lights and uniformed officers, sirens and voices, and cars clogging the street at odd angles. Crashed cars and an ambulance.

  “Britt!” he shouted, wide-eyed with terror. “Brittany!”

  A uniformed cop tried to stop him from running into the middle of the madness. Kyle feinted right, then ducked left and ran past him.

  “Kyle!” his mother called. She caught him by one arm and hung on.