The Girls She Left Behind

by Sarah Graves

  The office phone’s light was still stubbornly not blinking. Tara Wylie, where the hell are you? Lizzie wondered. And why do I have such a bad feeling about you?

  “Sure,” Dylan replied skeptically, as down the block a small movement caught Lizzie’s eye.

  It was the woman who’d passed by her window minutes earlier, ducking fast back into a doorway. And that was the same as it had been in Boston: the quick glance, the indecisive lingering.

  “You go on,” she told Dylan. The topcoat he wore, she was acutely aware, was the same one she used to bury her face in each time they parted.

  “Go on, now,” she repeated, “somebody wants to talk to me.”

  Starting back toward her office, she couldn’t help feeling a familiar quiver of anticipation. Here in Bearkill she might not see quite the same high level of criminal romping and stomping as she’d been accustomed to back in the city. She might not need her weapon as often up here, either, and even the standard tan deputy sheriff’s uniform was mostly optional, much to her relief.

  But she was still a cop. “Lizzie,” Dylan called after her. “Lookin’ good.”

  “Yeah, sure.” She caught her own reflection in the window: short, spiky black hair, smoky eye makeup expertly applied, red lipstick. It was not at all a style that was common around here—switchblade-slim, emphatically female, and with a tight, nervy way of moving that suggested she would deck you, no problem, if you gave her half an excuse.

  She carried herself, as she was perfectly well aware, as if begging for a fight. But that suited her, too. Because let’s face it, most of the time, I am.

  Inside, she switched the lights back on, noting that Dylan had left his black-and-white-striped scarf on the coat tree and that there were still no calls, then turned to the visitor who’d followed her silently in.

  Late twenties or early thirties, five foot four and a hundred pounds or so, short dark hair, dark eyes, and pale complexion. Both hands were visible, Lizzie noted automatically, even though it was already clear there was nothing threatening about the woman. Her face was a little too thin and her nose too bony, with high, sharp cheekbones and a too-wide mouth. But her plainness was the kind that came almost all the way around to beauty again: simple, serene.

  Only right now she looked grim. Like she’s getting ready to face the music. Like she’s done something bad.

  Which didn’t seem likely, either: that face, those eyes, as if she’d walked through a fiery hell recently and come out still kicking on the other side.

  “Have a seat,” said Lizzie, pointing to the chair Dylan had used and thinking that despite her bleak expression, this woman hadn’t done anything so very terrible, probably.

  Still, you never knew.

  The phone console on her desk lit up—PEG WYLIE, said the caller ID—just as Dylan came back in, looking for his scarf.

  —

  TRANSCRIBED AUDIO OF INTERVIEW W/SUBJECT JANE CRIMMINS, CONDUCTED BY MAINE STATE POLICE DET. DYLAN HUDSON FOR AROOSTOOK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEP. ELIZABETH SNOW, BEARKILL, MAINE.

  CRIMMINS: Wait a minute, you’re recording this?

  HUDSON: The recording is only so nobody can claim later that either one of us said or did anything we really didn’t, okay?

  CRIMMINS: Yeah, all right. Can I have my ID back? (pause) Okay. Okay, so I guess I can do this. I mean, I have all the memories so I can…Enough for all of us, the other ones plus myself.

  HUDSON: Other ones? I don’t think I—

  CRIMMINS: Well, it’s, it’s like the only way it could be, isn’t it? Because she thinks it’s better to be with him, even though I was the one who…

  HUDSON: (pause) Ah, can you be a little clearer on that for me, though? Because this is about Tara Wylie, what we’re concerned with here. So I’m not seeing…

  CRIMMINS: I’ve never told anyone. I’m only staying here now to…to, ah, tell you about it, because…(inaudible)

  HUDSON: Jane? You all right?

  CRIMMINS: (weeping)…because I’m tired, okay? So tired, and I thought I could just let you take care of it all. Just, I don’t know, give up. But it’s hard.

  HUDSON: Uh-huh. But this was all your idea, though, wasn’t it? You came in here to the office on your own to…(inaudible, continued weeping)

  HUDSON: But do you want to take a quick break? Get a coffee, or…

  CRIMMINS: (interrupts) Not because I…not because I think it’ll do any good.

  HUDSON: …or something to eat? Then we could sit down and—

  CRIMMINS: (agitated) Because why should anyone listen to me? Why should anyone care what I think about what he did? Oh, no, I’m just the—

  HUDSON: Jane? Seriously, you want to take a break now? Put yourself back together a little?

  CRIMMINS: (weeping) No. It just gets to me sometimes, that’s all. Because I never planned to tell anyone, ever. But now…

  HUDSON: Right. I get that this is difficult for you. But we could be talking about a young girl’s life, you know? A missing girl that we need to find, before…

  CRIMMINS: (angrily) Well, isn’t that just special. Wow, some really special little snowflake she must be, huh? The whole town’s out looking for her, I guess.

  HUDSON: (pause) Yeah, well, her name’s Tara Wylie. She’s fourteen, her mom’s worried about her. And like I said, we really appreciate…

  CRIMMINS: (inaudible)

  HUDSON: …if you have information. Now, we can do this in short sessions, we can do it however you like. If you’re up for it now, though, let’s try to…

  CRIMMINS: Sure. Talking about it, making it real, I don’t guess that’ll kill me, will it?

  HUDSON: Jane? (unidentifiable sound)

  HUDSON: (inaudible)

  CRIMMINS: (voice rising) Will it? Will it?

  TWO

  The rural roads around the northern Maine town of Bearkill all looked the same at night, dark narrow blacktop ribbons with no center line or streetlamps. Huge trees crowded up to the edge of the pavement, stiff and silent.

  Making her way in the Blazer along the barely familiar route, Lizzie at last found the place where Peg Wylie and her missing daughter, Tara, lived: a factory-built bungalow on a poured-concrete slab sitting on a bulldozed quarter acre way the hell out in the woods. Lizzie had already been there earlier that afternoon, and it looked even more lonely and remote now than it had in the gray winter daylight.

  At the end of the long gravel driveway curving between the trees, a DISH TV antenna perched at one end of the bungalow’s red-metal peaked roof and a propane tank hunkered under the bathroom window at the other, both illuminated by a pole-mounted yard light that shone bluish white onto the roughly graded bare earth between the driveway and the house.

  The yard lamp lit up the graveled dooryard. A snow shovel propped hopefully against the lamp pole was beginning to rust. Lizzie’s boots crunched on the gravel as her shadow lengthened alongside her, then fractured on the pressure-treated porch steps.

  “Peg?” The porch light came on, the door opened, and the missing girl’s mother appeared, looking haggard.

  “Thanks for coming,” Peg said, leading Lizzie in. “Coffee? Or a beer?”

  In the kitchen, a small TV with the sound muted flickered from atop the refrigerator. At the center of a round wooden table with two wooden chairs pulled up to it, a gray cat with a notch out of its ear sat on a sheet of newspaper, washing its face.

  “No, thanks.” The missing teen’s mother was a chunky woman in her early thirties, wearing jeans and a turquoise Bearkill High sweatshirt. Her short bleached-yellow hair was still damp from a recent shower, and her face was taut with worry.

  “What’s going on?” Lizzie asked, looking around. A heavy canvas jacket hung by the door, flanked by a yellow nylon vest whose back panel was crossed with Scotchlite tape.

  A Pathmaker radio stood in a charging base on the counter by the coffeemaker. Lined up under the coatrack were a pair of steel-toed boots, their cap soles heavily scuffed and the yellow co
rd laces threaded through their metal-grommeted eyelets frayed from use.

  “Nothing,” Peg replied dully, though her call twenty minutes ago had sounded frantic.

  In a shoe box on the counter in a nest of flannel, a striped kitten slept. Beside the box was a saucer that held an eyedropper and a tin marked MILK REPLACEMENT—FOR VETERINARY USE ONLY.

  Two cats, but the house smelled utterly clean and fresh, Lizzie noted. “Nothing new, anyway,” Peg amended. “I got scared, was all, just so scared, and I didn’t have anyone to—”

  She pulled out one of the chairs and sank heavily into it. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to be wasting your time.”

  Then don’t be, Lizzie thought. If she’d known this was only a social-support visit, she wouldn’t have left Dylan Hudson alone to deal with the woman who’d showed up unexpectedly in the office.

  She’d have handled it herself. And if you were really so worried, you’d have pushed for that Amber Alert, she thought at the woman slumped defeatedly at the kitchen table.

  Instead Peg had balked at the measure. It was as if she didn’t want any official publicity about Tara being missing, but why would that be?

  It didn’t add up. Yet there was no sense antagonizing the woman. “It’s okay,” she said. “Show me Tara’s room once more, why don’t you? Who knows, maybe I missed something.”

  Not that she really thought so. She’d seen enough missing persons’ rooms to know what needed looking at and what didn’t; the first time had been enough.

  But it had been a pain in the ass to find this place again in the dark. So she might as well make this second trip worthwhile, she thought as Peg led her down a hallway lined with unprimed wallboard, past a bathroom furnished with economy-grade fixtures and unfinished tile.

  “You doing this work yourself?” Lizzie asked.

  Because it occurred to her suddenly that even way out here in the boondocks, a handyman with the hots for the teenage daughter was a classic perp candidate.

  “Some. Tara’s been helping with a lot of it, actually, she’s good that way. And Pup Williams is working on it when he can, you know him?”

  “Yeah.” Pup was a Bearkill man, ninety years old and maybe ninety pounds soaking wet, whose high-quality work and low rates for carpentry were famous all over the county.

  Pup was harmless, though. And anyway, in the unlikely event of a struggle Tara could’ve taken him one-handed.

  The girl’s small bedroom and Peg’s even tinier one faced each other at the end of the hall. In both, the floor was unfinished OSB—oriented strand board was the cheaper version of plywood, Lizzie had learned back when Pup fixed a rotten floorboard at her own rented house. The pastel chenille bedside rugs lay directly on the rough surface.

  “It’s why I got the house so cheap,” Peg explained. “The guy who built it thought he could save money by doing the finish work himself.” She took a shuddery breath. “But he never got around to it, and now I do what I can, when I can.”

  In Tara’s room, colorful posters and banners camouflaged the wallboard tape. A twin bed with a pink quilted comforter and a basic bedside table occupied one corner. On the plain pine desk, with a cork-covered bulletin board above and behind it, stood a laptop computer, a lamp, and a stack of schoolbooks. There was a white-painted dresser topped by a pink dresser scarf, and a closet with a hollow-core wooden sliding door.

  Lizzie sat on the bed, trying again to absorb some sense of the girl. She’d checked under the mattress and in the drawers and closets on her earlier visit, but turned up no clue to the young teen’s whereabouts; if Tara had secrets, she kept them well.

  On a small wooden easel in the corner stood a sketch pad and a box of colored pencils. Tara had left a drawing of a crow half finished, a few swift, dark lines that suggested a broad wing, a sharp beak, and two bright eyes glinting greedily.

  The lines were bold, without any wasted strokes, as if from inside the girl a vibrant talent had already begun emerging. Maybe it would get a chance to flourish further, Lizzie thought.

  But maybe it wouldn’t. Something about this whole situation just didn’t compute. Cutting school, for instance. It was a small thing. But the girl had never done it before and she was, as her records indicated, a good student.

  “I checked her Facebook again,” said Peg, waving at the laptop. “But the only recent activity I can see is from her own friends, trying to locate her.”

  “You’ve asked them in person? And talked to their parents?” Lizzie got up.

  Peg nodded discouragedly. “No one’s heard from her. So they say, anyway, and they’re getting scared, too, so I believe them.”

  “And you still can’t think of anyone who might’ve wanted to hurt Tara? Or maybe just to worry you to death, by taking her? An ex of yours, maybe? Someone like that?”

  Peg shook her head. “Her father is dead. He died when she was not much more than a baby. And there isn’t anyone else. I’m not,” she added wryly, “in the market for any romance.”

  Something in the woman’s voice made Lizzie turn from the bulletin board with its turquoise-and-gold Bearkill High banner, pair of frilly paper-strip cheerleading pom-poms hung from a push pin, and collection of Justin Bieber fan photographs.

  “You’re sure? You know for certain her dad is deceased?”

  “Sure? Of course I am.” Peg crossed her arms over her chest a little defensively. “He’s dead and I’m glad about it, if you want to know the truth.”

  That’s what I want, all right. So why, suddenly, did Lizzie have such a strong feeling that she wasn’t getting it?

  On the dresser stood a snapshot of Tara’s boyfriend, Aaron DeWilde. Heavily tattooed and grinning smugly, the kid had a neck like a tree trunk and the overbuilt physique that came from a diet of supplements and protein shakes, plus a lifting routine that was not part of any standard high school phys-ed curriculum.

  “Still gone, too?” Lizzie waved at the photo.

  Peg sighed. “Yeah, and his folks’re still ragging on me about it. I told them Tara’s fourteen, Aaron’s eighteen, so who do you think was doing the leading in this little adventure they’re on? If,” she added uncertainly, “that is what’s happening.”

  “Uh-huh.” Lizzie picked up a school photo of Tara: long, dark hair, bright brown eyes, and a pretty smile. The girl looked like a thousand others, her face not yet fully formed and her eyes brimming with the youthful certainty that nothing bad could happen to her. Oh, kiddo, I hope you’re right, Lizzie thought.

  But more and more she just didn’t think so. The girl always called, but this time she hadn’t. She never skipped school, but this time she had. And when people didn’t do what they always had done, Lizzie knew, too often it was because they couldn’t.

  Back in the kitchen the kitten cried pitifully. Peg mixed some formula from the can with a little water and drew it into the eyedropper, then began feeding the hungry infant.

  “Tara’s rescue,” Peg explained of the kitten lapping eagerly at the dropper. “She found it last week by the side of the road, all alone. Someone dumped the poor thing there, I guess.”

  “So now it’s your job?” Typical teenager, Lizzie thought, she brings a pet home and then lets her mother take care of it.

  But Peg only glanced down fondly at the tiny creature. “Oh, I don’t mind. Cute little thing, and Tara…well, she’s just a kid, you know?” Her voice broke. “She’s just a little kid.”

  “Yeah. You’re right.” Lizzie glanced around once more. The place was not aggressively spotless, but it was clean, well kept, and orderly. It looked like a place where two ordinary people, a mother and daughter, lived decently and without incident.

  Until now. “So Peg, why’d you really call me out here in the dark tonight? On the phone you sounded like you were about to lose it completely,” she added, “but now when I get here—”

  She stopped, struck by a pang of sympathy. Peg was all alone out here on the edge of the woods, miles from anyone and worrying her
self sick, comforting herself with an orphaned kitten.

  Because her own baby was missing.

  “You’re sure there aren’t any of her friends or acquaintances you want to talk to me about?” Lizzie asked.

  “Or even yours?” she added. “Someone you work with, someone you might not feel quite right about? Because if there is, I can check people out quietly, you know.”

  Sometimes it was a boss at work or maybe someone a parent owed money to, eyeing a young girl in what ended up being way too friendly a fashion.

  “And they wouldn’t have to know,” Lizzie said. “You realize that, right? I know how to check them out thoroughly without anyone knowing about it.”

  But Peg shook her head firmly. “No. Really, I just…”

  She paused, chewed her lip. Then: “Honestly, I just panicked. Thinking about the possibilities…you know, if Tara had any idea at all what kind of torture I go through whenever she does this, I don’t think she would ever…”

  But in that belief Peg was just wrong, of course. Kids didn’t have mercy. Back in Boston just before Lizzie had departed for Bearkill, for instance, a thirteen-year-old girl had stage-managed her own kidnapping, emailed a lot of very convincing-looking faked photos of herself in distress, and nearly made off with a ransom of ten thousand dollars in cash, all because a coveted pair of Miley Cyrus concert tickets had not been provided swiftly enough.

  But her growing unease over young Tara Wylie’s situation, even though she didn’t yet know why, said that wasn’t the case here.

  “Right,” she told Peg. “Tara’s a good kid, I get that. About her dad, though…” She let the sentence trail off suggestively.

  “I told you before, he’s dead, all right?” Peg retorted. But as she said this her shoulders slumped under the sweatshirt. Then:

  “Okay, look, the truth is I don’t know who Tara’s father was. I was really young, it was just the one night, I never saw him again after that and I never wanted to. But…see, that’s not what I told Tara.”

  Which explained the odd vibe earlier when Peg talked about Tara’s father, maybe. Or maybe not.