The Girls She Left Behind

by Sarah Graves

  She turned to me again. “And then you came along. Like,” she added, and her sarcasm nearly killed me, “an answered prayer.”

  A sound outside sent her rushing to the living-room window, which looked out over the sidewalk. “What were you thinking?” she spat furiously at me again as she peeked between the drapes.

  I looked, too. There was a man down there, and after a moment I recognized him. It was the reporter I’d given the interview to when Cam first got released from the hospital, the guy from the independent newspaper. He must have recognized me at the courthouse. Now he was pressing the bell, wanting to be buzzed in.

  “He’ll go away,” I said helplessly; her answering glance was scathing. She snapped the curtains shut.

  “I’m sorry,” I said miserably again. Then: “But how will you get anywhere?” I’d never even seen her call a cab.

  “I bought a car. What, you thought you were the only one who could do it?”

  I must’ve stared. She had money; I’d never made her pay for anything, and a victims’ fund sent her a check each month. But—

  “And I got a driver’s license,” she added matter-of-factly. “What did you think, that I just sat around doing nothing while you were at work all day?”

  Actually, it’s what I had thought. I’d dosed her well enough every morning to keep her muddled and unambitious for hours.

  Or so I’d believed. Her bag stood by the door. By now it was afternoon, the winter sun already beginning to fall toward the horizon. In a few hours it would be dark. Eager to go, she peeked out the window again and sighed in annoyance.

  “This is ridiculous. He won’t give up, why should he? And it’s your fault. I don’t care how sick I was, I should’ve known better than to get involved with a fool like you.”

  Her words felt like punches I couldn’t fight back against, her gaze like an ice pick stabbing me. But even then I wanted to help her somehow.

  I could have told her how to get out of the building unseen. From the basement there was a service exit to an alley behind the buildings, over to the next street.

  But she never gave me the chance. “But what am I afraid of, anyway? He can’t hurt me. I can just walk right out past him,” she said angrily, and turned sharply away from me.

  Fool, fool, I heard my own voice howling at me in my head. With the doomlike thudding of my heart pounding in my ears, I followed her down the hall.

  Halfway to the apartment door we’d set up a telephone table with a landline phone dating from the 1960s, with a pink plastic receiver on a metal base encased in matching pink plastic.

  A princess phone, it was called, and as she stomped past it she ripped the cord out and smashed the base against the wall so hard that broken parts flew everywhere.

  That’s when I knew how furious she must have been with me all along—how vengeful and full of hate. She’d loved that phone. Crouching, I picked what was left of the heavy base off the floor as she spun and faced me.

  “You just couldn’t stand it, could you?” she accused. “You wanted some of that oh-so-special victim-sympathy that the other girls had. So you toddled on down to the courtroom to get some.”

  Her lips twisted. “It wasn’t enough to be Saint Jane. Oh, I take care of her every need, I’m so goody-GOOD!” she mocked.

  “Cam, it wasn’t like that. I only wanted what was—”

  “Never mind.” She picked up her duffel bag. “I’m going to join Henry. Our daughter is already there, it’s why he picked the place. That’s where he must have sent her, don’t you see?”

  Her eyes glowed with the certainty of delusion. “He loves me. I was special to him. So now we’ll be a family, the three of us.”

  The three of us…her, Gemerle, and the baby, who by now would be a young teenager. “Cam, how can you believe that?”

  But of course she could. In a part of my heart, in fact, I understood her behavior completely: She’d started out young and feisty, convinced she’d get out of there.

  Convinced, probably, that I’d send help. Only I hadn’t, and over the years she’d been so broken and stripped of all hope that she’d believe anything just to avoid another session of his abuse.

  She’d even come to believe he loved her. Which I understood, too, I supposed; there’s only so much fear a person can live with. She’d eased hers in the only way she could.

  Now, though, when I’d done so much for her and we’d made plans…She spoke harshly again. “It wouldn’t have worked anyway, you know. That dumb scheme of yours.”

  She made an ugly face. “Oh, I’m going to get revenge,” she mocked. “Sure, only not after your stupid stunt today. He saw you in the courtroom, you know. And he recognized you, I could tell.

  “And he won’t trust you. Not that you’ll really try, you’re such a coward. And even if you do, you’ll never get near him. I’ll make sure you don’t.”

  Now I was the angry one. After all I’d done for her, that she should spit on me this way…as the immensity of her betrayal struck me and she reached for the door to go, I rose up behind her as smoothly and silently as I’d ever done anything.

  Then I hit her very hard on the back of her shaved head with the heavy base of the broken princess phone.

  “Unh,” she said as the weight of the thing struck something solid; bone, I supposed. Then her knees buckled and I caught her under her shoulders and lowered her the rest of the way down.

  Blood spread across the hardwood. She was still breathing, but no one bled that much and lived, I was certain.

  Which meant it was only a matter of time until I went to prison. Meanwhile Gemerle was free now, and he was the cause of all this, not me.

  It just wasn’t fair. But if no one ever found out what I’d done, then maybe things still could be put right.

  I dragged Cam back into her room and laid her on her bed. I put a thick mat of towels under her head to absorb the bleeding, and spread plastic trash bags to keep it from soaking the mattress. Then I cleaned the rest up as best I could, which was not very well; the blood had splashed everywhere.

  Until finally it was nearly midnight.

  From the bedroom, Cam took another loud, hitching breath, her death seeming to take forever. That was his fault, too, I thought resentfully. And what else might he do now that he was loose?

  To Cam’s teenage daughter, for instance, whose whereabouts I now believed I knew. Probably he’d want the girl with him as a way of controlling Cam, I thought; by threatening the girl, he could make the mother do anything. Though Cam had already proved her willingness to do anything for Gemerle.

  The more I thought about it, in fact, the more sure I became. Why else would he make such a remote place—Bearkill, Maine, had a current population of only eleven hundred according to its Wikipedia entry—the meeting spot?

  I slapped the laptop shut. That’s why he’d picked Bearkill, of course: because of the girl.

  Which meant that to trap him, all I had to do was get to her first.

  —

  “Contact lenses?” Dylan looked incredulous. “Come on, Lizzie, you mean you can really do that? Change your eye color well enough so that no one will realize it, just by…”

  “Yup.” Area 51’s Thursday-afternoon interior was empty except for the two of them, the bartender sitting at a table in the back doing a crossword puzzle.

  “Buy ’em online, get any kind you want,” she said. “Cat’s eyes, reptile eyes, black, red, yellow…”

  Peg’s were a shade called Blondie Blue.

  “Especially if you don’t need any vision correction,” Lizzie added.

  She finished her Coke and slid off the barstool; when she’d found him here Dylan had been about to order lunch, but the way she felt right now, any minute she’d be drinking her own.

  “Hey, don’t feel too bad,” Dylan said. “I’ve looked right at her, too, you know, and I didn’t tumble to it, either.”

  “I guess,” Lizzie replied. She glanced at the bottles lined up behind
the bar, reminded herself just how lousy a daytime drink would make her feel, and headed for the door.

  Outside, the air smelled like burning weeds. “Meanwhile I get that she’s lying,” Dylan went on as he followed her out. “I’m just not sure the reason is to hide that Tara is Gemerle’s kid.”

  In the Blazer he turned earnestly to Lizzie. “Who cares who her father is? I mean, if all we’re trying to do is get her back?”

  But to that Lizzie had no answer. They drove across town in silence, and when they got out to her house the air smelled like soapy bleach from all the chemicals the firefighters were dropping from helicopters, half a mile away.

  So far, though, no mandatory evacuations had been ordered, and until they were, Lizzie didn’t intend to join the people who were leaving ahead of any official announcement. Chevrier would tell her when it was time, she figured.

  Inside, she got out the eggs, bread, and butter. “So did you talk to the DeWildes last night?”

  Rascal had burst through the opened front door to gallop around the yard a few times; now he returned, pleased and panting.

  “Yeah,” said Dylan, smoothing the dog’s ears. “They’re…”

  He spread his hands helplessly to indicate how destroyed the bereaved parents were. “They’re in Bangor now, identifying him.”

  “Poor people.” She dropped bread into the toaster. “Anybody had any more sightings on Gemerle or Jane Crimmins?”

  Or whoever she was. Dylan shrugged. “They’re still working the motel room. No results back from any blood evidence yet. And some of my guys went to the burial site in the fire zone, to start processing that. But no, no sightings.”

  He put coffee on. “As for the DeWilde kid, Bangor’s got its own homicide cops. Them and Portland, the state stays out unless they want help, and then it’s my problem.”

  She sank into a chair. “You know, though, I’m still the one who knows all the ins and outs of all the different relationships.”

  The toast popped up. “Yeah. And it would make sense to have you coordinating all these investigations. But since when did this job ever make sense?” he said. Then: “Not to change the subject. I haven’t had the chance to mention this before now, but I figure you should know. I’m seeing someone.”

  “Good for you. That’s…good,” she finished idiotically. She fought to produce a smile. “So who? Somebody on the job?”

  “A woman from my apartment building. No cop connections.”

  “Oh.” Their eyes met across the table. She wondered what he saw in hers and got up hastily so he wouldn’t see too much.

  “Sorry to spring it on you,” he said. “I just didn’t want you to find out some other way, is all.”

  “That’s okay,” she managed lightly, pouring more coffee. “I guess I just thought it would be Emily Ektari if it was anyone.”

  His look turned speculative. “You think she might—”

  At which a laugh burst out of her; good old Dylan, he was a handsome dog and a charming one, too.

  But a dog nonetheless. “Don’t you ever quit sniffing around at every woman you see? Really, Dylan, you’re…”

  Before she could finish, though, his cell phone chirped and then his face changed in a way she recognized.

  “Right, I know where. Be there shortly,” he said.

  “We’ll be there,” she corrected, pausing only to put the food away where Rascal couldn’t get at it before following Dylan out.

  TEN

  “Come on, Lizzie, this isn’t fair. Don’t freeze me out,” Dylan added as he muscled the Crown Vic up the same bumpy gravel road that Lizzie and Peg had traveled earlier.

  Lizzie sighed. Behind them dust billowed in grayish clouds; ahead in the blasted landscape heaps of blackened sticks smoked sullenly where groves of saplings had been just hours earlier.

  He’d made no promises; not lately. Still, it was sinking in now: He was seeing someone else.

  “Dammit,” he said, trying again, “you know it’s not that I don’t love you. I do. But if it’s never gonna happen for us, then…”

  Which infuriated her all over again, because if he hadn’t lied to her back when they really were together, she wouldn’t be so hesitant to trust him again now, would she?

  He swung onto a patch of miraculously unburnt grass, then forward onto blackened earth when a volunteer firefighter in a yellow vest waved urgently at him.

  “Hot muffler’ll torch that grass up,” the kid explained as they got out. “Over here,” he added, leading them from the road.

  A dozen yards distant the soil was still loamy, the fire of hours earlier hopscotching whimsically to scorch some areas and leave others untouched—so far. They were nearly to the site where the hole with the box sitting next to it had been when the kid stopped.

  “Okay, so I have not touched him, and I haven’t told anyone else about him, either,” he said. The kid looked a little shaky but he was trying to be manful about the sight of the body.

  Lizzie crouched. In jeans and a gray sweatshirt, the deceased was a middle-aged white male with light hair and freckled skin now bluish in death.

  “Not what we were expecting. Or rather, who.” Lips pursed, Dylan stared down at the body as if it might tell him who had done this to it.

  “So,” she asked, “this junior firefighter here, he knew to call you because…?”

  Dylan kept staring. “Told ’em all earlier, a call to me gets ’em fifty bucks if it pans out. Think it’s Gemerle?”

  “Description’s right,” she allowed. “Think he’s been here all along?” She scanned the parched soil around the body.

  “Hard to say. Maybe. In the smoke and so on, he could’ve been missed until now.”

  She prodded at the victim’s neck, found the likely cause of death buried in the cool flesh:

  “Huh. Length of wire.” Straightening, she tipped the head sideways with the toe of her boot and spied the two cutoff wooden mop-handle sections tied to the wire, one at each end.

  “A homemade garrote,” she said, unwillingly impressed. “That takes strength. Or some excellent motivation,” she added.

  Dylan frowned down at something dark peeping from between the body’s clenched teeth. Producing a latex glove from his coat he pulled it on, then touched a finger to the victim’s lower lip.

  The thing in the victim’s mouth slid out on a gush of dark blood; Lizzie repressed a shudder. It was the victim’s tongue; in his agonized struggle he’d apparently bitten it off.

  “Mm-hmm,” Dylan said clinically. Only if you knew him well would you detect the jagged edge of something else in his voice: sorrow, maybe. Or pity.

  “Yes sir,” he went on, “this guy is the best argument for not escaping from your friendly neighborhood forensic institution that I personally have ever seen in my life.”

  He thought for a moment. “But what I still want to know is, why help him escape? And after that, why kill him?”

  But before she could voice the answer that had already begun percolating in her head, Dylan turned toward a dust cloud boiling up near the main road. Soon Cody Chevrier’s white Blazer appeared through drifting smoke, light bars flashing.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking?” she said as the vehicle sped uphill toward them.

  Dylan nodded. “Gemerle had a pretty cushy situation where he was. Locked in, but Salisbury Forensic is a medical facility, not a prison-type environment.”

  If Gemerle got caught after an escape attempt, he’d get sent to a worse place, in other words.

  “So maybe somebody made it worth the risk? Maybe like we said last night, lured him out. And made sure there was something in it for the orderly, too,” Lizzie theorized.

  Chevrier got out of his vehicle, approached Dylan, and stuck his hand out; they’d worked together before. Then, taking in the scene expertly, he turned to Lizzie.

  “So what’s the deal here?”

  She didn’t hesitate. “That’s Henry Gemerle.”

  She could
feel Dylan’s eyes on her; they hadn’t made a for-certain ID yet. But:

  “Guy did a runner from the Salisbury Forensic Institute. Seems he had a helper. We think Gemerle killed the helper, stuck the body in the trunk. They found the vehicle in Houlton.”

  Chevrier listened skeptically, glanced at the body again. “And you’ve identified him how?”

  “Fits the description, for one thing. Also if you lift him a little, you might find a plastic ID bracelet from the hospital,” said Lizzie.

  Crouching, Dylan raised the body enough to expose the plastic strip still wrapped around the dead wrist.

  “We think Tara Wylie might be his daughter,” she added. “Why he took her, we don’t know yet. Or even if he did, for sure.”

  Chevrier nodded. “Yeah, well, I might have an idea about it. This came in to your office. Missy wanted me to give it to you. I guess you asked the New Haven cops for more Gemerle stuff?”

  She peered at the sheet of names and addresses Chevrier gave her. The final name on it was familiar: Peg Wylie. “Jesus.”

  She passed the list to Dylan. There were about a dozen names on it. Some addresses had been crossed out and replaced with new ones, a few of them several times.

  And some were crossed out altogether. “Gemerle wrote this?” Dylan asked.

  Chevrier nodded as Lizzie went on scrutinizing the fax sheet. “He didn’t have to find Peg,” she said. “He’s been keeping tabs on her all along, right up until he got arrested. And on these other women, too.”

  She turned to Chevrier again. “But why would this give you an idea of why he might’ve taken Tara?”

  “It doesn’t, by itself. But your pals in New Haven also sent along some court documents, including this roster of witnesses who testified in his competency hearing last week, some privately and others in open court.”

  He handed it over; she scanned it quickly. Peg Wylie was on this sheet, as well. “Oh, man. Now I get it. She must have pissed him off by testifying. So he was punishing her.”

  Lizzie pulled her phone out. “Missy, did New Haven send you anything about Gemerle’s old place being dug up yet? The yard?”