“And I hate myself for it, Detective.” The unplanned words came out in a rush, and once they began Vera was afraid she might not be able to stop them. “I look back at that night and wish I could redo it. I think: What if I had insisted on walking her all the way to her door and making sure she got inside? Or what if I’d stayed overnight in the hotel room with her, in the next bed, which was what she suggested at first? Then I’d never have to wonder if my actions caused all this.”
The detective was tapping a pen back and forth between thumb and forefinger, looking at Vera more intently than anyone had looked at her before. Cutler, too, looked highly engrossed in what she was saying.
“Vera,” Ferreira said, “you’re a smart enough woman. You’re a smart woman who does stupid things. I’ll be honest with you—I don’t think for a minute that you have much of a role in the Willard kid’s disappearance other than what you’ve told me. In terms of being directly responsible for that girl going missing . . . I just don’t think it’s likely, even though we have some unanswered questions still.”
“So I’m not a suspect,” Vera said. “But I’m a person of interest. Do Jensen’s parents know this?”
“They’ll be brought up to speed soon enough. And in case you were wondering, you can expect your employer will be notified, too. I have a feeling they’re not going to risk the well-being of another one of their students in the future.”
Hearing this, something inside Vera snapped loose. She lowered her head, scrunched up her face into its least attractive expression, and let the tears come down, trickling along her chin and onto her dress front.
The detective pushed a box of tissues toward her, and she scrabbled for a handful.
Cutler spoke up then. “You do understand, I hope, that all this has to be looked into. Especially since you haven’t been straight with us. We have a warrant to search your apartment. We’re expecting your cooperation.”
“Of course,” Vera said, laughing hollowly behind her tissue at the thought of police detectives searching her tiny place. “There isn’t much to search there. But please search all you want.”
The detective made a phone call, short and cryptic on his end, and into the room came a third face Vera had seen before—sad-eyed Officer Babineau, who reintroduced himself to Vera in a manner that struck her as being close to apologetic. She allowed the three of them to lead her out of the room and then out of the building, not daring to ask where they were going; with two detectives on one side of her and a police officer on the other, she sensed that some of the employees at their workstations were looking at her as they passed. She wondered if they already knew who she was, knew the story that the rest of Dorset was about to know.
She said nothing as they drove back to her apartment. She took them up the three flights and unlocked her door for the detectives and the officer—a model of graciousness for one whose residence was about to be searched. For the first time she was conscious of how truly small her studio looked, with the big mattress and box spring filling up most of the space. There really wasn’t room enough for all of them. Ferreira and Babineau both stopped in the kitchen, and Vera followed the line of their gaze to the four printouts of the four girls taped above her laptop.
“Take these down, Gerry,” Detective Ferreira said with something like disgust, and as the officer peeled back the tape and put the pages in a clear folder, Vera said, “It helps me to look at the pictures. I’ve been trying to figure out if there’s a connection between these last three girls. Don’t you think it’s striking, two girls dying by strangulation in the same town? And now a third is missing. One can’t help but wonder.”
The detective grunted. “I need those journal pages you said you were going to hand over,” he said.
Going over to her worktable, she felt around under some ungraded papers and handed him Jensen’s last entry. “The last two pages are the handwritten ones I told you about,” she said. “Have you guys . . . I mean, have the police looked into any possible links between Angela and Sufia? I know you have one man in prison now. I just hope you have the right one. If there’s any doubt . . .”
“Ma’am?”
“Yes?”
“I’d like you to step aside and be quiet.”
She nodded shamefacedly. She didn’t know whether she was supposed to stay in the studio or excuse herself, perhaps go sit on the stoop so they could search in peace—not that her presence seemed to inhibit them. Watching Ferreira, Babineau, and Cutler mauling her belongings was not something she wished to oversee. She pressed herself up against the window in her room as the detectives worked around her, looking out and trying to pretend that nothing unusual was happening. She observed the normalcy on the sidewalk below, hoping it might somehow rub off on her: a woman struggling with a baby carriage as she talked into her cell phone. A rangy kid wobbling along on a skateboard—not the same boy she had seen on the street while hanging flyers, Vera determined. Cars stopping to refill their tanks at the gas station across the street, and a blind man with a white cane a few yards away, waiting for the streetlights to change. Behind her she heard the sound of milk crates being dumped on the floor, milk crates holding various lesson plans from all her past semesters of teaching, and a rustling as they leafed through an envelope of photographs taken of herself and her few friends at Princeton.
“You were right,” Detective Ferreira said a short while later. “You don’t have much to search.” Vera saw that he was holding her laptop under his arm.
“When will I get the laptop back, Detective?”
“When we’re done with it, that’s when. I don’t expect it’ll be a long time. We can see that you get a search warrant inventory.”
“Thank you,” she said, as though the detective were a handyman who had come in to repair something.
“My advice? Stay in town for the next few weeks. Just to be on the safe side.”
“I can do that.”
“And no more volunteering. We know what we need to know now.”
She remained in the window as the detectives and the officer left her apartment, and she saw them reappear on the sidewalk and get into their car. They didn’t look as though they were saying anything to one another, and they didn’t look back up toward her window as they drove away.
Vera stepped from the window to survey the mess they had left behind. They had made a good show of putting things back, which was more consideration than she felt she deserved, but nothing was organized exactly as she liked it. She began to replace things, to repack her milk crates till the files were in the order she wanted them in, to pick up the silky dresses that had slipped off their hangers as the detectives had rifled through her closet. She neatened the piles of papers that sat next to where her laptop always sat; now the space was empty, just like the space above the wall where the four girls’ pictures had been displayed. The blank white wall taunted her. There was one piece of tape still stuck to the plaster—the one on the far end, the spot where Jensen Willard had squinted down at her only minutes before.
Vera thought for a long time, staring at that single piece of tape. She had several different ideas at once, each larger and more overpowering than the next.
When her studio was once again in order, she took her phone out of her purse and called Sue MacMasters’s number. “Sue?” she said to the answering machine. “This is Vera Lundy again. I think you’re going to get a phone call about me later. Or maybe the dean will. Either way, I’m just letting you know now that I’m not coming back to Wallace after the break. I’m just establishing that now so that you won’t have to bother with calling me yourself. I can fax you the grades I’ve recorded since February.”
She hung up the phone and remained seated on her bed for some time, unsure of what she felt about this. She knew she should feel sad. She knew she should feel ashamed. She knew she should, on a purely mercenary level, feel worried about where her nex
t paycheck was coming from. But all she could think was: It is strange how things can change so quickly.
No more job, she thought again. No more afternoons at the copy center. She remembered the envelope in her tote bag then, the one with the New York postmark that she’d picked up at headquarters. She had forgotten all about it.
Vera felt around in her bag until her fingers latched on to the stiff envelope. Pulling it out, she held it in her hands for a moment, then scraped one bitten-off fingernail against the seal until the envelope was open.
Inside was a greeting card with an image she had seen before. And as soon as Vera saw it, looking straight into the rolling eye of a carousel horse, she knew that this card had not been sent to her by a donor.
The face of the card was a reproduction of the original cover of The Catcher in the Rye on it—the scarlet cover with its loose, fluid drawing of the Central Park carousel. The horse’s body was contorted as though in agony, its one visible eye telegraphing something to Vera—violence, she thought, or terror.
She did not want to open the card, but she made herself do it. At first she thought the inside was blank. Then, at the very bottom, in the tiniest, faintest hand lettering she had ever seen—a handwriting she was sure she had seen before—was this message:
Bret would like to meet you. He knows more than he’s saying.
Vera turned the card over, half expecting to see something else written on the back, but there was nothing but the bar code and the copyright. Bret would like to meet me; he would like to speak to me, she thought, and her mind flashed back to Sufia Ahmed, so self-possessed as she’d stood before her in the classroom: Miss Lundy, I would like to speak to you.
Not long after that, the girl was dead.
It is strange how things can change so quickly, Vera thought again. But what can be done can also be undone.
She was sure that the handwritten note had been sent by Jensen, just as she was sure that she was the recipient of this message for a very particular reason. I’m the elect one, Vera thought; I’m the one she’s reaching out to. But why? What is she trying to tell me about Bret?
Chapter Eleven
It was early in the morning, so early that most people were still in their beds, but the Dorset bus station already had a hard-luck assortment of people waiting to board—people so derelict and defeated that they were nodding off in their metal seats before their buses even arrived. Vera moved past them all to get to the ticket counter, and when it was her turn to be waited on, she took out her credit card and placed it in front of the seller. “I’d like a round trip to New York City,” she said.
“When will you be returning?”
“I don’t know exactly. Maybe I’d better make it a one-way.”
“There’s a transfer in Boston.”
Vera nodded, studying the ticket seller for a minute, and then reached for the newspaper she had stashed in her tote bag. The paper was folded so that the most recent article about Jensen Willard stood out. “By any chance,” she said, holding it up for her to see, “does this girl look familiar to you? Do you remember selling this person a bus ticket within the last week? She might have used a different name.”
“No. I know who that is, though. That’s the girl who’s gone missing.” She handed Vera her ticket. “Bus leaves at eight thirty.”
Almost everyone in Dorset recognized Jensen’s face by now, Vera surmised. It wasn’t often that its young residents went missing. She wondered how the girl would feel, knowing she was becoming a local celebrity of sorts, that the BRING JENSEN HOME committee and the Dorset police forces were so actively looking for her. Probably, in typical Jensen fashion, she would shy away from the scrutiny just as much as she craved it.
Vera felt both hopeful and afraid—an anticipatory feeling that she always felt at the onset of traveling anywhere, though this time it was weighted with the uncertainty of what was to come. She had brought a book with her, a mammoth volume called The Comprehensive Book of True Crime, which she’d been wading through for months; she had thought it might be a relaxing diversion for her bus trip, but she now regretted her choice of reading material. Burying herself in such a sordid book among the slumped figures that were also waiting for the bus seemed an inauspicious way to start her journey.
With a half hour to kill before her departure, she crossed the street and went into the variety store, glancing at the newspaper rack; she didn’t see Jensen Willard’s picture today—that seemed a good sign—but then the headline under the fold made her do an almost comical double take. She picked up the newspaper and read the article where she stood.
Missing Girl Last Seen with Teacher
A new development in the case of Jensen Willard, the 15-year-old Dorset girl who has been missing since March 30, came to light when an employee of the Roundview Hotel returned from a trip out of state and recognized Willard’s picture in the Journal. According to the employee, Willard checked into a room at the hotel on the evening she disappeared. The Roundview Hotel is located on Wheaton Road, right next to the address where Willard was dropped off by her stepfather.
Detective Ray Ferreira and Detective Helen Cutler, who have been working together on the case, found surveillance records indicating that Willard later left the hotel with a woman. This woman has been identified as Vera Lundy, 39, who was Willard’s substitute teacher at the Wallace School.
Sue MacMasters, head of the English department at the Wallace School, responded to a query by email: “Given recent occurrences, Vera Lundy is no longer under our employ as of today.”
Lundy, who was questioned by police, claims to have visited Willard because she was worried about her mental state. Willard is known to have been treated for depression within the past year. Lundy reportedly walked the girl a few houses away from her Pine Street address. This was the point at which she was last seen.
Ferreira says that Lundy’s involvement is not considered suspicious. But librarian Lillian Platt, who refers to Lundy as a “regular” at the Dorset branch of the Southern Maine Community Library, says, “She comes here every week to check out books about murderers. Sometimes more than once a week. I find that very peculiar.”
Vera’s first reaction was to find this depiction of herself preposterous; in a different circumstance she would have found it funny. The librarian, of all people, with her unfounded dislike for Vera—what did she know? And didn’t librarians owe their patrons a little privacy? Then she thought of all the people she knew in town who would read this article—her former students, the Cudahys, even Paul and Amy Nimitz—and became more circumspect. She purchased the newspaper along with a copy of Vogue and a cup of coffee, trying not to seem furtive in her body language as she completed her transaction; though her photo was not included, she would not have been surprised if the clerk had pointed at her and said, “Hey, aren’t you that teacher? The one in that article right there?” She hid the newspaper in her bag with the older issue before anyone could see it and draw that parallel.
Back at the bus station, the line for those waiting to board was growing, and some had trickled outside; a few of these people, she could tell, were native New Yorkers who had found themselves in Maine and were anxious to get out. She wondered if she looked more like one of them or like one of the slumped, defeated people inside the terminal. She hoped for the former as she waited outside with all of them, feeling the morning sun on her face.
She wondered who Sue MacMasters had found to take her English classes and what her students would be doing that day—other than talking about her, of course, and wrapping up the final discussion of The Bell Jar. It didn’t seem right to Vera that someone else was finishing what she’d started. She wondered, too, if any of the students would miss her. She was certain that she would miss some of them, if only a little bit; such a strange feeling, Vera thought, to be missing other people when they aren’t missing you. It was the closest thing she could imagine to be
ing a ghost—the phantom in the room that is unseen, unsensed, unwanted.
• • •
Four hours later, Vera had completed the first leg of her trip and had boarded the Boston bus bound for New York City. Almost five hours of riding remained, but her knees were already stiff from sitting still for so long—an unwelcome reminder that her joints were not as resilient as they’d been when she was a Princeton graduate student commuting on holiday visits.
She shared her seat with a gentleman whose face was cut deeply with wrinkles, a man who sat with his legs spread so far apart that she had tried to make herself smaller to prevent his bony knee from touching hers. Shortly after the bus had left Boston, the man took notice of her and started pulling mysteriously stained religious tracts out of his pockets, thrusting them under her nose and asking, “Have you been saved?” When that didn’t get a desired reaction, he leaned in so close that she could feel his dry lips brushing her earlobe, and he whispered, “Ever been with an older man?” She had the window seat and felt pinned in place; all the other seats on the bus were taken, and she didn’t dare ask to switch with anyone. She remembered reading a news item a while back about a woman who got stabbed to death on the back of a bus, and no one noticed till they reached their stop, hours after the fact.
Eventually the man fell asleep, his mouth hanging agape. Vera reached into the tote she kept at her feet and reread the copy of Vogue she had already flipped through. She felt around in her bag a little more, trying her hardest not to wake the man, and took out a yellow legal pad and pen she’d brought. Turning to a blank page, she wrote a heading at the top: “Possibilities: What Bret Might Know.” After underlining this heading several times, she began to compile a list:
Possibilities: What Bret Might Know.
1. Jensen killed herself, and Bret knows all about it. Possibly even knows where the body is.
What Has Become of You Page 25