Last Girl Gone

by J. G. Hetherton

  He leaned across the desk. “Laura, you’ve got nothing that would make any kind of story. Period. Even if you cobble together a few more quotes from police sources, it’s still not going to knock the grieving mother off the front page. Tell me true—if you were in my position, what story would you choose?”

  “If it bleeds, it leads,” Laura said.

  Bass frowned. “You know I don’t subscribe to that kind of reductive thinking. It puts both ourselves and the reading public into a box where neither of us belong. Stories—the good ones at least—aren’t that simple. You know that.”

  “And what’s the public to gain from a mother’s tears?” she shot back. “It’s not a story at all, Bass. It’s tabloid gossip designed to sell papers, nothing more.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way, Laura.”

  She stood. “You promised me until deadline.”

  “I did indeed.” He patted the ink blotter in front of him. “Deadline, then.”

  She turned and opened the door.

  “Laura,” he called after her. “Don’t let this story get the best of you. Not like in Boston.”

  She left and didn’t look back.

  CHAPTER

  7

  HILLSBOROUGH, POPULATION 6,568, had exactly three types of accommodations for out-of-town guests. A few chain hotels loitered near the interstate, while the local bed-and-breakfast operated out of a mid-eighteenth-century Georgian Colonial that offered a thin glimpse into the town’s sometimes savage pre-revolutionary history of riots and rebellion, period character captured by rooms with heartwood floors and four-poster beds.

  At the west edge of town sat the motel owned by Elias Quant, a U-shaped edifice of concrete block painted teal. It didn’t have a name, just a neon sign that read MOTEL. And, under that, COLOR TV.

  It didn’t take a genius to figure out where a government employee would stay.

  Laura parked the Dart in the lot and went into the office in the center of the U. Elias Quant, nearing eighty years old, was hard of hearing. She had to shout to him for more than ten minutes, but eventually he got the picture. For ten dollars, he was more than happy to let her just sit in her car outside.

  “Are you sure no room?” he said one last time. He had round wire-frame glasses and a Dutch accent, both of which she suspected he’d brought over from the old country.

  “No thank you, Mr. Quant,” she shouted. “If I get cramped, I’ll just come in here and talk to you.”

  “Or if you get lonely,” he said, smoothing the front of his vest, and winked.

  She rolled her eyes, but smiled in spite of herself. “Or if I get lonely.”

  Out in the lot, it wasn’t the small space or the lack of company that bothered her. It was the heat. As the hour hand crept past ten, the mercury slid past ninety. Even with all the windows down, the hot sun and the black asphalt proved a relentless combination. Which is how she ended up crouched in the shade next to the ice machine when the black Tahoe pulled into a space in front of the rooms.

  The driver was the man from the field with the shaved head and the dark eyebrows. He was wearing a clean white shirt under the same wrinkled blue suit, and he didn’t look surprised when she came out from behind the ice machine.

  “Agent Timinski?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  He said it wearily and with an edge, as though he had no time for fools like her, but public relations training burned into him over the years prevented anything less than a polite response.

  “Agent Timinski, my name is Laura Chambers. I’m a reporter for the Gazette.”

  His grimace melted away. She’d been expecting resistance to the press, but when she identified herself, the disinterest gave way to a look that was more complex. She didn’t quite have a name for it.

  “I don’t talk to reporters I don’t know.”

  “So get to know me.”

  “Miss Chambers, I’m afraid the FBI doesn’t communicate with the press except in certain special circumstances. And in those cases, contact is always initiated by the government.”

  She gave him her most innocent, wide-eyed smile. “Oh, I didn’t want to communicate with you, Agent Timinski. Just buy you a cup of coffee.”

  That earned her a grin. “You know where we can get a good one?”

  “The best.”

  He nodded. “Now how could the Bureau turn down valuable intelligence like that?”

  * * *

  The Blue Ribbon Diner was a short car ride away. Timinski drove. Five minutes later they were ensconced in a back booth with seats more electrical tape than vinyl and being served by a career waitress. She wore reading glasses on a chain around her neck and sensible flats under bulging ankles. Her uniform looked like it hadn’t been cleaned since the Bush administration, and the coffee was terrible.

  Timinski took his first sip and winced. “Liar.”

  Laura shrugged. “Okay, the best within a mile. That’s the bad news—this is as good as the coffee gets on this side of town.”

  “Then what’s the good news?”

  “You were lucky enough to snag some pleasant company.”

  He took another sip, added more cream, more sugar, sipped again. “Uh-huh.”

  “I know you’re working on the Mitchem case. I have a vital clue that I’d like to pass on.”

  “You just get right to it, don’t you? What, no small talk first?”

  “Well, if you want to talk about the weather, we can. Hot out there, huh?”

  He raised a hand. “No, it’s fine by me if we cut to the chase. Tell me what you’ve got.”

  She shook her head. “I’d like to ask you a few questions first.”

  The waitress reappeared, and Timinski, acting as though he’d had a sudden brainstorm, asked her to take away the coffee and bring lemonade instead. “Hot out there,” he said, and she nodded at him like he was an idiot before shuffling away.

  He repeated her. “Some questions.”

  “Yes.”

  “The FBI doesn’t answer questions from reporters. We do, however, accept crime tips.”

  “Look, usually when I’m working with—”

  He held up a hand, cutting her off. “By all means, tell me about some of your other experiences liaising with the FBI. How did your relationship with those agents work?”

  She paused. “Well, I’ve never worked with the FBI per se.”

  “Well, one of your colleagues then. How did it work for them?”

  “Okay, fine. I’ve never worked directly with the FBI. And I’ve never worked with anyone who’s worked directly with the FBI.”

  “And you know why that is?”

  She shook her head.

  “Policy. Policy dictates that press requests be run up the flagpole to Washington. And the boys in Washington usually don’t spend much time considering whether to work with the Hillsborough Gazette. Or the Washington Post, for that matter. Not officially anyway.”

  “Agent Timinski—”

  “Let’s start right there. I’ll call you Laura, and you can call me Tim. Everybody does.” He took another sip of coffee. “You ever report a homicide before, Laura?”

  “Of course. I know the Gazette isn’t the most prestigious paper, but I cut my teeth at some major dailies. The crime beat has some dedicated guys. They usually stay at it for years.”

  He nodded his approval. “Been my experience as well.”

  “But I assisted a few of them,” she continued. “There’s too much going on in a big city for one person to cover it all. The beat reporter would read the blotter in the morning and then divvy up the juiciest pieces. I got my fair share of homicides. Even got a few bylines myself there at the end.”

  “Tell me about the end.”

  “Just got tired of the big city, I guess.”

  “That’s a dodge and you know it.”

  “Is this an interview?”

  He kept the expression on his face unreadable.

  She sighed. “Fine. I was born and
raised here in Hillsborough. Left for school in Chicago, worked in New York for a few years, then Boston for five or six.”

  “Then you decided to come back.”

  “Yes.”

  “Happy to be home?”

  “As much as anyone ever is.”

  “And you came back because, and let me get this straight”—he ran his finger down a page of imaginary notes—“because you’re homesick?”

  Laura’s lips were a thin, white line. She nodded.

  Timinski shook his head and made a tsk-tsk sound as though reprimanding a child. “It’s the same as with the cup of coffee.”

  She furrowed her brow. “What?”

  “Same as with the coffee, Laura. You’re lying again. I can see it in your face.”

  She could feel her face reddening but tried to meet his gaze. His eyes were chips of dirty winter ice, pale blue shot through with gray, unwavering and unblinking. He stared at her openly until she looked away.

  “How long you say you’ve been back in town?” he asked finally.

  “Eight or ten weeks.”

  “So pretend you’re me, good old Tim of the FBI. The special agent in charge of the Raleigh office sends you down here to shore things up. This is a new phenomenon, after all, these disappearing girls. It’s deserving of scrutiny. What’s the first thing you would do?”

  “For a new crime, I’d look at new people.”

  He leaned back and nodded appreciatively, impressed. “That’s exactly right. This man didn’t just up and start grabbing children one day. That sort of disease festers in the mind for a long, long time. No one, and I mean no one, has the willpower to keep it all bottled up.”

  “Maybe it’s his first time,” she said. “Everyone has to start somewhere.”

  “No.”

  “Just no?”

  “No,” he said again. “Too organized. Too cold. No one hits a home run their first time at the plate.”

  “I’m new in town.”

  “Not quite how I meant it.”

  She smiled. “So you don’t think I did it.”

  The smile wasn’t returned. “For a variety of reasons, no. But we catalogued you in our initial pass along with all the other new people.”

  It was a strange moment to realize she’d been examined as a possible suspect, even in the broadest possible sense. Something about being lumped together with the killer created a mixture of outrage and disgust.

  “One of the first things we did was run a check on every person who moved to town in the last year,” Tim continued. “Our background is very thorough, so while I don’t know exactly why the Globe dismissed you, I know you were considered a rising star, and that you were fired quite suddenly. Other than that, the paper is being very tight-lipped.”

  “I don’t think it’s relevant.”

  “It’s relevant to me. Tell me what happened.”

  “I’d rather not, Agent Timinski.”

  He slurped some lemonade. “Tim, please.”

  “I can’t do that, Tim.”

  “Then I don’t see that there’s any chance we can work together.”

  “If I tell you, I’m not sure you’ll want to keep talking with me.”

  “Here’s the way I see it. If you don’t level with me right now, I’m leaving. You’ll never speak with me again, and that is a promise. Right now you’re an unknown quantity, and I don’t associate with unknown quantities. Given those circumstances, Laura, what exactly do you have to lose?”

  Silence hung between them. It lasted only a few seconds, but in Laura’s mind it seemed to stretch on for an eternity. Timinski’s gaze froze her in place, eyes the color of melting snow that never seemed to blink.

  “All right,” she said finally. “Is this another test? Like you already know what happened, and you want to see if I give it to you square?”

  “No test necessary,” he said. “That part of the conversation is already over. You lied to me twice. Makes you a type.”

  “A type—you mean a liar?”

  “Yes, Laura. You’re a liar.”

  It was so brazen, the words delivered so flatly, she wasn’t sure how to feel. Either way, it wasn’t as though she could deny it.

  Laura took a deep breath. “I was trying to write a story about abuse in the Catholic church, and I was having a hell of a time getting people to agree to be interviewed. In the poor, white, religious parts of Boston, that’s still not polite to talk about. People were split three ways. A small percentage thought it was blasphemy to slander the church under any circumstances, and another small percentage was devout while being genuinely concerned.”

  “And the third group?”

  “The ones who couldn’t be bothered. Christians immune to the suffering of others. Jesus would have hated a hypocrite, don’t you think?”

  “No argument here.”

  “Anyway, ideology makes people compete to see who can shout the loudest. Lots of tempers, scathing editorials from all sides.”

  “And lots of papers sold.”

  “Anything that scares people sells papers.”

  He frowned. “You okay working to exploit people’s fears?”

  “No, but it’s not like I have control over the paper.”

  “But you’re part of it. Don’t you bear some responsibility?”

  “How responsible are you for Hoover keeping blackmail files on members of the U.S. government?”

  His frown deepened. “Point taken. Keep talking.”

  “Working the story, I did a lot of interviews, and I found a young man who’d personally been abused by a member of the church. He had an excellent memory, and he had corroborating evidence. Documents. Letters. Not only that, he’d spent enough time with this man to learn a lot of other dirty secrets. He told me about a warehouse—the church called it a youth refuge—where other boys were kept. It was an ongoing situation, so the Globe tipped the police and they raided the place. He was telling the truth.”

  “Sounds like a slam dunk.”

  “This story was scathing, Tim. It had everything. It would sell a lot of papers, sure, but it would have righted a wrong in the process. And this priest he accused, Hamilton Odell, this guy had risen through the ranks in the years since to become second in command of the Boston Archdiocese. It was my first front-page story.”

  Timinski rocked forward in his seat. “And?”

  “My source recanted a few days later. He’d been very careful not to allow copies of anything. He wouldn’t even allow me to record interviews. He was scared of what would happen when the story came out, and it turned out he had good reason to be. These were powerful men, with a powerful hold on him. They threatened his eternal soul, and they offered him a truly outrageous sum of money as well.”

  “Son of a bitch. He got away with it.”

  Laura shrugged. “Knowing what I know now? It’s not as surprising as it sounds. My source was a true believer; that’s how Odell got control of him in the first place. And he’d been poor all his life. Nobody throws away a winning lottery ticket. We had to print a retraction.”

  He shook his head in disbelief. “It’s just wrong.”

  “I thought so too. So when I ran into Cardinal Odell on the street a week later, things didn’t go great.”

  “No?”

  “Not really. I hit him,” Laura said.

  Tim snorted.

  “You’ve got to understand, I really connected with this kid. The interviews must have run a hundred hours. And then this piece of shit tells the kid that he’s the one going to hell.”

  “So it was a crime of passion.”

  “BPD didn’t charge me, but he sued me and the paper. He would have won too, but he offered the Globe a bargain. He didn’t want money.”

  “Just your head on a platter,” Tim said.

  She shrugged. “Can you blame them? I punched the subject of an investigative report. People have been fired for less. There’s right and there’s wrong, and then there’s playing the game. I should
have played it safe and just forgotten about the whole thing.”

  “That’s the lesson you took away from it all?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Okay,” he said, and stood up from the booth. “We’re done here.”

  He left five dollars on the table and walked out.

  * * *

  He didn’t speak a word on the ride back, didn’t open his mouth for the first five minutes parked in the motel lot, engine idling, air-conditioning set to arctic freeze.

  Laura broke first. “So that was a deal breaker.”

  He didn’t look at her, just stared at the motel office though mirrored sunglasses. “You’ve got a temper,” he said, “and that’s given me pause. Plus, it sounds like getting fired really screwed up your moral compass.”

  She snorted. “Like cops have a monopoly on morality.”

  He slipped off the shades and fixed her with those near-colorless eyes. “Of course not. In fact, there’s more psychos in the bunch than average. Something about the power and the guns attracts ’em. But this kind of work attracts all types. Some people see the injustice in the world and it just bothers them, like an itch they can’t scratch. So they become cops and scratch away at things.”

  “Boy, Tim, that’s a real down-home, country way of saying you’re the arbiter of right and wrong, that you get to decide what part of the world needs fixing.”

  “I do indeed,” he said. “I didn’t ask to be this way. Blame my mama. She did a damn fine job of raising me, and deciding what’s right and what’s wrong has never been my problem.” He tapped his chest. “I already know. I’ve known since I was a boy.”

  Laura stared at him. There was something incredibly old-fashioned about Timinski’s worldview, like he’d stepped out of one of her father’s westerns. And if he was a cowboy, maybe he knew how to barter.

  She said it quietly. “I know something about the case. Maybe I can help you find him.”

  “Let me guess, you want something in return.”

  “Yes.” She forced the word out. It made her skin feel oily.

  Timinski didn’t look surprised. “Okay, then. Let’s have it.”

  “I help you, you help me. We trade.”

  “You could just tell me what you know and hope it helps,” he said.