Last Girl Gone

by J. G. Hetherton

  “You’re sure?”

  “Fairly certain.”

  “What does fairly certain mean? He did or he didn’t.”

  “He washed the body.”

  “So you can’t tell.”

  “Laura, the, um, sorts of things you’re thinking of—” He coughed into his hand. “It would have left physiological evidence. Tearing and such.”

  Laura swallowed hard. She could hear it behind her ears.

  “But there was nothing like that. The cause of death was strangulation. Other than the marks on her neck, it’s like he never touched her.”

  “That’s good,” she said softly.

  He shook his head. “This sounds horrible, but in terms of finding this prick, no, that’s not good. Sexual assault would have narrowed the profile. The chance of finding physical evidence would have increased, and even if we didn’t find anything, at least we would have had a clearer idea of the type of person we’re hunting. Instead, all we’ve done is muddy the waters.”

  “So what does that leave? Tell me about the profile you do have.”

  “Off the record—”

  “Christ, Tim, I want to help you, I really do. But are you planning to give me anything I can print?”

  “Bureau would never let me leak the profile from an ongoing investigation.”

  “Fine, fine. Off the record.”

  “Off the record, a relative doesn’t make any sense. No one is unaccounted for. Besides, other than the obvious, which we’ve ruled out, what motive does a family member have to kill a ten-year-old? The same goes for strangers.”

  “So what are you thinking?”

  “That he stood here and watched us down there with the body.”

  She waited.

  “That’s it,” he said. “That’s the profile. He washed her, posed her, left her to be found. Then he watched us mill around and look at her.”

  “So he returned to the scene of the crime. Lots of criminals do that.”

  “Sure, but this whole setting”—Timinski gestured to the ridge and the field—“it seems designed to facilitate him watching us.”

  “Could be he wanted to get a look at you. Keep tabs on the enemy.”

  Timinski stared off into space, tapped one finger against his front tooth. “Maybe.”

  “Come on, give me something that’s fit to print.”

  “Well, the truth is that the Bureau would never let me reveal anything about an active investigation, period.”

  Laura narrowed her eyes. “You better be going somewhere with this. We had a deal.”

  “Nope, I’m afraid I can’t tell you a thing about this case on the record. Not while it’s open.”

  “Tim—”

  “But,” he cut her off, “there’s really nothing preventing me from telling you about cases that are closed.”

  “I—what? Why would I care? I didn’t climb up here just to talk about old cases.”

  “What year were you born?”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “File on you said twenty-nine, so 1988, right?”

  “Yes, but—”

  “Interesting year, 1988. Interesting all over, but especially here in Hillsborough. I don’t suppose you remember much about it.”

  “No, Tim, I was an infant.”

  “Didn’t read the paper much then?”

  Her face started to flush. “I’m being serious. We had a deal, and it was a deal about this investigation, this crime. I don’t want to talk about 1988.”

  He shook his head. “I beg to differ, Laura. I think you’re going to want to hear this.”

  CHAPTER

  10

  AN UNNAMED SOURCE in law enforcement, or, A source close to the investigation.

  That’s how Tim had asked to be credited, at least publicly. Privately, though, he’d given his blessing to be discreetly named. His credentials plus the three little letters of his agency would open a lot of doors. It would make writing the story easier, and he needed her story to succeed. Perhaps later she could refer to him by name in print, but for now the weight and authority of a simple unnamed cop would have to be enough. Besides, if everything he’d hinted at was true, the source would be the last thing on anyone’s mind.

  The Orange County Library building had moved to a modish brick-and-glass building while she was away, but the back of the main hall still had a roll of microfilm readers. August 1988 started out the same as January. The first few Gazette front pages featured headlines like “Orange High Panthers Thrash Chapel Hill!” and “Heavy Rains Delay Churton Construction.” On August 5, things changed. Laura reached out and touched the screen, ran her finger across the picture they’d printed.

  The headline read: GILROY GIRL SEARCH CONTINUES.

  And the picture was Olive Hanson rendered in black and white.

  Laura double-checked the caption, confirming that this was indeed Susan Gilroy. Looking at the photograph was like looking at a ghost. Corn-silk blond hair. A narrow face ending in a weak chin. Sad eyes. A face that had seen violence and come to accept it, one that expected every adult was two seconds away from lashing out with a slap or a kick. The face of a little girl who had decided to pursue a strategy of blending into the background, hoping never to be noticed. A child who excelled at remaining invisible.

  Susan Gilroy appeared to have done this so successfully, all the color had drained out of her. She reminded Laura of homeschooled children, the ones who were never allowed out into the sunlight and turned nearly albino as a result.

  And the eyes—cold eyes for a nine-year-old. She stared straight out from the grainy photo like she was asking for something. Or waiting for something.

  Laura pushed on through headlines screaming about the search, the discovery of the body, the subsequent failed investigation. After two months the coverage started to falter. Articles moved to the second page, then onto the third. Soon it was mentioned only in follow-ups once a week.

  Then it happened again. Another nine-year-old, Alina Scopoloto, disappeared on the night of October 31—the irony of it being Halloween was lost on no one—and again the body was returned. The Gazette was in war mode now, endless forty-point headlines, constant references to coverage in the Raleigh News & Observer and other dailies. The second killing had transformed a simple murder into something newsworthy on a national level.

  And even before the Alina Scopoloto feeding frenzy tapered off, another girl went missing. More grisly font splashed across the front page: KID TAKES ANOTHER GIRL.

  At first the headline made no sense to her. A closer reading revealed something she’d missed while skimming. Between the second and third missing girl, this killer had been bestowed with that highest of honors: a nickname in the press. He’d joined the likes of the Zodiac, the Night Stalker, the Boston Strangler, the Midtown Slasher, the Alligator Man, Son of Sam, and Jack the Ripper. This name, though, seemed so innocuous as to be almost farcical.

  They were calling him the Kid.

  * * *

  Laura kept reading, utterly transported. She had spent the first eighteen years of her life in Hillsborough. How had she never heard about any of this?

  One name kept appearing again and again: Deputy Donald Rodgers of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office. He’d been lead investigator on the case and had been much more willing to talk to the reporters back in 1988 than Sheriff McKinney was today. He used the Gazette to appeal directly to citizens, asking them to come forward with any information. He even used it to address to the Kid, pleading for the return of the second missing girl, Alina Scopoloto.

  The Kid had responded with a corpse.

  Laura kept reading long enough to see the headlines shrieking about the third girl, Maria Mendelsohn, age ten. There was a drudgery in reading about death; it made her tired. She rolled back the microfilm and watched them reappear in reverse order, Maria Mendelsohn, the Scopoloto girl, then little Susan Gilroy.

  Donald Rodgers had gone on to be sheriff. Laura remembered him from her hi
gh school years. He’d personally broken up a drinking party on the Orange High baseball field late one Friday night. Hadn’t handed out tickets, just gave everyone a stern talking to. Perhaps stern wasn’t a strong enough word. She remembered several of the baseball players with tears in their eyes, crying as Rodgers laid into them.

  He’d been kinder to the girls.

  A quick search of the phone book revealed that he was still alive and living four or five miles north of downtown, not too far from the Chambers farm. Laura thought about calling, then dismissed the idea. Why give up the element of surprise?

  * * *

  She drove past the driveway twice before locating the address scrawled on a wooden post toppled into the ditch. It wasn’t much more than a rutted clay track, and the Dart’s muffler scraped the ground more than once on the way up to the sagging farmhouse.

  Laura climbed out of the car. The sun hung above the treetops and the shadows lay stretched out like black oil. She took three steps across the front yard and stopped.

  A man emerged from a dark corner of the front porch, a shotgun carried loosely across his chest.

  “Sign says no trespassing,” he called.

  “What sign?”

  “One next to the damn address.”

  “The wooden post? It blew down into the ditch. That sign is long gone.”

  Rodgers had the same cowboy gait she remembered, as if he’d just spent a day on horseback, and the same liquid brown eyes, but his thin blond hair had turned a dirty gray and his face had changed. Time hadn’t been kind. Deep crow’s feet pitted his orbital sockets, and trenches etched the lines between his nose and the corners of his mouth. He looked sour as he came down the front steps, and it didn’t help when he spit into the dirt.

  “Well, I’m telling you then: no trespassing.”

  “Are you Donald Rodgers?”

  “Who’s asking? I know you from somewhere?”

  “My name is Laura Chambers. I’m a reporter for the Gazette.”

  He squinted at her. “Naw, that’s not it.”

  “I also went to high school around here. We never met exactly. But I do remember one time on the baseball field—”

  “Laura Chambers, of course. Headed north about as soon as you could, legally speaking.”

  She nodded.

  “I remember you. I remember almost everyone I ever talked to.”

  The shotgun hadn’t moved an inch, which Laura took as an encouraging sign. She started walking across the yard.

  “What about Susan Gilroy? Do you remember her?”

  Rodgers froze up, and he let the shotgun barrel drop down next to his leg. “Now who mentioned that name to you?”

  “An FBI agent named Timinski. People call him Tim.”

  “Nope, don’t know him. Like I said, I’d remember.”

  “He’s the FBI agent here because of Olive Hanson and Teresa Mitchem.”

  “And he sent you to talk to me?”

  “In a manner of speaking.”

  Rodgers nodded to himself. “Figured someone would be along sooner or later. Didn’t expect it to be a damn reporter, but if the F-B-I”—he drew out each letter—“sent you, I guess I better play along.”

  He stood back and let her walk up the stairs in front of him, then stepped past her and pulled open the screen door.

  “Mind the dog,” he said. “He don’t bite.”

  * * *

  Cooper pushed his nose into the back of her knee and gave a few long, careful snorts.

  “Cooper, get off the lady.”

  “It’s okay,” Laura said.

  “He just wants to get your scent. Can’t help himself, it’s his nature.”

  Cooper huffed her a few more times, then lolled his tongue out and gave the back of her hand a lick. His ears drooped down nearly to the ground and folds of skin covered most of his eyes.

  “Bloodhound?” Laura asked.

  “Purebred. Used to really be something, but he’s almost twelve years old now. Cooper’s enjoying retirement.”

  “And how about his owner?”

  That earned her a small smile. “After years of cleaning up other people’s messes, I decided to buy this farm and move outside of town and finally get some alone time with my wife. A golden pond kind of thing. Then she up and died, and I ended up with more alone time than I’d bargained for.”

  “Sorry to hear it,” Laura said.

  “Aw, hell, it’s a ways back now.”

  “You could move back to town.”

  “Nope,” he shook his head. “Too stubborn.”

  “At least you can admit it.”

  “Admit it? I’m proud of it. I wish folks had more steel in ’em. Seems to me that at least half the people today can be swayed by a gentle breeze. Tempt a husband and he cheats on his wife. Pressure a child and he joins a gang. Pay a politician and he’ll do whatever the hell you tell him to. Things used to be different.”

  “Really? The politicians used to be honest?”

  Another small smile. “Fair point. Maybe I’m remembering the good old days a little too good.”

  Laura smiled back. “Maybe.”

  “And you, Laura. I heard they kicked your ass out of Boston.”

  She grimaced.

  “Too soon?”

  She shook her head. “Is there anyone in town who doesn’t know about that?”

  “Well, I know about it, and some people describe me as a hermit. No, I think it’s safe to assume everyone within a hundred miles has heard that particular story.”

  The thought entered her mind that her mother might, on some deluded level, have been right. It made Laura’s head hurt. At moments like this, it wasn’t hard to remember why she had left town in the first place.

  Rodgers saw the look on her face. “Sorry to bring it up,” he said, and she waved him off.

  They sat at the dining room table, glasses of water untouched in front of them. The inside of the farmhouse was surprisingly neat and tidy, swept clean of any dust or clutter. Not what she would have expected from a bachelor.

  “So let’s talk about trust,” he said.

  “Go on.”

  “As in, why should I trust you?”

  “I guess mentioning the FBI doesn’t get a girl far these days.”

  He held up both hands. “Don’t get me wrong, it’s impressive. I served as sheriff for eight years, and you’ve still met more FBI agents than I have. But that’s the point, right? I don’t know this Timinski. I’ve never talked about this case with anyone, and I’d be perfectly happy to leave things as they are. Why should I start digging up the past?”

  Laura leaned back, surprised. “So no one else ever came asking questions?”

  “After the beginning of 1989? Nope.”

  “Well, there you go, Don.” He frowned at the use of his first name. “I’m the only one who ever bothered to show up.”

  His eyebrows crept up his forehead. “I’m getting pretty old. Maybe you better lay that one on me again.”

  Laura unpacked her bag onto the table, laying out folders, papers, notebooks. “It’s like this: maybe you retired to try and forget this kind of thing. Maybe even now you’re planning to let me down easy. You’ll let me talk a while before kicking me out, getting me out of your hair. Then you can go back to doing whatever you do out here all alone. You can go back to ignoring dead little girls and men with strong hands.”

  He started to open his mouth; Laura raised a hand to stop him from talking.

  “Maybe that’s the kind of cop you are, the one who decides to cut bait,” she continued. “But maybe you’re the other kind, the kind who tries to forget but can’t, not in good conscience. If your conscience is nagging you, Don, I’m the only cure. I’m the only one who ever gave enough of a shit about those girls to get in my car, drive out to your farm, sit at your table, and ask you about them. So if you’ve got something to say, it’s now or never.”

  He paused. “Which do you think I am? Which kind?”

&nb
sp; She gestured around her, toward the houses and the surrounding fields. “I think you tried to cut bait. Only it didn’t work. The fishhook got caught in the back of your hand. It’s still there, bothering you. Begging you to itch at it.”

  “Well, all right. Okay, then.” He sucked a tooth and considered her. “Tell me what you already know and I can try to fill in a few blanks.”

  Laura fanned a series of photocopies out across the tabletop.

  “I know about the three girls—Susan Gilroy, Alina Scopoloto, and Maria Mendelsohn. I know they were taken and killed, the bodies left in fields to be discovered later. I know the case bears a number of similarities to Olive Hanson.”

  “So basically just what you read in the papers,” he said.

  “Well…” She looked down at her shoes.

  Rodgers popped up from his seat and started pacing the room. “Christ, that’s really all, isn’t it? This Timinski character, he sent you in here half-cocked, you know that?”

  “I read all the news coverage from back then,” Laura protested. “I read everything you ever said when you were sheriff.”

  “I spent more time keeping things out of the papers than I ever spent putting things into them, girlie. We gave a lot of statements back then, we were a lot freer with information—it was a different time—but I never broadcast any details. If everything you know came from the papers, you don’t know squat.”

  She felt anger bubble up in her chest. “Oh, so you did have a suspect after all?”

  He pointed a finger at her. “Don’t make light of it. That case,” he said, and stopped.

  “What?”

  The next words out of his mouth were so quiet she could barely hear them. “Do you really think there’s a connection between what happened back then and these two little girls?”

  Laura took a deep breath. “I think there’s a connection, yes. I can’t say why Agent Timinski sent me here without more information. Maybe he thinks I can help.”

  Rodgers studied her another few moments, his face scrunched up in confusion. Suddenly it cleared. He stopped pacing and grinned.