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Last Girl Gone

Page 24

by J. G. Hetherton


  “You don’t care,” Laura repeated.

  “Why should I? Olive’s dead. So is Teresa, and you know it. I told that girl not to go wandering off—a million times I told her. What does she do? Wanders off and leaves me holding the bag.”

  “Holding the bag.”

  “You deaf? Hell yes, holding the bag. My husband spent a month drunk after we found out and then he took off. God knows where he is now. I suspect he ain’t ever coming back. Did you read those damn articles they wrote about me? Making me out to be neglectful and so on? More bullshit. Everyone ’round here lets their kids play outside, go house to house and such. Just bad luck mine happened to be the one snatched up.”

  “Bad luck.”

  “Stop acting like that,” she said, and slapped Laura’s hand off her knee. “’Course it was bad luck. That girl never had trouble making me look bad, but what the hell else would you call it?” She shook her head. “Bad fucking luck.”

  Laura’s skin felt clammy. She pulled her coat closer. “You were right, Mrs. Hanson. It was a mistake to come here.” She stood.

  “Hey now, not so fast. I’m giving you a hard time, I know, but that don’t mean we couldn’t work together. I bet you write a real pretty story about her. I bet Time would put it on the cover. You get yours and I get mine.”

  A deep fatigue spread through Laura’s core. “Are you asking me for money, Mrs. Hanson?”

  “Don’t give me that look. I told you, my husband quit on me. Times are tough.”

  “Times are tough,” Laura agreed.

  “So we got a deal then. Just need your word you’ll make me look good. All them know-it-alls pretending it was my fault she got grabbed up. And that Angie Mitchem, always sitting in church, praying, and everyone treating her like some kind of saint. I want to shake them all and say, hey, her kid’s gone too. It’s not fair.”

  “No, it’s not. Can I ask you something?”

  Emily narrowed her eyes, suspicious. “I suppose.”

  “Did Olive ever wear a cross? A gold cross around her neck?”

  “Lot of girls wear those.”

  Laura tried not to grit her teeth. “I’m not asking about a lot of girls; I’m asking about your daughter. Did she wear one?”

  “Maybe.”

  “You’re not sure?”

  “I told you, we’re not religious.”

  “Thank you for your time, Mrs. Hanson.”

  “So we got a deal? I help you write the story and we split the cash?”

  Laura said nothing.

  “But no more lies. You got to promise to give me fair treatment.”

  “If I gave you fair treatment,” Laura said, “people would burn you at the stake.”

  She left Olive Hanson’s mother sitting there on the porch, face an ashen snarl, lighting her third cigarette of the day.

  * * *

  Baptists had reigned supreme in Hillsborough’s early years, and they’d made good use of their numerous believers by building something that would last, a structure of red brick rising to a peaked roof next to a Romanesque bell tower, its copper roof gone green with age. It stood on the corner of Third and Spring looking a thousand years old. She wondered if that was the point, if the building itself was a message about eternity.

  Laura climbed the steps to the front doors, thick wooden slats braced by iron and bolts, and pushed her way into the vestibule. There was no artificial light inside, just a few candles, and she took a few seconds to blink the day away.

  Stairways on either side led to the gallery above, originally built for slaves, and another set of doors opened on the aisle running the church’s length. She walked up toward the altar, her footsteps echoing off the marble floor. There was more light in the main chamber courtesy of tall stained-glass windows. The walls flickered in blues and yellows and greens, and the marriage of colors filled the nave with an amber glow.

  She reached the pulpit. To her left, a woman dressed in black sat in the second row of pews. Her fingers ran up and down the cover of a worn black Bible as she spoke softly under her breath.

  “Mrs. Mitchem?”

  It came out too loud. Her voice knocked off the walls, the roof, and came back to her a mocking imitation of itself.

  Mitchem Mitchem Mitchem.

  The woman’s head snapped up. She was maybe fifteen years older than Laura, with black hair so thick and long and tangled it must have been impossible to pull a brush through. Her features were full without being plump. There was a certain darkness under her cheekbones, almost like a bruise, hinting at a recent and rapid loss of weight. The cheeks themselves were wet with tears. The eyes were the color of pewter, as though crying had leeched all color out of them.

  “Mrs. Mitchem,” she said again, careful not to let her voice echo this time.

  “Yes.”

  “May I sit?”

  Angie Mitchem perched on the edge of the pew with her knees together. Her fingers never stopped roaming the Bible. She said nothing.

  Laura took it as an invitation and sat.

  “I know who you are,” Angie said. “You came to my house six months ago. I yelled at you.”

  “Yes.”

  “I shouldn’t have raised my voice.”

  “No one can blame you,” Laura said.

  She used the back of her hand to wipe her face. “I understand you’re doing your job, but do you really think it’s appropriate to approach me here?”

  “No ma’am. I can see how it might be construed as disrespectful. This is just the only place I knew to find you.”

  Angie twisted in place and scanned the rest of the church. Satisfied they were alone, she shrugged. “It’s fine, I suppose. But I don’t talk to reporters.”

  Laura tried for levity. She pointed back and forth between them and said, “So what do you call this?”

  Angie gave a small smile. “I mean I won’t say anything on the record. But I don’t mind talking to you, Laura.” She reached out and put a hand on Laura’s knee.

  “You know my name.”

  “I told you, I know who you are.”

  “Mrs. Mitchem—”

  “Call me Angie.”

  “Angie, I’m real sorry about your daughter.”

  Angie squeezed her knee. “I know you are.”

  “I want you to know, I drove up there to the mountains because I didn’t know what else to do. I tried to call the man from the FBI, I talked to the sheriff in person. No one believed me.”

  “To speak and not be heard must be difficult.”

  “Thank you. I—you’re very understanding.”

  “You risked your own life going up there. I can’t see that you gained anything from it, either.”

  “I risked another person’s life, too. He wasn’t as lucky.”

  “He was full grown. He made his own choices.”

  “Not like Teresa.”

  Angie made a sound like a sigh, but it came from somewhere deeper than her lungs. “No, not like Teresa.”

  “I thought I could save her,” Laura said, and it came out choked. An invisible hand clamped across her throat. She couldn’t talk. She couldn’t breathe.

  Angie’s eyes widened. “Sweetheart, you’re crying.”

  And she was. Her cheeks turned sticky and a sob wracked her chest. “I’m sorry,” she managed.

  Angie Mitchem didn’t hesitate. She opened her arms and embraced her. Into her ear she whispered, “I know.”

  * * *

  “The most awful part is not knowing what happened to her. Nighttime is the worst. Eyes open or closed, the darkness is a canvas. My mind goes to work on it in the silence.” Angie shuddered. “My imagination can be terrible.”

  Laura just nodded. Not knowing—she understood that pain. They sat on the church’s front steps, letting the cold do its work. It cleared the mind like a slap in the face. They’d been talking for almost an hour.

  “Did she ever wear a gold cross?”

  “Yes, all the girls here do. It’s suppo
sed…”

  “What?”

  “It’s supposed to protect them.”

  Laura reached into her bag and pulled out an envelope. The FedEx package had arrived at the farm around lunch. Timinski had promised to be prompt, and he was as good as his word. From inside the envelope she drew four glossy eight-by-ten photographs, close-ups of each cross found in the cabin.

  She held them out to Angie. “Do you think you could take a look at these?”

  Angie made no move to reach for them. Something darted behind her eyes. It was the first sign of panic.

  “They’re just photos, Angie.”

  “Let me guess. Gold crosses, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “From where?”

  “From the cabin in the mountains.”

  Now the thing moved from behind her eyes and emerged into the open. Her gaze shot left and right, her breathing doubled in pace. She moved to stand, then sat again. “I can’t look at those.”

  “Why not?”

  She fixed Laura with a look, as though the question barely deserved an answer. “You know why. What if it’s in there?”

  “So what if it is? We won’t know anything more than we do right now. That he took her.”

  Angie didn’t speak. Her breaths came in long low whooshes through the pert circle of her lips.

  Laura pressed her. “Right?”

  “Right,” Angie said. She took one more deep breath, let it out, and took the pictures. She looked at them carefully, one by one, then shook her head.

  “It’s not here.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I gave her the cross. It was mine when I was a little girl. Here—” She took Laura’s notebook and pen, rested them on her knee, and started drawing. “It was my mother’s before that. I used to see it in the mirror around my neck every day, and then again on Teresa.” She finished and handed back the notebook.

  Laura studied the picture. Angie was a fine artist. With a minimum of strokes she had captured it in detail. It was more ornate than a simple cross. Jesus was present in crude form, and there was a twisting ivy pattern at the top.

  “Is it small?”

  “Perhaps a bit bigger than is normal for a small girl, and quite tarnished from use. Part of its charm.”

  Laura nodded. None of the crosses from the photos looked anything like it. She tried to think how to say the next thing. Angie Mitchem was somehow serene in her grief. Laura wondered how deep her convictions went. If she pushed, perhaps this woman would collapse like a house of cards.

  “Did you read about him? About Hobbes, I mean.”

  “Of course. I read everything that relates to Teresa.”

  “You know about the things in his journal. Not the things he did, but the things that were done to him.”

  Angie looked off into the distance, gave a curt nod.

  “Do you believe they had a hand in his becoming?” Laura asked. “That he was not born but made?”

  “I do,” she said firmly.

  Laura took a deep breath. “If there had been a chance, do you think he could have been unmade?”

  Angie turned and stared at her for a beat. Understanding dawned in her eyes. “You’re talking about Teresa.”

  Laura tried to maintain eye contact, failed, and ended up staring at the gray stone steps. “What if she’s not the same person. What if she’s changed. Do you still want her back?”

  “Look at me,” Angie said, and she did. Her gaze was clear and unflinching. There was no flimsy house of cards hiding behind those eyes. Just a thousand-year-old church.

  “Do you want her back,” Laura asked, “even if she’s broken?”

  Angie set her jaw.

  “I want her back,” she said, “any way I can get her.”

  CHAPTER

  29

  SHE ATE A bowl of cold soup in her room while flipping through the coloring book. Most of it had crumbled away, but there were still two pages attached by a single staple. Both were loose sheets of paper, not part of the coloring book proper. No pictures, no lines to stay inside, just the raw imagination of a child.

  Laura worried for that child.

  The first page depicted a long ribbon of blue with a fish poking its head out. A river. In front of it was an oblong shape done up in beige. All along its length little pockets of red and yellow and orange stood out. There wasn’t much detail, but Laura took them to be fires. Down in the corner stood a dark shape. It was indistinct, without clear outlines, but the child had taken great pains to fill in the space.

  Laura ran a finger across the area.

  Even after all this time there were gouges in the paper. Someone had taken a crayon and run it over the area again and again, pressing down as hard as they could. In the center, a single red dot.

  The second picture was much worse.

  In it, a boy with a frowny face lay on the ground. Unnaturally large tears leapt out from both eyes and arced toward the ground. Next to him was what could only be described as a monster, a hideous three-legged, four-armed beast with the head of a dog. Every hand held a cigarette. Two of the cigarettes were being pressed into the boy’s belly. Above the two of them hung a single bare bulb. Again, darkness was emphasized, the tracks from the black crayon like veins in the paper.

  Laura took a breath and flipped back to the first picture, the foot encased in a sandal. There was no proof, of course, that any of this had to do with Hobbes’s victims, but something inside her recoiled at the sight of these crude drawings. They had the same flavor of sickness she associated with Hobbes. Could he have passed that sickness on to a child?

  Why not?

  As his diary made clear, it had been passed on to him like some kind of psychological virus. Sometimes a virus kills its host. Sometimes it leaves them alive but infected. A carrier.

  * * *

  “Obsession is never healthy,” Jasmine said.

  “And what about the alternative? If I never even try to look for her, by default I spend the rest of my life not knowing.”

  Jasmine nodded. “That’s called acceptance, Laura. And believe it or not, that is a healthy response to certain adversities. We cannot change certain things, and we are not responsible for changing them. All we can do is endure. Like you said, we have to live with it.”

  She crossed her arms. “It seems like a coward’s excuse.”

  Jasmine took a minute to sip from her water glass. Laura had known her long enough to recognize the look on her face. She was collecting her thoughts.

  “In the past,” she said finally, “I’ve had patients diagnosed with a terminal illness. The situation is in some ways similar. They’re confronted with not only their own mortality, but also with a profound lack of agency. Often the disease isn’t the result of any choice they made or didn’t make. It exists as something completely outside their control. If a person like that tried to work toward accepting their fate, would you call it cowardice?”

  “Of course not. There’s a lot to be said for going out with dignity.”

  “So they should know when to quit.”

  “You can stop right there. It’s a false analogy. Terminal cancer is one thing; finding Samantha Powell is something else entirely.”

  “How do you see them as different?”

  “Finding Samantha isn’t a lost cause.”

  The doctor drank some more water. “Samantha is a very sweet girl with a very troubled home life. I offered my help to Sheriff Fuller, but he didn’t seem interested.”

  “I’m interested.”

  “You’re not the police.”

  “But I’m here, and I’m involved whether I like it or not. He sent me an ear, Jasmine. Here, take a look at these.” Laura spread the pictures of the crosses out on the low coffee table and explained where she’d gotten them. “What do you think? Some kind of trophy?”

  “It’s a leap,” Jasmine said. “A gold cross necklace must be the most common piece of jewelry besides earrings. Even I wear one.” She patte
d a lump underneath her shirt.

  “So you think it’s just coincidence.”

  “No, I think it’s more than that. I think it’s a product of your need to know.”

  Laura groaned. “And just like that, back to doctor and patient.”

  “Listen. Do you know mountain laurel?”

  “The plant?”

  She nodded. “When I was a girl, we used to spend summers in the mountains. I was an only child, and when my parents were busy I would climb up into high places to be alone. I loved those flowers, the pinks and the whites. To me they were crowns and necklaces and hair clips. Anywhere there was mountain laurel, there was sure to be a wind that would keep me cool after climbing. I thought it was like magic, that the plants themselves summoned the wind. I liked to pretend they summoned it just for me. But of course I had it backwards. The air carries the moisture a plant requires.”

  “There’s a moral in there somewhere, I’m sure.”

  “I know, I’m being obtuse. Here’s my point. You have a gut feeling that these gold crosses are a clue, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Not right. You need to come to terms with the fact that you can’t trust your gut feelings. You’re in a very vulnerable place, with a deep need for closure. How could your feelings possibly be objective? You need to find that these necklaces have meaning, so you decide that they do. Not the other way around.”

  “You think it’s nothing,” Laura said.

  Jasmine put a hand on her knee, a look of concern on her face. “In the laurels there was always a fresh breeze, because fresh breezes are where laurels grow.”

  CHAPTER

  30

  COOPER HAD BOUNDED off around the old tree stump, sniffing delicately at the dirt. Once the dog was sufficiently occupied, she told him about the ear. At first he thought it was good news, a sign that Teresa Mitchem was still alive. So she told him it was another left ear, and watched his wishful thinking crease and buckle under the weight of another missing girl.

  “Jesus,” Rodgers said, and bent over with his hands on his knees, taking quick breaths, his face the color of used-up charcoal.

  “Seems Fuller’s main concern is avoiding bad press. He’s hunkered down for the winter.”

 

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