Gone for Good (2002)

by Harlan Coben

  "Yes, of course." She put down the plate of cookies. "I remember all of the girls. My husband, Frank he taught English here died in 1969.

  We had no children. My family had all passed away. That sorority house, those girls, for twenty-six years they were my life."

  "I see," I said.

  "And Julie, well, late at night, when I lay in bed in the dark, her face comes to me more than most. Not just because she was a special child oh, and she was but of course, because of what happened to her."

  "You mean her murder?" It was a dumb thing to say, but I was new at this. I just wanted to keep her talking.

  "Yes." Rose Baker reached out and took Katy's hand. "Such a tragedy.

  I'm so sorry for your loss."

  Katy said, "Thank you."

  Uncharitable as this might sound, my mind could not help but think:

  Tragedy, yes, but where was Julie's image or the image of Rose Baker's husband or family, for that matter in this swirling potpourri of royal grief ?

  "Mrs. Baker, do you remember another sorority sister named Sheila Rogers?" I asked.

  Her face pinched up and her voice was short. "Yes." She shifted primly. "Yes, I do."

  From her reaction, it was pretty obvious that she had not heard about the murder. I decided not to tell her yet. She clearly had a problem with Sheila, and I wanted to know what it was. We needed honesty here.

  If I were to tell her that Sheila was dead now, she might sugarcoat her answers. Before I could follow up, Mrs. Baker held up her hand. "May I ask you a question?"

  "Of course."

  "Why are you asking me all this now?" She looked at Katy. "It all happened so long ago."

  Katy took that one. "I'm trying to find the truth."

  "The truth about what?"

  "My sister changed while she was here."

  Rose Baker closed her eyes. "You don't need to hear this, child."

  "Yes," Katy said, and the desperation in her voice was palpable enough to knock out a window. "Please. We need to know."

  Rose Baker kept her eyes closed for another moment or two. Then she nodded to herself and opened them. She folded her hands and put them in her lap. "How old are you?"

  "Eighteen."

  "About the age Julie was when she first came here." Rose Baker smiled.

  "You look like her."

  "So I've been told."

  "It's a compliment. Julie lit up a room. In many ways she reminds me of Diana herself. Both of them were beautiful. Both of them were special almost divine." She smiled and wagged a finger. "Ah, and both had a wild streak. Both were inordinately stubborn. Julie was a good person. Kind, smart as a whip. She was an excellent student."

  " Yet," I said, " she dropped out."

  "Yes."

  "Why?"

  She turned her eyes on me. "Princess Di tried to be firm. But no one can control the winds of fate. They blow as they may."

  Katy said, "I'm not following you."

  A Princess Di clock chimed the hour, the sound a hollow imitation of Big Ben. Rose Baker waited for it to grow silent again. Then she said, "College changes people. Your first time away, your first time on your own ..." She drifted off, and for a moment I thought I'd have to nudge her into continuing. "I'm not saying this right. Julie was fine at first, but then she, well, she started to withdraw. From all of us. She cut classes. She broke up with her hometown boyfriend. Not that that was unusual. Almost all the girls do first year. But in her case, it came so late. Junior year, I think. I thought she really loved him."

  I swallowed, kept still.

  "Earlier," Rose Baker said, "you asked me about Sheila Rogers."

  Katy said, "Yes."

  "She was a bad influence."

  "How so?"

  "When Sheila joined us that same year" Rose put a finger to her chin and tilted her head as if a new idea had just forced its way in "well, maybe she was the winds of fate. Like the paparazzi that made Diana's limousine speed up. Or that awful driver, Henri Paul. Did you know that his blood alcohol level was three times the legal limit?"

  "Sheila and Julie became friends?" I tried.

  "Yes."

  "Roommates, right?"

  "For a time, yes." Her eyes were moist now. "I don't want to sound melodramatic, but Sheila Rogers brought something bad to Chi Gamma. I should have thrown her out. I know that now. But I had no proof of wrongdoing."

  "What did she do?"

  She shook her head again.

  I thought about it for a moment. Junior year, Julie had visited me at Amherst. I, on the other hand, had been discouraged from coming down to Haverton, which was a little strange. I flashed back to the last time Julie and I had been together. She had set up a quiet getaway at a bed and breakfast in Mystic instead of having us stay on campus. At the time, I'd thought it romantic. Now, of course, I knew better.

  Three weeks later, Julie called and broke it off with me. But looking back on it now, I remembered that she had been acting both lethargic and strange during that visit. We were in Mystic only one night and even as we made love, I could feel her fading away from me. She blamed it on her studies, said that she'd been cramming big-time. I bought it because, in hindsight, I wanted to.

  When I now added it all together, the solution was fairly obvious.

  Sheila had come here straight from the abuse of Louis Castman and drugs and the streets. That life is not so easy to leave behind. My guess was, she dragged some of that decay with her. It does not take much to poison the well. Sheila arrives at the start of Julie's junior year, Julie begins to act erratically.

  It made sense.

  I tried another tack. "Did Sheila Rogers graduate?"

  "No, she dropped out too."

  "The same time as Julie?"

  "I'm not even sure either of them officially dropped out. Julie just stopped going to class toward the end of the year. She stayed in her room a lot. She slept past noon. When I confronted her" her voice caught "she moved out."

  "Where did she move to?"

  "An apartment off campus. Sheila stayed there too."

  "So when exactly did Sheila Rogers drop out?"

  Rose Baker pretended to think about it. I say pretend, because I could see that she knew the answer right away and that this act was somehow for our benefit. "I think Sheila left after Julie died."

  "How long after?" I asked.

  She kept her eyes down. "I don't remember ever seeing her after the murder."

  I looked at Katy. Her eyes, too, were on the floor. Rose Baker put a trembling hand to her mouth.

  "Do you know where Sheila went?" I asked.

  "No. She was gone. That was all that mattered."

  She would not look at us anymore. I found that troubling.

  "Mrs. Baker?"

  She still would not face me.

  "Mrs. Baker, what else happened?"

  "Why are you here?" she asked.

  "We told you. We wanted to know "

  "Yes, but why now?"

  Katy and I looked at each other. She nodded. I turned to Rose Baker and said, "Yesterday, Sheila Rogers was found dead. She was murdered."

  I thought that maybe she had not heard me. Rose Baker kept her gaze locked on a black-velvet Diana, a grotesque and frightening reproduction. Diana's teeth were blue, and her skin looked like a bad bottle-tan. Rose stared at the image and I started thinking again about the fact that there were no pictures of her husband or her family or her sorority girls only this dead stranger from overseas. And I wondered about how I was dealing with all this death, how I kept chasing shadows to divert the pain, and I wondered if maybe there was something like that going on here too.

  "Mrs. Baker?"

  "Was she strangled like the others?"

  "No," I said. And then I stopped. I turned to Katy. She had heard it too. "Did you say others?"

  "Yes."

  "What others?"

  "Julie was strangled," she said.

  "Right."

  Her shoulders slumped. Th
e wrinkles on her face seemed more pronounced now, the crevices sinking deeper into the flesh. Our visit had unleashed demons she had stuffed in boxes or maybe buried beneath the Di accoutrements. "You don't know about Laura Emerson, do you?"

  Katy and I exchanged another glance. "No," I said.

  Rose Baker's eyes started darting across the walls again. "Are you sure you won't have some tea?"

  "Please, Mrs. Baker. Who is Laura Emerson?"

  She stood and hobbled over to the fireplace mantel. Her fingers reached out and gently touched down on a ceramic bust of Di. "Another sorority sister," she said. "Laura was a year behind Julie."

  "What happened to her?" I asked.

  She found a piece of dirt stuck on the ceramic bust. She used her nail to scratch it off. "Laura was found dead near her home in North Dakota eight months before Julie. She'd been strangled too."

  Icy hands were grabbing at my legs, pulling me back under. Katy's face was white. She shrugged at me, letting me know that this was new to her too.

  "Did they ever find her killer?" I asked.

  "No," Rose Baker said. "Never."

  I tried to sift through it, process this new data, get a grip on what this all meant. "Mrs. Baker, did the police question you after Julie's murder?"

  "Not the police," she said.

  "But someone did?"

  She nodded. "Two men from the FBI."

  "Do you remember their names?"

  "No."

  "Did they ask you about Laura Emerson?"

  "No. But I told them anyway."

  "What did you say?"

  "I reminded them that another girl had been strangled."

  "How did they react to that?"

  "They told me that I should keep that to myself. That saying something could compromise the investigation."

  Too fast, I thought. This was all coming at me too fast. It would not compute. Three young women were dead. Three women from the same sorority house. That was a pattern if ever I saw one. A pattern meant that Julie's murder was not the random, solo act of violence that the FBI had led us and the world to believe.

  And worst of all, the FBI knew it. They had lied to us all these years.

  The question now was, why.

  Chapter Thirty-Four.

  Man, I had a good head of steam going. I wanted to explode into Pistillo's office. I wanted to burst in and grab him by the lapels and demand answers. But real life does not work that way. Route 95 was littered with construction delays. We hit terrible traffic on the Cross Bronx Expressway. The Harlem River Drive crawled like a wounded soldier. I leaned on the horn and swerved in and out of lanes, but in New York, that just raises you to average.

  Katy used her cell phone to call her friend Ronnie, who she said was good with computers. Ronnie checked out Laura Emerson on the Internet, pretty much confirming what we already knew. She'd been strangled eight months before Julie. Her body had been found at the Court Manor Motor Lodge in Fessenden, North Dakota. The murder received extensive though vague local coverage for two weeks before fading off the front page and into stardust. There was no mention of sexual assault.

  I veered hard off the exit, drove through a red light, found the Kinney parking lot near Federal Plaza, pulled in. We hurried toward the building. I kept my head high and my feet in motion, but alas, there was a security checkpoint. We had to walk through a metal detector. My keys set it off. I emptied my pockets. Now it was my belt. The guard ran a wand that looked like a vibrator over my persons. Okay, we were cleared.

  When we reached Pistillo's office, I demanded to see him in my firmest voice. His secretary appeared unintimidated. She smiled with the genuineness of a politician's wife and sweetly asked us to have a seat.

  Katy looked at me and shrugged. I would not sit. I paced like a caged lion, but I could feel my fury ebbing.

  Fifteen minutes later, the secretary told us that Assistant Director in Charge Joseph Pistillo that was exactly how she said it, with the full title would see us now. She opened the door. I blasted into the office.

  Pistillo was already standing and at the ready. He gestured at Katy.

  "Who is this?"

  "Katy Miller," I said.

  He looked stunned. He said to her, "What are you doing with him?"

  But I was not about to be sidetracked. "Why didn't you ever say anything about Laura Emerson?"

  He turned back to me. "Who?"

  "Don't insult me, Pistillo."

  Pistillo waited a beat. Then he said, "Why don't we all sit?"

  "Answer my question."

  He lowered himself into his seat, his eyes never leaving me. His desk looked shiny and sticky. The smell of lemon Pledge clawed at the air.

  "You're in no position to make demands," he said.

  "Laura Emerson was strangled eight months before Julie."

  "So?"

  "Both of them were from the same sorority house."

  Pistillo steepled his fingers. He played the wait game and won.

  I said, "Are you going to tell me you didn't know about it?"

  "Oh, I knew."

  "And you don't see a connection?"

  "That's correct."

  His eyes were steady, but he was practiced at this.

  "You can't be serious," I said.

  He let his gaze wander the walls now. There was not much to look at it. There was a photograph of President Bush and an American flag and a few diplomas. That was pretty much it. "We looked into it at the time, of course. I think the local media picked up on it too. They might have even run something I don't remember anymore. But in the end none of them saw a true connection."

  "You have to be kidding."

  "Laura Emerson was strangled in another state at another time. There were no signs of rape or sexual assault. She was found in a motel.

  Julie" he turned to Katy "your sister was found in her home."

  "And the fact that they both belonged to the same sorority?"

  "A coincidence."

  "You're lying," I said.

  He did not like that, and his face reddened a shade. "Watch it," he said, pointing a beefy finger in my direction. "You have no standing here."

  "Are you telling us that you saw no link between the murders?"

  "That's right."

  "And what about now, Pistillo?"

  "What about now?"

  The rage was building back up again. "Sheila Rogers was a member of that sorority too. Is that another coincidence?"

  That caught him off guard. He leaned back, trying to get some distance. Was it because he didn't know or because he didn't think I'd find out about it? "I'm not going to talk to you about an ongoing investigation."

  "You knew," I said slowly. "And you knew that my brother was innocent."

  He shook his head, but there was nothing behind it. "I knew correction: know nothing of the sort."

  But I did not believe him. He had been lying from the start. Of that I was now certain. He stiffened as though bracing for my next outburst. But, to my surprise, my voice grew suddenly soft.

  "Do you realize what you've done?" I said, barely a whisper. "The damage to my family. My father, my mother .. . ?"

  "This doesn't involve you, Will."

  "Like hell it doesn't."

  "Please," he said. "Both of you. Stay out of this."

  I stared at him. "No."

  "For your own sakes. You're not going to believe this, but I'm trying to protect you."

  "From?"

  He did not reply.

  "From?" I repeated.

  He slapped the arms of his chair and stood. "This conversation is over."

  "What do you really want with my brother, Pistillo?"

  "I'm not going to comment any further on an ongoing investigation." He moved toward the door. I tried to block his path. He gave me his hardest look and walked around me. "You stay away from my investigation, or I'll arrest you for hindering."

  "Why are you trying to frame him?"

  Pistillo stopped
and turned around. I saw something change his demeanor. A straightening of the spine maybe. A quick flicker in the eyes. "You want to get into truths, Will?"

  I did not like his change of tone. I suddenly wasn't sure of the answer. "Yes."

  "Then," he said slowly, "let's start with you."

  "What about me?"

  "You've always been so convinced your brother was innocent," he continued, his posture more aggressive now. "How come?" "Because I know him."

  "Really? So how close were you and Ken near the end?"

  "We were always close."

  "Saw him often, did you?"

  I shuffled my feet. "You don't have to see someone a lot to be close."

  "Is that a fact? So tell us, Will: Who do you think killed Julie Miller?"

  "I don't know."

  "Well then, let's examine what you think happened, shall we?" Pistillo strode toward me. Somewhere along the way, I had lost the upper hand.

  There was fire in his belly now, and I had no idea why. He stopped just close enough to start invading my space. "Your dear brother, the one you were so close to, had sexual relations with your old girlfriend the night of the murder. Isn't that your theory, Will?"

  I might have squirmed. "Yes."

  "Your ex-girlfriend and your brother doing the nasty." He made a tsk-tsk noise. "That must have infuriated you."

  "What are you babbling about?"

  "The truth, Will. We want to deal in truths, right? So come on, let's all put our cards on the table." His eyes stayed on me, level and cool. "Your brother comes home for the first time in, what, two years.

  And what does he do? He strolls down the block and has intercourse with the girl you loved."

  "We'd broken up," I said, though even I could hear the whiny weakness in my own voice.

  He gave a small smirk. "Sure, that always ends it, doesn't it? Open season on her after that especially for a beloved brother." Pistillo stayed in my face. "You claim that you saw someone that night. Someone mysteriously lurking around the Miller house."

  "That's right."

  "How exactly did you see him?"

  "What do you mean?" I asked. But I knew.

  "You said you saw someone by the Miller house, correct?"

  "Yes."

  Pistillo smiled and spread his hands. "But you see, you never told us what you were doing there that night, Will." He said it in a casual, almost singsong voice. "You, Will. Outside the Miller house. Alone.