All The Pretty Dead Girls

by John Manning

  “What are you talking about?”

  Sheriff Miles laughed. “I know it sounds crazy. I’ve been thinking that myself for the last few weeks. But it’s been there in the back of my head all this time…when Bonnie Warner disappeared, I said to myself, ‘This has happened before…’”

  “Dad, what do you mean?” Perry stared at his father. “A girl disappeared before from the college?”

  “You don’t remember?” His father returned his stare. “You were young, but it made the news. It was twenty years ago, almost to the month.”

  Perry closed his eyes for a moment. “Yeah,” he said. “I vaguely remember a girl going missing there…it was right after you were elected sheriff.”

  “That’s right. It was one of my first cases. Margaret Latham. An all-points bulletin went out searching for her.”

  Perry was nodding. He had been just eleven years old, but he remembered the gruesome details. “They found her eventually, right…badly mutilated.”

  “That’s right. Limbs cut off, blood drained. Body was dumped in Lake Bessett. No one ever charged with the crime.”

  Perry shook his head. “But that hardly makes it a cycle, Dad. One girl’s murder doesn’t necessarily connect to the disappearances of three others twenty years later.”

  “I have a long memory, Perry. That’s why I’ve made such a damn good sheriff. People forget things. But I remember. I make connections.” He handed Perry a sheet of paper. “I recalled that another girl was reported missing soon after Margaret Latham disappeared. See the report?”

  Perry glanced down at it. “Yes, but this girl eventually turned up okay. It says here her parents told police she had run away from the college and returned home.”

  “Yes…but why did she run away?”

  “Come on, Dad, now you’re really starting to sound nutty…”

  “I have a long memory!” he shouted. He seemed genuinely angry. “I’ve been in the vault, combing through all our old cases. I’ve been at the library, going through micro-filmed newspapers. This has been a recurring pattern at that school. I remember!”

  He shoved a well-thumbed folder, cracking with age, across the table at Perry.

  “If you read that, you’ll see that almost twenty years before Margaret Latham’s disappearance, there was another curious event at Wilbourne. People forget. But I remember.”

  Perry leafed through the contents of the file. A girl in a 1960s flip hairdo smiled up at him from one photo. In another, she stared glassy-eyed at him, her face swollen in death. Perry shuddered.

  “I had to really rack my brain to remember,” his father was saying, “but I did it. It was like there was something in there that kept me from remembering—that keeps everybody in this goddamn town from remembering. But still, I knew it was there. Deep down, the memory was there—and the files corroborated it.”

  “Okay, so girls have gone missing or murdered from Wilbourne before. Still, to call it a cycle—”

  “You need more, son? When I suspected I might be on to something, I went back again in the files. Sometimes it was twenty years. Sometimes it was only nineteen. But sure enough…” He began tossing files at Perry, who practically had to catch them in his arms, they came so fast. “1962. 1943. 1923. 1904.” Miles grunted. “That’s when the sheriff’s department was founded, so I don’t have records to go on before then. And the local newspaper only goes back to 1897. But how much do you want to bet, if we went down to the town clerk’s office, we’d find some death records of Wilbourne college girls—mysterious deaths—murders—circa 1884–1885?”

  Perry leaned forward and placed his hand on his father’s forearm lightly. “Dad, I think you might be tired. Maybe you should go lay down, get some rest.”

  “I don’t need any goddamn rest! I need to figure out what the hell is going on up at the school!”

  Perry stood. “Have you eaten anything tonight, Dad? Let’s go get a chili burger and fries at the Bird—”

  “Haven’t you heard what I’ve been telling you? Come on, Perry. You’ve got to admit this is too weird to just chalk up to coincidence.” He banged the table with his fist. “Explain why the townsfolk seem to forget. Explain why you didn’t remember Margaret Latham going missing until I reminded you.”

  “Dad, I was eleven.”

  “Then explain to me why the selectmen didn’t remember! Not even Veronica Thomas, whose father was the sheriff before me! She never called me to say, ‘Gee, Miles, this sounds a lot like that case we had eighteen years ago.’ Explain to me why no one in town seems to remember these things. Even more—why no one up at that goddamn school ever seems to wonder why every generation they lose two or three girls to violent deaths!”

  Perry had to admit that was a very good question. Evidence of the girls’ deaths sat right there on his father’s kitchen table. But Wilbourne College had never acknowledged its recurring problem.

  “Well,” Perry said, thinking out loud as much as responding to his father, “if they did acknowledge it, enrollment would certainly decline.”

  Miles looked at him with a hard, intense stare. “I have a feeling enrollment is the least of their concerns.”

  “Dad,” Perry said. “You think the school has something to do with the deaths, don’t you?”

  “Or at least covering them up.”

  The sheriff stood, rubbing his forehead.

  “You okay, Dad?” Perry asked.

  “Headaches,” Miles grumbled. “Too much reading.”

  “Let’s go to the Bird. You need to get out of this house.”

  The older man was still lost in thought, however. “The strangest part is why we don’t remember. It doesn’t make any sense. It’s not like so much happens in this fucking town that you can’t remember something bad happening. At the time, these were all big news stories. I don’t understand it…it just doesn’t make any sense.”

  “Dad, you need to eat.”

  “I’m not hungry.” He put a hand to his head again. “Damn headache. Maybe I will go lie down and take some Motrin.”

  “Good idea,” Perry said. “I’ll clean up this mess. Then maybe I can make us both some eggs.”

  Miles shook his finger at him. “You gotta admit I’m on to something, Perry.”

  “We’ll talk about it after you rest awhile.”

  His father grunted, then headed down the hall to his room.

  Biting his lower lip, Perry started scrubbing the dishes in the sink. Food had dried like glue in pans. Milk rings stared at him from the bottoms of glasses. He decided just to fill the sink with hot water and let the dishes soak.

  Hauling the trash out to the can, he scolded himself. Why wasn’t I paying more attention to Dad? Why wasn’t I being a better son? Why couldn’t I see he was on the verge of cracking up before?

  But he couldn’t deny that what his father had discovered was very interesting. Very interesting indeed.

  A good memory was one of the most important tools in solving crimes. Perry knew that. His father was right. So he needed to pay attention to the feeling he’d gotten when he looked at one of those files. He’d seen one of the names before.

  But where? When?

  Back at the table, he lifted a yellowed folder he knew had come from the station files. Yes, this was the one. The girl who’d disappeared but later turned up okay at her parents’ home.

  BARLOW, MARICLARE was written on the tab.

  Barlow? That name is familiar. Why?

  Perry sat down and scratched his head. Where do I know that name from? He opened the file and looked at the date it was opened.

  Twenty years ago.

  He heard his father saying, “Every twenty years or so something happens to the girls up at the college.”

  And then it came to him.

  The girl in the white Lexus. Perry had pulled her over the night before school started. Her name was Barlow. Susan Barlow, with a Manhattan address. She’d flirted a little bit with him, and he’d found her attractive.
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  Might there be connection between her and this Mariclare Barlow, who was also listed with a Manhattan address?

  Barlow was a fairly common name, and Manhattan was a big place. But Perry had enough curiosity to read the entire file. His eyes widened as he read.

  Dear God, he thought. Could Dad be right?

  Every twenty years or so…

  The overhead light flickered. Perry shuddered as he continued to read.

  29

  Ginny climbed the stairs to her apartment, spitting mad,

  I should have resigned on the spot, she thought to herself.

  Fumbling with her key, she let herself inside, balancing her book bag slung over one shoulder and two paper bags of groceries in her arms.

  I’ll never forgive Gregory, she said as she stewed. Never.

  They’d finally had their long-awaited face-to-face confrontation about Bonnie Warner, as well as a few other things.

  “Do you want me to tell you I was planning on reporting her for being off campus? Is that what you want me to say, Ted?”

  Ginny sat opposite the dean, who was ensconced in his tall leather chair behind his desk. His small pink hands were folded over his chest.

  “I would hope that was truly what you were planning, Ginny,” he said to her. “It would have been the only responsible thing to do.”

  “Fine. Then I’ll tell you that’s what I was planning to do. I never got a chance to do so, because I found out from Sheriff Holland that morning that she was dead. Or at least presumed to be, with all that blood. And frankly, that weighed more heavily on me than the fact that she’d broken one of the silly college rules.”

  Gregory had smiled at her, that toothy mammal smile. “We have rules for the students’ protection and safety, Ginny. They’re not silly.”

  “If I could do anything differently, it would be to have insisted that Bonnie ride home with me. If she had agreed…” Ginny’s voice trailed off. She hated thinking about that poor girl and the fate she suffered.

  “She was a headstrong child,” Gregory said. “So I’ve been told. I never met her.”

  Of course not, Ginny thought. She wasn’t the granddaughter of a rich benefactor like Sue Barlow…

  “Here’s the dilemma as I see it, Ginny.” Gregory leaned forward, his beady eyes locking onto hers. “I’m sure Bonnie’s parents would be very distressed to know a teacher here saw her off campus the night she disappeared and did not report her right away.”

  “Right away? The administration was closed for the night.”

  “You could have called me directly.”

  Ginny laughed. “And what would you have done? Gone out looking for her?”

  “Perhaps.” Gregory leaned back in his chair. “The point is, if you had taken action rigft away—”

  “That’s an unfair charge!” Ginny’s voice was loud, but she didn’t care. “The best I could have done was report her the next day.”

  “I’m not sure if the Warners will see it that way.” He gave her a tight smile. “They’re threatening to sue Wilbourne, you know.”

  “Then you’d only be giving them ammunition if you told them I saw her.”

  Gregory nodded. “You’d probably be named a party in the case.”

  Ginny stood, approached the dean’s desk, and gripped the sides with her hands. Her eyes bore into Gregory’s. “What is this all about? Stop beating around the bush.”

  “Just a simple request that you drop the courses on the divine feminine next semester.”

  “What?”

  “You heard me. The board of trustees isn’t happy with such teaching at Wilbourne. Now that Fred Dodd has retired and I found Nancy Wallison to replace him, the board is quite unanimous in its desire for academic consistency.”

  Ginny stood, feeling a little dizzy. “What the hell does that mean?”

  “Oh, come now, Ginny. You knew very well when you took this job that Wilbourne was a conservative school. We offered you a job to keep some diversity in our curriculum. But that was a priority of the old board of trustees. Now the board is less interested in promoting ‘alternative’ views.”

  “Look, Gregory, you are absolutely right. I took this position knowing that Wilbourne had a history of being conservative. I also knew that it had a history of academic freedom and a commitment to educational diversity. Being conservative, might I remind you, need not equal being small-minded or intolerant. It is only recently that the conservative movement in this country has been co-opted by Christian fundamentalists who have dictated how we must think and what we must believe.”

  Gregory was looking at her almost with pity. “Dear, dear Ginny. I think you ought to stick with religious theory and not get into politics.”

  “It’s become hard to separate the two,” she retorted.

  “I’m not asking you to keep to any sort of line. Only that you submit to me a revised curriculm for next year.”

  Ginny was astonished. “Is this how it’s going to be then? First, you personally intercede for a benefactor’s granddaughter, who happens to be a student in my class, and demand she be given preferential treatment…”

  “The poor girl was sick, Ginny.”

  “It was her place to work that out with me, not yours!”

  He shrugged. “In any event, I do appreciate your flexibility on that matter.”

  Ginny had agreed to give Sue Barlow an extension, but it had been against her better judgment. She had always liked Sue—thought she was smart—and indeed, a few days later, when she took the make-up test, the girl had aced it. How apologetic Sue had been about Gregory’s involvement. Ginny didn’t blame her. Gregory was, quite simply, an impossible prick.

  “I don’t know,” Ginny said, turning to leave Gregory’s office. “I can’t commit here and now to turn over my academic authority to the administation. Frankly, I’m too angry to even discuss it further with you.’

  Gregory had smiled his infuriating weasel grin. “That’s fine, Ginny. You think it over. Let’s talk again by Friday, all right?”

  He was threatening me, Ginny thought as she settled the groceries onto the counter. He was holding over my head the fact that I saw Bonnie on the night of her disappearance.

  So let him tell her family I saw her! I couldn’t have prevented what happened! They could read about it in the police report anyway.

  Still, Ginny knew she should put a call in to her lawyer. Not only about Bonnie—but about the tactics Gregory was using to control her teaching. Her contract guaranteed her academic freedom.

  She was tired and all she wanted to do was put the groceries away, open a bottle of wine, and find a little bit of mellow before sleep. The wind was cold, whipping against the side of the house and cutting right through to her bones. Winter, it seemed, was going to make early inroads on autumn.

  She noticed the red light on her answering machine was blinking. She hit the play button as she put the groceries away.

  Beeeeep. “Ginny, this is Angela. Just wanted to check in with you and see how the book’s coming. I just got off the phone with Dan and he wants you to know they are really going to get behind this book—he really thinks this is going to be a big seller, that it’s really going to push you over the top. They have plans to get you on almost all of the major television shows, and there’s a possibility of a History Channel or A&E documentary. So look. He was just wondering when he’d be able see a few chapters. I can’t keep putting him off. You know I really hate to be a nag about this kind of thing, but I can’t keep assuring him that everything is going well when I haven’t seen anything myself and you don’t return my calls. So, please, please, please, Ginny, give me a call when you get this, no matter what time it is, okay? I’m a little worried. Is everything all right up there? Call me.”

  “Oh, Christ,” Ginny said out loud, holding a jar of peanut butter in one hand and a bag of coffee beans in the other.

  Angela Cohen had been her agent from the very beginning of her publishing career, back in th
e days when she was working on her Ph.D. at Harvard. Slogging her way through on her doctoral thesis, Ginny was advised to find a literary agent. “Publish or perish, my dear,” her advisor, Dr. Guenther, a wise old professor with a heavy German accent, had told her. “If you already have a contract to publish your thesis, it’s kind of hard for them to deny you not only your letters, but a teaching position here. And I’m sure there are any number of respected academic publishers who would love to have a shot at publishing you.”

  It had seemed a bit premature, but Ginny had learned early in her collegiate career to listen to faculty members giving advice. She’d bought a book on literary agents, typed up a synopsis of the book, and sent it out to twenty nonfiction agents. She honestly thought nothing would come of it. When Dr. Guenther asked her about it, she could just shrug and say, “I tried.”

  She was never sure how Angela Cohen came across her query letter, but she had, and she was not only interested in representing Ginny—she was excited and enthusiastic. “This book has best seller written all over it,” Angela had enthused over the phone after reading a few sample chapters. “I just love how you take on the guys who started the early Christian Church—it’s just great, and it’s going to be controversial, it’ll get all the fundamentalists’ panties in a twist for sure.”

  “That’s a good thing?” Ginny had asked, worried.

  “Honey, controversy sells books like you would not believe.” Angela had told her. “Ginny, you and I could do good things together, trust me on this, okay?”

  And over lunch at a swank bistro in central Manhattan a few weeks later, Ginny took the plunge and signed a letter of agreement for Angela to represent her.

  The last thing in the world she expected was for Angela to get her a six-figure contract with a major publisher in New York. But that’s what she did. The Sacred Feminine earned her not only the Ph.D. she had coveted for so long, not only a teaching position at Harvard, but also one hell of a lot of money. Suddenly, Ginny was in demand for talk shows and speaking engagements all over the country. Scuttlebutt around the faculty was that tenure was a given, and sure enough, it came through…but Angela and the publisher were already pushing Ginny on a second book. “I never meant to be an author,” she’d protested to Angela. “I want to be a teacher.”