The Dead Place

by Rebecca Drake

  The concrete walkway was crumbling in places, and the lawn looked patchy and colorless even for December. The brick of the house needed to be repointed. One of the black shutters hung askew. Two stone urns flanked the front door, empty except for a scrim of dust.

  Kate rang the bell, shivering in the cold and waiting in silence so complete that she could hear the drone of a lone holdout fly. When no one responded, she pulled open the creaking screen door and used the brass knocker.

  The face of the woman who opened the door was an older version of the smiling photo from the yearbook.

  “Are you Beth Henke?”

  “Yes?” The woman held onto the door as if she were using it for support. She was pretty, like her daughter had been, with the same dark hair, though hers was graying and her face looked prematurely worn.

  “I’m Kate Corbin. My daughter is missing and I think she was taken by the same person who took your daughter—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.” The woman’s face crumpled and the door started to swing closed. Kate stopped it with her foot and a hand.

  “Please, Mrs. Henke, I need your help.”

  “I can’t, I’m sorry.” Mrs. Henke pushed against the door, but Kate held on, pushing back.

  “If you could just tell me a little about Ann,” she said, speaking rapidly. “Please. I’m begging you, Mrs. Henke.”

  The woman hesitated, pinching the bridge of her nose with thin fingers that trembled. “All right,” she said after a moment. “I don’t know what I could possibly tell you, it’s been so many years. Ten minutes—that’s all I’ll give you.”

  She showed Kate into a hallway with a dusty console table. The mirror hanging above it also had a film. Heaped on the table were a woman’s handbag, a nondescript jacket, and a pile of mail. “I just got home from work, I only work part-time most days,” Mrs. Henke said, one hand straying to the mail before moving away to twist a button on her blouse instead. It was plain cotton, as were the black slacks she wore. They hung on her thin frame. She stared at Kate with a look torn between pity and confusion. “I suppose we could sit down.”

  The living room didn’t appear to be used by the living. A stiff brown sofa and two patterned armchairs faced each other in front of an empty fireplace. It might have been very pretty, probably once was, but time and neglect had changed things. Dust lay on all the surfaces and a fern on a corner plant stand shriveled from want of water and sunlight. Huge floor-to-ceiling curtains were drawn across the windows, muffling light and sound.

  Kate’s heels sank in plush carpet that looked like dingy cream. She took a seat in one of the armchairs and tried not to sneeze.

  “I used to keep this place spotless.” Beth Henke’s voice was flat as she switched on a lamp before sitting down on the sofa. “I guess I got busy.”

  Her hand strayed to her blouse again. “Are you Elizabeth Hirsh’s mother?”

  “No, my daughter is Grace Corbin. She’s been gone for three days.” Four hours, twenty-five minutes, Kate added mentally.

  As if she could read her mind, Beth Henke said, “I’m sure you’re counting the time.”

  “Yes.”

  “I did that, too.” Grief had cut deep lines on either side of Beth Henke’s mouth. She twisted the button on her blouse until she noticed what she was doing, and folded her hands in her lap instead. “I must have missed your story on the news. I don’t like to watch much; it’s too depressing.”

  Kate didn’t correct her, unsure if the woman would believe her.

  “I don’t know how I can help you,” Beth Henke said. “Ann’s been gone a long time.”

  “I hoped that maybe there was some overlap somewhere—that maybe the girls knew the same person, or had met someone on campus.”

  “That seems unlikely after such a long period of time.”

  “What was she studying?”

  “History.” Beth Henke smiled a little. “Her father said she’d never do anything with that degree. He wanted her to major in business or computer science or something like that.”

  Kate couldn’t think of anybody in the history department. “I read that she disappeared on the way home?”

  “Back to her dorm,” Beth Henke said. “Even though we lived in town, she wanted her independence. Both her father and I thought it was important to let her have the typical college experience.” The stricken look on her face made it clear that she regretted this decision.

  In a voice that dropped the farther in to the story she got, Beth Henke described the call she’d taken from the police and the frantic efforts of the family to find Ann.

  “We did everything they suggested. Are you going to do a TV appeal?”

  “I don’t know.” Kate hedged.

  “We thought it would be a good idea—a personal appeal could work, they told us—but it didn’t help.” Beth Henke looked down and her hand moved back to the button, twisting and twisting.

  “Did the police have any suspects?”

  The other mother shook her head. “Of course they thought it was her boyfriend at first. We all did. But he wasn’t involved at all.”

  Kate asked for his name anyway, but it meant nothing to her. “The police ruled him out as a suspect?”

  Mrs. Henke nodded. “Airtight alibi. He was visiting his father in the hospital when Ann disappeared. Massive heart attack the night before she went missing—Ann called to tell us about it.”

  “But you still suspected him?”

  She nodded. “You know how it is—when your child disappears, all you think about is finding her. You’re not interested in other people’s feelings.”

  Thinking she was guilty of doing the same thing, Kate asked, “Did you ever hear from the person who took her?”

  “You mean aside from the awful photo?” Beth Henke’s chin trembled and she covered her face with her hands. For a few moments, the only sound in the room was her loud weeping. Kate spotted a box of tissues on an end table and fetched them for her. The woman went through several before she looked up again, red-eyed.

  “I’m sorry to ask,” Kate said, “but yes, I was wondering if you’d gotten anything else. Any letters?”

  A single hard shake. Beth Henke stood up, tissues balled in her hand. “Please, I’ve told you all I can. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”

  Kate stood up as well, but she made no move toward the door. She hadn’t learned anything new; she had to find something that could help her. “I know this is an imposition, I know I have no right to ask, but I feel if I could just see some of Ann’s things I might find some clue. Do you have an address book or photos of friends I could see?”

  The woman looked at her for a long moment, but then she nodded. Kate followed her back to the front hall and up a wide flight of stairs to the second floor and a closed door at the end of a softly carpeted hall.

  Beth Henke opened the door and Kate stepped into a little girl’s paradise. The walls were a pale pink, the carpet fluffy white, the canopied four-poster bed piled high with lacy pillows and stuffed animals.

  It was the sort of room that Grace would have loved as a little girl, but firmly rejected once she became a teenager. Too pink, too girlish, too young. It seemed an odd room for a young adult, but Ann had definitely lived here. There was proof of the different stages of her life in the photos on the walls and the shelf above the white desk and chair: riding a pony as a toddler, poised to dive into a pool, smiling with a grade-school soccer team, preening in a bikini on a beach.

  It took Kate a moment to realize that it was the only room in the house that appeared to be clean. Everything was dusted, everything carefully arranged. It was a shrine.

  Kate didn’t know what, exactly, she was looking for, but she examined the photos and then the two pretty memo boards covered with ticket stubs and yellowing concert programs and ribbons earned at long ago sporting events. No other faces looked familiar, none of the scenes jogged a memory. There was no connection to Grace of any kind and Kate felt
desperate.

  Aware of Beth Henke standing like a silent sentinel in the doorway, Kate looked at the textbooks neatly stacked on the desk. She found a sketchbook among them.

  “Ann took a drawing class?”

  “Yes, it was an elective for her.”

  Kate turned the pages. Charcoal studies progressing from shapes to still lives of fruit to some rudimentary nudes. She’d had some talent, though her line was a little heavy. Kate flipped back, and noticed that Ann had printed her name and the title of the class in neat writing inside the front cover. It was the name underneath, though, that made Kate’s breath catch in her throat.

  In the same neat printing, Ann had written: “Professor J. Virgoli.”

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  It started to snow as Kate drove toward the university, a hard driving fall of flakes so tiny that they looked identical. They melted against the windshield, but froze on patches of road. The Volvo’s tires slipped in spots, but she didn’t slow down, just kept pressing the accelerator while her hands kept a tight grip on the wheel.

  What if the police pulled her over? Would they listen to her this time? Probably not, they’d probably just slap her with a big ticket. It didn’t matter, none of it mattered, except getting to the university. She didn’t know where Jerry Virgoli lived, but she could find out. She had to talk to Ian. Surely he would listen now, surely if he was presented with direct evidence he couldn’t ignore it.

  She had the heat on full blast, but was still shaking. What if it wasn’t Jerry Virgoli? So what that he’d taught drawing to Ann Henke. He must have taught hundreds of students over the years.

  Yet she couldn’t help remembering that party back in September. It felt like a lifetime ago, standing on the lawn in the warmth of a late summer evening. She could still hear him complimenting her on having a “daughter as lovely as yourself.”

  Had he talked to Grace at any other time? She couldn’t remember, but Grace had been on campus often enough, he had to have seen her. He was an odd man, Ian had said so himself, and he’d wanted Ian’s job. It made perfect sense, but still she could hear Ian’s voice accusing her of wanting to get him fired.

  She pulled into the parking lot on campus closest to Ian’s building and switched off the motor, but she didn’t get out of the car. There had to be something more, some other piece of evidence compelling enough to make Ian and the police listen.

  She stared blankly at the snowflakes gathering on the windshield. The sun had completely gone; the sky was low and thick with gray clouds that suggested heavy snow. She thought of Grace and prayed that she wasn’t cold, that she was alive and warm and could wait, just a little longer, for her mother to find her.

  The snowflakes formed patterns on the windshield, the wind blowing them about. Little circles of white, they reminded her of blossoms. Suddenly, she thought of the flowers in the photos. Every victim had been surrounded by flowers. They had to have come from somewhere. Hadn’t she argued as much to the police? It had been one of the main reasons that she’d suspected Terrence Simnic, but it wasn’t him, it was someone else. Someone who had to purchase the flowers.

  She started the motor with trembling hands and drove off campus and toward the center of town. She knew of three florist shops in Wickfield including Terrence Simnic’s. She started with the one in a strip mall at the edge of town.

  All the traffic in the parking lot was huddled near the grocery store. No one was thinking of flowers in December snow. The front window was partially steamed over and the pots of sparkle-dusted poinsettias looked garish. Some of their leaves were brown at the tips and curling inward.

  There was no one in the small store besides a young man in a green rubber apron working behind the counter. He barely looked up from his work, giving Kate a quick once-over before grabbing a sheet of red tissue paper to wrap around a scrawny bouquet of daisies.

  “Do you keep a customer list?” Kate asked, stepping past buckets filled with roses to get to the counter.

  “Nope—we just fill orders as they come in.” The young man kept his eyes on his work.

  “But don’t you get repeat orders?” Kate pressed. “Surely you keep a list of repeat customers?”

  He looked up for a moment. “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “Well, is your manager in?”

  The man shook his head. He couldn’t be more than twenty-five, but he had a taciturn expression suited for someone who’d faced a lifetime of disappointments. With nicotine-stained fingers, he reached for a piece of ribbon from a spool behind him.

  “When will your manager be in?”

  “Tuesday.”

  “She never comes in the shop otherwise?”

  He shook his head, tongue coming out of his mouth as he concentrated on tying the ribbon around the bundle. “Only Tuesdays.”

  In the second store, the most upscale one in Wickfield, the front window had a tasteful Christmas scene complete with real fir trees and golden decorations. The manager was behind the counter, directing a young woman in how to properly arrange cut flowers in a crystal vase.

  When Kate said that she was with the art department and needed to check the customer log to find out what they’d ordered in the past for a big show, the woman was only too happy to let Kate look at the customer list, kept in a big black ledger that she pulled out from under the desk.

  The book was easy to read, a list of names and next to them the flowers they’d ordered. Kate scanned it eagerly, sure she would find Jerry Virgoli, but his name wasn’t there. She read over it three times, but there was no Virgoli and no familiar names at all.

  Walking back to her car through a half inch of snow, Kate felt despair settle over her. There was only one store left and she’d agreed, on pain of being prosecuted, not to set foot in it. But she had to see the list, she had to know and she had to know now.

  For a moment, she considered calling Ian, turning her cell phone over and over in her hand, but ultimately she slipped it back in her pocket. She couldn’t convince him because she was barely convinced herself.

  The roads were worse. It wasn’t yet two, but the snow was falling so fast that the plows and salt trucks had to race to catch up. The side streets were becoming ice slicks, and she had to crawl to avoid spinning out.

  What if she was wrong? What if this hunt was nothing but a wild-goose chase and it wasn’t Jerry Virgoli at all? Doubt plagued her through the last few streets, and only the thought of finding Grace kept her going.

  She parked a block away from Bouquet just like she had before, only then it had been warmer and now snow lashed her face. Jerking the hood of her coat over her head, she walked as quickly as she could toward the shop, slipping and sliding on ice-covered spots.

  There was no sign of Terrence Simnic’s van. He liked to make deliveries himself, but maybe he’d sent somebody else today. When she came abreast of the window, she slowed her steps and while pretending to look at the display, tried to peer behind it and see who was in the shop.

  No sign of Terrence Simnic, though he could be in the back room. If she went in and out quickly, he wouldn’t see her. All she needed was the list.

  A bell jangled softly as she opened the door, but it sounded loud in her ears. It was warm in the shop, humid. The young woman behind the counter wasn’t Josie. She looked up from trimming long-stemmed red roses and gave Kate a smile.

  “Can I help you?”

  “Yes.” Kate wove through buckets of bright-colored roses and lilies, past long, leafy ferns, and around a display of pansies to the counter. “I’m with the art department at the university and we’re hosting a big exhibit and I just need to check your customer list to see what we’ve ordered in the past.”

  The young woman frowned. She pushed a strand of shoe-polish-black hair behind an ear studded with small metal spikes and shook her head. “That list is like, confidential, you know?” She stripped leaves from the roses; one hand had a small heart tattoo on the back.

  “I like
your ink,” Kate said, trying to sound calm, relaxed, as if it was no big deal.

  “Thanks. I just got this one.” The girl smiled. Across the bust of her too-tight black T-shirt, big red letters said, “What Are You Looking At?”

  “My daughter wants a tattoo.”

  “Are you going to let her get one?”

  Not on your sweet life. “I will if I can find her.”

  “Where’s she gone?”

  “My daughter’s missing,” Kate said in a low voice, thinking that this girl couldn’t be much older than Grace.

  “Wow!” The girl’s mouth dropped open, and Kate caught a glimpse of silver tongue stud. “For real?”

  “Yeah.” Kate glanced around the shop. Still no sign of Terrence Simnic and there was no one else to overhear her. “She’s been abducted. I think she was taken by the same person who took Lily Slocum.”

  “That really sucks,” the girl said. “I’d be, like, just wiped or something if anything happened to Brady.” She tapped a picture taped behind the counter of a smiling dumpling of a baby with a big bow apparently glued to her bald head.

  “Is that your sister?”

  “No.” The girl laughed. “She’s my daughter.”

  Babies having babies. Not long ago, this had been one of Kate’s worries for Grace, a mother’s nighttime fear when she thought of her teenage daughter. It seemed like a different life, the memory was so distant.

  “That’s why I really need to see the customer list,” Kate continued in the same low voice. “I need to check if there’s a particular name on it.”

  The girl nodded. “Okay, yeah, I understand. I think that would be considered, like, extraordinary circumstances, but I think I’ve got to ask my boss first.” She reached for the phone.

  “No!” Kate grabbed her hand, and the young woman looked afraid. “No,” Kate said more calmly. “I’m really not supposed to tell people—the fewer people that know the better. It’s a police investigation, so everything’s hush-hush.”