by Kara Thomas
He replaces the frame, and I can’t tear my eyes away. The picture is of Volk, two girls, and a woman. One of the girls is in a graduation cap and gown. The sash says University of Virginia.
My daughter’s Lori Cawley’s age. Lots of us on the force have daughters. This case is personal to us.
Suddenly, I am eight again and I can smell Charlie Volk’s turkey-and-mustard sandwich breath in my face. Just tell me everything that happened that night, sweetheart. There aren’t any wrong answers.
Except there was a wrong answer, and we knew it. Our stories had to match. If my testimony didn’t match Callie’s, the man who had hurt Lori would get away with it.
What about his face? Was it someone you’d seen before, Tessa? It’s important that you tell us if it was.
Volk knew Callie had woken me up and told me it was the man from the pool. When one of the other officers called for a detective to question me at the station, Volk told them not to bother, he’d do it himself.
This asshole knew exactly what he was doing, using Callie and me to get an arrest warrant for Stokes.
I feel like I could vomit all over his desk.
I’ve been quiet for too long. Charlie Volk squints at me. “You look awful familiar.”
“My name is Tessa Lowell.”
Charlie Volk takes off his glasses. Wipes the sweat from his nose. “Tessa Lowell. I’ll be damned.”
“I’m looking for my sister, Joslin,” I say.
Charlie Volk just stares at me. “Sorry. This is just a kicker, seeing you all grown up. Tessa…little Tessa L.”
I swallow hard. “My sister?”
“Right, right.” Volk shakes his mouse, and his computer hums to life. “When was the last time you saw her?”
“She ran away when she was seventeen. She’d just broken up with this guy. He may have a record,” I say. “Danny something.”
Volk lifts his glasses off his nose and peers at the screen. “Do you mean Danny Densing? Says here that we booked him for possession in ’06.”
Danny Densing. “How did you— He came up when you searched my sister’s name?”
Volk scrolls down the screen. “The Arnold police had us question him about an incident over in their town. Looks like Joslin Lowell was his alibi.”
Arnold. Any other day the name wouldn’t have meant anything to me. All I’d ever known about Arnold was that it was a place you didn’t want to be caught in alone. But the other day at the library, I saw the Gazette cover story about a meth house that exploded there the night of Lori’s murder.
My sister told the police that Danny was with her. He must have asked her to lie for him, because he was involved in the explosion somehow.
And without knowing it, he gave Joslin an alibi for Lori’s murder.
“The meth lab explosion,” I say. “They think Danny had something to do with it, right?”
Volk frowns. “I can’t say. It’s still an open investigation. Two other persons of interest fled the state, and we don’t have enough evidence to extradite them.”
I’ll bet everything he’s talking about Tommy and Mike Faber. So it’s possible the cops never looked at them for Lori’s murder at all, and Melissa Lawrence assumed I was asking about their involvement in the explosion.
Had Lori found out that they were cooking the meth that caused the house to explode? Did they have to kill her to shut her up?
“Your sister was mixed up with some bad people,” Volk says, echoing my thoughts. “How come no one ever reported her missing?”
The blood flowing to my head slows. “What?”
Volk frowns, runs his finger down the scroll button on his mouse. “If someone filed a report, it’d be right here.”
Anger flashes through me, leaving me feeling raw and ready for a fight. I wish my mother were here right now, so I could shake her by the shoulders until she tells me why she didn’t report my sister—her daughter—missing, after she told me that the police would find Joslin and bring her home.
Where are you two? I feel the words rising in me like bile, as if the only way I’d feel better would be to scream them out.
Where are you, and what the hell are you hiding?
•••
I don’t stop in the lobby for Callie; I walk right past the front desk, past Eli’s limp wave goodbye, and out the front door. Callie storms out after me.
“What happened?”
“Let’s go.”
She trails after me. Unlocks the car. I buckle my seat belt and stare straight ahead. Callie starts the engine and blasts the AC, but stops there.
“What happened?” she asks again.
“I got his name. Danny Densing.”
“You know what I mean,” she says. “Did Volk remember you?”
“Yeah. But he didn’t say anything about Stokes.” I make a fist to stop my hand from trembling. “No one reported my sister missing.”
Callie is speechless. “Have you…thought about trying to find your mom?”
I would rather die than tell Callie that I have tried to find her, and the only clue I have came from a six-year-old in a trailer park. I put my face in my hands.
I’m not prepared for what Callie does next—she rests her fingertips on my shoulder. The words come out of me in a single breath: “I don’t like people touching me.”
Callie jerks her hand away as if she’s been burned. “Sorry.”
She squashes her hands between her knees.
I shut my eyes. “We have to find Danny first,” I say, because what’s the alternative? My mother is hiding from the Monster.
Besides, how could my mother be helpful? The moments leading up to her driving us to that gas station ten years ago—rarely coming out of her room after my father was sentenced, not reporting Joslin missing—point to one conclusion.
My mother had been gone long before disappearing from my life.
“Joslin told the cops that she was with Danny the night Lori was murdered,” I say. “They think he and the Fabers were involved in a meth lab explosion.”
Callie mulls this over. “So if your sister wasn’t really with Danny, then what was she doing?”
“I don’t know, but hopefully Danny does.” I pause. “What are the chances a guy who’s evading felony drug charges is in the phone book?”
Callie snorts. The knot in my throat loosens a little. She puts the van in gear and pulls out of the parking lot. Danny Densing. I imagine writing the name inside my wrist with a pen, even though I could never forget it, now that I’ve heard it.
We make a detour to CVS, because Callie needs to pick up her prescription. While Callie waits in line at the pharmacy, I weave up and down the aisles, even though I don’t need to buy anything. I’m just tired of standing around, taking up space. I make a game out of trying to guess what kind of medications Callie is on. Happy pills like the ones Gram used to have me take, maybe.
I see the girl at the cash register in the front, buying a can of that radioactive Gatorade stuff you give to little kids when they’re puking their brains out. I almost think it’s her, which of course it isn’t, because she’s dead. Ariel. Ariel, who was always red-mouthed from a cold and sniffling, obliviously touching you right after she wiped her nose.
I watch Katie Kouchinsky from the cosmetics aisle, until Callie’s voice comes from behind me.
“What are you doing?” She freezes when she sees Katie. It seems like neither of us is going to acknowledge her, until Katie collects her change, turns around, and locks eyes with me.
“Hi,” she whispers. Katie’s voice was always the biggest difference between her and her sister. Ariel had a voice that made teachers cringe—she never seemed to realize how loud she was being, even when she was talking about something potentially embarrassing, like buying a training bra.
Katie was quiet. Still a thumb-sucker at seven, which is when I saw her last, before the funeral yesterday.
“Hey,” Callie says gently. Katie looks like she’s stepped into qui
cksand. She doesn’t move as we approach her.
“I’m so, so sorry,” Callie keeps talking. “I meant to tell you in person—yesterday.”
“It was hard for all of us,” Katie says, in a way that’s obvious she doesn’t consider Callie part of us. Callie looks hurt; I don’t envy her. That’s the best part of being on the outside—you never have to wonder where you stand with people.
“I’ve got to go,” Katie says quickly. “It was nice seeing you.”
“Wait,” Callie says. “Did you tell the police Ari was with you the day she went missing?”
The color leaches from Katie’s face. “How did you—”
Callie lowers her voice. “Nick says she was with him.”
“You talked to Nick? When?”
Callie takes a step toward Katie. “You’re not going to help your sister by lying.”
Katie flinches. I know Callie doesn’t mean to be cruel; there has always been a cold, matter-of-factness to her when she wants something. You have to be the stepsister, Tessa, because I look like Cinderella and you don’t.
Tears dot Katie’s eyelashes. “I was just doing what she asked me to. You have no idea what my dad will do if he finds out I lied about that too. I’ve got to go.”
Callie rests her hand on Katie’s forearm. Katie is limp under her touch.
“We know about the website,” Callie whispers. “I know you do too. She might have told you something that could help the cops find her killer.”
“But they think Nick did it.” Katie blinks. “The cops were at his house this morning, searching for whatever he used to do it.”
I freeze. Whatever the cops are looking for at Nick’s house, it’s not a murder weapon. “What did they tell you about how she died?”
“Not much.” Katie wipes the area under her eye. “They can’t, because it could mess up their investigation.”
A weapon. Katie thinks that her sister’s killer shot or stabbed her—the police haven’t even told Ariel’s family that she was strangled.
I open my mouth, but Callie jabs me with her elbow.
“Katie, I heard something about Ari,” Callie says. “That she may have met up with a guy before she died…Did she tell you she was scared of any of the men from the website?”
Katie shakes her head. “She was so careful about who she picked. She said they were just lonely, and nice. One didn’t even want to have sex with her.”
“Did she say anything else about that guy?” Callie asks.
“No. Now I really have to go.” Katie pulls the handle of her plastic bag tight over her wrist. “I’m not supposed to talk about Ari to strangers.”
Katie pushes past us, and we watch her disappear through the automatic doors. The look on Callie’s face is determined, as if Katie calling her a stranger had rolled right off her.
“You think that guy could be the Monster?” Callie asks me.
“None of the girls were raped,” I say. “Think about it.”
Callie is quiet as we step through the doors—just in time to see Katie getting into a pickup truck idling at the parking lot curb. The passenger window is down, giving us a full view of Daryl Kouchinsky behind the wheel.
He looks at Katie, then back at us. His jaw sets. Before he pulls away from the curb, he says something to his daughter that makes all the color drain from her face.
One look from Daryl Kouchinsky has done something to Callie. Unscrewed an already loosened bolt.
“Maybe you were right about him. Katie said she’s not allowed to talk about Ari,” Callie says, her voice shaking. “Maybe Katie knows something about her dad—she could have been acting when she pretended she didn’t know who did it.”
“I don’t know.” I buckle my seat belt, even though Callie shows no intention of leaving the CVS parking lot. “Could be Daryl doesn’t want the other kids saying stuff that might wind up in the papers. Nothing in the news said anything about Ari being an escort.”
“You know he would have hurt her if he’d found out what she was doing.” Callie’s expression sets as she starts the car. “He can’t control himself. Remember the dog?”
I nod as Callie exits the parking lot and heads home. As a kid, I often wondered if Daryl Kouchinsky had ever killed a person. Some people wear their violence like weights around their neck. It was in the slump of his shoulders, the downward curve of his back.
There are people who like to hurt, and then there are people who just need a reason to. People who will kill their own daughters are the type that I would prefer to believe don’t exist.
“Katie knew something more that she wasn’t saying,” Callie continues. “She’s trying to protect her dad.”
“Or she’s trying to protect herself from him.”
We don’t say anything more for the rest of the ride. Callie pulls into the driveway and parks. The curtains in the window rustle. Maggie knows we’re home. And she doesn’t look happy.
“Did you ask if we could go out?” I say.
Callie hesitates. “I thought it would be better to apologize than ask permission.”
“If she thinks I’m getting you into trouble, she’s gonna send me away.”
“Oh please.” Callie shuts the car off. “You can do no wrong in her eyes. I need to know your secret.”
There’s a twinge of resentment in her voice. She doesn’t know that it’s not true. We all have a capacity for forgiveness, and maybe Maggie’s is greater than the average person’s.
But the secrets I’ve kept from her are unforgivable.
•••
Callie and Maggie are having a heated discussion in the family room, so I can’t get on the computer to search for Danny Densing. I figure I should comb through the rest of my dad’s crap from the prison, see if he’s left me any sort of clue I can use to track down my mother or Jos. I head up to the guest room and fish around the bag of his drawings until I find the one I’m looking for.
Bear Creek, 1986.
I could barely fill a shoebox with the things I know about my family’s history. My father was one of five kids; all but one were half siblings. I met his brother once, when I was a toddler. He stayed with us for two days, then disappeared with a box of my mother’s jewelry and the mason jar of quarters that Joslin had kept on her dresser.
They found his body in a Philadelphia crack house a year later. Pneumonia or something.
My father’s father is dead. My father’s mother, an obese woman in a floral housecoat, died when I was still an infant. One of our only surviving photos is of me on her knee, in her home in New Castle. Shortly after the photo was taken, she and my mother got into an argument, and my mother stopped letting my father bring us up there. Grandma Lowell died a couple years later.
And that’s all I know about my father’s family. My family.
Still, it’s enough that I’m convinced the Lowells weren’t the type of people who owned property; and if they did, my father definitely wasn’t the type of person to keep a piece of information like that to himself. He was the type of man who’d brag to the garbage guy about the size of the dump he took that morning. He bragged about me too, to the scary men who came around the house.
That’s my Tessy, right there. She’s the smart one.
But it’s possible my dad’s family did own a place in Bear Creek, a really long time ago. They could have sold it before he even met my mother.
There’s a tightening in my chest, like a rubber band being stretched from both ends. There’s so much I’ll never know about him—things I might have learned eventually, if I’d gotten the chance. If he’d stayed. If my mother hadn’t done everything she could to erase him from our memories once he was gone.
Now it seems like the only way to get to her is through him.
The computer room is still occupied, so I call information on my cell, even though the service is, like, three dollars and Gram will shit herself when she sees the bill. I ask to be connected to Bear Creek’s town clerk office.
The operator transfers me, and I sit through two piano versions of Beatles songs before someone picks up.
“Um, hi.” I’ve forgotten how to speak, as I often do when I have to use the phone. “I was wondering if you had public records of a house in Bear Creek. A cabin.”
“What’s the owner’s name?”
“Glenn Lowell.”
The sound of typing. A sigh. I’ve bored her already. “Nothing with that name.”
“What about anyone else with the last name Lowell?”
A pause. A sigh.
“Look, I’m gonna tell you something,” the woman says. “There isn’t much up the mountain. And the people who live there…You won’t find an address, because there isn’t one.”
“What do you mean?”
“Squatters,” she says. “Lots of abandoned cabins from when Bear Creek was a ski resort. People living in ’em, building more of ’em.”
“That’s allowed?” I ask.
“Course not, but we don’t have the resources to police thousands of square miles of uncharted woods. As long as they don’t cause no trouble, we don’t send officers up there much.”
Tax evasion. Illegal homes. Sounds right up the Lowells’ alley. Now we’re getting somewhere.
•••
Dinner tonight is tacos. While the smell of the meat cooking wafts up the stairs, Callie pokes her head into my room.
“Is she mad?” I ask.
She shakes her head. “Nah, I think we’re good for a while. She agrees that getting out is good for coping with what happened to Ari.”
Callie steps into the room. “I couldn’t find anything on Denny Densing online. But I remembered I had this.” Callie sets a Fayette High yearbook on the bed. It’s open to a page of senior portraits. Class of ’03 is across the top.
“Why do you have this?” I ask.
“I did photography for the yearbook committee,” Callie says. “The advisor gave me a box of old editions that go back to the eighties.”
Adrenaline zips to my toes. She could be in one of the candids. My sister, hanging around the soccer field with friends, before she dropped out of school. Callie seems to sense my thoughts.