The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  “ID’d your John Doe from last month,” he said.

  Livia looked up from her work. “Yeah?”

  “Homicide guys worked with Missing Persons and went back month to month. Your guy went missing last year. Reported by his landlord.”

  “Landlord? No family?”

  “I guess he was a bit of a drifter. MP detectives said his mother lives in Georgia and hadn’t talked to him in years. Didn’t know he was missing until she got the call.”

  “That’s sad.”

  Dennis dropped a thin file onto Livia’s desk. “Here’s what we have on him. Arrested just once, but had some detailed dental work completed a while back that allowed a positive ID.”

  “Thanks, Dennis. I’ll be happy to get this off my desk.”

  When he was gone, Livia pulled the file folder over to her and opened it. She saw in the top left corner a small square photo of a young, good-looking man. She read farther down and saw he had been reported missing in November of 2016.

  Livia pulled out the death certificate to finalize her notes so it could be printed up and sent off to this young man’s mother in Georgia. Her first homicide was an interesting and challenging study, a case that required much guidance and one that taught her a great deal. Dr. Colt had apologized a half dozen times over the past month whenever he heard Livia was spending time on the case, either talking with the homicide detectives or preparing reports for Missing Persons or working with the ballistics lab on the soil analysis and cloth and fiber findings. It was her first clinger—a case that no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t get rid of.

  A life might end, Dr. Colt told her, but sometimes their cases live forever.

  * * *

  Two days later, Livia completed the file and delivered her final report to the homicide detectives. The name of the man “floating” in the bay was broadcast to the public by every news anchor in Emerson Bay and North Carolina. The exact details about his death were kept vague as the investigation was in the preliminary phase, and he was still being reported as a “floater” whom fishermen had stumbled upon. The newspeople ate up any morsel of information they could find about this twenty-five-year-old man named Casey Delevan. They presented it dramatically on the evening news, but the sad truth was that no one had missed Mr. Delevan, and no one was looking for him. The story had no staying power. After a day, the identification of the body pulled from Emerson Bay was old news, overshadowed by Oktoberfest, changing leaves, and Halloween festivals.

  It was ten p.m. when Livia started her bag work at the gym. In a tank top, shorts, and bare feet, she went at the Everlast bag with everything left inside her. It was soft but solid when her shin connected with it. As she brought her leg down, she danced on the balls of her feet before unloading a combination of three punches—two straight left jabs and a powerful right hook. Another kick followed. Sweat poured down her long, lean frame. Always athletic, Livia had formerly been a treadmill and Nautilus regular. Running and light strength training had been enough during medical school and residency to stay in shape and give her mind a break. But since she started her fellowship, something more than long runs were needed to offset the overwhelming volume of information her brain absorbed each day. She needed, too, an escape from the eerie morgue, where bodies lay on autopsy tables, the piercing cry of bone saws echoed off the walls, and the smell of formaldehyde hung in the air. Livia needed a release from the close quarters she shared with death, and evidenced by the sculpted body she witnessed in the mirror over the last few months, she’d found her refuge.

  Bag work was how she spent the last fifteen minutes of her workouts. Livia had long ago given up on the “cooldown” feature of the treadmill. Cooling down now was saved for the shower.

  “Good!” Randy said. He, too, was dripping with perspiration. His T-shirt clung to his hulking body and his arms tensed as though he’d like to get involved in the action. “Mix it up. You throw the same combination over and over, your opponent will anticipate it.”

  About to release another side kick with her dominant right leg, Livia instead offered an axe kick with her left, followed by a spinning backhand right.

  “There you go,” Randy said. “Variety gets you out of trouble. You stay stale with that side kick, and your opponent will see it coming.” He checked his stopwatch. “Time!”

  Livia bent over, breathing heavily, and put her gloved hands on her knees.

  Randy patted her on the back as he walked away. “Good workout. I’d take you back home with me as my bodyguard. The streets of Baltimore would never be the same.”

  “I’m sure.”

  “See you next week, Doc.”

  Livia showered at the gym and was home and in bed by eleven thirty p.m. She grabbed the book off the nightstand, disgusted with herself for reading it. She’d spent twenty-seven bucks on the thing and knew some portion of her cash would find its way to Megan McDonald. The previous evening, Livia made it through half the book, which covered Megan’s stellar life and all her accomplishments. It covered in detail the summer retreat she championed, and all the girls she had helped in her young life. Livia read page after page about the driven person Megan McDonald was, the entire narrative implying, without frankly stating, what a loss it would have been had she not escaped from that bunker.

  Livia hated the writing and the vocabulary and the foreshadowing. She hated that the book turned such a tragedy into a suspenseful true-crime noir. She hated that Nicole, who disappeared from the same beach party on the same night, was barely mentioned. She couldn’t stomach the implication that her sister was the other girl, the lower-profile, less-special girl who did not have the town’s sheriff as a father or a résumé that compared to Megan McDonald’s. Livia detested the suggestion that the world would be less a place had Megan McDonald not escaped, but would continue just the same without Nicole. Most of all, Livia was saddened that no one remembered her sister any longer. The country was transfixed, not by the girl who was gone, but by the one who made it home.

  Over the past year, Livia watched every interview Megan McDonald had given. She was torn between believing Megan’s grief over Nicole, and thinking she was full of herself. Reading this money-grab was not swaying her low opinion of the girl. Why, Livia wondered, would someone put on display her innermost thoughts and horrors for the reading public to devour if not for attention and celebrity?

  And despite all this, Livia couldn’t stop reading. The story was the closest thing she’d gotten to real details about the night Megan and Nicole were taken. Just as Livia turned the page to begin a new chapter, the phone rang. She answered on the second ring.

  “Hello?”

  “Livia?”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s Jessica Tanner.”

  Livia remembered Nicole’s friend. Ten years separated Livia and Nicole, and a strange relationship had developed between the two sisters. Livia was very close in a maternal way with Nicole; this motherly relationship lasted until Livia went off to college. Nicole was eight years old at the time, and their relationship blossomed whenever Livia came home for holidays and summers. Some of the greatest memories they shared were those times when Livia was home from college. Livia’s mind drifted to those nights, when Nicole would sneak into Livia’s bedroom. One late night, she lugged a thick Harry Potter novel with her and stood by Livia’s bed.

  “You’ve got to go to sleep. You’ve got soccer in the morning.”

  “Just for a little while,” Nicole said. “Just one chapter.”

  Livia smiled. “Fine. Hurry up.”

  She moved the covers to the side, and Nicole climbed into her older sister’s bed, tucked her head into the corner of Livia’s shoulder as they both lay on their backs. Livia found where they’d left off, marked with a Taylor Swift ticket stub from the previous summer.

  Livia opened the book and read. One chapter turned to three and soon she heard Nicole’s breathing become deep and rhythmic. It wouldn’t have taken much to carry her nine-year-old s
ister to the bedroom next door, but Livia never minded sharing her space with Nicole. She stuck the stub back into the book, a new location farther along, and couldn’t help feel as though the same was happening to them. Each time, they got further along in their story together. Livia wondered what would come next when the book ended. Would another follow, or would the latest one simply end? Sisters don’t share beds forever.

  Years later, Livia was finishing medical school when Nicole started at Emerson Bay High. Livia’s pathology residency occupied much of her life during Nicole’s high school years. Their relationship drifted during this time, the formative years of Nicole’s adolescence. The realities of life and work sent the sisters in different directions. Reading Harry Potter novels was a distant memory tarnished by time. Still, Livia knew most of Nicole’s friends from that time, and knew Jessica Tanner had been one of her sister’s closest. The last time the two had talked was at a vigil for Nicole more than a year before, and another time briefly when the town gathered to futilely search the wooded areas of Emerson Bay just after the disappearances.

  “Hi, Jessica. Everything all right?”

  “Yeah. Sorry I’m calling so late. I mean, is this late?”

  “It’s fine. What’s going on?”

  “I’m at school. At North Carolina State. My mom just told me about this guy they found back home. Floating in the bay.”

  “Uh-huh,” Livia said, wondering how Jessica had gotten wind that Livia was involved with the case.

  “Do you know about it?” Jessica asked.

  “Do I . . . yeah,” Livia said. “I heard about it.”

  “Some fishermen, like, found the guy floating or something. But people are saying maybe he didn’t jump. Maybe he was killed.”

  “Okay.”

  “So I saw a picture of the guy. The dead guy.”

  “What kind of picture?”

  “You know, on the news. My mom sent me the article from the paper. She still doesn’t get that all of that stuff is online.”

  Livia waited.

  “So anyway, I just wanted to tell you because . . . I figured you’d wanna know.”

  “Know what, Jessica?”

  “The dead guy? Casey? That they pulled out of the bay? He was the guy Nicole was dating that summer. Before she disappeared.”

  SUMMER 2016

  “Let ’em drool.”

  —Nicole Cutty

  CHAPTER 5

  July 2016

  Five Weeks Before the Abduction

  They sat on the edge of the pool, feet bathed in the cool water and the high summer sun on their shoulders. Emerson Bay was in the distance, just down the flight of stairs carved into the hillside and which ran down from the pool to the water’s edge. A pontoon and speedboat floated next to the dock, and two umbrella bays were vacant of the Jet Skis they stored. Rachel’s brother and a friend were streaking the bay on the Yamahas, hopping waves made by the wake of powerboats, the screaming engines audible from the poolside patio where the girls sat. It was Friday afternoon and Emerson Bay was busy. Already, there were boats pulling water skiers and tubers, sailboats angled from the wind, and music blaring from pontoons anchored out by Steamboat Eddie’s.

  The three of them—Jessica Tanner, Rachel Ryan, and Nicole Cutty—had been friends since freshman year. At first a reluctant friendship, formed when previous friends from middle school splintered off into various factions created by sports or neighborhoods or popularity or the hundreds of other categories that separated high school girls. Jessica, Rachel, and Nicole—along with handfuls of other girls—were left to fend for themselves at the beginning of freshman year. A lesson learned in high school, just as in the wild: There was strength in numbers. These three found one another and stuck together. As the other cliques grew, from the cheer team to the scholars, the chemistry geeks to the beauty queens, Nicole and her friends formed their own inseparable union. Only recently, as summer wound down and college beckoned, had things begun to change.

  Rachel’s house sat on the edge of Emerson Bay, along with 987 other homes whose owners were lucky enough and wealthy enough to hold such a piece of prime real estate. Although the homes came in various shapes and sizes, most were elaborate structures with sprawling lawns and rolling greenery that spilled down the hillside to the banks of Emerson Bay. Most had pools and beach access and some sort of motorized water toy, from speedboats and pontoons to Jet Skis and fishing boats.

  Rachel’s home was where the three had spent each summer since freshman year, lounging poolside or cruising the lake on Rachel’s ArrowCat. It was where they had become friends. Rachel’s house and the pool and the bay and the summers all held their secrets. The pool house was where Jessica had hooked up with Dave Schneider. The boat garage was where Rachel puked the first time she’d gotten drunk. And on the Ryans’ docked pontoon was where Nicole claimed to have lost her virginity during a party last summer, although the story had changed so many times no one knew the truth any longer.

  “What’s up with you lately?” Jessica asked.

  “What do you mean?” Nicole said.

  “You’ve been MIA. You don’t post anything. You barely return texts. So what’s up with you? I know you’re not hooking up with anyone.”

  Nicole smiled and splashed the water with her feet. Shrugged.

  “Get. Out! Who?”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said, forehead wrinkled. “Who?”

  “You guys don’t know him.”

  “A Chapel Hill guy?”

  “God no! He doesn’t go to school.”

  “Doesn’t go to college? How old is he?”

  “I don’t know. Like, twenty-five?”

  Jessica stared at her. “What the hell, Nicole?”

  “What? I’m seventeen. It’s not illegal. Gotta be fifteen or younger.”

  “I don’t care if it’s legal. What’s a twenty-five-year-old doing with us?”

  “He’s not doing anything with us. Just me.”

  “Whatever,” Jessica said. “Does he have a job?”

  Another shrug. “I don’t really know. Construction, or something.”

  “So what, he holds the stop sign at construction sites?”

  “I don’t know what he does.”

  “Sounds serious,” Rachel said.

  “Screw you guys. I’m so sick of Emerson Bay boys. And high school boys, in general. Totally predictable. Totally boring.”

  “When do we get to meet him?”

  Nicole made an ugly face. “Great idea. I’ll suffocate him with neediness. Please meet my friends so they can love, love, love you!”

  “Tell him to come to Matt’s party next Saturday,” Jessica said, almost a challenge.

  “Right. Like he wants to go to a high school party.”

  “You’re still going, aren’t you?”

  Nicole shrugged again. She could have yawned to get her point across. “Yeah, I guess. The bitches will be there, so I might not stay long.”

  “Come on,” Jessica said. “They’re not bitches, they’re just . . .”

  “Perfect. Little. Bitches,” Nicole said. “And so fake it makes me want to puke.”

  “Megan McDonald? She is always super nice to you.”

  “Yeah, in a super-fake way. Like: I’m so much smarter than you and prettier than you and more popular than you, I think I’ll act really nice to you so you don’t feel so sorry for yourself. And if I could find a way to document my charity to you on my résumé, I’d do it because it might get me into a better school.”

  Jessica and Rachel laughed at the mimic.

  “That’s not Megan at all,” Jessica said.

  “If anything,” Rachel said, “she comes off as too nice. So I can see why you think she’s fake. But it’s real. It’s the way she is. And she created the summer retreat, so you can’t make the argument that she’s dumb. Girl’s smart-smart. Like thirty-six-on-her-ACT-smart.”

  “Exactly. She created a retreat to help incoming freshman, yet during our freshman yea
r she was the one who was bitchy and cliquey and made people feel like shit.” Nicole stood from the pool and moved to a lounge chair. “She bothers me.”

  “She bothers you lately because she’s hooking up with Matt. I thought you were ‘so over’ him,” Jessica said, making air quotes.

  “I am. But Megan McDonald? Really? I mean, after me, he gets with her? He’ll need a crowbar to get in her pants, so what’s the point?”

  “You’re disgusting,” Jessica said.

  Nicole unhooked her bikini top and lay bare-chested on the lounge chair, closing her eyes and absorbing the sun. “Tell me when your brother comes back with his perv friend. I don’t need them drooling when they see me topless.”

  Jessica and Rachel looked at each other with quizzical stares and suppressed smiles as they watched their friend lay half naked by the pool. They had both discussed Nicole’s transformation this summer. They defined it as rebellion before heading off to college. A severing of ties, perhaps, to make the process of leaving her family and friends easier.

  “Megan’s off to Duke next year,” Jessica finally said. “And I’m sure she’ll be in Ethiopia or somewhere next summer saving sick kids, so you won’t have to worry about her for long.”

  With closed eyes, Nicole raised her hand in a thumbs-up gesture. “You know what? I am going to Matt’s this weekend. Think I’ll start a little summer fling with him. See what the little prude does when she sees her boyfriend all over me.”

  The rev of Jet Skis filled the summer air and Rachel looked down at the bay. “My brother and his friend are back.”

  Nicole kept her eyes closed as she lay on the patio chair, her breasts glistening with tanning oil and perspiration. She didn’t move. “Let ’em drool.”

  CHAPTER 6

  July 2016

  Four Weeks Before the Abduction