The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  “Got anything, Doc?” Sanj asked.

  “Yeah,” Livia said, staring down Mr. Davis’s throat. “He choked on a chicken wing. I see the bones in the back of his throat.”

  Kent and Sanj had a look.

  “That’s why you’re the doc, Doc.”

  “Anyone would have found it on autopsy,” Livia said.

  “Yeah,” Sanj said. “But this makes us look smart.”

  “I bet he dropped his soda when he started to choke.”

  Sanj made sure to photograph the spilled soda can, then zipped up the bag and they pushed the gurney out of the apartment. Outside, the residents watched with morbid expressions as Sanj and Kent loaded their neighbor into the van. While the investigators talked with the police and finished their report, Livia found the building’s owner.

  “You’re the landlord, is that correct?” she asked.

  “Yeah. I’m the one who found him.”

  “Neighbors called to report a smell, is that right?”

  “That’s right, Doc.”

  “That ever happen before? Neighbors call with a complaint and you had to check on a tenant?”

  “Tenants complain all the time. But I usually make a phone call and settle things that way. I called Tony for two days, and he obviously never answered. So I came over to see what was going on.”

  “How did you get into the apartment?”

  “I’ve got a master to all the units. It’s in the rental agreement that I can enter any apartment so long as I identify myself and give a reasonable lead time.”

  Livia nodded as she thought.

  “Cops asked me about this stuff earlier this morning.”

  “Of course,” Livia said. “You did the right thing. I’m curious for a different reason.” Livia pointed to the parking lot, where Sanj and Kent were finished with the police and climbing into the van. “That’s my ride. Sorry about Tony.”

  “Yeah,” the landlord said. “You sure that smell goes away?”

  “Give it a day or two,” Livia said as she walked down the stairs.

  * * *

  They gathered two bodies on the first day of ride-alongs, and arrived back at the morgue just as another crew of investigators went out on an evening call. It was four p.m. Calls that came in this late in the day were dished off to the night-crew investigators. Livia thanked Sanj and Kent for their hospitality before she left, promising to see them in the morning. In her car, she plugged an address into her GPS. Anthony Davis’s case and her discussion with the landlord had got her thinking. During the forty-minute ride back to the morgue, with the body lying behind her, she used her phone to get the information she needed. Casey Delevan had been reported missing not by friends or family, but by his landlord, much like Anthony Davis.

  Livia jumped onto the highway and headed west toward Emerson Bay. When she took the off-ramp in West Bay ninety minutes later, the GPS spit out directions until Livia was in front of Casey Delevan’s former residence, a long single-story building shaped in a blocked U that held eighteen units. She found the number to the management and dialed.

  “Old Town Apartments,” the voice said.

  “This is Dr. Cutty from the medical examiner’s office. We talked earlier.”

  “You here already?”

  “I’m parked out front.”

  “I’ll be right out.”

  A minute later, Livia saw the front door to the office open and a balding man walk out onto the patio. She stood from her car and approached him with a smile and an extended hand.

  “Livia Cutty.”

  He took her hand. “Art Munson.”

  “You own the apartments?”

  “The whole building. I’m only seventy percent full. You’re not looking for a place to stay, are you, Dr. Cutty?”

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Didn’t figure a doctor would want one of my little units. So which tenant are you interested in?”

  “An old one named Casey Delevan.”

  “Guy they just pulled out of the bay?”

  Livia nodded. “That’s him. You’re listed as the person who reported him missing, is that correct?”

  “I called the cops, if that’s what you’re asking. Didn’t know I was listed as anything.”

  “Why’d you call the cops?”

  “He used to pay his rent three months at a time. I require it of some of my clients, especially the ones with bad or no credit. This prevents them from leaving me high and dry. He paid three months, missed his next installment. I sent two notices with no replies. So I went to check on things when he wouldn’t answer his phone. Lot of these guys, they don’t pick up the phone when I call. They forget I know where they live. Came by a couple of times, he never answered the door. Finally had to use my key to enter the unit. Knew right away he was gone.”

  “Why was that?”

  “Place was dusty as hell. Rotten food in the fridge. Nobody had stepped foot in there for some time. I get it from time to time with this clientele. Something comes up and they split in a hurry. So, when I knew he was gone, I called the cops.”

  “When was that?”

  “Just after Halloween. I went through all this with the cops. He prepaid for the summer, July through September. Never got anything from him for October. I chased him with phone calls for a couple of weeks before I discovered the apartment had been abandoned.”

  “And you called the police because you thought something had happened to him?”

  “No. I called because I’m required to file a report with the police before I can clear the unit. I was already out a month’s rent, so I wanted to move fast to find a new tenant. He didn’t have any family listed on his documents, so I stored all his stuff—required by law—for three months. Then I started hocking it. Almost forgot about him until I heard he jumped from that bridge. Wish he’d written me a check before he jumped.” Art Munson let out a small laugh that he quickly stifled.

  “And you say the apartment looked unlived in for some time?”

  “That’s for sure.”

  Livia created a timeline in her head. Casey could have disappeared anytime from July to November, confirming the OCME’s suggestion that his body was twelve to sixteen months old when it came to the morgue.

  “What did you do with his belongings?” Livia asked.

  “Sold some of them to a few tenants. Tossed a bunch. Think a few things are still here in storage.”

  “Yeah? Think I could have a look?”

  “Suppose so. What’s the interest?”

  “I did the autopsy on him. We’re tying up some loose ends.”

  “Sounds like something the cops should be doing.”

  “My sentiments exactly. But here I am at the end of a workday, doing this stuff myself.”

  “C’mon in,” Art said. “Storage is in the basement.”

  Livia followed Art Munson into the apartment building and through a door in the back, down a dark stairwell and into a large, cluttered basement. Fluorescent lights blinked to life and cast the space in a migrainous glow. It was a hoarder’s paradise. Livia counted eight wooden desks at first glance before noticing another three under stacks of couch cushions and dusty plastic plants. A few old televisions were stacked in the corner along with two ancient refrigerators from when they were termed ice boxes, and dozens of framed pictures and hanging mirrors.

  “Looks like a mess,” Art said. “But it’s more organized than you’d guess. Got everything separated by year. Delevan was last year, so that stuff’s over here. He was my only AWOL tenant last year.”

  Art Munson pointed at a desk that held a stack of hardcover books, a microwave, and a computer.

  “Most of his furniture sold. He had some halfway decent stuff, so it was easy to move. This is all that’s left.”

  Livia walked to the desk and surveyed the stack of books. She saw a biography on Jeffrey Dahmer and an encyclopedia of serial killers. She paged through them to find they were heavily outlined and dog-eared. Livia pu
lled open the top drawer to a mess of pens and paper clips and unremarkable office supplies jostled and scattered during the desk’s journey to Art Munson’s storage space. She pulled open the other drawers and rooted around unimpressed. When she pulled on the bottom drawer, it was locked. She went back to the books and paged more carefully through them.

  “You gonna be a while, Doc?”

  “Maybe a few minutes.”

  “I’ll be outside. Let me know if you need anything.”

  When Mr. Munson was gone, Livia pulled open the top drawer again and sifted through the junk. She looked for a key to the locked drawer but didn’t find one. She looked around the basement at the other stacks of junk. The fluorescent lighting was starting to warm and the storage area was brighter now than it had been originally. On the third desk she found a toolbox. Inside was a flat-head screwdriver. Back at Casey’s desk, she inserted it into the space between the locked drawer and desk frame, and pried with everything she had. Just as a grunt escaped her lips, the drawer splintered at the lock and sprung open.

  Livia waited a moment to make sure Mr. Munson didn’t come down to check the ruckus, then she paged through the upright files hanging in the drawer. Bank records and bills. The Old Town Apartments rental agreement. Then a thicker folder. She pulled this out and placed it on the desk. Newspaper articles spilled from the folder as she laid it down. Meticulously cut from the paper, they had sharp, ninety-degree edges and long horizontal rectangles that contained the headlines. Scanning them, Livia read articles chronicling the abduction of a Virginia girl named Nancy Dee. A sick and eerie feeling came over her as Livia paged through the articles, which first covered the initial reports of the missing girl and the search for answers. The police reports and speculation on how Nancy might have been abducted, where she had been the day she went missing—a timeline of her life that pieced together her steps that day, the last time she was seen alive. The articles covered the police investigation, the town’s search, and the vigils held by family and friends. The articles brought Livia back to Nicole’s abduction. The Dee family had gone through the same process. The difference, however, came as Livia continued to page through the stories. Six months after Nancy Dee had disappeared, her body was discovered in a shallow grave in the Virginia woods more than one hundred miles from her hometown.

  Livia stuffed the articles into the folder and rooted back through the drawer. She found a map of Virginia in one of the folders, pulled it out, and dropped it on the desk. Her fingers walked through the other hanging folders in the drawer, each labeled with a name. She saw Paula D’Amato and Diana Wells scrawled on the labels. She pulled the folders from the drawer.

  “Doc?” Art Munson yelled from the top of the stairs. “You almost done?”

  Livia stacked the three folders and the Virginia map into a pile and stuck them in her purse. She closed the drawer and brushed the splintered wood particles under the desk.

  “Yeah,” she said, rearranging her purse so it looked loose and casual before heading up the stairs.

  Livia followed Art Munson outside. It was past six p.m. and dusk had settled over Emerson Bay, the fall sky lit by a fading lavender glow.

  “Police ever look at any of Casey Delevan’s belongings?” Livia asked.

  Art shook his head. “Nope. Just took my statement, asked a few questions. Said they’d get back to me. After three months, I told them I was renting the apartment and moving his stuff. Never heard from them again.”

  “I’m still working with the detectives on this. Just making sure we don’t miss anything.” Livia handed him a business card. “If you remember anything else that feels important about Mr. Delevan, give me a call.”

  “Will do. I thought he jumped off Points Bridge. Something else going on with him?”

  Livia shrugged. “That’s it. We’re just crossing t’s and dotting i’s. Part of the bureaucratic process.”

  Art held up Livia’s card as she climbed into her car. “You find out he left any money behind, he still owes me a month.”

  Livia started the car. “If I find anything, I’ll make sure you get a check. Thanks for your help.”

  CHAPTER 19

  Megan McDonald worked at the county courthouse. It was a filing job secured by her father to keep her busy after the abduction. Sitting for long hours in her bedroom, Dr. Mattingly had warned, was unhealthy. But Megan countered, in the quiet of her mind, that filing marriage certificates and lawsuits in a stuffy office for eight hours a day was equally unhealthy. Again, though, like her book—and most things Megan did over the last year—the courthouse job was a way to calm her parents. Placate them and comfort them and make them believe everything would be all right. Her role as a daughter was ironic in this sense. She should be on the receiving end of comfort and consolation. But in this new, strange, post-abduction world, Megan found herself soothing her parents and making things workable so they could continue their lives.

  She went to her sessions with Dr. Mattingly, she wrote her book, she did the interviews. She spent her days at her nine-to-five at the courthouse. At home, she listened to the only thing her mother was capable of offering—the whispered voice that gave updates on her book sales and relayed messages from readers who were touched by Megan’s words. In reality, Megan knew, the main reason her mother periodically opened her door was to make sure Megan was there and safe and had not been taken again. It was becoming an obsessive compulsion Megan wanted to speak to Dr. Mattingly about.

  It was too embarrassing for her mother to allow Emerson Bay, and the people who worked under her father, to see that Megan had fallen from stardom, so the filing position at the courthouse was termed an internship. To prepare her for what, exactly, was never clearly defined. But it was the only sufficient way to explain why a nineteen-year-old girl who was supposed to be studying at Duke University, a girl who was the valedictorian of Emerson Bay High and who had created one of the most successful mentoring programs the state had ever seen, was now weaving through middle-aged women in the back office of the county courthouse stuffing hard-copied documents into filing drawers.

  The cafeteria was packed from eleven thirty to two o’clock each workday with county employees, lawyers, reporters, clerks, and herds of citizens who needed to stuff their faces with fried food before their court appearance for speeding or littering or DUI. The cafeteria was a noisy place with long picnic bench tables and orange cafeteria trays. An “intern” for the past eight months and Megan had not once stepped foot in the place. Instead, she spent her lunch hours in her car. She had developed a routine, which so far hadn’t paid dividends. She wasn’t sure yet, exactly, what she was looking for, but the alternative was to do nothing, which was no longer acceptable. Not when she believed she was so close.

  It took twenty minutes to drive to West Bay, which after factoring in the return trip gave her twenty minutes to watch the sky. Pulling into a new park, one she hadn’t visited before, Megan climbed from her car and leaned against the front bumper. After a few minutes a plane passed overhead on a southwest bearing toward Raleigh-Durham. She watched the image of the plane, the size of it in the sky and the direction it was moving. She listened to its sound. In her mind’s eye, Megan superimposed this image with the ones she remembered from her two weeks in captivity. In the dark cellar where he kept her, she had been able to peek through a splinter in the plywood that covered the window to see the planes as they passed overhead. The small sliver of sky that was visible was usually vacant when Megan scanned it. But occasionally she saw a plane. At night, that slit in the plywood offered stars from which Megan made out constellations. During the day, she waited for those planes to make her feel not so alone. Those planes held people, and when she spotted them she felt like she was still part of their world.

  As she watched now, leaning against her car in the park, she thought she was close. She had little to help her triangulate, but the sound of those planes burned in her mind told her the flight pattern she was now watching was the sam
e one she’d seen and heard during her two weeks in that cellar.

  She waited twenty minutes, then five minutes more, knowing the extra time spent would make her late for work. But still, she took the extra minutes hoping to hear it. Finally, she climbed into her car. She’d try another spot tomorrow. She was close. Here, the planes were at the correct altitude and bearing. Their engines at the right pitch. All that was missing was the train whistle.

  CHAPTER 20

  After her second day of ride-alongs, Livia made a quick stop home on Tuesday evening. Kent Chapple had so far dubbed Livia’s time on ride-alongs as “rot week” since her third transport was also of a decaying body that had met with death days before. Today, she and the scene investigators had gone to the home of Gertrude Wilkes, a ninety-year-old woman who police found dead under the covers of her bed. Her body sat for nearly two weeks, they guessed, before the mailman reported the address to authorities when he couldn’t stuff the mailbox any longer. With no family to check on her, the house was bubbling with the smell of death when police opened the door early that morning. By the time Livia arrived with Sanj and Kent, the odor had faded slightly, aided by the cops who had coffee fiercely boiling on the stove and every door and window open wide. Despite their efforts, when Livia entered the elderly woman’s house, she had immediately reached for the VapoRub. Kent simply inhaled deeply as he walked past her.

  The autopsy would later prove Mrs. Wilkes had died peacefully in her sleep of congestive heart failure, and though no family members were still living to hear this, it comforted Livia that death had come so gently. It was also satisfying that no one besides the morgue crew and police would know this poor woman’s body sat rotting for two weeks simply because no one was left in this world who loved her.

  As Livia entered the foyer of her home on Tuesday evening, she unclipped the bobby pin that held her hair in a tight bun and let it fall to her shoulders. She reached for a strand and smelled it.