The Girl Who Was Taken

by Charlie Donlea

  “He’s filled with remorse. It’s written all over these pictures,” Nate continued. “He’s on the edge. And with Megan? We see it again. Guilt. Sorrow. Regret. Why didn’t he just kill her? She was doped up, right? Doctors found her high on Special K. He had her high as a kite, not able to defend herself. Why not strangle her like he did Paula? Because he hesitated.” Nate pulled over his newly signed copy of Missing. “Read this and you’ll see. He doped Megan, and moved her to the bunker. Maybe that’s where he killed the other two. Maybe there’re more girls out there that he brought to this bunker and then killed and buried. Maybe we find them later—weeks, months, whatever. But why didn’t he kill Megan? Because he lingered. He took the steps—doped her, bound her, transported her to the woods, and then . . . he wavered. When it came time to kill her, he stopped and thought about it. And in that hesitation, she ran. Feisty girl ran like hell until that guy found her wandering on Highway Fifty-Seven.”

  Nate took a deep breath, as if the night had exhausted him. “So we got a guy who is lacking affection in the real world. A guy who wants love from the girls he takes because he can’t find it elsewhere. A guy who is heartless enough to repeatedly rape the girls he takes, but remorseful when he kills them.” He looked up at Livia, took another deep breath. “That help you at all?”

  Now Livia ran a hand through her hair. “I’m not sure. But I know a hell of a lot more than I did a couple of hours ago. Your theories will help when I talk with detectives or federal agents.”

  Livia gathered the photos and reports and stashed them back into her folder.

  “Thanks for looking at this stuff and taking so much time on it,” she said.

  “Yeah. No problem. Thanks for getting me a copy of Megan’s book.”

  Livia nodded and headed for the door.

  “Oh, one other thing,” Nate said before she left. “Something no one mentioned in any of those reports, but I find odd. Whoever took those girls has access to body bags. Sort of weird that he took the time to stuff them both into vinyl after he killed them.”

  CHAPTER 41

  Livia was at the desk in her bedroom, moving between the computer and her notes. She was starting a rotation through pediatric pathology the following week and was painfully behind on her readings. The fellows had been given thick binders and textbooks during their orientation week in July that outlined the subspecialties they would be exposed to during their twelve-month forensic fellowship. The first three months, from July through September, constituted their breaking-in period, where they concentrated only on general forensics. But starting in November they would begin integrating their skills in forensics with other subspecialties, which for Livia included pediatric path, neuro-path and derm-path. Preoccupied over the last several weeks with her extracurricular investigation, she hadn’t yet touched her reading material. Tonight, however, she used the textbooks as a distraction to get her mind off her most recent, and slightly disturbing, meeting with Nate Theros. By midnight, she was deep into the intricacies of pediatric bone development when there came a knock at her door. She bolted upright in her chair, the bedroom lit only by the desk lamp and the rest of the house cast in shadows. She closed her textbook. Still in jeans and T-shirt, Livia waited until the knocking came again. She clicked on lights as she made her way to the front door, looked through the peephole, and saw Kent Chapple standing on her front patio.

  She disengaged the dead bolt and pulled the door open.

  “Remember that favor you owe me?” Kent asked through the screen door.

  Livia did—from when Kent had let her leave early on the Friday of her ride-along week.

  “Yes,” she said with a wry smile.

  “I need a couch for the night.”

  “It’s that bad, huh?”

  “Worse,” Kent said. “No way in hell I’m making it until the kids are in college.”

  Livia took an exaggerated whiff of air through the screen door. “Investigator Chapple, is that whiskey I smell?”

  Kent raised a hand, his index finger in the air. “Guilty.”

  Livia pushed open the screen door. “Come on in.”

  Kent slid past her and into her living room, where he collapsed onto her couch.

  “Want to tell me about it?”

  Kent shrugged. “I’ve tried to explain it to myself a thousand different ways. Make it sound like something other than what it is. Something that might be salvageable. I mean, when you’re with someone since high school, it’s hard to admit when it’s over. It’s hard to say that the first person you ever fell in love with is also the first you ever fell out of love with.”

  Livia walked into the kitchen. “Coffee, water, or soda?”

  “I’ll take a whiskey if you’ve got it.”

  Livia opened the refrigerator. “No whiskey, but I think I’ve got an old . . .” She crouched down to look on the bottom shelf. “Yeah. An old wine cooler.”

  She reached to retrieve it and when she stood up Kent was right behind her. “Oh God! You scared me.”

  “Sorry.” Kent smiled as he stared at her.

  Livia looked at the label. “Strawberry mango. Not exactly whiskey, but it’s all the alcohol I have in the house.”

  Kent took it from her, eyes locked on hers. “Thanks.”

  Livia turned and closed the refrigerator, grabbing a mug from the cabinet. She filled it with hot water and dropped a tea bag into it.

  Kent twisted off the top of the wine cooler and took a sip. “Tell me about this case you’re so preoccupied with,” he said.

  Livia raised her eyebrows. “Am I preoccupied?”

  Kent shrugged and sat down. “Had Jen Tilly on ride-alongs this week, and that’s what she says. Says you’re looking into some missing girls, or something, that you think might be tied together. That’s why Colt murdered you in the cage just before ride-alongs.”

  Livia didn’t remember telling Jen much about what she was working on, only that it had to do with her decomp from summer. But Livia knew well the ramblings and gossip that went on in the morgue van and could imagine Sanj and Kent egging Jen on to extrapolate on details.

  “Don’t know, really,” Livia said as she sat down across from Kent at the kitchen table. “I guess you could say I’ve got as much crap going on in my life as you do in yours. Just different types of crap and different problems.”

  Kent stuck out his bottom lip and narrowed his eyes. He looked at his strawberry-mango cooler and then offered it to Livia.

  She laughed. “Put it this way: If you’d offered me whiskey earlier today, I might’ve taken you up on it.”

  “Nah,” Kent said, a slight slur to the word, like his tongue was swollen. “Docs can’t tie one on like this on a random weeknight. All I gotta do is sit in a van with Sanj tomorrow. If I’m too hungover, he’ll take the entire scene for me. We cover for each other like that. You? You gotta perform tomorrow. You gotta be on. Right? Can’t be cloudy with what you do.”

  Livia smiled. “I’m going to get you that coffee after all. I think you need it.”

  “Don’t bother,” Kent said. “I’m gonna crash, if that’s okay with you.”

  “Couch is all yours.”

  Livia watched him take another sip of wine cooler.

  “Your job is very important, Kent. You shouldn’t diminish what you do.”

  “It’s not that. I love my job. It’s just that I’ve got backup if I need it, that’s all I’m saying.” There was a pause in their conversation. “But that’s what I do. I figure out crime scenes. I document what happened when someone dies.” He paused again, as if reluctant to go on. “So that’s why I’m asking about what you’re working on. Maybe I can help.”

  “I’m not really working on anything. Not officially, and certainly with no supervision from anyone.”

  “Dr. Cutty’s gone rogue?”

  “Hardly. It’s just something personal I have to look into.”

  Kent took another sip of strawberry mango. “It have to do with your
sister?”

  Now Livia squinted her eyes slightly, lifted her chin. Slowly, she nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Kent laughed. It sounded forced and Livia couldn’t tell if it was real or fake. “Hey,” he said. “I made you listen to my problems for a whole week in the van. I can at least return the gesture.”

  Livia lifted the tea bag from her mug and placed in on the table. She took a sip. “Fair enough,” she said. “Girls have gone missing from this state and two others in the last three years. I think the same guy took them all, including my sister. If I widen the search beyond border states, there have been others, too.”

  Kent stared at her with glassy eyes, mouth-breathing in the labored way of a drunk. Livia wasn’t sure he’d remember a thing about their conversation tomorrow, but for thirty minutes she told him what she knew and what she suspected. Kent asked few questions while she talked, just sat and listened.

  Finally, he said, “Those are some serious allegations. You talk to the cops?”

  “I’m trying. But it’s complicated with the girls being from different states. It means getting different police forces together, rival detectives pairing up and sharing information. It’s a tall order for someone with no contacts. But I’ve talked with the sheriff of Emerson Bay. He was involved with my sister’s case and sounded like he was willing to help.”

  “I know some of the homicide guys. We have drinks on the weekend. I could ask them for help.”

  “Thanks, Kent. I’ll let you know what happens with Terry McDonald first.”

  Exhausted by one a.m., Livia stared at Kent. “Why don’t you just tell your wife it’s over?”

  This brought Kent back from the place he’d been for the last thirty minutes as he listened to Livia recount her findings from the past few weeks.

  When he didn’t respond, Livia continued. “These last few weeks have taught me a lot. Mostly that keeping things inside and not expressing how we feel doesn’t help anyone. Most of the time it ends up hurting the people we’re trying to protect. I still haven’t told my parents how guilty I feel about ignoring my sister in the months before her disappearance. Or about skipping her phone call that night. They haven’t yet mentioned to me that they can hardly exist in the house that is a replica of the place it was before their daughter was taken. Megan McDonald won’t tell her parents that the girl she was before she disappeared doesn’t exist any longer.”

  Livia looked at Kent.

  “If you don’t think things are going to change between you and your wife, just tell her, Kent. Don’t tell me. Don’t tell Sanj. Tell your wife. We’ll be there to listen, don’t get me wrong. But tell your wife, Kent.”

  Livia stood and took the empty wine cooler from in front of him and dropped it in the garbage. “I’ve got an early morning.”

  “Yeah,” Kent said. “Sorry to barge in like this.”

  “It’s no problem. Thanks for listening to me.”

  “You too. Oh, one other thing,” he said as he shuffled his body in the chair and reached into his front pocket. “I’m taking your advice.” He pulled out his cigarette lighter, tossed it to Livia. “Keep that as a souvenir for saving my life. I picked up a stress ball.”

  Livia stared at the Bic lighter. “Good for you.”

  Later, after she got Kent settled on the couch with a pillow and blanket, Livia lay awake in bed. It was close to two a.m. She thought she heard the floorboards creak outside her bedroom, then heard Kent’s snoring on the couch. Sleep felt far away. Maybe it was the fact that a man hadn’t spent the night since she started her fellowship, or maybe it was the intimate pictures of Paula D’Amato and Nancy Dee that rolled through her head. Maybe it was Nate’s chilling descriptions and insights from earlier. Whatever the reason, Livia lay in bed that night but never found sleep.

  CHAPTER 42

  Megan lay in bed, her window cracked with the chill of midnight whispering over the pane to cool her room. Under the covers her legs twitched as her mind flashed—dark, then bright—with images of the cellar. There were reasons not to venture too far into hypnosis. Her previous sessions, which ended smoothly in Dr. Mattingly’s office under his guidance and tutelage, had never gone beyond the lush armchair that was her home while her mind explored the deeply buried memories of her captivity. But since the last session, when she unleashed herself from his voice and journeyed off on her own, her mind had been restless with images from the cellar. Dr. Mattingly had expertly prevented these suppressed memories from surfacing outside the controlled environment of his office and the isolated time frame of a single hypnosis sitting. But now, since Megan’s rogue therapy session, every time her mind slipped into the unconscious state of sleep her thoughts and dreams were wild and saturated with the happenings of her captivity—disjointed thoughts and phantasmagorias loosely rooted in the facts she had established with Dr. Mattingly, but also rich with exotic pictures and fictitious characters.

  In her current dream, Megan’s ankle was still shackled to the wall, but the plywood was gone from the windows and the sunlight bright when she rose from her bed, springs echoing as she stood. Outside, she looked up to see the sky streaked with the jet stream of crisscrossing planes, white scratches against a blue sky. A loud whistle startled her as a freight train raced past the cellar. She felt its vibration as the long freight cars passed in a blur, one after the other, until they transformed into a commuter line—the windows spilling the blue glow of interior lighting.

  The sun was gone now in her dream and it was dark but for the passing train and the aqua-lit windows. It sped past her cellar, and in the train’s window Megan noticed an isolated figure profiled by the light. Each passenger car displayed the same image of the same person. Megan moved closer to the cellar window and squinted her eyes. The person in the train turned, as if sensing Megan’s presence.

  In bed, Megan’s head and neck moved back and forth as she followed the saccadic motion of the train in her dream. She let out small whimpers as she slept, her mind straining to identify the person on the train. Then, the woman raised a hand in an easy wave and Megan saw clearly the face in the train’s window, highlighted in the soft light. It was Livia Cutty.

  “Don’t go!” Megan cried.

  But the train continued until there were no more cars. Until the night was black and quiet, with no planes and no stars and no moon. When Megan put her hand to the cellar window, the plywood was back.

  “Don’t leave me!”

  She heard a voice and Megan shot her eyes open.

  “Honey!” her father was saying as he woke her, shaking her shoulders. “Megan, wake up. It’s just a dream.”

  Megan finally woke. She stared at her father, disoriented.

  “It’s okay, honey. I’m here. Daddy’s here.”

  He held her close as she breathed heavily.

  “This is why I didn’t want you to start this again. This is what I wanted to save you from.”

  Megan wrapped her arms around her father, rested her head on his shoulder, and cried as the image of the blurry train passing the cellar window pulsed in her mind. Livia Cutty’s easy wave as the final car passed. The feeling, again, of being alone in the dark cellar. And something else, too, that dug at the inner reaches of her brain, something difficult to identify as her mind fought fact from fiction. But eventually, as her mind settled and the images of her dream faded, one thing remained. A sound. It had not been present in her dream, but without doubt this noise was the missing element she’d worked so long to identify. It had been there in her last therapy session. She’d heard it just briefly before Dr. Mattingly forced consciousness upon her. And now, a week later, it finally manifested. It was no longer dancing and elusive in the foggy memories of her subconscious but, instead, clear and vibrant and ringing in her ears.

  PART VI

  “I know who took me.”

  —Megan McDonald

  CHAPTER 43

  November
2017

  Fourteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  After two weeks of no returned calls, Livia took her second personal day of her fellowship and headed to Emerson Bay. She parked in the lot of the Montgomery County Federal Building and entered the sheriff’s office. At the front desk, she asked to see Terry McDonald. No, she had no appointment. Livia wasn’t even sure he was in, but she was willing to wait, all day if necessary.

  After a few minutes the secretary ushered her into the office where Terry McDonald sat behind his desk.

  “Please,” he said to Livia. “Sit down.”

  “Thanks for seeing me,” Livia said.

  “I was meaning to call you, just haven’t had time.”

  “Is Megan okay, incidentally? I haven’t been able to reach her for a couple of weeks.”

  “I’m glad you’re here,” Terry said. “Megan is another reason I was intending to talk to you. Since this little adventure you two have embarked upon—and I don’t diminish it, that’s not what I’m saying—but since Megan started looking into things on her own, her psychiatrist has told me some troubling things about her progress. She appears to have relapsed. Nightmares. Regression in memory during her therapy sessions. Withdrawal. Depression. All the symptoms she showed immediately after her ordeal.”

  “When did this start?” Livia asked. “I mean, I’m sorry that she’s going through this, but the last time we talked she was doing well and was eager to help. I’ve had long conversations with your daughter, sir, about what she wants and what she still needs for closure.”

  “Dr. Cutty, I appreciate the forensic expertise you bring to Megan’s case, and your sister’s, but you are no psychiatrist. Am I correct?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Then please, I beg you, leave Megan out of this thing you are doing. I understand your need for answers, and your family’s need. But you don’t know my daughter. You don’t know the hell she went through, and the long journey it’s been for her to get back to some sense of normalcy. I will support you in any way my office or influence will allow. But please, leave my daughter out of it. She’s come so far under Dr. Mattingly’s tutelage, I won’t allow that effort to be wasted. She was, until just recently, a different person than when she returned from her ordeal. She was, her mother and I were noticing, returning to the girl we remember. I want that girl back, Dr. Cutty. And seeing her with you, and the backward leaps she’s taken in the last couple of weeks convinces me that you’re hurting her progress.”