Nowhere Girl

by Susan Strecker

  “Should we call him?” I asked. “This is two weeks in a row he’s missing.”

  But I knew why he was staying away. He was still pissed at me about Emma. Chandler was right. It wasn’t going to get better until I told David why I saw her even though he didn’t want me to.

  Chandler slid a few sweet potato slices onto a pretty butter plate in front of me. “Do as you wish, princess.”

  But for some reason, I had a funny feeling about it, and I didn’t.

  Instead, I let David recede. I let Emma recede. We didn’t talk about Brady or Greg. We sat around the table passing poached asparagus with lemon and candied mandarin Cornish game hens and wine and finally port and truffles. Then we lounged in front of the fire and quizzed Odion on his flash cards for his upcoming citizenship test. Chandler got out his atlas, and we traced Gabby’s Hoka Hey route and asked her a million questions. We were nervous for her, overprotective aunties, but Gabby wasn’t worried, and July seemed so far away. Plus Chandler had gone to the grocery store and gotten a stack of tabloid magazines, and there were charades to play about three-headed siamese twins and Alec Baldwin’s pregnancy.

  By the time Gabby and I got out to the MG, it was past midnight, and she said she was too drunk to drive. She crawled into the passenger seat of her cold car and immediately curled up in a ball and went to sleep. I was left to drive the MG through the quiet town of Stanwich, thinking how amazing it was that Gabby still had such a trust in the world, even after her best friend’s twin sister was killed so mysteriously when she was sixteen. She still wanted to drive off with hundreds of bikers across Indian territory during the Hoka Hey.

  I passed Stanwich’s town hall, dark now, save a single lamppost near the flagpole, past the library and the Congregational church and the quaint boutiques and eateries. The quietude and stillness reminded me of those months in the wake of Savannah’s murder when Fisher had mandated a curfew in our town. It was as if the grim reaper had arrived and haunted the place at night, clearing the sidewalks after 9:00 P.M. so that walking home from a school game or a friend’s house made you suspect.

  And then fifteen months after Savannah was killed, Gabby had called me and said to get outside. It was close to ten, and the whole town had been shut down for an hour. I went out to the front porch. A little while later, my parents came out. David was the last to join us. It seemed some kind of informal, unplanned telephone chain had been devised, because all down our block of little colonials, there were people outside, watching.

  No matter where you were standing in town, you would have seen the flames shooting up. Stanwich is mostly flat, but the Wolfe Mansion had been built on a hill, and so it seemed the flames were lording over us, sent by some mysterious god to move us all to hushed awe. The house where Savannah had been killed burned to the ground while the town of Stanwich watched. It was too cold to spread, they said later. Too much snow on the ground to move the fire anywhere but up. No one knew who started it.

  As I stood on the porch, hugging myself for warmth, I thought about all the afternoons I’d come home and found my mother alone in the kitchen going through her recipe book. She had thousands, recipes she’d created after having a similar dish in a restaurant or dreaming about pork chops with a fig reduction or new ways to serve sugar snap peas.

  “Where’s Dad?” I used to ask.

  With one pencil tucked behind her ear and another between her teeth, she often seemed not to hear me. When I’d opened my mouth to ask again, she’d hold up one long finger to shush me. I’d never seen anyone focus the way she could. She’d redo a recipe a hundred times, first with basil and then thyme, cilantro, and a dozen other spices before she’d switch to different kinds of salt and pepper, white, gray, pink. There’d be twenty glass bowls lining the counter, each with half a cup of gazpacho that tasted the same to me, but she insisted each one embodied its own distinct flavor.

  Finally, she’d lift her gaze. The way her lips were mashed into one tight line answered my question. My father was at the house. She’d check her watch and then go back to flipping pages. “He’s been gone an hour.”

  My dad had spent the first year after Savannah’s murder at the house where she died. Every day, he filled a thermos with coffee as black and thick as mud and sat by the front door of the creepy, abandoned house in a folding canvas chair. He said it made him feel close to her, to sit where she’d last been alive and read to her or talk, as if she might answer him. Or maybe he thought the murderer would come back. Either way, now the Wolfe Mansion was burned down. And my father would never be able to go there again.

  The day after the fire, I’d been trying to focus on an experiment in chemistry when I heard Layton Barnhill, one of the detectives’ kids, tell his lab partner that there were no fingerprints now. Nothing to go by. No sign that anything had ever been there. “Not even Savannah Martino,” he’d said. And because I couldn’t help it, I turned around. A slight boy with a lisp who played Dungeons & Dragons at lunch, he was forever pushing up a pair of square, smudged glasses. He had ducked his head. “Sorry,” he said. And I had turned around again. Gabby was absent that day, so I didn’t have a lab partner, and no one volunteered. I wasn’t sure if I alienated everyone or if people kept a wide berth. It hardly seemed to matter. I’d touched my necklace with the backwards f and wondered if the matching one had burned in the woods that night or if maybe it was still in someone’s closed fist.

  Now I turned onto Broad Street, where the huge old colonials of the town’s forefathers still stood. Gabby lived on the top floor of what had once been a rectory for a now defunct church. I parked in front of her place, and before reaching over to wake her, I saw how much like a little girl she resembled, her long lashes making shadows on her tanned cheeks, one curl falling across her forehead.

  “Hey,” I said. And she woke up as if the world had been waiting for only her.

  She stretched in her suede coat and kissed me on the cheek, her dark eyes bright. “We’re here,” she said happily. “But how will you get home?”

  “My car’s here.” I pointed to the Volvo. “Remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” She kicked open her door. “The minitank.” She laughed, and I handed her the keys. “I love ya, girl,” she told me.

  “I love you too,” I said, and then I got out of her tiny car, climbed into my Volvo, and headed home.

  CHAPTER

  16

  I’d been going to David’s a couple times a week to do his laundry and clean, but I was still getting static from Deanna to finish my fifth golden cow or cash goose or whatever she called my books. So I met a Merry Maids consultant at David’s when he was out, got an estimate for weekly cleanings, and then left a bunch of messages saying I was hiring someone, but I hadn’t heard back from him. That and him missing the last two dinners could only mean that my bitchy sorority girl of an ex-sister-in-law told him that I talked to her. And he was pissed. But I knew that already.

  My family had a few things in common. We never forgot anything, and we held grudges. Depending on how mad he was, I wouldn’t have been surprised if David skipped the next year of Thursday dinners, so I ambushed him at his house in the middle of the afternoon, when I knew he’d be working. I’d already gotten the first invoice from Merry Maids, so at least he’d be home in clean sweats while he wrote code for the video games he was creating. As I was about to push open his door and call out, he swung it open as if he’d known I was coming. His gray eyes had gone dark.

  “You shouldn’t have talked to her, Cady. Why can’t you ever leave anything alone?”

  His anger surprised me. “You said you wanted a reason why she left.” Behind him, I saw the TV was off. For once. “I got one.” Even while he worked, Emeril Live or Kitchen Nightmares was usually blaring in the background.

  “Why? For your next book? Did you run out of stories about murdered brothers and runaway sisters?” He’d never lashed out at me like this before. He was my early reader, the one person who could tell me what worked
and what didn’t. He’d loved all my books.

  “David.” I took a step back. “What is the matter with you?”

  “And thanks for the fucking merry pranksters moving all my shit around and making me feel like I’m in an alien invasion.” He turned around and headed into the living room, so I took it as an invitation and followed.

  I automatically leaned down to clear the couch, but it was clean. A load of gaming magazines was neatly stacked on the bottom shelf of the coffee table. As I sat on the arm, I noticed the olive-green cushions had been cleaned. I didn’t know if David’s new maid was in fact merry, but she certainly was good.

  “Why are you so pissed? I thought I was doing you a favor.”

  He let out all his breath and sat. “I can’t talk to you about it.”

  “You’re joking, right?”

  But I thought about what Chandler had said. David did a bang-up job being my confidant on matters of which housemate I should sleep with senior year in college (none of them), whether I should try shooting heroin, just once, so that I could get in the head of a drug-addicted character (too risky), and if I had to tell Gabby when I saw her old boyfriend kissing someone else at a downtown bar when we were in our twenties (absolutely), but there was one thing we never talked about, and I didn’t think it was going to happen now. But I heard what Chandler had said at lunch, and I realized I wanted to try.

  “Let it go.” His voice was cold with warning.

  “Whatever happened with Emma or whatever is going on with you, you can tell me.”

  He put his head in his hands. Tiny white flakes dotted his dark hair. I wondered if I could send the Merry Maid on a shopping trip. Origins sold a great all-natural dandruff shampoo.

  “I know more about your sex life than I’m willing to admit,” he said. “You’ve made a strong argument again and again why there should be more plus-size models. I know that you think Cris Collinsworth and Bob Saget are the same person.”

  “Have you ever seen them in a room together?” That didn’t even get a smile out of him.

  “But what is the one thing we never talk about?”

  “Savannah,” I said. “All this is about Savannah. So Emma wasn’t bullshitting me the other day? She left you because of our sister?”

  David stopped. “Did she actually tell you that? Did she finally admit that our family history was too much to explain to her fucking sorority sisters and that people still hate her because her father, the chief, closed the case?”

  I was quiet for a moment. “She said we don’t deal with anything.” And all at once, I saw him as a little boy again, that sort of sorry expression he used to have right after he got in trouble.

  He stared out the kitchen window at a bright-red bird on a branch. “I don’t know why I love her so much,” he said. “I mean, it’s Emma, right? I know she’s not the greatest. She’s sort of a pain in the ass and a princess. So why do I care?” He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “What’s wrong with me?”

  “You don’t shower enough,” I said.

  That got a half smile out of him.

  “And you should wash your sheets and throw away your pizza boxes and start going to the gym and quit rotting your mind on video games. You should probably get a nose job while you’re at it and a haircut and brush your teeth.”

  Then he started laughing, and I laughed with him. And when we were done, David said, “I was so pissed at you for meeting her because, I don’t know, I guess I’m ashamed.”

  I thought again of what Chandler had said. “That I went instead of you?”

  “No, that Emma is right. We can barely speak our sister’s name aloud, never mind talk about what happened to her. And then to us.”

  CHAPTER

  17

  “Cady.” Patrick was in jeans and a T-shirt, his face clean shaven, a razor nick on his chin. He reached out his hand and I took it, surprised at how good it felt to touch him, how familiar was his smell of coffee and lemon soap.

  “Thanks for coming in,” Detective Caritano said.

  “No problem,” I told him. The week felt like it had dragged by.

  He rubbed the stubble on his chin. “Have a seat.” He pulled out a chair for me, and I sat at the table where I saw they’d placed a small microphone. “So we don’t forget anything.” Jon Caritano smiled. “Coffee?”

  I held up my hand to indicate I didn’t want any.

  Patrick sat down next to me and grinned. Out the window, the rain kept on as it had for most of a week, sliding down the pane in gray streaks. “How’s the book coming?”

  “Slowly. I finally found a key piece to my research, though.”

  Patrick’s eyebrows shot up.

  “I needed to talk to a murderer, to really understand how they think. I never thought it would happen, but I finally got one.” I smiled despite the fact that I was trying not to. “Added bonus. He’s a serial killer.”

  “Jesus Christ,” Caritano said. He adjusted the microphone.

  Patrick’s voice was intense. “Who is it?”

  My neck flushed, and I suddenly wished I hadn’t said anything. “Oh, just someone a guard at the South Jersey Pen hooked me up with.”

  Patrick leaned forward, and he put one of his huge hands on the table. “There’s only one serial killer at that prison.”

  “Yeah. I know.” I felt like he was going to yell at me.

  “Cady,” he said again, his voice urgent. “We need to talk about this.”

  Jon had started to speak, and I really didn’t want Patrick or anyone to try to talk me out of interviewing Larry Cauchek, so I put my hand up to stop him.

  “I can’t talk about it,” I said. “I promised them I wouldn’t.”

  “So…” Jon smiled at Patrick, maybe asking permission to get back to why they’d called me. “Patrick told me all about you, and he thinks now that we can bring this case up from the basement, you might be able to help us. I know this is difficult for you, so we’ll go slowly.”

  “You don’t think this was some random killing done by a sociopath on his way through town,” I said.

  They both studied me.

  Finally, Jon spoke. “This is what we’ve come to know. Whoever killed your sister cared about her. I’ve never said anything before now because I couldn’t prove it, and frankly, the politics around this case were hell.”

  “Politics?” I asked. Patrick and Jon exchanged glances. “What does that mean?”

  Caritano sighed and undid the buttons on his cuffs. “Cady, there are things we can talk about here and others that we can’t discuss. One of them is Captain Fisher and the way he ran the department.”

  Patrick drew his eyes up to mine. “We need to focus on your sister,” he said quietly. “The mur— The crime scene is not exactly what it seemed.”

  “It’s okay,” I said. “You can say murder. My sister was murdered. I know that.”

  “There was something about the murder scene that…”

  He paused and studied the middle distance between us. I did the same thing when I was writing and couldn’t think of the exact right word.

  “That didn’t quite add up,” he finally said.

  Was he fucking with me? “What?”

  He held up his hand. “I know, and I’m sorry. But there are things that didn’t make sense. She’d been bound, but her hair was still in its braid. And her assailant took the time to remove whatever he’d used in the attack. In some ways, it didn’t look like she’d struggled.” He was talking fast. “It didn’t seem as though she’d tried to escape. She was still wearing a sweater and skirt, but her underpants had been removed. Yet there was no sign of penetration.” He quit talking. “Shit,” he said quietly. “This isn’t going to be easy.”

  “It’s hard to fight when you’re being choked,” I said. “Maybe he used a condom and she thought that if she let him rape her, he’d leave her alone after.” I turned to Patrick. His green eyes turned serious. “Savannah was a hundred pounds with all her clothes on. Ther
e’s no way she could have overpowered anyone.” Patrick got up and took three bottles of water out of a minifridge in the corner.

  Jon’s voice was low, almost apologetic. “Cady, people either run or fight when they’re attacked. They freeze, yes, but only after running or fighting fails. It doesn’t seem like Savannah tried to do either.”

  “So you’re saying it was her fault? She didn’t fight hard enough? She didn’t scream loud enough?” I could feel myself losing control, wanting to get up and strike Jon Caritano for blaming my sister for her murder. “Was her skirt too short? Did she have it coming?”

  Patrick passed out the waters and sat down.

  Caritano spoke. “No, not at all. Of course this wasn’t Savannah’s fault. It’s never the victim’s fault. But you have to understand—”

  “But I don’t understand! I don’t understand how someone could murder a sixteen-year-old girl and get away with it.” I was trying to stay calm, trying to remind myself that Patrick and Jon were the good guys. The ones who cared enough to open a case that had been all but forgotten more than fifteen years before.

  “Listen,” Caritano said. “Oftentimes, the police will make a choice to keep information from the public so they can search without the perpetrator knowing he’s under suspicion. Perps tend to get sloppy when they think we’re on the wrong track.”

  Patrick leaned over and turned off the microphone. “The truth is, Captain Fisher didn’t want to focus on this case. He wanted it to die down. He wanted the town to believe it was a frenzied stranger attack, not someone who lived here. Captains get reelected when the town believes they are safe. If it was someone who lives here—”

  I got up. I could feel that strange sensation in my veins, as if the blood was jumping, the same one I used to feel in the months after Savannah was murdered, a fiery restlessness.

  Caritano watched me pace. “We told the town it was a crime of opportunity. We made them believe everyone was safe. But we continued the search for what we call a friendly perp, and when none turned up”—he showed me his hands—“they closed the case.”