The Lost Girls

by Jessica Chiarella

  Two of them clearly didn’t buy it, looking at me like I was a 21 Jump Street–style cop, sidling up to a group of kids in hope of narcing on them. But the third one just grinned, pulling a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and extracting one.

  “Of course, ma’am,” he said with faux deference, offering it to me on his palm, like a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

  “And a light?” I asked, adopting the lofty-eyebrowed posture of a finance wife. It was a windy night, and both of us had to cup our hands around the cigarette to get it to light. Hunched toward each other, as if we shared a secret.

  “What’s your name?” he asked when we finally leaned apart.

  “Maggie,” I replied, and the name came out of my mouth in a perfect white cloud.

  I burn with the memory now, as Coleman crosses his thick, hairless arms. He probably rolls up his sleeves during business meetings, hoping the web of tendons beneath his skin will make him appear intimidating.

  “Well, it’s been a rough year for him,” Coleman says, his usual friendliness cooling before my eyes.

  He knows, I think. At least, he knows enough to hate me.

  “I keep telling him he’s better off in the long run,” he continues. “So he can be with someone who’ll appreciate him. You know, for all that he can offer a woman.”

  “I’m sure he will be,” I reply, undoing the fastenings on my boxing gloves. “Better off.”

  “I keep telling him that only a fucking idiot wouldn’t see him for what a great guy he is. Only someone really, irreparably damaged would treat him that badly.”

  “He’s lucky to have such a good friend,” I reply, and because I can’t resist, I give Coleman a little bare-knuckled punch to the shoulder. Just a little too hard to be playful. “Good to see you, Coleman. Good luck with the baby.”

  “Go fuck yourself,” he mutters over his shoulder as I elbow past him and head for the door.

  * * *

  * * *

  THE BIKE RIDE home eases some of my anger, but not all of it. I stop for a moment after I lock my bike to my building’s back gate, pulling out my phone, Coleman’s voice like a pressure headache as I open the Find My Friends app. It takes only a moment for the blue dot to appear on the screen. Eric is at home. Our old place, which he keeps offering to sell and I keep insisting he keep. I don’t want strangers in it, that place that was once a home.

  I’m running late, so I shower quickly and make a box of macaroni and cheese that I find in the back of a kitchen cabinet. I eat sitting on my couch while simultaneously doing my makeup for work tonight, John Oliver talking in the background from my little TV. Something about Russell Crowe, though I’m not really following it. I have two distinct collections of makeup: One is the shimmery corals and dewy CC creams I collected during my marriage. I still wear them for things like production meetings, or when I really don’t want to look as hungover as I am. And then there’s the rest of it, the wine-colored lipstick and the pale powder and the black false eyelashes—the stuff I wear to the club. I apply it like a mask, like it’s Halloween and I’m going as Morticia Addams, except the wig I pull on over my pixie cut is a dark chin-length bob with bangs. And then there are the clothes. Open my closet and you’ll find a section that looks better suited to a dominatrix than a podcaster. Leather skirts and black lace camisoles and choker collars with heavy buckles. Tonight, I pick a lace shift with combat boots, fishnets, and a leather jacket. Morticia Addams meets Joan Jett.

  It feels good, putting on this clothing, the makeup, the wig. It’s why I took a job at a goth club when I could have applied for a gig at a bar closer to my apartment or an upscale place in Fulton Market, where the cocktails have eight ingredients and the tips would be massive. I wanted to do this five nights a week instead. Put on armor. It’s the same feeling I used to get with other men, like the bartender in the storeroom or the waiter in Coleman’s bathroom. The excitement of slipping into someone else’s skin. Giving them a name that isn’t my own. Becoming someone else.

  It’s no coincidence that I had a habit of giving Maggie’s name to strange men. Even during the years when I thought I’d ridden myself of my sister, really there was nothing—not the things I enjoyed or the man I married or the clothes I wore—that was not touched by Maggie. Eric would tease me that my music taste was stuck in the nineties, but that was because all my favorite songs were Maggie’s first. I never picked out a piece of jewelry or a blouse or a pair of shoes I couldn’t imagine Maggie wearing. A therapist once suggested that without my sister, without the person I’ve spent my life trying to emulate, I was left craving the experience of creating an identity for myself. Of being a person separate from the mythology I’d built around her. And while I’m not generally a fan of therapists, even I have to admit that one was pretty perceptive.

  There’s no way I’ll get to work on time if I take the bus, so I take an Uber and slip in through the side entrance, a metal door halfway down a ripe, muggy alley lined on both sides by dumpsters. Already, I can feel the pulse of the music in my chest, even before I make it to the front of house. It’s crowded—par for the course on a Saturday night—and Marco, one of the other two bartenders on shift, gives me a dirty look as I set up behind the bar. He’s wearing a mesh shirt and a ton of eyeliner, to the point where he could just as easily be bartending at Hydrate up on Halsted as here.

  “So I guess you’re such hot shit now you can’t be on time to work, huh?” he says as I pass behind him.

  “That’s a funny way of saying ‘congratulations,’ ” I reply, taking the order of a girl with enough hardware in her nose to set off a metal detector. Marco raises a perfectly waxed eyebrow at me.

  Marco is a poet—a good one, by all accounts—who got his MFA at one of those extremely refined liberal arts schools out east. No one quite understands why he’s working here, especially since there’s a rumor going around that he’s actually a certified, Mensa-grade genius. One of the security guards claims he’s heard that Marco speaks as many as six different languages. And while Marco complains constantly about the nonexistent earning potential of the modern poet, part of me suspects he works here because he enjoys it. Because he can’t imagine himself in academic committee meetings, on the tenure track somewhere, wearing a tie and running an indie lit mag and holding office hours. It makes him seem like a kindred spirit, someone else who landed here because being upstanding and normal feels beyond their reach.

  “You’ve changed, honey,” he says, pursing his lips like a disappointed schoolteacher. “Acting like a prima donna now that the money people take you seriously.”

  “Please,” I reply, mixing the girl’s old-fashioned. “I was late to work even before I was winning awards.”

  “True,” Marco replies, and he seems oddly cheered by the reminder. He busies himself at the bar for a moment, and when he turns around, he has a shot in either hand. “To your award,” he says, and hands one to me. We toast, and I down it so quickly I can’t register what it is, until the burn has given way to a taste that is very much like sticking your head into a men’s locker room and inhaling deeply. I gag a little.

  “Jesus,” I croak. “Was that Malört?”

  Marco’s smile is so devious that I know the answer even before he replies. “Malört for you. Koval for me.”

  “Dick,” I say, and receive a cackle and a slap on the ass from Marco as we both go back to taking orders. The club is dark and thrumming and hot, and it isn’t long before that thing takes over, that particular flow I get into when performing a mindless task over and over, under the neon lights of the bar. Wearing a mask of black makeup. Music pounding around me. The darkness hiding all but the most vividly painted features of the people in the crowd.

  “You’re gonna give me a heads-up before you quit, right?” Marco asks as he passes behind me, heading for the register.

  “You can’t get rid of me that easily,” I reply o
ver my shoulder. “It all depends on what we put together for next season.”

  “Better get to work on it, then,” Marco says, tapping the nonexistent watch on his wrist with all the easy bravado of a twenty-six-year-old with a graduate degree. Someone who doesn’t envy my position, coming up on thirty and suddenly faced with the need to take my career seriously. An age when aimlessness becomes a liability.

  He’s right, I realize. I need to get to work. I think of the call I got this morning. Someone with information on a case that might be connected to Maggie. I remember it, the voicemail on my phone.

  “Hey, I said vodka.” There’s someone leaning over the bar. A dude with what looks to be a fake lip ring and a bouffant haircut. Probably a schoolteacher during the week, who loves to think of himself as hard-core for wearing a lip cuff and a black T-shirt to the club on the weekends. Who’s had a subscription to SuicideGirls since college and truly believes that jerking off to girls with nipple piercings makes him edgy. But I realize that I’m making his cocktail with cranberry juice and Jäger, which would have been an unpleasant surprise, had he not been paying more attention than me. Still, I glare at him for his tone as I restart his drink.

  As soon as I get a break, I bang my way back out to the alley, beyond the reach of the music, and listen to the voicemail again. Ava Vreeland. She would like to meet, at my earliest convenience. I check the time; it’s already after midnight. Too late for any reasonable person to call someone they don’t know. Her phone is probably on Do Not Disturb anyway—she sounds like the business type, a person who keeps regular hours. I decide instead to send a text, assuming that the likelihood of her calling me from anything but a cell phone is basically insignificant in this day and age.

  This is Marti Reese, returning your message. I would like to meet and discuss your case.

  I’m just about to turn my phone screen off and head back inside when three dots appear beneath my message. Then:

  Where are you now?

  A small alarm triggers within me, a flash of red I can almost taste. Anyone could be on the other end of that phone. It’s not out of the realm of possibility that this is some sort of scam. That it’s actively dangerous, even. I think of the calls I’ve been getting. Silence on the other end of the line, someone content to call me and say nothing. Satisfied with making it known that he is aware of me. Thinking of me. That he has taken notice.

  Still, I text back.

  Club Rush. Working my night job. After all, how dangerous could it be to meet someone here, of all places? One look at security and this person could be out on their ass.

  On Wolcott?

  Yes.

  I can be there in 20. Does that work?

  Sure.

  She doesn’t reply after that. Immediately, I’m less certain this was the right move. After all, what sort of person drops everything on a weekend, after midnight, to go to a goth club and discuss a cold case with a bartender-slash-podcaster? A crazy person, that’s who.

  I half consider leaving right then and there. Faking sick for Marco, catching a cab home. Letting the night play out however it will for Ava, blocking her number, and forgetting about her. Still, my curiosity lingers. I want to know what sort of person she is. I want to hear what she has to say.

  She arrives in fifteen minutes, not twenty. I spot her right away, because she’s totally wrong for this crowd and still walks in like she owns the place. She’s wearing a dark trench coat over a black suit dress, a cluster of thin gold chains hanging around her neck, and what appear to be Christian Louboutin heels. Her hair is dark and curly, cut in a loose bob at her chin. Her lips are so red they look waxy and black under the lights. She’s beautiful, in an excessively well-tended sort of way. And of course, she notices me as immediately as I have her, glancing toward the bar and making eye contact before I can stop gaping at her. Suddenly, I feel like a clown, in my makeup and wig. My cheap lace dress. I’m a small, excessively painted child, caught playing dress-up.

  She threads her way through the crowd, moving surprisingly quickly for how packed it is. People seem to make way for her, whether they realize it or not.

  “Marti?” she asks when she reaches me. I nod and motion her to the one reliably open barstool in the place, because it’s situated behind a large concrete pillar to the side of the bar, cut off from the rest of the dance floor. She slips out of her coat before she sits, and I see there is a name tag clipped to the pocket of her dress: “Advocate Health Care System. Ava Vreeland, MD.” I wonder if she’s left it there for my benefit. Because it might make me trust her, to know that she’s a doctor. To be honest, it does. Her eyes follow my gaze.

  “Oh,” she says, pulling the tag from her pocket and stuffing it into her purse, which is understated in the most expensive way. Gucci, I think. Ten years out of Sutcliffe Heights, and I can still recognize designer threads when I see them. “I was just catching up on charts when you texted.”

  I turn back to my counterpart at the bar.

  “Marco, I need another five,” I say, and get a very exaggerated eye roll for my trouble, but he waves me off. Marco is in his element when he’s busy enough to get pissy with the clientele. I turn back to Ava. “Want a drink?”

  I watch as she glances behind the bar, taking in our fare. This is clearly not the sort of establishment in which she’s used to drinking. She probably usually orders Negronis, if she ever has occasion to sit at a bar these days. Or maybe an Aperol spritz.

  “How about a whiskey sour?” she asks, probably trying to remember what she drank in college. I mix it with Maker’s and a heavy hand. She raises her eyebrows when she takes her first sip. “It’s good.” She folds her hands on the bar. We eye each other for a moment, clearly both unsure of how to start. “First off, congratulations on your award.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you guaranteed a second season now?”

  “I guess it depends on the material,” I reply. “We’re exploring a few different angles at the moment.”

  “And I’m one of those angles?” she asks, revealing a narrow gap between her front teeth. The sort of imperfection that’s charming in a face like hers. Still, she can’t possibly come from money, despite how expensive she looks now. Not with that smile. Where I’m from, orthodontia is the gateway to cosmetic surgery. Not just straightening, but all manner of filing and reshaping and the whitest of veneers if nothing else can be done. And no pediatric dentist worth his referral fee would have let a gap like Ava’s go, if her parents could afford to close it. Which means they likely couldn’t.

  “The podcast has generated a number of leads,” I say. “We’re trying to investigate the most credible ones.”

  “And you’ve probably googled me and consider a board-certified ER doctor to be credible enough?”

  I haven’t googled her. That’s the problem with acting on impulse, texting her before thinking it through. But I play it off.

  “I also like the angle,” I reply. “Instead of looking into a theory about Maggie, looking at a connected case. A kidnapping?”

  Ava shakes her head. “A killing.”

  There’s a pinch in my stomach, as if I’ve swallowed a tiny flake of glass, though it’s what I suspected. I’ve kept up with all the local disappearances within the past ten years. If any were at all similar to Maggie’s, I would know about them.

  “Who?” I ask, pulling my phone out of my pocket, ready to take notes.

  “A woman named Sarah Ketchum. She was strangled to death seven years ago and buried in LaBagh Woods.”

  “On the North Side?” I ask, because those woods ring a bell. Ava nods. I seem to remember hearing about that, a few years back. But I never looked into it seriously and can’t remember why. “So what makes you think I’d be interested?”

  “Google her,” Ava says. I do, though the Wi-Fi in the club really, really sucks. It takes a moment for her photo to appea
r on the screen of my phone. It’s a yearbook photo. Sarah is button-nosed with wavy blond hair, large eyes, and a smile full of straight, polished-white teeth. Those veneers, probably.

  She’s the spitting image of Maggie.

  “She was eighteen when she was killed,” Ava continues as I consider the photograph.

  “No offense, but if you throw a stone in the town I’m from, you’ll hit a girl who looks like this,” I reply. Even I looked like that once, before I cut off my hair, before I grew shadows beneath my eyes.

  “Ten years ago, if you threw a stone in the town you’re from, you might have hit Sarah Ketchum,” Ava replies.

  I shake my head. “No women under the age of twenty-five from Sutcliffe Heights have been killed in the past two decades.” I know this, cold. I have made it my business to know this.

  “That’s because the police report said she lived in Palos Hills,” Ava replies. “Southwest suburbs,” she says, when I furrow my brow. “Because after her parents divorced, she lived there with her mother. Went to high school there. But she spent every other weekend and half the summer staying with her father.”

  “In Sutcliffe Heights?” I ask.

  “On Galley Road,” she replies.

  My heart gives a strong judder beneath my breastbone, making me cough, momentarily breathless. “Galley Road.”

  “Forty-six oh three,” she replies. I reach for the nearest bottle, which proves to be gin, and pour myself a shot. I take it quickly, in hopes that it will shock my brain back into functioning properly. Ava sips her whiskey sour through its tiny cocktail straw.

  “Jesus,” I say, and pour myself another shot. There are three balconies in my childhood home, all overlooking the back of our property, which is a full acre of woods and grass. If you stand on any one of those balconies and look northwest, past the Miller house and over the estates on Sullivan Way, you can glimpse the roofs of the houses on Galley Road through the trees. “Why haven’t I heard about this?” I ask.