All the Secret Places

by Anna Carlisle

  “Guess it’s just the two of us,” she told Jett as she settled in for her meal. “How about a nice easy run and then a bath? One of us smells like she needs one.”

  An hour later, she was toweling off the dog, gently wiping suds from her ruff, when her phone rang. She saw that it was her father and set down the towel to answer: he rarely called, relying on her mother to maintain family communication. Gin had talked to her mother briefly around lunchtime when she had gone downstairs to heat up some leftovers, and she was sure that Madeleine had passed along her account of the events that had transpired last night.

  “Hi, honey,” her father said. “Everything good over there?”

  “Sure, Dad. We had a—a lazy kind of day.”

  “Well, after last night, it sounds like you needed one. Your mother talked to Chief Baxter, by the way. They’re going to charge that woman in the arson case. Jake doesn’t have anything to worry about. At least, not on that front.”

  Ah, there it was—her father was feeling guilty. “I’m relieved, of course, for Jake,” she said. “And I’m glad that Marlene Sykes admitted the truth. But I hope that she’ll get some help while she’s awaiting trial—I think at least some of her behavior may have been exacerbated by stress and possibly a major depression or other mental illness.”

  “Of course, of course,” Richard said, sounding distracted. “Listen, I, uh, well . . .” He cleared his throat, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain.

  “Are you all right, Dad?” Gin asked. “It can’t have been much fun, being questioned along with Jake half the night.”

  “Oh, I’m fine, just fine. It’s just that I, well, I had a lot of time to think, sitting there waiting for Stillman and his crew to talk to me. And I came to a few conclusions. Well, one important one, anyway.”

  “Oh, really?” Gin asked, pretty sure where her father was going. He was a fair man and a moral one, but apologizing had always been difficult for him.

  “Yes. You see, I think I may have, er, underestimated both Jake and you. When I took out that insurance policy, I overstepped. I made something my business that has nothing to do with me—and worse, I ended up making both of you feel like I don’t have faith in you to run your own lives.”

  Gin allowed herself a small smile, glad her father couldn’t see her in this moment. Maybe now, finally, her father would realize that she didn’t need him—or Jake, for that matter, or anyone else to provide for her or rescue her or fix her mistakes.

  Still, it was kind of nice to know that he was still ready to do all of that and more for her.

  “It’s okay, Dad,” she said. “I know it came from a place of love. And in a way, it’s proof that you’ve truly accepted Jake as part of my life. That means a lot to me.”

  “All right,” Richard said gruffly. “You know, I’ve always dreamed that someday you’d come back home. I think people just have a natural connection to the place they were born.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” Gin replied. “I’m glad to be home.”

  But something he’d just said nagged at her mind, making her replay the last few sentences of their conversation.

  “Hang on, Dad . . . what did you just say?”

  “Just now?” Richard asked, sounding bewildered. “Just that your mother and I are glad you’re back home with us.”

  “No, the part about . . . people having a connection to where they were born.”

  “Well, I was thinking of your mother, actually, since she’s spent her whole life here, but—”

  “No, wait. You made me remember something.” The nagging feeling rapidly blossomed into full-blown excitement as the pieces fell into place.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Just . . . that girl.” As Gin’s mind raced ahead, she struggled to explain to her father. “Danielle. I think she might have been lying.”

  “Honey, I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I met this girl, this young reenactor, at a party a couple of nights ago. She knew the guy who owned the motorcycle that, umm . . .” She paused, realizing that she hadn’t told her father about her accident, not wanting to worry him. “Anyway, she met a man named Marvin Morgensen at a reenactor event. Apparently Chief Crosby investigated him for a series of rapes years ago.”

  “Slow down, honey,” her father protested. “I can hardly keep up.”

  “Well, it’s just that this girl, Danielle, she said Morgensen had been friendly to her when she first started coming to the reenactor meetings, and then one day he just disappeared. But Dad, she said he went ‘back home to Kansas’—that’s what you reminded me of, because Tuck Baxter told me that Morgensen spent his whole life in Pennsylvania. She was trying to throw me off his trail, to convince me that he’d simply moved away.”

  “I’m afraid you’ve lost me,” Richard said. But Gin couldn’t take the time to stop to explain it to him. Pieces were falling into place all at once, and the picture that was emerging wasn’t a pretty one.

  Danielle had said she had hurt her back during a drill, and that was why she wasn’t out on the dance floor. But she had been wearing a brace on her leg, not her back. It was an over-the-counter brace, and she’d wrapped her knee as if she’d torn a ligament. She’d obviously done it herself, which suggested that she hadn’t gone to see a doctor.

  And then there was the bandage on her forehead. Danielle had worn her hair clipped to one side, and Gin had assumed she was hiding a breakout, as she herself had once done at that age.

  Until Danielle had said she’d hurt herself when she fired a blank round from her rifle.

  “The problem is that it’s typically the shoulder that’s injured from the kickback when a round goes off,” Gin said, talking herself through the things that didn’t add up, the problem that had been nagging at the back of her mind for the last two days. “I’ve never heard of anyone hurting their face that way.”

  “Gin, honey, you’re not making any sense at all,” her father said. “This girl you met, who hurt her leg or her back or her face or whatever—what does it matter?”

  “Because what if she’d hurt herself in a fall?” Gin let her words hang in the air for a moment. The rider who had struck her had landed on his side. Or maybe her side. The helmet she’d been wearing could have shifted violently, bruising or abrading her skull, which would account for the bandage near her hairline. And Danielle’s leg injury could certainly have been explained by the crash as well.

  “Sweetheart, are you all right?” her father asked, his voice full of concern. “It sounds like you haven’t even given yourself a chance to recover from everything that’s happened. Before you get started on a new case . . .”

  “It’s fine, Dad.” Gin couldn’t spare the time to explain it all to her father. The person who had run her down was small—unusually small for a man, but not for a woman. Gin didn’t know what the connection was yet—but she was convinced that Danielle Segal was lying to her about something. That she had been trying to prevent Gin from learning something she didn’t want her to know.

  The bike belonged to Marvin Morgensen. If Morgensen had been the Shopgirl Rapist—what if Danielle hadn’t escaped him at all? What if she had actually been one of his victims? What if he had preyed on her, pretending to help her learn about reenacting . . . then somehow got her alone and raped her?

  “It’s just that there had to be a reason why this girl didn’t go to the police,” Gin mused, aware that she was further confusing her father but needing to walk it through out loud. If Danielle had sought help, and the investigators had done a rape kit, it would have been a pretty straightforward matter to get a DNA sample from Morgensen.

  But maybe she had been afraid the evidence wouldn’t stick. Maybe Morgensen had threatened her, cautioned her not to say anything.

  “Danielle might have felt that it would be pointless to report him,” Gin said, excitement building inside her. “Maybe she decided to go after him herself. It’s like the Lincoln Alley Killer,
Dad, remember him?” Two of the victims of the grisly serial killer had ended up on Gin’s table nearly a decade earlier.

  “He took the ears from his victims,” Richard said. “What does that have to do with anything?”

  “Do you remember how they finally took him down?”

  “One of his victims escaped, didn’t she? And she was able to give a good enough description to the police artist to identify him.”

  “Because he didn’t finish her off,” Gin agreed. “And she actually stabbed him with the ballpoint pen. Nearly killed him. Well, what if that happened with this girl? If Morgensen stuck to his pattern, he would have tried to come on to this young woman that he met in a meeting. If she turned him down, and he became enraged, he might have taken her to some hidden location and raped her. But what if she somehow was able to get the upper hand—if, during the attack, she actually killed him?” An explanation for everything that had transpired was emerging from her racing thoughts. “It might not have even been on purpose—it might have happened in self-defense. After, she might have panicked and tried to get rid of the evidence.” The motorcycle might have been part of it—if Danielle had felt that it could tie her to Morgensen’s murder somehow, she might have found a way to take it. She could have had it for years; it would have been easy enough to keep hidden. “And then, when Morgensen’s body was found and the news reported that I was helping with the autopsy, she decided that I was a threat.”

  “You’re saying that the body found on Jake’s jobsite was connected to all of those rapes?” Richard asked. “But they were years ago, weren’t they?”

  “The media made it sound like I was on the verge of solving the whole case,” she said. “They said I’d never failed to identify a body since I started consulting to the county.”

  “But that’s true,” her father said. “You’re much too humble, honey.”

  “But that’s just news media hyperbole, only Danielle wouldn’t have known that. Maybe she thought she had to stop me.”

  “Those rapes were years ago,” Richard said. “I’m still struggling to understand how they’re connected.”

  Gin ignored her father and focused on Danielle. Even if Morgensen had stopped, even if he had somehow managed to live a clean life, he might not have been able to resist when a girl who perfectly matched his profile turned up. Especially since Danielle had put him in a mentoring role by seeking him out for help with the reenacting. She might have appeared compliant or even submissive.

  Gin had pulled up the old news articles around the rapes. The profile was remarkably consistent. Morgensen had gone after girls who were attractive but not beautiful—sorority girls, estheticians, retail workers—but they were all young and white with long hair and traditionally feminine style of dress. And in each case that the victim was able to describe the events leading up to the attack, there was a moment when his demeanor seemed to change—when he went from calm to frenzied and furious. Generally, it had been when Morgensen’s victims rejected him, when his fantasy of romantic involvement was shattered.

  What if, as Danielle became more and more interested in reenactment, Morgensen interpreted her growing interest as sexual attraction? At some point, he might have made a move, which took Danielle off guard. Her rejection would have been instant and quite possibly humiliating.

  “That could have set him off,” Gin reasoned, mostly to herself. But if Danielle had somehow managed to kill him during the attack, it would have been considered self-defense. Only, Gin had worked with rape victims during her residency. In the hours following their rape, it was all too easy for girls to believe they somehow were complicit, that they should have read the signs differently, that the attack was somehow preventable. Depending on Danielle’s background and lived experience, she might have even believed she deserved it. If she had been operating out of shame and fear, she might have truly believed that her only option was to cover up what she had done.

  To dispose of the body.

  But that left the teeth. Even if Danielle had had the fortitude to get the body to the woods and to dig the hole, was it really plausible that she’d knock out his teeth? And dress him in the historic uniform? And shoot his dead body with a musket?

  There were a lot of improbable details in the scenario that Gin had come up with. But at the very least, there was the problem of Morgensen’s birthplace, along with Danielle’s leg brace, the bandage on her face, and her limp. Not, perhaps, enough to go to the cops.

  But enough to go talk to her.

  “Dad, thanks for listening to all this. But I’ve got to go.”

  “But honey, I still don’t understand what this entire conversation has been about! You think you might know who killed the man who was found on Jake’s work site? But surely you don’t plan to go and talk to them—isn’t that dangerous?”

  “I know where to find her, though,” Gin said. Tonight was the “moonlight battle” that the women had been talking about at the reenactors’ dinner. “And it’s a public place. Don’t worry, Dad—I’ll be perfectly safe.”

  23

  As she got into the Range Rover, Gin called Rosa. When her friend answered, Gin could hear the sounds of shouting and laughter in the background.

  “Would you happen to be at the moonlight battle, Rosa?”

  “How did you know?”

  “Lucky guess. Plus, Doyle looked like he never plans to let you out of his sight the other night. I think he’s truly smitten.”

  Rosa laughed. “You should come! There’s this group playing harmonicas and drums and actual fifes. They’re really good.”

  “I was actually wondering if Danielle Sigal was there.”

  “Oh, the girl with the long hair and the leg brace? She was here—but I think she went home already. She said she has to work early tomorrow.”

  “Oh—thanks, Rosa.”

  “Are you coming over?”

  “No, I don’t think so. But you have fun, okay?”

  She barely heard Rosa’s good-bye over the cheering in the background.

  Gin debated for a moment. It was still fairly early, so she ought to be able to come up with a plausible pretext for a visit—and a chance to talk to the girl alone. She did a quick search on her phone, deciding that if the girl’s address wasn’t listed, she’d give up and return home.

  It came up immediately: 24 Old Gordon Road.

  Gin knew the road, which hugged the hill to the south of town. It had fallen into disrepair in the seventies and been replaced by a four-lane route that cut off much of the steepest part. The original workers’ housing had largely been demolished, save half a dozen tiny cottages that were still inhabited.

  She found number 24 at the end of the row, separated from its nearest neighbor by several overgrown lots. She pulled into a gravel turnout and walked up to the door, encouraged to see that lights were still on in the house.

  Within seconds of knocking, the door opened, and Danielle Sigal peeped out. She was dressed in sweats, her hair in loose waves over her shoulder.

  “You’re the lady from the other night, aren’t you? Gin, was it?”

  “I’m sorry, I know it’s late—I saw the lights on, and I really need to talk to you.”

  The girl looked spooked, small, and afraid. “What about?” she said uncertainly. “Did something happen at the battle?”

  “No, no, nothing like that. I just . . . it’s something else.” Gin tried to communicate with her body language that she was no threat, offering a soft smile. “Could I just come in and talk to you for a few minutes?”

  “Okay, well, sure. Could you just—could you just give me one second, please?”

  Before Gin could respond, the girl gently shut the door. Moments passed, making Gin wonder if Danielle was ever coming back. But eventually the door opened again, and Danielle stepped aside to let her enter.

  She had changed into jeans and a long sweater that practically engulfed her small frame and put her hair up in a ponytail, but Gin was distracted by the
state of the room. Danielle had obviously tried to tidy up for her guest—papers had been hastily mounded on the table, and empty dishes had been stacked on the counter of the sink visible from the living room.

  The effort had made little difference.

  Danielle lived in the squalor of someone well on her way to becoming a hoarder. There was barely a path through the room, and every piece of furniture was stacked high with books and papers and clothes and junk. Clothes spilled out of cardboard boxes lined up two deep along the wall. The dining room table was covered, with only a square big enough for a single person to eat a meal in front of the television, which sat unsteadily on top of more boxes. Even the hall was filled with bookshelves and dressers and boxes, leaving a space barely wide enough for a person to ease through sideways.

  “I’m sorry for the clutter,” Danielle said quickly, barely meeting Gin’s eyes. “It’s just, I’m going to be selling a lot of this. I just have to, um, get some time to go through it.”

  “Oh,” Gin said. She’d worked on a few cases of hoarders who’d been discovered dead inside their homes, and while the investigations had little to do with her department outside of confirming the cause of death—usually natural causes—she had done some reading on the propensity to hoard. Often, though not always, it had its roots in some trauma or loss; the hoarding became an ineffective coping mechanism for the anxiety, depression, and grief.

  All of which supported the theory that Danielle had suffered a breakdown after being raped.

  Gin spotted a framed photograph that had been carefully dusted and set on a crocheted doily on top of a relatively clutter-free table. In it, Danielle wore a scarlet graduation gown and cap. Her hair was shorter and darker, and she was beaming with pride. Her hands rested on the shoulder of a seated woman who could be her mother or an aunt or even an older sister—the resemblance was striking, though the woman couldn’t have been forty. She was very thin and dressed in a long plain skirt and blouse.

  Danielle saw Gin looking. “That’s me and my mom at my high school graduation. She, um, died a few months later.”