RATH DROVE TOWARD Mandy’s mother’s house, trying not to think of Sonja’s ass. With Rachel’s absence, he felt long-dormant urges of his awakening. He didn’t like them. They worried and upset him. Ghosts from a past life he wished would remain dead.
His cell phone vibrated. Laroche. Rath let it go, thinking of Sonja’s ass. Women. His failing. The old man’s.
The day of Laura’s murder, Rath had been at the height of his promising detective career, working under Barrons on the Connecticut River Valley Killer case. From May 1994 to July 1995, the CRVK had raped and strangled five female victims in the region, then dumped their bodies in the woods. The case had thrust Barrons and Rath into the national spotlight, the crimes being the only serial-murder investigation known to Vermont, then or since. It could have made Rath’s career.
Rath had also been at the apex of his bachelorhood: broad-shouldered, muscled, arrogant, his lightning blue eyes, the old man’s eyes, not yet dimmed by the vulgarities to come. Women had been drawn to him in or out of uniform though the gun and cuffs at his hips hadn’t hurt. He’d made no qualms about wanting zero ties with the women. We’re adults. No harm done.
Except that while Laura was being raped and stabbed, her neck broken, Rath had been with a waitress who’d been wild in bed in a way Rath pegged then as an animal sexuality but knew now was born of loneliness. The same way he knew now his behavior then had been anything but adult. His callousness and lack of perspective then startled him now when he thought of it, something he tried not to do.
By the time he’d pulled into Laura’s drive an hour late, buzzing from his conquest, he’d crafted a lie about having to work on the CRVK case. Who could fault him? Besides, it had been his birthday. He was entitled. Wasn’t he?
After he’d found Laura, he’d vowed he’d never lie again.
He’d discover soon enough just how impossible that was.
Rath hated this part.
He got out of the Scout and let the autumn sun bathe his face with warmth that betrayed the brisk mountain air. Lately, when he came in from the cold, lines that had once gone away as his skin warmed now remained.
Mandy’s mother’s house was a fifties ranch with faded, beige, vinyl siding that hung just off level, likely from being slapped up by a guy who eked a living out of the same van in which he trucked his kids to Little League. A birdbath was wedged out in the lawn, dried up and crusted with moss.
Rath knew this house. It was the same house he’d grown up in; the same house as a million others from Portland, Maine, to Portland, Oregon. Common. What troubled Rath was that inside the house nothing was any longer common. And nothing ever would be again, whether Mandy came home after crashing on a friend’s couch or her desecrated body was found in the dank reek of a rapist’s cellar.
Rath told himself to remain hopeful. Maybe Mandy had run off with a boy for a romp in a Montreal hotel, where the two could drink legally and play adults and enjoy more of life than what these back roads offered. And once they got their ya-yas out, they’d come back. Safe.
Except Mandy’s tips were left on the Monte Carlo’s floor, the keys in the ignition. No. Hope was a luxury. And Rath had to knock on the door and ask the missing girl’s mother painful, intrusive questions, yank scabs off tender wounds and gouge old sores, let the blood run fresh.
He craved a cigarette.
A shade pulled back from the living-room window, then settled again.
Rath knocked on a metal storm door caved in from being slammed against the porch rail, perhaps by the savage mountains winds up here, perhaps by a savage temper.
Faint footsteps came from inside, and a bony woman with hair heaped in the unkempt tangle of the sleepless opened the main door. She wore a sweat suit the color of mold and stared with eyes whose only glint was that of pain. She pushed the storm door open. “Yeah?” she said.
“Mrs. Wilks?”
“I suppose.”
“Sorry?”
“I use the name, but we’re divorced. They charge a ransom for a woman to get her own name back. Didn’t have it in me to suffer one more humiliation.”
“I understand.”
“I doubt it.”
“My mom was married to a lout,” Rath said, giving louts everywhere a bad name.
The corner of the woman’s mouth twitched, as close to a smile as he’d get, he supposed.
“I’m Frank Rath. Harland Grout’s friend. What do you prefer I call you?”
“Doris. Come in. I don’t need to be heating the outdoors.”
Rath stepped inside. Doris Wilks shut the door, and the living room fell as dark and silent as a confessional, the room’s velour shades drawn and not a single bulb burning. A chemical pine scent made Rath’s nose itch. In the quiet shadows sat a sectional sofa of the sort found at a Rent-A-Center: purple velveteen marshmallow cushions that suggested sumptuous comfort but swallowed you whole with all the support of overcooked pasta. On the wall above it, crooked shelves displayed dusty Beanie Babies.
Doris pulled the chain on a floor lamp to shed a funereal glow on the room. A dog, if that’s what you’d call the lint ball perched on the ottoman, yapped.
“Shut it,” Doris croaked. Lint Ball curled on itself like a pill bug.
“Sit.” Doris nodded at the couch. Rath knew he’d sink into the atrocity and look even less official than he already was, so he said, “Bad back. I’d better stand.”
“In the kitchen,” Doris said, swinging her head toward a doorway. “The chairs are sturdier. Couch is a black hole.”
Doris flipped a switch on the kitchen wall, and a naked fluorescent ceiling light spit to life. The Z-Brick linoleum was tacky beneath Rath’s boots, reminding him of the meat markets on 25¢-Draft Nite during his BU days. He and Doris sat across from each other at a chipped Formica table.
“Mind I smoke?” She brought a Salem Light to her lips, lit it with a paper match.
“Mind if I do?” Rath said, figuring their common vice might gain him an edge.
“Have at it.”
Rath lit up, getting nothing for his effort but a faint headache.
“Tell me about your daughter,” he said.
Doris drew a deep drag and exhaled.
Mandy was her only child. Doris had been pregnant twice, “a million years ago.” After that, she and the ex had given up on a family and pretty much everything else. Then she got pregnant at thirty-five. “It took,” she said. “There was something wrong with the others.” She waved smoke from her face. “I had to, you know.”
Rath didn’t need this information, but he let her tell it because she needed to tell it. And it would loosen her up.
“Mandy was a miracle,” she said. “The ex didn’t see it that way. Wanted to terminate her, too. Not because anything was wrong. Argued he was too old for tantrums. This from a man who still has tantrums.”
“Is he why Mandy sought emancipation? Because—”
“—He’s an asshole? Pretty much.” Doris’s face sagged as she tapped cigarette ash in a foil TV-dinner tray puddled with congealed gravy.
“When was the last time you saw Mandy?”
“Five days ago.”
“What happened?”
“I had taken her to a job interview at the Lost Mountain Inn. She got the job, and they wanted her to start that night. I wanted to celebrate for once, take her to lunch or something. But she was too nervous to eat. So we went to the Dress Shoppe. They have a good clearance going on.”
Doris made a squeaky sound with her lips, and Lint Ball leapt in her lap and bared its rat teeth at Rath. “Idiot,” she said, scratching the dog’s ear. “Mandy found her as a pup, in a box on the side of the road. A whole litter. The others were dead. Mandy nursed her from a bottle. But her new roomie has mean cats, so. Who does such a thing? Leaves puppies to die?”
Rath wondered if she was trying to distract him. “Why’d you drive her to her interview?” He flicked ashes in the TV-dinner tray, seeing no other place to do so.
“She has the Monte Carlo.”
“I’m her mother.”
“But she sought emancipation.”
“Because of Asshole. I ain’t a saint. I make mistakes. But she was right. I shoulda divorced him long ago. Shoulda never taken it.”
“He abuse you?”
She shrugged. Rath made a note. Underlined it.
“He abuse her?” Rath said.
“Phh. He couldn’t be bothered.”
Rath didn’t believe her.
“You sure?” he said.
“Of course I’m sure. He’s too lazy. Besides, he’d so much as touched her, she’d have cut his nuts off.” She laughed. “She’s stronger than me that way. And smart. Not test smart maybe. But commonsense smart.”
“Where’s your ex-husband live?”
“Some shit hole with his new wife—139 Pine Street.”
“When did you divorce?”
“Nine months ago.”
“And he’s married again already?”
“Like I said. Asshole.”
“What’s his name?”
“Larry.”
Rath made a note. “And you’re on good terms now, with Mandy?”
“Pretty good. She’s sixteen. I hated my mother when I was sixteen.”
“Why’s that?”
“I was sixteen.”
“Did you and Mandy argue recently?”
“She’d never let me drive her if she were pissed. She don’t compromise. Not Mandy.”
“And you haven’t heard from her since?”
“She said she’d call and let me know how her first night went. She never did. I figured she got busy. Teenagers. Then I found out about the car.” She sighed heavily and collapsed on herself like a punctured tire. “She’s a good girl. Smile that’d break your heart. Ask anyone.”
“I will.” Rath snubbed his cigarette as Doris tamped her pack and knocked one free. Lit a match.
“Did anything strange happen that day?” Rath said.
“Strange?” The match burned down toward her fingers as she stared beyond it, her eyes emptying. The flame reached her fingertips, and Rath was about to snuff it out when Doris finally shook the match, a tendril of smoke spinning in the air between them, leaving the bite of sulfur in Rath’s nostrils.
Doris reflected, her eyes clouding.
Rath let Doris untangle her cat’s cradle of thoughts.
“We were in the Dress Shoppe.” Clarity returned to her eyes. “I asked Mandy about a dress. But she was distracted.” Doris paused and closed her eyes. She opened her eyes and resumed. “Then she said, ‘Hold on’ and went out. I was going to spy. Nosey mom. But the salesgirl came up and started going on about how gorgeous Mandy is and hauled me off to show me just the perfect full-price dress. Before I knew it, Mandy was back. I figured she’d seen a friend, or wanted to sneak a cigarette. She smokes and thinks I don’t know it.”
“How long was she gone?”
“Five minutes. Tops.”
“How was she after that? If you could use just one word to describe it.”
“One word?”
“One.”
Memory was a devil that wore many disguises. Wrong in detail and fact. In court, a prosecutor or DA shot more holes in testimony based on eyewitness recollection than a redneck shooting a road sign with a .12 gauge. Witnesses seldom stopped to actually remember. To get them to focus, Rath asked them to use one word to describe a detail, a person’s height or the color of a car driving from a crime scene.
“Close your eyes,” Rath said. “See her face.”
Doris closed her eyes, eyeballs spasming beneath their lids.
She opened her eyes. “Done,” she said. “Exhausted. She wanted to get home. She didn’t seem excited anymore. About the new job or the clothes.”
“Did you ask her about it?”
“She thinks I pry. So, no.” She blew out a breath.
“You can’t beat yourself up over these things.”
“Yes you can,” she said.
Yes, Rath thought, you can. Forever. Without it ever changing a thing. “You know anyone who might want to hurt your daughter?” Rath said.
She nodded without hesitation.
He leaned forward, surprised. “Who?”
“No one in particular.”
Rath frowned, confused.
“You haven’t seen her, have you?” Doris said.
“I have a snapshot Grout had from a family thing.” The photo wasn’t great, a candid taken at a cookout, a bit at a distance with people around her, but it did show a clearly pretty girl with red hair, a heart-shaped face, and caramel eyes that locked on you.
“You’ve never seen her,” Doris said. “In person. When I told you the salesgirl was prattling about Mandy being gorgeous, she wasn’t just trying to sell a dress. Mandy’s a jaw-dropper. She radiates. A smile like sunshine’s pouring from her. Her eyes, that red hair. But, she don’t photograph that way. In photos, she looks pretty. But in life. She stops people.”
Doris smiled, sadly. Then in a hushed, confessional tone, said: “She attracts men, Mr. Rath. All kinds. All ages. They get this glaze. Like they want to own her, bring her home, and put her in a glass cage, keep her safe from the bad men, which, of course, they’re not. They’re the only one who can save her.”
Doris shivered. She seemed caught in the whirlwind of speaking about Mandy, as if doing so might conjure her up here and now, and they could be done with the mystery of her whereabouts and go on with life.
“Mandy makes boys crazy, Mr. Rath, and middle-aged men insane for their lost youth. They say such desperate things to her.”
“Does anyone in particular get this ‘glaze?’ ”
“Everyone. You would.”
“I doubt—”
“You would. Even women get it. Some people like to hurt a girl like that. Just because she exists. You need to find her.”
“We’ll find her,” Rath said, meaning it.
“Alive?”
“Yes,” Rath said, lying.