RATH TURNED FROM the window and looked at the far wall, the display of missing girls’ photos and the collection of random facts, of their lives, still pinned to it. It saddened him. There was so much more to each life than this. Scraps.
He began taking down the biographies and interview transcripts. The photos. He took them down with care, slid each piece gently into its respective folder, gave each photo one good, last look.
He saved Mandy’s photo for last. The so-called “bad” photo. He preferred it. In it, she was less perfect, more human somehow. A girl. A pretty, innocent girl who’d known a hard, mean life and tried her best in the face of it. Fled, he hoped now. Left this town and her cruel family to start anew while she still could. New York, maybe. Boston. How he hoped. For her.
“Where are you?” he said, staring at the photo, of her at the beach cookout with others her age.
Something in the photo caught his eye. In the background, blurry. A couple. He peered more closely. Sat at his desk and dragged his lamp over to the photo to see it in a brighter light. Yes. In the background, just barely in focus enough to make out their faces. A young couple. Roughly Mandy’s age. The boy a bit older than Mandy, a young man. The girl a bit younger than Mandy. The young man had his arm around the girl, in a sort of playful gesture, as if they were cousins. He was laughing. But his left eye. It was cut toward Mandy, looking straight at her, and the camera. The girl was looking up at the young man with one eye, and one eye was on Mandy too, just as she caught the young man eyeing Mandy. And her face. The hatred in it. The hatred for both of them. The young man. And Mandy. Not jealousy. But raw hate. Savage hate.
He knew both of the subjects in the photo. And thought about the question he’d asked himself when he’d first seen Mandy’s Monte Carlo: Why’s it parked like that? And he knew, in an instant, with a cold certain dread creeping in his marrow why the car had been parked like that, and that Mandy Wilkins was dead. And who had killed her. And why.
He slumped in his chair and called Grout. Couldn’t reach him. So tried Sonja Test.
“Hey,” he said. “I got it.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Mandy. I know who killed her. Can you meet me?”
“Of course.”
He told her where.