AS RATH DROVE up into Aver’s Gore, the Scout shuddering so hard on the dirt road that his molars ached, his back pain was ludicrous.
His cell phone vibrated on the dash. PRIVATE. Rachel? Calling from a friend’s?
He answered.
“A girl’s body was found, near St. J.,” Sonja Test said.
“Where?”
“Victory.”
Victory was situated twenty-five miles south of Canaan and ten minutes outside St. J. It had once been a booming logging town, but only a few folks still carved a living for Northern Dynasty Mills. A quiet town of fewer than a thousand souls, it had a Main Street of local establishments like Northwoods Outfitters and The Wilderness Restaurant alongside McDonald’s and Dunkin’ Donuts.
Sonja lived in Victory.
Rath pulled over onto an old logging road. “Is it Mandy?”
“I’m waiting to hear more from Lou. I gave him our girl’s description.”
Rath leaned back and stared out the windshield. The sky was a blinding blue. It was one of those days that looked balmy from inside, but bitch-slapped you with its cold hand when you stepped into it.
“I hope it’s not her,” he said. “I’m about to visit her roommate. Then her father. I can’t inform them of a death officially. That needs to come from a cop.”
“Nothing’s official. I have squat except it’s a dead girl.”
Why is she calling me and not Grout? Rath wondered.
“Listen,” she said. “Not a word to Grout. Not until we have something. OK.” It wasn’t a request. It was a demand. And it answered Rath’s question. She was playing a dangerous game, keeping information from her superior.
“OK,” Rath said, and ended the call.
He dialed Rachel. Got her voice mail. “Hey it’s Dad. Call me.”
It wasn’t a request.
Rath drove by mailboxes crammed into rusted milk cans and boasting French names, the progeny of drunken fur traders whose feral stock lived on in a legion of loggers and roofers, masons and dairy farmers: LaSalle, Lepage, Leduc, LaValle, Lavec. The names made Rath thirst for a Laphroaig as he came upon a dented mailbox with the name Duffy scribbled on it with black marker. Which one of these names doesn’t belong?
A crummy split-level house sat atop a steep, gravel drive, the gravel washed to the side in fans by runoff. Rath pulled the Scout up the drive and parked on a patch of dead grass next to a nineties Corolla with a faded FREE TIBET bumper sticker. He walked past the Corolla, black beads dangling from the car’s rearview, the rear floor littered with candy wrappers and spent Diet Coke cans. A child’s car seat polluted with pet hair. The house’s cheap T-111 panel siding was diseased with lichen, skirt chewed ragged by porcupines seeking salt in the glue.
Rath glanced at the Monadnock River Valley. The river cleaved through the open farmland, its surface mirroring the afternoon sun, so it shone like a skein of molten silver. The hardwoods’ autumn colors luminescent in the golden afternoon light, a beauty discordant with the shambled house before him. The door opened, and a woman in her early twenties stood behind the torn screen, and said, “Can I help you?”
Gale Duffy had the gaping eyes of a frog. Her cheeks were peppered with moles, her lips plump and bunched like a guppy’s. She wore a pink Gronkowski Patriots jersey draped over a belly that suggested her idea of home cooking was frozen pizza and Eggos. The jersey fell to her knees. Barefoot, she seemed to be wearing nothing but the jersey, her toenails painted Patriots’ red and blue. She leaned against the doorjamb, hugging herself, her cleavage deepening. She seemed oblivious to it.
“Gronk’s off to a good start, if he can remain healthy,” Rath said. “Too bad the secondary is a sieve.”
“You lost, or just a lonely Pats fan?”
“I’m a—”
“A cop? You don’t look it.”
“What do cops look like?”
“Not you.” She peered out at the Scout, raised her eyebrows like Really?
“I work privately,” Rath said.
“You guys actually exist?”
“I do.” He showed her his ID.
“I wouldn’t know that from a Gold’s Gym card,” she said.
“A Gold’s Gym card says Gold’s Gym on it.”
“What do you want?” she said.
So much for levity, Rath thought.
“To ask you questions about Mandy,” he said.
“What’s she done?”
“What makes you think she’s done something?”
“Umm. You?”
“May I come in?”
She groaned and pushed open the screen door.
The house reeked of kitty litter and of the cat piss that kitty litter was supposed to cover but never did. One of many reasons Rath disliked house cats, the first reason being his allergies. Rath sneezed, his eyes weepy.
As shoddy as the outside of the house was, the inside was staggeringly tidy. The shag carpet had deep, vacuum-wheel marks running in it like ski tracks in fresh powder.
The couch and chairs had modern lines of bent birchwood arms and white linen fabric that lent an illusion of upscale Euro design. Rachel had similar furniture he’d helped her haul back from Ikea in Montreal. It looked good, but was cheaply made. He hadn’t expressed that to Rachel though, not wishing to dampen her enthusiasm.
On the wall hung photos of Gale with several middle-aged women, arms draped about one another, each a tad disheveled and sweating. Easy smiles like the women were on a tropical vacation. The women’s matching T-shirts read: RACE FOR LIFE. A race for curing cancer. Under the photo was a plaque with Gale as the recipient: Hero for Life 2010.
Bookcases were so crammed that books lay horizontally atop those arranged upright. Rath read a few spines. Edie: American Girl; Vamps and Tramps by Camille Paglia. Wonderland Avenue: Tales of Glamour and Excess; Sarah Vowell’s Take the Cannoli.
“Those are Mandy’s,” Gale said. “She into all that. Woman empowerment, sexual revolution.”
“Why are her books out here? It’s your place, right?”
“Her room’s a shoebox. And she sort of gamed me. I think she likes showing them off in case a smart guy ever comes over.”
“Have any smart guys come over?”
“No guys at all. Hard to believe as it is.”
“What’s that mean?”
“Have you seen her? She can wear a burlap bag, and still guys slobber and girls get pissy with envy.”
“Do you envy her?”
“Envy may be a sin. But. I’m only human. Imagine if you were roomies with a real slab.”
“Slab?”
She rolled her eyes. “What you old guys call a hunk. Like, say, Gronk. You know. If he were running around your apartment with his shirt off, showing off his build, and you’re like, you know, you. Anyway, her looks make you feel like mud. Until you get to know her.”
“How so?”
“She’s quiet. Private. She’s not in your face about her looks. Which can rankle some girls more. Because you know, if a good-looking girl is a witch, you can at least nail her on that. You know, she’s got it all in the looks category, but what a witch. That Mandy’s nice and seemingly oblivious to her looks makes girls go ballistic. Because how can a girl not know she’s that gorgeous? If I were, I’d be a witch. See what I mean?”
He did, and he didn’t.
She laughed. “Girls are strange.”
“You think?”
“Especially when it involves other, prettier girls. What’s this about?”
“She’s missing.”
“She’ll turn up,” Gale said.
“You seem pretty sure.” Rath studied her face, surprised by her quick response.
“When I was her age”—a lost look came over her face—“I disappeared a lot.”
“So. What’s she like?”
“Like I said. Freakin’ private. She comes in, says hey, flashes her smile, grabs a book, and sneaks into her bedroom. Then stays in there and doesn’t come out. Not even for, like, snacks. I doubt she even reads half those books.”
“You said she gamed you?”
“I didn’t want the books out here. I suggested she put them in the cellar, but she said the cellar was damp, and her books meant a lot. I was like, they’re just books. It’s not like they’re the Bible. Then she said if I want to use her furniture . . . and I need a place to plop and watch the tube. All I had before was milk crates and beanbag chairs. So—”
“So you and Mandy don’t get along?”
“My ad said Roommate wanted, not Friend Wanted.”
“Can I see her room?”
“Not much to see.” She scratched at a rash on her neck and flung her eyes toward the narrow corridor. “Last room on the left.”
The bedroom was as promised: a shoebox. A twin bed without a headboard or a footboard was centered on the opposite wall from the door, maybe three feet of space around it. Above the bed, a faded poster of Warhol’s Monroe was tacked crookedly. The rest of the bare white walls were peppered with nail and tack holes.
The bedsheets were tossed back in a twisted heap. On a pink bedspread, an image of Betty Boop performed a jig. Rath pinched a corner of the top sheet between his fingers and thumb and lifted it. An open book sat beneath it. Black and Blue. Rath had never heard of it. He read the jacket cover. The book was about a mother who fled an abusive husband and changed her identity. Is that what you’ve done, Rath wondered, fled, changed your identity? He scribbled the book’s title in his notebook.
The drawer of an Ikea nightstand was ajar. Rath stuck the pencil in the drawer’s gap and pulled the drawer open to find a hairbrush, nail polish in hot colors named Rupture, Purge, Hipnotic. Pens and pencils, a raffle-ticket stub, Midol, a pad of paper. He paused and looked at the header of the notepad. Starmont Hotels and Resorts.
The notepad was pristine, no indentations from writing. He tucked it in his jacket pocket, then looked under the bed. A cat raked his face with its claws, then squirted past him. Wincing, Rath stood and wiped at blood on his cheek, the scratch itching and swelling. “Cat Scratch Fever.” That right-wing nutjob Nugent had gotten it right in the one crummy song on which he’d based his entire offensive life.
Rath opened the closet’s folding doors to find clothes spilling from milk crates. Acid-washed jeans in black and blue. Corduroys and sundresses. Tank tops and T-shirts with Wonder Woman, Betty Boop, and Marilyn. Black Ts that read, JOHN DEERE and GOT CHOICE?
Panties, plain white cotton, tossed in a pile. No bras.
He searched pockets and found one business card. It had been through the wash, and he could not read it. He closed the closet door.
On the way down the hall, he slipped into the bathroom and shut the door. The bathroom was spotless, the chrome-sink fixtures mirroring his distorted image back at him in miniature. The room smelled strongly of bleach though not strongly enough to cover the stench of the litter box next to the toilet. He wondered what Luminol would pick up: The place seemed somehow too immaculate. Had it been cleaned and scoured after an altercation?
Under the sink were boxes of panty liners, tampons, creams and ointments and powders, a toilet-bowl scrubber.
He opened the medicine cabinet, a metal job with a scratched mirror on the face. The interior was rusty where the shelves were riveted to the sides. The usual. Cough syrup. Allergy pills. Contact-lens solution. Pink disposable razors. Tweezers. Cosmetics. Red and blue Halloween hair dye. Birth-control pills.
He shut the medicine cabinet and stepped toward the door. Something was stuck to his shoe. A Post-it note. He unstuck it and looked at it. A childish scrawl. One word. Hard to make out. Impossible. argtbrongcin? He folded it and tucked it in his shirt pocket.
His heart leapt as his cell phone buzzed.
Laroche. Again. Rath wasn’t going to let the son of a bitch bail on dart night without finding his own substitute. That’s what he deserved for not having a spine to tell his wife he was owed one night out for every ten of her supposed girls nights.
In the living room, Rath found Gale slouched on the couch, watching Judge Judy. Evil Cat sat in her lap, giving him the evil eye.
“You scared my cat,” she said.
“Did Mandy have a laptop or a PC?” he asked.
“No way. She just got a job. She scraped together rent, but she couldn’t afford toys. Besides, we get nothing but dial-up here. It’s like watching TV with rabbit ears.”
Rath nodded. Parts of Vermont were still locked in a perpetual time warp.
“You keep a tidy house,” he said.
“Cleanliness is next to godliness,” she quipped.
“You have reason to think she’s been hurt or in trouble?” Rath asked.
“Not unless she’s gotten over her head in something.”
“Like?”
“How would I know?”
“Are you on the pill?”
She laughed. The harsh bray of a mule, a spray of spittle misting from her nose.
“I’m a virgin,” she said, laughing and giving a burst of spittle again.
Rath laughed with her, sharing in the joke.
Anger seared Gale’s face. “Not every woman—”
“Of course not,” Rath said, mortified that she’d been serious. “I just—”
“Judged. Poor-white-trash girl who lives in a dump and talks about hunks must be doing half the loggers this side of Canada, right? Mandy can read all those snobby books about feminism, but I’m the true feminist. Because when you control your body, you control your life.” Her ire was up, her eyes jumpy and mad. The girl had a temper, was a hot head.
“I apologize,” Rath said.
“Don’t. You’d be right ninety-nine times out of a hundred. But you’re wrong now.”
“I only thought. The baby seat, in the car?”
“Oh,” she said brightly, the outrage in her face melting like snow on a sunny spring day. “Now I apologize. I can be a bit testy at times.”
“Yeah?”
“I work for a day care. I have the seat in case of an emergency. It’s the law.”
Rath nodded.
“The cats are my babies,” she said.
“If you think of anything, call me.” Rath handed her his card. “One more thing.” He took out the Post-it note and showed it to her. “This yours?”
She considered it. “No.”
“Well. If you think of anything.”
Out in the Scout, Rath stuck the Post-it note to the dash above the ashtray.
In the valley, he tried Rachel’s number and was kicked to voice mail. “Hey,” he said. “It’s Dad. Just. Being Dad.”