Last Girl Gone Page 2

  “If you want,” he said finally, “I could take you somewhere else.”

  She nodded happily, and he started the engine.

  PART I

  SMALL-TOWN BLUES

  GIRL’S BODY FOUND, POLICE CONTINUE SEARCH FOR SECOND MISSING CHILD

  By Laura Chambers

  July 7, 2017

  HILLSBOROUGH, N.C. — Tragedy struck early Thursday morning when the body of a young girl was discovered in a soybean field four miles east of Hillsborough, North Carolina. The deceased has been identified as Olive Hanson.

  Hanson, age ten, was reported missing the night of July 4, and a police search has been under way since the early morning hours of July 5. That search came to an end at approximately 7:30 a.m. yesterday morning when her body was discovered by a local farmer.

  Police have been closemouthed about details of the case, refusing to either confirm or deny that Hanson’s death was the result of foul play. In a statement put out Thursday afternoon, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office confirmed the victim’s identity and described the investigation as ongoing.

  A second child, with Hanson at the time of her disappearance, remains missing. Teresa Mitchem, also age ten, was last seen in the company of the victim on the night of July 4. Asked about the status of the search for Mitchem, Sheriff Walter McKinney reiterated the department’s policy not to discuss investigations in progress.

  According to a missing persons report filed jointly by the Hanson and Mitchem families the morning of July 5, both girls asked permission to visit the other with plans to set off fireworks. The ruse was discovered when Angie Mitchem, the missing girl’s mother, arrived unannounced at the Hanson residence looking for her daughter.

  Neither family has been willing to comment. “They were good girls, both of them,” said a neighbor, Leann Cooks. “Always together. They didn’t have a mean bone in their bodies. Who would do this?”

  That attitude of disbelief was echoed on the streets of downtown Thursday night. Citizens gathered in front of the Orange County Courthouse and formed an impromptu vigil, burning candles and singing hymns.

  Among the mourners was Hillsborough mayor Craig Smythe. “I have been assured by Sheriff McKinney that he and the fine deputies of the OCSO are doing everything in their power to locate Teresa Mitchem and to bring her home safely,” he said. “At this point, there’s nothing to do but pray.”

  Anyone with details about the case was asked to call the Orange County Sheriff’s Department’s at (555) 890–3600.

  CHAPTER

  1

  LAURA REREAD THE article for the third time and grimaced at the last line. Nothing to do but pray—tell that to the Hanson family. She could picture them in a back room of the mortuary, slumped on pieces of cheap office furniture, flipping through a coffin catalog, faces gray as wet cardboard. Would the mayor have the courage—nay, the faith—to look them in the eye and say it again?

  She doubted it.

  Her eyes drifted until they landed, again, on her name at the top of the article. Laura Chambers. She dragged a fingernail over the letters, scoring a thin line across their middle. Something about physical contact made them more real. Though she was ashamed to admit it, Laura never tired of seeing her name in print.

  She started reading the article for a fourth time before crumpling the paper into a ball and shoving it in the trash. Her favorite journalism professor, Murray Popovitch, had talked endlessly about the thrill of millions of people seeing those little letters printed at the top of a front-page story. He called it the vanity of the byline. Murray likened it to a siren’s call, praising its motive force while warning his students not to crash their ships onto the rocks.

  “Seeing your name in print is beautiful and dangerous,” he said.

  Murray always talked like that, in complete, poetic sentences. The short, goateed little man had entranced her from the very first class. She’d always understood the concept of journalism as a force for good, but Murray was the one who made her believe it.

  Laura shook off the memory and made a mental note not to revisit it. It offered nothing but pain. Murray was dead, she was trapped in a Podunk town in North Carolina, and her only consolation was that her mentor had died in time to avoid witnessing her disgrace.

  Nervous energy buzzed in her chest. She forced herself to stand and pace the length of her so-called office. It had been a selling point of the job during her phone interview with Bass Herman, editor-in-chief of the Hillsborough Gazette.

  “You’ll love it,” he’d said. “It’s cozy. Plenty of character.”

  Only later had she recognized his pitch as copy torn from a real estate advertisement, the kind used to sell thin, ugly houses no one wanted to buy. An honest ad would have read something like “Stinky hotbox, no views, partially air-conditioned, available immediately. Lots of privacy—no one in their right mind would spend time here.”

  Beautiful it wasn’t.

  Unpainted cinder block passed for walls. The only window sat eight feet off the ground, a Lucite slit designed to admit the minimum of light. Two doors and the top of a staircase separated the space from the main newsroom, but no one used the staircase. The door at the bottom was exit only, without an exterior handle. It all added up to a concrete closet at the end of forever, a place the other staffers rarely visited and never lingered.

  Which made the squeak of her office door all the more surprising. “Morning, Colin,” she said, and gave him one of her best smiles, trying to keep the edge of disgust out of her voice.

  Colin Smythe was the child of Mayor Craig Smythe but acted like he was the firstborn son of a king. Two months ago, preparing for her first day at the Gazette, Laura had read every back issue dating to the first of the year. Smythe, whose articles appeared at least three times a week, had managed to make her blood curdle long before they ever met. His worldview combined the moral compass of Christopher Columbus with the keen human insight of a bowl of clam chowder. Blacks, women, the poor—if they were down, Colin Smythe’s philosophy was: put a boot on their throat and keep them that way.

  “You look beautiful this morning, Laura.” He spoke in a light country accent. He didn’t wink, not that it mattered. A wink from Colin would be the definition of redundant. There were ballistic missiles with more subtlety. He wore a shapeless linen blazer over a crew neck T-shirt the color of fresh blood. One hand held a rolled-up copy of the Gazette.

  She edged back around the corner of her desk and perched on her chair. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen you in my office.”

  “You never made the front page before. We’ve got the morning editorial meeting in a few, so I thought we could chat.”

  “I’ve had plenty of front-page stories,” she said.

  He leaned against the wall. “Sure, in Boston, right?” His eyes fastened on hers, waiting for a reaction. Laura ordered herself not to take the bait.

  “Yes, in Boston,” she said.

  “But not here.”

  “No, not until this morning.”

  He winced, and Laura almost smiled.

  “How’s the job treating you. You like it?”

  Now he was acting like her boss. She gritted her teeth. “Bass and I meet every week about my progress here.”

  “What did you say to him in there anyway? How’d you get the big man to bump this story to the front page?”

  “I didn’t get him to do anything. All I did was write it up and drop it on his desk. What else was he going to put on the front page? Your review of the local theater production of Fiddler on the Roof?” Laura shuffled together her papers and butted the edges until they were flush. “It’s news, Colin. Not that this town gets much.”

  He came off the wall and placed two T-bone-sized hands flat on her desk. “Don’t start telling me about this town.”

  “I was born here.”

  “And abandoned ship the first chance you got. This story is a ticket to the big time.”

  She narrowed her eyes.

 
; “Don’t give me that look, like it’s a betrayal to even say it out loud. No one gets on the Globe’s front page without climbing across the bodies of a few fallen comrades. I don’t know you that well, Laura, but then again, I don’t need to. That’s just the way of the world.”

  Laura checked her watch.

  “And don’t pretend you’ve got somewhere important to be. I write features”—he jerked a thumb toward his chest—“and you’re on cleanup duty.”

  “My cleaning up not good enough?” she asked.

  He smirked. “Not nearly. You’ll have to learn to scrub up a bit better if you ever want to find a husband in this town.”

  “Are you done?”

  “Not even close. Missing girl turns up dead—not drowned by accident in the Eno or killed by her drunken daddy, but taken by some stranger and then left in that field for us to find. I’ve never heard of something like that. It may happen in other parts of the country, but not here. Major papers will want a piece of what’s going on here. This story is a ticket out. And I’m taking it.”

  Laura stood, came around the desk. “Here’s a bit of advice: when you talk about a little girl’s death, try not to look so damn excited.”

  He flushed, then raised the hand holding the rolled-up newspaper toward her face. She turned her head, ready for him to hit her. The paper stopped an inch from her face and he smiled at her wince. Fifteen years into adulthood and still the schoolyard bully.

  “How’d you get that story anyway?” His voice came out so quiet it was nearly a whisper. “One second someone finds the body, the next you’ve already gotten the story typed up and turned in. If I didn’t know better, I’d say you killed her.”

  He moved closer until they were nose to nose. She could see the white spittle collected at the corner of his mouth and smell the onions on his breath.

  “No, I know what happened,” he continued. “Your boyfriend called you, didn’t he? Soon as the sheriff looked away, Deputy Stuart dropped a dime and fed you every last thing you needed. Was that how you climbed the ladder in Boston? On your back?”

  The raw, unconcealed hatred radiating outward from him shocked her. She took a big step back, then tried to take another one, but there was nowhere to go. Her back was pressed against the wall.

  Laura had been a consumer of therapy since first escaping Hillsborough at the age of eighteen. Situations like this, her first therapist would have said, offer three options: be neutral, escalate, or deescalate. De-escalation was what most people would call taking the high road. Her therapist had encouraged her to take the high road whenever possible, and probably it was the best decision here too. She’d have to work with Smythe for the foreseeable future.

  Calm down, she told herself. Just play nice.

  But she couldn’t do it.

  It was his face. Cheekbones that could plane oak. Thin bloodless lips pressed together and turned up at the corner in contempt. An Aryan’s wet dream.

  She despised that face.

  Neutrality was the best she could manage. Arms crossed in front of her, she exhaled sharply, flecks of saliva landing on his chin.

  He ran a hand down his face and crumpled the paper, then dropped it into the wastepaper basket. “Anyway,” he said, his voice back to its normal, unhurried gait, “just wanted to give you a heads-up. As the more experienced staffer, I’m getting Bass to hand the reins over to me. You got a problem with that?”

  Laura shrugged. Anything she said would serve only to burn bridges.

  His smile beamed so bright you’d have thought she’d just bent over and kissed his toes. “Didn’t think so,” he said.

  One loud squeak of the rusty hinges and he was gone. Laura gave him a minute, then opened the door herself. She crossed the top landing of the steps and emerged in the small hallway at the back of the newsroom, then ducked into the ladies’ room.

  Old habits die hard. The daily editorial meeting at the Boston Globe had been a crowded affair held in a boardroom with the table and chairs removed to make room for all the staffers and assistants. The object of meetings, Laura believed, was to stand out. She hadn’t fussed over her appearance since showing up in Hillsborough two months ago, but Smythe’s arrogance had fired something raw and angry in her belly. Now it was time to be ready.

  She took a breath and examined herself in the mirror, running a finger through the dark ringlets of hair that fell to her shoulders, unwinding the kinks.

  The dress code at the Gazette was decidedly more casual than at the Globe. She wore dark-purple jeans, Converse All Stars, and a denim jacket over a black T-shirt emblazoned with the white silhouette of Frank Sinatra. Gold hoop earrings, thin enough to be tasteful, stood out against her light olive skin. Somewhere in her family tree there must have been a relative from Italy. An eighth-inch gap showed between her two front teeth, the source of much torment during her middle school years.

  These days, she had bigger problems.

  The eyes, she told herself, betrayed a wisdom far beyond her twenty-nine years.

  The most difficult thing about her encounter with Colin Smythe had been the little voice inside her screaming, “He’s right! He knows!” Even as she pretended disgust at his blatant opportunism, she had been planning her next move. Because he was right. This story, told correctly, had the potential to lift its author up and carry them away to bigger and better things. There was only one ticket, and it belonged to the person whose name was printed under the headline.

  She ran another finger through her hair and made herself a promise.

  It would be her name at the top of the page, no matter what.

  CHAPTER

  2

  “EVERYONE SHUT UP.”

  Bass Herman waved a hand at the group, gesturing for them to be seated. He had a gut the size of an aircraft carrier and he navigated like one too, pointing his stomach in the direction he wanted to go and dragging the rest of his body along behind it. Usually, people got out of the way.

  He wore a British banker’s shirt in salmon, the white collar damp with sweat, suspenders, and cheap slip-on loafers. His hair looked like whitewater and his hands were stained yellow by years of nicotine use.

  He pointed a discolored finger at Smythe. “What exactly are we planning for Sunday’s feature? Not this solstice festival shit again?”

  Smythe coughed into his fist. “Well, my series on local celebrations—”

  Bass cut him off. “Forget it. The only thing this town hates more than Jews is pagans.”

  “The solstice isn’t pagan per se,” Smythe said.

  “Who cares? People think it’s devil worship. These are good, Christian people, Mr. Smythe. And their preferred brand of Christianity is loud and proud. None of this love-thy-neighbor, no-hate, believe-what-you-want, hippie-dippy bullshit. These people are Old Testament connoisseurs.” Bass smacked a yellow hand down onto the table. “They’re Baptists, goddamn it.”

  Laura knew her office was bad, but the conference room would bring a tenured government worker to tears. It had no windows and few lamps. Piles of paper and other trash leaned into every corner. Moldy ceiling tiles threatened to collapse at any moment.

  Inexplicably, Bass Herman liked to use the conference room as part of his office.

  “Yes, sir,” Smythe said. After just two months, even Laura knew enough to sit down and shut up once Bass Herman started yelling.

  “He’s right, you know,” a nasal voice perked up from the back. Laura twisted in her chair, trying to see who had the guts to speak up.

  Natalie something-or-other, the mousy administrative assistant, stood behind Smythe, one hand holding a notepad and the other on his shoulder.

  Herman pressed several of his chins into his chest and looked down his nose at her. “Excuse me?”

  “I was saying—”

  Herman cut her off. “You writing articles now?”

  “Me?” She clasped her hands in front of her chest, the notebook pressed between them, face open in genuine surprise. />
  “Maybe you’ve been scooping the Gazette under some nom de plume? Working nights? Weekends?”

  “Nom de plume?” she repeated. Even for a North Carolina native, her French accent was terrible.

  Smythe reached up and brushed her hand off his shoulder. He spoke between his teeth. “Sit down and stop talking, Natalie. You’re making me look like an idiot.”

  The light in the girl’s eyes died. She hung her head and sat back in her seat against the wall, notepad at the ready. Her expression reminded Laura of a dog whose beloved master had just kicked it in the ribs.

  “Okay, enough,” Herman said. “You have your assignments. No missed deadlines. Miss Chambers, stay back for a moment.”

  Everyone else stood and filed out. It gave Laura time to plan out exactly what she wanted to say.

  “Miss Chambers.” He pronounced it the southern way, as though it ended in a Z—Mizz Chambers. “Congratulations on your first front-page story for the Gazette. When I hired you, it was because I knew you could produce great journalism here.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You’re welcome. Now that we have the compliments necessary to massage your journalist’s ego out of the way, let’s move on to the bad news.”

  Laura already had a pretty good idea of what was coming.

  He put his hands in his pockets and closed his eyes. “I’m considering handing the story off to Colin Smythe.”

  “You’re not happy with my coverage.” She didn’t phrase it as a question.

  “Not at all. You seem to have excellent sources. It’s clear you’re used to a fast-paced, competitive environment. Hillsborough isn’t Boston, but it’s nice to get a little hustle. Mr. Smythe met with me this morning—”

  “He’s campaigning for the story?”

  “I wouldn’t put it quite like that. But he also made some good points.”

  “Such as?”

  “Such as his local contacts. Certainly you have a few yourself. You couldn’t have gotten the story so fast without being persuasive.”