Last Girl Gone Page 4

“By that time it was the least of her problems. You see, the operation didn’t go so well for Susan. She got a liver infection. They controlled it with antibiotics, but it had already spread and damaged her kidneys. Fast forward to a year later. She weighs ninety pounds and spends eight hours a day plugged into a dialysis machine. She needs a kidney fast. Luckily, her husband of twenty-five years is a perfect match.”

  Dr. DeVane said nothing.

  “The day she asked for his help was the day he filed for divorce,” Laura said, her voice flat as Kansas prairie. “Played dirty too; took everything. She was dead in six months.”

  The doctor crossed her arms, looked at the ground.

  “There was a small outcry, of course, but he hadn’t done anything illegal. No one could touch him. And I guarantee he didn’t think it was wrong.”

  “How can you know?”

  “He’d never agree to an interview, but I caught up with him outside his building once. I didn’t identify myself as a reporter, and he thought I’d just recognized him from one of the other newspaper articles. I asked him, ‘Did you learn anything from all this?’ I was thinking his answer might acknowledge some of the terrible irony and injustice that had befallen his wife. Do you know what he said?”

  Dr. DeVane shook her head.

  “He said, ‘Yeah, I learned something. Always wear a condom.’”

  The silence hung between them like a cloud.

  Laura took a breath. “My idealism went the way of the dodo sometime that first year. The job isn’t to change the world, just report it.”

  “We’re out of time,” Dr. DeVane said.

  Laura stood and noticed her hands had balled into fists. Each palm featured four white pinpricks surrounded by red where the fingernails had dug into flesh. She opened the door and stepped into the hall.

  “Laura,” Jasmine DeVane called after her. “What you said, that there are no villains in the world—I don’t agree.”

  “No? Why not?”

  “Because someone out there killed that little girl.”

  CHAPTER

  4

  HER BEDROOM HADN’T changed a lick in eleven years. Same brown carpet, same Rat Pack poster, same Minnie Mouse bedspread, same faint odor of mildew always on the edge of being noticed.

  Home.

  Laura had been aghast to find it so untouched. On her return, a fine layer of dust coated everything, even the floor. No footprints. No one had so much as opened the door in years. She’d considered throwing it all out, starting over, but she didn’t plan to stay long. What was the point of redecorating? So she’d washed and swept, and now two months later she slept every night clutching Minnie Mouse.

  Once changed into a pair of old jeans, she slipped back down the hallway, boots in hand. The old farmhouse had foghorns for floor joists. As a teenager Laura had mapped the various squeaks and pops until she could hop between the solid spots like Indiana Jones at the end of The Last Crusade.

  She paused, listening outside the door of the master bedroom.

  Not a peep, which meant her mother was still asleep. At five thirty in the evening.

  More grateful than worried, Laura carried on down the stairs and out the front door. Big blue sky arched over her. The fields, summer green, stretched to the horizon.

  She slung a bag onto her back seat and took off down the dirt drive. The car, a 1969 Dodge Dart convertible in midnight blue, had a hundred and fifty thousand miles on its third engine and started on the first turn only half the time. The body was eaten through by rust in at least half a dozen spots. But the soft top still worked, and that was the only thing that mattered.

  Laura turned onto asphalt and hit the gas, felt the sweat on her brow evaporate as the wind played through her hair. Frank Sinatra singing the saccharine “New York, New York” carried her three miles south down Highway 57. A new song came on just as she hit the turn on to Highway 86 half a mile north of downtown, brushes on a snare opening Bobby Darin’s version of “Mack the Knife.”

  She turned south. Highway 86 became Churton as it passed through downtown. Beyond the brick buildings at the town’s center, beautifully maintained Georgians and Colonial Revivals gave way to low-slung ranches and finally to corrugated warehouses along I-85. She got on and then off again a few miles later, turned in to a neighborhood of double-wides, and stopped outside a yellow one with a pink flamingo mailbox and honked twice. A kid with a 35mm camera slung around his neck and a backpack in his hand came running out and hopped over the door without opening it.

  “Nice moves, Leon,” Laura said, and threw the car into gear.

  “Thanks, Miss Chambers.”

  They turned back onto the interstate, back toward the Chambers farm. She glanced over at him.

  Leon Botton wore his darkish hair buzzed short on the sides with the longer top pushed into the center of his head. Clad in a black T-shirt and black jeans, feet stuffed into oversized combat boots, he appeared every inch the rebellious teenager. But that hadn’t been Laura’s experience. The few times they’d talked he had been soft-spoken and thoughtful.

  Laura caught him staring at her as they pulled away. He’d been doing that a lot lately.

  “Getting a good look?” she asked.

  He snapped his head forward and started fiddling with the tuner, suddenly concerned about her choice in music.

  “You know, Leon, if you want to get a girl’s attention, just staring and letting your mouth hang open isn’t the best way.”

  His mouth opened and then closed like a guppy on land.

  “I’m just teasing. You know that, right?”

  “Yes, Miss Chambers.”

  She hoped he did. At the age of seventeen, Leon was responsible for more than half the photos in the Gazette. He was president of the Orange High photography club and covered all the local high school sports the people around here held dear. And he had a crush on her, of course, obvious in all the dopey Romeo looks he’d been shooting her way in the newsroom. She liked Leon—there was no substitute for manners, in her experience—but ultimately he was a reminder of how far she had fallen. She’d once teamed up with a Pulitzer Prize–winning photojournalist; now she had her very own high school student.

  “Miss Chambers?”

  “Call me Laura.”

  “Laura.” It rolled off his tongue about as smoothly as molasses. She could almost see his heart flutter.

  “Yes, Leon.”

  “It’s great we finally get to work together.”

  “Great. For sure.”

  “But when I get an assignment, usually Mr. Herman will, uh, tell me a little bit more about it.”

  “What does he usually tell you?”

  “Oh, I guess he tells me where I’m going, what I’m supposed to take pictures of. You know, um, the basics?”

  Laura shot him a look.

  “Not that it matters,” he added quickly. “I’m just curious.” He crossed his arms and watched out his side of the Dart as the buildings yielded to fields once again. He was probably trying to look cool, Laura thought—face scrunched up, hair shifting in the wind. Of course he was trying too hard, but it wasn’t bad for a seventeen-year-old.

  “You weren’t expecting my call,” Laura said. “Bass not giving you much work?”

  “It’s July.”

  She raised an eyebrow.

  “It’s summer,” he explained. “No sports going on. Nothing worth shooting.”

  “Almost nothing,” she said.

  * * *

  They parked, locked the car, then walked across a field and started climbing the far ridgeline. Near the crest, Laura turned and looked back. The sun was about to dip its toe into the horizon. Low, flat clouds reflected oranges and purples so brightly she had to raise a hand and shield her eyes. A hundred feet below them and a mile distant, a small shine indicated the windshield of the Dart parked on a small dirt shoulder.

  “We’re shooting the sunset?” Leon panted.

  Laura shook her head. She’d failed him a
s a partner, letting him come out here dressed all in black with heavy combat boots. The sweat poured off his forehead in sheets and he wiped it away with the back of his hand.

  “Then what?”

  “Other way,” she said.

  Earlier she’d dug out an old topographical map and picked this spot so that the sunset would be behind them. A one-hundred-foot climb had sounded a lot easier in theory.

  Leon turned and scrambled the last ten yards up loose gravel and into the wild grass at the crest. Laura climbed up next to him, took one look over the other side, and shoved him down.

  “Stay low.”

  “Miss Chambers—”

  “Stay down and follow me.” She got on her hands and knees and then crawled through the brush until they reached a tree barely a foot around and ten feet tall. Still, it was the only object of any size up here. Its irregular shape would help break up their silhouette.

  “Here,” she said, then lowered herself onto her belly and dragged herself forward on her elbows until she reached a small ledge.

  Another moment and Leon was beside her.

  “Whoa,” he said. “Is that—”

  “You bet it is.”

  “Hey, is it, um, legal for us to be up here?”

  “We’re probably guilty of a little light trespassing.”

  “No, I mean, is it legal to take pictures of that.” He nodded down the east side of the ridge.

  Below them another soybean field stretched out like a stage. The sun still stood high enough in the sky for its light to cut over the ridge and slice down into the scene below, a cosmic footlight bathing everything in an unearthly copper glow.

  The far edge of the field met a dirt road lined with police cruisers, light bars long since turned off. Laura pulled out binoculars, and through them she could make out the crest of the Orange County Sheriff’s Office as well as deputies from neighboring Durham and Person counties. Another line of vehicles formed an interior wall, unmarked Dodge Chargers and Chevy Tahoes in dark blues and blacks. Whippy, aftermarket antennas stuck up from their trunks. Down the center of the field, a muddy track recently cut through the soybeans, and at its end stood a cluster of three vans. Then the yellow tape started. It stretched between wooden stakes, marking off a square area about a hundred feet on a side.

  Inside the square stood two men in suits. They wore white, hospital-style elastic booties over their shoes.

  “Of course it’s legal,” Laura said. “It’s called the First Amendment.”

  Leon nodded. “The sunset will actually help us.”

  “Is the light enough?”

  “It’s perfect.” The shutter on his camera started clicking. After a while he said, “Where’s the girl?”

  “It was over a hundred degrees today. They found her yesterday morning. I bet they moved her within a couple hours.”

  “Moved her?”

  “To the morgue.”

  “Oh. Right.” The shutter kept clicking away.

  “What are you getting?”

  “Everything, man,” he said. His voice sounded dreamy and far away. In a way, she thought, he actually was distant. He was down there walking through the soybeans, his focus refracted through the lens and cast down into the center of the field with all those cops.

  “Wide shots?”

  “Sure.”

  “Did you bring a zoom lens like I asked?”

  He pulled himself away from the eyepiece and looked at her as if she’d asked him if he’d ever kissed a girl. “Of course. I mean, shooting sports is my thing, you know?”

  She patted his shoulder. “Just asking, sweetheart,” she said, and he grinned at her. “Get me some shots as close up as possible. Groupings of people, the vans, the tape, individual shots of whoever is down there if you can.”

  “You got it.”

  Laura watched through the binoculars as two men in deputy’s uniforms wound up the yellow tape and pulled up the stakes.

  “They’re done,” she said to herself.

  Leon popped open the back of the camera, changed out the film, then started shooting again without a word. A few minutes later he said, “That’s it.”

  “You got everything?”

  “If it was down there, I got a picture of it. Besides, I’m out of film and we’re losing the light.”

  “Let me see that.”

  Leon looped the strap over his head and handed over the camera. “Like I said, out of film.”

  “I just want to take a look.”

  Supporting the heavy zoom lens in one hand, she lowered her eye to the viewfinder. Everything leapt closer by a factor of ten. The quality of Leon’s equipment shocked her. The binoculars had made it easier to see, sure, but suddenly it was as if she was standing mere yards away. She could make out clothing, body language, even facial expressions.

  Her gaze shifted to the left as one deputy handed his roll of yellow tape to the other and started approaching the men in suits. He had light brown hair worn long and ramrod-straight posture. He made his way across the field, high-stepping over the rows and making it look like a military exercise.

  Frank Stuart.

  Laura shifted uncomfortably on her elbows, the rocky ground digging into her bones. Spying on a police investigation in progress was all part of the job. But secretly watching someone with whom she had a personal relationship? It felt dirty, like she was a peeping tom.

  Frank turned his head and examined the ridgeline, almost as though he could feel her up there, watching him. Laura jerked back and ducked down, then chastised herself for her stupidity. Making out details with the naked eye at that distance was impossible. But the one thing he might be able to detect was movement on a ridgeline, the sun behind them painting her silhouette dark against the colored sky.

  After a few seconds she raised her head and peered through the viewfinder again.

  Frank had stopped three feet inside the tape and seemed to be calling over to someone. Laura panned right and found herself looking at Sheriff Walter McKinney. A gray wire-brush mustache dominated his face, topping a small mouth locked in a perpetual frown. He shouted something back, pointing at his feet.

  Laura realized Frank had made the mistake of not wearing any foot protection.

  McKinney turned to the man next to him, said something, and the other man shrugged. McKinney waved Frank over. He walked over slowly, shoulders slumped, a little boy caught with his hand in the cookie jar. After a few minutes of discussion, mostly the sheriff pointing at him and moving his mouth while Frank just listened, he left the way he came, went all the way down the dirt path to the road, then got in his cruiser and drove away. Most of the other cruisers were already gone.

  McKinney left next; then the final deputy finished with the tape and the stakes, loaded them into a van, and bumped it down the track and back onto the road. Laura pulled her head up and stared down into the field without the camera. Only the second man in a suit was left, the field big and empty in the dying light and the man alone in the center of it.

  She examined him through the zoom lens. He was a stranger to her. About forty, dark suit, white shirt turned brown around the collar by all the dust clinging to his sweat. The top of his shaved head glistened, and thick black eyebrows gave him a stern expression even at a distance. He crossed his arms and closed his eyes and just stood there. For five minutes he did absolutely nothing that Laura could see. Then he walked to the last remaining Tahoe, started it up, and disappeared down toward the highway.

  Laura handed the camera back to Leon along with her keys. “Go back to the car and wait for me.”

  “What are you doing?” he asked.

  “There’s more water in the trunk. I’ll be there before dark.”

  * * *

  She made her way across the field, stepping over row after row of green. Even past the line of holes where the stakes had been, the verdant lines of life continued.

  Laura knelt and touched the dirt.

  A girl had died here, her body
planted in the soil, a seed that would never flower, and so there was something deeply offensive about ground so rich and lush with life. To the west, the sun slid behind the ridgeline. The universe ticked on like a station master’s watch. It had a schedule to keep, and no small thing—not disease nor death nor the suffering of children—would ever give it pause. Laura closed her eyes and crossed her arms as she’d seen the man do. Maybe it had given him answers. Maybe it would cast the whole terrible thing into some new perspective and make it all seem meaningful.

  But all she felt was cold.

  * * *

  Halfway back up the slope, Laura began to feel very foolish indeed. Twilight had passed ten minutes ago, and her only light came from her phone’s flashlight. Its beam carried weakly though the descending dark. Her own feet were barely visible.

  Another five minutes of climbing and it seemed she’d advanced only another five feet, but suddenly a rocky outcropping loomed above her. She cast the flashlight’s beam upward and side to side. A large shortleaf pine stood to either side. She vaguely remembered the pine and clambering around a bit of rock like this one. But had it been on her right or her left going down?

  There had been too many trees, too many bits of rock. She couldn’t remember. Besides, everything looked different in the dark.

  She chose a direction and picked her way around the edge of the outcropping. A loose gravel trail cut across its face. Following it, she pushed herself close to the wall, trying not to fall, and banged into another jut of stone.

  The way in front of her stood blocked. To the left there was nothing but empty air.

  The trail had dead-ended.

  Laura took a breath. She had chosen the wrong way, simple as that. Turning carefully, she kept the light pointed at her own feet, aware that any trip from this ledge could be fatal.

  The beam caught something on the ground.

  In the dirt, under a natural rock overhang too shallow to be called a cave, were a collection of small white cylinders. She picked one up and read the small printing down the side: DUNHILL.

  Cigarette butts.

  She turned and looked outward just as the moon slid out from behind a cloud. The field spread out below her like a pale porcelain miniature. She could make out the rutted track and the rows of crops and the spot where Olive Hanson’s body once lay, all of it silent and still.