The Forgotten Girl Read online

  No reply.

  “How do you find someone you can’t remember?”

  Still nothing. I shrugged, took a ten from my wallet, and tossed it on the table. I was about to leave when the door opened and our very own chief of police stepped in. Brian Newirth. Perceptive, unruffled, classically handsome.

  “Harvey,” he said, approaching my table. “I haven’t seen you around much. Mind if I sit?”

  “Sure,” I said, “but I was just leaving.”

  “Stay awhile,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “My performer’s license is up to date,” I said with a nervous smile.

  “Good to know,” he said, sliding the mannequin over so that he could sit opposite. “That’s not what I want to talk about.”

  Marzipan poked her head up from the kitchen. Chief Newirth caught her eye and ordered coffee. She made the zipping motion and disappeared. I looked from the chief to the mannequin and back again.

  “Looks like you’ve got my undivided attention,” I said.

  “Good,” he said.

  Our conversation was neither brief nor pleasant, even though Chief Newirth did his utmost to maintain a neighborly tone. It caught me off guard, mainly because—with my own catalog of concerns—I hadn’t thought about the Green Ridge murders for some time. They may have popped into my head now and then, but I hadn’t really considered them: the victims, the families, the impact on the town.

  Twenty minutes with Newirth, though, brought everything to the fore with new and chilling implication.

  If I’d believed things couldn’t get any worse, I was wrong.

  * * *

  The first victim was Melissa Wynne. Twenty-five years old. Green Ridge born and raised. She was a single mother, well-liked, worked two jobs. I knew her as well as I knew anybody in town, which is to say, not well. Her kid used to enjoy watching me play. He’d sit in his stroller clapping his chubby little hands. Kept pretty good time, too.

  Melissa’s body was found on the morning of August 15, 2012. I say “found” but there was no attempt to hide her. She’d been wrapped in garbage bags and dumped in the middle of the Shoe-Nuff parking lot. There was no clear motive, and the few persons of interest—Melissa’s ex-husband, two recent lovers—had solid alibis. The killer had been either very careful, or very lucky.

  The town bubbled for a couple of weeks. We carpeted the Shoe-Nuff parking lot with flowers, as if Melissa had any affinity with the place other than that her corpse was discovered there. We held a candlelight vigil at Green River Park, beautifully attended, and set our candles floating downstream afterward. Homicide detectives appealed for information and knocked on doors, and the good folk of Green Ridge assisted them wherever possible.

  By Labor Day things were largely back to normal. Melissa’s murder was no longer the topic of every conversation, and state police had switched their focus to other major crimes. We were asked to remain vigilant, though, and to report any suspicious activity. I can’t speak for everybody, but I’d say this heightened awareness of the periphery lasted a few more weeks. Maybe.

  Victim two: Latisha Paffrey, twenty-nine years old, originally from Atlanta, Georgia. Her body was discovered in the doorway of Granger Insurance on the morning of July 20, 2013. The similarities to Melissa’s murder were irrefutable. Both were African-American females in their twenties. Both were bound in garbage bags and dumped in public locations. Both were raped vaginally and anally, and beaten about the skull with a flat-faced instrument. One slight variation in the MO: Melissa had been stabbed twenty-three times in the torso, Latisha six times. Still, there was little doubt they were dealing with the same killer.

  The investigation escalated. Police scrutinized every tenuous connection between the two victims. They cross-examined mutual associates, and looked for links to other sexual homicides within a one-hundred-mile radius. Suspects were rounded up and interrogated. Three local men were arrested and later released. Even I—one of the town’s oddballs—was brought in to aid with inquiries. The questions were on the plus side of intimidating, but I didn’t mind; the police were doing their job, and I had nothing to hide.

  The investigation sent ripples through the community, ruffled feathers, but bore no fruit. Much like the hunt dogs, police used strong-arm techniques in the absence of solid evidence, hoping to scare out a lead or, better yet, a confession.

  They got nothing.

  Nine months passed. The town lowered its guard.

  Victim three: Grace Potts, discovered at the foot of the monument in Veterans Square. She complicated the pattern in that she was Caucasian, thirty-two years old, but everything else was consistent: bruising and tearing around the genitalia; eleven puncture wounds to the torso; blunt force trauma to the skull. Police efforts again intensified. More forensic analysis, cross-referencing, interrogations—a forcible joint endeavor by Green Ridge police and the state’s major crimes unit that, unfortunately, netted the same results.

  No worthwhile leads. No witnesses. No apparent motive. Forensic pathologists found no conclusive trace evidence or DNA. The killer was brutal, but meticulous. He clearly didn’t want to make the investigators’ jobs too easy.

  I imagined him among us, not skulking and wolflike, but blending in—just an everyday dude who buys his groceries at ShopRite and his suds at the Liquor Monkey, but twisted inside, and laughing as the police chased their tails.

  With no dependable evidence and a shortage of resources and manpower, the investigation was turned over to the county’s cold case unit in June 2015.

  But cold didn’t mean dead, and while the people of Green Ridge had lapsed again in their vigilance, the police had not.

  * * *

  I never had a problem with Chief Newirth. He was one of the good guys, a proud American intent on serving his community as honestly and efficiently as possible. He’d been chief for twelve years, deputy chief for eight years before that. I couldn’t remember a time when he didn’t embody Green Ridge’s law enforcement. But there was more to him than the badge; he organized events for local charities, ran a boxing gym in Bryant Grove (Green Ridge’s low-income neighborhood), and talked at schools throughout the Skylands Region about such issues as firearm safety and substance abuse. He also donned the red suit in Green Ridge’s celebrated Santa Claus Parade.

  Yeah, one of the good guys.

  I studied his calm brown eyes as he stirred sweetener into his coffee, thinking he looked incongruous beside the mannequin, as if he were the one out of place. He lifted the mug to his lips, took a sip, shook his head. “Not great,” he said. “Been on the plate too long.” He added another sweetener, stirred again, then asked, “Where’s Sally?”

  A conversation with law enforcement will always set a person on edge, even when they’ve done nothing wrong. I didn’t think this could be anything serious, though, given that we were in a public location (sharing a table with a mannequin, by God). Nonetheless, I found the chief’s casual approach concerning.

  I told myself to be cool—I’d done nothing wrong.

  “She left me,” I said. “Skipped town.”

  “You don’t know where?”

  I shook my head.

  Chief Newirth nodded, took another sip of coffee, curled his upper lip. I recalled one of the hunt dogs warning me about talking to the police. Consider, carefully, what you’ll tell them, and if they’ll believe you, he’d said. And then look over your shoulder. We just might be there. I glanced from the chief to the restaurant’s front window, expecting to see a shadowy figure leaning against a streetlight, or a nondescript black car parked across the road. I saw nothing suspicious, but felt suddenly as if I were trapped between two immovable objects.

  “No forwarding address?” Chief Newirth pressed. “No cell phone, or number where she can be reached?”

  “Nothing,” I said.

  “She just … disappeared?”

  “I guess.”

  “You guess?”

  I nodded vaguely, because the
only information I had would make me sound crazy. She stole my memories, Chief, then I was accosted by a group of thugs led by a dangerous mind reader I call the spider. I linked my hands to keep them from trembling. How could I be so blameless, yet look so guilty?

  “It’s not unheard of, but it is unusual,” Chief Newirth remarked. “In my experience, there’s often some contact after a breakup, if only to tie up loose ends.”

  Another vague nod. Chief Newirth watched me while he sipped his coffee. I couldn’t hold his gaze.

  “Of course, unusual doesn’t mean suspicious.” The chief set his mug down and spread his hands. “But the fact remains that a young woman has disappeared without trace, which raises certain concerns in light of our town’s recent history.”

  It took a moment, but the weight of his words dropped onto my shoulders, and the air rushed from my lungs so fast that I needed to grab the table to remain balanced.

  “Wait a second,” I gasped, and now I had no problem looking him in the eye. “Sally’s not dead. She just … left town. It happens.”

  Chief Newirth took another sip of coffee and his hand was remarkably steady. “I have a responsibility, Harvey. I need to report anything untoward to the county prosecutor’s office, no matter how insignificant it may seem. So I’m gathering the pieces and trying to make them fit. You understand that, right?”

  “Sure,” I said. “And I’ll help you any way I can. But honestly, sir, Sally just left. I don’t know where she is, and that’s the truth.”

  “I get the feeling,” he said, pointing to my left cheek, “this is connected somehow.”

  I touched the crescent scar, feeling a knot of ruptured tissue beneath the surface, but it was otherwise healed. I told my landlord that I’d been in a bar fight, but that bullshit wouldn’t fly with Chief Newirth. The whole truth wasn’t an option, either, so I plugged for something close.

  “Some guys came looking for Sally.” My voice cracked. There was a pitcher of tap water on the table. I poured a glass and downed it in three pelicanlike gulps. “Let’s just say they were more forceful in their interrogation techniques.”

  “This isn’t an interrogation,” the chief said calmly.

  “I know that, sir.” Hearing those words helped, but they didn’t stop my heart from hammering.

  “I heard about those guys,” the chief said. “I’ve made some inquiries, but haven’t been able to locate them for questioning.”

  “You won’t,” I said. “They’re invisible. I can’t tell you anything about them. I can’t even tell you what they look like.”

  “Nobody’s invisible, Harvey. Some people are just better at hiding than others.”

  Tell me about it, I thought.

  “I also ran a background on Sally,” Newirth continued. “Actually, I didn’t, because she has no background. Not as Sally Starling, at least. So she’s either an illegal immigrant, a fugitive, or is on the run for some other reason.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Did she ever mention her past to you? Talk about her parents, or her childhood?”

  I frowned. If I told the truth—I don’t remember—it would look like I was avoiding the question. If I made something up, he’d see through it. Either way, I looked guilty.

  “She’s a quiet girl,” I said, echoing what Marzipan had said. “Very private.”

  “You didn’t know anything about her? That didn’t bother you?”

  “I knew what I needed to know,” I said. “And I’m a private person, too. It was all very cool.”

  “No driver’s license, social security number … Jesus, Harvey, that didn’t seem odd to you?”

  “I don’t remember it being an issue,” I said. One hundred percent true.

  Chief Newirth held up one hand, as if I were a lost cause, like his coffee—of which he took another sip, sneered again. He was persistent. Got to give him that.

  “Anyway,” he said, turning his cool brown eyes back to me. “Sally. No background. On the run. These heavies show up in town—bounty hunters or loan sharks—around the time she disappears. They snoop around. They rough you up. Are you with me, Harvey?”

  I nodded. Cat was on the money.

  “The pieces fit,” he said. “I don’t like them, and there are things I don’t quite understand, but they fit. When the prosecutor’s office enquires into unusual activity, I can lay this out. No problem. Keep calm and carry on, as the T-shirts say.”

  “Okay,” I said, and my discomfort lessened, albeit marginally. “Totally do that, then.”

  “Except,” the chief added, leaning across the table, the expression in his eyes more probing than cool. “A detail came to light recently that … hey, it’s probably nothing, but I need to address it before doing anything else.”

  I nodded. I had no idea what emotions my body language conveyed—guilt, confusion, fear—but at that moment I aimed for absolute honesty.

  “I’ll help you if I can,” I said.

  “That’s what I like to hear,” he said with a smile. He considered his coffee again, then pushed the mug to one side. I tried a smile of my own, hoping it didn’t look as false as it felt.

  “You still live at Passaic Heights?” the chief asked.

  “Yeah.”

  “One-bedroom apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Does it have a garden area? Anywhere for residents to grow flowers or vegetables?”

  “Nothing like that,” I said, wondering where this was going. “There’s a small, paved area in back where the stoners hang out, but that’s about as horticultural as it gets.”

  “That’s what I thought,” the chief said. “And have you been doing any gardening on the side, perhaps to make a few extra bucks now that you’re on your own?”

  “Gardening?” I shook my head, frowning. “No, sir. That’s not really my thing.”

  “Right.” Chief Newirth settled back in his seat. His badge caught a pellet of light. “So tell me, Harvey … what use would you have for a shovel?”

  He appeared to have deviated from his original line of inquiry, and I wondered if the bad coffee had rattled his usually perceptive brain. I shook my head again.

  “A shovel?”

  “Yeah, you know … for gardening. Or digging holes.”

  “I know what a shovel is, I just…” I looked at the mannequin, as if she could provide an explanation, then back at the chief. “Honestly, sir, I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  He nodded, took a notepad from his breast pocket, flipped a few pages. “Friday, August seventh. Five forty-eight p.m. You bought a shovel from Cramp Hardware. A Razor-Back digging shovel with a forty-nine-inch fiberglass handle. That’s a quality tool, Harvey. Tough to break. You obviously planned on digging a deep hole.”

  I looked at him, jaw hanging.

  “I have a copy of the sales receipt in my office,” he said, tucking the notepad back into his pocket.

  “You’ve made a mistake,” I said, and I was sure of it. “It wasn’t me.”

  “The store clerk and another customer say otherwise,” the chief said. “Well, they said it was the tall guy with dreadlocks who plays guitar outside the Liquor Monkey.”

  “Wrong,” I said, shaking my head.

  “You’re also on the store’s security cam,” the chief added. “Large as life, holding a shovel.”

  “What?”

  “I can arrange for you to see it, if you need your memory jogged.”

  And that was it: my memory. Whatever use I had with a shovel, it was connected to Sally, and she had deleted it from my mind. I lowered my head and sighed. What have you done, Sally? I thought. What have I done?

  “August seventh,” the chief said. “That’s around the time Sally disappeared, right?”

  I threw my mind back, but it was all a blur. I shrugged and said, “I guess.”

  “It was the last day she worked at the Health Nut. Joy Brady showed me the schedule. Sally worked nine ’til two. She was supposed to work t
he morning shift on the eighth, but didn’t show up.”

  My eyes—so heavy—rolled up to Chief Newirth’s. I figured if I wasn’t under arrest, I could just go home. You see it in the movies all the time—the suspect being grilled by police. Am I under arrest? No? Well, fuck you. And they get up and leave, those cool motherfuckers. My legs were trembling, though, and I felt sick inside. I wasn’t going anywhere.

  “So,” Chief Newirth said. “You want to explain why you bought a shovel on the day your girlfriend disappeared without a trace?”

  Yeah, I thought. I do want to explain it. But I could only stutter and blink, feeling as empty-headed as the mannequin. Eventually, three words—the truth—stumbled from my lips:

  “I don’t remember.”

  “That’s not very helpful, Harvey.”

  “But I don’t,” I warbled, and elaborated with something that didn’t feel too much like a lie. “Ever since those thugs beat me up, I’ve struggled to remember certain things. Maybe it’s post-concussion syndrome. Or brain damage. Shit, I don’t know, but there has to be some rational explanation for this.”

  “I hope you’re right,” Chief Newirth said.

  “What … you think because I bought a shovel that I killed my girlfriend? Buried her someplace?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “And that I likely killed the other women, too?”

  “I’m not accusing you, Harvey.” His eyes remained calm. He linked his fingers and studied me over the top of them. “I’m looking for answers. That’s all.”

  “It’s bullshit,” I snapped.

  A shrill voice from the kitchen: “Cocksucker!” We both turned and saw Marzipan frantically making the zipping motion. She saw us looking and ducked—“Fuckity-fuck”—out of sight. A little break in the tension, for which I was grateful. I breathed through my nose. Found a shred of calm and pulled it close.

  “It’s bullshit,” I said again, but in a quiet, controlled voice, and I looked at Chief Newirth with all the honesty I could muster. “Besides, it doesn’t fit the killer’s MO. Those women weren’t buried, they were dumped out in the open.”

  “An MO isn’t a signature, Harvey. It can change according to the conditions of the crime.” He leaned across the table again. “I have to look into this. You know that, right?”