Cemetery Girl Read online

Abby cut him off. “No. Tom? Is it Caitlin?”

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Then what is it?”

  I shook my head. “She said . . . she tried to talk to me . . .”

  Abby came closer. “That’s good, Tom. It’s good she tried to talk to you. What did she say?”

  The doorbell rang.

  I looked at both of them. “You didn’t invite more church freaks, did you?”

  “Tom . . .”

  “I’ll see who it is,” Chris said.

  “Tell them to go to hell,” I said.

  Abby stayed close, still watching me. “What did she say, Tom? Is it important?”

  I shook my head. “She said . . . something happened to her . . . while she was gone . . .”

  “What? What happened to her?”

  “We didn’t get that far. I . . . we didn’t . . .”

  Chris came back, a tentative smile on his face.

  “Someone’s at the door for you, Tom.”

  “Who?” I asked.

  “It’s a woman,” he said. “She says she’s a friend of yours, and she knows something about Caitlin. Her name is Suzanne or Susan.”

  I found Susan on the porch, where she stood smoking a cigarette. She wore the same kind of clothes as the first time we’d met, except her sneakers had been replaced by muddy hiking boots. When I came outside, she turned to face me.

  “Ah, Tom.”

  “I didn’t know you made house calls.”

  “We go wherever we’re needed.” She pointed to the two empty porch chairs, so we sat. “I apologize for the intrusion on your family life, but I’ve been thinking about you.”

  “You were?”

  “I saw your good news in the newspapers,” she said. “Your daughter is back. You must be a happy man.”

  “It’s a complicated adjustment in a lot of ways.”

  “Right.” She dropped the cigarette on the porch and ground it under her boot. “I’m sorry about this. It’s a bad habit I picked up in college and then returned to a few years ago. I do it when I’m anxious.”

  “What are you anxious about today?” I asked.

  She rubbed her hands together as though keeping them warm. It was a cool day, and I wished I’d worn a jacket.

  “What has your daughter said about where she was?”

  “Nothing.” I looked down. “She won’t talk about it. She told us not to ask her about it. Why do you want to know?”

  “And so you haven’t asked her?”

  “The therapist told us not to.”

  “It’s best to follow the lead of the experts in these cases,” she said. “At least that’s been my experience. They know what’s best.”

  “I take it you didn’t just come to talk to me about the merits of therapy,” I said.

  “Like I said, I’ve been thinking about you. This story. It’s been in the papers, so it’s been in my mind. Do you still have that flower, or did you give it to the police?”

  “I still have it. I should have given it to the police—”

  “You probably should—”

  “You know, I’m sort of in the middle of a larger crisis here. I appreciated talking to you the other day, but I don’t think I have time for whatever you’re thinking about. Just get to the point or go.”

  “You’re right. Of course.” She dug into the pocket of her shirt and brought out a pack of cigarettes. Her fingers shook as she dug one out and struck the lighter. “Sorry,” she said, blowing the smoke plume in the opposite direction of where I sat. Around us, normal life went on. A few doors up, our neighbors raked their leaves onto a large blue tarp. A child laughed somewhere, a bright, distant trilling. “This man,” she finally said, “the man from the sketch, you believe he’s the one who took your daughter from you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “I think you’re right, Tom. I think he did.”

  “What are you saying? Because of the flower? What?”

  She shook her head. “Not because of the flower.”

  “Then what?”

  “Tracy,” she said. “Tracy Fairlawn.”

  “What about her? Did you talk to her?”

  “Not for a while,” she said. “But I’ve spent a lot of time talking with her in the past. She’s a very troubled young woman. When you and I met the other day, I was trying to protect her, to value her privacy, the confidentiality of the things she has told me over the last year.”

  “Drugs?”

  “Among other things.”

  “Are you saying she’s not reliable? Or believable?”

  “I think she’s believable, Tom. Especially about this matter.” She looked down at the burning tip of the cigarette as though she didn’t know how it had ended up in her hand. “Tracy knows this man, the one she saw in the club. She knows who he is.”

  I held tight to the armrests of the chair. My neighbor dragged his tarp full of leaves out to the curb.

  “What’s his name?” I asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Tell me.”

  “I don’t know it,” she said, her voice acquiring an edge. “I don’t.”

  “Tracy sent me to you.” My words came out sharp, ringing through the afternoon air. A picture formed. “You two are doing this together, aren’t you? She sends me to you, and you lead me around by my nose—”

  “I can only guess at Tracy’s motives, but the thought crossed my mind that she wanted me to communicate something to you on this account. She was right. I knew about this when you came to see me the other day. Then I saw the news in the paper. I couldn’t keep it to myself. I looked your address up in the phone book and came over here.”

  “You’re quite a saint,” I said.

  “I thought long and hard about whether I should get involved further,” she said. “About whether I should tell you. But if I had to guess, I think Tracy wanted me to tell you about this. I think that’s why she gave you my card and name. She has a difficult time talking about this issue, and she probably wanted to use me as a kind of proxy. I have incomplete information as it is, and it feels like—it is—a violation of the trust Tracy and I built.”

  “Don’t make yourself out to be more important than you are,” I said. “You’re not a priest or a therapist. Now where is Tracy?”

  “I told you—I haven’t been able to get ahold of her.”

  “I’m calling the police.” I started to stand. “They’ll find her. They’ll come down on you, too.”

  “That’s not the solution, Tom. And neither is this anger.”

  I was still on the edge of my seat. “What else do you know? There’s much more to this story, and you know it. Spill it.”

  She didn’t say anything.

  “Goddamn it, spill it!”

  “Have you seen that ghost girl lately, Tom?”

  “Don’t change the subject.”

  “Have you?”

  I paused. “Yes, she was outside our house one night.”

  “Did she say anything?”

  I slid back in the chair. “I went after her, but she ran away.”

  “Remember what I told you about that?”

  “That sometimes we see what we want to see. That it’s a form of wish fulfillment to see that girl.”

  “Right.” She dropped the cigarette and ground it out. “And it’s the same for Tracy.”

  “Why would Tracy want to see what she saw in that strip club?” I asked.

  “Not why she would want to see that man, but why would she want to tell her story. To you. Why would she care about that man being captured or revealed?”

  “Because it’s the right thing to do.”

  “You’ve met Tracy. Do you think that’s a primary motivation for her?”

  I stood up. I fumbled in my pocket for my phone. “Get out of here,” I said to her. “If you’re not here to help—if you’re just here to talk in riddles—then get lost. I’m calling the police.”

  “Tom?” she said.

  �
�Fuck off.”

  She reached out and put her hand on the phone. “Tom? Are you sure you want to know what Tracy knows?” She nodded her head toward the house. “Your daughter is home. She’s alive. When we talked, you were worried about her being dead. That was your fear. Well, you have your answer.”

  “I’m calling,” I said.

  She kept her hand on mine. I waited.

  “Put the phone away,” she said.

  I held on to the phone, but I sat down.

  “Tracy Fairlawn,” Susan said. “She was taken.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tracy told me about this as I got to know her. It took a long time for her to confide in me, which is why I struggled with telling you this.”

  “Go ahead,” I said. “I’m listening.”

  “About six years ago, when she was fourteen. She was walking home one night, alone, and a man stopped and offered her a ride. She took it. The man took Tracy to his house. She doesn’t know where he lived. He drove around a lot, in the dark, and she didn’t know the streets very well because she wasn’t driving yet. When she got to the man’s house, he fed her and gave her something to drink. They talked and listened to music, and when Tracy wanted to leave the house and go home, he wouldn’t let her. He held her there against her will, in his basement. He locked her in. He raped her repeatedly.”

  For a long moment, I couldn’t say anything. I felt cold again, even though the wind was calm and the trees still.

  “How did she get out?” I asked finally.

  “He let her out,” Susan said. “After about six months—six months of rape and terror in a locked basement room—he put her in his car again, blindfolded, and drove her around and around. Eventually he let her out on a country road in Simms County, twenty miles away from here. She made it to a gas station and called her mother.”

  “What did the police do?” I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.

  “What do you think they did?” she asked.

  “A girl was kidnapped and raped.”

  Susan shrugged. “A girl with a drug problem, a girl already in trouble with the police. A girl who couldn’t say where this man was who’d held her. She couldn’t identify the house, the car, even the neighborhood. All she did was tell this wild story of being taken against her will and held in a basement, and then miraculously being let go.” She shrugged again. “They didn’t pay much attention to her. I only got involved through my volunteer work.”

  “The police sent her to you?” I asked.

  “Not directly. The police didn’t see her as the victim of anything. But we had a mutual friend, a woman who taught at Tracy’s high school. This teacher knew about my work for the police, so she put us in touch. I just tried to be a sounding board, a sympathetic ear. Tracy needs much more help than I can provide, but it was a start.”

  “Do you know Liann Stipes?” I asked.

  “That’s Tracy’s lawyer, right? The woman whose daughter was murdered? Tracy mentioned her. Complained about her really. I get the feeling I was a better listener than Liann or anyone else in Tracy’s life.”

  “And that man . . . ?”

  “She says it’s the same man, the one she saw in the club with your daughter.”

  “How did she see him in that club and still dance for him? Why didn’t she run or call the police right then and there?”

  “She was terrorized, Tom. Terrorized. She thought that he came back there to taunt her, to intimidate her. It was like he wanted to remind her he still held some power over her. Which he did. Why didn’t she say or do anything? It’s a miracle she’s ever said or done anything. She feels as though saying anything is taking her life in her hands. She went to Liann because she couldn’t stand to not do anything about it.”

  “And now Tracy’s gone.” I brought my hand to my face and chewed on some loose skin around my thumbnail. “This man released her over five years ago, about a year before Caitlin disappeared. And now that Caitlin is back, Tracy is gone again. You think . . . ?”

  “Frightening, isn’t it?”

  I thought back to the first time I’d met Tracy, our conversation in the strip club. I calculated. “Tracy told me her daughter is almost five,” I said.

  Susan nodded. “She has a constant reminder of what this man did to her.”

  I curled my hands into fists, and when I did, they shook. “He let Tracy go because she was pregnant,” I said.

  “Who knows? I wouldn’t assign humanitarian motives to him.”

  “What should I do now?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure, Tom,” she said. “But I wanted you to know everything you needed to know. The police, they might have their own agenda. There are things they don’t want to tell a crime victim. Or they want to tell them on their own schedule and terms.”

  “And Liann? Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I don’t know Liann,” Susan said. “I can’t speak for her. But you’ve been chasing ghosts. Maybe this will make things more concrete.”

  “And what happens if I catch up to the ghosts?” I asked.

  “You’d be lucky to put them to rest.”

  Chapter Thirty-four

  Ryan didn’t answer. I tried two times after Susan left, leaving two messages. Before I could call a third time,

  Abby came out onto the porch, letting the screen door slam closed behind her.

  “Who was that, Tom?”

  I shut the phone. “She’s helping me.” I pointed to the house. “Did you leave Caitlin in there alone?”

  “Chris is talking to her.”

  “Lovely.”

  “Is that woman a therapist of some kind?” Abby tried to stop me from going inside. “Tom, I think you do need help. Real help.”

  I went past her and up the stairs. At the half-open door of the master bedroom, I heard Pastor Chris’s cheery voice chirping inside. I pushed in. They were sitting on the floor.

  “Tom,” Chris said. “I was just counseling Caitlin here—”

  “Do you know someone named Tracy Fairlawn? She’s a stripper at those clubs you used to go to with the man in the sketch. Did you talk to her?”

  “If I say I don’t know,” Caitlin replied, “will you slap me again?” She scooted closer to Pastor Chris.

  “Tom, if you’d like to join our conversation, it might—”

  I turned and left the room, letting him talk to my back.

  When Liann came home from church, her family in tow, she found me waiting on her front porch. She told the family to go on, and when they were inside, she still didn’t say anything.

  So I spoke.

  “Why didn’t you tell me?” I asked.

  Her shoulders sagged a little. She knew what I meant.

  The phone rang in my pocket. I ignored it. “You knew this about Tracy all along,” I said. “The man, the baby . . . you kept it all from me. You told me you were her lawyer for a drug case. You didn’t mention she’d been the victim of a violent crime.”

  “Tom, she did come to me needing legal help. That’s where my contact with her started. And in the process of helping her with the drug case, I found out that she had been taken and assaulted. The police turned their backs on her, Tom. They just turned their backs on her. Someone had to help that girl. She trusted me, and I couldn’t—”

  “No. I don’t want to hear any bullshit.”

  The phone rang again, so I checked it. Abby. I silenced it.

  “So you decided not to tell me everything you knew about Tracy?” I asked. “Answer the question.”

  “I didn’t think it was relevant.”

  “Not relevant?”

  “What mattered was catching the guy,” she said. “Tracy was skittish. She was scared of the police. But she did see Caitlin in that club, and it was easier for her to talk about that than about what he did to her. That’s why I brought Tracy to you with her story. I helped you.”

  “I trusted you,” I said. “You came to us when Caitlin disappeared. You cut thro
ugh the bullshit and helped us. I thought you were on our side. But you kept this information from us. From me.”

  “What do you want me to do, Tom?” she asked.

  “All those things that happened to Tracy. The kidnapping, being held hostage. The rape. That’s what happened to Caitlin, isn’t it?”

  “What matters now is that we find that man—”

  I was up and past her. “Call me if your agenda changes, Liann.”

  Chapter Thirty-five

  I sat in my car in front of Liann’s house. I wasn’t ready to drive off. I didn’t know where to go or who to turn to.

  I looked down at the phone. Two more calls from Abby. Three messages.

  The slap. My confrontation with Caitlin.

  There was music to face on all sides. And what did they say about home—when you go there, they have to take you in . . . ?

  So I drove home.

  I stepped inside the back door. “Abby?” She didn’t answer my call, but I found her in the living room, sitting on the end of our couch, her elbow on the armrest and her chin cupped in her hand. It looked precarious, as though her head could slip loose at any moment. “Abby?”

  She still didn’t look up, but I could tell something more was wrong, something besides the fight and the slap. The room felt devoid of air, like someone had died.

  “What’s the matter, Abby?”

  She jumped a little. She looked over, moving her head slowly, as though turning took a great deal of effort. “Oh, Tom. It’s you.” She held the phone next to her on the couch.

  “What gives?” I asked. “Why did you call me so many times?”

  “Ryan called,” she said. “They found that guy, the one from the drawing. They made an arrest.”

  Abby told me the little she knew. Ryan had called shortly after I’d left the house and told Abby they had someone in custody, someone who matched the description given by Tracy. Someone they believed to be the man Caitlin was seen around town with. Abby didn’t know how or where they’d found him or what tipped the police off, but Ryan was going to come by the house at any minute to fill us in. And talk to Caitlin.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the morning.

  If the man was in custody, where was Tracy? She hadn’t been seen in weeks.