Stone Maidens (7 page)

“I thought that was a no-go,” she said.

“Max, my guy who’s good with numbers, hadn’t calculated the late ice melt along the lakeshore this year. An unusual surface current changed the calculation, too, resulting in a sweep zone along the beachhead more than a mile farther back from our first check. Not far from the shore we found it—a patch of disturbed sand and this piece of smashed glass jar with a partial print.”

“You’re not telling me everything, Brian.” She leaned closer, studying the fragment. “A partial print is forensically questionable evidence at best.”

“OK, yes, you’re correct. But what you should be asking is how I can connect the broken glass with the murder.” Eisen beamed. “The inner surface of the jar, where I lifted the partial, is coated with the vic’s DNA.” Eisen beamed.

Prusik looked puzzled. “Are you certain?”

“Yeah, I know you’re thinking: Why the glass? What’s it doing there?” he said. “I don’t think he used it as a weapon, though. No DNA was recovered from along its broken edge, so it doesn’t appear to have been used to cut or tear through her flesh.”

Eisen held up the evidence along its edges so Prusik could see more easily. “And, yes, I do mean a ‘he.’ The width of the print falls within the normal range of an adult male.”

“That’s a public beach, Brian,” she reminded him. “It could have been picked up by a passerby.”

He nodded, already expecting the challenge. “Yeah, true. But the print was preserved in some sort of secretion—presumably the victim’s—while it was still impressionable, meaning at or near the time of her death. And another thing, the partial was protected from the elements on the inside of the jar.” Eisen removed
the protective lenses. “It was a very isolated spot, Christine. Low among the beach dunes, well out of sight of the waterfront or the park road. We never would have found it without refactoring the drift equation. An isolated place indeed,” Eisen underscored.

Christine’s heart started to gallop and her breathing became ragged. She sat down and gripped the chair arms. Another remote forest landscape came into her mind’s view—very isolated and very far from home—one filled with ear-deafening insects that were nowhere near Lake Michigan’s waterfront dunes. For a moment she thought she might pass out. Where was the damn antianxiety medicine when she needed it?

“Christine, is it something I said?” Eisen said half jokingly. “Are you OK?”

“I’m fine, Brian. Fine.” Prusik stood up too quickly, fighting dizziness and an irrational impulse to run out of the lab. “Great work. Anything come up on the prints?”

“We’re running the partial print through AFIS right now,” Eisen said, referring to the Automated Fingerprint Identification System.

Prusik’s pinkie pulsed with pain. She hadn’t realized she’d been clenching her right hand, squeezing her small finger tightly the whole time. “Good work, Brian, really. Excellent. Please let me know what you find.” She strode through the laboratory door, glancing backward, seeing Eisen still standing where she’d left him, looking her way, perplexed, until the door clicked shut.

Christine returned to her office, picked up her purse and car keys, and took the elevator down to the parking garage en route to her athletic club and the calming waters of the pool. The other lanes would be quiet now. Only the drone of her own flutter kick would fill her ears and her rhythmic taking in of a lungful of air with each spiraling pull of her strong arms.

“Crosshaven Sheriff’s Department.” Mary Carter, the police dispatch operator, spoke in a calm voice. A natural at police work, Mary had been on the force for ten years. She wore a wide bullet belt and a leather gun holster that chafed every time she rocked forward in her chair, which was frequently, as she rarely left the sheriff’s office on street duty.

“Your daughter’s late coming home, Karen? I understand. Julie’s fourteen, right? And she has frizzy blonde hair.” The dispatcher typed the entries onto a missing persons screen, reading a list of questions off the computer monitor to Karen Heath, the missing girl’s mother. Mary’s police-issue black polymer eyeglasses were designed to take abuse in the field. Mary mainly needed them for reading crime thrillers. The most active duty they saw was slipping off her desk when she wiped the bridge of her nose with a Wet-Nap towelette. She loved the lemony scent of the foil-wrapped wipes, which usually made an appearance right after she’d polished off two glazed crullers from Libby’s Kitchen.

“Where’d you say Julie was earlier?” Mary typed in
Daisy Rhinelander, 6 Old Shed Road, phone number 426-9807
.

“Has she any notable identifying features or disfigurements?”

Small scar on right elbow from falling out of tree
, Mary recorded, after winnowing out that information from a response that included Karen’s frustration with the pace of the phone call and her complaint that Mary stop delaying and call Sheriff McFaron immediately.

The dispatcher patiently stayed on the line. “I’m sorry, Karen, I didn’t get that.” She adjusted her headset. “How long has Julie been missing? Several hours, I see. You’ve checked with Mrs. Rhinelander twice. Your daughter left there at approximately three p.m.”

Mary knew that unless exigent circumstances existed, a missing person report usually couldn’t be filed with the state police
network until twenty-four hours had passed, but she had Karen stay on the line while she contacted the sheriff by radio.

“Sheriff, Mary here. Over.”

“What’s doing?” Sheriff Joe McFaron said into the mike, stretching the coil its full length out the window of his 1996 Ford Bronco truck—the model four-wheeler that he favored. At that moment he was standing next to a culvert at the Beecham farm several miles south of town, eyeing Mr. Beecham, pale and sitting on the ground next to his tractor. The farmer appeared to have suffered a mild heart attack. McFaron was waiting for the ambulance to arrive.

“I’ve got Karen Heath on the line. She’s pretty worried, wants you to send out a missing child APB. Her girl’s been gone three, maybe four hours, she says. Evidently, there’s no sign of her whereabouts. Over.”

The sheriff shoved back the brim of his trooper-style hat and rubbed a palm across his brow. He knew Karen Heath could be a bundle of nerves. Even in high school, he’d never forgotten how she’d fainted when Henry Small, a lineman on his high school varsity team, had gotten his leg caught between two tackling players. The hollow crunching sound of Small’s leg bone had dropped Karen Heath straightaway on the sidelines.

“Put through a radio call to the Staties,” he said. “I should be back to the office within the hour. Did you say it was Julie or Maddy Heath missing?”

“Julie.”

“If she turns up, you’ll have to call the state boys back quick or they’ll have a conniption over my jumping the gun on this. Between you and me, Karen Heath’s always been a borderline nervous wreck, God bless her soul. Over.”

Mary issued the bulletin to the state police district office ten miles north of Crosshaven and then leaned back, chewing thoughtfully on a fresh hot cider doughnut. It was small enough
to pop into her mouth whole, and just the thing to fill the lonely silences between dispatch radio calls.

Mary released the mute button and told Karen Heath that she’d notified the sheriff and put out a bulletin, then said, “Karen, if Julie turns up, I’d appreciate a call back. Anything we hear, I’ll be in touch right away.”

Karen Heath didn’t reply. Mary thought it must have finally struck home: filing a missing persons report on her child.

“Karen, you still there?” Mary’s voice was softer this time, less businesslike.

“I hear you.”

“We’ll be in touch, Karen. You try to get yourself some rest.” Mary hung up the phone and shook her head. Julie was a nice young girl, responsible. She’d know better than to get herself in trouble. It’s probably nothing, Mary thought, reaching for another doughnut. Then she changed her mind and closed the box up tight.

The boys and Elmer took seats at a table away from all the smoke that roosted over a huddle of men on stools facing the open griddle. Shermie Dutcher, the owner of the diner, looked up from the grill, mumbled something to Karla—the only waitress in the place—and then went back to cooking, his skinny arms flailing away.

Karla placed three paper napkins tightly rolled around dinnerware in front of Elmer and the boys.

“Hey, Karla,” Elmer said. “How are you today?”

“Fine,” she said. “What’s wrong with junior here? Seen a ghost?”

Mike snorted. “Kind of.”

Joey glared at his older brother. “I didn’t see a ghost, but I
did
see something.”

Sixteen-year-old Mike clamped his strong hand down on his brother’s arm. “Button it, Joey.” His dark eyes drilled into the eleven-year-old’s. He’d warned Joey plenty of times about jumping to conclusions about people and spreading rumors.

Seeing the younger boy’s wounded face, Elmer said, “OK, OK, Mike. Let Joey be. He and I have got some serious fishing to do tomorrow morning early. Right, Joey?”

“Fishing” was their code for sitting and talking a spell. Joey desperately needed the old man for that. He depended on his grandfather, the only living person on the planet who would let him ramble on and listen to it all. Mike wouldn’t.

Joey rubbed his eyes. Those paralyzing seconds coasting by the truck on Old Shed Road replayed in his head. He looked up at Karla and blurted, “I saw this guy—”

“Joey, what’d I tell you?” Mike spoke over his younger brother’s voice. “You don’t know that guy from Friday. You have got to stop making up stories about people.”

Mike jabbed a finger on the table and leaned closer to Joey so Karla wouldn’t hear. “Last spring it was what’s-his-name—Johnny Shannon, that punk who had you all in a tizzy at school? So don’t go spreading rumors about people you don’t know. I’m warning you for the last time.”

“OK,” Elmer said. “You made your point, Mike. We came here to eat supper, not to heap troubles on your brother here. The boy’s done no harm.”

They all ordered the dinner special—meat loaf, fried potatoes, and onion rings.

Joey’s eyes locked on a man sitting at the counter, dressed in the same one-piece bibs as Elmer, only where Elmer’s hung slack from his lean body this man’s spilled over with rolls of fat. The heavy man rotated on his stool and looked straight Joey’s way.

“You got a grip on them boys, Elmer?” The fat man’s body jiggled when he laughed. “Karla tells me that boy’s seen a ghost.”

Realizing the fat man was poking fun, Joey raised his chin angrily. “It’s no ghost. I never said that!” He faced the other way, hurt. “It was the truth, Gran.”

Elmer rapped his great brown knuckles on the table. “I know you’re not fibbing, son. Don’t pay attention to Mr. Barnes. Mike’s right as far as showing your hand to others. They know how to get you going, joking and kidding around like they do.”

Joey was sick and tired of hearing it all. He took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes deeply with his dirty hands. “I’m going to the bathroom.” At least nobody would be scolding him or laughing at him there.

Slowly rubbing the grainy bar of soap between his hands, Joey listened to the diner talk through the thin paneling. The fat man who’d laughed at him was snickering like the bullies at school did. Joey hated that. The thought of Johnny Shannon—his nemesis in the hallways—wrestling him to the ground and kneeing him in the groin while Shannon’s punk crew chuckled was too much to bear.

Joey leaned his forearms against the sink. The smell of Lava soap and greasy home fries mingled. Someone entered the diner in a hurry, a man puffing.

“Say, boys, Julie Heath’s been reported missing. Just heard it on the scanner. An APB’s out for her already. She plum disappeared without a trace a few hours ago. After visiting a friend at the Rhinelander place on Old Shed Road. No one’s seen her up at Libby’s, Harris’s Grocery, or anywhere else. Police report said she’s wearing a green skirt and a white button-down shirt.”

Joey dropped the soap, his hands foaming white. He looked at himself in the heavily etched mirror hanging over the sink and remembered seeing something. Like polka dots. He fought to calm himself, the way Mike always said to. He placed his glasses between the faucet handles and splashed cold water on his face. He had to be sure. He blinked to clear the water, then refitted his glasses.