The Girls She Left Behind (19 page)

“Yeah,” said Dylan, smoothing the dog's ears. “They're…”

He spread his hands helplessly to indicate how destroyed the bereaved parents were. “They're in Bangor now, identifying him.”

“Poor people.” She dropped bread into the toaster. “Anybody had any more sightings on Gemerle or Jane Crimmins?”

Or whoever she was. Dylan shrugged. “They're still working the motel room. No results back from any blood evidence yet. And some of my guys went to the burial site in the fire zone, to start processing that. But no, no sightings.”

He put coffee on. “As for the DeWilde kid, Bangor's got its own homicide cops. Them and Portland, the state stays out unless they want help, and then it's my problem.”

She sank into a chair. “You know, though, I'm still the one who knows all the ins and outs of all the different relationships.”

The toast popped up. “Yeah. And it would make sense to have you coordinating all these investigations. But since when did this job ever make sense?” he said. Then: “Not to change the subject. I haven't had the chance to mention this before now, but I figure you should know. I'm seeing someone.”

“Good for you. That's…good,” she finished idiotically. She fought to produce a smile. “So who? Somebody on the job?”

“A woman from my apartment building. No cop connections.”

“Oh.” Their eyes met across the table. She wondered what he saw in hers and got up hastily so he wouldn't see too much.

“Sorry to spring it on you,” he said. “I just didn't want you to find out some other way, is all.”

“That's okay,” she managed lightly, pouring more coffee. “I guess I just thought it would be Emily Ektari if it was anyone.”

His look turned speculative. “You think she might—”

At which a laugh burst out of her; good old Dylan, he was a handsome dog and a charming one, too.

But a dog nonetheless. “Don't you ever quit sniffing around at every woman you see? Really, Dylan, you're…”

Before she could finish, though, his cell phone chirped and then his face changed in a way she recognized.

“Right, I know where. Be there shortly,” he said.

“
We'll
be there,” she corrected, pausing only to put the food away where Rascal couldn't get at it before following Dylan out.

“C
ome on, Lizzie, this isn't fair. Don't freeze me out,” Dylan added as he muscled the Crown Vic up the same bumpy gravel road that Lizzie and Peg had traveled earlier.

Lizzie sighed. Behind them dust billowed in grayish clouds; ahead in the blasted landscape heaps of blackened sticks smoked sullenly where groves of saplings had been just hours earlier.

He'd made no promises; not lately. Still, it was sinking in now: He was seeing someone else.

“Dammit,” he said, trying again, “you know it's not that I don't love you. I do. But if it's never gonna happen for us, then…”

Which infuriated her all over again, because if he hadn't lied to her back when they really were together, she wouldn't be so hesitant to trust him again now, would she?

He swung onto a patch of miraculously unburnt grass, then forward onto blackened earth when a volunteer firefighter in a yellow vest waved urgently at him.

“Hot muffler'll torch that grass up,” the kid explained as they got out. “Over here,” he added, leading them from the road.

A dozen yards distant the soil was still loamy, the fire of hours earlier hopscotching whimsically to scorch some areas and leave others untouched—so far. They were nearly to the site where the hole with the box sitting next to it had been when the kid stopped.

“Okay, so I have not touched him, and I haven't told anyone else about him, either,” he said. The kid looked a little shaky but he was trying to be manful about the sight of the body.

Lizzie crouched. In jeans and a gray sweatshirt, the deceased was a middle-aged white male with light hair and freckled skin now bluish in death.

“Not what we were expecting. Or rather, who.” Lips pursed, Dylan stared down at the body as if it might tell him who had done this to it.

“So,” she asked, “this junior firefighter here, he knew to call you because…?”

Dylan kept staring. “Told 'em all earlier, a call to me gets 'em fifty bucks if it pans out. Think it's Gemerle?”

“Description's right,” she allowed. “Think he's been here all along?” She scanned the parched soil around the body.

“Hard to say. Maybe. In the smoke and so on, he could've been missed until now.”

She prodded at the victim's neck, found the likely cause of death buried in the cool flesh:

“Huh. Length of wire.” Straightening, she tipped the head sideways with the toe of her boot and spied the two cutoff wooden mop-handle sections tied to the wire, one at each end.

“A homemade garrote,” she said, unwillingly impressed. “That takes strength. Or some excellent motivation,” she added.

Dylan frowned down at something dark peeping from between the body's clenched teeth. Producing a latex glove from his coat he pulled it on, then touched a finger to the victim's lower lip.

The thing in the victim's mouth slid out on a gush of dark blood; Lizzie repressed a shudder. It was the victim's tongue; in his agonized struggle he'd apparently bitten it off.

“Mm-hmm,” Dylan said clinically. Only if you knew him well would you detect the jagged edge of something else in his voice: sorrow, maybe. Or pity.

“Yes sir,” he went on, “this guy is the best argument for not escaping from your friendly neighborhood forensic institution that I personally have ever seen
in
my
life.
”

He thought for a moment. “But what I still want to know is, why help him escape? And after that, why kill him?”

But before she could voice the answer that had already begun percolating in her head, Dylan turned toward a dust cloud boiling up near the main road. Soon Cody Chevrier's white Blazer appeared through drifting smoke, light bars flashing.

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” she said as the vehicle sped uphill toward them.

Dylan nodded. “Gemerle had a pretty cushy situation where he was. Locked in, but Salisbury Forensic is a medical facility, not a prison-type environment.”

If Gemerle got caught after an escape attempt, he'd get sent to a worse place, in other words.

“So maybe somebody made it worth the risk? Maybe like we said last night, lured him out. And made sure there was something in it for the orderly, too,” Lizzie theorized.

Chevrier got out of his vehicle, approached Dylan, and stuck his hand out; they'd worked together before. Then, taking in the scene expertly, he turned to Lizzie.

“So what's the deal here?”

She didn't hesitate. “That's Henry Gemerle.”

She could feel Dylan's eyes on her; they hadn't made a for-certain ID yet. But:

“Guy did a runner from the Salisbury Forensic Institute. Seems he had a helper. We think Gemerle killed the helper, stuck the body in the trunk. They found the vehicle in Houlton.”

Chevrier listened skeptically, glanced at the body again. “And you've identified him how?”

“Fits the description, for one thing. Also if you lift him a little, you might find a plastic ID bracelet from the hospital,” said Lizzie.

Crouching, Dylan raised the body enough to expose the plastic strip still wrapped around the dead wrist.

“We think Tara Wylie might be his daughter,” she added. “Why he took her, we don't know yet. Or even if he did, for sure.”

Chevrier nodded. “Yeah, well, I might have an idea about it. This came in to your office. Missy wanted me to give it to you. I guess you asked the New Haven cops for more Gemerle stuff?”

She peered at the sheet of names and addresses Chevrier gave her. The final name on it was familiar: Peg Wylie. “Jesus.”

She passed the list to Dylan. There were about a dozen names on it. Some addresses had been crossed out and replaced with new ones, a few of them several times.

And some were crossed out altogether. “Gemerle wrote this?” Dylan asked.

Chevrier nodded as Lizzie went on scrutinizing the fax sheet. “He didn't have to find Peg,” she said. “He's been keeping tabs on her all along, right up until he got arrested. And on these other women, too.”

She turned to Chevrier again. “But why would this give you an idea of why he might've taken Tara?”

“It doesn't, by itself. But your pals in New Haven also sent along some court documents, including this roster of witnesses who testified in his competency hearing last week, some privately and others in open court.”

He handed it over; she scanned it quickly. Peg Wylie was on this sheet, as well. “Oh, man. Now I get it. She must have pissed him off by testifying. So he was punishing her.”

Lizzie pulled her phone out. “Missy, did New Haven send you anything about Gemerle's old place being dug up yet? The yard?”

But they hadn't. She stuck her phone away again. “Gemerle's got no priors. But that doesn't mean he wasn't active. I'm guessing these women on his list are ones who never reported what he did to them, because he threatened them. Peg, too, probably.”

Dylan's eyes narrowed. “And maybe some of them are crossed off because they aren't alive anymore?”

“Right. I want to know what's in that backyard of his. If it's not already dug up then it needs to be.”

Chevrier eyed the corpse again. “So if you think he moved her, where do you think Tara Wylie is now?”

“Who knows? And he can't tell us. Damn.” She turned away in frustration. It was just midafternoon but already the low sun was sinking toward the mountaintops to the west.

“Meanwhile there's a woman in the area using the name of one of his victims' close associates, Jane Crimmins,” she said. “We know it's not her, we've got lab evidence saying so. But again, we don't know why.”

Chevrier drew an Altoids tin from his shirt pocket and popped one into his mouth. “Sounds like a mess. Hudson, you got all this okay?”

Dylan caught the sheriff's drift on the first bounce.

“I could sure use Deputy Snow's help,” he answered smoothly. “She's got homicide experience and we've worked together before.”

He glanced at Lizzie. “Also, she's up-to-date on all aspects of this case. The local aspects, especially.”

Chevrier popped another mint and chewed it vigorously.

“Okay, then,” he said. “Snow, you can work with all of 'em as needed, right? Feds, state guys…”

“Yeah, boss.” She shot a look of gratitude at Dylan.

Not that this all couldn't still turn into a huge pain in the butt. As if to emphasize the fact, Chevrier aimed a warning look at her as he strode back to his vehicle:

Don't screw this up.

I
t was almost midnight, and there'd been no sounds for a while from Cam. But I felt frozen until the door buzzer made me jump.

“Miss Crimmins, do you remember me?”

It was the reporter from the alt-weekly who'd been downstairs earlier.

“Go away,” I shouted.

A business card slipped under the door. “Okay, I understand you might want to think about talking to me. But I want your story and you know from before you can trust me. I'll write it all just like you say.”

I said nothing but in the bedroom Cam chose that moment to make a loud gurgling sound.

“Miss Crimmins, are you all right?”

“Go away or I'll never talk to you!” I told him. This late at night one of the other tenants would get fed up with this guy in the hall and then
they'd
call the police. “I'll talk to you tomorrow!”

When I peeked out a little later I half expected to see him down on the sidewalk, but he wasn't there so when I'd finished packing a bag, my laptop, and a big manila envelope full of Cam's pills, I hurried out of there. I paused only to take two of Cam's stimulant pills and grab a barbecue skewer from the kitchen drawer.

Cam was still breathing, but shallowly and not often; I thought she didn't have much longer to live. They'd know that she'd been murdered, surely.

But no one would know where I was. They could pound on the door tomorrow, I thought as I rushed down the stairs and out the service door to the alley. They could pound all they wanted but no one would answer. Eventually they'd get in, and Cam would be here, of course; cold, silent.

But I'd be long gone.

I
t was late Thursday afternoon when Dylan summoned the crime-scene techs from the motel where they'd been finishing up and spent a few minutes with them. The pretty one wasn't among them, Lizzie noticed, annoyed with herself for caring. Then he and Lizzie went back down the gravel road in the Crown Vic.

“So,” he said as they bumped onto the paved highway, “you think Peg might finally come clean now?” He turned toward town, leaving the ashy zone of fire devastation behind.

“Beats me,” Lizzie said. “Now that Gemerle's dead he can't hurt her—or Tara, either—but…”

But there was more to it than that, she was sure of it. And the girl was still missing. A dagger of renewed anxiety for Tara Wylie pierced Lizzie as Dylan aimed the big sedan toward Bearkill and hit the gas.

“If Tara was coming home just around the time Gemerle got to Bearkill, the timing's right,” he mused. “But how'd he find her?”

Lizzie turned from the depressingly dry rural landscape going by. “Easy. He cruised her neighborhood. If she was headed home by then, which based on her past behavior we think she probably was, he'd have come across her sooner or later.”

Back in the city among so many people the idea would've been far-fetched, but not here. “Probably he even knew what she looked like, since he was apparently keeping tabs on her mother for all those years,” Lizzie said.

Surveillance from a distance was easy. Even the pictures on Tara Wylie's official
MISSING
posters had been downloaded from the Internet. Identifying her would've been a snap.

When they drove back into Bearkill the downtown streets were nearly empty, people either staying close to home or leaving town altogether on account of the fires. Dylan pulled to the curb.

“So does your new girlfriend know the kind of hours you work?” Lizzie asked suddenly. “And what you're doing while you work them?”

He glanced at her. “Why, you think she needs warning?”

But then his face went rueful. “I don't know. Maybe she does. Just…but look, probably we shouldn't talk about it.”

“Yeah. Probably we shouldn't.” It was none of her business.

“Anyway, I've got to go,” she said. “I sent down a separate request to the New Haven PD earlier, asked them to get in touch with the real Jane Crimmins. And with the other girl, the Gemerle victim that Jane Crimmins took in. She's in the hospital.”

“So we'll see what they have to say. They're working on tracking down the stolen van, too. As far as whatever vehicle Gemerle was using, there's plenty of them in the fire zone. Volunteers' cars, work-crew trucks, people bringing food and water…”

One more wouldn't be noticed. She got out, bent to the open car window. “Listen, you might as well know something now. When this is over I'm out of here. I'm going back to Boston. I'll tell Chevrier once things settle down.”

He stared for a moment. Then: “But what about Nicki?”

She forced herself to answer calmly. “Dylan, I can't search the state of Maine inch by inch. I need some kind of a lead, and there aren't any. Like it or not, she's a cold case.”

When he didn't reply, she went on. “And there's nothing else for me here. If something substantial about Nicki needs looking into, you can call me about it.”

A muscle jumped tautly in his jaw. “Didn't take you long to give up.”

She couldn't believe it. She kept her voice even. “Oh, that's what you think I'm doing? Really?”

Luckily just then Missy Brantwell came outside and spotted Dylan's car. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said, hurrying over. “The NHPD sergeant called you again,” she told Lizzie. “About someone you wanted checked. Jane Crimmins? He said no one was home at her place but the uniforms got the super to open it.”