The Last Dead Girl (23 page)

Jana stepped away from the wall, stopped again, and listened. Scratching. Definitely. The sound a claw would make. Or a fingernail.

“Luke?” she said.

“Not funny,” she said. Her voice higher than she wanted. She could hear a tremor in it.

“Eli?” she said.

She took another step, her hands held out in front of her, groping at empty space. Another step and her arms sweeping through the air, and the fear growing that she would touch something solid.

She came to the end of the chain.

“Luke!” she screamed.

The room swallowed up the sound. She froze with her arms outstretched.

She was alone. She had to be.

Scratching. Straight ahead.

Jana crouched down and pried her fingers underneath the chain around her ankle. She tried to force it down over her heel. But there was no way. She knew. She sat down and wrapped both hands around the chain and strained to tug it free from its anchor. She moved back toward the wall and braced a foot on either side of the place where the chain went through, and pulled with all her strength, over and over, until she was sweating and couldn't keep her grip on the metal.

She fell back in the dark with her breath coming in gasps.

Minutes crept by. She used them to get her breathing under control and to convince herself that the scratching had to be a mouse. She wasn't afraid of a mouse. She found the water bottle, took a sip. Got up and walked toward the door until the chain stopped her. From there she knelt, then lay on her stomach. If she stretched out an arm, she could touch the bottom of the door with her fingertips.

Scratching. She heard it clearly. She shifted the water bottle from one hand to the other, rapped it once against the door. Heard a mouse scuttling away on the other side.

Jana let go of the bottle, surrendered to relief. Her breath sighed out of her and she laid her cheek against the floor. The bottle rolled away. She closed her eyes and let herself feel her lungs filling up, emptying out. The bottle stopped rolling. When she opened her eyes some time later, it wasn't because the mouse came back and the scratching started again; it was because she realized there was something different about the air on this side of the room.

It might have been a subtle difference in smell—although a subtle difference might have been hard to detect. The wood that made up her prison had its own smell, and there were layers underneath it: earthy, musty, primal. And other smells too—inevitable when your toilet is a plastic bucket, even if the bucket has a lid, even if it gets switched out every day or two and replaced with a clean one. So maybe it wasn't a difference in smell that distinguished this side of the room from the other, but it was something. A feeling in the air. A heaviness. A presence.

The mouse scratched at the door and Jana got to her hands and knees. She lifted her right hand from the floor and extended it as far as she could, exploring the space to the right of the door. She went as far as the chain would let her go, her fingertips straining, but she couldn't reach into the corner of the room.

She crawled back the other way, raised her left hand this time. Fingers spread, searching high in the air, and then lower. Urgently. She shifted farther left, the chain scraping the floor. She reached out blindly in the dark.

And jerked her hand back, and scrambled away with a scream caught in her throat. She hit the far wall, lost her balance, fell sideways, and huddled there, rocking, her knees drawn up, her hands clutched between them. Her body rocked, rocked, and finally the scream tore out of her. Because she knew she had touched someone's face.

I
drove away from Roger Tolliver's house just before sunset, thinking about his story and what it meant. He'd been trying to tell me more than one thing.

He wanted me to know how Jana got the bruise on her cheek. It was the bruise that first brought us together, Tolliver and me; it was the reason I had broken into his house, the day after Jana died. He had lied to me about the bruise then, and now he had told the truth.

He'd been trying to tell me something about himself too: that he felt guilty, he regretted the way he had treated Jana. Maybe he wanted me to forgive him, or maybe he wanted me to agree that he was a wretched man. I didn't feel inclined to do either.

The third thing he'd been trying to tell me had to do with Jana's reaction, the way she panicked when he tried to kiss her. It seemed strange, but I didn't know what it meant. I wondered if Tolliver had exaggerated it, if the incident had grown in his mind after Jana's death, so that an awkward situation and a meaningless accident became something more significant.

I didn't realize that Jana's reaction was the most important part of the story. It troubled me, but not as much as it should have. It was a hint, a clue. It was trying to tell me that I had no inkling yet of what had really happened to Jana Fletcher.

•   •   •

I
drove east on Quaker Hill Road, past the spot where I'd first seen Jana on the Night of the Doe. I went on and came into Rome and found Jana's street. Though the sun had gone down, the sky was still light. It was all familiar, rolling down her street, seeing her car in the driveway. The blue Plymouth.

It wasn't mine, but I had the key in the apartment. I looked for it when I went inside, found it on the kitchen counter, on a ring of its own. I thought that tomorrow I might try to follow Moretti again. I wondered if I should use the Plymouth, but it didn't seem right. Moretti might recognize it—that was one reason. But there was another. Following Moretti would be stupid. I could say I was doing it for Jana's sake, but she had no choice in the matter, so it didn't seem fair to draw her into it.

I poured myself a glass of orange juice, took it with me to the bedroom. Jana's possessions were all around me: her sheets on the bed, her clothes in the closet, her copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
on the night table. None of these things were mine.

I had her mother's number in my wallet. I punched it into my cell phone and hit the call button. Three rings and a voice said, “Hello.” A man's voice.

“Sorry,” I said. “I might have the wrong number. I'm trying to reach Lydia Fletcher.”

“No, you've got it right,” the voice said. “Who's this?”

“David Malone.”

“Of course. I thought we might hear from you again.”

He spoke with a casual arrogance—the tone of an insider talking to an outsider. I recognized him now: Jana's friend, the one who had read from the Bible at her funeral.
For everything there is a season . . .

“Hello, Warren,” I said. “Can you let me talk to Lydia?”

“I don't think so. She had a bad day. She's resting.”

“What's the matter?”

Quiet on the line. He was deciding if I deserved to know.

“She'll be all right,” he said at last. “The detective came to visit her. Moretti. He wanted to give her an update. You've heard about this guy who died, Sam Lanik?”

“Simon Lanik.”

“Right. Well, Moretti wanted Lydia to know that he thinks Lanik was the one who killed Jana. He said it may not be possible to prove it, but that's what he believes.”

“He told me the same thing.”

“It sounded sketchy to me,” Warren Finn said. “Do you believe him?”

I didn't, but my own theory would sound just as sketchy.

“I haven't made up my mind,” I said.

“Moretti said the case would stay open, but he hoped Lydia might take some comfort in knowing that Lanik was dead.”

“How did she react?”

“She went to bed as soon as Moretti left. I've been checking in on her. I think she'll be better tomorrow.”

“I don't want to bother her, then,” I said. “The reason I called—I've been living in Jana's old apartment. Her car is here, and her clothes and books and other things. I thought her mother would want them.”

“I'm sure she will.”

“I could load everything in the car and bring it there, or someone could come and pick it up. There's no rush. I don't want her to worry about it.”

Warren took his time responding. The arrogance had been fading from his voice, and when he spoke there was no trace of it left.

“I don't either,” he said. “I'll take care of it. How about tomorrow night? Will you be home?”

“Sure.”

“I'll get a friend to drive me out there. It might be a little late, nine or ten.”

“That's fine.”

“Good. I'll see you tomorrow.”

We ended the call. I opened the bedroom window to let in some air. Drank some more orange juice. I knew I should start packing Jana's things, but it was a job I didn't want to face. I told myself I could do it tomorrow. I knew I should eat something too. Agnes Lanik had given me provisions: a bowl of goulash and a loaf of homemade bread. I put the goulash in a pan on the stove and let it simmer while I sliced the bread. The crust was thick as tree bark.

I set a place at the table and fixed a plate and made myself eat, but it wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to get out of the apartment, away from everything. I came close to leaving but then I pictured Poe Washburn finding the message I'd left for him. It was an invitation. I needed to be here in case he decided to come by.

I finished up and washed the dishes and tried to imagine how my hypothetical meeting with Washburn would play out. It might not go well. Roger Tolliver had said I was asking for trouble. I thought I should be ready.

Around nine-thirty I went next door and asked Agnes for a favor. When I came back, I had her Makarov pistol. Just in case.

I settled in for the evening. Me and my gun and Jana's copy of
The Count of Monte Cristo
. I stayed up reading till midnight and discovered I really liked Edmond Dantès.

Washburn never showed.

•   •   •

T
he next morning I behaved like a responsible adult. I had two inspections scheduled: an old Victorian house on a hill overlooking a golf course, and a Craftsman-style bungalow on the east side of the city. The work kept me busy until one in the afternoon. Then I drove to Poe Washburn's house and let myself in again. He wasn't there, but the note I'd left on his pillow was gone.

Back home, I gathered empty boxes and packed some of Jana's things. It went okay at first. I started in the kitchen and moved on to her desk. I boxed up her files and papers, her books. I saved the bedroom for last. The closet was hardest: taking the clothes from the hangers and folding them and piling them on the bed. After a while I had to stop. Because it was too sad—and not an overpowering kind of sad, not the kind that breaks you down and leaves you sobbing on the floor. It was a small, detached, empty kind of sad.

I left the clothes on the bed and went out. I locked the door of the apartment behind me and climbed into my truck. And drove.

The first place I went was the hospital. I circled it three times before turning into the lot. Sophie's car was there. I could have left a note on her windshield. It would have started with
I'm sorry
. I don't know what it would have said after that.

I went to the old apartment next and sat looking up at the balcony. There was a potted plant on the railing, something viney with dark green leaves. That's new, I thought. That's Sophie's plant. It could be yours but you don't live there anymore.

I still had my keys. I could go up there and let myself in. Sophie would come home and find me lounging on the balcony, and she might be angry or she might be happy, I didn't know. But I knew she'd be wearing her cat's-eye glasses and I knew how her hair would smell and I knew what her voice would sound like when she called me Dave.

I didn't go up. I headed over to the university campus and the law school. It was Friday afternoon and the sun was out, at least for the moment. The students were walking around in shorts and tank tops, baring their pale arms and legs. Springtime in upstate New York.

From there I kept moving. I drove past familiar places: the apartment where Angela Reese painted her canvases, the gray-brick IRS building where Wendy Daw worked. I wound up on Bloomfield Street, the neighborhood where Gary Dean Pruett had lived with his wife, Cathy.

A quiet neighborhood, nothing flashy. The houses looked alike, but not
too
alike, not mass-produced. The people who owned them made a comfortable living. A lot of them were probably schoolteachers like the Pruetts. If they had children, they had one or two at the most.

The people who lived here had fences or hedges to separate them from their neighbors. Some of them had small detached garages tucked out of sight, but others parked their cars on the street. The cars were like the houses, nothing flashy. They were midsize sedans in dull colors: blue and black and gray. They didn't stand out.

I drove by the Pruett house—tall and narrow, painted pale blue—then came back around again and parked across the street. I looked at the front lawn. The last time I was here—talking to Neil Pruett—the grass had been long and spotted with dandelions.

It looked better now: Pruett had gotten around to mowing it. Of course he had. In a neighborhood like this, there were informal rules that everyone understood. You kept your lawn mowed and your hedges trimmed. You never turned your music up too loud. You cleaned up after your dog. You went easy on the decorations at Halloween and Christmastime.

One of Neil Pruett's neighbors came out onto her porch to get her mail. An older woman, gray-haired and slump-shouldered. She looked around and saw me parked on her street in my red pickup truck. She stared at me. I had the driver's window down. I gave her a smile, a wave. I tried to look harmless. I succeeded. She went back inside.

I thought about Cathy Pruett, living on this street in the final weeks and days of her life. On the outs with her husband, Gary. Gary had been cheating. Cathy had suspected it. She had talked about it with her best friend, her sister-in-law, Megan Pruett, and Megan had followed Gary to a hotel and caught him with an eighteen-year-old, Angela Reese. So Cathy's suspicions were confirmed. She had tried to work it out with Gary, but in the last days of her life she believed that Gary had gone back to his old ways. She would have been preoccupied, distracted. What were those days like?

If Gary Pruett was innocent, then someone else had killed his wife. Maybe Luke and Eli Daw. The Daws could have known Cathy Pruett because they were students at the high school where she taught, but when Cathy Pruett died they were in their early twenties; it had been years since they were in high school.

Why did they choose Cathy Pruett?

And once they chose her, what then? How did it work? Gary Pruett claimed that his wife had left the house one Saturday afternoon and never returned. She had taken her car. Where had she been headed? He didn't know.

Where did she cross paths with Luke and Eli Daw?

Maybe right here, on this street.

When you decide to abduct a schoolteacher, what's the first step? Maybe you've got a place to take her—an abandoned farm out on Humaston Road. But that's the end point. The starting point is your victim: you need to observe her, learn what she does, where she goes. So you start right here, at her house.

In the last days of her life, when Cathy Pruett was preoccupied with her failing marriage, her husband's infidelity, were the Daws watching her?

Did the Daws spend time here, parked on her street?

Eli drove a white van.

How did I know that? From a news story? No. I'd heard it from Wendy Daw.

A van: the vehicle of choice for abducting schoolteachers.

I tried to imagine the two of them, Luke and Eli, parked on this street in a white van. The van would have stood out among all these dull sedans. Luke and Eli would have attracted attention. They would have been noticed by gray-haired ladies collecting their mail, by people walking their dogs.

When Cathy Pruett went missing, the police would have questioned the neighbors; they would have asked about unfamiliar vehicles parked on the street. Wouldn't they? Frank Moretti led the investigation. Did he take it seriously or did he go through the motions? Did he keep an open mind or did he assume from the start that Gary Pruett was guilty?

Was Frank Moretti a good cop or a bad cop? I kept coming back to that question.

I needed to make a decision about whether to try following him again. If I was going to do it, I couldn't use my truck; it would be an insult to his intelligence. I looked at all the dull sedans parked along the street. I needed one of those. Something plain, something invisible.

It should be easy to get one. I could go to Enterprise or Avis, and they would be happy to rent me a dull sedan.

I checked my watch. It was almost five o'clock. I'd lost track of the time. On Wednesday, Moretti had left the station house a few minutes after five. He might do the same today. By the time I drove to a car rental place and filled out the paperwork, it might be too late to catch him.

As I debated whether to try it anyway, I saw a car approaching from down the street. A dark blue sedan, nice and plain. It pulled up in front of the Pruett house.

Neil Pruett climbed out of it. He started toward the house, then glanced my way and did a double take. Confusion showed on his round face. I waved and got out of the truck. He waited for me on his side of the street.

There were things I wanted to ask him about his sister-in-law. I wanted to know what she was like in the last days of her life and if she ever mentioned having the feeling that she was being watched. But that could wait.