The Last Dead Girl Read online

  “Oh, for god’s sake,” said Moretti. “Don’t start in again about popsicle sticks.”

  “When Luke shot his cousin and disappeared—that was your case too. You investigated. So you must’ve gone into Luke’s trailer. You must’ve seen his models. So when I told you I found a popsicle stick in the woods, you must’ve thought of Luke Daw.”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Not even for a moment?”

  “Maybe for a moment,” Moretti said. “And then it occurred to me that there might’ve been a child in the woods with a popsicle. Look, you need to think about whether you’re taking this too far. You’re living in a dead girl’s apartment, and apparently you’ve been talking to convicts and snooping around trailers and who knows what else. Maybe I can’t stop you, but I don’t have to follow your lead. You’re not going to convince me that Luke Daw was involved in Jana Fletcher’s death, because there’s no reason to think he was anywhere near her on the day she died. Never mind killing her—there’s no reason to think he ever heard of her.”

  28

  Interlude:

  Late August 1996

  Jana Fletcher and Luke Daw lay naked under the stars.

  Jana tried to take in everything: the texture of the woolen blanket underneath them, the heat coming off Luke’s body, the clean smell of the night air. Other smells too: the old timber of the barn, her own sweat, Luke’s sweat. And something lingering, a memory of the smell of cows—inoffensive, because the cows had been gone for a very long time.

  There were other animals here, though: birds in the high rafters. Jana could hear them up there, hopping along the wooden beams. The bare beams were all that was left of the barn’s roof. A pair of birds took wing and Jana watched them fly away. Watched their silhouettes against the background of the stars.

  “What kind of birds are those?” she asked Luke.

  “Corvus brachyrhynchos,” he said.

  “In English.”

  “Crows,” he said. “There are swallows up there too, but the swallows are way smaller.”

  Jana focused on a star that looked brighter than the ones around it.

  “They’re bad omens,” she said.

  “Swallows?”

  “Crows, genius.”

  “That’s a myth,” Luke said. “I read somewhere that they’re kind. They’ll feed their parents, when their parents get old and weak.”

  “They remember who their parents are?”

  “Sure. They’re smart. They’re supposed to be able to remember human faces. They can recognize someone they’ve met before.”

  Something passed over the empty framework of the roof—maybe one of the crows, maybe a different bird altogether. Jana lost track of the bright star, then found it again.

  She pointed at it. “Is that anything?”

  “Which one?” said Luke.

  “The bright one.”

  He tipped his head against her shoulder, looked up along the length of her arm. “It might be part of Sagittarius.”

  “You think so?”

  “Do you see a teapot?” he said. “Sagittarius is supposed to look like a teapot.”

  “I thought it was supposed to be an archer.”

  “It’s a centaur with a bow, but the middle part is like a teapot.”

  Jana tried to see a teapot, or a centaur, or a bow.

  “I don’t think that’s Sagittarius,” she said.

  She brought her arm down, and Luke’s hand found hers. A breeze passed through the barn, cool on her skin.

  Luke squeezed her hand. “See?” he said. “This is good.”

  She closed her eyes. “It is.”

  “We could be happy like this, couldn’t we?”

  “We could.”

  He shifted beside her, getting comfortable. “You were wrong about me. You didn’t like me at first.”

  She remembered the night they met, at the rest stop on the Thruway.

  “I liked you a lot at first,” she said. “I didn’t like you at second.”

  He laughed. A low, gentle sound. It trailed off and he breathed deep, let the breath out in a yawn. Jana opened her eyes and gazed at the stars. Not at one in particular, but at the whole field of them. She saw a red dot pass among them, blinking. A plane flying high.

  Luke’s breath fell into a steady rhythm. Jana listened to it, and the plane flew out of sight. She slipped her hand free of his, sat up slowly on the blanket, got to her feet.

  She stepped around him and found her clothes piled on the ground, bra and underwear on top. She put them on, then put on her shirt and jeans. Luke’s clothes made their own pile—topped off with something metal and black in the starlight. A thirty-eight revolver.

  As she buttoned her jeans she realized that Luke was lying on his side, watching her.

  “What are you doing?” he said.

  She smiled at him in the dark. “Thought I might go for a walk.”

  “What if I don’t want you to go?”

  “Then I’ll stay here.”

  He pushed himself up, sat cross-legged on the blanket. “Where would you go, if you went for a walk?”

  “Timbuktu.”

  “That’s a long way.”

  “Down to the pond then, for a start.”

  He leaned back, bracing his weight on his arms. “You’re very smooth.”

  “Smooth?”

  “Calm.”

  “That’s me,” she said. “Smooth and calm.”

  “Are you pretending you don’t see it?”

  “See what?”

  He nodded toward his clothes and the revolver. “The gun,” he said.

  “I see the gun, Luke.”

  “You’re not going to pick it up?”

  “Do you want me to pick it up?”

  “I want you to do what a person would do.”

  Jana bent down and picked up the gun. “Will you come with me to the pond?” she said.

  “Forget about the pond,” said Luke. “The pond’s not what you want.”

  “What do I want?”

  “I don’t know. Do you want my car keys? They’re in my pants.”

  “Are you giving me your car keys?”

  “You can take them,” he said. “You’ve got the gun.”

  She aimed the gun at him. “Is that what I should do, take your keys?”

  “That would be the sensible thing.”

  “And then what? Shoot you?”

  “I’d say shoot first, then take the keys.”

  She pulled back the hammer of the revolver. “Is that what you think of me? Don’t you know me at all?”

  “I have a pretty good idea,” he said.

  “Apparently, you don’t.”

  She turned the gun up suddenly and held it under her chin, the steel cold against her neck. She pulled the trigger and heard the click of the hammer falling on an empty chamber.

  “Jana—”

  She worked the hammer with her thumb again, and the trigger with her finger. Five more times, with Luke saying “Stop it!” all the while. When she had gone through every chamber, she dropped the gun on the ground between them.

  He was on his feet now, pulling on his clothes.

  “That was dumb,” he said, his voice heated. “You should never do that. You should always assume a gun is loaded.”

  She turned her back on him. “Stop screwing around,” she told him. “If you don’t trust me by now, you might as well shoot me in the head.”

  He was quiet behind her, but she imagined him buttoning his shirt, picking up the revolver. She heard mechanical sounds that might have been the cylinder opening and then closing again. He might have put a round in the chamber. She waited for him to press the muzzle against the back of her skull.

  He didn’t. He came up behi
nd her and put an arm around her waist, the other around her chest. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  June 7, 1996

  Jana left the service plaza smiling, thinking about Luke the drummer with his orange T-shirt, and his idiot friend who played a mean bass. She motored east on the Thruway in her grandmother’s LeSabre—stale smoke and perfume—and when she reached Syracuse she headed south on I-81.

  She had the name of a bar in Binghamton scribbled in the margin of her road map: Dino’s on Conklin Street. Luke and his band would be there tomorrow night. She had seventy-five miles between Syracuse and Binghamton to make up her mind. The band might be awful and Luke might be boring, and then she would have wasted a day. Or the band might be brilliant and Luke might be irresistible, and she might get tangled up with a drummer and never make it to New York City.

  She reached Binghamton and kept on driving, with a small twinge of regret. There would be other musicians in New York.

  She crossed the border into Pennsylvania, moved into the left lane to pass a line of semi trucks. The wind whipped through the window beside her. She had a Melissa Etheridge album cranked up loud in the LeSabre’s cassette deck.

  A short time after midnight she decided to take a break. She got off the interstate at a town called Harford and pulled into an Exxon station. The lone attendant was missing one of his front teeth and most of his hair. He was listening to a rock station on a boom box radio.

  The ladies’ room was hidden in a far corner, behind stacked cases of soda and racks of potato chips. Jana found it surprisingly clean, though there were no paper towels.

  She came out drying her hands on her jeans. The attendant didn’t see her; he had his nose in a hunting magazine. A Tom Petty song played on the radio: “You and I Will Meet Again.”

  When she walked out the front door, she saw a white panel van parked next to the LeSabre. She went around the front of the van with her keys out and there was Luke Daw leaning against her car, wearing his easy smile.

  “I know this seems weird,” he said, “but I can explain.”

  And then there were two Janas: one who agreed that this seemed weird; he shouldn’t be here; he should be back in Binghamton; maybe his gig got canceled. And another, half a step behind, who thought: He followed you. He’s a crazy guy with a van.

  Jana backed away. She should have screamed. The attendant would have heard her. He would have been a witness. She meant to scream, but she backed into something solid and a hand went over her mouth. Not Luke’s hand—the idiot friend’s. He had come up behind her.

  Later on, she would remember the sensation of trying to twist away from him, trying to stab her keys into his thigh. She would remember the sound of the gas station radio—a fresh Tom Petty song, “Kings Highway.”

  Music for an abduction.

  She watched Luke slide open the side door of the van. The two of them forced her in. The door slammed shut. No more music, just the weight of Luke Daw on top of her and his voice saying, “Don’t worry. This won’t be as bad as you think.”

  • • •

  Ninety-two days—from June seventh to September sixth—that’s how long she spent with the Daws. She passed the first few hours lying in the back of the van, her ankles bound together, hands cuffed behind her, a rag stuffed in her mouth and tied in place with a bandanna.

  They drove north to Binghamton, retracing her route in reverse. Then they left I-81 and followed Route 12 for a hundred miles, all the way to the city of Rome. Not that Jana knew that at the time. She didn’t know the destination or how long it took to get there. It seemed to take forever.

  She was alone with Luke in the van. The idiot friend had gone off with her keys. She assumed he must be following them in her grandmother’s car.

  Luke drove in silence at first, then switched on the radio and flipped through the stations. Jana tried to get his attention, but the rag in her mouth turned everything she said into gibberish. She tried faking an attack—breathing hard and shaking as if she were having a seizure. Luke glanced back at her through the space between the seats, then returned his eyes to the road. “Knock it off,” he said.

  She kept it up, but only for a little while. She was afraid she might start to hyperventilate for real. She lay with her cheek pressed against the carpeted floor of the van and focused on breathing calmly through her nose. Luke gave up on the radio and started to hum. He seemed full of nervous energy. He retrieved a drumstick from the dash and tapped out a complex rhythm on the seat beside him.

  By the end of the trip he had tossed the stick aside and seemed to have retreated into himself. He didn’t say anything when he pulled the van off the road and killed the engine. He came around and opened the side door and showed Jana a knife and a revolver. He used the knife to cut the cord that bound her ankles, then folded it and put it away. The handcuffs stayed in place. He dragged her out and stood her up against the side of the van.

  She saw trees and a night sky and an overgrown lane running off into the dark. Luke had parked the van behind a trailer, but the road was there on the other side, not so far away. No sign of the idiot friend.

  She lifted her chin defiantly. Said, “Take off the gag.” It came out muffled, but he got the gist. He tucked the gun away behind his back, turned her around, picked at the knot in the bandanna until it came free. He turned her again and pulled the rag from her mouth.

  She spat out the taste of it. “I have asthma,” she said. “You put that in again, you could kill me.”

  Luke shot her a skeptical look, opened the van’s passenger door, and took out her handbag. He dumped the contents on the ground and nudged them with the toe of his shoe.

  “I don’t see an inhaler,” he said, laying a hand on her throat and pushing her back against the van. “You don’t have asthma. If you lie to me, we’re not going to get along.”

  “You want the truth?” Jana said. “I don’t like rags in my mouth.”

  “All right, we’ll leave it out. But if you scream, I’ll have to shoot you.”

  “That sounds fair,” she said, and drove her knee up into his groin.

  It didn’t put him on the ground as she had hoped, but it knocked him back. It gave her a chance to break free and rush along the rear wall of the trailer, around the corner, toward the road. She saw headlights and ran out to meet them, yelling “Help me!” at the top of her voice. The headlights slowed, the car swerved to avoid her. She recognized it too late: her grandmother’s LeSabre, with the idiot friend at the wheel.

  She turned to run and Luke Daw caught her and dragged her out of the road. He hauled her back to the van and the idiot friend brought the LeSabre around and joined them. Luke stuffed the rag in her mouth again, tied the bandanna in place. They bound her legs and picked her up. Carried her along the lane that led away from the trailer and the road and any help she might hope to find.

  A half-moon shone low in the sky. They passed the edge of a pond to the sound of bullfrogs croaking. The ground sloped up. Jana twisted her head from side to side. She saw a barn looming in the distance. She saw a farmhouse that had fallen in on itself.

  She thought they would take her to the barn, but she was wrong. They took her underground.

  29

  July 1996

  You could bring me a puppy,” Jana said.

  “What kind?” said Luke Daw.

  “A golden retriever. I always wanted one.”

  “That’s a hunting dog.”

  “I wouldn’t have to take it hunting,” she said.

  His dark eyes were studying her. Sometimes they seemed full of intelligence; sometimes they seemed empty. Right now she couldn’t tell.

  “A dog like that needs to be outdoors,” Luke said. “I don’t know if I’d want to keep one down here. It seems cruel.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to do anything against your conscience.”

  “Let me t
hink about it,” he said. “What else?”

  “Coffee,” she told him.

  “No coffee.”

  “Mocha with whipped cream.”

  “You’re lively enough without coffee.”

  “Caramel macchiato.”

  “I could bring you ice cream.”

  “I’ll take ice cream,” she said, “but I still want coffee.”

  There were no chairs in her prison underground, so they were sitting on the floor—Jana in the middle of the room, Luke with his back against the door. He had brought a light with him: a battery-powered lantern that rested on the floor beside him.

  Jana thought it must be nighttime, but she wasn’t sure. She tended to lose track. Luke came down on his own schedule; she never knew when the door would open. Sometimes—like now—he came down just to talk, and they pretended they were civilized people, rather than a lunatic and his captive. They were a couple negotiating the terms of their living arrangement.

  “I’d like Syrian food,” she said.

  “That’s Middle Eastern.”

  “It’s a kind of Middle Eastern.”

  “Shish kebobs?” he said. “Like that?”

  “Something like that.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Or Ethiopian.”

  “That’s, what, African?”

  “Northern African.”

  “Aren’t they always starving, the Ethiopians?”

  “Not all of them,” Jana said. “Some of them come here and open restaurants.”

  “What do they serve?”

  “Chicken and lamb,” she said. “Lentils. And a spongy kind of bread called injera.”

  “We don’t have that around here. Sorry.”

  “Too bad,” she said. “It’s my favorite.” It wasn’t really. She’d had it once, in Montreal. You couldn’t get it in Geneva.

  “What else?” Luke said.

  “Italian.”

  “I’ve given you Italian.”

  “You’ve given me cold pizza.”

  He sat there turning a popsicle stick over and over in the fingers of his right hand. Jana thought about what it would be like to break the stick in half and jam both halves into his eyes.