The Last Dead Girl Read online

  Maybe I managed to hit upon some deep truth about his psychology, or maybe he got tired of listening to me. Either way, he opened the middle drawer of the desk and laid the gun inside. I was glad to see him do it. I had some things to tell him that would make him angry—maybe angry enough to shoot somebody. I didn’t want it to be me.

  I watched him close the drawer.

  “Jana lied,” he said, prompting me.

  I moved away from the mantel, trying to decide where to begin.

  “There was a schoolteacher named Cathy Pruett,” I said. “Someone killed her. It happened here in Rome the summer before last—the same summer Jana left home to go to New York City.”

  I went through the whole thing for him: the details of the case and Gary Pruett’s conviction and Jana’s desire to free him from prison. How she had contacted Napoleon Washburn to try to get him to recant his testimony. I repeated what she’d said to him: What if Cathy Pruett ran into the wrong people? What if she got kidnapped by a couple of crazy farm-boys in a white van? I talked about Luke and Eli Daw and why I believed that Jana’s remark referred to them.

  Warren’s brow furrowed. “You mentioned them before—Luke and Eli.”

  “Yes, I did.”

  “You think they killed this woman, Cathy Pruett?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you think Jana knew them? You think she met them in New York?”

  We were coming to the terrible part. It was something I didn’t want to think about. I hated it. And I didn’t want to tell him, but I thought he deserved to know.

  “The thing is, Warren, I think she lied about New York. What is there, really, to prove that she ever got there? No phone calls, no address. Think about how little she told you about her time there. And the things she did tell you—did they sound real, or could they have been made up?”

  I waited while he considered the question. He was standing near the mantel, with the candles in the background behind him. His eyes were pools of gray shadow.

  “Why would she lie?” he asked.

  “I think she just didn’t want you to know,” I said. “I think she meant to go to New York, but she never made it. Because somewhere along the way, she met up with the Daws.”

  I sketched it out for him: the story I’d been working out in my mind ever since I drove away from Wendy Daw’s apartment. I had nothing to work with but bits and pieces of information: the words Jana had used to describe Luke and Eli—crazy farm-boys in a white van. The fact that she had left home in her grandmother’s car but returned without it. Her reaction when Roger Tolliver made a pass at her—the fear that came over her when she couldn’t get away from him, because his front door was locked.

  Bits and pieces. They meant nothing on their own. But when you put them together with Jana’s lost summer—when no one heard from her apart from a few postcards—they started to seem more ominous. I kept coming back to Luke and Eli. What if no one heard from Jana because they took her? What if they brought her to the farm on Humaston Road? A hideaway, abandoned and remote. What if they kept her there?

  I went over all this with Warren. He took it in. He didn’t want to believe it.

  “You’re guessing,” he said. “You don’t know anything for certain.”

  “You’re right,” I told him. “But there’s one last thing. Eli Daw died, just a few weeks after Cathy Pruett. Someone shot him. Everyone thought it was his cousin Luke, because the murder weapon belonged to Luke. But Luke didn’t kill him. Tonight I talked to Eli’s wife. She was there. She knows the truth. She told me Jana shot Eli Daw.”

  That was Wendy Daw’s revelation—the one thing she knew about Jana. She had described the scene for me: that night in their trailer when Eli died. Once I convinced her to talk, Wendy didn’t spare any of the details, so I knew that she’d been cuffed to the headboard of their bed, courtesy of Eli. There’d been a knock on the trailer door and he had gone to answer it. Then she heard the gunshot. She screamed. And the next thing she saw was Jana in the doorway of the bedroom.

  Now I described the scene for Warren. I could see the tension growing in him as he listened. I was glad he had put away the Makarov pistol.

  “She could be lying,” he said. “If she knew who killed her husband, why didn’t she tell anyone at the time?”

  I had asked Wendy the same thing. Her response made sense to me. Her marriage to Eli had been nothing like what she signed on for. He had abused her. She had fantasized about killing him herself. She was horrified when Jana shot him, but once the horror passed, she realized that Jana had done her a favor.

  “She’s not lying,” I told Warren. “The pieces fit together. I believe Luke and Eli took Jana and kept her at the farm. I believe that’s where she encountered Cathy Pruett—that’s how she knew that Luke and Eli killed Cathy. And somehow Jana escaped from them. It must have happened on the night of September sixth. That’s when she shot Eli. Luke disappeared the same night. The police found his car abandoned here in town, not far from the bus station. When Jana came home to you, she came on a bus. Do you remember what day that was?”

  He did. I could see it in his eyes before he spoke. Jana meant everything to him. Of course he remembered.

  “She came home on a Saturday,” he said. “September seventh.”

  He went silent and we stood there together for a while. I watched him thinking. The wind gusted against the house and tore over the roof above us. The four flames burned behind him on the mantel.

  “If that’s what happened,” Warren said softly, “then I’m glad she shot him.”

  I nodded. I was glad too.

  “What about the other one?” Warren asked. “Luke. What happened to him?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s a question I need to answer.”

  40

  Interlude:

  September 6, 1996

  A giant spaceship hovered over the White House.

  “Watch,” said Luke Daw. “This is the best part.”

  A beam of white light flashed down from the ship, and the building exploded into splinters of wood and stone and glass. An orange fireball engulfed the movie screen.

  People cheered. Someone honked his horn. Jana sat with her bare feet up on the dash of Luke’s Mustang. The sunroof was open to the night sky.

  Luke was beside her, behind the wheel, grinning. Handsome in profile, a two-day stubble on his chin. He held her hand.

  Up on the screen, people ran in the streets. Cars flipped end over end through the air. More explosions—the tinny sound of them came through a drive-in speaker clipped to Luke’s window. Air Force One taxied down a runway with flames rolling in behind it, threatening to swallow it up. It broke free from the ground at the last possible moment and rose into the air.

  A pair of teenage girls sat cross-legged on the hood of the next car over. They clapped their hands and laughed as they watched the plane take off. Jana heard herself laughing too.

  “See?” Luke said. “I knew you’d like it.”

  • • •

  The key to Jana Fletcher’s release turned out to be missing her period.

  On the morning of the sixth, she woke at twenty minutes after nine. She knew the time because she had a watch now, a cheap one on a plastic band. She had light too—a battery-powered lantern. She switched it on and let her eyes adjust.

  She twisted the cap from a bottle of water, felt the seal break, drank half of it, and put it aside. She saw a plastic grocery bag in the middle of the room, something Luke had left for her the night before. She scooted over and opened it. Fresh supplies. More bottled water, granola bars, a box of tissues. A new tube of toothpaste. Tampons and pads.

  She hadn’t asked for those—though she’d been thinking about them for the past couple of days. She thought she was overdue. She tried to work it out. The last time had been after Cathy Pruett died but
while her body was still in the room. When Jana counted back, it came out to thirty-two days at least, maybe thirty-four. Not good.

  But there was nothing she could do. She drank some more water, then used a little to brush her teeth. She stretched and ate a granola bar and lay on the mattress with a pillow propped under her head and read by lantern light. She had a sack of paperbacks that Luke had brought her: slim mysteries with yellowed pages. Mickey Spillane and Rex Stout. Luke said they had belonged to his grandfather. Jana spent a couple of hours with Some Buried Caesar.

  She heard footsteps on the stairs around noon. Felt a current of cool air when Luke opened the door. He came in and knelt and planted a kiss on her forehead.

  “Jana’s got her nose in a book again,” he said.

  She folded the page to mark her place and laid the paperback on the floor. Sat up and accepted the coffee that Luke offered her. He had orange juice for himself, and bagels with cream cheese.

  “Sesame or blueberry?” he asked.

  “Blueberries don’t belong in a bagel.”

  “Sesame it is.”

  “What’s new?”

  “The Mets lost.”

  “I said what’s new.”

  “Funny.”

  He passed her a copy of USA Today. She had asked him a month ago for a newspaper, and he had started bringing it three or four times a week. Always USA Today. Never a local paper. Never what she wanted.

  She wanted news about Cathy Pruett. She knew Luke and Eli had dumped the body, and the police had found it. That was the limit of what Luke would tell her. If she asked him, he would say, “Don’t worry. We’re in the clear.” And she would smile and pretend it was good news.

  Maybe it was. Part of her hoped the police would find a link between Cathy Pruett and the Daws, and it would draw them here, to the farm, and they would find her. But part of her feared what might happen if the police caught up with Luke and Eli. If the two of them kept silent, no one would know to look for her. The door to her prison might never open again. The chain might never come off her ankle. She might be left behind, forgotten underground.

  Jana tasted her coffee and wondered if Luke had slipped something in it. He hadn’t drugged her since the night they made their bargain. He’d been true to his word. He had kept Eli away from her, and he had brought her out every night to see the sky. But she knew things could change. There could be something in the coffee now and she wouldn’t taste it. She thought about it but kept the thought to herself. She couldn’t afford to let Luke see it.

  She never hesitated to eat or drink anything he gave her. That was part of the performance. Every move she made was part of the performance. The way she held her coffee and scanned the front page of USA Today, pretending to be engrossed in the lead story—a piece about a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas. The way she reached casually for a plastic knife and used it to spread cream cheese on her bagel.

  The performance was always evolving. Early on, she never reached for the knife; she left it to him to prepare the bagels. But over time she realized her mistake. She wanted to convey that she was harmless, that she could be trusted with a knife, and the way to do that was to take the knife without asking and toss it down again when she was through with it. Only a desperate person being held against her will would look at a plastic knife as a potential weapon.

  Jana wasn’t desperate—not in the scenes she played out with Luke Daw. She wasn’t being held against her will. She was glad to see him, grateful for the things he brought her. When he took her out at night and let her bathe in a plastic pool, she was happy. And when he spread a blanket on the dirt floor of the barn, she lay down on it and wanted the same thing he wanted. Because the scene demanded it.

  She was going to walk away from him. That was how the play ended. She only had to make it through to the end. So she drank her coffee and ate her bagel and talked to Luke about the hurricane that might make landfall on the coast of North Carolina. No script. They improvised their lines.

  The scene wound down and he gathered the cups and the napkins and the plastic knife. Exit Luke with the leavings of breakfast. Jana watched him cross to the door, where he paused and threw out a line she wasn’t expecting.

  “Are you late?” he said.

  Decisions. She could pretend she didn’t know what he meant. She could lie. But he was smart; he knew the answer already. And she wasn’t afraid of him—not in the play she wasn’t.

  She shrugged and said, “Maybe a day or two.”

  No strong reaction. He said, “Okay,” and went out. The door closed.

  • • •

  Five hours later. Enter Luke with the key to the padlock that secured the chain around her ankle. Jana had finished one book and picked up another. Mickey Spillane, I, the Jury.

  Luke worked the key in the lock and set her loose. He let her walk ahead of him up the stairs, and when she opened the trapdoor at the top she saw daylight for the first time in three months. The barn against a blue sky. The pond in the distance. A heron taking flight.

  “Well, this is different,” she said.

  Luke Daw laughed and took her hand and they walked together down the slope of the hill, to the lane that ran past the pond. The lane cut through a grove of trees and she could see the trailer and the road and a car passing in the late afternoon. She didn’t run for the road, because the Jana she was playing didn’t need to get away. The Jana she was playing hadn’t spent the last five hours worrying about what Luke would do if she was pregnant.

  Luke took her into the trailer, and in the trailer there was takeout food laid out on a table: chicken shawarma, rice pilaf, pita bread and hummus, fattoush salad.

  “It’s Lebanese,” Luke said.

  “It looks good.”

  “Maybe you want a shower first.”

  She did want a shower. The bathroom was barely bigger than a phone booth, and the window was too small even to put her head out. She wouldn’t have climbed out even if she could, because Luke Daw was no fool, and she wouldn’t have been surprised if he had Eli out there somewhere, watching.

  And the Jana she was playing didn’t need to climb out a window. She belonged here.

  She showered and washed her hair and dressed in clean clothes. Jeans and a T-shirt. And afterward she ate Lebanese food that Luke warmed for her in the oven.

  • • •

  A sweet scene after dinner. Luke Daw, bashful. He had a plastic bag from a drugstore. A small box inside, light as air. “I thought, you know . . .” he began. “We should find out for sure, don’t you think?”

  Into the bathroom again. She opened the box. Peed on the plastic stick. Came out to wait with him, both of them silent. Sitting on his lap with his arms around her waist. They looked at the result together, saw the plus sign.

  Celebration. Luke on his feet, picking her up, twirling her around. Then his mouth on hers, eager. His hands undressing her. He carried her to his bedroom—narrow bed like a teenager’s—and laid her down. This is right, Jana thought. This is what young lovers would do. She opened herself to Luke Daw and felt him inside her.

  Fierce and gentle. She looked up into his eyes. He kept them open. Dark eyes. Sometimes they seemed empty, but not now. There was something in them that might have been love.

  She closed her eyes and let herself surrender. As the part required. And when she cried out, he cried out a moment later, and she wrapped her legs around him and held him inside her. He’d been bracing himself up with his arms, but now she felt his weight settle onto her. She felt the heat of him, the brush of his lips against her temple. She felt the rhythm of his breathing. She heard him whisper, “This changes everything.”

  • • •

  At dusk they went for a drive. Fast in the Mustang around the bends of Humaston Road. Jana put one arm out through the passenger window and the other up through the sunroof and felt th
e wind on the palms of her hands. Eric Clapton playing on the radio. They flashed by a trailer on a gravel lot at the roadside.

  “That’s where Eli lives,” Luke said.

  They left Humaston and drove east. There were houses and a few businesses. Luke paid more attention to his speed. The road ran long and straight, lots of cars, a few semi trucks.

  “Do you want ice cream?” Luke said. “There’s a place up here—my grandfather used to take us.”

  The place was called the Frozen Cow. A tiny building with picnic tables in front. You walked up to a window under an awning to place your order. Luke parked and stepped out of the car. Jana got out too—barefoot on the warm asphalt. The thunk, thunk of the car doors shutting. The voices of a family at one of the picnic tables: mom and dad, daughter and son.

  Luke paused to tuck something into his waistband and cover it with the tail of his shirt. The revolver. He’d pulled it from a drawer before they left the trailer. Because not everything had changed. Jana was tempted to ignore the gun, but that seemed wrong. She went around the front of the car, shaking her head, amused, indulgent. She slipped her arm through his and said, “Come on, killer.”

  They walked to the window and a woman came to take their order. She looked to be in her forties and wore a spotless white apron. She recognized Luke, called him Mr. Daw.

  She worked the levers of the soft-serve machine, filling two cones. Jana got chocolate. Luke got a twist. The woman tapped the cones on the counter so the ice cream would settle in, then turned them upside down and dipped them in a pan of melted chocolate. She brought them out and righted them again and passed them through the window.

  Luke paid with a twenty-dollar bill, and the woman made change. She winked at Jana before they left.

  “How’s this fella treating you?”

  Jana smiled. “He’s holding me against my will.”