The Silent Girls (23 page)

Chapter 51

U
NDER A FOREBODING
sky, Rath sauntered out to the barn, carrying a pry bar and a hatchet. He would get the deer unstuck from the frozen ground. He’d be lucky to salvage any meat now. But his back felt good. His back felt grand. His back felt
nothing.
He realized in the last day that something was missing from his routine, and it had taken him a while to realize what. The pain. When he turned or bent or reached, he found himself flinching against a pain that never came. The pain was simply, miraculously, gone.

He felt liberated, ready to do now with ease what he’d been unable to do at all just two weeks before. It would take a while to get the deer unstuck, but he wanted to get a start on it before the snow came. The area was due for a storm, and snow was already swirling down from the ominous sky.

He stood over the deer. His cell buzzed.

He didn’t recognize the number.

“Yes,” Rath said, his voice ringing, matching his high spirits.

“Mr. Rath?” The person on the other end was winded, gasping.

“Yes,” Rath said.

“I’ve been trying to reach Rachel and keep getting her voice mail. And I left messages on your home machine, and—”

“Who
is
this?”

“Felix.”

“Who?”

“You met me on campus—Rachel’s boyfriend.”

“Right. I hardly ever use my landline and check messages even less. Why were you leaving messages for me?”

“I wasn’t; I was leaving them for Rachel.”

“Rachel’s not at the house.”

“Well then, where
is she
?”

Rath dropped the hatchet at his feet. “She’s not with you?”

“No
.
” Felix nearly shrieked. “She went home
.
”

“What are you talking about?” Rath stared out blankly at Ice Pond.

“She left a voice mail saying she wanted a few days alone. She hasn’t been to her dorm so . . . I thought, when I didn’t hear, I thought maybe I’d said or done something to make her mad. I’ve been calling and texting her cell and—”

“For how long?”

“Nearly three days.”

“You haven’t heard from her in three days?”

“I thought she was at home and wanted space.”

“Christ. Did you have a fight?”

“Not really.”

“What does that mean: not really?” Rath was shouting now, stalking back and forth across the barnyard, tapping the pry bar against his kneecap.

“She didn’t want to tell you until we got concrete proof. Something that could help.”

“Proof of what?”

“She went, well, undercover.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She went to those Family Matters meetings.”

“No,” Rath said. He went stiff as pain shrieked in his chest, as if he were stabbed. “No. She didn’t.”

“It was probably stupid. You don’t think her attending those meetings has anything to do with it, do you? Rachel’s disappearance?”

Rachel’s disappearance.

Chapter 52

G
ROUT PULLED
THE
cruiser up in front of Betty Malroy’s residence in Newbury, Connecticut. He’d expected a trophy home, perhaps an estate, from what he knew of her relentless fund-raising and her prominence among the Beltway crowd, not to mention the generosity her rabid cult followers would undoubtedly bestow on her if called upon.

She must be hiding the money somewhere
, Grout thought as he looked at the modest raised ranch that sat on perhaps a half acre of land among similar houses at the end of a respectable but unremarkable cul-de-sac.

“This is it?” Larkin asked, glancing at a map on his iPhone.

A light glowed in the home’s living-room window. No car sat in the driveway. Grout was tired; they’d hit snow in Vermont, then freezing rain down here. The going had been torturous, and Jen had called his cell and texted him every ten miles, asking where he was. Getting more strident with each message. Her voice all but screeching on the voice mail, her texts in all caps: WHERE ARE YOU? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?

He hadn’t answered the phone or returned her messages.

He was on a case, is what. He was doing his job.

“OK, let’s go,” Grout said, and opened his door, the McDonald’s bag from the drive-thru they’d stopped at in White River Junction blowing out of the car on a gust and tumbleweeding down the street.

As they approached the porch, Grout heard a TV from inside, the volume cranked. He knocked hard on the door. They waited, Larkin with his hands jammed in his coat pockets and rocking on his toes. He was amped. Grout was, too. This woman, one way or another, she was behind these missing girls, behind the dead girl. Though he was still unsure how Mandy fit. She doesn’t fit, he thought as he knocked again, louder.

The sound on the TV fell away to a murmur, and Grout knocked again.

He heard a chain lock slip from its slot, then the door was opened, and Betty Malroy stood before him on the other side of the storm door.

The fourteen years since the video he’d watched of her had been taken
had
aged her; but even standing there now with a terry-cloth robe clutched at her neck, she possessed an air of refinement, and it was easy to tell she had been stunning in her youth. Her luxurious silver hair was swept up in a carelessly attractive heap that on most women would look dumpy. Her face was pale, the skin a bit slack and her cheeks and forehead marred with age spots. But her eyes possessed the bright alertness of youth, and her posture was erect, delicate shoulders squared. She looked perhaps fifty-eight though Grout knew she was in her early seventies.

“May I help you?” she said through the door, glancing from Grout to Larkin, to somewhere behind them on the street, the car, perhaps, then back to Grout.

Grout displayed his ID, and said, “We need to speak with you. It’s urgent.”

She stared at them, her eyes going dim, the brightness gone in a blink, and Grout thought she was going to shut the door on them. Instead, she said. “Let me see the other gentleman’s identification, if I may.”

Larkin showed her his ID.

“Fine,” she said. She allowed them into the foyer, reluctantly. Then she climbed the stairs without a word. Larkin and Grout followed, took a left at the top of the stairs as she did, Grout looking to his right, down the hallway for a long moment, to ascertain as best he could, if anyone else was in the house. Then he went into the living room.

The house was warm. The floors were a blond, handsome wood. The place was finely appointed with modern furniture that featured a glass coffee table and glass end tables. A sofa along the wall was sleek and angular; its pewter-colored fabric had those tufted buttons Jen thought were fancy in a way that escaped Grout.

It was all glaringly impersonal.

A white brick fireplace with a slate hearth and a simple white-painted mantel stood empty. No fire screen. No fire. Where the fire would have been was barren and cold, black from the soot of fires long extinguished.

Above the mantel hung the largest crucifix Grout had ever seen. It looked like it was made of solid gold and gleamed in the light thrown by a floor lamp at either side of the fireplace.

Betty Malroy sat in the matching chair to the sofa, beside the fireplace. She wore a crucifix around her neck.

She turned the TV off with the remote, settled herself against the back of her chair, and nodded at the sofa.

Grout and Larkin sat. The room was too warm. Hot.

Larkin took out a notepad and clicked a pen.

“What’s happened?” Ms. Malroy said.

“Ms. Malroy,” Grout said.

“Yes?” She looked Grout directly in the eye, unflinching, confident. Superior.

“You founded The Better Society, is that so?”

“Yes,” she said, bored with him already. Dismissing him with a word.

“And you also are the primary source of financial backing for Better Days Adoption Agency?”

“True.” She had not yet blinked since sitting.

“The Better Society, it’s—” Grout began.

“I won’t speak about it,” she said.

“About what ma’am?” Larkin said.

“That organization.”

“Your organization,” Grout corrected.

She lifted her chin at Grout. “You’ve not done your homework, Officer.”

“Detective.”

“You’ve not done your homework,
Detective
.” She sniffed.

Grout realized then that the house gave off no odor that he could detect. No aroma of food, or a pet, or perfume, or life. He glanced around. Besides the crucifix, the white walls were bare. Pristine. Sterile.

“How do you mean?” Grout asked.

“It’s not my organization,” Malroy said.

Grout leaned forward, elbows on his knees. “You founded it. Your photo and biography are prominent on the home page.”

“They can post what they like.”

Grout was getting a slippery, uneasy feeling. This woman was sharp. This woman had threaded the eye of the needle in DC’s political game. She’d swum with sharks and looked pretty good for having done so. Unscarred.

“There’s a video of you that—” Grout began again.

Betty Malroy leaned back, drumming her fingers on the arms of the chair, imperious. “What does that video have to do with anything? What can a video from fourteen years ago possibly have to do with anything today, or with why you are here? Why
are
you in my home? Speak up. Don’t dawdle. What do you want with me? I’ve done nothing.”

Grout felt his skin tighten at the arrogance of her act. “Wrong,” he said, projecting his voice as he lowered it. “You have done a great deal. You make it your life’s work to foment hatred and violence, to create and grow an extremist organization that takes pride in terrorizing young women. Victimizing girls and young women who are already scared enough.” His blood was up now. “You pushed forward a radical, spiteful agenda, created an army of young girls who infiltrate meetings of a very private nature. I saw that video. You know how to work up a crowd. A crowd made up of people who brag openly about calling men who murder doctors in their home—
saviors.
”

“Did,” she whispered.

“Excuse me?”

“Did. I did know how to work up a crowd.”

“I’m sure you are still capable.”

“Capable. Yes. Willing. That’s another matter. I perhaps
did
push forward a mad, as you put it, agenda.”

“And how would you put it?”

“Ugly.”

Grout was taken aback.

“Despicable,” Malroy said. “Regrettable. Sinful even.”

What was she saying? Was this a ploy?

“Detective . . .” she said, implying she had not caught his name.

“Grout.”

“Detective Grout. As I said, you have not done your homework.”

Grout glanced at Larkin, who seemed at a loss. Mystified.

“I have had nothing to do with that organization for years. Nothing to do with it except in trying to distance myself from it.”

“I saw that video.”

“I
made
that video. I know what you saw and felt. The same thing I feel now. Disgust. Repulsion. Hatred toward the hate. I know.”

Grout could feel Larkin’s eyes on him, but Grout kept his own eyes locked on Malroy. He wasn’t buying her speech. Not yet.

“You can look into it easily enough,” Malroy said. “Lawsuits are public. I tried to sue them for keeping my likeness and that video on there. I tried to put an injunction on them using the name of the society. Do your homework, Detective.”

“You don’t believe in what the Better Society stands for?” Larkin said.

“Let me put it this way. Do I believe in abortion? No. Do I believe in the right to protest? Yes. Do I believe our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is the Son of God? Yes. With all my heart. What I don’t believe in, Detective, is murder. I do not believe in what The Better Society promotes now. I haven’t since ’98. If you knew anything, you’d know I ‘disappeared’ then. Of course, I’ve lived right here all along. What I did was distance myself from the society.”

“Why?” Larkin said.

“Because of Kopp. Because of what he did to that doctor. And because I was appalled so many of my followers would take a stance of support for such an act, a sin. When that doctor, that father and husband, was killed. In his own home. There was no justification for it. None. And I said that, and they turned on me. My own people. Like snobby, spoiled little brats. They turned on their mother! I hadn’t raised them like that!” She gave her head a brisk shake, as if to snap herself back into a state of propriety, but it was too late. The lunacy, the zealotry, had flashed.

Grout ignored it. “Why not start a new society?”

Malroy swept her hand at him. “I’d already spent two decades building the society from the ground up with all the love I had in my heart. I wasn’t starting over.”

“Tell us about The Better Society, as you saw it,” Grout said.

“So you can mock it?” Malroy sniped.

“So we can understand it.”

Her eyes darkened.

“Our protests were legal. We abided by the law. We were peaceful. Respectful.”

“I see,” Grout said.

“You’re blind,” she spat, further shedding her mask of decorum.

“To what?” Grout said, easily, enjoying it.

“The true workings of evil.”

Grout had her now, had the snake slithering out from under its rock.

“Please. Open my eyes,” he said.

“See, you mock.”

“He’s not mocking,” Larkin said, patiently. “The mission statement on the Web site says it’s to ‘confront abortionists and abortion promoters wherever they go: clinics, abortionists’ offices, and even homes.’ Was that your creation, or is that new since you left?”

“That was mine, but they warped it,” she hissed. “They bastardized it.”

“Do you know a Mandy Wilks?” Grout said.

“Who? No. I don’t know Mandy anyone.” She puckered her lips, homely, fishlike.

“She was possibly pregnant and seeking an abortion,” Grout said.

“Possibly?” Malroy said.

“And she was seen with an elderly woman on a bench outside a clinic soon before she disappeared.”

“There are lots of old ladies in the world, detective. I don’t know any Mandy. I haven’t laid foot in Vermont in a decade.”

“Who said anything about Vermont?” Grout’s said as his blood pressure spiked at her slip up.

“What?” she said. “No one. I just. Your IDs.”

“Right.” Sure, Grout thought. The old woman was burying herself deeper with each word, each lie, she spoke.

“Don’t you
right
me,” she said. “Don’t you dare. What is this
about
anyway?”

Grout took out the photo of Mandy, strode across the room, and snapped it in front of Malroy’s face. “Her, do you know her?”

“No,” she said, without looking at the photo.

“Look at it,” Grout snapped.

She looked at it. “No.”

“I don’t believe you,” Grout said.

“I don’t care. And I won’t be interrogated in my own home, I won’t—”

Grout slapped his thigh and laughed, openly mocking now. Malroy shrank back like she’d been cut. “This,” Grout said, “is hardly an interrogation. An interrogation would be much different than this. You wouldn’t want that. You wouldn’t like that.”

Her face was carved of stone now. Fixed. Immutable.

“Perhaps you know her?” Grout showed her the most grisly of photos of Julia.

Malroy’s stone face was suddenly flesh again, quavering from a blast of unexpected shock. She looked away and set her mouth tight.

“Someone is killing girls up where we’re from. All of them were in meetings where you have infiltrators.”

“I have nothing to do with the society! I told you that!”

Malroy was trembling, her bottom lip quivering, but her eyes remained locked on Grout’s. They shone with conviction.

“These are your followers,” Grout said. “Your
apostles.
You taught them to be this way.”

“I did not, I—”

“Shut up.” Grout stuck a finger in her face. “Unless you’re going to say something useful, shut up, you old windbag.”

Malroy shook as if she might break apart, her face going purple with silent rage. Her mouth working as if her dentures were loose.

“Now listen to me,” Grout said. “These girls are being killed, their babies cut from them, and, well, you have an adoption agency, yes?”

“No. I mean, yes I do, but no. You couldn’t possibly think. No. Never.”

“Liar. You better start telling me something I can believe. Tell us who of your minions you think is capable of such a thing.”

She clutched her face in her hands now, her fingers claws, as if she wanted to tear the flesh from her skull. And for a moment, Grout was afraid she was trying to do just that. She pulled her hands away, and her face was livid where she’d clawed it. “He.”

“Who?”

“Oh God. No.” She clutched her crucifix in her fingers. Kissed it. Wept.

“Tell me, Ms. Malroy.” Grout touched her shoulder lightly. “Who?”

“He.” She sobbed. “He’s not doing it for—” She hung her head, shaking it as if were she able to rid her mind of whatever wretched thought was in it, she could rid the world of the reality. “He’s not doing it for reasons you think.”