The Silent Girls (5 page)

“Yeah?”

“I work for a day care. I have the seat in case of an emergency. It’s the law.”

Rath nodded.

“The cats are my babies,” she said.

“If you think of anything, call me.” Rath handed her his card. “One more thing.” He took out the Post-it note and showed it to her. “This yours?”

She considered it. “No.”

“Well. If you think of anything.”

Out in the Scout, Rath stuck the Post-it note to the dash above the ashtray.

In the valley, he tried Rachel’s number and was kicked to voice mail. “Hey,” he said. “It’s Dad. Just. Being Dad.”

Chapter 10

R
ATH WA
TCHED THE
front of Larry Wilks’s apartment from the Scout parked across the street and down the block several houses. The narrow street’s asphalt was cracked and broken from frost heaves, a forgotten street crowded by and darkened beneath red pines that had been set in eerily precise rows by FDR’s Tree Army.

The unkempt yards were littered with rusted pine needles and broken branches. In the few minutes the Scout had been parked, sap had already dappled the windshield like viscous birdshit. From some backyard, a rooster crowed, as if the shadows of the pines left the confused bird announcing an eternal dawn.

These were homes built in the eighties’ real-estate boom that had died as quickly as it had been born, leaving housing developments unfinished, cellars filling with rainwater that turned to a soup of green algae and drowned frogs. This street had been finished, but archaeological artifacts of its heyday being circa 1987 remained everywhere. Windows sported long-faded Tot-Finder stickers. To the side of most of the crushed-stone driveways stood basketball hoops. The metal backboards pocked with rust, the scraps of gray nets flitting in the breeze like the frayed strings of an old mop. The backboard posts leaned dejectedly, the cement in which they were affixed twenty-five years ago breaking down and loosening its grip. No new backboards in sight, the ones made of fiberglass with black plastic bases easily moved on wheels, adjustable arms to set the hoop’s height relative to that of the child.

Rath could all but hear the shrieks of the ghost kids who had once overrun the forlorn street on Big Wheels, could see the cardboard lemonade stands, the lawn sprinklers spraying water in silver arcs, fathers washing wood-paneled station wagons and mothers gabbing over fences that had long since fallen over and were now being reclaimed by the Earth.

His childhood years. Long gone.

He double-checked the address in his notepad: Apartment #2, 139 Pine Street. He checked the glove box, considered his .22 revolver. He closed the glove box and got out and shut the Scout’s door quietly. The rooster crowed.

At 139 Pine, a purple Dodge Neon and a white Ford F150, both with their hoods up, sat in a driveway spoiled with oil and other engine fluids.

Apartment #2 was in the upstairs half of the cape at the top of an iron stairway that looked like a fire escape lag bolted straight into the cape’s vinyl siding.

Rath took the steep, creaking stairs, the whole rig swaying with his weight. The door at the top was black with mildew. A shade on the inside of the small window prevented him from seeing inside. He rapped on the door.

A girl answered immediately, as if she’d been expecting him, and Rath’s heart jumped. The girl possessed the round and runny eyes of a foundling. Her plump rump was squished into Daisy Dukes two sizes too small. She sported pigtails and a tight pink tank top with the word
PINK
scrawled across it, Rath guessed in case you were color-blind you’d know what color shirt she was wearing. The shirt was stained with chocolate and threadbare enough to be nearly transparent. She wasn’t wearing a bra, and her dark nipples were visible. The look on her face said she had indeed been expecting someone, just not
this
someone.

“Who are you?” she said.

“Is Larry around?”

She made to slam the door, but Rath stuck his foot inside.

“What the hell?” the girl said. Her breath was sour with gin. It was 1
P.M.
The girl shouted over her shoulder: “
Dad
,” she said in a mocking tone, “one of your coke-head buddies is here!”

A model of discretion, this girl.

She plopped down on a sunken couch befouled with dog hair and started playing an ancient video game, jerking a joystick obscenely between her thighs. Larry,
Dad
, lumbered in from the kitchen, his pale, whale-blubber gut stretching his wife beater and threadbare boxers to their limits. He wore one white, sagging sock. The other foot was bare, the toes deformed and hairy. Two toenails black with decay. He was unshaven and had either been eating powdered donuts or burying his face and fingers in a bowl of before-mentioned coke.

“What the
fuck
?” he grunted. “You tell Porkchop you’re here for coke? Where you get off making her think I deal coke? I don’t know your ass. Who the fuck you think you are?” He moved close to Rath, and Rath caught a stench akin to a clogged sewer pipe.

“I need to talk to you about your daughter,” Rath said, meeting Dad’s eyes.

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“Mandy, your—”

“She ain’t my daughter.”

Rath stared, confused. “I just came from your wife’s house, and—”

“
Ex
-wife.”

“Your daughter,
Mandy,
is missing,” Rath said, his voice sharp, insistent.

Wilks curled his upper lip and wagged his head like a bulldog. “A bitch just like her mother. Probably run off as usual. The Ex tell you why I divorced her?”

“She said she divorced you.”

“She says whatever she needs to say to make herself look good.”

As opposed to you, Rath thought, who can speak his mind openly because he’s of such high social standing he’s beyond reproach.

Dad plodded into the kitchen. Rath walked past the couch where Porkchop lay on her side, jerking the joystick with one hand, her other hand crammed down her Daisy Duke’s, scratching furiously.

Rath entered the kitchen, and a pride of tomcats preened at his feet, then leapt one by one up onto the counter, where they prowled anxiously. From a rusted chain, the leg of a slaughtered deer hung in the corner, dripping blood into a baking pan. The cats licked their whiskers and tongued their eyeballs. They blinked in their drowsy, feline manner. Rath sneezed wetly.

Dad sat at a Formica table littered with comic books, video-game cartridges, and donut boxes. Two revolvers lay on the table, within easy reach of Dad. One was an old, cheap .22, the bluing worn and rusted. The second was a .45. A model 625 JM, its stainless steel polished to a mirror finish. A round from it would go clean through Rath, through the wall behind him, and sail out into FDR’s forest.

On the table sat tiny vials, glassine envelopes, and a minuscule electronic hand scale. Dad leered up at Rath. His eyes were milky.

“Sit,” Dad said.

“I’m good,” Rath said.

“
Sit.
” Dad rested his paw on the 625 JM.

Rath sat. The chair was sticky. What made it so sticky Rath did not want to know. He thought about the .22 back in his glove box, where it wasn’t doing him much good. But a .22 bullet, even at point-blank range, would likely just get lodged in the first ten inches of Dad’s fat. Rath would have to shoot Dad in the head, and he didn’t come here to shoot anyone in the head. The kitchen stank of warm blood, filthy cats, and whatever bodily stench was pouring off Dad, who fidgeted with the scale.

“What do you mean she’s not your daughter?” Rath asked. His shirt was pasted to his spine with sweat. Blood dripped from the calf leg into the baking pan.
Ping ping.

“Found out three years ago. Was in for some tests to see if I didn’t have cancer in my balls. Found out my boys are too fucked up to take proper hold to an egg. That’s why the first two brats never took. You follow?”

A pair of cats leapt from the counter and raked their claws down the muscled hank of deer leg in a sensual manner, leaving tattered furrows in the meat. They slurped blood from the baking pan.

“Well. Even so. She’s missing.”

“Good,” Porkchop muttered from the sofa.

Dad grunted like a hog. “Jealous like the rest.” His hand squeezed around the 625 JM. It dwarfed the revolver, made it seem like a squirt gun. “So. What you want?”

“I need to know where you were night before last—”

His eyes sparked. “
Here.
”

“Was anyone here with you?”

“Yeah,” he said, and wagged his three chins toward Porkchop. “She was.”

Porkchop looked up and stared at him.

“Weren’t you,” he said.

“Yeah, sure,” Porkchop muttered, and went back to jerking her joystick.

“Just who the fuck are
you,
anyway,” Dad said to Rath, “coming into my home like some needle Dick? You ain’t a cop, sure’s shit, and—”

“A friend of the family. I just want to see if there’s anything you can tell me—”

Porkchop got up and wandered past down the hall, her breasts all but falling out of her top now. A nipple exposed. The bottom crescent of her ass cheek jiggled out from her Daisy Dukes as she disappeared into another room. Rath tore his eyes away.

“You wanna taste of Porkchop?” Dad said, and smiled, teeth gray as dirty dishwater.

Rath recoiled, felt his stomach churn.

“Way you’re eyeing her,” Dad said, “thought maybe you’d like a piece o’ Porkchop.”

“I’m good,” Rath said.

“
She’s
good. Fifty bucks.” His finger slipped inside the 625 JM’s trigger guard.

Rath felt his balls tighten. He had to get out of there. He inched his chair back.

A tomcat the size of a Labrador retriever lapped blood from the baking pan, hissed at the other feral felines who eyed the blood.

“Cheapskate, huh?” Dad moved his hand from the .45 and picked up the .22. It nearly disappeared in his palm. He folded his arms across his chest, tipping back a bit in a chair two sizes too small for him. “Or are you queer?”

“Yeah, that’s it.”

Rath glanced at the deer leg.

Drip. Drip.

“Well,” Rath said, “it seems you’d rather speak to a real cop.”

Dad considered this as if he were trying to figure out the quantum physics of Time’s Arrow. He looked hard at Rath. His eyes had lost their milkiness and were bright and clear now, crazed.

A cat stood on its hind legs, stretched to rip its claws along the meat, shredding it.

Dad kicked the cat, and it bared its fangs. Dad aimed the pistol square at Rath’s chest. Smiled. Then he swung the .22 at the deer leg and fired a round. The cats didn’t flinch. They seemed used to it. It was only a .22, but would still kill Rath at that range. It might take awhile, hours, but it’d do the trick eventually.

Dad leaned back, a madman’s smirk seeping across his face. Rath sprang then, shoved the table hard so it struck Dad’s fat gut, and Dad sucked in air with a
whump,
his chair teetering, arms pinwheeling, and eyes blowing up. “What —”

Rath shoved the table harder. Dad toppled back and hit the floor so hard, empty beer bottles fell and smashed. The back of Dad’s head struck the counter edge as he went down, and he lay there making blubbering, snoring sounds, blood leaking from an ear.

Porkchop ran into the room, pupils huge, teeth clenched. She eyed the .22 on the floor. Rath kicked it under the stove and glared at her. “Get out,” he said. She glared back. “
Now,
” he ordered. And suddenly all her teen bravado evaporated, and she was a scared child. She ran out through the living room and threw open the door and crashed down the fire escape.

Dad was hoisting himself up, eyes locked on Rath, homicidal. Rath grabbed the .45 as Dad came at him, his head down and his arms wide. Rath raised the .45, but Dad hit him square in the solar plexus before he got it all the way up. The wind left Rath, and his vision splintered in silver explosions as he landed on his back. He howled when Dad fell on him, and his spine felt as if it were being crushed.

Rath tried to get the .45 out from between him and Dad as Dad rose, hauling Rath up by the neck, and tossed him across the kitchen as if he were a dirty sock. Rath smashed hard against the cold slickness of the deer leg, then struck the refrigerator’s door handle with his spine as a blinding pain ignited in him, and he collapsed on the floor. He thought he would pass out, his vision spongy, the world warbly. A hive of bees droned in his ears, and he smelled the ocean.

The .45 lay on the floor beside him, light-years away. He stretched his fingers for it, his eyes leaking hot tears of pain. He got a hand on the revolver’s grip as Dad tossed the table aside and bore down on him.

Dad was reaching for the .45, and Rath shook his head,
no no.
Dad backhanded Rath across the face, the stone of his ring taking a chunk of Rath’s cheek.

Rath kicked Dad hard, square in the ankle. Dad hopped in pain, and Rath drove the heel of his boot into Dad’s kneecap. Dad crashed on the table, the table imploding under his mass.

Rath stood, grinding his teeth against the savage wreck of his back, and grabbed the .45. He caught Dad trying to gain his feet again and jammed the .45 to his forehead. “I’ll paint the floor with whatever’s inside that fucking skull of yours instead of brains.” He pressed the muzzle tighter between Dad’s eyes, cocked the hammer with his thumb, his finger on the trigger, itchy. “Lie down.”

Dad lay down.

“Good dog,” Rath said, grimacing and fighting nausea.

Rath turned and hobbled out of the place. He scrambled down the stairs, the fire escape swaying, making him puke. In the driveway, between the Neon and the F150, his ankles got wrapped in jumper cables strung between the vehicles, and he did a header, planting his face into the Neon’s bumper. He struggled back to his feet and staggered out to the Scout, each step more painful than the last.

Chapter 11

B
ATTERED AND EXHAU
STED,
Rath looked at his sad paunch in the bathroom mirror, a body whose muscles were once taut without any work no matter the beers or the pizza. No more.

He poured hydrogen peroxide on his gashed cheek, gritting his teeth. Pain spiderwebbed from his spine. He filled the sink with cold water and sank his face into it. He put back two Vicodin with a belt of Lagavulin.

He dipped a toe in the bath. Icy. Perfect. He set the bottle of Lagavulin beside the tub then eased in, the pain in his back relenting some as he shut his eyes. His eye was swollen, his jaw stiff. The tub felt damn good. There were, he had to admit, upsides to having the place to himself again. He was allowed to spread out, let the laundry stack up, the dishes pile in the sink, leave a beer bottle where he finished it without Rachel’s swooping in and scolding. Still.

He picked up his home phone from the floor beside him and dialed.

“Hello?” Grout answered.

“Grout, Rath.”

“Why did you come up
Private
?

“It’s my home number. I don’t want clients calling it, or trouble finding me.”

“OK, Jason Bourne. How’d it go today?”

“Fabulous. My back feels like a shattered windshield. Mandy’s father is a real gem. HE fucked up my back even worse.”

“You want to press charges?”

“Nothing’d stick. I pushed my way into his home, unwanted. He can say whatever he likes. His stepdaughter would likely cover. Out of fear.” Rath couldn’t help but feel empathy for Porkchop. What happened to cause a girl of her tender age to behave the way she did? “If I were you I’d bring Dad in as soon as you can though. Grill him.”

“You think he’s got something to do with Mandy?”

“I wouldn’t put anything past him. I don’t trust the girl’s alibi for him. You can get him for dealing coke at least. Possibly pimping, though I think he was just yanking my chain on that one. Address is 139 Pine Street.”

“Shitty area.”

“You think?” Rath took a pull of Lagavulin. “There any Starmont resorts in Vermont?”

“You have any questions Google can’t answer?”

“I’m on dial-up here.”

“Move down from the hills. Leave the ice age behind.”

“I like the ice age. You wish you lived here and not Deer Meadow Townhouses.”

“Pheasant Run Condos.”

Rath heard Grout’s fingers typing.

“There’s a Starmont hotel in Stowe,” Grout said. “The Double Black Diamond. Real
la-di-da. Starts
at 350 bucks a night. What’s this about?”

“A notepad in Mandy’s room was from a Starmont. Would be worth checking if she stayed there. You’d need to do it. Hotels are tight with info to anyone not a cop.”

“Even to cops. Mandy couldn’t afford this joint.”

“It’d have been on someone else’s dime. Mandy, by all accounts, is a stunner. Maybe she had some rich guy wanting to get hooks into her. If any staff saw her, they might remember her. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that she’s memorable. Men want her. Women envy her.”

Rath readjusted himself in the tub, water sloshing.

“Are you in the
tub
?” Grout said.

“For medical reasons. My back. It was bad before, now—”

“Snoop around the Double Black Diamond with me, and you can throw a massage on your expense account. Maybe they give Happy Endings.”

“The only place in Stowe that gives a Happy Ending is Friendly’s restaurant,” Rath said.

“They don’t allow Friendly’s in Stowe. What else you got?”

“I stopped by the Lost Mountain Inn. Nothing. No one there saw anything odd about her behavior. She punched out as usual, and said ‘See you tomorrow.’ Listen. Let’s catch up in person after Stowe. I’m wiped.” Rath rested the bottle of Lagavulin on his chest. “Get
yourself
a massage at the Double Black Diamond while you’re there.”

“The wife’d just love that.”

“She’ll be too pissed you’re volunteering a Sunday to care.”

“Don’t bet on it.”

Rath hung up, took a slug of scotch, and lay back in the bath, looking at his notes. So. So. So.

Sew your own buttons,
his mother would say.

Her old-fashioned sense of humor had gotten her through tough times. Rath wondered if it would have gotten her through the aftermath of Laura’s murder? Not for the first time, he was glad she’d not lived to suffer that. She’d suffered enough.

The winter Rath was nine his mother had broken an ankle on an icy sidewalk. When his father had come home to see her in a cast, he’d said, “They shoot horses for less,” and strode into the kitchen to clank glasses and crack ice trays, giving sound to his inner fury as he poured a highball of straight club soda.

He’d been on the wagon for weeks, and Rath had wished he’d fall back off it. When drinking, Rath’s father tossed the ball around, took the family out for ice cream, bought his wife candy— gestures unheard of when sober. Rath preferred him this way. But when his father drank, he also never got to work at his barbershop, and the place would go shuttered for days. Rath’s mother would pick up nightly waitressing gigs to supplement her full-time job as a drugstore clerk, working doubles all weekend until sick with exhaustion.

When the old man sobered, he’d find his clientele had dwindled, and his mood would darken. Each day sober, each second, was more ominously tense than the last. He became a stick of lit dynamite, his smoldering fuse sucking up the oxygen in the house as the inevitable explosion approached.

He’d never struck any of them. In moments of self-pity, he’d return to the refrain: “At least I never hit none of you.” It made Rath wonder what abuses the old man had suffered as a boy to make this a shining accomplishment. He’d never hit them. But he’d broken chairs. Broken his hand driving it through a wall, a hairsbreadth from his wife’s face. Broken his wife’s heart.

When sober, his eyes wandered, too. He’d had the broad build, blue eyes, and black hair he’d passed to his son, and women were readily sucked into his orbit. Before Laura’s murder, Rath had shunned relationships because he’d felt the old man’s weakness for women festering inside him and had never wanted to hurt a woman as his father had hurt his mother.

Rath glanced at his notes now.

Mandy: a knockout. People react strongly to her looks. Glaze over.

Mandy’s mother was biased about her daughter’s looks. But Gale wasn’t. Nor was Madeline. Gale admitted she envied Mandy. He looked at his next note:
Mandy on pill.

She was likely having sex though that was not a certainty. She never brought boys home. Not one person he’d spoken with knew of a boy in her life.

Double Black Diamond Resort.

She could have picked the Starmont notepad up anywhere. Rath’s junk drawer was choked with refrigerator magnets and notepads from places he’d never been, without his having a clue how they’d ended up in his drawer.

His mind came back to the birth-control pills. If she was on the pill, would she have left the apartment without the prescription if she intended to be gone for more than a day? He should have checked the date on the package. For all he knew, they were months old. Did she have a boyfriend? If so, where was he?