“You really can talk to whales?” Nessa asked.
“You said your grandmother’s friend Miss Ella spoke to snakes. I thought I might have a go at chatting with a whale. I’ve spoken to this one, but I can’t confirm she’s listening. She’s the strong, silent type. I yammer away, but she never talks back.”
The whale swam alongside the boat as if escorting them to their destination. As they got closer to Danskammer Beach, Nessa felt her body go cold. The two girls were down there, their faces staring up at her from the murky water.
She laid a hand on Harriett’s arm. “Would you ask Celeste to stop here?” Nessa asked. “And keep her busy for a little while, if you would.” They hadn’t discussed the importance of being discreet; it went without saying that no one needed to know they were looking for ghosts, not whales.
“Not a problem.” Harriett made her way to Celeste at the other end of the boat.
With the engine off, the boat bobbed up and down on the waves. The whale cavorted around the vessel, launching herself upward, twisting high in the air, and sending a burst of water into the sky when she slammed down on the surface.
“She’s putting on a show.” Jo took a seat next to Nessa. “It’s like she’s covering for us.”
“Yeah.” Nessa pulled a sketch pad and pencil out of her handbag. She wasn’t feeling chatty.
“Can you see the girls?” Jo asked quietly.
Nessa glanced up, her face grim. “Yes,” she said. “It looks like their bodies were dropped in the same place. If so, I don’t think it can be a coincidence. The same man must have killed them both.”
They floated just below the surface, their long hair undulating in the ocean’s currents. Mandy Welsh’s pale face shone like the moon. She had frank, honest eyes the color of moss. The rest of her body, clad in a billowing black dress, blended in with the depths below. With so many photos online, Nessa didn’t need to sketch Mandy. Her subject was the Asian girl in the red hoodie with long black hair and lips parted as if she wished to speak. She looked even younger than Mandy, Nessa thought. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen. Don’t you dare cry, Nessa, she heard her grandmother chide her.
“You’re good at that,” Jo said. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”
“I’m not,” Nessa told her as she sketched the outline of the girl in the hoodie. “I haven’t opened a sketchbook in years.”
The last morning of Nessa’s summer in South Carolina, her grandmother had slid an envelope full of cash across the breakfast table. She’d never had much to spare, so Nessa knew it was meant for something important.
“When you get home, find somebody who can teach you to draw,” she’d said. “You don’t need to be Leonardo da Vinci. But you need to be able to sketch a face so people know who they’re looking at.”
Nessa had never shown any promise as an artist, but she didn’t dare say so.
“You won’t always know the people who call to you,” her grandmother told her. “And sometimes the bodies are too messed up to identify on their own. You’ll need a picture of the ghost to figure out who they are.”
Nessa’s grandmother got up from the table and returned with a scrapbook, which she opened to a pencil-drawn portrait of a girl. Her eyebrows were plucked to thin black arcs over round, heavily lined eyes. She’d tried her best to conceal her youth, but plump cheeks and a mischievous smile betrayed her. It may not have been a perfect portrait, but it made a lasting impact. One look, and Nessa knew just who the girl had been—and how much her family had lost.
Nessa flipped through the scrapbook, past portraits of other dead women. She shook her head sadly. She wasn’t up to the task. “I don’t think I can do this. Why can’t I describe them and have someone else make the drawings?” she asked.
“Because they’re more than just pictures,” her grandmother said. “They’re a contract. When you draw a ghost, a bit of their soul gets transferred to the paper—where it’s mixed with a little bit of your own. The dead will trust you when they know you’ve got something at stake. If they believe you’ll keep looking, they’ll be able to rest.”
“What if I can’t find their people?” Nessa had asked.
“Then you’ll lose that little piece of yourself that you put down on paper. So make sure your pictures are good.”
While waves rocked the boat, Nessa finished her sketch of the unidentified girl. Whatever details hadn’t made it onto the paper were still in her head. As soon as she was home, she would transform the sketch into a portrait. She was too exhausted to polish it right away. Too much of her own soul had gone down on the paper. She handed the book to Jo, who’d stayed by her side the entire time. She watched as Jo studied the page.
“She doesn’t look anything like Mandy Welsh—or the girl we found yesterday,” Jo noted. “Aren’t serial killers supposed to have a type?”
“I think it’s safe to say that the killer likes young girls,” Nessa pointed out.
“True,” Jo said. “He also owns his own boat, and knows that the water out here is deep. A fisherman, maybe?”
“Maybe,” Nessa offered wearily.
Jo gave her friend’s shoulder a squeeze. “Okay, we can talk about all of this later.” She passed the sketchbook back to Nessa. “But before we go, do a quick drawing of the whale,” she said. “So we can show our captain what you’ve been up to.”
While Nessa sketched, the only sounds were the whistling of the wind and the chattering of the women at the other end of the boat. As she finished her drawing, a third noise arose—a faint buzzing that was growing louder. Jo searched the sky, but the glare from the sun made it hard to determine the source. Then a flying object swooped down from above and traveled along the length of the boat before shooting back up into the clear blue sky.
“What the hell?” Jo hopped to her feet and made her way toward the captain’s wheel. “Was that a UFO?”
Harriett met her halfway. “It was a drone,” she said. “We have an admirer. Is there a chance its camera captured anything it shouldn’t have?”
“Just this.” Nessa had joined them, her sketchbook closed and a sketch of the whale in her hand. She presented the drawing to Celeste. “I drew this for you. To thank you for bringing us out here today.”
“It’s lovely!” Celeste said. “But are you sure you’re okay? You don’t look very well.”
“I’ll be fine,” Nessa told her. “I think the drone really rattled me. Where’d it come from?”
“Looked like it came from Culling Pointe,” Celeste said.
“Do you think it was spying on us?” Jo asked.
“Seems unlikely,” Celeste said, “but if you guys want to take a look, I can steer the boat that way.”
“Will we get in trouble if we head over there?” Nessa asked.
“I don’t see how,” Celeste said. “Nobody owns the ocean.”