He looked at me, seeming to wait for some kind of response. I only nodded.
“As impressive as your monster-hunting credentials might be,” he said, “I need to ask you to step back a little.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.”
“Scaring kids crosses the line, Miss Shelley.”
“Who have I scared?”
“Zoey Johanssen had to be taken to the emergency room this afternoon.”
Zoey. The kid from the pier, the one with the short hair and trench coat. “The emergency room?” I repeated.
“I understand you and my son were talking to her, Riley St. James, and Alexander Farnsworth down by the docks earlier.”
I said nothing, knew I was better off neither confirming nor denying.
“The way I heard it,” Pete Gibbs said, clearing his throat before continuing, “you were interviewing them? Asking them about Lauren and Rattling Jane?” He looked at me for a long time, his blue eyes turning grayer and stonier by the moment. “Evidently Zoey got shook up so bad she had the mother of all asthma attacks.”
“Asthma?” I said with a snort. “Are you kidding? The kid was chain-smoking. I’m no doctor, but I’m guessing that might have had something to do with her breathing problems.”
“Look, the thing is…” He moved a little closer, speaking more softly, like a friend about to share a secret. In addition to the cologne, he smelled fresh, like laundry hung out on the line to dry. “Zoey is kind of a… fragile kid. A history of anxiety. Even some self-harm. Her family is worried. The last thing they want is someone encouraging these crazy ideas that make her so freaked out she can’t catch her breath and has to be rushed to the hospital to get shot up with steroids. You get that, right?”
I nodded.
“My son is a good kid, but he has… questionable friends sometimes. I’ve spoken to him and asked him to stay away from that particular group, Zoey especially.” His jaw tensed, and he looked out at the lake.
“He seems like a great kid, actually,” I said.
He nodded. “He is. I feel really lucky. His mom died when he was ten, so it’s been just the two of us for a long time. He keeps me on my toes, that’s for sure.”
“I can only imagine,” I said.
He smiled, shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. “So, what are you doing out here at the Wildflower Cottages, Miss Shelley? I’m sure you’re aware this is private property?”
“Just looking around. Thinking I might come for a longer stay next summer, rent a little place…”
“You looking for Rattling Jane?”
I didn’t answer, only smiled in what I hoped was a neutral way.
He gave me a knowing look. “You can do all the ghost hunting you want. I’m sure there are a lot of folks in town who’d love to tell you a story or two about Rattling Jane. And I’m equally sure there are business owners who would love the extra publicity—the idea that your podcast might bring in more tourist dollars, that you might even get the TV folks interested in featuring our little community on an episode or two. But I’d like you to leave Lauren out of it. That includes poking around the cabin her family rented. The owner, Jake, is pretty particular about the area being only for registered guests.”
“I understand,” I said.
“And I need to know that you’re not going to bother the kids in town anymore or add to the crazy stories going around about Lauren being dragged into the lake by a ghost.”
I nodded.
“I’d also appreciate it if you’d stop sharing… these particular theories with my son. He’s got a pretty wild imagination. I don’t think it needs stoking.”
I didn’t say anything.
“Do we have a deal?” he asked, eyebrows raised.
“Sure,” I said, and started walking toward my van. I stopped, turned back to him. “Can I ask you a question, Constable?”
He smiled. “Please, call me Pete. And sure, you can ask me anything, but I’ve gotta warn you, I’m not a big believer in the supernatural. I’m afraid I don’t have a single Rattling Jane encounter to report despite having lived here my whole life.”
“Are you helping with the investigation? Looking into what happened to Lauren? Trying to find her?”
He sighed, ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. “Look, Lauren Schumacher is a troubled kid who ran away. Happens every day.”
“You’re sure about that?”
He nodded. “According to her parents, this is a regular thing with her—she stays gone a couple of days, crashes with friends, but always comes home. She had a big fight with her dad the day she left. She’s just blowing off steam somewhere.”
“Is anyone even out looking for her?” I asked.
“It’s not really my jurisdiction, but I understand a missing persons report was filed with the state police. But I’ll bet you just about anything that she’s turned up back at home in Worcester already, tail between her legs.”
That told me all I needed to know.
No one was looking all that hard for Lauren.
Just like all the other girls.
Girls everyone expected would disappear.
No one was surprised, and no one looked very hard, and when the girls never came back, people made up stories, said things like Must have hitchhiked out to California like she always talked about. Or, Must have run off with some guy who promised to get her out of this shithole town, her shithole life.
“I hope you’re right,” I said, and climbed into my van, shutting the door a little too hard.
Vi
July 19, 1978
I’M TELLING YOU,” Patty said, voice low, “there’s nothing there. I’ve looked through chart after chart in that file room, and there’s not a single mention of B West or any Mayflower Project.”
Vi pushed a shovel into the dirt. Old Mac was dumping a load of rocks at the edge of the garden for lining the flower beds. Some of the patients were gathered around, waiting to help move them. Tom the werewolf was hopping from foot to foot and rubbing at his arms, which were covered in scabs.
Miss Ev, wearing a large straw gardening hat over her wig, was supervising, directing the tractor with the bucket loader full of rocks: “Closer, Mr. MacDermot. That’s it. No, too far to the right. Can you back up and come a little to the left?”
Poor Old Mac was going back and forth, back and forth in the old Ford tractor, trying to comply.
“Miss Evelyn,” said Tom, “I’m telling you, I could do it. I worked trucking for years. I can drive anything: an eighteen-wheeler, a forklift, even a piece-of-crap old tractor.”
“Absolutely not, Tom,” she said. “Mr. MacDermot, now you’re too far to the left!”
“The records must be somewhere else then,” Vi said in a loud whisper. “Down in the basement, maybe.”
Working in the garden was the only time Vi could really talk to Patty, and even then there were usually other people around: patients digging and taking in the sun and fresh air, Old Mac laying water lines or delivering piles of mulch and rock with the tractor, Miss Ev in her big hat bossing everyone around.
Patty looked over her shoulder to make sure there were no patients close by. “Maybe there’s nothing to find,” she said, shaking her head.
“Oh, come on,” Vi said. “You don’t really believe that, do you?”
Patty scrunched up her face, thinking. “Not really,” she said. “But still, I can’t help but think we’d be better off leaving it alone.”
“Is that what you want to do?” Vi whispered. “Leave it alone?”
Patty hacked at the ground with a hoe. “You know, I used to have this dog, Oscar. There was a spot in our backyard, and Oscar would go out there and dig and dig. The soil there was all rocky, full of shale—it would splinter into sharp edges. Oscar would keep at it in this one spot, getting his feet all cut up. We tried everything: tying Oscar up, fencing that area off, even laying boards over it. But he always found a way back to it. Poor dog. I remember it so well—how he’d be all cut up and bleeding, but he’d keep digging.”
“So what happened?” Vi asked. “Did he ever find anything? Dig anything up?”