The Girl in the Woods

"It might get people thinking about the Foley girl again," Diana said.

 

"That's one way to look at it." He rubbed his mustache. "Did Jason tell you where he wanted to look?"

 

 

 

"He said out in the area where the girl liked to ride her bike. County Road 600, I guess."

 

 

 

"That narrows it down. That road runs from one end of the county to the next."

 

 

 

"But the Foley girl didn't ride the whole thing." She tapped her fingers on the armrest. "Anybody out there who might be a suspect?"

 

 

 

Dan shrugged. "Pig farmers and rednecks. Anyone of them could be a suspect. We can't just run them all in." He made it all the way to the door before he stopped. He had his hand on the knob, but let it fall back to his side.

 

"What is it?"

 

 

 

He spoke without turning around. "Are you okay? I mean, with all of this, with Jason being missing and all. I know you were...spending time together. Are you okay?"

 

 

 

Diana wanted to ask for help, but knew she was no longer in a position to do so. Not from Dan anyway.

 

"I'll do my best," she said.

 

"Should you call someone? A friend or something."

 

 

 

"Maybe I should buy a dog."

 

 

 

"You know I can't really be here."

 

 

 

"I know."

 

 

 

He reached for the door again and pulled it open. He took two steps outside then turned around and came back in. He pulled the door closed but not all the way shut. He looked like he wanted to say something else.

 

"What?" she said.

 

"You mentioned that newspaper article about the Todd girl. And how I said back then that it was a kidnapping. Remember? It was a kidnapping, Diana, as sure as I'm standing here. When we pursued that angle, we were told to drop it. By higher-ups in the department, people who were probably being told to do so by others. I won't say their names, and it doesn't matter anyway since they're all probably dead. But what I said back then is what I really thought and still do. That Todd woman is right, even if she is a loon. Somebody took her daughter. Somebody who lived right around here."

 

 

 

He left without saying anything else.

 

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

 

 

 

 

 

If Diana were normal, if she were like everyone else on the planet Earth, Dan's parting words at her apartment door would have brought unbridled relief, an assurance that the fight was worth carrying on. After all, she had wanted that more than anything else, a sense that she wasn't alone, chasing after a lost cause like a lonely crusader, and, of course, she had wanted Dan's validation and assurance more than perhaps anyone else's.

 

But Dan's admission that there was more to the Margie Todd story than met the eye set Diana back on her heels. Faced with encouragement and a push to continue, she instead withdrew. The prospect of finding answers suddenly felt overwhelming, and when she contemplated the end of the road, the place where everything concerning Margie Todd was revealed to her and the world, a cold panic gripped her, as though knowing everything was somehow worse than knowing nothing at all.

 

 

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

 

 

Diana woke up cold.

 

It was dark, darker than usual. At night, her bedroom caught diffuse light from the street, and she preferred to sleep with her curtains open so she didn't find herself in total blackness. Lately, she had been sleeping with the lights on anyway, so to find herself in almost total darkness accelerated her heart rate.

 

Something wasn't right.

 

She couldn't understand why she felt so cold. It was as though she were exposed, wearing less clothing than normal. But that didn't make sense. The nights had turned chilly, and her landlord, in an unusual fit of generosity, had turned the boiler on in the building, which meant that the nights were sweltering and Diana could sleep with just a sheet and a light blanket covering her.

 

Had the boiler broken? Had the bedclothes fallen off to the side?

 

Consciousness coalesced slowly. Like swirling particles in space that took eons to gather into moons and planets, her brain took its time sifting through the scattered fragments of sensation that trickled in. She calculated the cold, the dark, and then she moved on to the rest.

 

She wasn't in bed. That quickly became apparent.

 

She was standing up, and her feet were cold and bare, touching not carpet or hardwood but something less forgiving. Concrete?

 

She started to understand. The dislocation, the removal from familiar surroundings. She had wandered somewhere. A vision had overtaken her, and she had walked out of the apartment.

 

Am I in the basement? she wondered, and even hoped for something as familiar as that. If she were in the basement, it wouldn't be so bad. She could just climb the stairs back to her apartment, and no one would know the difference. Safe enough and reasonable to outside eyes. She could have business in the laundry room, even in the middle of the night.

 

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