Bright Young Women

“I was just about to say, isn’t it possible that Roger is… disturbed and also that this is the person who did it? Could they have been working together?”

“You’re going to law school in the fall, aren’t you, Pamela?” That was Sheriff Cruso. I must have mentioned my plans during our initial interview, though I couldn’t remember doing so. Or maybe he knew because his position made him privy to such things. Confidential things. Maybe I should respect that. Just let him do his job. Focus on doing mine. I remembered the victims’ assistance fund Brian had told me about. Apparently, you had to apply within seven days of the event in order to qualify. I needed to get on top of that. I wondered if there were applications right here in the station. I should ask.

“Columbia, right?” Pickell said. “Very impressive.”

A bolt of shock struck my tailbone. That wasn’t true. Why in God’s name had I told him that?

“I’m going to Shorebird College of Law. Down in Fort Lauderdale.” Brian and I were going together. He wanted to specialize in campaign finance law, just like his father, and I wanted to specialize in corporate, just like mine.

Pickell frowned. “Oh. I see.”

“Regardless,” Sheriff Cruso said, “you are someone who understands that we never say nothing is impossible. It’s impossible—it’s irresponsible—to make official determinations at this point in the investigation. We follow the trail that the evidence cuts. And right now the preponderance of evidence cuts to Roger.”

I could find no objection to that.

“What happened to Martina Cannon’s friend back in Seattle was a terrible thing, and I have no doubt that this is the man who did it.” We both looked down at The Defendant’s honed, carnivorous features. “It’s a total mystery how he pulled it off, to be honest with you. I feel for Martina, and I feel for the families of the girls who went missing. But it has absolutely nothing to do with what happened here.”

I nodded numbly.

“And one more thing,” Sheriff Cruso said in a firm tone that wasn’t unkind. He was looking at me with worried, pitying eyes. He was in his midthirties, but there was a baby-faced softness to his cheeks that telegraphed a sort of Leave It to Beaver wholesomeness. I could picture him drinking a glass of milk at the breakfast table, his wife removing the mustache left behind with her thumb and a smile. “I have to watch what I say here, because Martina Cannon has deep pockets and friends in high places, but I’ll leave you with this.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, and clasped his hands together, pointing conjoined index fingers at my chest. “I’d advise you not to spend time alone with the woman, Pamela. I’d advise you not to spend any time with her at all, for your own safety.”





RUTH


Issaquah, Washington

Winter 1974

After the second girl went missing, the Seattle police chief warned women live on Channel 5 not to venture out after dark. It was March in the Northwest, the sky blue-black by four in the afternoon. That the call to stay at home for three-quarters of the day coincided with the height of the women’s lib movement in downtown Seattle did not seem to me like any coincidence.

I trailed my mother through the stationery store, checking my watch only when she wasn’t looking. The grief group was meeting in thirty minutes, but if she felt hassled, she would spite me by dawdling. She’d already changed her mind twice on the calligrapher as we worked out the invitation wording for my father’s garden-naming ceremony at Issaquah Catholic, where he’d been the high school history teacher for eighteen years before he died last summer.

For the one-year anniversary of his death, Issaquah Catholic had planted hydrangea bushes in the front yard of the old clergy house, which for a time had served as a rehabilitation station for fugitive slaves who had escaped the South. It was an important piece of the school’s history, and my father had made up his lesson plan in such a way that the unit about the Underground Railroad fell in the springtime, when it was warm enough to conduct his class in the unkempt yard outside the sagging white cottage. The new history teacher planned on continuing this tradition, and the school had sprung to clean up the grounds and install a plaque dedicating the space to my father. This sounded more like landscaping than a garden, but I was trying to hurry my mother along and kept that observation to myself. Besides, I hated to remember the clergy house and all the abasement that occurred under its rotten roof.

“Have you spoken to CJ about it yet?” my mother asked when we were finally in the car on the way to Frances’s house.

CJ was my ex-husband. He’d been in my older brother’s class at Issaquah Catholic. It was of the utmost importance to my mother that CJ attend the ceremony so that all the nuns would think we were still happily married.

“I haven’t,” I admitted, squinting like a bad dog caught tearing up a couch cushion. “But I will.”

My mother pulled into a Chevron station abruptly, failing to signal, and someone smacked a horn, a short burst of indignation. My mother put her hand up in the rearview mirror and waved apologetically. “Can you please take care of it this week, Ruth? I’ve been asking for months. It’s not like you are so busy.”

My mother had a way of making me feel like I was both too old to behave the way I did and also too young to be trusted out of her sight. “I promise.”

“And please apologize to Martha on our behalf and tell her we are so sorry about this.”

Martha. My ex-husband’s new wife. I nodded dutifully, my eye on the time. The grief group was meeting in seven minutes, and we had half a tank of gas. There really was no reason we had to stop at that moment. In a small, penitent voice, I asked, “Is there any way you could fill up after you drop me off?”

My mother turned off the engine and heaved her door open. “I completely forgot that I told your brother I’d take the kids to the winter sale at Frederick’s tonight. Your nephew desperately needs a new coat.”

She was blushing violently when she got out of the car. Funny, for all the lies my mother expected me to tell, she could hardly stand to tell one herself.

I looked down at the container of meatballs in my lap. I’d wanted to cook the girls something sophisticated, something that wouldn’t be served by a cafeteria lady in a hairnet. Good Housekeeping had a recipe for salmon mousse canapés in last year’s holiday entertaining issue, but my mother had wrinkled her nose and said yuck when I told her what went in them. I’m not spending nine dollars on a nice piece of salmon just so you can turn it into mush. There was a pound of chuck in the freezer left over from Christmas; I was welcome to that. I’d sealed the meatballs in one container and some chopped parsley in another. I could at least impress the women by sprinkling fresh herbs over the dish. My father had taught me to finish a dish with something green. He’d happily moonlighted as the home ec instructor every time Mrs. Paulson had another baby. Cooking was one of my favorite hobbies, but it had died along with the only other person in my family who appreciated good food.

I sighed, full of pity for myself. Maybe I could freeze them for next week. The parsley wouldn’t keep, so I’d have to buy some more, but parsley was cheap. And I was sporting an especially vile blemish on my chin. I’d just started on a new medication, Acnotabs, that I’d seen advertised in that same issue of Good Housekeeping. “Now stop acne where it starts… inside your body.” I was supposed to start seeing an improvement in two to three weeks. Maybe by next week I could attend the grief group and not have to worry about finding a seat in the shadows. And certainly by the time my father’s ceremony rolled around, I’d be a brand-spanking-new version of myself. Everyone would see that I’d come a long way over the last few years, and maybe they’d stop looking at me like that. Like I was fragile but also frightening.