Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

Andrea stared at the deep lines in her face. The judge was just a person who knew how to push buttons. She was not so much indomitable as a Great Oz standing behind a curtain.

Esther prompted, “Are you going to tell me your motivations?”

Andrea channeled her cadet training. “I want to be the best Marshal I can be, ma’am.”

“And you’ve chosen the glamorous world of Judicial Security to hang your hat on?”

“I’m trying it out, ma’am. The USMS allows you to—”

“I know the rotation procedure,” Esther interrupted. “I’ve been around almost as long as the Marshals themselves.”

Andrea tried to break her stride. “I didn’t realize that you were a Washington appointee.”

Esther didn’t smile. “Reagan put me on the bench. I suppose you have no idea who Ronald Reagan was or what he meant to this country.”

Andrea couldn’t stop Laura’s words from coming out of her mouth. “I know that it’s fitting that Reagan died of pneumonia since so many of the homeless people and the people with AIDS that he ignored died of the same thing.”

Esther’s eyes locked onto her like two cannons.

Now Andrea remembered the value of keeping her idiotic mouth shut. The judge did have some actual power here. She could demand Andrea be taken off her detail. She could screw up Andrea’s career before it even got off the ground. Andrea wracked her brain for a way to dig herself out of this hole, but all she could hear was the same word machine-gunning around her skull—

Fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck-fuck.

“Well.” Esther’s lips were so pursed that every line around her mouth seemed to be dedicated to that single purpose. “That was very funny, actually.”

Andrea wasn’t looking at a woman who had found something funny.

“I’ll let you get to work.” Esther stood from the table, so Andrea did, too. “I imagine Cat’s in the library. That’s at the far end of the hall on the left. Don’t go up the stairs unless it’s life or death. I understand you’ve got a job to do, but Dr. Vaughn and I expect to retain a modicum of privacy. Understood?”

“Yes.”

Her spine turned to steel again. “Yes?”

Andrea caught the warning loud and clear this time. “Yes, ma’am.”

Andrea had slept so restlessly in the crappy bed at the Beach, Please Motel that she woke up feeling hungover. Twelve hours of walking the darkened Vaughn estate was akin to trying to find Waldo inside Dante’s first circle of hell. All she could do now was stare at the ceiling and pray that her headache would pass. She’d had a terrifying dream about sitting at the judge’s kitchen table while a large spider unfurled its long, hairy arms. Andrea had been incapable of moving as the spider pulled her toward its wet, multi-fanged monster mouth. She’d jerked herself awake trying to scramble away. And then she’d slipped off the edge of the mattress and hit the floor.

Day two of her Marshal career was already off to a fantastic start.

Her iPhone dinged with a text. Andrea ignored it, assuming her mother had found another jacket in Oregon. She turned up the music she’d been listening to. Andrea had downloaded all of the songs from Emily’s mixtape. She’d heard of some of the artists, but was mortified that her favorite was by a grown woman who went by the name Juice Newton.

Andrea closed her eyes, but she couldn’t force herself back to sleep. Judith’s collages floated into her brain. The newer one with the death threats against the judge, the earlier one that a teenage Judith had used to try to work through her conflicted feelings about her mother. The mixtape. The stray words—Keep working it out! You will find the truth!!! The group photo of Emily with three of the men who would later become prime suspects in her murder.

Chief Bob Stilton’s notes stated that the attack had most likely occurred between 6:00 and 6:30 p.m. He hadn’t explained how he had established that window, but Andrea had no other choice but to accept it. The weapon used to beat Emily was a slat from a shipping pallet in the alley, so it could be assumed that the attack was probably opportunistic or spur-of-the-moment rather than planned. Which tracked, because the attacker had obviously been furious.

Stilton had assumed that Emily’s body had been removed directly after the attack, but Andrea wasn’t so sure. The man’s own diagram showed the alley as forty-one feet long and about three feet wide. Both buildings were approximately fifteen feet tall with one-foot-wide overhangs. Even in broad daylight, there were probably a lot of shadows you could hide a body in, not to mention that the three large, black plastic bags of trash from the diner provided excellent camouflage.

Andrea had looked up the meteorological data for that Saturday evening. Clear with no chance of rain. The sun had set around 7:42 p.m. If Andrea was trying to dispose of a body, she definitely would have waited until it was dark.

Which gave every suspect on her list plenty of time to be seen at the prom before returning to dispose of the body. No one had an iron-clad alibi. Even Eric Blakely, who admitted to being the last known person to talk to Emily that night, had corroborating witnesses. Two classmates claimed that they had seen him inside the gym during the timeframe of the attack.

Medical records recorded that Emily had weighed 152 pounds in the seventh month of her pregnancy. Lifting that much weight would not have been impossible for an eighteen-year-old boy, but it would not have been easy. Automobiles were forbidden on the boardwalk. The wooden piers probably would not support the weight of a car. The suspect would’ve parked on Beach Road. Then he’d have to go to the end of the alley, pick up Emily, then walk back to the car and put her in his trunk.

From there, it was a fifteen-minute drive to Skeeter’s Grill where, as the statement from the boy who had found Emily in the Dumpster reported, most of the staff left around ten even though the restaurant closed at midnight. He had called in the body at 11:58 that evening. Emily was naked, probably because her teal satin prom dress would have been easily identifiable, or maybe because the killer was worried about leaving evidence. Either way, Emily’s face had been unrecognizable. She’d had no identification on her, no purse or wallet. One paramedic had pronounced her dead, but then another had seen her hand move and started CPR.

And then seven weeks later, Judith Rose had been removed from her body.

Andrea rolled onto her side. Her brain had started buffering. There was not enough room to download all of this. She tapped her phone to check the time. She had missed a text from Mike at 8:32 this morning. Andrea felt a quiver in her heart, then another quiver somewhere else.