Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

Everybody in this damn town was an artist.

“Mr. Wexler,” Bible said. “Thanks for talking with us.”

Wexler crossed his arms. “That bitch tell you what she did to me?”

“My partner told me that you tried to assault a federal law enforcement officer,” Bible said. “So do you want me to arrest you or do you wanna sit down and have a chat like we planned?”

There was a moment of silence while Wexler weighed his options. He was saved a response by a woman appearing from the hallway. Clearly, she hadn’t heard them. She was reaching back to pin up her hair. She froze at the sight of them, startled by the strangers in the room.

Andrea was startled to see the woman.

She was older than the others, possibly in her late twenties. Same yellow dress. Same long, dark hair. Same bare feet. Same heartbreaking thinness. The contours of her skull were visible under her skin. Her eyes were two round orbs pressing against her bruised-looking eyelids. The band around her ankle was so tight that the skin had been rubbed raw.

“Dean?” she asked, her voice trilling up in fear.

“It’s all right, Star.” Wexler had taken some of the gruffness out of his tone. “Keep working. None of this has anything to do with you.”

Star didn’t press for an explanation. She looked at no one, spoke to no one, as she slowly walked into the kitchen. Her movements were robotic as she reached up to open a cabinet door. Andrea realized that there was a slight pause after every action. Take out the flour. Stop. Place it on the counter. Stop. Take out the granulated sugar. Stop. Set it down. Stop. Then yeast. Stop.

“Dean?” Stilton unsnapped his shirt pocket and found his spiral notebook and pen. “Are we going to do this or what?”

“Sit down,” Wexler said. “Let’s get this the hell over with.”

There was only the couch and the chair. Bible and Stilton were both big guys and Wexler was clearly going to take the chair. Andrea spared them any notions of chivalry and walked over to the kitchen. She pushed herself up on the single leather stool under the island. She could hear Star working behind her, but Andrea didn’t turn around or acknowledge her presence. She gathered by the way Wexler was staring at her that this was exactly what he wanted.

“All right.” Bible nodded to Stilton as they took their separate corners on the couch. They had clearly worked out who was going to take the lead. “Chief?”

Stilton said, “Dean, tell me about this poor girl in the field.”

Andrea heard a glass being set down heavily behind her.

“I’ve told you all I know,” Wexler said. “And that’s not even what I really know because I told you I don’t recall ever having met her.”

“Alice Poulsen,” Bible supplied.

Star stopped moving. Andrea could feel the tension building behind her, but she still did not turn around.

“That appears to be the victim’s name,” Bible said. “Alice Poulsen.”

“Victim?” Wexler gave a familiar dismissive grunt. “She killed herself. That has nothing to do with me.”

“And the state of her?” Bible was mindful that Star was in the same bad way. “What about that?”

“What state of her? She was a beautiful young woman, from what I could see.” Wexler showed his teeth. “They’re all adults. They can do whatever they like. I’m not even their employer. I’ve got no idea what the volunteers get up to when they’re on their own time.”

Bible adjusted his approach. “How does the volunteer system work? I guess you have a website or something?”

Wexler seemed to gauge whether or not to answer before finally nodding. “We get applications through the site. Most of them are international. America’s gen X-Y-Z, whatever they’re calling themselves, they’re all too lazy to do this kind of work.”

“I hear ya,” Bible said. “Must’ve been hard starting a place like this from scratch.”

“I inherited some money from a distant relative. I used it to buy the land.” Wexler rubbed his mouth with his fingers. His eyes kept nervously finding Star. “Actually, I started the entire organic-hydroponic movement right here in Delaware. We’ve been using microbial activity to create nutrients from the beginning. No one else was doing it. Not even on the West Coast.”

“Hydroponic.” Bible seemed to let the word rest in his mouth. He was trying to get Wexler’s guard down. “I thought that used water and—”

“Yes, in the beginning. Thanks to global warming we can cultivate in the fields. Hell, give it another ten years and we could probably grow oranges here.” His hands gripped the arms of his chair. He stopped looking at Star. “When I started out, the whole town thought I was crazy. They said I couldn’t get the beans to grow or find the workers to make it succeed. It took me twenty years before this place turned a real profit. Look at it now.”

Andrea noticed that the grunting had fallen away. Dean Wexler was a hell of a lot more articulate when he was talking about how smart he was.