The Broken Girls

“Jamie, I’m at Idlewild. We’re going to need some police.”

He paused, surprised. She’d called his personal cell phone. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“They’ve found a body here.”

“Shit. Shit, Fee. Call nine-one-one.”

Fiona remembered that she’d used the wrong terminology in this case. “It isn’t a fresh body. It’s remains, definitely human, probably decades old. We’ll need a coroner, some police. But can it be quiet? It might be . . . an accident. She might have just fallen.”

“She?”

“Yes. The owners want it quiet until she’s identified and it’s sorted out. Can that be done?”

He paused for a second. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. We’re on our way.”

“Your help is admirable,” Anthony said as she hung up. “But futile.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

He put his icy hand over hers on the flashlight and aimed it at the back of the dead girl’s head. “Look at that,” he said. “Now tell me she fell.”

Fiona stared. Who are you? she thought. What happened? Who are you, and how did you get here?

Even after so many years, with the blood long gone, it was clear in the light. Beneath the strands of hair, the back of the girl’s head was smashed, a section of the skull nothing but shards of broken bone.

The day stretched long, over the cold light of afternoon and the early descent of evening. By six o’clock the crew on scene had set up lights beneath the two tents they worked in—one over the ruins of the well, the second to receive and photograph the body. The crew was small. Fiona had memories of crowds of people in the news footage after Deb’s body was found—uniformed cops pressing back rubberneckers, detectives and crime scene techs scurrying in and out, more uniformed cops spreading out to look for footprints. But this was different. There was a handful of people moving back and forth between the tents, talking as quietly as if they were working in a library. There were no rubberneckers except Fiona, who was sitting on a pile of broken stone from the well, sipping a hot cup of coffee. Anthony Eden was gone, probably to report to his mother, and the only uniform on the scene belonged to Jamie.

He exited the tent with the body in it and crossed the grass to sit next to her, wearing his heavy cop’s parka. His hair looked darker in the onset of dusk, his trim beard of lighter gold. “We’re almost done,” he said.

Fiona nodded and made room for him to sit next to her. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“It’s nothing. You’ve been sitting here all day. You must be freezing.”

“I’m fine.” Her toes were a little frigid in her hiking boots and her ass was numb, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t handle. She’d long ago put her camera back in her car, since pictures were out of the question. “Can you tell me anything?”

He stared at the lit tent and seemed to think it over. “Is this off the record?”

“Jamie, for God’s sake.”

“I know. I have to ask. It’s my job.”

She drew a thumbnail along the top of her coffee cup. “Fine. It’s off the record.”

“She was a teenager,” he said, appeased. “Fourteen, fifteen, thereabouts. Small for her age, but based on the bones, Dave Saunders is certain.”

“The cause of death?”

“It’s preliminary until the autopsy is done, but you saw her head. Saunders says a blow with something big and blunt, a rock or the end of a shovel.”

“She couldn’t have hit her head on the way down the well?”

“No. The bricks in the well are the wrong shape, the wrong size. Too smooth.”

She’d been expecting it, but still she felt something heavy in her stomach. Her glance wandered off through the trees toward the sports field, where Deb had lain. Two girls dead, four hundred feet apart. “How old is the body?”

“Based on the decomposition, at least forty years. According to Saunders, she’s reasonably well preserved because she’s been in the well, though not in water. The body is too old to test whether she was raped. No animals have been at her, and she’s been mostly protected from the elements. But she’s decomposed. She’s been there a long time.”

This girl had been here, long dead, curled inside the well, on the night Deb was murdered. And after Deb was dead and before her body was found on the field, Idlewild had been the resting site for two murdered girls, decades apart. There was no way Fiona could be impartial about this, no way she could avoid crossing the lines. “I’ve seen pictures of the Idlewild uniforms, and they were navy blue and green. She isn’t wearing a uniform, is she?”

Jamie said nothing, and Fiona turned and looked at him. He was still staring at the tent where the body lay, his jaw set.

“What?” Fiona said. “You know something else. What is it?”

He paused. “We can’t be sure. And if I tell you, you have to stay out of it at least until we notify the family.”

Fiona felt the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “You’ve identified her?”

“There’s a tag sewn into the collar of her blouse,” he said. “A name tag.”

“Tell me.”

“Fee, you’ve been on the other side of this. If she has family, and the slightest thing is handled wrong, we make this worse.”

Fiona knew. She remembered the day the cops had knocked on their door, the minute she had seen their faces and known that Deb wasn’t missing anymore. She pulled a notebook and pen from her back jeans pocket. “Just tell me.”

“I’m warning you: don’t go digging. Give us a few days at least. This is a police investigation.”

“I know.” Fiona stared at him, waiting. “I know. Jamie. Tell me.”

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Sonia Gallipeau,” he said. “I don’t recognize the name—I don’t think it’s a local family. She may have been a student from away. It doesn’t ring a bell for me, any missing girl with that name, but I already have Harvey digging into the files back at the station. He’ll call me any minute. And we don’t even have confirmation that this girl is Sonia Gallipeau—she could just be wearing Sonia’s blouse. She could have stolen or borrowed it, or bought it secondhand.”

Fiona scribbled the name down in her notebook. “I’ll do my own search,” she said, holding up a hand before he could speak. “Just on the Internet. No phone calls. And I’ll ask Dad.”

Jamie’s mouth was open to speak, but he thought better of it and closed it. He might not like it, but he was smart enough not to turn down help from Malcolm if it could aid the case. “I want to know what he says. And what you find.”

“I’ll come by later.” She pocketed the notebook and pen, then flung an arm around his neck, leaning in close to his ear, feeling the tension in his shoulders even through his parka. “I’ll bring takeout, and we’ll trade. Quid pro quo. How does that sound?”

He still stared ahead, but a red flush moved up his cheeks. “You do this to me,” he said, shaking his head. “Fuck it. Bring beer.”

“I will.” She could have kissed him, but she didn’t. Instead, she got up and headed back over the muddy track toward her car, without looking back to see if he was watching.

Chapter 8

Sonia

Barrons, Vermont

October 1950

Books were her salvation. As a child, she’d had a shelf of childhood favorites that she loved enough to read over and over again. But after, during the hospital stay and the long voyage and the cold days in Idlewild’s dreary hallways, books became more than mere stories. They were her lifeline, the pages as essential to her as breathing.

Even now, sitting in class, Sonia touched her finger to the yellowed pages of her Latin textbook, as if its texture could calm her. At the blackboard, Mrs. Peabody droned on about verb conjugation as the ten girls in the room fidgeted in their chairs. Charlotte Kankle peeled at a hangnail on her thumb, watching from under her angry lowered brows as a bead of blood came out. Cindy Benshaw shifted in her chair and scratched her ear, the motion of her arm revealing the circles of sweat stains on the armpit of her blouse, like the rings of an old tree. It was cold outside, but it was suffocating in here, the room airless, the smells of unwashed girls’ bodies and chalk dust trapped in a bubble.