Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

“He was the creepy gym teacher who kept accidentally walking into the girls’ locker room when we were changing. And now, you could say that he’s nothing but a cheap imitation of Clay Morrow. You’d think it was the opposite since Dean was older, but it’s hard to convey how malicious Clay’s influence was. Dean studied at the altar.” Melody’s tone changed at the mention of her daughter’s tormentor. “At least Clay had charm. Dean is so primitive. He only cares about control. He is a wraith from the bowels of hell.”

“Can we go back to something you said earlier?” Andrea gently steered her away from Wexler. “What was Emily’s reaction when she realized she’d been raped? She must’ve been devastated.”

“She was,” Melody said. “My mother was there when Emily found out she was pregnant. She said it was one of the most painful moments of her life. Emily was in shock. Mother said it wasn’t the pregnancy at that point so much as the betrayal that cut Emily to the bone. The clique was her life. To have one of them do such an unthinkable thing to her was unimaginable. She was obsessed with trying to find out who did it. She called it her Columbo Investigation.”

“After the TV detective?”

“Peter Falk. Amazing actor,” Melody said. “Emily approached the investigation very seriously. I told you she was a nerd. She did proper interviews with people. She wrote everything down. I would see her in class or in the hall poring over her notes, trying to see if she had missed anything. I suppose it was like a diary. She was never without it. I felt so sorry for her. Asking so many questions was probably what got her killed.”

Andrea wondered if pieces of Emily’s Columbo Investigation had made it into teenage Judith’s collage. The stray lines felt like the sort of affirmations a geeky young girl might write to bolster herself—

Keep working it out! You will find the truth!!!

She asked Melody, “Which people did Emily investigate?”

Melody shrugged. “I’m assuming the same people Jack’s dad investigated.”

Clayton Morrow. Jack Stilton. Bernard Fontaine. Eric Blakely. Dean Wexler.

Andrea asked, “How does what happened to Emily at the party tie into what’s happening at the farm? Is Dean drugging the girls?”

“They don’t have to be drugged. Obviously, the girls will do whatever Dean wants.” Melody shrugged again. “It’s cunning, isn’t it? The way they instinctively choose the girls who will be vulnerable to their manipulations. Nardo screens them. I remember Star being very excited about her interviews. I blame myself for not noticing that she was losing too much weight. I mean, you never say that to a woman, do you—you’re too thin?”

Andrea shook her head, though she knew that Melody wasn’t looking for validation.

“I stopped seeing her after she moved to the farm. That’s part of the pattern. Dean isolates them from their families. First, there are no in-person visits, then only phone calls, then all you get is the occasional email, then nothing. Every parent I speak with tells the exact same story. And looking back, it’s the same thing Clay did with the clique. They were completely isolated. All but Emily, but her life was incredibly narrow because of him.”

Andrea had to ask, “Do you know about the ankle bracelets the girls wear at the farm?”

“Yes.” Melody took a quick breath. The bracelet was clearly difficult for her to talk about. “I saw it a few days after Star stopped communicating with me. I drove over there and pounded on the door and demanded that they let me see her. She was so proud of the anklet, as if she’d been initiated into something special. You have to earn one, apparently. As if Dean’s still a teacher handing out ‘A’s to his favorite students. I don’t understand it.”

Andrea couldn’t understand it, either. “You said he acted creepy in school. Where does the weight thing come in?”

“He was always into health food and ultra-marathon running and all that stuff that everyone thought was crazy in the eighties. I remember him being particularly cruel to the overweight girl in class, but of course everyone was cruel to her. Groups of kids can be sadistic by nature. But he singled her out. He would leave diet plans on her desk. He would make noises with his mouth when she walked.” Melody shook her head in disgust. “In any case, it’s not hard to draw a direct line from past Dean to the current Dean’s anorexia fetish. And of course sex is sex. It makes sense to blend his two passions.”

“What about Star?” Andrea asked. “What’s she getting out of this?”

“I asked her once, back when she would still speak to me, and she gave me some bullshit drivel about love,” Melody said. “The thing that I learned from the eating disorder specialist is that with anorexia, starvation can become addictive, and it can act like a hallucinogenic on the system. At first, you go into dreamlike trances where you’re highly suggestible. Then eventually, your brain will shut down to conserve energy. You lose—”

Melody’s hand went to her mouth. Tears wept from her eyes again. She was clearly thinking about her own daughter.

“Take your time,” Andrea said.

Several seconds passed before Melody slowly dropped away her hand. “You lose consciousness. That’s what happens when you deprive your body of basic nutrition. You pass out. You’re completely senseless.”

Andrea repeated Ricky’s words. “‘The shit that’s happening at the farm is the same shit that happened to Emily Vaughn forty years ago.’”

“Yes, you could say that Emily was senseless when she was raped,” Melody said. “You know, when I first realized what was happening to Star, all I could think was, what kind of twisted fucker wants to have sex with a woman who’s for all practical purposes in a coma?”

Clayton Morrow. Jack Stilton. Bernard Fontaine. Eric Blakely. Dean Wexler.

“It’s almost a form of necrophilia, isn’t it? The woman has no idea what the man is doing. She’s completely helpless the entire time. She can’t tell him to stop or even tell him to keep going if it feels good. She’s an inanimate series of holes. She might as well be a mannequin. What kind of sadist gets off on that?”

Andrea looked down at her left hand. The bruise had started to show. There was a dark band around her wrist that had been left by Dean Wexler’s thumb and fingers.

“Oliver!”

They both jumped when Bible slammed open the front door.