The Girl In The Woods Part 3

"Thank you." Diana worked her neck one way and then the other, trying to get the kinks out. "Is she okay? Did she have a good night?"

"She always has a good night," the nurse said. "The stuff they give them sends them off to Never-land."

"I brought her candy bars," Diana said.

The nurse smiled. "I found them, honey. I put them in the drawer at the nurse's station. She'll be happy to have them when she wakes up."

Diana stood up and moved to her mother's bed. She rubbed her mother's exposed forearm and squeezed her hand. "I'll be on my way."

"How did you sleep?" the nurse said.

"Pretty well for being in a chair." The nurse raised her eyebrows, and only then did the images from her dreams come back in tatters and fragments. Rachel's face...Rachel trying to speak...Kay Todd and her cigarettes. "Why do you ask?"

The nurse raised her eyebrows again. "You call that thrashing and moaning 'pretty well'," she said. "I call it having more trouble than just sleeping in a chair."

On the drive home, the images from her dreams pecked at Diana's subconscious. They didn't step into the open, didn't crystallize into anything three-dimensional that she could remember or a.n.a.lyze. Instead, the images nuzzled and scratched, almost as though they were toying with her, trying to provoke her into some response, although Diana couldn't imagine what that response might be besides unease or disquiet.

She made sure she kept her eyes on the road. The sun was climbing the sky, the horizon red. The flat farmland stretched away into the distance, and near the tree lines, low-lying fog gathered, wispy as spirits, something ghostly that remained from the night before. Like her dreams. During the night, she had seen the face of a woman. From what she could remember, it didn't look like Rachel, but with the strangeness and certainty of dream logic, she knew that it was her sister. The dream image showed Rachel not as the skinny, swaggering fifteen-year-old who had disappeared from her life, but rather as an adult, a fully-grown, mature woman, one whom Diana had never seen before.

And this woman opened her mouth, and she spoke to Diana in the dream.

But no sound came out. Nothing. A split second of moving, noiseless lips, and then she was gone, lost to the night and the darkness.

Diana shuddered, turned the heat up higher against the morning chill. Which was worse? she wondered. The dreams that came during sleep or the visions that came when she was awake? She couldn't formulate a clear answer.

It had been at least a year since she had dreamed of Rachel. In the long days and weeks after Rachel's disappearance, Diana dreamed of her sister nearly every night. She saw her face, pleading for help. She saw a grave-her sister's grave-covered with freshly turned earth. But the dreams had faded along with any hope she had of ever finding her sister alive. Her mother declined, and any spare energy that Diana had to give to someone else went to the care and eventual placement of her mother in Vienna Woods.

Kay Todd had brought all of that back.

Diana had dreamed about her, too. And she remembered the dreams about Kay Todd with much more clarity. She saw her weathered, leathery face, her stumpy teeth, and in the dreams-and even awake-the face seemed like a threatening, grinning mask, and in the car, alone, in the new light of the day, Diana felt an icy touch climb up her spine, and she checked the rearview mirror to make sure she was alone and not being watched by that very same face.

But not only was the car empty so early in the morning, the road was empty, too, and Diana traveled the open distance between Leesburg and New Cambridge like someone walking down a dark street at night, listening for footsteps or pursuit. She accelerated, hoping to get back to town even faster.

She couldn't know anything, could she? Diana thought. She's just f.u.c.king with me, right?

The entire ride home Diana tried but could never quite convince herself of the fact that Kay Todd was just another crazy, just another lonely and disturbed voice crying out in the wilderness of the world.

CHAPTER SIX.

When Diana turned the key and stepped into her small apartment, it felt like she hadn't been home in months, even though she had last walked out the door about sixteen hours earlier, out the door and into the meeting with Kay Todd. But the apartment felt strange when she entered. The blinds were drawn, the lights off, and her shabby furniture and the scattered belongings around the room looked as though they were someone else's property. She moved quickly through the room, flipping on lamps and overhead lights.

She went to the bathroom and turned on the shower. She felt greasy from having slept in her clothes. While the water warmed-always a long process-Diana checked herself in the mirror. She thought she looked thinner and likely older than her twenty-four years. Her eyes were a little red around the edges, and her skin looked blotchy and pale.

Sleeping in a mental hospital chair will do that to you.

She quickly brushed her hair, untangling the knots, then shed her clothes and climbed into the shower. The water felt therapeutic. She took her time-a luxury she could afford ever since she quit her job-and let the water push and press against her body, washing away all remnants of Vienna Woods, the smell of decay, the closed-in, stuffy atmosphere.

The feel of her mother's palm against her face in the day room.

Diana closed her eyes tight, let the water do its work. First Kay Todd with the cigarettes, then her mother with the slap. It hadn't been a good day for dealing with mother-types. But she couldn't remember the last good day she'd had for dealing with her mother. When would that have been? Before Rachel disappeared? Before Dad left?

Diana stopped the water and stepped out into the steamy bathroom, toweling off and then wearing a different towel around her body as she moved through the apartment. It was cool outside of the bathroom, and her skin p.r.i.c.kled into gooseflesh as she walked to the bedroom where she kept her laptop. She logged on, called up the web browser and clicked on her bookmarks bar.

There was no shortage of sites devoted to missing persons on the internet. There were non-profits run by organizations, sites run by parents turned advocates, and sites devoted to individuals who had disappeared or run away, usually maintained by a family member or friend and full of heartfelt pleas and grainy snapshots. Diana went to one of the national missing persons clearinghouses and typed in the name "Margaret Todd." Nothing came back, so she tried "Margie Todd." Again nothing, which didn't really surprise her. Diana had learned that people who disappeared prior to the internet age were much less likely to show up on any of the big missing persons sites. Someone had to post the information, and in the case of Margie Todd, that burden would have fallen on Kay. Diana didn't take her to be much of an internet user.

Diana went back to the search feature and typed Rachel's name. By this time, Diana had seen the details of her sister's profile so many times that she knew them by heart, right down to the pathetic little narrative-one paragraph long-that gave the details of the night Rachel disappeared: Fifteen-year-old Rachel Janet Greene left her house sometime between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. on the morning of August 22nd, 2004. She had been at a party the night before and had been involved in an altercation with another girl. A friend dropped Rachel at her house at approximately 1:30 am. Rachel was seen by her older sister at this time. In the morning, when her family went into Rachel's room to check on her, she was gone. A neighbor reported seeing Rachel walking away from the house some time during the night, but couldn't be certain of the time. It is not clear whether Rachel Greene met with foul play or disappeared of her own accord. Her family has not heard from her since that night.

Diana stared at the photo of Rachel that appeared on the screen. It was a high school portrait, taken during Rachel's freshman year, about a year before she disappeared. She looked wide-eyed and somewhat innocent, her hair straight and past her shoulders, her teeth slightly crooked since they couldn't afford braces. Diana ran her tongue over her own teeth, which were even worse than her sister's.

The photo and the narrative told so little of the story. They didn't reveal the depths of her sister's unhappiness and rebellion, the volume of the fights she'd had with her mother and Diana. They didn't explain the long nights waiting and pacing, the nights in bed staring at the ceiling, the gap left in the center of their lives that seemed to expand like a black hole, gobbling up large chunks of matter and nearly swallowing her mother whole. And Diana knew that if Rachel's entry didn't reveal the whole story of her life and disappearance-and how could it?-then none of the thousands of missing persons entries did.

And she knew that Kay Todd wasn't telling her everything. Not even close.

Diana clicked on another bookmark at the top of the page. This one took her to her own site, the one she had created in the weeks after Rachel's disappearance. It was a low-budget production, as most of them were, and featured more photos and information than the national sites. But not much more about the actual disappearance since Diana didn't really know anything else. Over the past few years, Diana had given serious thought to shutting it down, not renewing the domain name fee and letting the whole thing fade away into the vast reaches of cybers.p.a.ce.

But she just couldn't bring herself to do it.

The website also had an added benefit. It allowed Diana to set up an email account, a tipline through which people could send information about the case to her, and then she could pa.s.s it along to the police if it seemed at all important. In the first months after Rachel disappeared, the tips came in fast and furious, and they helped Diana and her mother reconstruct the details of the last night Rachel was known to be alive. After a few months, the emails turned weird, as Diana expected they would. People claimed to have "seen" Rachel in every part of the country, doing everything imaginable. Working as a waitress at a truck stop in Utah. Working as a stripper in Texas. Diana tried not to let her hopes rise with each of these emails, but she couldn't help herself. A little thrill rose in her chest at each new piece of information-no matter how far-fetched-and she asked the police about it only to be told that there was no sense in checking these "leads" out. A few times she considered getting in her car and going herself, driving all the way to some out-of-the-way restaurant or strip club to lay eyes on the woman who might just be her sister, but when she wrote back to the people who provided the initial information, no response of any merit came. Just a strange joke, a strange sense of humor. Move along, nothing to see here.

So why did she think Kay Todd was different?

Maybe it was the ferocity of the woman, the way she had acted when Diana grabbed her arm. She would have burned Diana if she had to. Diana had dealt with violent, desperate people on the job, knew the look of someone backed into a corner and willing to fight because they had nothing left to lose. That's what Kay Todd looked like in the Courthouse Diner.

Diana needed help. She needed another set of eyes to look at the situation and offer an opinion. She checked the email account a.s.sociated with her sister's website. Nothing. She logged off and stood up, began to pull underwear, bra and socks out of her drawer. She didn't know many people in New Cambridge, and those she did know were all on the police force. Most people would see that as a good thing given the circ.u.mstances, but Diana wasn't so sure. She hadn't been back there since she quit, hadn't talked to most of them since she turned in her badge and uniform. She didn't like going back to places she had already left, didn't like the feeling of covering ground that had already receded into the past.

She pulled on a pair of jeans and a long-sleeved white T-shirt. While she laced her sneakers, she thought about who she might see and what it would be like. She stood up from the side of the bed, but didn't leave the room. Her shoulders slumped a little.

Who are you kidding?

She knew there was only one person she didn't want to see.

And she knew he was the person she had to start with.

CHAPTER SEVEN.

Diana parked in a visitor's s.p.a.ce behind the boxy, limestone building that housed the New Cambridge Police Department. She could have walked, since the station sat only six blocks north of her apartment, but thinking about walking up to the building and then having to flee on foot made Diana feel exposed. The car provided a certain amount of cover, as well as the ability to make a fast getaway. And there was something else, too, something that lurked beneath the surface and made her feel even more uneasy. Diana didn't feel comfortable walking the streets of New Cambridge the way she would have in the past. Her night of bad dreams as well as the visit from Kay Todd had conspired to make New Cambridge seem like a slightly alien, slightly unsafe place all of a sudden, as though the town had been tipped on its axis a few degrees, and nothing really seemed the same.

She saw when she pulled in that Captain Berding's car was in its a.s.signed spot, which meant he was in the office. Diana sat in her car for a long moment without turning the ignition off. She knew she could still just back away and leave. She had meant to spend the day looking for a new job and exploring the possibility of returning to school part-time for the spring semester. She knew she could fill her days with any manner of small ch.o.r.es, the kinds of things that everyone else did in the process of constructing what they called their lives. Why did she have this compulsion to make hers about something more?

Oh, grow up, she thought. It was only s.e.x.

At least, that's what he thought of it.

She turned the car off, took a deep breath like someone about to jump into a deep pool of water, and climbed out.

Diana went in the back entrance, the one used mostly by employees, and the one that afforded the most direct access to the Captain's office. Once inside, she was greeted by the familiar sounds of the station, the clattering of keyboards, the ringing of phones. She recognized the odor of the endlessly brewing coffee and the cheap floor polish the cleaning crew applied at night. Diana reached up and rapped lightly on the open door.

"Yeah?" Dan said, then he looked up through the reading gla.s.ses perched on the end of his nose. "Oh. Diana."

"Got a minute?"

He took the gla.s.ses off. "Is something wrong?"

"No. I just needed to ask you about something." Diana felt the need to clarify. "It's professional, not personal."

"I'm not worried about that," he said and waved her into his office.

Diana considered closing the door but thought better of it. That might seem too weird. Too intimate? But if he wasn't worried about it, why should she be...

She took a seat on the near side of the desk. Behind Dan, the wall was decorated with plaques and ribbons attesting to his thirty years of service to the citizens of New Cambridge. An American flag stood in the corner mounted on a wooden pole, and in the other corner, on top of a metal filing cabinet, there was a picture of Dan with his wife and two sons. The room smelled like a combination of manly aftershaves: Canoe and Brut and Old Spice.

"So?" he said.

"I'm fine," Diana said. "How are you?"

He sighed. "I have a meeting at the courthouse in fifteen minutes. I don't have much time." He was a broad-shouldered man a few inches over six feet tall, with just a hint of thickness through his middle. His dark hair, with a sprinkling of gray that added a layer of dignity, was parted to the side and perfectly in place. His face had been neatly shaved that morning as it was every morning, and the creases in his uniform sleeves looked like they could slice paper. He gave the impression that in his fifty-three years on the earth he had never once been at a loss for what to do or say. He looked like a man born to command. "So, what can I do for you?"

"Okay. Have you ever heard of a girl named Margie Todd? Margaret Todd would be her full name."

For just a moment, and almost imperceptibly, Dan's face altered. He moved his head back about an inch, and the mask of professional composure he always wore-what Diana thought of as his "cop face"-was replaced by a look of genuine surprise. Then the professional look quickly returned. "Why do you ask about that?"

"So you have heard of her?

"Sure. She's the girl who ran off a number of years ago. Why do you ask?"

"You think she ran away?"

"In the absence of any other information, yes. You still haven't answered my question."

Diana nodded. Fair enough. "I ran into her mother."

Dan's face twisted, like he had eaten something sour. "That crazy old lady. She's still kicking?"

"Barely. She has terminal lung cancer."

"Oh." He didn't seem bothered by the news.

"She wants to know what happened to her daughter before she gets her ticket punched."

"And she came to you for help? Why?"

Diana looked down at her hands, which were clutching the armrests on her chair.

"Diana?"

"She says she'll tell me where Rachel is if I find out what happened to her daughter."

"Aw, Diana. And you fell for something like that?"

"Don't patronize me, Dan." Diana felt her cheeks flush. "I know how to read people. She seemed like she really knew something."

Diana's voice must have gone higher than she intended. Dan held his hands out in a placating gesture, then stood up and came around to her side of the desk and shut the office door. Only a few people in New Cambridge knew about Rachel's disappearance, and of them, Dan certainly knew the most. When he sat down again, his face showed something that might have been compa.s.sion and might have been pity. Diana couldn't decide which.

"I'm not questioning your judgment," he said. "I am suggesting that it might be clouded by your desire-"

"Dan-"

He held up his hand again. "...clouded by your desire to find your sister as well as your own guilt over what might have happened to her. It's impossible for this woman to know anything about your sister. Think about it for a minute. How could she?"

Diana didn't respond. She knew Kay couldn't know anything worthwhile. In the cold light of Dan's office, through his eyes, Kay Todd's promise did seem far-fetched and ridiculous. "I don't know," Diana said finally. "She didn't say."

"How are you, Diana? Really?"

"I'm fine. Really."

"I've meant to call or email to check in..."

"But Janine wouldn't like that very much, would she?"

Dan stiffened, and Diana knew she had crossed a line by saying his wife's name out loud. She wasn't sure she had ever spoken it before. Certainly not in Dan's presence. And ultimately, he decided to ignore her transgression and move on.

"I suggest you not get tangled up in helping this Todd woman. She isn't right, and this case is ancient history. You don't want to go poking around into things like that. The girl's long gone, and you have better things to do with your life."

"And you're qualified to know that?"

He leaned back. "You're right. I can't tell you what to do. But you came here asking me about the case..."

"And that's all you know about it? She's long gone, presumed to be a runaway, and her mother's a kook. You were on the force then. You must remember something."

Dan took a deep breath. He brought his right hand up and rubbed his chin, pinching the loose skin that hung there between his thumb and forefinger.