Little Girls Lost (11 page)

He turned Tyrone toward him and placed his other hand on Tyrone's other shoulder, so that he could look deeply into his eyes.

"A great philosopher once said, 'What doesn't kill me makes me stronger.' You, Tyrone, have been nearly killed a number of times. Your father did unspeakable things to you. Your mother didn't love you enough to protect you. You dropped out of school and went into the military, where they shipped you out to countries where you could see and do things so horrible that I don't even have words for them. And then, when you came back to this country and brought some of that violence and pain back with you, they caught you and they threw you into a cage full of animals even more vicious than you. A lesser man, a weaker man, would have been broken by any one of those things, let alone all of them. But you, Tyrone, you're too strong for that."

He held Tyrone's eyes and squeezed his shoulders.

"Do you see that, Tyrone? Do you see how powerful you've become?"

Tyrone nodded slowly. "I do see it. You've helped me see it, doctor. And now I feel like I can do anything."

Police detective was the sort of job that doesn't make you feel good very often. Sam could count on the fingers of one hand the times that he had felt proud that he had his job, that he carried his badge.

Of course, he didn't join the force to feel good about himself, but some days were better than others, and the days when being a detective made him feel like shit were a good sight worse than the days that did not.

Today, Sam felt like shit.
 

He stood to the side of the ceremony, not wanting to give the impression that he felt like he belonged there, as if he could mourn in the same way or with the same intensity that the dead girl's relatives could mourn. On the other hand, he didn't want to stand so far away that he gave an impression of distaste. It was an impossible task, to find the appropriate place to stand at a funeral to which he had not been invited, and which—if he had been better at his job—maybe would not have been necessary in the first place.

Sam stood with his hands in his pockets and welcomed the queasy feeling in his stomach. That was the feeling that reminded him that a monster was still out there. Sam was close now, he could feel it, but he wasn't close enough. The sea of black clothing that surrounded him reminded him of that. The ashen faces of Becky's parents were simply punctuation.
 

Well, he was here to do a job. Sam shoved his feelings down and scanned the crowd. He wasn't looking for anything specific, just something or someone who seemed out of place. Sam knew that he wasn't lucky enough to find the killer standing right next to him at the funeral of a girl he had killed, but he was nothing if not thorough and so he scanned the crowd for a face he didn't expect to find there.
 

You're out there, you bastard. You have another girl and she may be dead already, but I have your scent now. You son of a bitch, I have your scent, and I'm coming.

Tyrone stood beneath the shade of a tree and rested his hands against the cool iron fence that ringed the cemetery. He could see the ceremony off in the distance, and in his heart he joined the mourners there.

His eyes filled with tears at the thought of the pain they must be suffering.
 

Tyrone knew pain. The therapists all wanted to talk about his childhood, as if the things that happened to him when he was little were so much worse than what happened later. Tyrone knew the truth, though. He knew that a child is strong because he can forget. Tyrone remembered in a detached sort of way what his parents had done to him. When he played through the memories it was kind of like watching television. He saw what happened, but he didn't feel it. Whatever he might have felt at the time, the pain and the fear, those things were gone now, and emptiness took their place.

The more recent pains were the ones that kept Tyrone from sleeping at night. He remembered what had happened to his friends in Afghanistan. He wished he could forget, but he couldn't. Tyrone knew that he had done terrible things while on tour, and he knew that God would never let him forget those things. Memory was how he paid for his sins.

And Tyrone could remember prison, after they found out what he'd done. He'd tried to explain, but they wouldn't listen, they were too angry at him. And so they put him into a place where the worst people in the world lived. Tyrone carried scars from that time, some on the outside and some on the inside. Eventually he got out, but he knew better than anyone that, when you escape from hell, you bring a little piece of it with you.

He breathed a sigh of relief. At least Betsy was free now.
 

Tyrone could hear the sounds of mourning, even though he was far away. He knew how sad they must be, because Betsy was a pretty girl and everyone loves the pretty ones. He wanted to shout out to them, though. He wanted to wave his arms and yell, "Rejoice! She's free! She's safe now, and she's with God! No one can hurt her ever again!"

He remained silent. He would not be able to convince them, he knew that. It took Tyrone himself a long time before he understood what he now knew to be the truth. The world is a cold and terrible place. It is full of pain and fear and regret. Now that Betsy's spirit was free of her body, she had transcended that and ascended into glory. It was a wonderful thing! Tyrone looked forward to the day when Betsy's parents would understand.

It was a wonderful thing, the path he was on, and he was only getting started.

Sam's head was full of plans for the day ahead as he trudged back to his car, so it was some time before he noticed that someone was waiting for him.

It was the sickly yellow that caught his eye first. Sam had never understood why Bud chose that color. It looked like mustard when it was clean. When it was dirty, it looked like something crusty and unwell. He'd given his partner plenty of grief over it. "You know what's a good color for a car? Red. Black. Blue, sometimes. Not puke-mustard-yellow." And Bud would squint his eyes and drive on without a word.

Now his partner was leaning up against his ugly car and waiting for Sam with his arms crossed across his chest. Sam felt the blood drain out of his face. He almost turned around and walked back the way he came. Instead he took a deep breath and continued forward.

Bud opened his mouth to say something, but then closed it at the look in Sam's eyes. He cursed under his breath. "She told you."

It was by a bare margin that Sam restrained himself from punching Bud in the mouth. "She told me," he said instead.

Bud looked away. "Well, fuck."

"Yeah," Sam said. "Fuck."

Bud looked at him warily. "I'll bet you pretty much hate me now."

"What else am I going to feel, Bud?"

He nodded, looking down at his feet. "You should feel exactly that thing. Because I did it, and as much as you hate me, I hate myself even more."

Sam looked around, searching for the words. "Why?" was all he could manage.

It was a long time before Bud answered. "At first I thought I was in love with her. More likely I was just drunk and stupid. Now I'm just ashamed, and so, so sorry."

Sam shook his head, then began walking towards his car.

"Sam?" Bud called after him.

"I'm sorry too," he said in answer, then continued on in silence.

An interrogation room is specially designed to make a prisoner feel like he's teetering on the edge of the worst place in the world.

The flickering fluorescent lighting, the folding metal chair, the bare walls and the two-way mirror that says "We're watching you and you can't watch us," all of it was specifically designed to make whoever sat in that folding chair feel as if he had not a friend in the world.

Today the occupant of the chair was named Joey Saldana, and Sam watched through the mirror as two officers asked questions of him. The boy had been picked up at school earlier that day. He wasn't under arrest, he was simply here to answer a few questions. Sam could barely imagine how freaked out Joey must have been when the cops came for him, right in front of his friends. Or maybe he was excited; who can tell with kids today?

Joey didn't look excited. He looked scared, mostly, and was clearly looking forward to the moment when he would be allowed to leave.
 

"Could you tell us about your relationship with Pamela Wilson?" asked the paunchy officer sitting across from him.

"We're friends," Joey answered, visibly squirming. Sam thought that he wasn't a bad-looking kid. He had an athletic build, though he certainly wasn't muscular. He looked like someone's little brother.

"Do you remember the last time you saw her?"

Joey's eyes shifted up and to the left as he searched his memory. "Sure, it was in the hallway at school. We talked for a bit."

"When was that?"

"Thursday."

"What did you talk about?"

"Not much. School stuff."

"Did you ask her out?"

"What?" To Sam's eyes, Joey was visibly startled. He had probably been hoping that he was just one of many friends of Pamela who would sit in this chair and answer these questions. Now, for the first time, he was beginning to wonder whether he might be the only one the police were interested in.

"Did you ask her out on a date?"

"No, we weren't like that. We were just friends."

"Are you sure about that? We've talked to other people at the school, Joey. They all say that you liked Pamela. And that you asked Pamela out more than once."

Joey squirmed uncomfortably, looking everywhere in the room except at his interrogator. "I guess I did."

"Did you ask her out when you talked to her in the hall on Thursday?"

"Maybe."

"Did you or not?"

"I did."

"Did she shoot you down, Joey?" The interrogator's voice took on a friendly tone, but Sam could see that Joey was not fooled. He had no friends in this building.

"She didn't say yes, but I think she maybe...."

"Maybe what? Maybe you'd be able to convince her?"

"Yeah," Joey said uncertainly, as if searching for the answer that the interrogator would accept.

"How would you convince her, Joey? Maybe by following her to work? Maybe by confronting her when she came out of the homeless shelter?"

"What? No! I'd never do that!"

"What would you do, Joey? What would you do to a girl who shot you down again and again, in front of your friends? What would you do to a girl who made you look small like that?"

Joey grew white in the face and visibly restrained himself from leaping out of the chair. He looked down, gathered himself, and then looked the interrogator right in the eye. "I would never hurt Pamela. And she didn't shoot me down! She was way too nice for that. Even if she didn't want to do go out with you, she'd find a nice way of saying it, because she cared about how people felt. No one else gives a shit about anyone, but Pamela does. So you go out there, and you find whoever did this, and you fuck them up! Because Pamela deserved better."

Sam turned away from the mirror and exited the observation room. At one point he had thought that Joey might be the one behind all of this. He knew Pamela, he wanted to know her better, and as an athlete on the school football team he might have seen Jasmine as a cheerleader on the sideline and Betsy up in the stands. It was a thin thread, but one that for a time seemed promising.

Now Sam knew better. The kid sitting in that seat had nothing to do with the abductions or the killings. Sam crossed one name off his mental list and focused even tighter on the image of the gray van.

"Do you think about death, Pamela?"

Pamela turned her head away from the voice. Crouched in a corner of her cage, she tried to pretend that she couldn't hear him, that she was in some place far away.

"I ask because I think about death a lot, and I thought you might have some special insight. Seeing as how you'll be dead so soon."

Pamela hugged herself. Despite her best efforts she was shivering, and the tears were coming again.

"The people who used to live in Germany many centuries ago believed that, if you were about to die, you would see a crow. The bird was the spirit that would take your soul to the other side. Tell me, Pamela, have you seen any crows today? Of course, it would be hard to make out a black-feathered bird in a place like this. It is pretty dark."

At first Pamela had been afraid of the dark, sure. For the first few days or weeks—she had no idea how long she'd been locked in this cage—she was afraid of everything that might be out in that dark. Her mind had conjured up every shape fear could take, from rats and cockroaches to tentacled monsters. Pamela had spent a lot of time in the dark, though, and somewhere along the way it stopped seeming dark to her. Now this was simply her world.
 

"Do you want to go home, Pamela?"

This was different. This broke through the pattern of thoughts she played through her head to make it from one hour to the next. Her tormentor had threatened her more times than she could count, he had shouted and raged and spat at her, and he had spoken calmly and at length about all the horrible things he was planning to do to her before the end. But he had never offered her freedom before. The speaker was out of sight, in the shadows or around a corner, but she turned in the direction of the voice.

"You do want to go home, of course you do. There's no question about that. The question is, what are you willing to do for it? That's something I think about a lot: when you're staring death right in the face, how does it change things? If you're about to lose everything, is there anything that you won't give up in order to avoid it?"