The Lost Girl Read online

  He took long strides, moving away from the trees. It took me a few seconds to realize my snowmobile was rocketing right toward him. A straight collision path. Why didn’t he see me? Why didn’t he hear the grind and the roar?

  I grabbed the control and tried to turn.

  “Hey—!” I cried out. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong with me. I suddenly couldn’t move. My arms hung helplessly. I tried … tried … But I couldn’t swerve or spin away.

  I tried again. My hands slid off the control. My arms dropped to my sides. I felt too weak to hold them up.

  What is happening to me?

  I tried to jam the brake. My boot suddenly felt as if it weighed a thousand pounds. My leg refused to move. My foot went limp. I … I couldn’t stop the thing. And I couldn’t turn. I couldn’t swerve. Struggling, straining, I couldn’t move my arms or legs!

  The guy walked with his head down. His arms swung gently at his sides in the big overcoat. He didn’t hear me. He didn’t see me.

  I stared helplessly as my snowmobile rammed into him with a ferocious thud. Caught him in the side. Knocked him back hard. I watched his body leave the ground. The impact of the crash lifted him high in the air.

  I saw his eyes go wild, and I heard his scream. A scream I knew I’d hear for the rest of my life. A scream of pain and horror.

  My snowmobile darted past him. Suddenly, I could move again. My arms came back to life. I clenched and unclenched my fingers. Working. My legs were working, too.

  No time to think about what had paralyzed me. I killed the engine and slid to a stop in a tall snowdrift. I sat there breathing hard for a few seconds, my head spinning, shaking in disbelief.

  Then I stood up, struggling to shake off the dizziness, I turned. I saw the young man flat on his back in the snow, one leg tilted at an odd angle. His hood had come off and his long black hair was spread on the snow around his head.

  Lizzy was already down on her knees at his side. She bent over him, one hand on the young man’s chest. Lizzy turned when she saw me running toward her. Her eyes were wide with alarm.

  “He’s dead, Michael!” she screamed. “You killed him!”

  16.

  Her shrill cries rang in my ears. My head throbbed. I pressed my hands against my ears, trying to shut out her words.

  “He’s dead, Michael. You killed him!”

  A long moan escaped my throat. The others pulled into a line facing us. They remained on their snowmobiles as if frightened to climb off.

  Pepper hugged herself. I could see her whole body shuddering. Diego hunched forward, his expression grim. Kathryn and Gabe shielded their eyes to squint into the snow.

  “Michael, you plowed right into him. Didn’t you see him?” Gabe asked.

  “Why didn’t he see me?” I answered. I didn’t want to tell them how my arms and legs froze. I didn’t understand it. I’d never panicked like that before. “I … couldn’t stop,” I added. “I tried, but…”

  “We have to get out of here,” Diego said, glancing all around. “Before someone comes.”

  “Are you crazy?” Pepper cried. “Just leave him here?”

  “He’s dead. There’s nothing we can do for him,” Diego said. “Look. We can’t hang around. We had some beers, right? The police will bust us.”

  “But it was an accident,” I said.

  “They won’t care,” Diego insisted. “They’ll do a breath test or something and find out we were drinking.”

  “A total accident—” I repeated, still feeling dazed and dizzy. The snow glared in my eyes. Nothing seemed real.

  “Diego is right,” Gabe said. “We’ll be arrested. They’ll say we were drunk. Drunk high school kids out for a thrill ride and we killed a guy. Forget our college scholarships. They’ll be out the window. Our lives will be ruined.”

  “But we can’t leave him,” Pepper argued. “Is he really dead? Lizzy, is he breathing? There’s just a trickle of blood from his head. Maybe…”

  “Let’s go! Let’s beat it!” Diego cried, making his engine roar.

  “No. Wait—!” Pepper insisted. “Wait. Everybody, calm down. We have to think clearly.”

  “I’m thinking clearly about our future,” Gabe said. “Why ruin our lives forever? The guy is dead. We can’t help him. We have to save ourselves.”

  Suddenly, Lizzy chimed in. She was still on her knees in the snow, leaning over the young man’s body. “I … I think I know him,” she said. She brushed a strand of his black hair off his forehead. His eyes stared blankly up at the sky.

  A shadow swept over the snow. I gazed up to see that same red hawk swooping low. It turned in midair and floated into the line of pine trees.

  A hush fell over the scene. We all froze and waited for Lizzy to continue.

  “Oh, wow. Yes. I know him,” Lizzy said. “His name is Angel. He … he was at my old school for a while.…” Her voice trailed off. She suddenly turned away from him and raised her gaze to me.

  “He was at my old school, Michael, but he got in trouble. Major trouble.”

  I swallowed. “Major trouble like…?”

  “He beat two kids. Almost to death. Everyone knew it was Angel who did it. But somehow, he got off with a warning.”

  “Whoa,” Diego muttered. “A bad dude.”

  “He’s a total psychopath,” Lizzy said. “Seriously. Everyone was terrified of him. He was the angriest person I ever saw. He picked up a teacher in the lunchroom and shoved his head through a glass door. The teacher never came back to school.”

  “Let’s go,” Diego said, roaring his engine again. “We’ve got to get away from here.”

  “He’s right.” Lizzy jumped to her feet and wiped the knees of her jeans off with both hands. She climbed onto her snowmobile. “The guy is bad news. Let’s go. Hurry.”

  This time, no one argued. We turned our snowmobiles and headed back down from River Ridge. No one looked back.

  I killed someone. The thought repeated in my mind.

  I pictured the startled look on Angel’s face as my snowmobile rammed into his side. And I saw his body fly into the air, arms and legs thrashing crazily. How could I make the images stop repeating?

  As I saw the accident again and again, I kept remembering the feeling of being paralyzed. My arms and legs weak and helpless. Frozen. I was frozen in panic. How else to explain it?

  We were roaring downhill, following the wide path beside the River Road. Lizzy and I led the way, followed by Diego and Kathryn. Gabe and Pepper had fallen behind.

  The sun was still high in the sky. We sent up tall waves of snow as we sped downhill, taking the curves easily as the road wound down to the bottom.

  Suddenly, I raised a hand. I skidded to a stop. “Wait!” I shouted over the roar of their engines. I turned and watched them slide as they braked their snowmobiles. We were all at jagged angles. It looked like a car accident on the highway when a bunch of cars plow into each other.

  Accident. All an accident. The words tumbled through my mind.

  “Michael, what’s wrong?” Gabe shouted. “Why’d you stop?”

  “We have to go back,” I said. “We’re being stupid.”

  They all started talking at once. I raised my hand again until they stopped. “We’ve made a terrible mistake,” I shouted. My voice rang down the hill. “What if he’s still alive? I don’t care if he’s a bad dude or not. We can’t leave him to die in the snow. Then it wouldn’t be an accident. It would be murder.”

  “It’s too late, Michael,” Diego argued. “We can’t—”

  “We can’t leave the scene of the accident,” I told him. “We weren’t thinking clearly. Do you think the police won’t see our snowmobile tracks? Of course they will. And it won’t take them long to track down who made them.”

  “Michael is right,” Pepper said. “Six snowmobiles from his dad’s store? They’ll find us in less than an hour. And we’ll be in even more trouble because we left the guy lying there.”

  “Let�
�s turn around and go back,” I said. “We’ll call the police. We’ll tell them how it was an accident. Everyone agreed?”

  No one protested.

  Lizzy caught my eye. She had her head down, as if she was thinking hard. Then she raised her gaze to me. Her dark eyes studied me. She nodded. She agreed with me. I had this strange feeling. Like she and I were connecting, like we were suddenly close.

  We slid our snowmobiles around and began climbing the hill again. Now the wind was in our faces, freezing gusts that made my cheeks hurt. I pulled my ski cap lower, but it didn’t protect my face.

  It seemed to take an hour to climb back up to River Ridge. The heavy feeling of dread in my stomach felt colder than the swirling wind.

  I reached the spot by the tree line first. I stopped. And blinked. And squinted hard.

  “Where is he?” Lizzy cried. The others murmured their disbelief.

  He was gone. I could see the indentation in the snow. See where his head had been. His back. His leg, bent at such an odd angle. I saw a thin line of pink, left from where his head was bleeding.

  But no body. No body sprawled in the snow.

  “At least we know he’s alive,” I managed to say.

  “But he’s a psychopath, Michael,” Lizzy said in a tiny voice. “And he knows who we are. He knows who we are. We … we could be in a lot of trouble.”

  PART TWO

  SHADYSIDE, 1950

  17.

  Gina Palmieri was relieved to see the two policemen at her door. She had been waiting for news for five days and unable to do anything else. The house hadn’t been cleaned. The dishes were piled still dirty in the sink. She hadn’t even made the bed.

  She hadn’t slept, either. How could she sleep without Angelo in the house? With Beth gone, too. With no word about either of them.

  The cousins had come over to keep her company, but she couldn’t talk to them. Was she supposed to make small talk? Did they expect her to feed them?

  She couldn’t eat. Her stomach was a tight knot. And now she sat with a cup of tea growing cold on the table beside her, an unopened magazine folded between her hands.

  And at last through the front window, she could see the two dark-uniformed officers come up the front walk. She was at the door before they rang the bell.

  And as they removed their caps, she could read their faces and knew the news was bad.

  How could it be good?

  Angelo and Beth didn’t go off on a vacation together. They weren’t out celebrating the opening of the stables without her.

  Something terrible had happened to them. Mrs. Palmieri led the two solemn-faced officers into the front room and motioned for them to sit on the low brown couch. She stood behind the matching armchair, hands gripping the back as if it were a life raft.

  “Mrs. Palmieri, perhaps you could sit down,” the officer who had introduced himself as Sergeant O’Brian said, gesturing.

  She shook her head. Her dark eyes avoided his stare. “I’m okay here.”

  O’Brian nodded. His partner, Officer Mannelli, shifted his weight uncomfortably. It was an old couch, Gina knew, and no one was ever comfortable on it. But this was different.

  “Have you found my husband?” Her voice came out in a croak. She hadn’t spoken to anyone all morning. “My daughter Beth?”

  The officers exchanged glances. “We have bad news,” O’Brian said. He twirled his cap between his hands. “Your husband is dead, Mrs. Palmieri.”

  Gina was expecting it, but she gasped anyway. She knew she’d remember the officer’s voice and the way he said the word dead. She knew it would become a memory she couldn’t erase.

  O’Brian leaned forward over the coffee table. “We found your husband’s body in the Fear Street Woods.”

  Gina felt her knees start to give way. She moved around the chair and dropped into it. Her heart throbbed in her chest. She thought she might die. Join Angelo. It would be so much easier to die now.

  “In the woods? What was he doing in the woods?” The words came out of her mouth without her thinking them. It was like she was in a dream, a very real dream, but she was outside her body watching herself, watching herself sit in her living room and talk about Angelo being dead in the woods.

  “We don’t know, ma’am,” Mannelli said. “Our investigation has just started and—”

  “Can I see him?” Her voice still a hoarse croak.

  “I don’t think that would be wise,” Mannelli said.

  “Some animals must have gotten to him,” O’Brian said. “Wolves, maybe. His body … it’s … uh … there … there isn’t much left of him.”

  A sob escaped Gina’s throat. I’m not going to cry, she told herself. I’m not going to cry until they leave. Then I’ll cry for you, Angelo. I’ll cry for us both. For a long long time.

  “I know this is a horrible shock,” O’Brian said softly. “But we’re looking at murder here. Your husband was tied up and dragged into the woods. Before the animals got to him.”

  Gina sighed, her throat tight, every muscle in her body clenched.

  “I’m sure you don’t want to talk now,” O’Brian said softly. “But do you have any idea who…?” His voice trailed off.

  Gina squeezed the arms of the chair until her hands ached. “What about my daughter?” she asked, ignoring O’Brian’s question. “Where is she? What happened to Beth?”

  “We don’t know,” O’Brian replied in a voice just above a whisper. “Perhaps she ran away to escape the murderer. Perhaps your husband’s murderer, grabbed her, kidnapped her, took her away with him.”

  Gina narrowed her eyes at O’Brian. “Ran away? If Beth ran away, she’d call me from wherever she is. She wouldn’t go five days without calling me. And why do you say kidnapped? I … I haven’t received a call for ransom.”

  A sob escaped her throat. “My baby isn’t coming home. My baby is dead.”

  O’Brian sighed. “There’s always hope, Mrs. Palmieri.”

  Hope? She thought. Look at his face. I don’t see any hope there.

  “We’ve been searching the woods for your daughter for these five days,” Mannelli said, tensely curling and uncurling his fists. “No trace of her. I’m afraid we have to call off our search.”

  “So you do think she’s dead,” Gina persisted.

  Both men shrugged. Their uniform shirts looked heavy, uncomfortable. Both of their faces were bathed in sweat.

  “Martin Dooley killed my husband,” Gina said suddenly, in a flat, dry, emotionless voice. She said the words with a clenched jaw.

  The two officers had started to climb up from the couch. But they sat back down upon hearing these words. “What did you say?” Mannelli asked.

  “You heard me,” she said in a whisper. “Martin Dooley murdered my husband and probably my daughter, too.”

  “Why do you say that?” Manelli asked.

  “I told the other officers five days ago,” Gina said angrily. “Don’t you talk to each other? I … don’t understand why no one listens to me, why no one takes me seriously.”

  O’Brian scratched his short white crewcut. The white hair, the tired eyes, and the deep creases on his ruddy cheeks revealed that he’d been a cop for a long time. “You reported that Martin Dooley threatened your husband.”

  Gina nodded. “He wasn’t subtle about it, Officer. He said he would stop Angelo from running his own stable. He said he would make sure Angelo’s stable failed within a year.”

  “But Dooley didn’t threaten your husband with violence?” O’Brian asked.

  “It … it turned into a shouting match,” Gina said. “I’m afraid Angelo lost his temper. He hit Martin Dooley, nearly knocked him down.”

  “And then Dooley threatened to kill him?” Mannelli asked.

  Gina shook her head. “He said he would pay him back. And he did, Officer. He did. And he didn’t wait long. He killed my husband and my daughter, and I don’t understand why you two are sitting here talking to me when he is still walking around c
ompletely free.”

  Mannelli started to reply, but O’Brian motioned for him to stop. “We talked to Martin Dooley several times, Mrs. Palmieri,” O’Brian said, locking his eyes on hers. “We haven’t been sitting around.”

  “Martin Dooley has an alibi,” Mannelli said. “He was home with his family and two of his neighbors that whole night. He never went out.”

  “He’s lying!” Gina jumped to her feet. “He’s a filthy liar!”

  “His family swears to it, and so do the neighbors,” O’Brian said. “They had a small dinner party. They listened to Bob Hope on the radio. Then they played cards till after eleven. We collected all their stories separately, and they all agree. Martin Dooley could not have killed your husband and daughter.”

  Gina clenched her cold hands into tight fists. “You’re wrong. I know he did. I know he killed them.” She stood over the two policemen, shaking her fists in front of them. “What do I have to do? Prove it myself?”

  18.

  The chapel was decked with flowers, long colorful bouquets across the altar, wreaths resting against the sides of the two pinewood coffins, a smaller wreath on the priest’s podium.

  Gina had sworn she would not cry at the funeral. But the strong aroma of the lilies made her eyes water. She pulled down the black veil from her hat. She didn’t want people to watch her face.

  The gray, sunless morning of sleet and freezing rain was perfect for the occasion, she thought. No matter how many flowers are around me, I’m going to live in this gray cold world from now on.

  The idea of the double funeral wasn’t just an economical idea. She knew Beth was dead. Why prolong the heartache? Also, Beth would want to be beside her father. The two of them were so close, she remembered. They didn’t have the stormy soap-opera relationship Beth had with me.

  Although … Beth knew I loved her. She always knew that.

  A shiny-faced usher helped Aunt Hannah down the chapel aisle. She moved so slowly and carefully these days with a cane in each hand.