The Church of Dead Girls (12 page)

“I assure you I have no such intention.”

“Then I do not understand the direction of your questions.”

It seemed unlikely to some people that Ryan Tavich could have deduced Oscar's involvement without there having been an informer within the IIR. There was much speculation about this. Harriet swore she had told him nothing. After all, they had stopped seeing each other weeks before the bombs were found.

On the Sunday morning after Oscar's arrest, Barry was on his way to Aaron's apartment. The weather was mild and a few maples had begun to turn, branches of orange leaves on predominantly green trees. As Barry turned onto the sidewalk in front of Aaron's unit, he heard a car pull to a stop at the curb. He turned to see Jesse and Shannon getting out of their Chevy, recognizing their blond ponytails even before he saw their faces. Since Aaron had said nobody else would be coming over, Barry felt disappointed. Then he realized that Jesse and Shannon were angry. Barry hurried toward the door of Aaron's unit.

Jesse tackled him before Barry got halfway. When Barry tried to scramble to his feet, Jesse slapped him in the face, knocking off his glasses.

“You told,” said Jesse.

“Told what?” asked Barry.

“Told about Oscar,” said Jesse.

“No, I didn't. I swear I didn't.”

Barry sat on the ground, rubbing his face with one hand and holding his glasses with the other. The bridge had snapped and he held the two pieces in his palm. He kept blinking. Without his glasses everything was bright and wobbly.

“You're lying,” said Shannon.

Barry heard the front door of the apartment unit slam open, then he heard Aaron's voice. “Leave him alone.”

“He told the cops about Oscar,” said Shannon.

“Little Pink didn't tell anyone about anything,” said Aaron.

“I bet I can make him talk,” said Shannon.

Aaron put a hand on Shannon's arm. “Did you hear what I said?”

Barry couldn't see very well and the sunlight hurt his eyes. He could just make out Shannon's and Jesse's blond goatees. The brothers looked at each other. Jesse shrugged.

“Come on,” said Shannon. They walked back to their car. Protruding from their skinny backs, their shoulder blades under their T-shirts looked like incipient wings.

Barry got to his feet. He rubbed his face where it had been slapped. “I didn't tell, I really didn't.”

“Don't blubber,” said Aaron. He took Barry's arm and began leading him to the door. “I know you didn't tell.”

O
scar's arrest was accompanied by a sense of completion: a crazy thing had been done and a crazy person had been found responsible. Much was made of the fact that Oscar wore a gold lip stud. What wouldn't have made sense would have been for the culprit or culprits to be so-called normal teenagers known to everyone for years, although that had been feared. The only regret was that the rest of the IIR couldn't be tied to the bombs as well. Surely all ten members were involved and Chihani had encouraged them. At least this was argued. Because it was known that Franklin was seeing Paula McNeal, it was supposed that Franklin was protecting her half brother. And everyone knew of Ryan Tavich's relationship with Aaron's mother. There was much talk about a conspiracy of silence between these men, and the person who spoke most loudly about a conspiracy was Hark Powers. He would hold forth at Bud's Tavern on how Chihani and Aaron were plainly behind the phony bombs. Of course, since Aaron had bitten off Hark's ear, Hark's credibility was suspect. But people talked among themselves and it seemed unlikely that Oscar had acted on his own.

The rumors of Franklin's and Ryan's complicity grew so common that one morning Phil Schmidt called Ryan into his office. Schmidt had been police chief for twenty-five years and had come to see Aurelius as his personal property. He was a big man with a big stomach and he liked to rest his hands on it when he talked. He wore suits rather than uniforms, but they were suits that resembled uniforms: blue and shiny. His wife, Gladys, worked at the post office and between them it seemed they knew everything to be known in Aurelius.

“I don't want to offend you, Ryan,” said Schmidt, “but I need to ask one question.”

Ryan knew what was coming. “I'm not trying to protect Aaron McNeal,” he said.

“D'you think he was involved with those bombs?”

“Aaron denies it and Oscar says he did it by himself.”

“Do you believe them?”

“I don't work according to belief, I work according to evidence.” Ryan caught hold of his growing irritation and took a breath. “I know nothing more than I put in my report. And Franklin doesn't either, for that matter.”

“Are you friendly with Aaron?”

“Are you kidding? He seems to hate me.”

If Phil Schmidt was satisfied, others weren't. Chihani was grilled by the college president, Harvey Shavers. His secretary described how she could hear Shavers's booming voice and Chihani's dry voice going back and forth for an hour. At last Shavers gave up, apparently having learned nothing.

The Good Conduct Committee of the college queried the members of the IIR who were students. Since they hadn't been caught in any wrongdoing, they couldn't be punished, but Barry said they were reminded of the college's fine tradition.

“Wherever you go,” Dean Phipps told them, “people don't see Jason Irving or Harriet Malcomb or Bob Jenks. They see Aurelius College.”

Shannon Levine made half-audible pig noises with his hand covering his mouth, though Barry said that Shannon was scared. Had it been known they had vandalized the cemetery, they would have been expelled. Every week in the
Independent
there were indignant letters about the vandalism and every week Chief Schmidt said that the investigation was continuing.

Fear of conspiracy can be an insidious fear. The fact that the IIR claimed to be innocent was meaningless. People believed they were plotting. This very belief became a kind of evidence. Very few people felt the bombs were the end of it and most waited for a new transgression. Indeed, they looked forward to it.

Then something happened that almost wiped Oscar Herbst and his phony bombs from people's memory. But it didn't wipe them out completely and that was part of the problem.

—

Megan Kelly lived in a small white house at the edge of Aurelius, the last on Jefferson Street before the intersection with Adams, which along that stretch has Hapwood's Tire and several town storage sheds. The first house on Adams leaving town is a farmhouse, the Bells', a quarter of a mile from town. Megan Kelly was in her midsixties. Her husband, Winfred, had worked as assistant manager at the Trustworthy Hardware but he had died of a stroke five years earlier. They had had four daughters, all of whom had moved away. To supplement her Social Security, Mrs. Kelly cleaned people's houses.

Mrs. Kelly had worked for me for several months, cleaning every Thursday, but I found her something of a busybody and I let her go. She was too curious about my habits and too ready to offer advice as to how I should live my life. I tried to accept the fact that Mrs. Kelly was probably lonely and so took a strong interest in the people for whom she worked. Never did I suspect anything malicious about her interest or that she was a gossipmonger, but her attention to my life was a pressure I didn't feel I needed. This was partly my own sensitivity.

On Monday afternoon, September 18, Mrs. Kelly was tidying up her living room. “Puffing up the cushions,” as she later explained. It was a little past three and by five-thirty she had to be over at Franklin Moore's, no more than a five-minute drive away. Glancing from her living room window, Mrs. Kelly saw Sharon Malloy on her bike on Adams Street, bicycling out of town. She assumed that Sharon was on her way to the Bells', whose daughter, Joyce, was Sharon's age. Sharon was wearing jeans and a blue crewneck sweater. On her back was a red canvas book bag. Her bike was a red and blue mountain bike called a Husky. School had gotten out about fifteen minutes earlier.

Sharon Malloy was fourteen years old and in ninth grade. Her family had moved to Aurelius from Rochester in the mid-1980s. Mrs. Kelly had gone to Dr. Malloy several times about her rheumatism. Though she liked him, she preferred doctors who were actually from Aurelius. Dr. Malloy was an outsider and Mrs. Kelly felt uncomfortable when he touched her. Not that he wasn't always courteous.

Mrs. Kelly noticed Sharon Malloy, that was all. Several cars went by but the only one she recognized was Houari Chihani's red Citroën. Mrs. Kelly knew that car—everybody did—and she thought about what she'd read in the
Independent
about how a friend of Mr. Chihani's, or maybe a student, had been arrested for leaving those bombs at the elementary school and high school. For Mrs. Kelly this was evidence of the creeping corruption of the cities, evidence of decay and dissolution, which was a phrase that Mrs. Kelly liked.

After another minute or so Mrs. Kelly went into her kitchen to fix herself a cup of tea. Her kitchen window was at the back of the house and also looked out on Adams, but it faced south rather than north. In the distance she could see the silo poking up by Frank Bell's barn. She expected to see Sharon Malloy again on her bicycle, but the girl wasn't there. Mrs. Kelly looked at her watch, then looked out the window again. She opened the kitchen door and went out on the back step.

Mrs. Kelly was not a suspicious person, but ever since she had discovered Janice McNeal's body nearly two years earlier she had come to every event expecting the worst. If she hadn't found Janice's body, she probably wouldn't have thought twice about not seeing Sharon. But in Mrs. Kelly's mind the world had grown craftier since Janice's murder and more perilous. Mrs. Kelly thought how first she had seen Sharon and now she didn't. But shouldn't Sharon be there? Mrs. Kelly again looked at her watch, then raised herself up on her tiptoes on her back step to improve her view. She was sure only a few minutes had passed. She didn't see how it was possible for Sharon to have reached the Bells' already.

Mrs. Kelly went back into her kitchen and as she waited for the teakettle to boil she thought about Sharon Malloy. If the girl had already reached the Bells', then it indicated that she herself had lost all track of time, which was a possibility that worried her. She had an older cousin in Munnsville whose memory was gone and her own mother had grown forgetful toward the end. Mrs. Kelly prided herself on the sharpness of her mind and this apparent slippage caused concern. But she also thought about Janice McNeal, not in an ominous way but as an example of the unexpected. And perhaps Mrs. Kelly was also a little bored and the prospect of a puzzle enlivened the afternoon.

After the kettle had begun to whistle and Mrs. Kelly poured the water across the tea bag in her cup, she went to the phone to call the Bells. Sylvia Bell often gave her a ride to mass and Mrs. Kelly had sometimes taken care of Joyce when the girl was younger. On the window ledge above the sink were a half dozen tomatoes that Sylvia had dropped off the day before.

Joyce answered the phone.

“Did Sharon get there?” asked Mrs. Kelly, feeling foolish.

“Not yet,” said Joyce, “but I'm expecting her any moment. Do you want me to have her call you?”

Mrs. Kelly experienced a chill. “I'd appreciate it,” she said. Then she hung up.

Mrs. Kelly got her jacket and went out the back door. Walking to the corner, she turned south on Adams. It was windy and the afternoon had turned cold. Leaves blew across the road. Heavy clouds were moving down from Lake Ontario and there would be rain later. Mrs. Kelly tried to keep herself from having extravagant fears. She thought of her husband's stroke and how she had found him in the backyard still holding a shovel. And she remembered Janice McNeal lying strangled in her living room and how her face had looked.

After Mrs. Kelly had gone thirty yards, she saw something in the high grass at the side of the road: an unexpected bit of color. It was a red and blue bicycle. As she got closer, she saw it was Sharon's bicycle. She poked at it with her foot. The chain had come off. Mrs. Kelly looked up the road toward the Bells' but there was no sign of Sharon. Several cars passed. Mrs. Kelly picked up the bike and moved it a few feet; the wheels moved freely. She considered taking the bike back to her house, but then set it down on the ground. She turned and walked stiffly home, moving as quickly as she could.

The fact that the chain had slipped off or had broken was one explanation why she hadn't seen Sharon from the kitchen window, but why didn't Sharon push the bike the rest of the way to the Bells', which wasn't far up the road? Perhaps a friend had stopped to give her a ride.

Reaching her house, Mrs. Kelly called the Bells again. “Is Sharon there yet?” she asked.

“No,” answered Joyce, “is anything wrong?”

Mrs. Kelly thought about that. “I don't know,” she said, then she hung up. She thought of the things that might be wrong. On her telephone was a decal giving the numbers of the fire department, the rescue squad, and the police. Mrs. Kelly picked up the phone and telephoned the police.

—

Ryan Tavich was not in the police station when Megan Kelly called. He was over at Jack Morris's Ford dealership getting the brakes fixed on his Escort. The car was up on a lift and Hark Powers had the rear left wheel off. Hark Powers used his tools roughly, slamming the pneumatic drill up against the wheel and abruptly pulling the trigger so the rapid-fire whine filled the garage. When the whine stopped, Ryan realized that his beeper was beeping. It was just three-thirty. He went into the office to call the police station.

“We got a call from Megan Kelly,” said Chuck Hawley. “She thinks something's happened to Sharon Malloy, the doctor's daughter.” He went on to explain about a bicycle and how Megan Kelly's living room window faced north and the kitchen window faced south, but Ryan didn't understand. Through the window of the office, he saw his Escort being lowered to the floor.

“I'll drive over and take a look,” he said.

An hour later, having made sure that Sharon was not at the Bells', had not returned home, and was not visiting one of half a dozen other friends, Ryan Tavich called the state police. He still felt that Sharon would turn up but he wanted extra help. It was a precaution, no more. When the dispatcher in Potterville radioed the alert to the troopers on duty, it was picked up by private scanners around the county, including the scanner of the office of the Aurelius
Independent.
Franklin Moore was not in the office. He had to cover a city council meeting that evening and he had taken the afternoon off. Frieda Kraus, the combined receptionist, office manager, and copy editor, called Franklin at home.

Because of Sadie's dislike of her father's involvement with Paula, Franklin and Paula often met at Franklin's house when Sadie was at school. That particular Monday afternoon, Sadie wasn't supposed to be home until five-thirty—she said she was visiting a girlfriend. Paula had come over at two-thirty.

Franklin and Paula were in bed.

Shortly after four-thirty the phone rang. Franklin tried to ignore it. The phone was on a nightstand next to the pillow.

Paula pulled away and sat up. “You'd better answer it.”

Even before Franklin answered the phone, he knew it was Frieda Kraus. She was the only one who would let the phone ring twenty times. And she probably knew he was in bed with Paula. She probably even had a joke to make about it.

Frieda's voice was serious. “The police think something's happened to Sharon Malloy. I thought you'd want to know.”

At that moment the bedroom door opened and Sadie stood in the doorway. She held a volleyball and wore jeans and an oversized gray Hamilton sweatshirt. She stared at her father and Paula. “She had eyes like saucers,” Franklin told me. Paula pulled the sheet over her bare breasts.

“I'll get on it right away,” Franklin told Frieda. Then he hung up.

Franklin looked at his daughter, who was staring at the clothes scattered on the floor. “I thought you weren't going to be home till five-thirty,” said Franklin, trying to keep his voice relaxed.

Sadie's face was pale. Her long hair was in a single braid down her back. “Aaron was supposed to meet me after school,” she said, “but he never showed up.” Then her face wrinkled in anger. With both hands she raised the volleyball and threw it at her father. It hit the wall behind his head and bounced away.