The Church of Dead Girls (21 page)

This created more of a stir and more pictures were taken.

Chuck Hawley took Donald's arm and urged him to the back door. Ryan had already left with Dr. Malloy. Reporters kept shouting questions and Chief Schmidt kept hitting the table with his gavel. Franklin wrote furiously in his notebook. The only person who showed no expression, who looked like the very rock of Gibraltar, according to Chuck Hawley, was Captain Percy.

When the room quieted down, Captain Percy spoke. “You know exactly what we know, which is little. We don't know the nature of this crime. We don't know that Sharon was abducted. All we know is that sometime between three-thirty and five-thirty this morning her clothes and backpack were returned to the police. The clothes had been cleaned, ironed, and folded. Her white leather Adidas tennis shoes had been polished. We don't know who did this or if the same person had anything to do with Sharon's being missing.”

Again Captain Percy was not telling the whole truth. There were two other items in Sharon's backpack, along with her school supplies. The first was a mannequin's hand: a left hand, flesh-colored, with painted nails. Sharon's parents and several of her friends, including Sadie, said they had never seen it before.

The second item was a business-size envelope containing a single sheet of paper on which was a list of words constructed from letters cut out of a newspaper. The words were “
CUNT
,” “
FILTH
,” “
FUCK
,” “
PUSSY
,” “
BITCH
,” “
DIRT
,” “
WHORE
,” and half a dozen more in a single column. But the words had been changed, or perhaps edited. Black slashes had been drawn across some of the letters so that “
CUNT
” became “
UNT
,” “
FILTH
” became “
LTH
.” All the words had been altered and the black slashes had been drawn over and over, cutting so deep into the paper that the “
D
” in “
DIRT
,” for instance, was nearly obliterated. Only Captain Percy and Chief Schmidt knew about the contents of the envelope and they kept it to themselves. As for the mannequin's hand, it was known to everyone in the office. Even Franklin knew about the hand, although Chief Schmidt asked him not to mention it. This hardly mattered. Within two days the presence of the hand in the backpack became general knowledge.

C
aptain Percy's assertion that the return of the clothing didn't indicate that Sharon's abductor was from Aurelius or from the surrounding area convinced no one. And the fact that Percy said there was no evidence that Sharon had been abducted also had no impact. The general consensus was that the clothes had been returned by Sharon's abductor to taunt the police. People saw it as an act of bravado. And possibly the person objected to the idea of Daniel Layman in Somerset, Pennsylvania, claiming credit for something that he or she had done. I say he or she but everyone around here believed that the abductor was a man.

These were ideas the police held as well, at least according to Ryan, but that didn't mean Captain Percy could tell a roomful of journalists that he believed a local man was responsible for abducting Sharon Malloy. I'm sure the journalists had gone to the press conference expecting to learn something sensational. To a large degree they had been frustrated. The return of the clothing was sinister without being dramatic. Dr. Malloy's outburst partly made up for their disappointment.

That evening on TV thousands of people across the state, and perhaps the nation, saw Dr. Malloy jump up and shout, “Don't you realize you are talking about a child? A fourteen-year-old girl? Do you know how wonderful she is? Of course whoever stole her lives here. He lives right here in this town!”

After the press conference a number of editorials appeared in area papers asking whether the authorities were doing enough to find the abductor of Sharon Malloy. As a result, Captain Percy was instructed to put more officers on the case, giving him a total—a task force, they called themselves—of twenty-five.

The increasing belief that the criminal lived among us put more pressure on the IIR. As long as people had believed that the criminal was someone from far away, Chihani and the other members of the group had been viewed with no more than suspicion. Possibly there was a link between the criminal and the IIR but even that was only argued by people like Hark Powers. Now it didn't seem so far-fetched. And the news that Aaron's apartment had been searched by the police was seen as evidence of his involvement. Chihani and the remaining IIR members were subjected to even greater scrutiny. Barry complained that people stared at him more than ever. “As if I stole something,” he said.

Nor was the group being overly sensitive about its lack of popularity. Paula McNeal heard in the dean's office that the school was consulting its lawyers to see if it could legally suspend the members of the IIR before their trial for vandalism.

Toward the end of the week the clothes were returned, Bob Jenks and Joany Rustoff dropped out of college and went back to their parents' houses in Utica. A few days later they drove to Seattle, where Bob's older brother worked for a software company. This left six members, as well as Chihani. I'm afraid that Bob and Joany's departure made people even more suspicious of the others, as if their defection indicated the guilt of the entire group. Of course Bob and Joany let Captain Percy know what they were doing and how to reach them in a hurry.

People seemed to feel that if someone in town was guilty, then it would be better for the guilty party to be a person nobody liked. Aaron already had a peculiar history among us. Barry was funny to look at. Leon was fat, itself proof of perversion. Jesse and Shannon showed their scorn for the status quo in their every gesture. Harriet had a cold beauty that led people to believe she thought herself better than everyone else. And then there was Houari Chihani and his Citroën.

What many dreaded was that the guilty party might be someone whom nobody suspected, a so-called pillar of the community. For instance, what if Dr. Malloy had abducted and killed his own daughter? Or even Paul Leimbach—didn't suspicion often fall on family members? For the crime to have been committed by someone who was respected gave the community itself an element of culpability. We hadn't seen his wickedness. He'd lived among us as a friend. One cannot remove a pillar of the community without the whole community's trembling. Far better to find an outsider whose idiosyncrasies already made him suspect.

The return of Sharon's clothing made Hark's accusations more plausible. All along Hark had argued that the IIR was involved. Now here he was standing at the bar at Bud's Tavern saying, “I told you so,” louder than ever. When it became known that a mannequin's hand had been discovered in Sharon's backpack, the very oddness of it gave Hark additional credibility. The fake hand made no sense. It was awful and meaningless. Hark said it was like Oscar's false bombs or even Aaron's senseless violence. So Hark found he had more listeners and his stock went up a little. And his cronies were eager to say how Hark had been right all along, because their stock went up too. It would be wrong to call them influential in any way, but they were aware of the increased notice they received.

Who were these cronies? There were three: Jeb Hendricks, who worked at the Midas Muffler by Wegmans; Ernie Corelli, who worked at Henderson's Plumbing and Heating; and Jimmy Feldman, who had a janitorial position at Knox Consolidated. They had known Hark all their lives, though they were a few years younger than Hark. They went hunting together in the fall and fishing in the spring. In the summer there was softball. Feldman was married but the others were single. He had married while still in high school—the girl was pregnant—and I don't believe he graduated.

All, along with Hark, were men with complaints. If a favorite football team lost a game, it was because the fix was in. If state taxes went up, it was because the money went down to the city, to welfare recipients and greedy minorities. Apart from being complainers, they were rather normal young men who looked at the world and their place in it with a mixture of confusion and resentment. They liked Hark because he had opinions and placed the blame where they liked to see it placed: elsewhere. He was stronger than they were. He was louder, could drink more, and shot a deer when the others missed. Most nights two or more of these young men were to be found at Bud's Tavern drinking beer, shooting pool, and complaining. Sometimes they were joined by two or three others rather like themselves. Added to their talk was now the subject of Sharon's disappearance.

“If Aaron McNeal's not involved in this,” Hark would declare, “I'll give my other fucking ear.”

In these discussions truth was not a matter of logic but came from a strength of conviction and the ability to shout down one's opponents. The more attention Hark received, the louder he became, until he himself, clearly, believed everything he said.

“Wasn't the Arab's car seen right when Sharon disappeared?” he would ask.

And his cronies would nod and others would nod as well.

“It's one thing for the cops to say they don't have clear proof they can take to court,” Hark would argue. “But it's another thing not to know. I mean, know in your fucking heart!”

Although I point to Hark Powers, his claims were not unlike those heard in other taverns and houses around Aurelius. He may have been the loudest but his ideas came to be shared by many. Indeed, I heard similar ones expressed within the teachers' lounge at Knox Consolidated.

Of all the IIR members, it was Barry whose isolation I understood best, as he visited me frequently. Since the beginning of September, he had had a boyfriend at Aurelius College, someone named Ralph who hoped to become an electrical engineer. The attention that Barry received as a member of Inquiries into the Right bothered Ralph from the start. Then, after Sharon's disappearance, when charges were brought against the group for vandalizing Homeland Cemetery, he told Barry that he didn't want to see him anymore, though he assured him they were still friends. It appears they had a scene in Ralph's dorm room, where Barry confessed that he might possibly be in love with Ralph and that he saw Ralph's decision not to see him anymore as a cruel betrayal.

The Friday after Sharon's clothes turned up, Barry came to see me. He was quite open about his bitterness. He was lonely. His heart was broken. He was destined to be lonely all his life.

“No one will like me again,” he said.

“What about that man in town?” I asked.

“Who do you mean?”

“That first man you were involved with.” I had, in fact, remained interested in this person, since Barry refused to divulge his name.

“I didn't like him,” said Barry.

“What did you do with him?” I asked.

“Nothing nice.”

“But what did you do?”

“He only wanted me to masturbate him and he wouldn't touch me at all. And he was cross.”

“You mean he yelled at you?”

“Nothing like that. He insisted I wash my hands and he stood beside me to make sure I did it right.”

Barry's main problem, in terms of his loneliness, was that he was either at school or at his mother's. Plainly, he wasn't going to meet other men unless he expanded his social circle. I found myself thinking about Jaime Rose, but there was nothing to suggest that Jaime would find Barry anything but silly. I knew, however, that Jaime went out. He bowled and he belonged to a garden club at the library. I'd even seen him sometimes in bars, not Bud's Tavern but the bar at Gillian's Motel. So I told Barry he needed to go out more often. This was not radical advice.

“People stare at me,” said Barry.

“You're not going to meet people unless you go out.”

“I don't like to drink.”

“There are reading groups at the library. There's a jazz society and a travel club. You have to exert yourself.”

—

There is an egalitarian quality to needs. We all have them. Barry's need for companionship differed from no one else's. At Aurelius College that Saturday night the ski club sponsored a dance in the cafeteria featuring a local band called Unreasonable Behavior. And in the house of one of the Spanish professors, Ricardo Diaz, the Latin League was holding a Mexican dinner—tacos, enchiladas verdes, chicken mole, and Dr Pepper.

Downtown there was a function at the Masonic Temple and the Elks were holding an auction to raise money for the Little League. The Good Fellowship Evangelical Church was having a pancake supper. Aurelius's several Italian restaurants were busy and if you stood in front of City Hall and sniffed deeply you could probably detect the smells of oregano and grease. The cocktail lounge at Gillian's Motel was offering ladies two drinks for the price of one. Bud's Tavern had free buffalo wings. The parking lot of Landry's bowling alley was full of pickup trucks. The Domino's Pizza delivery truck wove its way back and forth through the town like the needle and thread tying everything nearly together. The Strand Theater was showing something called
The Stupids
to a packed house. The teenagers who worked at the sub shop on Main Street were busy making sandwiches.

That Saturday evening Barry Sanders had decided to go out—a significant decision—and had gone to Landry's bowling alley. He went not to play but to sit at a table and drink Coke. Although this seems like an innocent occupation, Barry believed he was being quite daring. Who knew the nature of his fantasies? He wore a new blue shirt and his white hair was carefully combed. He sipped his Coke, blinked his pink eyes behind his thick glasses, and whenever there was a loud crash of pins, he probably gave a little jump. Barry, in his way, was out on the town.

Aaron had also gone out that evening. He had a drink at Gillian's with Jeanette Richards, with whom his relationship was cooling, and when she left around seven-thirty he stayed to talk to an English teacher from the high school, Ron Slavitt, who wrote poetry. Aaron contended that poetry was a dead medium; Ron Slavitt disagreed. Jaime Rose was also at Gillian's, drinking alone at the bar. He liked elaborate drinks: fresh fruit daiquiris and drinks with Kahlúa.

Franklin and Paula had taken Sadie to dinner to Angotti's Spaghetti House. Paula tried to talk to Sadie about school but Sadie was monosyllabic. She had not wanted spaghetti and was eating a hamburger and French fries. Earlier that week Sadie had seen her blue sweater on the news after it came back from the state police lab in Ithaca. She had never told Paula that she had given the sweater to Sharon Malloy, though Paula knew it and Sadie felt guilty. She also had a horror, she revealed later, that the sweater would be returned to her. A horror not because of its connection to Paula but because of its connection to Sharon. Sadie even imagined that she would find blood spots where the police had found none, which was silly. When Sadie ate, her hair swept across her plate, coming precariously near the ketchup. Both Franklin and Paula were at the edge of telling Sadie to tuck her hair back behind her ears, but they forbore.

Ryan Tavich had taken Cookie Evans to dinner at Mike's Steak House out by the strip mall. Between his usual work and the time he gave to Captain Percy, he had been putting in twelve-hour days and he felt he needed a break. But he kept thinking about the mannequin's hand in Sharon's backpack. And he thought about Janice McNeal, her quick voice and how she had touched him with her hands. He could almost feel it and the memory made his food tasteless in his mouth.

Even though Cookie Evans exhausted Ryan with her energy, he found it comfortable to go out with her because she didn't mind doing the talking. Indeed, she hardly noticed whether Ryan spoke or not. As they ate, she reviewed for Ryan all the women who had come into Make Waves during the week. There seemed an endless number. Ryan nodded, smiled, and thought about Janice McNeal. Cookie counted her customers off on her fingers. Her nails were long and dark red. Her short hair was curled and frosted. Ryan thought her head looked landscaped and he told himself to remember to tell this to Franklin, who claimed he never joked.

At one point Ryan asked, “Did any of these women talk about Sharon Malloy?”

Cookie looked at him with exasperation. “That's
all
they talked about. And their husbands, of course. It's surprising how many of them think themselves in danger.”