The Church of Dead Girls (25 page)

I
t would be a mistake to think that Houari Chihani's neighbors didn't call the police. The dull clang of a baseball bat striking the hood of an automobile will upset the peace of mind of any property owner. Mrs. Morotti across the street called the police at ten-fifteen, and her neighbor on the right, James Pejewski, called a few minutes later. Neither, however, saw Chihani fall and so their telephone calls concerned only the vandalism. When they looked again, they saw Chihani lying in the wet in his front yard but they didn't realize it was him. It was Halloween. Many houses had bodies in their front yards.

Around two in the morning, long after the police had been summoned, a patrol car drove past Chihani's house. By this time it was snowing hard. The two officers, Tommy Flanaghan and Ray Hanna, knew nothing of the earlier calls but they noted the smashed Citroën. Hanna wanted to stop but Flanaghan said to keep going. Chihani's house was dark and these problems would keep till morning. In any case, they had more pressing business on their minds than vandalism.

Presumably the calls of Chihani's neighbors had been noted in the police log. Perhaps an officer had even been told to investigate when he had time. But the calls had been forgotten in the wave of other events that had their beginning early in the evening.

Sadie, Meg Shiller, and Hillary Debois had gone trick-or-treating from six-thirty to eight, but what with the wet and the cold, they didn't have much fun after the first half hour. Sadie and Meg had umbrellas, which felt out of place on Halloween and got tangled up with the pillowcases they used to carry their candy. They saw some friends and several times they joined other kids, going together to five or six houses, then separating.

By eight o'clock they were back at Sadie's. Franklin was still out in search of Halloween stories, so the girls were alone. Mrs. Kelly had been there earlier but she had left, even though Franklin expected her to stay until ten. She was afraid that someone would steal her garbage cans unless she was home to watch them. The girls were soaked through and they stripped off their clothes, putting on bathrobes of Franklin's that Sadie found for them. They tossed their wet clothes in the dryer. Meg and Hillary telephoned their parents to say where they were. Meg lived two blocks in one direction and Hillary lived about a block in the other. As they waited for their clothes to dry, they made hot chocolate and snacked on Halloween candy. What did they talk about? Their history homework for the next day. How Shirley Potter seemed to have a crush on Bobby McBride. That Meg meant to go horseback riding on Saturday. That Hillary's cousin Anne was coming to visit from Albany that weekend. That Meg thought Frank Howard was cute but the others didn't agree. He was too stuck-up. Did they talk about Sharon Malloy and what might have happened to her? No, they didn't, which doesn't mean the question didn't occur to them. They talked quickly and kept interrupting each other and laughed a lot.

“Of course we thought about Sharon,” Sadie told me later. “It's something we think about all the time. It's just too depressing to keep talking about.”

By nine o'clock their clothes were dry. Meg had worn jeans, and over her jacket she wore a white shirt of her father's smeared with red paint to look like blood. As a hit-and-run victim, she hadn't needed an elaborate costume, and she didn't bother putting the cast back on her leg. In any case, made from newspapers, it was wet and falling apart. Nor did she put back the bloody bandages around her head and arms.

Hillary had dressed in one of her father's suits, and Sadie had decided a black dress that had belonged to her mother made a suitable vampire outfit. The lipstick she snitched from Paula, wiping the tip with a tissue so her lips wouldn't touch where Paula's had touched.

Because it was a school night Meg and Hillary had promised their parents they would be home by nine-thirty, or ten at the latest. They were a little giddy from the amount of candy they had eaten, but they were also tired, so shortly after nine-thirty they telephoned their parents to say they were coming home. Franklin was still out with the photographer. I was home with my lab reports, glad that no Halloween reveler had rung my doorbell for at least forty-five minutes.

Hillary's mother said she would drive over and pick up her daughter, though it was little more than a block. Meg said she didn't want to be picked up. Her parents were endlessly pokey and she could be in bed before her parents even found their car keys. It was still raining, but Meg had her umbrella, a long black umbrella of her father's. Hillary said that her mother could easily drive Meg home as well, but Meg was impatient.

So around nine-forty-five Meg said good-bye and hurried into the rain. Joan Debois's Dodge Caravan pulled into the driveway about five minutes later and honked. Sadie stood on the porch and watched Hillary run out to the car, which then backed out the driveway. Hillary waved through the window. Sadie closed and locked the door, then returned to the kitchen. She still had math problems to do so she settled down at the kitchen table with another cup of hot chocolate and her math textbook. She hoped her father would be home before she went to bed, but often he visited Paula McNeal. On some nights, if she was alone, Sadie would call me around ten-thirty to say hello. I disapproved of Franklin's leaving Sadie alone, but I was hesitant to speak to him about it. It amazes me how we keep silent when we feel we should speak up. But we don't want to offend someone by calling attention to a problem, something we feel this person should do. I felt it was unsafe for Sadie to spend so much time by herself, but instead of doing something about it and possibly irritating Franklin, I let Sadie go on being unsafe.

At ten-fifteen Meg Shiller's mother called Sadie, asking to speak to Meg. She sounded cross that her daughter had stayed out late despite assuring her that she was coming home right away.

The refrigerator abruptly turned on and Sadie jumped. “Meg left half an hour ago,” she said.

Both must have immediately calculated how long it would take to walk two blocks.

“Are you sure?” said Meg's mother. “Be serious now.” Helen Shiller taught second grade at Pickering Elementary School. She knew how kids could make jokes when they shouldn't.

“She left at quarter to ten,” said Sadie, growing scared.

“Oh, my God,” said Helen Shiller, and she hung up.

Sadie called Hillary Debois but the phone was busy. Then she called me. I said I'd be right over. I put on my raincoat and grabbed an umbrella. Sadie met me on the front porch. “She's not at Hillary's,” she said. “I just talked to her.”

I had a flashlight and I shone it at her. I was struck by how old Sadie looked, how frightened.

“Let's walk up to Meg's house,” she said. “Maybe she's home by now.”

The rain was just turning to snow. I kept my umbrella over both of us. As we hurried along the sidewalk, Sadie told me about her evening and how Meg had decided to walk home. We had only gone half a block when a station wagon pulled up to the curb. It was Helen Shiller.

“Have you seen her?” she asked.

We said no. The streets were dark and deserted. The houses on this block had large yards, sometimes stretching back to the next street. A few snowflakes had begun sticking to the ground.

Helen Shiller pulled away from the curb. The fear I saw in her face, I see it still: the eyes panicked in the dash lights. Sadie and I continued up the street toward Meg's house, jostling each other under my umbrella. I kept shining my light into the dark yards. We had gone about thirty more feet when my light picked out a thin black shape in Herb Gladstone's front yard.

“What's that?” I asked.

Sadie hurried to see. “It's Meg's umbrella,” she said.

—

I was the one to call the police. And I am ashamed of my own foolish vanity that lets me think that, because Chuck Hawley was on duty, the police responded faster than they might otherwise have. It was the first time that I felt glad my cousin was a policeman, though I have never had any reason to regret it in the past. I told Chuck what had happened.

“Cripes,” he said. “Oh no.”

In less than five minutes Ryan Tavich was at Sadie's house. Two more police cars arrived within minutes after that. Hillary Debois's mother called Sadie to see if there was any news. More car doors slammed outside and there were running footsteps. Cold air blew through the open doorway.

“There's no answer at Meg's house,” said Joan Debois.

Sadie told her there was no sign of Meg.

“You mean she never got home? Oh, her poor mother.”

Soon off-duty policemen began to arrive. By eleven o'clock we had state police as well. Sadie's cocker spaniel, Shadow, had to be put in the basement, where it barked and barked. The rain had turned completely to snow. Captain Percy arrived at eleven-thirty. His normally inexpressive face was especially rigid, as if cut from wood. I should have gone home, but Franklin was still out and I felt reluctant to leave Sadie, who was weeping. I also felt some of the excitement and wanted to stay. Though I don't know why I should have been excited to hear Captain Percy call the barracks in Utica to ask that dogs be sent down as soon as possible. Men were clomping in and out and the phone kept ringing. More and more police cars were parked along the curb and I could see people gathering up and down the street.

After Captain Percy used the phone, Ryan made a surreptitious call to Franklin.

“You better get home right away,” Ryan said into the phone.

There was a pause, then Ryan said, “Sadie's fine. It's one of her friends.” He hung up.

Minutes later Franklin rushed into his house and found it full of policemen.

The police searched every inch between Sadie's house and Meg Shiller's. They woke up or interrupted everybody not only on our street but also on the blocks north and south of ours. No one had seen Meg Shiller. Earlier the streets had been full of kids. People had heard their voices, their shouts. It was Halloween. Indeed, if Meg Shiller had happened to cry out, who would have found it remarkable?

And the snow was a problem. Sadie showed Ryan the place where we had found the umbrella on Herb Gladstone's front yard. His lawn went all the way back to Tyler Street. The police roused Herb but he hadn't seen or heard anything. If someone had come through his yard and left tracks in the mud, by midnight those tracks were covered with snow. Although there was nothing to say that tracks existed.

I went home at midnight, feeling that with Franklin back I was not justified in staying.

Sadie was angry with her father. “You were with Paula, weren't you.” It wasn't a question.

Franklin looked guilty. His light brown hair was messy and its disorder seemed evidence of his transgressions. One even expected to see lipstick on his cheek.

Reporters from Utica and Syracuse began to arrive around one o'clock, about the same time the dogs got here from the barracks in Utica. I was in bed trying to sleep and heard them barking. At two o'clock I got up to take a sleeping pill. There was still plenty of commotion in the street.

—

Meg was of the fourth generation of Shillers to live in Aurelius. Her great-grandfather had moved here shortly before World War I. He was the one who dropped the
c
from the family name—Schiller—hoping to anglicize it. His own father had been born in a small town in Bavaria in the 1870s. About fifteen years ago, a year or so before Meg was born, Ralph and Helen visited this town in Bavaria—I can't remember its name—and said it was packed with Schillers. Ralph told many people in Aurelius he felt embarrassed that his grandfather had changed the family name and he was considering changing it back to Schiller. I don't think anything came of this. But it must have been odd to discover a whole town of distant cousins and to visit a graveyard where one's family went back hundreds of years.

Helen Shiller's maiden name was also German: Kraus. But she had no knowledge of her family before her grandfather, a man whom I gather she didn't like. Both Ralph and Helen grew up in Aurelius and I have known them all their lives. As an electrician Ralph had done work on my house. His father was an electrician as well, and when I first called Ralph with a problem it was because I knew that my mother had employed Ralph's father. And as I mentioned, Helen taught second grade at Pickering Elementary School. They had three children: Bobby, who was nine; Meg, thirteen; and Henry, who was sixteen. Both Ralph and Helen had siblings in town and cousins, nieces, and nephews, so there were many Shillers in Aurelius, though perhaps not as many as in the town in Bavaria whose name I've forgotten. Foolishly perhaps, I think of Germans as blond, but the Shillers were dark and short and brown-eyed. They were a good family, serious and hardworking. One of those families who never have any scandal attached to their name.

I had Meg Shiller in general science in eighth grade, and while she wasn't an A student, she was a solid B student. She was lively and good-natured and I could see why she would be such a good friend of Sadie's. She loved horseback riding and kept her brown hair in a long ponytail, as if in solidarity with the horses. She spent most weekends working in a stable just south of town for the opportunity to ride for an hour or two. She was the sort of child—young lady, I should say—who made one feel the world was proceeding along on the right course: she was happy, successful, and contented. And now she was gone.

—

Ryan Tavich had no sleep that Tuesday night or Wednesday morning. There were many people to wake up and ask if they had noticed anything suspicious. Indeed, some remembered seeing Meg Shiller earlier in the evening dressed up as a hit-and-run victim. And some considered it prophetic that Meg had gone from door to door covered with blood and with her face all white and bandaged.

When people heard that Meg had disappeared, they began to telephone friends, neighbors, and relatives. A few of them got in their cars to drive slowly down Van Buren Street, past my house, and slowly along the route from Sadie's house to Meg's house. It was still snowing and the roads were slippery. Because of all the traffic, Captain Percy told Ryan to block off the streets around Meg's house, which was perhaps a mistake because even more people dragged themselves out of bed to look at the barriers. I don't know if there were actually any accidents but one kept hearing thirdhand that so-and-so had slid into a tree or smacked into the rear of someone else's car.