The Church of Dead Girls (28 page)

It turned out she had begun having an affair with a married history teacher named Sherman Carpenter, whose class on the labor-union movement she was taking. Carpenter's marital troubles were known all over town. The two of them had gone to a motel near Clinton. She had gotten home around five in the morning, having been delayed by the snow.

Ryan wanted to ask her what grade she expected to get in her labor-union class and if she had any thoughts about Carpenter's wife, who had made complaints about her husband's violence when he was drinking. But Harriet was cold and imperious and stared at Ryan as if she knew something dirty about him. She wore a tight blue turtleneck sweater and tight Levi's. She kept touching and tossing her long dark hair as if it were the object of her anger. Ryan thought of her as a ball breaker, but to Franklin the strongest term he used about Harriet was “one tough cookie.” The fact that he had been intimate with her muddled his thinking.

“You've made a mess of this whole situation,” Harriet told him. “Not only am I going to report it to the mayor, but I'm going to talk to the president of the college.”

“Get the hell out of here,” said Ryan.

As she left the room, she whispered to Ryan, “It makes me sick to think I ever let you touch me.”

That left Aaron.

He had been sitting in an office by himself for two hours and he didn't like it. Ryan entered and sat down at the desk without looking at him. Because of the people involved in the search for Meg there was a lot of noise, but this office was quiet. Aaron's hands were folded in his lap and he stared at the floor. Ryan didn't realize Aaron was angry. He looked reflective, as if considering life's troubles. Ryan thought of Harriet's remark that Aaron had told her to have sex with him. He found himself disliking the complexity caused by one's loss of social anonymity. Maybe he had lived in a small town long enough.

Ryan opened the drawer of the desk and removed a yellow legal pad. He wrote the date at the top, then he wrote his name and Aaron's name beneath it. He didn't say anything. He drew little stars at the top of the page, then he drew a picture of a mother duck followed by a line of baby ducks. He was just drawing the sixth baby duck when Aaron said, “Well?”

“I drove by your mother's house this morning,” said Ryan.

“Is that supposed to soften me up?” Aaron leaned back and stretched out his legs, crossing his feet. His hands were folded across his flat belly.

“I wonder if the people who live there ever think how your mother was killed right in the living room.”

“You'd have to ask them,” said Aaron.

Ryan saw the dislike in Aaron's eyes. He tore off the yellow sheet with the ducks, wadded it up, and tossed it at the wastebasket. It hit the rim and bounced away. “What did you think of Chihani?”

“He was harmless. He was also a smart man. I liked him.”

“I wonder if Hark would have killed him if you hadn't bitten off Hark's ear,” said Ryan. He had begun doodling on the next yellow sheet. Eggs this time.

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Just what it says.” Ryan decided it had been a dumb thing to say.

“You think I'm responsible for him getting killed?”

Ryan avoided the question. “D'you think the person who killed your mother lives in Aurelius?”

Aaron didn't answer.

“What would you do if you knew who killed her?”

“What would
you
do?”

“I expect I might kill him.”

“What would that solve?”

“It would let me sleep better. You haven't answered my question. What would you do?”

Aaron looked away. “I don't see it's your business.”

“Do you care one way or the other?”

Aaron jerked around in his seat. “Of course I care.”

“Would you want to kill him?”

“How do you know it's a man?” Aaron's tone was mocking.

“Of course it's a man.”

“If she was killed by a man living in Aurelius, then why haven't you found him?”

“It's not that simple.”

“That's one explanation,” said Aaron. Then he asked, “Do you think the same person took Sharon and Meg?”

“It wouldn't surprise me.” Ryan had drawn eight eggs in a row. He began to draw cracks in them. “Why did you tell Harriet to have sex with me?”

“Did she say that?”

“Why'd you tell her?”

“She's my soldier.”

“What's that supposed to mean?”

“Ask her yourself.”

Ryan finished drawing the cracks on the eggs. “Who were you with last night?”

“I don't plan to tell you.”

Ryan tore off the sheet of paper, wadded it up, and threw it at the wastebasket. This time he sank it. He got up, went to the door, and called to Chuck Hawley: “Chuck, take this guy over to Potterville and lock him up.”

T
he ten days after Meg's disappearance were days of dashed hopes and turmoil. The fact that a second girl had vanished and the increasing certainty that the person responsible must live in our area brought not only national attention to Aurelius but volunteers from all over the country, including a seer—this is what she called herself—by the name of Madame Respighi, who set herself up at the Aurelius Motel and, with the aid of pieces of clothing belonging to Sharon and Meg, began a psychic quest for the girls' whereabouts. She did not charge for this service and it was the general opinion that she could do no harm, though every time I drove past the motel I thought of Madame Respighi shut up in her room and locked in combat with malevolent psychic forces. Many people held her in scorn, feeling that she was trading on our town's ill fortune. She was a portly woman who dressed in gray suits, somewhat to my chagrin since I had imagined the colorful long skirts and dangling gold earrings of a gypsy. She wore black horn-rimmed glasses and her short silver hair was all curled and frizzy.

Several people showed up with dogs that had uncommon abilities. Other people came on their own, just because they wanted to join the search. Two writers materialized because they imagined book contracts. There were psychologists, law officers from around the country who had had similar cases, and social workers trained to help people deal with grief. The most disturbing visitors, to my mind, were the parents of children who had vanished in other places. They came to give solace to the Malloys and Shillers, but also in the hope that the person responsible would be captured and give information about their own children. They were sad people with defeated faces and it was hard to look at them without feeling their grief.

By the end of the first week in November everybody who might have seen or heard anything relevant had been interviewed. Suspicious automobiles had been traced. The fields and parks around town had been searched by hundreds of people. Ponds were dragged. Meg's uncle Mike became an active participant in the Friends of Sharon Malloy and the group distributed information about Meg all over the United States. Again there were calls, possible sightings, and suspicious people to be investigated.

The photograph of Meg Shiller showed a thin thirteen-year-old with long brown hair standing by a picnic table. She was waving at the photographer and had a slightly silly smile. She wore a plaid skirt and a light-colored blouse. Her hair, parted in the middle and tucked behind her ears, hung past her shoulders. She had a straight nose, almost pointed, and her lower lip stuck out slightly in a cheerful pout. Her head was tilted, which gave her a quizzical look: a little smile, a little pout, a little question mark. Within twenty-four hours the photograph took its place next to Sharon's on store windows and telephone poles and at the toll booths on the turnpike. Many people displayed the two photographs on the rear windows of their automobiles.

The fear surrounding Meg's disappearance was greater than the fear surrounding Sharon's. In Sharon's case, we could still hope that her disappearance was an isolated incident. But in Meg's it was clear that we were probably dealing with a sequence of disappearances, and almost immediately no child was seen on the street by herself, or even himself. This was true as far away as Binghamton and Syracuse. Meg's disappearance made us expect a third kidnapping, maybe even a fourth and fifth.

These fears led to a number of false alarms. Betty Brewer on Forest Street saw a man watching her house and felt he was after her daughter, Ilene. She called the police, who arrived in four separate cars three minutes later. The man watching her house—he had been walking by—was a plainclothesman with the state police. Ten plainclothesmen were patrolling the streets of Aurelius and all were eventually reported. Niagara Mohawk meter readers and town water-meter readers were reported again and again. Men walking their dogs, even mailmen, became suspect. And then at night there were the suspicious noises: the sound of footsteps in a backyard, a window rattling, leaves blowing across a front porch. Ten times a night the police would receive these false alarms and each time they would rush out because this time, possibly, the culprit might be found.

What kind of person was this culprit? The police had profiles prepared by psychologists and, according to Ryan, it seemed that everybody in town shared some of the characteristics. But that was not true. Primarily the police were looking for a single man between the ages of twenty-five and fifty or, if not single, then a man estranged from his wife. I am sure that police records were sought for several thousand men within the county, including myself. This was the time when Harry Martini was taken out of his office for the whole school to see, when Jaime Rose was brought in for questioning. One man, Herbert Maxwell, a local plumber for twenty years, was questioned by the police and revealed to be a Vietnam deserter. He lived alone and was rather solitary. He had already been punished or pardoned—I don't know which—for his desertion from the army but he didn't want it to become public knowledge. Now it was public knowledge. As a single man living alone and private in his habits, he had been suspected. That was true of many men. It was true of Ryan Tavich; it was true of me.

On the Saturday after Halloween, my next-door neighbor, Pete Daniels, happened to speak to me as we were both raking leaves. He almost never spoke to me, so his attention was surprising. First he mentioned the nice weather, then he said it was a shame about Meg Shiller.

Then he said, “Sadie Moore spends a lot of time at your house, doesn't she?”

I felt a chill. If I said no, he would find it suspicious. If I said yes, he would find that suspicious too. Of course, it wasn't any of his business, so his very question suggested mistrust. Pete had an alert expression, like a man listening for an echo. He leaned against his rake, a thin fellow in a Syracuse University sweatshirt that proclaimed him an “Orangeman.”

“I'm glad to help out Franklin whenever I can,” I said. “He's been very busy.”

I was a subject of discussion. I saw my neighbors looking at me with new eyes. Of course, it was easy to be paranoid about this. Could I ask Pete if he thought I might have abducted Sharon Malloy and Meg Shiller? The police knew I had been at school at the time of the first disappearance and at home or with Sadie at the time of the second. But what did my neighbors know? And once that sort of talk begins, truth or falsehood means nothing. Talk has its own momentum.

The next day, Sunday, Sadie told me that her father had been trying to find someone else to look after her. Mrs. Kelly was available only three afternoons and early evenings, and besides, she had left early more than once. Franklin wanted to get another person as well. He even said he might send Sadie to her aunt's in White Plains until “all this is cleared up.” Sadie protested vigorously enough that the matter was temporarily dropped. But Franklin told Sadie that she couldn't spend as much time at my house. She responded by saying she had thought that Franklin liked me.

“It's not a matter of liking or disliking,” Franklin said.

Franklin also suggested that Sadie could go to Paula's house each evening.

“I'll run away from home,” Sadie told him.

Then, when Sadie returned home from school Monday afternoon, she found Barry Sanders's mother settled in the living room watching television. “Like a big, ugly plant,” Sadie told me.

“Tell me if you're hungry and I'll fix you a snack,” Mrs. Sanders said, returning to her show. Because she claimed to be allergic to dogs, she had shut Shadow up in the basement. Sadie rescued Shadow and went to her room. Around six Mrs. Sanders prepared macaroni and cheese and green beans. Barry appeared for dinner but he didn't talk to Sadie, because he was shy with her in his mother's presence. Mrs. Sanders urged Barry to eat his green beans. After supper Barry and Sadie wanted to come over to my house but Mrs. Sanders said that wouldn't be a good idea. They watched TV instead. Shadow whined from Sadie's room but wasn't allowed to join them.

“She wants to keep me a prisoner in my own house,” Sadie told me the next morning at school.

Tuesday evening I went to see Franklin when he got home about eleven. “Do you really think I might be involved with these disappearances?”

He was not comfortable. “There's a lot of crazy talk.”

“That doesn't answer my question.”

“Of course I don't think you're involved, but people are upset. What can I do?”

I wanted to say, Franklin, look at me, I'm your friend. Instead I said, “Well, I hope this is settled soon.”

“So do I,” said Franklin. “Jesus, so do I.”

Charges were brought against Hark. The county prosecutor wanted to charge him with first-degree murder but Ryan had him change it to second. I like to think that Ryan felt sympathy for Hark but perhaps he knew that a first-degree murder conviction was impossible. There were plenty of people who thought that Hark shouldn't be arrested, that he had done the right thing. It was argued that even though Chihani had nothing to do with the disappearances he still represented the sort of thinking that leads to criminal behavior. One heard the argument that laws exist to keep deviants out of the community and that to seek to change these laws radically, as Chihani tried to do, was to make the community vulnerable. Chihani's preaching and the presence of the IIR had created an atmosphere that made it possible for the disappearances to take place.

The dangers of permissiveness became a general topic and I was told that Henry Skoyles, owner of the Strand Theater on Main Street, had canceled three scheduled movies as being too violent or sexually provocative, exchanging them for what he described as “family fare.” I had known Henry Skoyles in school. He had been two years behind me and had the reputation for being inventive as far as obscenities were concerned. Once he had called the principal “turdhead” and soon it seemed that everyone was using the word. Now he felt called upon to bring back the Walt Disney version of
Aladdin
and run it for the entire month.

—

But I'm not doing justice to the terror. Not only did we know that horrible things had happened, we were afraid that horrible things were about to happen. This made us even more suspicious, as if suspicion itself could keep us safe by keeping us alert.

With Meg's disappearance many new people joined the Friends of Sharon Malloy. More often, this group was called the Friends, since it now also included friends of Meg Shiller, though legally it was still the Friends of Sharon Malloy. The Friends decided they could help by organizing teams of volunteers to patrol Aurelius. By the weekend they had three cars with three people in each watching the streets of Aurelius twenty-four hours a day. No longer were they simply trying to find the missing girls, they were trying to keep more girls from disappearing. If I had suggested at school that they were a vigilante force, I would have been reproached. I'm sure others felt as I did, but such was the degree of fear that one had no choice but to applaud the Friends.

Sharon's uncles, Paul Leimbach and Donald Malloy, were the most active in organizing these patrols, but Meg's uncle, Mike Shiller, was also involved. There was talk that the men on these patrols should wear a special cap or armband to indicate their status as protectors, but Leimbach said it would make them too much like a police force. Donald Malloy got a number of magnetic triangles from a highway construction firm in Utica. These were bright Day-Glo orange, sixteen inches high, and the Friends displayed them on the front doors of their patrol cars. I don't know how many times a day I would look from my classroom window or from a window at home and see a vehicle with those orange triangles slowly passing by. It was both reassuring and frightening. I know that Ryan Tavich disapproved of the patrols, though Chief Schmidt felt they couldn't do any harm and was glad to have them on the streets. Captain Percy's feelings were mixed.

Paul Leimbach and Donald Malloy spent less and less time at work. Both were heard to say that the police weren't doing enough to find the culprit or to protect the citizens of Aurelius. At a city council meeting, Donald proposed a six o'clock curfew for anyone under the age of eighteen. Despite some protest his proposal was accepted with modification. Beginning immediately, anyone sixteen years or younger could not be out on the street after seven at night without an adult.

I was tempted to remind people that Sharon had vanished in the midafternoon, but we had reached a time when people, myself included, were circumspect in their speech. Everyone, it seemed, listened for a nuance of guilt, some double meaning that would point a finger. When I spoke, I felt that people listened not to my words but to what lay behind them. And of course people felt they heard something when they heard nothing of the kind. Far better to remain silent and to wear a brave smile, to praise the Friends for their sacrifice. Briefly I even considered joining them—this was when I felt I was being watched—but then I rebelled in my own little way and refused, though I told no one of my refusal and it was only to myself that I refused.

Once the curfew was in place, Henry Skoyles canceled the second show at the Strand and even the first show was sparsely attended. Many stores and restaurants open in the evening changed their hours. Junior's began closing at seven and the Aurelius Grill at eight. Wegmans, which had closed at midnight for years, now closed at nine o'clock. Night meetings were canceled. Rehearsals for the fall play at the high school were canceled, as were rehearsals for the Christmas pageant at Saint Mary's Church. Business fell off at local bars and restaurants. People who never locked their doors, locked their doors.

On the other hand, pizza deliveries doubled and the video stores did a big business. The liquor store out at the strip mall was also more active. The town library reported more visits and church attendance increased. And I must say that a higher percentage of my students got their homework in on time. From what I heard in the teachers' lounge, this was true in many classes. The Morellis, across the street from me, obtained a large dog from the pound in Utica, a German shepherd that barked all night long and terrorized the neighborhood cats. Indeed, a number of people bought dogs.