Or maybe Berkowitz just liked seeing their heads explode, the Bill Hodges in her head remarks.
“Oough,” Holly says.
But Bonnie Rae and Peter Steinman are too different to be the work of one person. She’s sure of it. Or almost sure; she’s willing to admit the similar locations and the abandoned modes of transportation, bike and skateboard.
That reminds her to check with Penny about Bonnie’s clothes. Are any of them missing? Did she possibly have a suitcase of duds stashed somewhere, maybe with her friend Lakeisha? Holly takes out her notebook and scratches a reminder to ask that. She’ll call tonight, try to set up an appointment with Lakeisha for the following afternoon, but she’ll save her important questions for when they are face to face.
She rinses her plate and puts it in her dishwasher, the smallest Magic Chef the company makes, perfect for the single lady with no man in her life. She returns to the table and lights a cigarette. Nothing, in Holly’s opinion, finishes a meal as perfectly as a smoke. They also aid the deductive process.
Not that I have anything to deduce, she thinks. Maybe after I dig a little deeper, but all I can do now is speculate.
“Which is dangerous,” she tells her empty kitchen.
Silver bells tinkle, which means it’s her personal (the office ring is the standard Apple xylophone). She expects it to be Jerome, with something he forgot to tell her, but it’s Pete Huntley.
“You were right about Izzy. She was delighted to give me what she found out about the Dahl girl’s credit and phone. On the Visa, no activity. On the Verizon account, ditto. Iz went back in to see if there were any charges in the last ten days. There haven’t been. Her last credit card purchase were jeans from Amazon on June 27th. Isabelle says when you call Dahl’s phone, you can no longer leave a voicemail, just get the robot telling you the mailbox is full. And there’s no way to track it.”
“So Bonnie or someone else took out the SIM card.”
“It sure wasn’t a case of nonpayment. The phone bill was paid on July 6th, five days after the girl disappeared. All her bills were paid on the 6th. Ordinarily the bank pays on the first Monday of the month, but that Monday was the official holiday, so…”
“Was it NorBank?”
“Yeah. How did you know?”
“It’s where her mother works. Or did until some of the branches shut down. She says when they re-open, she expects to be rehired. How much is in Bonnie Dahl’s account?”
“I don’t know because Isabelle doesn’t. It would take a court order to get that info, and Iz doesn’t see the point in trying for one. Neither do I. It’s not what’s important. You know what is, right?”
Holly knows, all right. Financially speaking, Bonnie Rae Dahl is dead in the water. Which is probably a terrible metaphor under the circumstances. “Pete, you sound better. Not coughing so much.”
“I feel better, but this Covid is a real ass-kicker. I think if I hadn’t gotten those shots, I’d be in the hospital. Or…” He quits there, no doubt thinking of his partner’s mother, who didn’t get the shots.
“Go to bed early. Drink fluids.”
“Thank you, nurse.”
Holly ends the call and lights another cigarette. She goes to the window and looks out. It’s still hours until dark, but the sunlight has taken on the evening slant that always feels rueful to her, and a little sad. Another day older, another day closer to the grave, her mother used to say. Her mother who is now in her grave.
“She stole from me,” Holly murmurs. “She stole the trust fund I got from Janey. Not all of it, but most of it. My own mother.”
She tells herself that’s the past. Bonnie Rae Dahl may still be alive.
But.
No action on her Visa. No calls made from her phone. Holly supposes a trained secret agent—one of John le Carré’s “joes”—could slip away like that, shedding the ties to modern life the way a snake sheds its skin, but a twenty-four-year-old college librarian? No. Not unlikely, just no.
Bonnie Rae Dahl is dead. Holly knows it.
3
Holly has an ill-formed (and totally unscientific) idea that exercise can offset some of the damage she’s doing to her body by renewing her smoking habit, so after speaking with Pete she takes a two-mile walk in the latening light, ending up at the south end of Deerfield Park. The playground is full of kids swinging and teeter-tottering, sliding and hanging upside-down from the jungle gym. She watches them in an unguarded way no man could get away with in this century of sexual hyper-awareness, not consciously thinking about her new case, subconsciously thinking of nothing else. She has a nagging sensation that she’s forgetting something, but refuses to chase it. Whatever it is will make itself known eventually.
She calls Lakeisha Stone when she gets home. The woman who answers sounds exuberant and high on life (other substances possible). In the background Holly can hear music—it might be Otis Redding—and people laughing. There are occasional whoops. Other substances probable, Holly thinks.
“Hi, whoever you are,” Lakeisha says. “If this is some car warranty offer or how I can improve my credit rating—”
“It’s not.” Holly introduces herself, explains why she’s calling, and asks if she could meet with Lakeisha tomorrow afternoon, lateish. She says she has to be close to Upsala Village on family business. Would that be convenient?
It’s a much less exuberant Lakeisha who says that she’d be happy to talk to Holly. She’s with friends at the campground on Route 27, the one with the Indian name—does Holly know it? Holly says she doesn’t, and doesn’t say that these days Indian is considered a pejorative at best, racist at worst. She says she’s sure the GPS on her phone will take her right there.
“Nothing about Bonnie? No word?”
“No word at all,” Holly says.
“Then I don’t know how I can help you, Ms. Gibney.”
“You can help me with one thing right now. Do you think she ran away?”
“God, no.” Her voice wavers. When she speaks again, all traces of exuberance are gone. “I think she’s dead. I think some sick bastard raped her and killed her.”
4
That night Holly prays on her knees, being sure to name-check her friends and saying that she’s sorry she resumed her smoking habit and hopes that God will help her quit again soon (but not just yet). She tells God she doesn’t want to think about her mother tonight—what Charlotte did and why she did it. She ends by asking for any help God can give her in the case of the missing woman and concludes by saying she hopes that Bonnie Rae is still alive.
She gets into bed and looks up into the darkness, wondering what was nagging her at the park. As sleep approaches, ready to take her in, it comes to her: have there been other disappearances in the vicinity of Deerfield Park?
She thinks it might be interesting to find out.
February 8, 2021
January has been bitterly cold, but February brings unseasonably warm temperatures, as if to make up for three weeks of lake-effect snow and teeth-clattering near-zero weather. On this Monday afternoon, with the mercury in the mid-fifties, Roddy Harris decides to rid the Subaru wagon of the built-up encrustations of salt, which will eventually rot out the rocker panels and undercarriage if allowed to stay. Em suggests he take it to the Drive & Shine on the Airport Extension, but Roddy says he’d rather get out in the fresh air while the fresh air is bearable. She asks about his arthritis. He insists it isn’t bothering him, says he feels fine.