Page 6 of They Say a Girl Died Here

Anna hadn’t noticed the girl come in, and she hadn’t ordered anything but was standing and smoking by the jukebox, making her selection.

Todd flushed, and Suzy looked slapped. “You’re such a bitch, Melissa.”

The jukebox burst into life, some country remix of “Three Cigarettes in an Ashtray” playing, and this young woman, maybe Anna’s age, swayed to the music, her own cigarette hanging from her lips. She was wearing denim overalls with only a bra top underneath and had a slim armful of brightly colored plastic bangles that clacked together as she moved, and her eyes were lined with thick smudged kohl. Her hair, darker even than Anna’s, was high on her head in a scruffy ponytail. It wasn’t so much how she looked that fascinated Anna, but the way she unsettled everyone around her. The air fizzed with a new tension.

“Cool it, Melissa.” Sheriff Adams, out of the restroom, joined his young deputy at the counter. He took the lid off his coffee and sipped it. “And you know smoking inside’s against the law.” He didn’t look at her, but his voice was no-nonsense, the patient tone of an exasperated father.

“I’m going anyway, Uncle Zach.” She took a long drag of the cigarette as the rest of the diner watched, then sauntered past the sheriff, a smile on her face, flicking her ash in his coffee and blowing the smoke in Todd’s direction.

Anna watched, smiling herself, until the diner door swung shut. The sheriff shook his head, pushing his cup away as Jeannie put a fresh coffee down in front of him. “Family or not, you shouldn’t let her behave like that to you. It’s disrespectful,” she said.

Sheriff Adams waved away her concern. “She doesn’t mean it. Bad time of year for her, you know that. She loved Lila.”

Miles came out of the kitchen with the burgers wrapped in foil. “That’s the no-pickle. Gave you extra cheese.”

“You’re a good man, Miles Brannigan. I won’t hear a word said against you.” He got to his feet. “Come on, Todd, we can eat in the car. Those new speed cameras won’t check themselves.” Todd Greenbough paused as he followed and looked back at Anna.

“You should come to The Shamrock sometime. Can be a good night.”

Anna gave the slightest tilt of her head—a completely noncommittal, disinterested nod—and he flushed again, embarrassed, and followed his boss out. Anna wiped away a few drops of spilled coffee, scrubbing much harder than necessary. She’d go to The Shamrock when hell froze over.

8

Anna ended up working an extra hour after a group of truckers had come in, and in the main she’d put her unease around the dead girls out of her mind. She would believe the sheriff over paranoid townspeople. If the state police had closed the case, then surely Harper’s Creek was safe. It was easier said than done to keep believing that when she left the diner to head home, however. Whoever was putting the posters up had been busy, and the thin photocopied sheets were pinned or taped to posts and walls and empty store windows, some flapping in the hot evening breeze as if the town was keen to shake them away, sticky paper on fingertips.

She felt the girls’ eyes on her, demanding her attention, and in her imagination they were sending a warning. Take care, Anna, don’t let it be you next.

She walked faster, nervous, this small town suddenly very much unsafe. She was being ridiculous. The Farmhand, or at least the real man who inspired the stupid boogeyman story, was dead, and the murders happened long before she got here. She didn’t know the murdered girls. She had shit of her own to deal with. But still, she couldn’t shake the unsettled feeling. Shame there was no hard evidence. That’s what Miles had said. But surely if the killer had been someone else, someone who lived here in Harper’s Creek, they’d have given themselves away by now. Even as she thought it, she knew that wasn’t true. She’d listened to enough podcasts and watched enough documentaries on serial killers to know they could go undiscovered for years. It didn’t make her feel any better. She glanced behind and around, picking up her pace.

With the evening air cooler, the promises held by a Saturday night were coming alive in Harper’s Creek. Music was playing in The Shamrock, pumping down the quiet of Main Street—and several trucks kicked up dust as they drove toward it, as if answering the call.

The deep bass throbbed as a country-rock number started, and Anna was reminded of the church hymn she’d heard earlier, on her way into work. This was the flip side to that—a beacon of danger in the night, drawing the wild and reckless, promising drinking and dancing and a good time. She of before would have loved it, but now she hurried in the opposite direction.

As she passed the church board, she saw that a poster of the girls had been tacked up there too. Their faces had washed in gray as night fell, as if they were truly ghosts looking back at her. Anna stared, and when the church’s rear door opened unexpectedly, she froze, as if caught mid-crime. A tall figure, a black shadow against the pale yellow light pooling out from inside, emerged.

Pastor Keene paused, and as he smiled his white teeth glinted. “Anna, isn’t it?” The security light clicked on as he closed and locked the church behind him. “What brings you to my door?”

He was tall, well over six feet, his body sinewy lean, hair thick and still dark despite him being in his fifties, and as he stepped out of the shadows, his blue eyes sharp and shining, there was something almost predatory about him. Masculine. Anna’s skin hummed like a rabbit’s would, suddenly aware of a fox. “How do you know my name?” The second man today to know who she was, and it made her feel vulnerable.

“It’s my job to know my flock.” He joined her on the sidewalk. “And as I’m sure you’ve realized by now, Harper’s Creek is a small town. I know most faces. Process of elimination. And the uniform”—he nodded to her dress with Jeannie’s on it—“tells me you must be Anna Maybourne. Evelyn Maybourne’s granddaughter?” A flash of those white teeth again. “Welcome to town. Always good to have a family return to the fold. I’ve seen you in church too.”

“We only go for Grandma’s sake.” She lifted her chin high, refusing to show any sign that her heart was beating so fast in her chest she thought she might pass out. “I believe in science, I don’t believe in God.”

“Is that so?” He was amused as he opened the door to his Mercedes, pristine and dust-free despite being from the eighties at least, its lines low and hard. “Well, that doesn’t mean that God doesn’t believe in you, Anna Maybourne.” He tossed his soft leather briefcase onto the back seat. “Can I give you a ride home?”

“I’m good to walk.” Staring at the darkness, she wanted nothing better than to be home as quickly as possible, but she’d take her chances in the night a hundred times over rather than get in that old car with a strange man.

“Then take care.” He looked at her thoughtfully. “Phone signal’s patchy at best since those two towers went down. And when it gets dark out beyond the edge of town, there’s no streetlights to guide you.”

“I know,” she said, defensive. “Like I said, I’m good.” They stood a moment longer, watching each other, before Anna realized that he wasn’t going anywhere until she left, so she walked past him, her hips stiff and legs feeling like they were moving all wrong under his gaze. A minute or so later the car coughed loud as his ignition fired up, but he must have turned to head the other way, because he didn’t come past. As she walked into the suffocating night, her heart finally slowing down to somewhere close to normal, she resisted the urge to look back.

9

Pastor Keene hadn’t been wrong about the darkness away from town. The narrow white beam from the flashlight on Anna’s phone barely reached her feet, and when she held it out ahead of her the ocean of darkness greedily ate it up. She walked fast but not too fast, knowing that she was only a skip away from a panicked run. She took deep breaths to calm herself.

There was no one out here. No killer lying in wait. No demon Farmhand coming to murder her because she’d summoned him so cynically the night before. She gripped her keys tight, sharp edges pointing outward between fingers. Even if someone did attack her, she was ready. Elbow to the throat. Key in the eye. Run.

Occasionally, as her sneaker scuffed along the edge of the asphalt, she thought she heard the throaty growl of an old car engine somewhere behind, but no headlights broke into the night, and no car overtook her.