Page 64 of They Say a Girl Died Here

Anna hung up quickly and tucked her phone into her pocket, her heart pounding. So maybe Bonnie never went for the abortion. An affair with a powerful man whose life would be wrecked if it came out, and she was pregnant with their child and keeping it. She looked back at the building in front of her. Pastor Keene hadn’t been the only man in town getting his teeth fixed. Sheriff Adams had too. That’s what had bugged Anna. In the Lila clips she’d watched, the sheriff’s teeth were crooked and stained. By the time of Bonnie’s murder, he had the clean, bright smile he had now. The sheriff had been through a lot of dental work between the two deaths. And he’d been so insistent it was the same killer because the methods were identical—but he was the sheriff. It would have been easy for him to make Bonnie’s death seem exactly the same as Lila’s because he knew the details that were kept from the public.

Anna needed to see the case notes. There would be something there, she was sure of it. Whatever had gone in the computer system would no doubt back up the sheriff’s story that the cases were identical, but if there were any small details that were different and if there was any evidence of Bonnie’s pregnancy from the initial examination of the body or the autopsy, surely that would be in the paperwork.

Roz finally pushed her chair back and hurried to the restrooms, in the other direction from the offices, and Anna rushed up the steps, quietly opened the door, and jogged down toward the sheriff’s office. She was in. She’d let herself out the window when she was done. With luck, no one would know she’d been there at all.

She pushed the sheriff’s office door closed and risked turning the desk light on, needing more than her tiny phone flashlight to find the file. It had to be here. She scanned the surface of his desk, moving papers around, not caring about leaving them untidy. There were other files but not the one she wanted. She tried the desk drawers. The top one was filled with the usual office bric-a-brac—stapler, hole punch, stuff people barely used anymore—and then she saw a small Post-it notepad toward the back, shoved in there and forgotten, maybe.

She stared before carefully pulling the drawer out farther. The sheriff had maybe used the pad to jot down notes during a phone call, and some of the writing she couldn’t make out, but two things forced her heart into her mouth. The first was the neat, small capital letters a license plate had been written out in, and the second was the lilac ink he’d used. She looked at the photos of the cards Bonnie had hidden behind the mirror. The same lilac ink. The same neat printed letters. Motherfucker. A murderous worm at the heart of Harper’s Creek.

She took another picture and closed the drawer, leaving the pad in place as evidence in situ. The sheriff had obviously forgotten it was there, otherwise he would have gotten rid of it when she told him about the cards she’d found. He must have kicked himself when she’d found them. Maybe he thought Bonnie had gotten rid of them after he’d given them to her. Bonnie probably said she had. But of course she kept them. She was a young girl in love. Too young to see that her lover was just a tragic middle-aged man getting his ego soothed and his dick sucked. At least Anna had one of the cards hidden away. The sheriff might have found an excuse to get in Bonnie’s room and destroy the others, but she had that. His DNA would be all over it.

Angrier now, she tried the next drawer, but it was locked, and she reached for the scissors in the desk organizer and jammed a sharp end into the keyhole, pushing it in as far as it would go. She twisted hard, and after a moment’s resistance, the cheap lock gave way. Screw you, Sheriff Adams, you murderous prick.

There were a few files stacked there, but none of them were Lila’s or Bonnie’s. Anna’s heart sank. Maybe he’d taken the file home. Or maybe it was locked in a records room in the station, and that would not be a lock she could force open with paper scissors. Shit.

She sat back on her heels, about to slam the drawer shut in frustration, when she saw a glint of a metal tab, right at the back. Not in the drawer but down behind it. Hidden. She reached in, caught the edge with her fingers, and pulled it through. She grinned. The names were typed neatly on the front. CLARKE, LILA, and BUCHANAN, BONNIE. Bingo. The sheriff might have forgotten about the incriminating Post-it note in the top drawer, but he’d hidden the file for now. Just in case. She tucked the file into her backpack and got to her feet. Reading could wait.

Anna turned to open the window, but although the handle moved, the window wouldn’t budge. She tried the next one along. It wouldn’t move either. It was as if they’d been glued shut. She looked closer. Nailed down. Shit.

She glanced toward the door. How was she going to get out past Roz? Shit, shit, shit. This was a small town; Roz wasn’t going to stay here all night. She’d probably forward calls to Pete or Todd and be leaving by ten. Then Anna would be truly fucked. Trapped inside an alarmed building with a stolen police file in her bag and Grandma home alone. Shit, shit, fuck. Her face burned as she took a deep breath, trying to calm herself. She had no choice. She was going to have to brazen it out. Then she saw the inhaler on top of the filing cabinet. Thank you, Todd.

“I found it!” Anna came breezily down the corridor, holding up the inhaler. “Eventually.”

“Good Lord!” Roz spun around in her chair with a gasp, one hand clutching her brightly patterned blouse. She looked so terrified Anna thought she was having a heart attack.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to make you jump.” Smile, Anna, smile. This is the most normal thing in the world.

“What are you doing here?” The fear took a moment to leave Roz as recognition finally sank in. “Anna?”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Anna feigned confusion. “I called out.” She held up the inhaler. “Todd forgot this. I said I’d take it to him on my scooter. He’s at Coulter Corner. Near that farm.” Anna knew nothing about Coulter Corner except that it was barely a town and more important, only a couple of miles from Harper’s Creek, a believable distance for her scooter to make. “Took me a minute to find it.”

“Oh gosh, no, I didn’t hear.” She had closed down her computer and got to her feet. “But I’m about to lock up and then head home. I can take it, if you like. I have to pass that way.”

“No, I’m good.” Anna’s face had flushed with how close she’d come to getting caught, but it must have looked like an embarrassed blush to Roz, who smiled warmly.

“Oh, I see how it is. You run along, then. And don’t distract him too much!”

“Thank you.” Anna couldn’t meet her gaze, which made Roz laugh a little.

“I remember those early days. All that fizz in the veins. I wish we could bottle it. You have fun.”

“Good night, Roz.” Anna was already pushing out the door, tucking the inhaler into her pocket, the stolen file burning into her back. She was going to be in so much trouble tomorrow. But then, if she was still alive by tomorrow, she’d make sure the trouble was all headed in the sheriff’s direction.

78

Music pumped out from The Shamrock as she went past and Deputy Pete’s cruiser was parked outside, but Anna couldn’t see any sign of the deputy himself. Maybe he was inside drinking instead of doing his job, but between the party atmosphere and the police presence, she wouldn’t be able to find a corner in there to look at the file anyway. The diner was out, as she’d called in sick and Jeannie was too nosy anyway. She needed somewhere totally private, and she couldn’t face going home yet, even knowing she’d left Grandma alone. If she wasn’t at home, she couldn’t die in the basement.

Almost on autopilot, she found herself heading toward the Cornerstone Motel, silence settling around her as she left Main Street behind. The porch lights were still on outside each room as if there was hope of customers arriving and giving their abandoned spaces purpose. It felt like something between The Shining and Psycho as she leaned her scooter against the wall, and that should have been frightening, but somehow the familiar fictional horrors were comforting.

She didn’t go inside Jamie’s room—not now that she’d had the half memory of finding him in there and not in the swimming pool—but sat in one of his chairs outside, the buzzing bugs that darted around the caged bulb above the door her only company. She lit a cigarette and took out the file. The air was so pregnant with a coming storm that the few thin pages inside started to warp as she freed them, the smoke hanging low as if it too were curious.

There was a small stack of printed photos she looked at first. The pictures that had been on the posters and then less-pleasant crime-scene ones. The dead girls splayed naked in the fields, no vibrant shine left. She moved on, not wanting to add to their lack of dignity by looking too long, then laid out the images of the backs of their heads side by side, more gruesome but easier to look at. Both girls’ skulls had been brutally dented—Lily’s more ferociously but in a more concave shape, whereas Bonnie’s injury was narrower, angular. Sharper. She didn’t need to read any report to know that these weren’t made with the same weapon. So much for the sheriff insisting the murders were totally identical.

She looked again at Bonnie. She’d been hit with something weighty, with harder edges. And she had a pretty good idea what it might have been. The shelf of awards at Butterflies Dental. The heavy obelisk award she’d held. That could do it.

She imagined the scene. Bonnie and the sheriff after hours in the clinic, but not their usual sex and romantic fantasies. Bonnie hadn’t had the abortion she’d promised she would. Him clearly not going to act on empty promises to leave his wife. Reality hitting hard for both of them, and then in a moment of panic, with Bonnie threatening to tell, he grabs the award from the shelf as she turns to leave and hits her hard with it. Then, it being only the day after Lila’s three-year anniversary, the murder no doubt having been a talking point again, he strangles her.

Yeah, Anna thought, inhaling hard, that worked. The clinic was the last place Bonnie had been seen. The sheriff must have cleaned up, put the award back on the shelf, and then, late at night, taken her body someplace else, washed her in Sailor’s Choice, and then left her out on Melissa’s farm, a chunk of skin cut from her back. It was a lot for one man to do, but fear could give you the strength of ten men; wasn’t that how the saying went? And while the doc might have covered for him with the pregnancy, he wouldn’t have helped cover up a murder. The old man was too weak to carry a corpse anyway. Even in the news clips after Lila’s death, he was using his walking cane.