Steven James - Opening Moves

There’s no ladder per se, just horizontal boards nailed to the trunk to form the rungs that lead to the platform that encircles the tree house. There’s a narrow west-facing window that an occasional hunter will slide his shotgun barrel through when he uses this tree house as an impromptu blind to try to take down the geese settling onto the marsh.

Around to the other side is the opening you’ll have to crawl through to access the tree house.

As you climb, you catch yourself wondering if it would be possible to carry a girl up these rungs.

If she were draped over your shoulders. If you were strong. If she were unconscious.

Getting her off your shoulders at the top and then sliding her onto the platform would certainly be difficult, but you decide that, yes, it would be possible.

You reach the top rung, ease onto the landing, then glance back. From this height you have a clear view of both the road and the marsh.

If someone came here last night he would’ve seen headlights coming this way long before they reached the trailhead. It would have given him plenty of time to slip away.

Your heart is hammering as you traverse the narrow platform, round the corner, and come to the opening that leads into the tree house itself.

It’s a dark, square mouth two feet high and two feet wide. You’ll need to get on your hands and knees to crawl inside.

But then you’ll see. Then you’ll know. Then you’ll see that there’s nothing here, and the police will do their job and find Mindy Wells at a friend’s house or something, and then everything will get back to normal and you’ll be able to focus on football again, on the state semifinals coming up this weekend. Everyone will be able to take a deep breath and forget that any of this misunderstanding ever happened.

You hear the rain splattering and tip-tapping on the roof of the tree house. Hollow. Indistinct. A rapid wet drumbeat.

And so.

You kneel.

And look into the room.

What little light has slipped in is shrouded by the cloudy, rainy day, but you immediately see that the tree house is not empty. Leaning with her back against the far wall, staring blankly at you, clothes missing, her legs tucked beneath her on the bare wooden planks, her hands on her lap, her wrists tightly bound with rough cord, is the girl.

Mindy Wells.

A terrible, terrible shiver runs through you. Your throat tightens. “Mindy?”

She doesn’t move. Doesn’t respond.

Only the sound of rain drumming above you.

You know how to check for a pulse-last spring your track coach had you monitor your heart rate when you did wind sprints. And even though you know it’s too late, you know it is, it must be, you realize you have to find out. You can’t leave without knowing for sure. You need to see if she is still alive.

As you crawl into the tree house, your heart seems to have knotted up solid inside your chest.

When you reach Mindy, it takes you a few seconds to work up the nerve, but then you press two fingers against her neck. Her skin has a damp, doughy feel.

There’s no pulse and the coolness of the flesh makes the fact that she’s dead seem all the more real.

You’re careful not to disturb anything so it won’t throw off the police when they investigate things, but for some reason covering her nakedness seems like the right thing to do, the least you can do for her, so before you leave, you take off your jacket and drape it gently over her chest and lap. She’s not a large girl and your coat is big enough to at least offer her a small degree of modesty.

Her name was Mindy Wells.

She was eleven years old when she was raped and killed in your hometown and left in that tree house by the marsh.

They never found her killer.

But you’re the one who found her body on that rainy day the week of the state football semifinals back when you were a junior in high school.

I finished telling Ralph the story and he said nothing, just sat beside me in the car in stony silence.

Initially, I thought he might do what others had done over the years and jump to the conclusion that finding Mindy was what’d led me on the path to eventually enter law enforcement. But he didn’t. Instead, he just leveled a hard gaze out the window and remained quiet.

It was another five miles before he spoke, his voice brusque and unyielding. “Kids are the worst.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“And you were only sixteen when you found her?”

“Yes.”

He looked at me then. “That must have been terrible.”

“It was.”

It still is.

“And they never caught the scumbag who did it?”

I shook my head and then we were silent again. I didn’t tell him that the guy had also killed at least one other young girl, Jenna Natara, the one whose death had invaded my dreams last night. It didn’t seem like the right time to get into all that.

Once again he watched the bleak, brown countryside that was brushed with light snow pass by the window. Glancing toward him, I saw him brush a finger beneath his right eye and I wondered how many times he’d been called in on cases with children as the victims.

A few minutes later I parked beside the curb in front of Timothy Griffin’s home, a ramshackle place in desperate need of paint and repair on the edge of town.

Ralph and I got out of the car.

“I saw you looking at me back there a minute ago,” he said.

“I’m sorry, I was-”

“I just had something in my eye.”

I paused. “Yeah, I know.”

Catalog in hand, I followed him up the porch steps and stood by his side while he knocked on Griffin’s door.

A waif of a woman answered, stared blankly at us. Out of high school, but not by much.

“Yes?” She had circles under her eyes and wore a tattered housecoat that drooped sadly over her stick-thin frame. It was as if she’d materialized out of thin air.

“Good afternoon, ma’am.” I held up my badge. “I’m Detective Bowers, with the police department.” I left out the fact that I was from Milwaukee and not Fort Atkinson. “This is Agent Hawkins with the FBI. Is Timothy Griffin here?”

“No.” She offered nothing more. Her eyes remained vacuous.

“Do you know when he’ll be back?”

“No.”

Ralph indicated toward the living room. “Can we come in? Wait for him?”

“I’m not sure Timothy would want that.” Even her voice sounded frail and tenuous, as if it might disintegrate if any other sounds invaded the air.

Though she didn’t move, I got the sense that she might fade back into the house at any moment. “And how do you know Timothy?”

“I’m his girlfriend.” She couldn’t have been older than nineteen or twenty. From his DMV records, I knew that Timothy Griffin was forty-nine.

Ralph spoke up. “Ma’am, what’s your name?”

“Mallory.”

We waited, but she didn’t give us a last name.

“Mallory, why wouldn’t Timothy want us to come in and wait for him?”

“Timothy is a private person.”

Ralph didn’t give up. “This is concerning something quite important. If we find out later that you were hindering our investigation in any way, that would be an unfortunate thing. For you and for Timothy. And it could put innocent people at risk.”

He was obviously banking on the fact that she wouldn’t be clear about her right to refuse us entry. However, if she did let us in as we’d requested, evidence we found inside the home would be admissible in court. He was banking on her not knowing that too.

His bet paid off.

After a slight hesitation, Mallory stepped aside.

We joined her in the living room.

A drab, greenish carpet covered the floor. Two mismatched reclining chairs were positioned beside the heavily curtained windows. At the far end of the room, cheap Formica shelves held a cluttered array of knickknacks. A variety of photos surrounded us on the walls. A TV faced the plaid couch; a VCR and twelve videos sat on top of it.