Chelsea Cain - Heartsick

Derek was carrying a projector, a laptop, and a box of doughnuts. He slid the doughnuts on the table and opened the box. A sickly sweet aroma filled the room. “They’re Krispy Kreme,” he said. “I drove all the way to Beaverton.”

A girl was missing and Derek was buying doughnuts. Nice. Susan glanced at Clay. But he didn’t launch into a lecture about the grave nature of the situation. He took two doughnuts, and bit into one. “They’re better when they’re fresh,” he announced.

Ian took an apple fritter. “You don’t want one?” he asked Susan.

Susan did. But she didn’t want to make Derek look good. “I’m fine,” she said.

Derek fiddled with the equipment. “I’ll just get set up,” he said. He opened the laptop and turned on the projector, and a square of color appeared on the white wall. Susan watched as the blur focused into a PowerPoint title page. On a bloodred background, a Halloween font read THE SCHOOLGIRL KILLER.

“The Schoolgirl Killer?” Clay asked skeptically. White clumps of doughnut glaze clung to the corners of his mouth. His voice was fat with sugar.

Derek glanced down shyly. “I’ve been working on a name.”

“Too literal,” Clay said. “We need something snappy.”

“How about the Willamette Strangler?” Derek said.

Ian shrugged. “It’s a little derivative.”

“It’s too bad he doesn’t eat them,” Clay said dryly. “Then we could come up with something really clever.”

“So the third girl’s been missing how long?” asked Susan.

Derek cleared his throat. “Right. Sorry.” He faced the group authoritatively, his fists on the table. “Let’s start with Lee Robinson, Cleveland High. She disappeared in October. She had jazz-choir practice after school. When it was over, she left the gym, where practice was held, and told some friends that she was walking home. She lived ten blocks away.”

Susan flipped open her notebook. “Was it dark?” she asked.

“No,” Derek said. “But close. Lee never arrived home. When she was about an hour late for dinner, her mother started calling her friends. And then, at nine-thirty, she called the police. They’re not thinking the worst yet.”

Derek hit a button on the laptop and the title page dissolved into the image of a scanned Herald news story. “This is the first story we ran, on the front page of Metro, October 29, forty-eight hours after Lee’s disappearance.” Susan felt a jolt of sadness at the sight of the girl’s school picture: flat brown hair, braces, jazz-choir sweatshirt, pimples, blue eye shadow, and lip gloss. Derek continued: “The cops ask anyone with information to call a hot line. They got over a thousand calls. Nothing panned out.”

“You’re sure you don’t want an apple fritter?” Ian asked Susan.

“Yes,” Susan said.

Derek hit a key again. The story dissolved into another slide, an image of the front page. “The November first story was front-page news. ‘Girl Missing.’” The school picture was there again, along with a picture of Lee’s mother, father, and brother at a neighborhood vigil.

“There were two more stories after that, with very little new info,” Derek said. Another slide. This one was dated November 7, another front-page headline: MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD. “A search and rescue volunteer found her in mud on the banks of Ross Island. She’d been raped and strangled to death. The ME estimated that she had been in the mud for a week.”

There was a story every day for the next week: rumors, leads, neighbors remembering how lovely Lee was, classmate vigils, church services, a growing reward fund for information leading to the killer.

“On February second, Dana Stamp finished up a Lincoln High dance-team practice,” Derek said. “She showered, said goodbye to friends, and headed to her car, which was parked in the student parking lot. She never made it home. Her mother, a real estate agent, was showing a house on the east side and didn’t get home until nine P.M. She called the police just before midnight.” Slide. ANOTHER GIRL MISSING screamed the front page of the February 3 issue of the Herald.

Another school photograph. Susan sat forward a little and examined the girl on the wall. The similarities were striking. Dana didn’t have the braces or the acne, so at first glance, she seemed prettier than Lee, but once you looked more closely, they could have been related. Dana was the girl Lee was going to be, once the braces came off and the pimples cleared up. They had the same oval face, wide-set eyes, small, unremarkable nose, and brown hair. Both were skinny, with the awkward beginning of breasts. Dana smiled in her picture. Lee didn’t.

Susan had followed the story. You couldn’t live in Portland and avoid it. As the days slipped by without any clues as to Dana’s whereabouts, they blended into one girl: DanaandLee. A grave mantra repeated again and again by local newscasters, the lead story, regardless of what was happening nationally or internationally. The police would say publicly only that they were considering the possibility that the two cases may be related, but in everyone’s minds, there was no doubt. Their school pictures always appeared side by side. They were referred to as “the girls.”

Derek looked dramatically from person to person. “A kayaker found the body partially obscured by brush on the bank of the Esplanade on February fourteenth. Nice, huh? She had been raped and strangled to death.”

The slide dissolved to that day’s paper, March 8. THIRD GIRL VANISHES: CITY RECONVENES BEAUTY KILLER TASK FORCE. Derek summarized: “Kristy Mathers left school yesterday at six-fifteen P.M. after a play rehearsal. She was supposed to ride right home on her bike. Her father’s a cabbie. Works late. He stopped by the house around seven P.M., after he wasn’t able to reach her by phone. He called the police at seven-thirty P.M. She’s still missing.”

Susan gazed at the girl’s photograph. She was chubbier than Dana and Lee, but she had the same brown hair and wide-set eyes. Susan glanced up at the round white clock that hummed on the far wall above the door. The black minute hand jumped forward. It was almost 6:30. Kristy Mathers had been missing for over twelve hours. A cold chill folded down Susan’s spine as she realized that there probably wasn’t going to be any happy reunion at the end of this story.

Ian turned to Susan. “Your subject’s Archie Sheridan. Not the girls. The girls are”-he ran his hand over his hair back to his ponytail-“background. You write this right, it’ll make your career.”

Derek looked confused. “What do you mean? You said that this was my story. I was up half the night working on this presentation.”

“Change of plans,” Ian said. He shot Derek one of his handsome smiles. “Nice PowerPoint, though.”

Derek’s entire forehead constricted.

“Relax,” Ian said with a sigh. “You can update the Web site. We’re setting up a blog.”

Two perfect red spots appeared on Derek’s cheeks and Susan could see his jaw tighten. He looked from Ian to Clay. Clay busied himself with another doughnut. Derek looked balefully at Susan. She shrugged and gave him a half smile. She could afford it.

“Okay,” Derek said with a resigned little nod. He snapped his laptop shut and began to coil its cord around his hand. Then he paused, the cord a strangled knot around his fist. “The After School Strangler,” he said. They all looked at him. He grinned, pleased with himself. “For the name. I just thought of it.”

Ian looked at Clay, head cocked questioningly.

No, Susan thought. Don’t let this bozo name him. Not Derek the Square.

Clay nodded a few times. “The After School Strangler.” He chuckled mirthlessly. “It’s corny. But I like it.” His laughter faded and he sat perfectly still for a moment. Then he cleared his throat. “Someone should write an obituary,” he said softly. “Just in case.”