Lost Girls

chapter 26

Someone entering the hotel and climbing the stairs toward my room. I don't hear this although I'm still certain, like knowing you're being watched while sitting alone in your room. And now it occurs to me that maybe I've been alone in the upper floors of the Empire Hotel too long altogether. I've come to know all of its yawnings and groans to the point that there is now an unsettled intimacy between us. This is why I feel the footsteps on the stairs before I hear them, deliberate and hollow. Sharp knuckles through the wood.

I don't ask who's there, don't look around for something heavy or sharp just in case. Instead I go to the door without thinking and pull back the bolt.

''Hey, Mr. Crane.''

Eyes open to a soggy Laird Johanssen, the three-quarter-length sleeves of his Meat Loaf T-shirt dripping Murdoch rain down to his fingertips. It's the Bat Out of Hell album cover with a demon biker blasting out of his grave riding a flaming Harley.

''Laird,'' I sigh, and realize that I'd been holding my breath. ''How did you know this was my room?''

''Guy downstairs,'' he says, shaking back the jellied cables of his hair. ''Told him I was your associate.''

I stand back to let him in and immediately Laird's presence in the room feels absurd. Nobody else has been in here the whole time of my stay and now that I have a visitor it's the doughnut-shop kid with the glasses permanently stalled at the pimply precipice of his nose. I walk back to the desk and sit down but for a moment Laird remains fixed just inside the door. Looks around at the pages of The Murdoch Phoenix on the walls, his head slipping into a slow nod.

''Ve-ry in-teresting,'' he says in a German-psychiatrist voice.

''Well, it's a pleasure to see you again, too, Laird, but what can I do for you?''

''Actually, it's more like what I can do for you.''

He moves over to the bed and sits on the edge of the mattress that barks loudly at having to bear his sudden weight. Then he pulls his arms out of the straps of his backpack and zips it open, a vicious grin playing over his lips.

''Forgot to give you something the other day,'' he says, and pulls out a pink folder, waves it in front of his face as though fanning himself.

''What is it?''

''What do you think?''

The grin, now less vicious than merely lopsided, stitched onto his mouth as though by some botched surgical procedure.

''I can't guess, Laird.''

''I liberated it after word got out at school that Ashley and Krystal had gone missing. It was only a matter of time before Principal Warren would come down with the pliers to break open their lockers and hand everything over to the pigs. So I beat her to it, and managed to preserve this little beauty.''

He waves the folder again, and I resist the urge to jump up from my chair, snatch it from his hands, and smack him across the face with it.

''How'd you get into their lockers without breaking them open yourself?'' I ask instead.

''Well, one way was to know their combinations.'' He says ''combinations'' in four distinct syllables as though speaking to a child.

''They told you?''

''Fuck no, man. I just knew.''

''And you took whatever it is you have there for yourself.''

''That would be the picture.''

His mouth gaping at me in what flips between mirth and the masking of chronic pain. But then I think: That's what being a teenager is, isn't it? Trying to have a good old giggle while seriously wondering if things might be better if you were dead, or maybe made someone else dead. Youth as a carousel of mirth and pain, over and over and all at once. Usually you only see it for what it is after you've graduated into the shady protections of adulthood and can look back with the wish to do it all over again, except this time in the name of vengeance. But Laird seems to understand all this even as he lives it. Maybe this kid is a little too smart for Murdoch, too gifted for the gifted program. Or maybe he's only exactly as he appears: a weird little fucker who's decided to translate his unpopularity and useless froth of hormones into the kind of superiority found only in the true voyeur. Laird wants to believe there's been a role for him in all of this, in the lives of Krystal and Ashley and all the other hot girls. And now he wants to believe he has a role for me too.

''You're a smart guy, aren't you, Laird?''

''I didn't bring my report card along with me, but yes. I'd say so.''

''You sure seem to know a lot about Krystal and Ashley, anyway.''

''Work, work, work.''

''Did you know everything about them?''

''Not everything.''

''What color were their eyes?''

''Blue. Both.''

''How much did they weigh?''

''Light. Whatever. I don't know.''

He stops waving the file. The grin sags.

''Why did you ask me that?''

''No reason.''

''Hey, man, you're not--''

''No, no, I'm not anything. Relax.''

But now Laird looks anything but relaxed. Arms stiff at his sides, a look on his face as though he requires immediate use of the facilities.

''C'mon, let's see what you've brought me,'' I say, pitching up for a jovial tone. What I don't want is him running out of here without letting me see his little prize. ''Hey, now, let's have a peek,'' I laugh, and now Laird laughs, too, or at least allows the unfortunate grin to return to his face, and hands the folder over to me. Inside there's a single sheet of paper that I pull close so that everything else but its text is blocked out of what I can see.

Rules of the Literary Club

No boys allowed (except for Dad).

No story can be stopped until it's finished.

No real names. No real families.

Everything is make believe.

The words carefully handwritten in blue ink, each sentence resting on dead-straight, invisible lines. Below them, one next to the other, two lipstick kisses for signatures. Perfect red, every wrinkle left marked on the page. The paper held close enough that I can read their lips. The color of their skin surrounding open mouths like maps of two distinct lakes.

''Whose dad are they talking about?'' I say after looking at the thing for what is probably a full minute.

''Doesn't say, does it?'' Laird shrugs. ''But if I had to venture a guess, I'd say 'Dad' is Tripp.''

''Why?''

''He was the only other member of the club, remember? And I don't think they thought of me as Dad, do you?'' He looks at me, licks his lips. ''If you're wondering why they thought of him that way--it's a mystery to me, man.''

''So you've had this the whole time. After the police search for the bodies and Tripp was arrested and everything?''

''Suppose so.''

''And now you're giving it to me?''

''To make the file complete.''

I push my back against my chair, scrape its legs a few inches across the floor closer to where Laird sits.

''Why did you keep the rules separate from the rest of the stuff--the rest of the file?''

''Date of acquisition. The rules came later, so I put it in a different place.'' Laird raises his chin and speaks next in what I take to be his idea of an English accent. ''I confess that my current office organization system leaves something to be desired.''

''Do you realize how potentially important these documents are, Laird? That you might be in some serious trouble if it were found that you've been concealing evidence?''

''What do you mean?''

''It means that everything you've given me is not just part of some goofy joke. It means that these rules and the girls' file--that it all has potential bearing on a murder trial. See where I'm going here?''

''If it's so important, why haven't you handed it over to the police yourself?''

''Maybe I will. Right now I'm trying to analyze whether it may be fruitful to Tripp's case or not.''

''How would it help?''

''Well, let's think about alternative scenarios here. Let's think about Tripp not being the murderer, but somebody else entirely. Somebody who had an interest in them. An unhealthy, or some would say perverse--''

''Hey, I just collect things, man.''

''Like people.''

''No. Only the stuff about them. I'm not--I mean, don't try and--''

''Is there anybody who can prove where you were the day the girls disappeared?''

Laird's jaw falls open to expose a yellow, undulating tongue.

''I just came up here to help you out,'' he says, shoulders lifting up to meet his ears as though to block them from hearing anything else.

''No, you didn't. You came up here to give me evidence.''

''That's not--''

''The first package you gave me at the doughnut shop wasn't enough, so you figured you might as well give everything up so that maybe I'd put it all together. Isn't that it? You've been playing a game. Waiting until the police and me and all the other idiots finally got up to speed on the sick kid in the smartass program?''

''No way.''

He says this in the unmistakable timbre of boyish protest. The screeching demand that the goal never crossed the line, the incriminating thing in his pocket wasn't his, his friend gave it to him, it was all just a joke.

''Why them, Laird? Why Ashley and Krystal? They wouldn't let you into their little club and it pissed you off? Or did you just want to expand your souvenir collection? Actually have some real girls instead of the gum off the bottom of their shoes?''

''I didn't do anything!''

''Let's start at the beginning: you borrowed the keys to your parents' car and met them after the Literary Club meeting that Thursday, asked if they could use a ride home. Then what did you do? Offered them a couple of Diet Cokes with a little extra slipped in, something you stole from your mother's medicine cabinet that she takes on her bad days, and before you knew it they were sawing logs in the backseat. Then off to the lake, where you had some fun and then--what?--did you have to use a boat, or did you just swim their bodies out there one at a time?''

''This is bullshit!''

The sight of Laird Johanssen's face streaming with panicked tears is something I could have lived without, but there it is anyway. Spittled lips turned to dancing elastic bands. A string of clear snot swinging down to his chin.

''I'm fucking outta here, man!'' He coughs, but doesn't move.

''You can tell me. I'm a lawyer.''

''Tell you what?''

''Whatever it is that you know. Whatever you did.''

''You wanna know something? This--'' he says, and stops, looks down at his upturned hands as though he expected something to be held there. ''I'm gone.''

And now he actually does rise from his place on the bed and it moans after him as he sticks his arms through the straps of his backpack. Throws the door open and steps out into the hall.

''I can help you, Laird.''

''Never heard that one before,'' I hear him say under his breath without turning, his head hanging from his neck like a dead weight.

Once Laird's gone I watch the door for a while as though waiting for a face to appear in the pattern of cracks beneath two oval knots I've come to think of as eyes. Listen to the echo of Doc Martens galloping down the stairs. After it recedes the furnace switches on and a damp breeze sweeps into the room. The floorboards crackle with the change of temperature, the glass squeaks in its frame. The sounds of the hotel closing upon itself, satisfied that once more there's nobody but its solitary guest occupying its rooms.

After a time I reread the paper Laird left with me. The Rules of the Literary Club. Hadn't Tripp said they'd had active imaginations? It appears he was no slouch in that department himself. I read it over and over, lingering over the lipstick kisses, the capitalized Dad. Read it for so long, the words eventually fall away from their meanings and I take them in only as abstract markings, the liquid loops of what I immediately recognized as Ashley's handwriting. The paper is high quality, likely taken from Tripp's own desk. Marbled ivory--this would be its name in the stationery store. And below the written text the waxy blossoms of their lips: Krystal's round and pressed hard, Ashley's a narrow graze. The same crimson flourish, the lipstick passed between them. Maybe I'm sure of which is which from how closely I've studied their faces on the wall. Maybe I'm just sure.

How can you be sentimental over the lives of those you've never known? But I know how it happens. Working with Bert and Graham on homicides where the contents of a dead man's pockets are spilled out over a table to be studied for explanations, hints of poor character, complicity in foul dealings. Everything has sinister potential when thought of as evidence. But then after a while you start to get tired and forget about putting a case together and suddenly the same banal scraps become haunted. Look: there's a matchbook from the Fox and Furrow located in an Oshawa strip mall, a fortune pulled from a Chinese cookie (''You are only steps away from learning the truth you have been seeking''), an alligator-skin wallet with a snapshot of redheaded kids buried among the credit cards, a receipt for forty-seven dollars' worth of long-stemmed roses meant for the dead man's wife, his secretary, an unknown beloved. Put it together and it means nothing. It means everything.

It means that Laird is coming forward. He wants to show and tell. He may even be circling around the idea of confessing, a process I've seen before that can take a little time. I tell myself that this is what I'm waiting for. Put a little pressure on and he'll come out with his hands up and we can all go home. I'll be patient. I'll make a clever plan.

I tell myself all of these things. Then I slip the paper in with the rest of the dead girls' file and do nothing at all.