Little Girls(88)

“But what reason would he have to abduct the girl?” Ted said. He was trying damn hard to not only convince her but to convince himself, Laurie could tell.

“What reason does anyone have for abducting and murdering anyone?” she retorted. “It would have been so easy. He lived here alone, no one ever came to visit him, and he had access to that whole facility even after he’d left. Maybe her death was an accident—I don’t think it was, but I guess it’s possible—and he just stowed her away in that garage. Maybe he meant to go back for her once things settled down. And maybe enough time finally passes and he figures, what the hell, and leaves her in there to rot.” A final thought struck her like a mallet to a gong. “Maybe he even forgot about her. After all that time, I mean. The dementia . . .” She looked intently at Ted. “Maybe that’s why he had been tearing this house apart. Maybe he was looking for the key, but in his dementia, he had forgotten what he’d done with it.”

It felt like bolts tumbling into place inside her head.

“Laurie . . .” Ted stood up.

“Wait.” She lashed out and gripped him just above the wrist. “The last phone call I had with him back in Hartford. He began talking nonsensically, or so I thought at the time—”

“Laurie, he was sick.”

“He called me Tanya,” she said. “Twice. On the phone. I didn’t think anything of it then—who would?—but now . . .”

Ted went silent. Slowly, he lowered himself back in his chair. Across the table, Detective Freeling’s eyes volleyed between the two of them. After a moment, he said, “Mrs. Genarro, are you sure about that?”

“As sure as I am sitting here. As sure as there’s the body of a dead girl in that garage in Sparrows Point.” But then she paused. She glanced down at the open case file and at one of the old school photos of Tanya Albrecht. “I’ve seen this girl before,” Laurie said.

One of Freeling’s eyebrows arched. “Yeah?”

“Hold on.” She stood up and left the room. When she returned less than two minutes later, she carried with her Myles Brashear’s photo album. She set the album on the table, opened it, and flipped to the appropriate page. “Here,” she said, pointing to the photograph of a young girl peeking out from beneath the shade of a highway overpass. “That’s her. That’s Tanya Albrecht.”

Freeling spun the album around so that he could get a better view of the photo. He said nothing as he looked at it, although the exhalations from his flared nostrils were quite loud.

“Holy Christ,” Ted muttered. He looked ill.

“Yeah,” Detective Freeling said eventually. He nodded, though he seemed saddened to do it. “Yeah, that’s her, all right.”

“I think there’s more, too,” Laurie said. She went to her purse on the counter and dug out the manila envelope she had found clipped to the back of her childhood scrapbook back in that horrible place. She opened it and upended it, scattering the photographs about the table. “Tanya wasn’t the only girl I found back at that storage facility.”

Both Ted and Detective Freeling picked up a photograph each. A deafening silence fell down upon them. It lasted for several heartbeats.

“Who are all these girls?” Ted said eventually, setting the photo down on the table.

Detective Freeling looked up at her. “These were with your father’s stuff?”

“Yes.”

“What does this mean?” Ted said.

“I know,” Laurie said. “I know what it means.”

When she didn’t continue, Detective Freeling rubbed his forehead and, peering down at the display of photographs once more, said, “There were a rash of disappearances back in the eighties throughout the Delmarva area. All of them young girls. Nine, I believe, in all. Including Albrecht. None of them were ever found.”

“He was stalking them,” Laurie said. “Taking pictures.”

“Jesus,” Ted said. The word juddered out of him. “These can’t be the same girls.”

“There’s eight different girls in all those photos,” Laurie said. Then she pointed to the photo of Tanya in her father’s album. “Tanya Albrecht makes nine.”

Ted just shook his head. His eyes looked distant, unfocused.

“I’ll need to take these as evidence,” Detective Freeling said. “We can ID them at the station.”

Laurie handed him the envelope.

With a sigh, Detective Freeling filed the papers into the case file and then closed it. Along with the photos of the girls, he had included the photograph of Laurie’s father and the two other men, but she didn’t protest. When he requested the photo of Tanya from the album, Laurie took it out from its plastic sleeve and handed it to him. He stared at it in unabashed amazement, then slid it, too, into the case file.

“I’d like to have you come down to the station tomorrow and give a formal statement,” Detective Freeling said. “Whenever is most convenient for you.”

She nodded. “Of course.”

“I can’t promise you what will come out in the newspapers in the next few days, though I presume you’ll be heading back to Hartford sooner than later?”

“As soon as we have a realtor look at the house,” Laurie said.