Pretty Girls Dancing(23)
It also looked like those worn by the dead victims of the Ten Mile Killer.
Mark pulled away from the curb, noting the neighbor watching him through her front window.
There were few agents in the BCI who hadn’t checked out the TMK case file at one time or another. The case was the most notorious one in the agency’s recent history. The fact that it had remained unsolved made it all the more bitter. All the victims had been found in a ten-mile radius deep in the Wayne National Forest. He remembered from his reading that many of the TMK’s victims had taken dance. And when their bodies had been discovered, each victim had been clad in leotard, tights, a tutu, and ballet slippers. It was the most notable commonality in the crimes. The memories of the photos of their posed, decomposing bodies had acid churning in his gut.
Without a body, Craw hadn’t been convinced that Kelsey Willard had been victimized by the Ten Mile Killer, no matter what the locals thought. But the cases of two teenage girls missing from towns twelve miles apart—even with seven years between the occurrences—had enough surface similarities to be examined for links before they could be dismissed as coincidence.
Kelsey Willard’s bike had been found abandoned seven years ago, with no trace of the girl. Whitney DeVries also appeared to have left her home voluntarily, but they had evidence she’d been targeted. They’d been close in age at the time of their disappearances. Both had once taken dance.
Keeping an eye on the oncoming headlights spearing through the darkness, he reached into his pocket, thumbed Ben’s number into his cell.
“Where you at?” the other agent asked. “I’m ready to head out and get something to eat.”
“Just leaving the DeVrieses. Have you gotten the agency file yet?”
“It was delivered a couple of hours ago.”
“I’ll pick up some sandwiches.” Mark slowed the vehicle as the brake lights on the car ahead of his flashed. “We can eat while we work. I’m eager to get a look at the Willard investigation.”
Whitney DeVries
November 5
5:37 p.m.
The movie flickered on the white-painted concrete wall. Fear kept Whitney’s gaze glued to it. The final scene was playing, the one where the stupid beginning ballet moves she’d practiced all day were strung together in a simple sequence. When it finished, it would start over again, an endless cycle.
The arabesque stretched the barely healed wounds on her back and hips, sending fiery jolts of agony through her system. Each pirouette had sore muscles screaming. If she moved too far from one side to another, a scab on her back would break open. Blood would drip down her spine, soak through the leotard, and make it stick to her. She hadn’t been given a change of clothes. She’d just gotten these back.
Demi-plié, demi-plié, relevé, tendu. Her arm arched up, the skin on her shoulders stretching and pulling. She could hear Tami Jae’s voice in her head: Graceful, graceful, the hand movements tell a story. You’re not swinging a bat, Whitney!
For a moment she pretended she was in Tami Jae’s studio. That she had to get through only an hour and a half before she could go home. Forty-five minutes for ballet, and then the last half of the class spent on jazz, her favorite. She imagined her mom sitting with the other moms in the corner, all talking and laughing quietly among themselves. The image became so real for an instant that she glanced to the side, half expecting to see Susan Paulus practicing next to her, as she had during the weekly lessons for years. They’d smile and roll their eyes as Tami’s voice grew crosser. She always got pissy when they didn’t have a good lesson.
But Susan wasn’t there. Whitney’s mom wasn’t in the corner. She squeezed her eyes shut tight. When she opened them again to fix her gaze on the film, they were blurry with tears.
She wanted to rest. She wanted to curl up in a little ball and sleep until this nightmare was over. But when she was allowed to sleep, she’d be on her stomach because every other part of her body ached.
Whitney had never been in so much pain in her life.
The worst thing that had ever happened to her was when she’d fallen off her bike when she was six or so and broke her arm. That had hurt. Until now she would have said it was the most agonizing thing in the world. But that was before she knew much about pain. Or about the world.
She was learning more than she’d ever wanted to about both.
The cambré had her leaning backward. The movement had fresh tears springing to her eyes. She was lucky the dance sequence was so easy because after her punishment, it had been a struggle just to complete these routines. Maybe that’s why the freak had chosen it. Maybe he’d just been waiting to use that whip on her.
Maybe he was waiting to do it again.
Panic scampered up her spine, and she renewed her efforts. She felt stiff and wooden, but her hands were uninjured. She let them tell a story like Tami Jae had said, wrists cocked, fingers held just so, graceful and delicate. And the next time her mind wandered, she’d imagine them wrapped around the freak’s throat.
It hadn’t just been the beating, although she’d wondered for hours afterward if she was dying. No, the worst had been moments later, when she’d heard him coming up on the stage. She hadn’t been brave then. She hadn’t tried to look up to see his face. At the sound of his footsteps, she’d crawled away, as fast as the pain would allow.