The Broken Girls(23)

“There’s no water in the well.” This was the foreman’s voice, low and strangled. “It dried up, which was why it wasn’t in use anymore. The water, it drained away down . . .” He trailed off, and Fiona wondered if he was pointing or gesturing somewhere. Neither she nor Anthony was watching. “So it’s damp in there, sure, but—she’s just been sitting there.”

Fiona swallowed and said to Anthony, “Give me the flashlight.” He seemed to have shut down; he handed the light to her immediately. She hefted it, swung it down to the girl’s skirt. “The color is bleached away,” she said. “Idlewild uniforms were navy blue and dark green.” Her research last night had drawn up more than one class picture, girls lined up in rows, wearing identical skirts and blouses. “I can’t tell if she’s got the Idlewild crest.”

“She’s a student,” Anthony said. His voice was low, his words mechanical, as if he was not thinking of what he was saying. “She must be. Look at her.”

“She’s small,” Fiona said, traveling the light over the body again. “She looks like a child.”

“Not a child.” His voice was almost a whisper. “Not a child. A girl. This is a disaster. This will end us. The entire project. Everything.” He turned and looked at her, as if remembering she was there. “Oh, God. You’re a journalist. Are you going to write about this? What are you going to do?”

Fiona tore her gaze from the body in the well and stared at him. Something was crawling through her at the sight of the body, crawling over her skin. Not just revulsion and pity. Something big. Something that had to do with Deb and the words scrawled on the window. Good Night Girl. “I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe she fell. But it’s part of the story.”

She watched his jaw clamp shut, his mind work. He was thinking about lawyers, nondisclosure agreements, gag orders. None of it mattered. Fiona was already standing here, looking at the body, and the cat was already out of the bag. “You can’t possibly be such a jackal,” he said finally.

“I’m not sure what I am,” she told him, “but I’m not a jackal. I’m a writer. And this”—she motioned to the gaping hole in the well, the girl inside—“can be handled with respect.” She thought of Deb, the news stories from twenty years ago. “I can do it. I might be the only one who can do it right.”

He was silent for a long minute. “You can’t promise that. The police—”

“I can help with that, too.” She pulled out her cell phone and dialed. “Listen.”

It rang only twice before Jamie’s voice came on the other end. “Fee?”

“Jamie, I’m at Idlewild. We’re going to need some police.”

He paused, surprised. She’d called his personal cell phone. “What are you talking about? What’s going on?”

“They’ve found a body here.”

“Shit. Shit, Fee. Call nine-one-one.”

Fiona remembered that she’d used the wrong terminology in this case. “It isn’t a fresh body. It’s remains, definitely human, probably decades old. We’ll need a coroner, some police. But can it be quiet? It might be . . . an accident. She might have just fallen.”

“She?”

“Yes. The owners want it quiet until she’s identified and it’s sorted out. Can that be done?”

He paused for a second. “All right,” he said. “I’ll take care of it. We’re on our way.”

“Your help is admirable,” Anthony said as she hung up. “But futile.”

“Don’t be so sure.”

He put his icy hand over hers on the flashlight and aimed it at the back of the dead girl’s head. “Look at that,” he said. “Now tell me she fell.”

Fiona stared. Who are you? she thought. What happened? Who are you, and how did you get here?

Even after so many years, with the blood long gone, it was clear in the light. Beneath the strands of hair, the back of the girl’s head was smashed, a section of the skull nothing but shards of broken bone.

The day stretched long, over the cold light of afternoon and the early descent of evening. By six o’clock the crew on scene had set up lights beneath the two tents they worked in—one over the ruins of the well, the second to receive and photograph the body. The crew was small. Fiona had memories of crowds of people in the news footage after Deb’s body was found—uniformed cops pressing back rubberneckers, detectives and crime scene techs scurrying in and out, more uniformed cops spreading out to look for footprints. But this was different. There was a handful of people moving back and forth between the tents, talking as quietly as if they were working in a library. There were no rubberneckers except Fiona, who was sitting on a pile of broken stone from the well, sipping a hot cup of coffee. Anthony Eden was gone, probably to report to his mother, and the only uniform on the scene belonged to Jamie.

He exited the tent with the body in it and crossed the grass to sit next to her, wearing his heavy cop’s parka. His hair looked darker in the onset of dusk, his trim beard of lighter gold. “We’re almost done,” he said.

Fiona nodded and made room for him to sit next to her. “Thanks for the coffee.”

“It’s nothing. You’ve been sitting here all day. You must be freezing.”