He pointed at pictures as he spoke.
“Orla was making costumes for Harvey at the Old Town Playhouse,” Hazel murmured. She imagined Orla’s room with the book laying open, the tepid glass of water, the beautiful dress she’d made days earlier hanging unworn in the closet. It was not the room of a woman leaving town.
“Why haven’t they been in the newspapers?” Hazel asked, growing angry.
“Why isn’t Orla in the paper? We’re coming out of time when a lot of women took off, when they hopped in a van and moved to California to drop LSD and sleep on the beach. Unfortunately, most of our law enforcement view the ‘70s girls the same way they did the ‘60s girls. They assume the parents are being paranoid, overreacting.”
“But six girls in four years!”
“Exactly. But they’re all in different jurisdictions. Or they were, until Orla.”
“Who’s the other girl from Traverse City?”
“Darlene Rice.” He slid out a Polaroid of a smiling girl with long blonde hair pulled over one shoulder. She was leaning her head on a large man, her father perhaps. In her arms she held a struggling puppy.
“Her name sounds familiar, but…” Hazel shook her head. Had she read about the girl? Seen a missing poster? She wasn’t sure.
“Her case is especially difficult. She was vacationing here with her parents, renting a house in town. Her mom and dad and two brothers went to get ice cream and watch a movie. They’d been here for a week and were beached out at that point. Darlene wasn’t. She took her beach bag and walked out the door, and they never saw her again.”
Hazel lifted the photo to look closer and wanted to cringe away from the smiling face. How could someone vanish without a trace?
“No one saw her? How is that possible?”
“People saw her up to a point. But she disappeared on a Tuesday in the middle of the day. A wooded trail offered a shortcut to the beach. The last sighting of Darlene was by a woman driving, who glimpsed her walking into that park. No sightings after that. No one saw her at the beach.”
“She disappeared in the woods? Which means you think someone is taking them - going into the woods and abducting them?”
“That’s my theory.”
“You said Orla doesn’t fit the type. What did you mean?”
Abe pulled out more photos of the girls. He spread them on the table.
Hazel studied the pictures.
The first thing she noticed was their hair. They were all blonde. Their hair appeared mostly long and straight. Their eyes were light colored, blue or green.
“You can’t tell in all the pictures, but the girls were also petite. Most of them were no taller than five-foot-four inches and weighed less than one-hundred and twenty pounds.”
“Orla’s tall.”
“I know. But she’s the right age, and the circumstances are similar. Her hair is dark, but it’s straight. And I think she’s connected.”
“Why?”
Abe gazed at the images before him, as if the answer lay within the faces of the missing girls.
“Call it a hunch, a somewhat confirmed hunch.”
“Confirmed?”
“I’ve been talking with Susan Miner’s mother for a year. The morning I saw the news brief about Orla, I knew he had taken another one. Susan’s mother called me fifteen minutes later. She had the same instinct.”
“He?”
“In cases such as these, it’s usually a man.”
Hazel swallowed. She remembered her vision of Orla. It had not been a dream; of that she was sure.
“I want her to be in a car somewhere, driving to Vermont to a music festival or visiting her cousin in Detroit. I want so much to believe she’s going to pop through the door, apologize for taking off, and act shocked that we raised the alarm.”
“But you don’t believe she will.”
“No, I don’t.”
“You mentioned her cousin in Detroit. Who’s she?” Abe flipped open his notebook.
“It’s a he, Liam. Why are you taking notes?”
He glanced up at her.
“Because I’m investigating her disappearance. I’ve been investigating all of them. I’m writing a story about these women. It’s going on the front page next week. I’m going to be under the wire, but I want Orla in that article. I need to gather as much information as possible.”
“For your story?” she demanded.
He laid his pencil down and regarded her.
“To find out who’s behind this. To stop him before he strikes again.”
Hazel studied his face.
“Why haven’t you written it yet? If these girls have been disappearing for years…”
“I only learned of the disappearances last year. Liz Miner contacted me. I knew of Rita’s disappearance, but local gossip claimed she took off with a boyfriend. After Liz reached out, insisting she’d spoken with the other parents, I started looking into it. I realized she was on to something. I’ve spent the last year talking to families, pouring over police reports, trying to find the link.”
“And you haven’t found it?”
“Not exactly, no.”
“How do I help?” she asked. “I need to help.”
Chapter 13
Orla
Orla woke to discover someone had moved her. The white hospital walls and dim lighting no longer surrounded her. She lay in a dark space, cave-like, except the walls were brick rather than stone. Lights flickered from torches lining the walls. Gleaming silver instruments and a glass bottle sat on a metal table beside her. The label on the bottle read ‘sodium thiopental.’
She turned her head to the side. A man in a white coat hunched over another metal table.
When he turned, she noticed a startling resemblance to Spencer, the man she’d spent that final night with. He’d told her his father was dead.
Did he know what happened to her? Or worse, was he in on it?
“Who are you?” Orla croaked, mouth gritty.
“At last she wakes,” the man said, unsmiling.
He pushed the needle into the bottle and pulled the syringe back.
“Please,” she murmured.
He didn’t respond but stepped to the bed and slid the needle into her neck. She tried to cringe away, but the straps held her in place.
He returned to the metal table.
“We’ll give that a little time to do its work, shall we?” he asked.
He walked away from her, disappearing into a dark tunnel.
When he returned, Orla studied him.
His thick, dark hair was combed away from his forehead. Piercing blue eyes gazed out from his tanned face. Like Spencer, he had a sharp nose and a square jaw. Handsome, but cold. In his fifties, she thought, or older.
“Truth serum,” he told her, picking up the bottle and tilting it in the firelight. “Have you heard of it, Orla?”
“Yes.” She closed her mouth, surprised at her answer. The moment he’d uttered truth serum, she’d intended to clamp her mouth shut and not speak a word.
“Good, that’s very good. And can you tell me your name?”
Orla tried to shake her head, but again spoke. It seemed impossible not to. As if the part of her that wanted to lie still and silent wasn’t in complete control, some automatic part of her brain took over.
“Orla Delaney Sullivan.”
“And I am Doctor Crow. Nice to officially meet you. How old are you, Orla?”