“And clever at hiding the fact that she’s psycho.”
Not exactly PC, but true.
“McGee used chloral hydrate to subdue her vics. How come the stuff only showed up in Ajax?”
“Mary Louise Marcus had chloral hydrate in her system. The toxicologist found it because he knew to look. Standard drug screens typically test for alcohol, narcotics, sedatives, marijuana, cocaine, amphetamines, and aspirin.”
“But we’re talking dead kids. No one went beyond standard testing?”
“The girls’ bodies weren’t found right away. For Gower it was eight days, for Nance fourteen, for Estrada four. Even if you’re looking for chloral hydrate, which no one was, decomposition can mask its presence.”
Hull’s brows dipped in confusion.
“On a gas chromatograph, decomp chemicals will peak higher than chloral hydrate. Even if further testing had been done, it might have been missed.”
“You think McGee killed Gower by herself? Or after she hooked up with Pomerleau?”
“Murder was never Pomerleau’s style.”
Hull dipped her chin and tipped her head. Seriously?
“You know what I mean. Of course it was murder. But in Pomerleau’s case, the killing was a by-product of cruelty and deprivation. Not a primary objective.”
“Right.”
“Anyway, unless McGee tells us, we may never know where she was living when Gower went down. Or if she acted alone.”
“Or if Gower was her first.”
I’d had the same grim thought.
“Why’d McGee break the pattern of dates and grab Marcus?”
“Same answer. Slidell’s probing sent her spiraling out of control.”
Hull’s chewing slowed as she rolled that around. Then, “I get the dates. She’s killing on the anniversaries of abductions or deaths in Montreal. Kids she knew. Maybe kids she saw die. But why the hair, the tissues soaked with saliva? Why plant Pomerleau’s DNA on her victims?”
I’d posed that question to Pamela Lindahl during the many hours we’d spent on the phone. Though difficult to assess long-distance, the psychiatrist’s tone had suggested agonizing guilt.
I took a moment to organize my thoughts. And have a bite of sweet-corn risotto.
“McGee’s therapist is convinced the arousal didn’t come from degrading or controlling, as with many serial killers. She feels McGee’s psychosis is two-pronged. First, she’s reenacting the deaths of the original victims, but killing them quickly and leaving them ‘in the sun’ to assure that her victims will never suffer as she did.”
“That’s why the bodies were placed out in the open, arranged with care and free of trauma or disfigurement.”
“Exactly. Second, McGee was seeking revenge on Pomerleau. But at the same time, she was diverting attention from herself, should she ever fall under suspicion.”
“So the shrink says she was driven by both love and hate.” Dubious. “And an instinct for self-preservation.”
“Yes.”
“Targets were chosen because they resembled one of Pomerleau’s Montreal victims?”
“Probably McGee herself. She was abducted at age twelve.”
“McGee made the calls six months out? Checking to see if the cops had anything on Donovan or Estrada?”
“Probably,” I said.
Hull bunched and tossed her napkin. Leaned back. Crossed her arms and wagged her head slowly. “Don’t sound like enough crazy to me.”
I pictured a girl in a trench coat and crooked beret. Felt sorrow clot any response I might have offered.
I knew the drill. So did Hull. McGee’s mental competence would be determined by pretrial motions and hearings and judges and lawyers.
Sane. Insane. Either finding would result in Tawny McGee’s worst nightmare, one she’d already endured. A life in one type of prison or another.
It had to be.
Even the damaged cannot be allowed to damage.
CHAPTER 44
THE NEXT MORNING I drove to Heatherhill Farm. Like the magnolia at Sharon Hall, the azaleas and rhododendron winked both waxy green and dull brown. I imagined the upside-down leaves, startled by the warm spell, turning for instruction from their roots.
River House itself was half in shade and half in bright sun. Its windows also looked confused, undecided between reflecting and ingesting light.
Mama was on the back deck, bundled in a parka and scarf, stretched out on the same chaise she’d occupied Thanksgiving week. As I had then, I paused a moment to study her. Perhaps to fix her image forever in my memory.
She’d lost weight, though the bulky jacket made that appraisal difficult. Her hands were chapped, the treasured hair a bit dull. Still, my mother looked beautiful.
It was a pleasant visit. No rancor. No resentment. I didn’t bring up chemo. She didn’t correct my manners or dress.
I told Mama about the arrest of Tawny McGee. About the CAIS. About the psychopathology of hatred and love. She called it Pomerleau’s legacy of madness.
I thanked Mama for her input. Said the YouTube cycling video had been the big break in the case. Ryan’s big bang.
She asked if I’d seen Ryan. I said not for a while. She didn’t persist.
Then I told her the good news. The police had located Kim Hamilton’s brother, now living in Miami. He was saddened to learn of his sister’s death and troubled by not knowing the location of her remains. Mostly, he was comforted by confirmation of a truth he’d always felt in his soul. Kim hadn’t turned her back on her family by running away.
At noon Mama and I shared a lunch of avocado salad and grilled chicken breast. At one Goose trundled Mama off for her nap.
That evening I turned in early. As was common since I’d met Umpie Rodas two months earlier, memories bombarded me the instant I closed my eyes. Unbidden apparitions involving bones and corpses and children.
I had no say in the order or arrival times of these sad visitations. Only in their duration. As soon as a reel began to play, I’d shut it down.
For some reason, that night I let my mind roll.
I saw Nellie Gower pedaling her bike, brown hair flying and catching the sun. Tawny McGee tightening the drawstring of a plastic bag under her chin.
Lizzie Nance practicing pliés and arabesques at a ballet bar. McGee closing her lifeless little fingers around a bunched white tissue.
Tia Estrada walking hand in hand with her mother. McGee tucking long blond hairs deep into her throat.
Shelly Leal tapping a keyboard, face radiant in the glow of the screen. McGee arranging her still body on a highway embankment.
I imagined the girls at the moment their worlds halted forever. Did they know death was at hand? Did they ask why?
In addition to the ballet slipper and clippings, McGee’s souvenir box had contained a yellow ribbon identical to the one found in Hamet Ajax’s trunk. Avery Koseluk’s mother didn’t recognize the ribbons. Laura Lonergan said they had not belonged to Colleen Donovan. Neither had yielded DNA.
I pictured those ribbons, wondered if they’d once bound the hair of my Jane Doe skeleton. Of another little girl as yet unknown to us. Though we might never learn for certain if there had been other victims, Barrow and Rodas would investigate on the U.S. end, Ryan in Canada.
I saw my Jane Doe, a sad collection of bones labeled ME107-10. Wondered if somewhere a family was searching.
I saw Colleen Donovan. Avery Koseluk. Hoped one day each would enter a police station seeking help.
We’d never know who removed Donovan’s name from the list of MPs on the NamUS site. It was back there now. With Koseluk and the scores of others either missing or lying anonymously in morgues or police evidence rooms.
Anique Pomerleau. Tawny McGee. Victims. Monsters. Their childhoods stolen. Their adult games played out with cold-blooded cunning.