I left Darcy outside while I went in to meet the first victim’s mother. Mrs. Collier was remarkably informative, all things considered. It had to be unbearable, losing a daughter. I still stung from being separated from Rachel; imagine how it must feel to know your little girl was gone forever, and worse, that the psychopathic killer who snatched her did it while you were off on a holiday. The guilt would be enormous.
“She was the sweetest girl,” Mrs. Collier kept saying. She had not wanted to talk to me. She had already been quizzed extensively by Granger’s investigators. “Sweet, sweet, sweet. All my friends told me that girls were the worst. That once they were teenagers they became monsters. But not my Helen. She was always so sweet.”
“I’m sure she was,” I said, wishing the woman would come up with a more useful adjective.
“She never went in for those naughty activities some of the other girls did. She didn’t chase after boys. She didn’t stay out late. She didn’t like to party. She preferred to tap-dance.”
“Did you say tap-dance?”
“That was her grand passion. Her idol was Shirley Temple, ever since she was a baby. She could’ve been great, given her chance.”
“Was she taking lessons?”
“Yes. She and her best friend, Amber, went to Miss Claire’s School of Dance on South Fremont. Almost every Friday, they went to the dance recitals held in the basement at Trinity Episcopal.”
“Any nights other than Friday?” I asked, remembering that she was last seen on a Thursday.
“No.”
“Never?”
“Absolutely not. I had a strict policy on bedtime by ten o’clock on all the other nights of the week, but on Fridays I let her stay up till midnight. I checked to make sure she was in bed, safe, every night. And I locked the doors.”
“Could I see her room?”
After a moment of hesitation, she escorted me upstairs.
If I hadn’t known the girl was sixteen, I certainly wouldn’t have gotten it from her living quarters. It was all decked out in pink frillies and lace and flowery dust ruffles and stuff I don’t even know the names for. My parents never went in for this junk. Even at an early age it was clear I wasn’t a Barbie girl. But evidently Helen was.
Or someone thought she was.
“Had this furniture some time?” I asked the mother, who was hovering awkwardly by the door. I figured she’d probably bought it when the girl was five and couldn’t afford to replace it later.
I was wrong. “Actually, we picked this set up last year. They were having a sale at Conway Brothers.”
Hmmm. “You know, I’m probably going to be a while. I like to soak up the atmosphere, get a feel for who your daughter was. You don’t have to wait for me. I’m sure you have many other things to do.”
Couldn’t be any less subtle than that. “Very well.” She was still reluctant, but she retreated. “I’ll be in the kitchen. If you need anything.”
Thank heaven. Behaviorists don’t work well with an audience. I couldn’t get inside Helen’s head with her mother monitoring and censoring me the whole time. Helen’s desk, her closet, and for that matter her entire room, were uncommonly clean. I realize I was not the prototypical teenager, but my room had never looked like this. Had her mother cleaned up before the cops arrived? Or did Mom always keep the joint like this? Was she one of those hausfraus who scurried around telling people to take off their shoes and not touch anything, making it more like a museum than a living environment? How would young Helen react to being raised by a single parent who had that obsessive-compulsive approach to life?
I combed through Helen’s closet, finding nothing of interest. She had a lot of clothes and tons of shoes, but I supposed that wasn’t unusual for girly-girls of her age. All her outfits appeared to be of the sort her mother would approve. Tasteful knee-length tea dresses that kept the body well covered. Pep club uniform. One-piece swimsuits. No Britney Spearsish midriff-revealing outfits. No hip-hugging blue jeans. No cleavage-boosting brassieres or clinging sweaters. No Victoria’s Secret lingerie.
Maybe her idol really was Shirley Temple.
Nah.
I checked the bathroom, too, but I felt certain that if there had ever been anything of interest, Mom would’ve removed it. I not only found nothing useful, I found nothing that suggested this girl had ever hit puberty, unless you counted the box of tampons shoved to the back of the cabinet beneath the sink. No pills, no diaphragm. Not even Clearasil.
I was hoping for a diary, but no such luck. In the bottom desk drawer, however, I found a stack of collage books. Helen was a scrapbooker. But this was not your garden-variety scrapbook. There were no pictures of actors or pop stars, no Eminem or Brad Pitt. Most of the pictures came out of magazines, and all were of people in authority, people in helping professions. Police officers, doctors in white coats, firemen. Wholesome role models.
Was this girl really the Pollyanna her mom thought she was?
Possible. But I still didn’t think so.
On the back page of one of the scrapbooks, I found a Web URL. I jotted it down in my notepad. I was putting them away when something spilled out of one of them, something that had been wedged between the pages.
A torn bus ticket. Now that was interesting. She wouldn’t need to ride the bus to get to Trinity Episcopal.
I didn’t expect to find anything useful under the bed. Wasn’t that the first place parents always looked? That was where I’d kept my pot when I was her age. And God knows I’d gotten caught often enough.
But under Helen’s bed, hidden in a small box wedged between the bottom of the mattress and the wooden slats, I found an outfit of clothes. It was all black. A sheer, tight lacy bodice. An equally tight, short leather skirt. Matching bra and shoes. Fishnet hose. A pair of black Ray-Bans with purple lenses. Something that looked like a white shoe polish brush but which I knew (thanks to Rachel) was actually used to put a temporary streak of color in your hair that washed right out once you were home from your revels. All told, a very exotic, erotic, interesting little outfit.
Granger’s investigators would’ve seen this, too, of course, but they wouldn’t grasp the significance. They’d laugh embarrassedly, or maybe make some off-color joke about the little girl getting some action. Then they’d close the box and put it away and proceed to look for bloodstains or something else they could understand. But to me, this box spoke volumes.
Helen was a closet Goth girl.
Downstairs, I found that one of Helen’s friends had arrived. I knew from a picture wedged into the side of the mirror above Helen’s dresser that this was Amber. She was more distraught than the mother, her cheeks still red, her eyes watery. When I asked if I could have a few words with her, I thought she might faint. But she agreed. That only left the more difficult chore of getting rid of Mom.