The Broken Girls
She hadn’t even processed the thought fully before she got out of the car and slammed the door behind her. Inhaling a bite of the chill air, she stepped to the hood of the car—where the note leaver would have stood to tuck the paper beneath her windshield wiper—and did a slow 360-degree turn, scanning the horizon.
When you looked at it that way, it was unmissable. There was a church only several hundred feet away—one of New England’s historical specialties, redbrick with a tall, elaborate white steeple, as pretty as a wedding cake. The clock embedded halfway up the steeple showed the time. Fiona left the parking lot and made her way toward it, crossing the cobblestone walks. She got close enough to the front to read the sign and see that it was called the North Church, and that it dated from 1671, the building itself from 1855. The front doors were open, a cloth Welcome sign propped up outside them. Fiona circled around toward the back.
She didn’t see anyone—just more tourists and retirees, and a panhandler sitting on the ground, leaning against the church wall, his knees drawn up. That struck her as odd, since panhandlers were rare in tourist areas like this one, most of them moved along by private security or the cops. She looked at the panhandler again and realized he was watching her.
He was a man, thin and stringy as a kid, in his thirties, his long hair combed back from his forehead. On second look, Fiona realized he wasn’t panhandling at all; he had no sign or overturned hat. He was just sitting against the wall, looking at her. His face was pale and pitted, his eyes sunken, his clothes of good quality but well-worn. He wasn’t homeless, but a man down on his luck, sick perhaps, used to sitting on the cold ground and watching crowds go by.
She walked up to him and held out the note. “Are you looking for me?”
His eyes didn’t leave her face as he looked up from his low position on the ground. He watched her for a long time. She saw uncertainty in his gaze, and calculation, and anger mixed with fear. Be careful with this one, she told herself.
Finally, he smiled and stood up, bracing himself against the church wall. “Hi, Fiona,” he said.
She stepped back, glad now that they were in an open square in daylight, with people around. This had been a mistake. “Do I know you?”
“I’m sorry about the note,” he said, watching her reaction. “I didn’t know how else to approach you. It seemed the best way.”
“Okay, well, I’m here now. How do you know me, and what do you want?”
The man shifted his weight. Now that they were face-to-face, he made no move to come closer. “My name is Stephen,” he said. “Stephen Heyer.”
She shook her head. He wasn’t sick, she realized now; he was healthy, his eyes sharp and unclouded. The gray of his skin and his matchstick thinness spoke of addiction instead.
He looked away, past her shoulder, as if considering what to say. He really hadn’t planned this, she thought. He’d likely thought she wouldn’t follow the note. He scratched the back of his neck with a restless hand. “I followed you here from Barrons.”
Fiona’s blood went cold.
“You met with that woman,” Stephen Heyer continued. “I thought maybe . . . But I don’t recognize her. I don’t know who she is.” He looked back at her face, and she saw something naked in his eyes, a desperation that looked painfully familiar. “Does she have something to do with Tim Christopher?”
Fiona took another step back as if she’d been slapped. “Fuck off,” she said to him, with all the icy cold she could summon into her voice, denying her fear, her sudden shakiness. She turned and walked away.
She could hear him behind her, trailing her. “Wait,” he said. “You’ve been going to Idlewild. To the restoration. I’ve seen you there.”
What the hell was this? Some stupid game? She kept walking. “Leave me alone or I’ll call the police.”
“I go to Old Barrons Road, sleep there sometimes,” he said, still following her, as if he was compelled to explain. “The old man who used to run the drive-in lets me use his place.”
“You go there to get high?” she shot back over her shoulder.
“No, no,” he protested. “I have some problems, yeah, but that’s not why. That’s not what I’m getting at.”
Her mind was racing. If he was a Barrons local, he must have known about Deb. He was around her own age, the right age to have been a teenager when it happened. She racked her brain again for the name Stephen Heyer, trying to put it in context, but she was sure she’d never heard it before, that he hadn’t gone to her high school. She pegged him as some kind of creep, a ghoul, maybe looking to scare her for money. She did not need this shit. She really did not.
“I’ve seen you,” he said. He was following at her shoulder. He gave off a curiously diminished vibe, as if he was so low on life force that he couldn’t be dangerous. Fiona knew by instinct that she didn’t have to run or scream; if she got in her car and drove away, he’d simply recede, defeated. So she strode purposefully toward the parking lot. “That red hair,” he continued. “It’s unmistakable. I’ve seen you, Deb Sheridan’s sister, the journalist, coming back to Idlewild. Looking, looking, right? They’re restoring it, and you can’t stay away. I figure you must be looking, looking. You think I don’t understand, but I do.”
Fiona turned and stared at him. He wasn’t lying; he was telling the truth, at least as he knew it. “Listen,” she said to him. “Whatever you think you know, I do not give a shit. Do you understand? Stop following me, or I’ll call the cops. Whatever crazy shit is in your brain right now, I suggest you forget about it. Forget about me. I am none of your business.”
“You want answers,” Stephen said. He didn’t seem high, but she wondered how long it had been since his last fix. “Closure, right? That’s what they call it. The therapists and group sessions and grief counselors. They don’t talk about what a load of bullshit that is.” He stared at her, and she saw frustration behind his eyes, some kind of crazy pain that spiraled through him, undulled by drugs. He gestured down at himself. “You think I got this way because I got closure?”
Her mouth was dry. “Closure for what?”
“You’re not looking hard enough,” Stephen said, echoing his own note. “I’ve been looking for closure for twenty years. Just like you. But I looked harder. And I found you.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what the hell that means.”
“I know how it feels.” He was strangely eloquent now, his eyes bright, an evangelist speaking the truth he knew best. “You’re all in here”—he tapped his temple—“and you can’t get out. It goes round and round. You’re thinking, thinking—always fucking thinking. The therapists and the grief counselors, they don’t understand. They want you to talk and write things down and share, but nothing makes it go away. I did drugs. You go walking at Idlewild.”
It was as if he were hitting her with the words, punching her in the stomach. “Did you know my sister?” she rasped.
“No,” Stephen Heyer said. “But I want Tim Christopher dead.”
“What—” She tried to get a grip, sound rational. “Are you some kind of death penalty advocate?” Vermont didn’t have the death penalty.
“I don’t give a shit about the death penalty,” Stephen said, his eyes alight. “I just want him dead. Not for what he did to your sister. For what he did to mine.”
There are moments when everything shifts, when the world becomes eerily like the kaleidoscope toy given to children, where with the turn of a cheap plastic knob everything changes, becomes different. Fiona looked at the man in front of her and the calm of downtown Portsmouth disappeared; the colors changed; the air smelled different. Everything flew upward, scattered, and landed again. Her head throbbed.
“Who was your sister?” she asked him. “What did Tim do?”
“Who is my sister?” he corrected her, his voice bitter. “Helen Elizabeth Heyer, born July 9, 1973. Would you like to meet her?”
Her voice was a rasp, but she didn’t hesitate, the words slipping out of her as they always did when she was buzzed like this, restless, the madness in her blood. “Yes,” she told Stephen. “I would.”
“My car is parked over there,” he said, pointing down the street. He smiled when he saw her expression. “How the hell do you think I followed you to New Hampshire? I’m a fucking addict, not a bum. It’s a blue Chevy. I’ll pull out and wait for you.”
“Where are we going?” Fiona asked him, her temples pounding.
“Back to Vermont,” he said. “I’ll lead the way. You follow.”
Chapter 25
Barrons, Vermont
November 2014