“This was their first summer here,” Boone adds.
Wilma unzips the messenger bag. “Did Tom Royce ever mention coming to the area before they bought it?”
“Yeah,” I say. “He told me they spent several summers at different rental properties.”
“He told me the same thing,” Boone says. “Said he was glad to finally find a place of their own.”
Wilma motions for us to sit. After we do, Boone and me sitting side by side, she pulls a file folder out of her bag and places it on the table in front of us.
“Are either of you familiar with the name Megan Keene?”
“She’s that girl who disappeared two years ago, right?” Boone says.
“Correct.”
Wilma opens the folder, pulls out a sheet of paper, and slides it toward us. On the page is a snapshot, a name, and a single word that brings a shiver to my spine.
Missing.
I stare at the photo of Megan Keene. She’s as pretty as a model in a shampoo commercial. All honey-blonde hair and rosy cheeks and blue eyes. The embodiment of Miss American Pie.
“Megan was eighteen when she vanished,” Wilma says. “She was a local. Her family owns the general store in the next town. Two years ago, she told her parents she had a date and left, kissing her mother on the cheek on her way out. It was the last time anyone saw her. Her car was found where she always left it—parked behind her parents’ store. No signs of foul play or struggle. And nothing to suggest she never planned to come back to it.”
Wilma slides another page toward us. It’s the same format as the first.
Picture—a dark beauty with lips painted cherry red and her face framed by black hair.
Name—Toni Burnett.
Also missing.
“Toni disappeared two months after Megan. She was basically a drifter. Born and raised in Maine but kicked out of the house by her very religious parents after one too many arguments about her behavior. Eventually, she ended up in Caledonia County, staying at a motel that rents rooms by the week. When her week was up and she didn’t check out, the manager thought she’d skipped town. But when he entered her room, all her belongings still seemed to be there. Toni Burnett, though, wasn’t. The manager didn’t immediately call the police, thinking she’d return in a day or two.”
“I guess that never happened,” Boone says.
“No,” Wilma says. “It definitely did not.”
She pulls a third page from the folder.
Sue Ellen Stryker.
Shy, as evidenced by the startled smile on her face, as if she’d just realized someone was taking her picture.
Missing, just like the others.
And the same girl Katherine had mentioned while we sat around the fire the other night.
“Sue Ellen was nineteen,” Wilma says. “She went missing last summer. She was a college student spending the season working at a lakeside resort in Fairlee. Left work one night and never came back. Like the others, there was nothing to suggest she packed up and ran away. She was simply . . . gone.”
“I thought she drowned,” Boone says.
“That was one theory, although there’s nothing concrete to suggest that’s what really happened.”
“But you do think she’s dead,” Boone says. “The others, too.”
“Honestly? Yes.”
“And that their deaths are related?”
“I do,” Wilma says. “Recently, we’ve come to believe they’re all victims of the same person. Someone who’s been in the area on a regular basis for at least two years.”
Boone sucks in a breath. “A serial killer.”
The words hang in the stuffy air of the dining room, lingering like a foul stench. I stare at the pictures spread across the table, my gut clenched with both sadness and anger.
Three women.
Girls, really.
Still young, still innocent.
Taken in their prime.
Now lost.
Studying each photograph, I’m struck by how their personalities leap off the page. Megan Keene’s effervescence. Toni Burnett’s mystery. Sue Ellen Stryker’s innocence.
I think of their families and friends and how much they must miss them.
I think of their goals, their dreams, their disappointments and hopes and sorrows.
I think of how they must have felt right before they were killed. Scared and alone, probably. Two of the worst feelings in the world.
A sob rises in my chest, and for a stricken moment, I fear it’s going to burst out of me. But I swallow it down, keep it together, ask the question that needs to be asked.