The Girls Are Missing by Caroline Crane Read Free Book Online Page A

came straight upstairs with both the Times and the Daily News under his arm.
    “Here,” he said, opening the second section of the Times. “How do you like this? The only thing missing is your name.”
    “My name?”
    “For reporting it.”
    Find Body of Missing Westchester Woman. It was datelined Cedarville, N.Y. She skimmed the three-inch story. The woman was Joan Danner, eighteen years old. Missing since May 29. She remembered the name. Found by two children playing in the woods. Bound, gagged, shreds of clothing, apparently cut off. Body heavily mutilated.
    “Thanks,” she said, handing back the paper. “You’ve really made my day.”
    “I thought you’d be interested. You’re the one who got this whole thing started.”
    “I’m not interested. I hate it. Can you imagine what that girl’s family is going through?”
    She put Adam back in his crib, then washed her face and slipped a peignoir over her sheer nightgown.
    Carl had preceded her to the kitchen. It was almost as though he were avoiding the sight of her in that nightgown, until she had the peignoir in place. And yet it was a set he had given her when they were married. He had found it provocative then, the see-through film of pale peach. It must be her figure, she decided, still a little loose. She would have to start doing exercises.
    He had already started the coffee maker and was frying bacon. It was a peaceful breakfast, with only the two of them. Even Gail had reached the age of sleeping late. Or perhaps she only did it to avoid Carl.
    He finished his second cup of coffee and pushed back his chair. “Better get that lawn mowed.”
    “It’s awfully early, Mr. Suburbanite.” Even after a year, they were still getting used to the routine of lawns, clogged gutters, and oil burners.
    “If I wait, the kids will be trampling it down and then it won’t cut properly.” He went upstairs to put on his lawn-mowing uniform, as she called it: grass-stained work pants and a pair of tattered sneakers.
    As she loaded the dishwasher and set the table for the next sitting, Gail came downstairs in her thin, too-small pajamas and silently helped herself to half a bowl of cereal.
    “There’s bacon,” said Joyce.
    “Mmm,” Gail muttered.
    “Aren’t we bright and sunny this morning.”
    “Mommy, did they find out who that person is?”
    “What person? Oh—yes. It was one of those missing girls. The older one.”
    “I’m glad it wasn’t Valerie.”
    “Who’s Valerie?”
    “That’s the other girl that’s missing. Anita’s sister knows her. They’re in the same class.”
    Outside, the lawn mower started with a roar. It drowned out her half-formed answer, which was just as well. Good luck, Valerie . She went upstairs to change her clothes.
    The newspapers were still on the bed where Carl had left them. The Times was folded open to the article she had already seen. She turned the pages of the News.
    MISSING GIRL FOUND DEAD. And a blurry photograph of Joan Danner in life, a smiling, oval-faced blonde.
    An autopsy revealed that the hyoid bone in the throat was broken, which indicated death by strangulation. It seemed clear that the mutilation had been done afterward. In a sexual rage, perhaps. It could not be determined whether the girl had been raped.
    Of course not. The body had been around since May 29.
    A freak. A real freak. How did nature ever come up with things like that?
    Quickly she put on her clothes, made the bed, and took the newspapers down to the living room. She did not want them in the same room with Adam. She placed them neatly on the coffee table—as Barbara said, Carl liked things neat—and glanced out at the lawn, where the mower stood alone in the middle of the half-cut grass.

8  
    He saw them moving about in the meadow, the shapes of men, and he knew what they were doing. They must have been all over the place, all through the woods, down by that little brook. Probably searching the ruins near Lattimer, the cellar that