The Girls Are Missing by Caroline Crane Page A

thing like this—if it happened at all, you’d get to the bottom of it much faster. That’s all. We have to try every possibility.”
    It sounded like an evasion. He must suspect someone, and wanted to find out more about him. Someone—on Shadow-brook Road? She could not believe it, even though she didn’t know any of them very well.
    “Every possibility,” he said again, as though he could read her mind. He asked other questions, trying to bring out what she did know about her neighbors. He asked her about her own household.
    “So you’re mostly here alone with the children. What time does your husband get home from work?”
    “Six-thirty. He takes a train that leaves Grand Central at five twenty-three.”
    “Is he ever late?”
    “When the train’s late.”
    “Ever work late? Take a later train?”
    “Of course, now and then. Everybody does things differently sometimes. What are you driving at? What is it you want to know?”
    She fought a mad urge to get up and open a window. She was suffocating, but the window would only make it hotter.
    “I want to know everything I can,” he said gently. “Then we start putting it together. And only after we’ve gotten somewhere can we sort out what’s relevant and what isn’t, so bear with us, okay?”
    “Yes, I’m sorry. I didn’t—It just sounded—”
    “We’re asking everybody the same kind of question, if that makes you feel any better.”
    She was surprised to find that it did. “But I still don’t like it. Do you really think it’s somebody from around here?”
    “Chances are, it isn’t,” he said. “It would have to be somebody awfully naive—or pretty damn clever—to commit that kind of mayhem in a place where he’s known and recognized, and expect to get away with it.”
    “If he thinks at all,” put in Finneran.
    At D’Amico’s request she went to find Mary Ellen, so they could ask her if she had seen anything noteworthy while riding around on David’s motorcycle.
    Boy crazy, Joyce thought as Mary Ellen’s eyes widened at the sight of the youthful Art Finneran. No, she hadn’t seen anything. She had been on the back roads halfway to Peekskill, and they had stopped for frozen yoghurt someplace way out in the country, but she couldn’t say where. She spoke breathlessly, more to Art Finneran, who silently jotted a few notes, than to D’Amico, who was questioning her. Finally they dismissed her, but she remained in the kitchen. The policemen rose to leave.
    “Thanks, ladies,” D’Amico said with a weary smile. “We’ll
    try the other people around here, and hope this guy might have made at least one slip somewhere.”
    “I wish I could help you,” Joyce said.
    “Not your fault. The guy just doesn’t want to be caught, and so far he’s been smart enough, or lucky enough, not to leave any traces.”
    “But he must be insane,” she said. “Mustn’t he? To do all those things? Would he even think about being caught?”
    “He may, in the long run, want to be caught,” D’Amico replied, “even though he doesn’t know it, and that’s why he keeps doing this. But he can’t recognize that. It’s all part of it.”
    “It doesn’t make sense.”
    “Of course it doesn’t make sense. We’re dealing with an irrational mind. In his own twisted way, though, it makes sense to him. This could be his release. His safety valve. The rest of the time he could be walking around looking as normal as the rest of us.”
    “Really? Then it could be—anybody.”
    “I wouldn’t say anybody. I’ve got my doubts it could be you, for instance. And I’m pretty sure it isn’t me.”
    “Are you saying the person might not know himself?”
    “That’s possible. Or if he does, he wouldn’t see it the way we do. He may even know it’s against the law, but to him it isn’t wrong. Or if it’s wrong, it’s still something he has to do, you know what I mean?”
    After they left, Mary Ellen sighed. “Did you see him?” As though Joyce