The Quarry Girls

by Jess Lourey

Sheriff Nillson stared down at me as I rubbed my stinging jaw. “If you’re hiding something from me, so help me,” he said. “I’m not having two girls disappear on my watch.” He put the emphasis on the “two”—“not having two girls disappear”—like one would have been acceptable but two was vulgar. Or maybe, like he’d known about the first one, had a hand in it, but the second was an unwelcome surprise. I was struggling to take a full breath. “If Brenda is missing, ask Ricky,” I said. “Ricky and Ant and Ed. They’ll know. Ed’s back in town. He bought Brenda earrings.” Dad and Sheriff Nillson shared a weighted look.

No, of course not, he’d said. I protected you. I told him it was a rumor. Dad had lied. He hadn’t protected me and Brenda at all. Betrayal crawled like tattoo needles, deep and sharp, across my skin. I couldn’t look at my father.

I glowered back at him, refusing him the satisfaction of an answer. I was cocky. That’s when I still believed Brenda would be coming home.

Dad came out of his office moments later wearing a suit. He strode to the kitchen, pulled the gluey hotdish out of the fridge, and shoveled it into his mouth standing up. I didn’t know why he even bothered coming home anymore, this Dad-shaped man, this cheater, this liar

Maureen would have pushed back even harder, but I wasn’t Maureen. Instead, I swallowed my bitter-tart swirl of feelings, stood, walked like a robot to his spot at the head of the table, and put my arms around him. After all, he had stayed home when I asked. That counted for something, didn’t it? He smiled, leaning into me like I was the parent and him the child. The thing was, I knew he was telling the truth. He did love all of us. Why wasn’t that enough anymore?

Dad steered the three of us under the tree to wait for him while he talked to one of the journalists he recognized. It was hot. I was miserable. For the first time I questioned—in my head, at least—why it was we couldn’t enter a building without Dad. It was at least ten degrees cooler inside. I was questioning a lot of things lately.

I stood there for a few beats, somewhere between crying and screaming. I couldn’t believe Ant had shown Claude that picture. It shouldn’t even matter, not with Maureen dead and Brenda missing, and it didn’t, not anything like those losses did, but it stung at a time when I didn’t have room for more hurt. I shuffled back under the tree next to Mom and Junie, wondering who else here had seen me in my bra, crying, in that dumb-bunny photo I let Ant take.

“How long do you think Mom will be gone this time?” Junie asked, breaking the quiet. She was wearing a gingham dress, ribbons in her hair. Despite the girlish clothes, Ed had been right. She looked a whole lot older than she was, sixteen at least.

What had Mom screamed to the congregation? Every one of you bears responsibility. Every. One. Of. You. It was mortifying, thinking of her breaking down in public. We tried so hard to hide it, Dad and me. Now everyone would know, not just the neighbors who’d helped us out when Junie and I were little. I stopped my bike at the East Saint Germain traffic light. To my left was a strip mall. To my right was the Northside Diner. Father Adolph’s words came to me. The same goes for Elizabeth McCain, who hasn’t been seen since she went missing from the Northside Diner over a week ago.

I tasted that for a few seconds. “Did Beth have any regulars? Anyone acting strange who came in that night?” She studied me down the end of her nose. “Police asked the same question. Beth was popular. Everyone loves a redhead. A couple of the regulars set off our radar. One of them, he looked like he was auditioning for West Side Story.” My heartbeat tumbled, skipped a beat, came back twice as strong. “Was his name Ed Godo?” “Don’t know his name. Short guy, midtwenties, greased-back black hair, leather jacket even when it was hot as the devil’s crack. Drank cola and popped Anacin like it was his job. Wore lifts in his shoes.”

“I appreciate your time,” I said. She smiled and turned to go inside. “Wait,” I said. “You mentioned she had a couple regulars who didn’t feel right. Who were the others?” She stopped with her hand on the door. “Not others. Other. Jerome Nillson.” The shock kicked me out of my own body, but Lisa kept talking, oblivious. “Like I said, you get to know everyone. Nillson ended up in Bethie’s section often enough that it couldn’t be coincidence. She said she didn’t like him, but what’re you gonna do?” she asked, shrugging. “Too bad him and the Fonz didn’t get together and cancel each other out.”

Ed Godo and Jerome Nillson had both been regulars in Beth’s life as well as Maureen’s, and they also both knew Brenda. Plus, while they landed on different sides of the badge, both men were dangerous. Their connections to three missing girls, one of whom had been found dead, couldn’t be a coincidence.

Something broke deep down beneath my ribs. I would never look at that dead face, but I knew it was her. It was Brenda Taft lying on her back in the middle of the circle of police officers. She was wearing scratchy-looking schoolteacher clothes that were not hers. She was laid out on display like the body of a gunslinger. It was Brenda. The scream didn’t start with me.

“Brenda’s dead,” he said when his weeping subsided. His voice sounded left over. Discarded. “I know.” “Jerome took Ant and Ricky in for questioning right away,” Dad continued, ignoring me. Or maybe I hadn’t spoken. “They swear they don’t know anything. Ricky says he hasn’t seen Brenda since she stopped by work to see you Saturday. Ant says he saw her that same morning, but not since. Does that sound right?” I lifted one shoulder. Dad either didn’t feel it or didn’t care. “They agreed to a polygraph, and their parents signed off on it. Both boys passed.” He pulled away from me, ran the back of his hand across his mouth. “I’m so sorry, Heather.” “What about Ed?” I asked. “What does he say?” “We can’t find him.” Dad shook his head like he couldn’t believe his bad luck. “We really messed this one up.”

I did know my friends. I might not have known everything they’d been doing, or who they’d been doing it with, but I knew the kind of people they were. I knew their hearts. I let that new fire burn, quietly. I wasn’t ready to show it yet. Not to my dad.

I’d hoped to do something to Ant, something raw, like shredding his skin with my fingernails, ripping out his hair, making him suffer the fire that was now burning out of control inside me. But I couldn’t hear him inside his basement. I turned and went home. But the flame still burned, quietly. For now.

It was unnerving how Pantown held the shape of me, the outline of who I was. As long as I stayed in the neighborhood, I was whole. I always assumed I’d be nothing, no one, if I ever left it. Was that just another one of Pantown’s lies?

I felt the copper heart against my chest and thought about how much it mattered, having a friend like Claude, what a treasure it was, and here he was offering me something more. I turned. “I love you, Claude.”

I placed my hand over the heart, feeling the beat of my blood through it. I tried to picture Maureen and Brenda alive, teasing me and Claude mercilessly, Heather and Ziggy, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G, but I couldn’t.

“He about wore it out, at first. Said it reminded him of being young. But then I guess he got old and stuffy! Squirreled it away somewhere. Do you remember it? You were just a little girl, but your father never wore jewelry other than that, so it might have snagged in your memory.” I lurched forward, my hand stretched out to silence her, but it was too late, forever too late. “I guess the lesson learned is never buy your father a copper ID bracelet.”

Her hair long and blonde. Flash. Strobe. With green streaks. The hand at the back of her neck pressing her face into his crotch. He was wearing a copper-colored bracelet that I recognized. No no no no no My dad. It had been my dad. My dad. It had been my dad.

Dad who’d put Maureen’s mouth on him and held it there. Who’d said he’d look into Maureen’s “suicide,” but of course he wouldn’t. Sheriff Nillson and my dad weren’t going to look in that direction at all.

“I knew you saw me.” I spun around. Dad stood in the doorway, his face flat. He was staring at the wicked bracelet I held. “It was only a few times,” he said, voice thick. “Jerome would stockpile leftovers. Marijuana and some harder stuff, odds and ends from arrests. When he had enough, he’d host parties. It was a way for us to let off steam. I swear to God I only went to a few. Only a few.” The bracelet slithered out of my hand and fell to the carpet with a thump.

A deep crimson rage exploded inside me. “Maureen was my friend.” “I know, baby,” he said, stepping forward, his mouth tight. I wondered if this was what he was like in court. Distant. Controlled. In charge. Lying with so much confidence you started to believe it was the truth. “She didn’t do anything she didn’t want to do, Heather. I swear on my life. There was no violence, no threats, ever.”

Out of habit, I considered believing him. He seemed to sense an opening and drew himself taller, full-on employing his district attorney voice and demeanor. “I’m still your father, Heather. I’m not perfect, but I’m one of the good guys.” A good guy. A nice guy. That’s what Ant had called himself. “What about Brenda? And Beth?”

A kaleidoscope of words and images swirled and snapped, then came into crisp focus: they hadn’t ever run Ed out of town. That had been one more lie he’d told me to get me off the scent. They’d been willing to write off Beth as a runaway rather than risk drawing too much attention to Maureen and potentially to their parties. Now that Brenda was dead, they couldn’t look away any longer. That’s when I understood the raw truth of it: the men in charge were looking out for themselves. We were on our own, the girls of Pantown.

Last night, to end our conversation, he’d vowed he was committed to working around the clock to find Elizabeth. He could have told me water was wet and I wouldn’t have believed him. I was left to understand we were making a fresh start, though, that in his own way, he’d apologized for molesting Maureen and other girls, and now we’d pretend none of it had ever happened. Because that’s what we did in Pantown. At least, it was what we used to do. But I wasn’t going to be a part of it, not anymore.

I’d realized during my shift that, for all the recent horror, at least Pantown was finally safe, as safe as it could be. Sheriff Nillson wasn’t having his parties anymore. Everyone was looking for Ed now, for real looking for him this time, so he couldn’t just skulk back like he had before. All eyes were on Ricky and Ant, too, if they weren’t already in jail.

She wasn’t expecting me home for at least another half an hour, and I didn’t want to scare her. It was too hot, though, to walk all the way around. I settled for calling out to her as I rattled the knob. Her eyes were wide and startled as she spun. She slammed the phone into its holder. Her quick motion made her earrings swing, gold balls on the end of a long chain. The same style earrings Maureen and then Brenda had been wearing. The earrings Ed had bought for them.

“Junie,” I said, my voice steel, my movements small because I couldn’t scare her off, couldn’t survive her death, never, not in a million years. I couldn’t lose Junie. Not my June Bug. She had to tell me. “Was it Ed? Did he give you those earrings?” She shook her head once, sharply, the earrings winding up to smack her cheek, left and then right. Tick tick. “Then who? You’re too young to be hanging around with someone who gives you jewelry like that. It’s dangerous.”

“I’m not mad, Junie,” he said, releasing her after several seconds. “But you have to tell me who gave you those earrings. It’s important.” She’d taken them off. They were resting on her vanity. She’d begun to understand how serious this was, I think, might have even told Dad where she got them, if Sheriff Nillson hadn’t thundered into our house right then.

“I know you think I’m a dummy,” she mumbled, “but don’t worry about me.” Mom had called me a worrier at the hospital the other day. It was one of the criticisms she leveled most often at me. But if I didn’t worry about Junie, who would?

Agent Ryan glanced up from the couch, surprised. His face was pleasant, his suit rumpled. Who had chosen him to guard us? Sheriff Nillson? “I thought you girls had gone to sleep,” he said. He didn’t know Junie had left, which meant at best, he was terrible at keeping track of girls. At worst, it meant he wasn’t here to protect us. He was here to help Sheriff Nillson cover something up, something that required keeping Junie quiet. I swiped at the thoughts buzzing around my head. I was being paranoid. Dad would never in a million trillion years let Nillson hurt Junie, no matter what other terrible things he’d done. But what if Dad didn’t know?

I crept to the kitchen, wearing the hospital slippers I kept stowed in my room. Slowly, agonizingly slowly, I removed the skeleton key from the hook, made my way into the basement, and disappeared into the tunnels. Ed had kidnapped Elizabeth McCain. Then he’d killed Maureen, and then Brenda. I was sure of it. Almost sure of it. But I still had to check one more thing.

I was grateful I’d left my bike perched by the back door. I didn’t have to step onto the porch, in Agent Gulliver Ryan’s sight line, to take it. I leaped onto my banana seat and raced to the quarries. I would find Junie at the cabin. I would save her. I had to.

What was it Ant had said about Ed? With Ed, I don’t have to think at all. Same general thing Dad said about Jerome Nillson in high school. Except where was Ed?

“The police are coming,” I lied, frantic to run forward and grab Junie. I felt around for the truth. “They know what you and Ant and Ed did to Maureen and Brenda.” “I didn’t have nothing to do with Maureen,” Ant said from his chair by the bedroom door. I bit back a sob. I’d been right.

“You can’t ever change men like them,” she said to me, echoing what Dad had said. Had she been there? “Women always try, but some men are born bad.” She couldn’t know there was poison in the bottle. She couldn’t possibly. Even if she’d dumped out all the pills before I’d found her in my room, even if she’d studied each tablet, how would she have known what was what? I’d always thought she’d inherited Mom’s features, but right now, she looked so much like Dad that it unnerved me.

He looked like such a toy man, a strutting bantam rooster. She hadn’t taken him seriously even though her skin had clenched each time he walked into the diner. “Name’s Ed,” he’d said that first day, “and you sure are pretty.”

The trapdoor that had been opening tentatively suddenly shot wide, hitting the floor with a thump. Junie gasped and ran to my side, and we both backed against the far wall, nearer the front door. A bloody hand erupted from the floor like a horror-movie zombie erupting from its grave. A woman followed. I gasped. She was covered in blood, her eyes wild, but I recognized her red hair. Beth McCain.

“Come on!” Beth called. She stood at the top of the rocks, outlined by the moon. I bet she wanted to take off, to run away from here and never look back. Instead, she backtracked until she reached Junie, grabbing her elbow to hurry her to the peak. She tossed me an apologetic glance. I knew what that look meant. Beth was going to get Junie out of here. To safety.

I watched him walk out, finally understanding what we’d been up against. Finally. It wasn’t just that us Pantown girls were on our own. It was also that Dad and Sheriff Nillson got to write the story. Any messy details that happened outside their narrative, like my dad with his hands in Maureen’s hair, pressing her to him, or Sheriff Nillson taking pictures of scared girls trembling on his apple-green carpeting, it just didn’t happen. Erased. Wiped out.

Realizing that tasted like poison, like something dying. As much as I’d learned, as hot as my fire had burned since I’d discovered that copper bracelet, it still twisted to learn we’d never stood a chance. Not if we played by their rules. If that could happen in my home, my neighborhood, where else was it happening?

“Sheriff Nillson made my friend Maureen do awful things before she died,” I blurted out. I knitted together courage, preparing to do the hardest thing I’d ever done, even harder than biking out to that cabin. I was going to tell on my dad. Agent Ryan tipped his head, glanced over his shoulder, and then stepped all the way into the room, quietly but firmly closing the door behind him. “What did Sheriff Nillson make her do?” Even after everything I’d realized, I almost couldn’t go through with it. We kept our secrets in Pantown. But you wouldn’t believe what happened next. Maureen and Brenda joined us in that dingy room, Maureen with her fierce, take-no-shit attitude, Brenda with her steady strength. They showed up when I needed them the most. I couldn’t see them, couldn’t smell them, but I felt them, the three of us growing up together, making music in Valhalla, laughing, forever connected. I touched my single earring, rubbed the mood ring Brenda had given me right before the only concert we’d ever play together. It was still a yellow-green color, but it didn’t matter because with them here, I could do this. I had to.

Agent Ryan listened to my whole story, reaching over to pat my arm when I would start sobbing so hard I couldn’t speak. He’d wait, patient, his eyes sad, until I got back on track. Even better, he believed me. I could see it in his face.

Turns out Ed and Ricky hadn’t known what Maureen had done with Sheriff Nillson, my dad, and a deputy in Nillson’s basement that night. According to Ant, they targeted her because they knew her, and because Ricky liked her, and because she seemed like she’d be easy.

When Ant got his sobbing under control, his face a great swollen loaf, he told me where he’d hidden the photo of me in my bra. In the end, that’s why he’d called me in. He’d been out of his mind to be forgiven for something, anything. I’d known that, and I’d still come. I didn’t hate him, but neither would I comfort him. He deserved to be locked up. He’d made his choices, and they’d taken away Brenda’s. I might soften to that, but for now, it’s how I felt.

Dad and Jerome Nillson were both facing charges. They were holed up at a hotel—for their safety, we’d been told. Nillson had resigned from his position as sheriff and was also facing serious prison time thanks to the photos, which had been matched up with women and girls he’d arrested over the past six years. Dad was offered a plea deal, which he took, rolling over on the other Saint Cloud movers and shakers who’d attended Nillson’s parties. It would keep Dad out of jail, but he was being disbarred.

I still hadn’t shown Gloria Maureen’s diary and didn’t think I would. It would only cause more pain. We wouldn’t ever know who Maureen had been afraid of, Jerome Nillson or Ed Godo. I suspected it was both men. Maureen had great instincts, even if she wasn’t always able to listen to them, not with all the Pantown rules for girls crowding her thoughts.

Sometimes Beth, Junie, and me just sat on the couch and were all quiet in the warmth of each other. Other times, Beth’d beg me to play drums, so I’d haul her and Junie over to Gloria’s, and we’d pick up Claude on the way. We’d open the garage and fire up the lava lamps. I’d pound away while Junie shook the tambourine, Claude twanged the triangle, and Elizabeth danced. No one played bass or sang. I wasn’t ready for that yet. I did my best to keep my face happy, but sometimes it split my chest open how bad it hurt to be in the garage without Brenda and Maureen. I think Claude felt it, too, because sometimes he’d come over and hug me when I needed it the most.