Vanishing Girls

“It fits,” she murmurs. “We know Sarah didn’t come home until almost five a.m. on Monday. She lied about it initially. She was scared of getting in trouble.”

“What if Madeline Snow saw something she wasn’t supposed to?” I say. “What if Andre decided to . . . ?” I trail off. I can’t bring myself to say get rid of her.

“Maybe,” Margie says, but frowns, unconvinced. “It’s a stretch. The cops know all about Beamer’s. But they’ve never pinned anything on Andre—nothing major, anyway. A few fines here and there from the health department. And last year an eighteen-year-old came in with a fake ID and then had to get her stomach pumped. But murdering a nine-year-old child?” She sighs. Suddenly she looks twenty years older. “What do you want from me?”

I don’t hesitate. “I need to know where the photographs were taken,” I say—not a request, a command.

Her expression turns guarded.

“What photographs?” she says. She isn’t much of an actress.

“The photographs on the red sofa,” I say, and then add, “There’s no point in pretending you don’t understand.”

“How do you know about the photos?” she asks, still dodging the question.

I hesitate. I’m still not sure how much I can trust Margie. But I need her to tell me where those photos were taken. Dara has a connection to that place. Whatever she’s afraid of, whatever she’s running from—it’s connected to that place, too.

“My sister was in one,” I say finally.

She exhales: a long, low whistle. Then she shakes her head. “No one knows,” she says. “The photos came from a password-protected site. Members only, super encrypted. All teen girls, most of them still unidentified. Sarah Snow was one of them.”

And Crystal, I think, the mermaid who had to quit FanLand after her parents found pictures of her posing for some weird porn website, at least according to Maude. Crystal is Dara’s age: seventeen this summer. Everything is beginning to make a terrible kind of sense.

“The cops caught a lucky break when they got one of the members to talk.” She pauses, looking at me pointedly, and I think of the accountant who was briefly questioned by police, Nicholas Sanderson, and the comment on the Blotter posted by an anonymous user: he likes young girls. Suddenly I’m positive that this is the “member” who talked to the police. “But even he didn’t know anything else. It’s a private network. Everyone has an interest in keeping it secret—the creator, the members, even the girls.”

A surge of nausea rolls from my stomach to my throat. My baby sister. Suddenly I remember that for years she had an imaginary friend named Timothy the Talking Rabbit; he went wherever we went but insisted on having a window seat, so Dara always took the middle.

How did everything go so wrong? How did I lose her?

“It’s Andre.” I’m overcome by anger and revulsion. I should have stabbed him in the face with a letter opener. I should have clawed out his eyes. “I’m sure it’s him. He must have another location—a private place.”

Margie puts a hand on my shoulder. The touch surprises me. “If he does, if he’s the one who’s responsible, the police will catch him,” she says, her voice softening. “It’s their job. It’s late. Go home, get some sleep. Your parents are probably worried about you.”

I jerk away. “I can’t sleep,” I say, feeling the wild urge to hit something, to scream. “You don’t understand. No one understands.”

“I do understand,” she says, speaking to me gently, consolingly, as if I’m a stray dog and she’s worried I might bite, or bolt. “Can I tell you a story, Nicole?”

No, I want to say. But she keeps going without waiting for a response.

“When I was eleven, I dared my little sister to swim across Greene River. She was a good swimmer, and we’d done it together dozens of times. But halfway to the other bank she started gasping, choking. She went under.” Margie’s eyes slide past mine, as if she’s still staring out over the water, watching her kid sister drown. “The doctors diagnosed her with epilepsy. She’d had a seizure in the water, her first. That’s why she went under. But afterward, she started having seizures all the time. She broke a rib when she fell down on the curb on her way to school. She was always covered in bruises. Strangers thought she was abused.” She shakes her head. “I thought it was my fault—that I’d caused her sickness somehow. That it was because I’d dared her.”

Now she looks at me again. For a split second, I see myself reflected in her eyes—I see myself in her.

“I became obsessed with keeping her safe,” she says. “I would hardly let her out of my sight. It almost killed me. It almost killed her.” She smiles a little. “She went to college all the way in California. After graduation, she moved to France. Met a guy named Jean-Pierre, married him, took French citizenship.” She shrugs. “She needed to get away from me, I guess, and I can’t say I blame her.”

I don’t know if she expects the story to make me feel better, but it doesn’t. Now I feel worse. She places both hands on my shoulders, ducking a little so we’re eye to eye.

“What I mean,” she says, “is it isn’t your fault.”

“Nicole!”

I turn and see Hernandez coming across the street, holding two coffees and a bag from Dunkin’ Donuts. His face is resolutely cheerful, a gym-teacher smile. “They always say cops like doughnuts, don’t they? I thought we could share one while we wait.”