The Girl Who Was Taken Read online

  This sent the others onto their feet, all straining for a better view of the four who had finally done it. A mass disrobing began, as guys dropped their shorts and jumped into the lake. Nicole was naked a few seconds later, but in no hurry to find protection in the water. She shielded her breasts with her arm as she jostled Jessica and Rachel to join her. The remaining guys who stayed on the raft whistled at the show. Jessica and Rachel quickly undressed and jumped in. Nicole slowly turned to the guys who stood staring at her, uncovered her chest, and stared back at them for a few seconds, her eyebrows raised. It shut them up quickly as the boys blinked and could think of nothing to say.

  “Only ones left,” Nicole said. She began to fall backward off the raft. “Must have the littlest guys in the group.”

  A splash followed and she was gone.

  In the end, two guys who never dropped their shorts claimed the beer was running low and wanted to keep their buzz going. Megan and Matt, after taking a lap around the perimeter and treading water, grew tired and swam to the safety of the raft, holding on to the side and placing a foot on the bar that ran underwater and encircled the float. Megan was careful to stay underwater, keeping just her head visible.

  “That was crazy,” Matt said.

  “It’s senior year, we had to do it eventually.”

  “I love that we started it.”

  The water splashed between them as kids swam and kicked around the raft.

  “I’m really glad we’ll be at school together next year,” Matt said.

  “Yeah? Me too.”

  He leaned his face toward hers, careful not to get too close—not to get too much skin-on-skin contact—and kissed her. Megan, balancing with her right hand on the raft and right foot supporting herself on the bar, kissed back, rubbing her left hand through Matt’s hair. Without warning, Megan felt a hand run up the back of her thigh and grab her butt with a hard squeeze. She pulled away quickly.

  “Take it easy you two,” Nicole said. “Grabbing ass in the lake? Get a room, already.”

  Megan pushed Nicole’s hand away. Matt laughed because he wasn’t sure what else to do. Nicole swam off as quickly as she had appeared.

  “That wasn’t me,” Matt said as soon as Nicole was gone.

  “No kidding.”

  Spent of energy from treading water, everyone slowly reconvened at the raft. Awkward and shy now that swimming away was not an option, the girls mostly congregated on one side, boys on the other. Matt reached up and grabbed Megan’s suit.

  “Here you go,” he said in a disappointed tone. “Looks like the party’s over.”

  Megan took her bikini and strapped it around her neck, watching out of the corner of her eye as Matt pulled himself out of the water to his waist to retrieve his shorts. She pulled on her bottoms, climbed back onto the raft, and handed out suits to her friends in the water. Everyone did the same except for Nicole Cutty, who climbed up the ladder and stood on the raft, squeezing water from her hair in no particular rush before bending over to pick up her bikini. From the depths of the lake, the guys helplessly stared.

  Megan noticed Matt, like every other guy, unable to peel his attention away until Nicole stepped both feet into her bottoms and pulled them up.

  PART II

  “I’m back, my Love. I’m back.”

  —The Monster

  CHAPTER 8

  October 2017

  Thirteen Months Since Megan’s Escape

  The dorm was a three-story red brick building with a security door and card-key entry. Livia waited outside until she saw Jessica Tanner walk through the lobby. Livia pushed open the door after Jessica unlocked it and they ducked into an empty study room. Close to midnight, about an hour after Livia had received Jessica’s phone call, the dormitory lobby was dark and quiet.

  “How’s medical school?” Jessica asked.

  “It was good. I graduated a few years ago.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Aren’t you a pediatrician?”

  “Pathologist.”

  “That’s what I meant,” Jessica said. “I remember Nicole telling me about it. Don’t you, like, examine bodies and stuff?”

  “Something like that. Can I see the picture?”

  Jessica produced a photo from her pocket. Livia took the picture and felt her heart ache when she saw Nicole, black hair weeping from her scalp and dark eyeliner painted thick and heavy onto her lids, transforming her eyes into ovals of coal with sapphire hidden inside. Standing next to her in the photo was a guy who draped his arm over Nicole’s shoulder. It took only a few seconds for Livia to match this man’s face to the photo of Casey Delevan from her case file, a bit longer to imagine that the decomposed body from a month earlier was the same man posing with Nicole.

  Dr. Colt encouraged all the fellows to work on the flaw of seeing their cases only from the side of death. Counseling the deceased’s family was an important part of their occupation, and visualizing vibrant souls instead of lifeless cadavers would help the fellows deliver news with compassion. Despite her efforts, all Livia saw when she looked at Casey Delevan was the putrefied body with the leg fracture and the strange piercings in the skull.

  “I didn’t think Nicole was dating anyone,” Livia finally said.

  “She was really secretive about it. I never even met the guy. Nicole showed me that picture to sort of, I don’t know, prove she had a boyfriend. I was giving her shit about it because no one ever met him. I don’t know why I kept the picture. Nic just never asked for it back. Then, when my mom told me about the guy floating in the bay and I saw him on the news . . . it’s the same guy.”

  “Did you know him at all?” Livia asked.

  “No. Nicole was very private about him. We used to tell each other everything.” Jessica shrugged. “I don’t know. That was a weird summer for us.”

  “When was this taken?”

  “Last summer, I guess. I mean, after senior year. That’s when she started dating him. Our friendship drifted that summer. I always thought it was because of this guy, but I sort of think she was going through some other stuff.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Rachel and I had a hard time reading her. She was really rebellious and started doing things I’ve never seen her do before.”

  “What kinds of things?”

  “Like, I don’t know, she was really mean to some girls at school. Especially to . . . Megan.”

  “Megan McDonald?”

  Jessica nodded.

  “How so?”

  “She hated all the attention Megan was getting for the summer retreat program and her scholarship to Duke. Nicole tried get with Megan’s boyfriend, and that caused a big problem.”

  Livia held up the photo. “I thought she was dating this guy. Casey?”

  “She was. The thing with Matt was just to piss Megan off and, I don’t know, prove that she could get anything she wanted. I know she hooked up with him that summer.”

  “With Megan’s boyfriend?”

  “Yeah. Lots of drama.”

  “What was this guy’s name?”

  “Matt Wellington.”

  “And when you say ‘hooked up’ what are we talking about?”

  “What do you think?” She took a deep breath. “Listen, Nic was my best friend. But she was different after senior year. Really promiscuous. Skinny-dipping. I mean, we all did it but Nicole was blatant about it. Making sure everyone saw her naked.” Jessica shrugged. “Something was off, you know? With all the black makeup and clothing, whatever that was about.”

  Livia remembered a trip home during the summer of 2016, and Nicole’s startling jet-black hair and the heavy black eyeliner and black clothes. Livia had ignored it. Made a point of saying nothing about it, and was almost obnoxious with her feigned ignorance to her sister’s physical change. Tonight wasn’t the first time Livia wished she could go back and offer the help Nicole was so clearly begging for.

  Livia held up Casey Delevan’s picture again. “Nicole ever say this guy w
ould hurt her or anything like that?”

  Jessica shook her head. “No. She barely talked about him at all.”

  “You ever tell the police about him?”

  “Yeah,” Jessica said. “When they interviewed me, I told them she was dating someone. But I never knew his name and I forgot about the picture until I went through some of my stuff this past summer and found it. Why? You think he had something to do with Nic disappearing?”

  “I don’t know.” Livia stared at the photo, held it up. “Can I keep this?”

  “I guess.” Jessica lifted her chin. “Do you know what happened to him?”

  “Casey? Yeah. He jumped off Points Bridge and was found floating in the bay.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Trouble sleeping the night before, with thoughts of Nicole and Casey Delevan running through her mind, Livia was at work early on Friday morning. She finished paperwork in the fellows’ office until nine a.m., when she was due in the autopsy suite for morning rounds. In front of her locker she pulled the blue smock over her scrubs and stuffed her hair under a surgical cap. She entered the autopsy suite, dropped her surgical gloves and face shield onto the table, and walked over to the whiteboard where the day’s cases were labeled and assigned.

  She saw her name scribbled in blue dry-erase:

  The other fellows similarly had cases assigned to them, as did four of the attendings. She read through the list to see if anyone had a more interesting assignment. All the cases that morning looked mundane, except for Tim Schultz. He had a gunshot wound, and Livia was unhappy about it. She knew, however, with little sleep and her mind so firmly preoccupied with Nicole that today was not the right time to tackle a challenging case. Or even an interesting one. An elderly fall victim felt appropriate for her current mindset.

  “You look like shit,” Jen Tilly, one of the other fellows, said as she walked up to the whiteboard.

  “Thank you,” Livia said.

  “Were you crying?” Jen asked.

  “No. Just up all night.”

  “What’s wrong?”

  Livia lifted her chin when Dr. Colt strolled into the morgue. “Long story.”

  Tim Schultz jogged through the door just after Dr. Colt and hustled past him to the dry-erase board. Dr. Colt, with his hands behind his back, walked to the board and scrutinized it as if he hadn’t written every word an hour earlier.

  “Late for morning rounds, Dr. Schultz, and you don’t get a case for that day.”

  “Yes, sir,” Tim said.

  “Cutting it close, no?”

  “Had a bathroom emergency.”

  “Um-hmm,” Dr. Colt said, still reading the board, head back and peering through his cheaters. “There are certain things I don’t need to know about my fellows, Dr. Schultz. You’ve just touched on one of them.”

  Dr. Colt walked to the whiteboard, picked up the eraser, and wiped clean the assignment next to Tim Schultz’s name. “That was a gunshot wound that might have been interesting, but I think I’ll give it to Dr. Baylor. An overdose came in overnight, and with your stomach already sour, Dr. Schultz, I think that’s a better assignment for you.”

  Dr. Colt began writing on the whiteboard. Livia and Jen smiled while Tim turned his palms upward.

  “Dr. Colt, my stomach feels just fine.”

  “Not for long. The OD is a decomp found in the projects, suspected to be a week old, or more. The investigators should be wheeling him in soon.”

  Tim looked over at Livia and Jen, who were doing their best not to laugh. He mouthed, without making a sound, I wasn’t late!

  * * *

  An hour into her autopsy of the elderly fall victim, Livia was struggling to get through the morning. She had completed the external examination to discover ecchymosis on this eighty-nine-year-old woman’s left side, from her rib cage to her shoulder to her skull. She noted and photographed a likely broken ulnar and radius on the left side. The internal examination was unremarkable, as she suspected it would be, and Livia started the process of weighing the organs. Today was the first time in her fellowship—the first time since her early days of path residency—when the smells and noises of the morgue bothered her.

  Tim Schultz’s decomp arrived just as Livia was detaching the lower intestine from the rectum. As soon as the investigators unzipped the bag, the odor hit her as it wafted through the autopsy suite.

  “Christ Almighty, Tim,” Livia said. “Turn on your overhead.”

  Tim switched on his ventilation fan as the investigators positioned the body on his table and quickly fled the morgue.

  A few minutes later he sliced open the abdomen, releasing the noxious fumes of intestinal rot. The odor hit everyone in the morgue, and a collective sigh came from each of the doctors.

  “Seriously, Tim,” Livia said. “Turn up your fan.”

  “It’s on high, Cutty. Since when did you become so odor intolerant?”

  Livia tried to block the smell from her mind as she went back to work. The woman in front of her had been discovered yesterday afternoon by her son, who stopped by for his weekly visit and found her lying on the bathroom floor. What Livia needed from this portion of the exam was a time of death, which she calculated from the stomach contents. She noted lividity on the left side, which suggested the fall had likely rendered the victim unconscious since she hadn’t appeared to move after the incident. Specifically, she hadn’t rolled onto her back as many fall victims tend to do. Livia confirmed the fractured wristbones, and then moved to the skull, where she knew the full story would be told.

  With the bone saw in her hands, she worked hard to ignore the mess that was unfolding on Tim Schultz’s table. It reminded her of her own decomp from last month, and she tried desperately to stop thinking about Nicole smiling happily in that photo. Livia tried not to think about Casey Delevan’s arm draped over her sister’s shoulder—the same arm she and Dr. Colt discovered to have suffered “shovel” wounds when someone dug him up. She tried not to think of the abrasions on his wrists and ankles from cinder blocks that pulled him to the bottom of Emerson Bay.

  With all these thoughts coursing through her mind, Livia’s movements were sticky and fat. She moved the buzzing bone saw over her patient’s head and performed the ugliest craniotomy of her short career, forgetting to design the cut asymmetrically so the skullcap would fit back into place without sliding off. Family members were never happy to see their loved one with a deformed skull at the funeral, a lesson every first-year pathology resident learned.

  “Shit,” Livia said to herself as she switched off the bone saw and watched the skullcap slide off the top of her patient’s head.

  Dr. Colt—standing at Tim Schultz’s table with his hands behind his back, cheaters on the tip of his nose, closely observing the internal exam—looked up. “Dr. Cutty? Is there a problem?”

  Livia pushed the skull back into place. She’d now have to run thick sutures through the scalp and, if possible, place a few staples into the skull when she was finished.

  “No, sir,” Livia said. Dr. Colt drew his attention back to Tim’s decomp.

  When she let go of the skullcap, it sloughed back onto the autopsy table and Livia peeled away the dura. She examined the brain and quickly documented the findings she knew would be present. A subarachnoid hemorrhage with midline shift of the brain—very typical of head trauma when elderly people fall and are not fast enough or strong enough to break their descent.

  Worried about the extra time she needed to suture the skull, Livia performed the neuro exam quickly, removing and weighing the brain, and then taking appropriate photographs for afternoon rounds. With everything completed, she got busy putting the body back together. Making the head presentable proved challenging and time-consuming. When she finished—one hour and fifty-two minutes later—she was embarrassed by her work. A mediocre technician could have done a better job pulling the Y-incision together, and the skull was simply a mess of running sutures and staples the mortician would have to make presentable. Than
kfully, Tim Schultz’s decomped overdose distracted Dr. Colt the entire morning.

  * * *

  With her paperwork completed, Livia created a zipped file of her fall victim’s case for afternoon rounds. As soon as she finished, she sat at her desk and cruised the Internet, searching for anything she could find about Casey Delevan. Pickings were slim as Mr. Delevan had little to no online presence aside from the fact that he was recently ID’d as the man fished from the bay at summer’s end.

  “Well,” Tim said as he entered the fellows’ office. “That’s the last time I use the bathroom before morning rounds.”

  Livia abandoned her search as Tim and Jen walked in.

  “It’s been a while since Colt has doled out reprimands,” Jen said. “I think he was waiting for his first chance to stick it to one of us. Wrong time, wrong place.”

  “No kidding,” Tim said. “That was the worst case I’ve seen.”

  “Smelled like it,” Livia said.

  “You’d better have your facts straight for rounds,” Jen said. “Your decomp is sure to get all the attention. And Colt is on a rampage.”

  They worked through lunch and then made rotations through dermatopathology and neuropathology before meeting back in the cage for afternoon rounds. Indeed, Tim’s case got much of Dr. Colt’s attention. Tim spent a full hour in the front of the cage, albeit a calm sixty minutes where he successfully navigated the onslaught of questions. Tim had made obvious progress since fellowship began in July, and was no doubt aided today by Dr. Colt having spent the entire morning at his table.

  Jen Tilly presented next. A fifty-year-old woman had died of cirrhosis due to chronic alcohol abuse. The presentation was fast and streamlined nicely by Jen’s meticulous preparation. Livia switched spots with her. It suddenly felt odd to be in the front of the cage. Although lately Livia had striven to be here, in front of Dr. Colt and her other teachers, today was an anomaly. All morning, throughout the autopsy and then during the afternoon when she prepared her presentation, her thoughts had been with Nicole. Like a computer application running in the background and drawing down her phone’s battery, the left-side analytical portion of her mind had been working all day on Casey Delevan and his connection to her sister. But now, with thirty sets of eyes on her as she stood in the glow of the Smart Board projector, Livia was finally forced to focus her mind on the fall victim she had autopsied. She was surprised to find such a scant amount of information to work from, as if suddenly she was taking that final exam from her dreams for a class she had never attended.