Girl, 11 by Amy Clarke (grave mercy TXT) 📗

Contents

Title Page

Contents

Copyright

Dedication

Epigraph

The Countdown

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

The Reset

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21

22

The Fuse

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

The Sacrifice

33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Connect with HMH

Copyright © 2021 by Amy Suiter Clarke

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to trade.permissions@hmhco.com or to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 3 Park Avenue, 19th Floor, New York, New York 10016.

hmhbooks.com

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Clarke, Amy Suiter, author.

Title: Girl, 11 / Amy Suiter Clarke.

Other titles: Girl, eleven

Description: Boston : Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2021.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020034220 (print) | LCCN 2020034221 (ebook) | ISBN 9780358418931 (hardcover) |ISBN 9780358449027 | ISBN 9780358449386 | ISBN 9780358494935 (ebook)

Subjects: GSAFD: Suspense fiction.

Classification: LCC PS3603.L3699 G57 2021 (print) | LCC PS3603.L3699 (ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034220

LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020034221

Cover design by Johannes Wiebel

Cover images: Manfred Ruckszio/Shutterstock (flora) and iStock/Getty (background)

v1.0321

To my mom,

who read thousands of my words before a sentence was published;

and to my dad

who encouraged me to tell the truth even in fiction.

I need to see his face.

He loses his power when we know his face.

— MICHELLE MCNAMARA

Part I

The Countdown

1

Justice Delayed podcast

December 5, 2019

Transcript: Season 5, Episode 1

Elle voice-over:

Minnesota is known for the cold. Frigid winters and stoic Nordic sensibilities. On this bright November morning, as I drive southwest in the land of ten thousand lakes, drifts of snow gust over the highway, aloft and swirling like phantoms. One minute I’m winding my way through flat expanses of prairie and farmland, the next I’ve arrived in the city—all concrete and lights and neat, modest lawns. Like many Midwest American states, there’s a separation that runs along the invisible but impenetrable borders between rural and urban. Just a few miles is all it takes for demographics, ideologies, cultures, and customs to change.

But every now and then, something happens that shakes a whole state. Its impact is felt by everyone, uniting people in grief and a common purpose.

Just under twenty-four years ago, in the lively college student community of Dinkytown, a young woman named Beverly Anderson disappeared.

[THEME MUSIC]

Elle Intro:

The cases have gone cold. The perpetrators think they’re safe. But with your help, I’ll make sure that even though justice has been delayed, it will no longer be denied. I’m Elle Castillo, and this is Justice Delayed.

[SOUND BREAK: Snow crunching underfoot; the echoes of “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men playing in the distance; the laughter of young adults.]

Elle voice-over:

In February 1996, twenty-year-old Beverly left a party she was at with her boyfriend and several other fellow juniors from the University of Minnesota. When the group walked out of the party, Beverly’s boyfriend tried to convince her to come with them up to Annie’s Parlour for late-night burgers and milkshakes. But Beverly had to get up early the next morning, so she insisted on going home. She was three months away from finishing her psychology degree and had already started an internship with a local clinic. They had an argument about it—nothing serious, just a spat like college lovers do. Eventually, he gave up and followed his friends alone. It was only five blocks to her apartment—a short walk she had made alone a hundred times before. Beverly zipped up her black wool coat, dipped her chin into her scarf, and waved goodbye to her friends.

It was the last time any of them saw her alive.

When she didn’t show up for her internship the next day, Beverly’s supervisor phoned her apartment. Her roommate, Samantha Williams, answered.

Samantha:

I don’t know how to explain it. As soon as I got the call, I had a feeling that something was wrong. I went up to her room to check, just to make sure, and yeah. Her bed wasn’t slept in. None of her stuff was there, like her bag and keys and everything. I could tell she had never come home.

Elle voice-over:

I’m sitting with Samantha Williams, now Carlsson, in her kitchen. She lives about an hour outside Minneapolis with her husband and two beagles, who sounded the warning before I even made it up to her front door.

Samantha:

[Over the sound of two dogs barking.] Hush! Go to your crate. I said crate. Good girls. You see, they’re well trained when they want to be.

Elle:

So, what happened when you realized Beverly hadn’t come home?

Samantha:

Well, I told her supervisor, and he said we should call the police, so that’s what I did. At first, they didn’t want to investigate—you know, it hadn’t been long enough or whatever. But once her boyfriend and me told them she was seen walking home alone, and that she was a dedicated student who had just started an internship, they started getting more worried. I know they interviewed [redaction tone], but his friends gave him a solid alibi. Other than that two or three minutes when they argued about her coming up to the restaurant with him, he was with them the whole rest of the night. The police came and talked to me that day, I think in the afternoon. You could find out in their report, if you have it.

Elle voice-over:

I do. According to Detective Harold Sykes, Samantha was interviewed on February 5, 1996, at 3:42 p.m.—approximately seventeen hours after Beverly was last seen.

Elle:

And from what you remember, what happened next?

Samantha:

Nothing, really. All her close friends had been with her that night, and they were at Annie’s Parlour for at least two hours after she left. Her family lived hours away, in Pelican Rapids. They figured there was no way the boyfriend did it, because he was only out of their friends’ sight for a couple minutes. She just . . . vanished. Everyone thought she might have gotten lost or disoriented, maybe she was drunker than her friends thought and fell into the Mississippi River and drowned. It’s happened before. But they searched the banks and snowdrifts for days, and there was no sign of her. Not until a week later.

Elle voice-over:

Seven days after Beverly went missing,