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

Elle:

What was that time like for you?

Sykes:

I . . . huh. No one’s ever asked me that . . . It was pretty tough. I once stayed up three days straight, just researching all the possible meanings behind the numbers three, seven, and twenty-one until I finally got sent home after I vomited into the trash can by my desk. When you’ve been a detective for as long as I have, you start to put the cases you’ve worked into categories. There are the ones that blur together, but you remember bits and pieces from over time. There are the ones that you forget entirely, either because they didn’t stick out or because you’ve forced the memories down. And then there are cases that stick with you no matter what—the ones that wake you up in the middle of the night like a spider crawling across your face, even decades later. I guess I don’t have to explain that to you, of all people. I was only six years into my career when I got the TCK murders, but I knew right away that I wouldn’t be able to let that case go until we found the guy.

Elle voice-over:

But they didn’t find the guy. Detective Sykes worked the case on top of his other caseload, but nothing panned out. And then, after a year of chasing fruitless leads and vetting wildly unsubstantiated tips, he was called to the scene of yet another girl’s murder.

[SOUND BREAK: Orchestra instruments tuning up, with a particularly sour note from a violin.]

Elle:

Can you say your name and your job title, please?

Terri:

I’m Terri Rather, and I’m the music teacher at Hillview Academy.

Elle voice-over:

Hillview is one of the most expensive private schools in the Minneapolis area. Its student body ranges from first to twelfth grade. While it’s technically a Christian school, approximately 20 percent of their student body is non-Christian. In 1998, that number was probably slightly lower, but fifteen-year-old Lilian Davies was one of the secular attendees whose parents enrolled her for the excellent music education. Lilian played clarinet—she was something of a prodigy, in fact. She had her heart set on applying to the New England Conservatory of Music. On February 2, 1998, she was walking to the main road from the school’s music hall after rehearsal when she disappeared.

Terri:

Back then, there was no road up to the entrance of the music hall—it was set back a couple hundred yards, and it was a pain for parents to drive all the way around campus to the parking lot at the back. So, a lot of students who needed to get picked up would walk across the big lawn and through a cluster of trees to get to the sidewalk next to Hamline Avenue. There was a path over the lawn which the school kept shoveled all winter. Usually, the kids all walked up together, so we didn’t worry about their safety. But Lilian had to leave a little early that day for a doctor’s appointment, so she was by herself.

Elle:

When did you know something was wrong?

Terri:

I was packing up after rehearsals finished, and her dad came rushing in, ready to give her a talking-to for making them miss her appointment, I think. He thought she’d just forgotten. When we both realized the other didn’t know where she was, we started to panic. We called the police right away. One witness thought he saw a girl that looked like her getting into an unmarked van, but she wore a gray stocking cap and a black coat. There was no guarantee the person he’d actually seen was Lilian. Other than that one possible witness, it was like she’d just vanished into thin air. But then . . . then a few days later . . .

[A nose blowing.] I was . . . I was close to Lilian and her father, Darren. He and I had been seeing each other. So, I was with him when the detective showed up at his house and let him know another girl had disappeared. He told us they couldn’t be certain, but he was fairly confident Lilian and this other girl, Carissa, had been taken by the Countdown Killer.

Elle:

That must have been devastating.

Terri:

It was like if someone strapped a bomb to your chest and handed you the timer: you know exactly how long until everything explodes. Darren and I went on the news, tried to talk directly to the killer. We told him we knew he had Lilian. We . . . we begged him not to hurt her. We begged him to change his mind, even though some people told us that seeing our pain might have been part of the thrill for him. What choice did we have? She was going to die anyway. We had to try. By the time it got to day seven, Darren was going out of his mind with terror, knowing any moment the police would call and say they had found Lilian’s body. In the end, he had to be sedated. I was the one who answered the phone when they found her.

Elle voice-over:

A tattoo artist in St. Paul discovered the body of Lilian Davies lying on a dirty piece of cardboard in front of the door to his shop seven days after she was taken. Detective Sykes was the second cop on the scene, but as usual, there was nothing to be found. No physical evidence, no unidentified DNA. Lilian’s young future had been snuffed out in the same way as all the other girls’—with poison and twenty-one lashes.

Elle:

I appreciate that this isn’t an easy conversation for you to have.

Sykes:

In all my decades doing this job, I’ve never seen the spirit leave a man’s eyes the way it did when Darren Davies found out his daughter was no longer in this world. When I saw that, I was more determined than ever to get justice for her—for all these girls. I left his house believing I could save the next one. I