The Silent Girl

vanished.
    She jotted down the order in which the girls disappeared.
    Deborah Schiffer, age thirteen.
    Laura Fang, age fourteen.
    Patty Boles, age fifteen.
    Sherry Tanaka, age sixteen.
    Charlotte Dion, age seventeen.
    It was like staring at a royal flush. Every year, a different girl, a different age. As if the kidnapper’s taste had matured as the years passed.
    She reached for the folder with the last photos of Charlotte, taken at the double funeral of her mother and stepfather. Again she flipped through the sequence of images taken by the
Boston Globe
photographer. Charlotte looking pale and thin in her black dress, surrounded by mourners. Charlotte stumbling away toward the edge of the crowd as Mark Mallory, her stepbrother, stares in her direction. The photo where Charlotte and Mark are absent, and her father, Patrick, looks confused by the sudden abandonment. Finally she came to the last image, where both were back in the frame, Mark walking behind Charlotte. Tall and broad-shouldered, he could easily have overpowered his stepsister.
    Every year, an older girl.
    The year that thirteen-year-old Deborah Schiffer vanished was a year after Dina and Arthur Mallory married, forming a new and reconstituted family, with all the joint activities that this would have entailed. School assemblies. Orchestra performances. State tennis tournaments.
    Is this how the victims were chosen? Through Charlotte?
    Jane picked up the phone and called Patrick Dion.
    “I’m sorry to bother you at dinnertime,” she said. “But would it be possible for me to take another look at Charlotte’s school yearbooks?”
    “You’re welcome to come anytime. Has something new turned up?”
    “I’m not sure.”
    “What are you looking for, exactly? Perhaps I could help you.”
    “I’ve been thinking a lot about Charlotte. About whether she’s the key to everything that’s happened.”
    Over the phone, she heard Patrick give a mournful sigh. “My daughter has always been the key, Detective. To my life, to everything that’s ever mattered. There’s nothing I want more than to know what happened to her.”
    “I understand, sir,” Jane said gently. “I know you want the answer, and I think I might be able to provide it.”
    H E ANSWERED THE DOOR wearing a baggy pullover sweater, chino slacks, and bedroom slippers. Patrick’s face, like his sweater, was sagging and careworn, every crease etched deeply with old grief. And here was Jane to bring back the awful memories. For that she felt guilty, and when they shook hands, she held on longer than necessary, a grasp meant to tell him that she was sorry. That she understood.
    He gave her a sad nod and led the way into the dining room, his slippers shuffling across the wood floor. “I have the yearbooks waiting for you,” he said, pointing to the volumes on the dining table.
    “I’ll just bring these out to my car and be on my way. Thank you.”
    “Oh dear.” He frowned. “If it’s all right, I’d rather you didn’t take them out of the house.”
    “I promise I’ll look after them very carefully.”
    “I’m sure you will, but …” He placed his hand on the stack of books, as though blessing a child. “This is what I have left of my daughter. And it’s hard, you know, to let any of it out of my sight. Iworry that they’ll get lost or damaged. That maybe someone will steal them from your car. Or you’ll have an accident and …” He paused and gave a rueful shake of his head. “That’s terrible of me, isn’t it? To value a stack of books so much that I I focus only on what happens to
them
. When they’re just cardboard and paper.”
    “They’re worth more than that to you. I understand.”
    “So if you could humor me? You’re perfectly welcome to sit here as long as you need and look through them. Can I get you something? A glass of wine?”
    “Thanks, but I’m on duty. And I have to drive home.”
    “Coffee, then.”
    Jane smiled. “That would be wonderful.”
    As Patrick went to the kitchen to make coffee, she sat down at the dining table and spread out the books. He had brought them all out, including the volumes from Charlotte’s elementary school years. She set those aside and opened the volume from Charlotte’s first year at the Bolton Academy, when she was a seventh grader. Her photo showed a fragile-looking blonde with braces on her teeth. The caption read: CHARLOTTE DION. ORCHESTRA, TENNIS, ART . Jane flipped through the book to the older