LITMIR.BIZ

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happy mood instantly evaporated as she waited to hear the rest of the story.

      “What they think is her body,” corrected Ted. “There’s only a few bones.”

      “And a piece of a bra,” added Phyllis.

      “A hiker made the discovery,” said Ted. “Out near Shiloh.”

      “Her poor parents,” said Lucy. They had been on TV so often, pleading for their daughter’s return, that Lucy felt as if she knew them. She could picture them clearly, the tall, quiet, whiskered father and the frizzy-haired, emotional little mother. Lucy couldn’t help identifying with them, especially when Joanne Appleton appeared wearing the same quilted jacket that Lucy owned.

      “It’s tough,” said Ted, closing one of the big books of bound Pennysavers with a thud. “There’s a press conference at ten in Shiloh. I’ll cover that. Lucy, I want you to write some background. We covered it pretty extensively, so it’s all here, in last summer’s papers.”

      “Right,” said Lucy, wishing she could wiggle out of it somehow. It was hard enough writing about it the first time, and she didn’t want to go over it all again.

      “At least now her parents know for sure what happened,” said Phyllis. “They’ll have closure.”

      “Whatever that is,” muttered Lucy, studying the photo of Corinne that had appeared on the front page of every newspaper in the state, maybe even in the whole country. It was one of those stories that the media, and the public, couldn’t get enough of. She was only sixteen, a pretty girl with a round face and long dark hair. She was smiling in the photo, and there was a dimple in each cheek. Like most towns in the area, Shiloh offered a recreation program for kids during the summer school vacation, which included games, field trips, arts and crafts, and even swimming and boating lessons. Corinne had been a counselor for the eight-to ten-year-olds. It was her first job.

      The rec program started at nine in the morning and ran until noon, but Corinne’s mother had dropped her off earlier, before eight thirty, because that was when she had to be at her job at a bank. “It seemed safe,” she was quoted as saying. “A park, right in the center of town. This is her home, after all. Everybody knew her and she knew everybody. If a girl isn’t safe in Shiloh, she isn’t safe anywhere.”

      Nobody had seen anything out of the ordinary. One moment Corinne was there, sitting on the bandstand, reading a book, and the next time anybody noticed, she was gone. Nobody had thought anything of it. Maybe she’d gone to get a cup of coffee or a bottle of sunscreen; maybe she’d gone inside the supply shed to get balls and bats for a planned baseball game. But when everybody assembled for the morning exercises, when they raised the flag and sang “This Land Is Your Land,” she wasn’t there. The recreation director had noted her absence and assigned someone else to take her place. He’d meant to call and see if she was sick, but nine-year-old Tommy Branson tripped on a rock and fell, breaking a tooth, and what with calling his mother and getting him off to the dentist, the director had forgot all about Corinne until her mother called sometime after noon, wondering why she hadn’t shown up at the bank, as she always did, so her mother could give her a ride home on her lunch break. By then she’d been missing for nearly four hours, time for an abductor to have taken her more than two hundred miles away.

      The story hit a nerve; it was all people in the region talked about for months. Many volunteered for search parties and spent long, hot hours trudging through the buggy woods; others put up posters on trees and utility poles. The Shiloh selectmen debated discontinuing the recreation program, fearful it was putting the town’s children in jeopardy. In the end, a police officer was assigned to patrol the park while the program was in session. The summer ended without further incident. No further abductions were attempted, and Corinne remained missing. Some people even speculated that perhaps the Appletons weren’t as nice as everybody thought, and perhaps Corinne had run away because of problems at home.

      “Now,” wrote Lucy, “ten months after her disappearance last July, the longstanding mystery of Corinne Appleton’s fate appears to have been solved.” She typed slowly, weighing her words, trying to chart a course between a cold, factual account and a maudlin appeal to readers’ emotions. When she finally finished, she was exhausted.

      “I think I’ll take a little walk before I tackle the listings,” she told Phyllis, but she hadn’t got out the door before Ted returned.

      “What did they say?” demanded Phyllis. “Is it really Corinne?”

      Ted nodded, taking off his jacket and hanging it on the coatrack. “Her mother identified the bra. It was pink with flowers. She said she’d washed it many times.”

      Lucy thought of the many times she’d handled her own girls’ clothing, taking the clean bras and underpants and shirts and jeans out of the dryer and folding them, making neat piles topped with their rolled-up socks, which she placed on their beds for them to put away in their dresser drawers.

      “There wasn’t actually much of her body left,” said Ted. “Just a few bones. They think the body might actually be elsewhere, maybe even buried, and animals dispersed the bones, but there’s enough that they can do DNA testing.”

      “What’s that mean? That animals dispersed the bones? Did they eat her?” asked Phyllis, never one to mince words.

      Ted sighed, reluctant to answer. “There are tooth marks on the bones.”

      “Is there anything that indicates how she died?” asked Lucy.

      “Not so far,” said Ted, “but forensic teams are going to comb the area where the bones were found. They’re confident that they’ll find more evidence.”

      He left it there; he didn’t say the obvious. It now seemed clear that Corinne had not voluntarily run away; someone had abducted her and killed her. And the evil predator who had done it was still at large.

      That night, Lucy and Bill sat down with Sara and Zoe for a little talk about safety.

      “We don’t want you to end up like poor Corinne,” said Lucy. “You can’t ever get in a car with a stranger.”

      “Or even somebody you know, unless you have our permission,” added Bill.

      “That’s crazy,” complained Sara. “Do I have to call every time one of my friends offers me a ride?”

      “No. You know what I mean. People we know but don’t really know. Like bag men from the supermarket…”

      “Are the bag men kidnappers?” asked Zoe.

      “Probably not. We don’t know. That’s the point,” said Bill. “Just because you recognize somebody doesn’t mean you really know them.”

      “Like the fathers, or even mothers, of your classmates,” said Lucy. “If Dad and I don’t know them, you need to be cautious and check with us.”

      “But if you don’t know them, how will you know if they’re bad?” Zoe asked.

      “That’s not the issue,” said Bill. “We’re not making judgments about people. We just want to know where you are and who you’re with.”

      Sara didn’t like this at all. “So I have to tell you everything I do, everywhere I go?” she protested angrily. “That’s crazy. I won’t have any privacy at all.”

      “We’re not trying to control your life, or keep you from your friends. We just want you to be safe,” said Lucy, frustrated that this was turning out to be so difficult. “Poor Corinne is nothing but a pile of bones now. I couldn’t stand and your dad couldn’t stand, for that to happen to you, to either of you.”

      Sara’s face was set in denial. “That couldn’t happen to me. Corinne was dumb. It said in the paper that she was playing around in Internet chat rooms and that she probably made a date to meet someone.”

      “That was never proved,” said Lucy. “As far as I know, she was just waiting for the rec

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