Page 66 of Girl, Forgotten (Andrea Oliver 2)

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Bible looked up from the silver band that had been permanently clamped around the dead girl’s ankle.

“That’s what the inscription on the shackle says.” He asked them again, “Who is Alice Poulsen?”

Nardo looked at Wexler, who offered, “She’s a volunteer. I don’t know her.”

Bible stood up. He was clearly angry. “Volunteer for what, exactly? Being deprived of basic nutrition and banded like a damn test subject in a science lab?”

Nardo and Wexler stared, as if they were expecting the question to be rephrased.

“All right.” Bible’s jaw clenched. “How many volunteers you got working here?”

Again, Nardo let Wexler answer. “Ten, maybe fifteen or twenty in the high season.”

“Ten or fifteen or twenty. Sure, that’s a ton of people to keep up with.” Bible turned to Stilton. “Chief, I believe you said Ms. Poulsen tried to kill herself a year and a half ago. Cut open her wrists. Right?”

Stilton nodded. “That’s right.”

“So she’s been living here on this farm for at least that long, maybe longer.” Bible pointed his remarks back to Wexler. “How old is she?”

“Legal age,” Wexler said. “We only take legal adults here. Make them show their passports or ID.”

“But you don’t know this particular adult who’s been living and working on your property for eighteen months?”

Wexler picked a piece of tobacco off of his tongue, but said nothing.

Andrea could feel the tension hitting the triangle of Bible, Stilton and Dean Wexler. None of them were looking at the dead body on the ground, though two of them were clearly affected by the sight of the emaciated young woman.

Bible’s response was fury. Andrea’s was unfathomable horror. She felt overwhelmed by the darkness in front of her. This woman had been someone’s daughter, or classmate, or friend, or maybe even sister. And now she was dead.

All Andrea could do was follow Bible’s instructions. She documented the malice perpetrated on Alice Poulsen’s body. The sunken cheeks. The painfully thin limbs. The fingerprint bruises that circled her wrists. The whalebone of her ribcage sticking out like the carcass of a decayed animal. To say the young girl was malnourished told only half the story. There were open wounds at her elbows and hip bones that looked like bedsores. Patches of hair had fallen to the ground like silk from a corn stalk. Her fingernails curled from stomach acids where she’d clearly gagged herself into vomiting.

Had she willingly submitted to this torture?

Andrea focused the camera on the prescription bottle. The label had been removed. The cap was overturned. Her hands were shaking as she took the last photos of the ankle band, which might as well have been a shackle. She wiped her palms on her shorts as she stood up. Everything felt so wrong. This girl had been starved into a skeleton and tagged like a farm animal. Even if Alice Poulsen had committed suicide, someone had pushed her toward that end.

She looked at Nardo, knowing instinctively that he was the more sadistic of the two. “Who welded this onto her ankle? She didn’t do that to herself.”

“Hold on, girl,” Wexler said. “We don’t know anything about that.”

Andrea bit back the invectives that flooded into her mouth. He hadn’t been shocked to see the band, and he clearly knew who the girl was. Alice had been living on his property for over a year. None of this had happened without Wexler’s knowledge and approval. Andrea was so angry that she was shaking. The girl was barely out of high school. She had come here as a volunteer and she would leave in a body bag.

She pointed to the body. “She’s flesh and bone. How could you let her get this way? You had to have seen her. She’s must’ve been a walking corpse.”

Wexler shrugged. “Not my department.”

Andrea repeated Bible’s earlier question. “Who is Alice Poulsen?”

“Dunno.” Wexler shrugged again. “We got a couple of girls from Denmark last year. Could be she’s one of them.”

Of course he knew where she was from. “Who’s the other girl? You said a couple, that’s two, right?”

Wexler shrugged one more time. “Like I said, I don’t know them well.”

“All right.” Bible took back over. “So who knows them well? Who let her get this way and didn’t say anything?”

There was silence, then another infuriating shrug.