Read The Girls She Left Behind for Free Online Page A

eyes, as if she’d walked through a fiery hell recently and come out still kicking on the other side.
    “Have a seat,” said Lizzie, pointing to the chair Dylan had used and thinking that despite her bleak expression, this woman hadn’t done anything so very terrible, probably.
    Still, you never knew.
    The phone console on her desk lit up— PEG WYLIE, said the caller ID—just as Dylan came back in, looking for his scarf.
    —
    TRANSCRIBED AUDIO OF INTERVIEW W/SUBJECT JANE CRIMMINS, CONDUCTED BY MAINE STATE POLICE DET. DYLAN HUDSON FOR AROOSTOOK COUNTY SHERIFF’S DEP. ELIZABETH SNOW, BEARKILL, MAINE.
    CRIMMINS: Wait a minute, you’re recording this?
    HUDSON: The recording is only so nobody can claim later that either one of us said or did anything we really didn’t, okay?
    CRIMMINS: Yeah, all right. Can I have my ID back? (pause) Okay. Okay, so I guess I can do this. I mean, I have all the memories so I can…Enough for all of us, the other ones plus myself.
    HUDSON: Other ones? I don’t think I—
    CRIMMINS: Well, it’s, it’s like the only way it could be, isn’t it? Because
she
thinks it’s better to be with
him,
even though I was the one who…
    HUDSON: (pause) Ah, can you be a little clearer on that for me, though? Because this is about Tara Wylie, what we’re concerned with here. So I’m not seeing…
    CRIMMINS: I’ve never told anyone. I’m only staying here now to…to, ah, tell you about it, because…(inaudible)
    HUDSON: Jane? You all right?
    CRIMMINS: (weeping)…because I’m tired, okay? So tired, and I thought I could just let you take care of it all. Just, I don’t know, give up. But it’s hard.
    HUDSON: Uh-huh. But this was all your idea, though, wasn’t it? You came in here to the office on your own to…(inaudible, continued weeping)
    HUDSON: But do you want to take a quick break? Get a coffee, or…
    CRIMMINS: (interrupts) Not because I…not because I think it’ll do any good.
    HUDSON: …or something to eat? Then we could sit down and—
    CRIMMINS: (agitated) Because why should anyone listen to me? Why should anyone care what I think about what he did? Oh, no, I’m just the—
    HUDSON: Jane? Seriously, you want to take a break now? Put yourself back together a little?
    CRIMMINS: (weeping) No. It just gets to me sometimes, that’s all. Because I never planned to tell anyone, ever. But now…
    HUDSON: Right. I get that this is difficult for you. But we could be talking about a young girl’s life, you know? A missing girl that we need to find, before…
    CRIMMINS: (angrily) Well, isn’t that just special. Wow, some really special little snowflake she must be, huh? The whole town’s out looking for her, I guess.
    HUDSON: (pause) Yeah, well, her name’s Tara Wylie. She’s fourteen, her mom’s worried about her. And like I said, we really appreciate…
    CRIMMINS: (inaudible)
    HUDSON: …if you have information. Now, we can do this in short sessions, we can do it however you like. If you’re up for it now, though, let’s try to…
    CRIMMINS: Sure. Talking about it, making it real, I don’t guess that’ll kill me, will it?
    HUDSON: Jane? (unidentifiable sound)
    HUDSON: (inaudible)
    CRIMMINS: (voice rising) Will it? Will it?

TWO
    T he rural roads around the northern Maine town of Bearkill all looked the same at night, dark narrow blacktop ribbons with no center line or streetlamps. Huge trees crowded up to the edge of the pavement, stiff and silent.
    Making her way in the Blazer along the barely familiar route, Lizzie at last found the place where Peg Wylie and her missing daughter, Tara, lived: a factory-built bungalow on a poured-concrete slab sitting on a bulldozed quarter acre way the hell out in the woods. Lizzie had already been there earlier that afternoon, and it looked even more lonely and remote now than it had in the gray winter daylight.
    At the end of the long gravel driveway curving between the trees, a DISH TV antenna perched at one end of the bungalow’s red-metal