Читать книгу Forget Me Not - A. M. Taylor - Страница 10

January 9, 2018

The body of a 17-year-old girl, Noelle Altman, was found just outside Forest View close to the side of the road just off Old Highway 51 in the early hours of yesterday morning, January 8th. She is believed to have died between the hours of 8 p.m. on January 7th when she was last seen and 7 a.m. on January 8th when she was found by a local woman who drove past and noticed an abandoned car.

Noelle was the sister of Nora Altman who has been missing from Forest View since January 8th, 2008 when her car was found abandoned in the same spot by a local police officer. As with the disappearance of Nora Altman, the police currently have no leads as to the murder of Noelle Altman, and are asking that anyone with any pertinent information to please step forward. They do not think the two incidents are connected and a spokesperson has revealed that the possibility of suicide has been completely ruled out.

The Altman family have requested peace and understanding at this time, and our condolences and heartfelt thoughts go out to them as they deal with this tragedy.

It was a short article, and I read it quickly, drinking in the few facts Ange had managed to glean from somewhere. What time Elle was found, when she was believed to have died, the exact location she was found. It was all relevant, pertinent, and yet it didn’t feel real. How could I be reading about Elle?

“The same spot,” I said, lingering over that detail. “How close was it exactly to where Nora’s car was found?”

Ange raised her eyebrows. “Really close. Willard said her body was a little ways off in the woods, but you could see the road still. The car was right by where the ribbon is.”

I reached for my coffee, as if going to drink some, but couldn’t lift it to my lips. Sometimes, when I closed my eyes, I could still see the headlines and photographs that filled the newspapers in the days and months after Nora’s disappearance. But that little patch of land where her car had been found existed somewhere inside me, desolate and snowy, even in the summer when the sun managed to warm my skin and my mind managed to crawl its way out of a perpetual winter. For Elle to have been found there—to have been left, abandoned there, as if she were nothing but a scrap to be discarded and forgotten—gave shape to her death in a way I hadn’t anticipated. Whoever had done this may as well have placed Elle within the chalk outline of the body Nora had never left behind.