CHAPTER FOUR

 

 

Jayne had set up a makeshift command center in the main dining hall of the Ashmore Student Center, a building which also housed the student life offices, bookstore, campus radio station, and the Ashmore Voice office. Baxter and several deputies were busy passing out flyers with Jenna’s picture on them to groups of students eager to help with the search.

When I approached her, Jayne looked up from the campus map she’d been studying. “Thanks for coming back over, Ellie.”

“No problem. Sorry I couldn’t get much off the phone.”

She shook her head wearily. “It’s fine. Without you, I wouldn’t have even known…” Shaking off that thought, she continued, “Anyway, I want you and Detective Baxter to go through Jenna’s dorm room. Her roommate said that to her knowledge, the boy she planned to go away with had never been to the room. But maybe you can find some clue as to where they were headed.”

I didn’t want to spend a minute more with Baxter than was absolutely necessary, but it wasn’t like I had a choice in the matter. You didn’t say no to Jayne when she was in a mood like this—but more importantly, I would do anything to help her find Jenna.

“Okay.”

She pointed to a silver case at the end of the table. “There’s the kit. Report to me when you know something. Detective Baxter has the search warrant.”

I nodded and picked up the case. Baxter saw me and held up one finger to signal me to wait for him. He finished up his conversation and came over to me.

“I hear we have a dorm room to process,” he said, his expression wary.

“Yep.”

We walked over to Harris Hall in an uncomfortable silence. Baxter showed the dorm director our warrant, and she escorted us upstairs and unlocked Jenna and Miranda’s room for us.

Baxter said, “There’s no need for jumpsuits and all that. There have been students in and out of here all evening, so the scene is contaminated. We’re only looking for some clue as to where Jenna went. Or at least where she thought she was going.”

Nodding, I set the field kit on the floor. I then peeled off my coat and set it outside in the hallway. We both put on gloves, then I started looking through Jenna’s closet as Baxter went for her desk.

Nothing seemed amiss. There were no clothes strewn around or hangers askew like she’d packed in a hurry. Her toiletries were nowhere to be found, but that made sense given the fact that she planned to be away overnight. I took a step back and glanced around the room. Both beds were made, and the entire room was neat, clean, and organized. Nothing was out of place.

“No luck?” Baxter asked.

“No.”

“I can’t find anything, either.”

“Mmm.”

“Ellie?”

I groaned inwardly. I was not in the mood to talk about our earlier disagreement, but Baxter could never leave anything unsaid. “What?” I replied, pretending to be interested in a music box on Jenna’s dresser.

He put his hand on my arm and turned me to face him. “I can’t work like this.”

“Me either, Nick. It’s hard for me to do a job when I don’t have all the information I need.”

He frowned. “I’m sorry about earlier. Look, it wasn’t my idea to keep you in the dark. The Sheriff asked me not to burden you with information about the other case.”

“Oh.” It hurt equally that Jayne didn’t think I could handle myself, but then again, she’d always mothered me—especially since my own mother hadn’t. “Well, in that case I apologize for hanging up on you.”

As I tried to end the conversation by getting back to our task, he said, “But you’re still pissed at me for looking into your mother’s case.”

“Wow. It’s like you’re a detective or something,” I snipped.

“Ellie, I was only trying to help. I told you that.”

I turned around to face him again. “Right. Because of your hero complex. Well, guess what? I don’t need a hero. And I don’t need my mother’s murder case reopened.”

His jaw had clenched at my hero comment. “Her killer could be running free right now. Wouldn’t you feel better with him behind bars?”

“I’d feel better if you’d stay the hell out of my business like I asked you to.”

Baxter held up his hands. “Fine. Consider me officially out of your business.”

“Fine.”

In a terse silence, we traded search areas and went over the room a second time. He got out his phone and called Jayne to let her know we’d struck out while I put on my coat and closed up the field kit.

After he ended the call, he said, “I know neither of us is in the mood to talk, but I have to get an official statement from you since you were one of the last people to see Jenna before she disappeared.”

I leaned up against Jenna’s closet, working to put my personal feelings aside so I could be helpful. “Okay.”

“I talked to your sister and her friends. They said Jenna Walsh was at a study group at your house for three hours on Saturday afternoon. What time did she leave?”

“A little before five.”

“How did she seem? Nervous, excited? Was she behaving normally?”

I shrugged. “She seemed like normal Jenna to me. She told the girls she needed to leave early to go get ready to ‘spend the rest of the weekend downtown,’ as she put it. Chelsea asked her if it was a romantic getaway with her new man, and Jenna said yes. Rachel gave her some crap about it. She seemed bothered by the fact that Jenna had only known this guy for a week and was moving too fast. Jenna brushed it off and said she was going to live while she was young. Now she, um…” I swallowed the lump that had formed in my throat. “She may not…” I trailed off, afraid to finish the sentence.

Baxter’s face softened. “Hey, come on. We’re going to find her.”

I shook my head, willing myself to hold it together. “Not on campus. She’s not here.”

He sighed. “I agree with you there. Someone’s not just going to stumble over her during the search. However, I think the search is useful to get her picture in front of as many people as possible and find out who was the last one to see her on Saturday night. That way we can get an idea of a timeline. We know she left your house a little before five and then came here to pack. The girls across the hall saw her leave this room with a bag around six, which was roughly when she sent her last text message. If I were to guess, I would assume Jenna went missing shortly after that—probably right around the time she was supposed to meet this mystery guy. You’re sure she never mentioned his name, even in passing?”

“No. Her friends had a fit over it after she left my house. She refused to tell any of them his name, even her roommate. They think he’s an old married professor or something like that. I can’t say I disagree too much, because from what I saw on her phone, she did zero texting with the guy. So he’s either too old to want to communicate via text, or he doesn’t want a paper trail, so to speak. Plenty of phone calls to a contact named Derek with a burner phone, though. And burner phones scream infidelity.”

Nodding, he said, “Right. Sheriff and I thought the same thing. But there are no staff members named Derek at this school. We checked.”

“But I’m sure there are plenty of Dereks in the greater Indianapolis area, if that is his real name.”

“I’m betting it isn’t, but we’re still going to pursue that angle. Anyway, the cyber investigators should be able to find out where the phone was when she sent the last text, which might give us another clue. And although she made no more texts or calls after six, if she opened an app that used any data, they should be able to at least determine what area she was in based on which cell tower her signal went through.”

I let out a sigh. “At least that’s something.”

As we trudged back to the Ashmore Student Center, I could feel the tension wasn’t gone between us. I hated it. Baxter was a good guy, but I hadn’t found it in me to forgive him yet.

My estranged mother’s murder case was the reason I quit the department and took up teaching. She was a Jane Doe case, her body parts scattered around the county and found over the course of a month, too degraded to be identified until I (the head criminalist at the time) noticed her one-of-a-kind earrings. Only Jayne knew that the victim we’d been examining the pieces of was my mother, and she’d kept it a secret from the rest of the department at my request.

I’d finally broken down and trusted Baxter with the information, only to have him delve into the case behind my back when I had expressly asked him to leave it alone. Rachel’s crazy father had killed our mother, I was certain, and I didn’t want him to think someone was tracking him for fear he might assume it was Rachel and come after her. She’d even changed her name to make sure he never found her. More than that, neither of us wanted to open up that old wound again.

Once we got to the dining hall, Baxter and I went our separate ways. He went to confer with a couple of deputies while I approached Jayne.

She gave me a weary smile. “No luck, huh?”

“No. I wish I didn’t have to keep reporting to you that I failed.”

“I didn’t expect you to find anything.”

“What can I do now to help?”

“Take a stack of flyers and start canvassing an area. I think that’s our best bet.”

I nodded. “You got it.” After grabbing a handful of flyers, I headed outside and called Rachel.

“Hey, do you have any new information?” she asked.

“Sorry, but no. Baxter and I went through Jenna’s room, but found nothing.”

“I’ve been asking everyone about her mentioning a guy named Derek, but no one’s ever heard of him.”

I stifled a sigh. “Where are you?”

“Going door to door in Schroeder Hall.”

“Care if I join you?”

Her voice hitched. “That would be great. Sis?”

“Yes?”

“Will you bring some hot chocolate when you come?”

“You got it,” I replied, my heart breaking a little. From when she was Nate’s age, if anything upset her, hot chocolate could fix it. It wasn’t going to fix her current problem, but I was willing to get her anything that would give her a measure of comfort.

After making a pit stop at the campus Starbucks, I arrived at Schroeder Hall and met Rachel in the lobby. The poor thing was haggard and drawn, nothing like her usual vivacious self. I enveloped her in a hug, but (like I often did) she pulled away before too much empathy caused her strong façade to crack. We might have had two different fathers, but in many ways we were exactly alike.

She took a sip from her hot chocolate and sighed heavily. “Miranda and Chelsea are working on the top two floors here, and I’m ready to move on. Want to tackle the music building with me? Should be plenty of band geeks in the practice rooms right about now.”

I smiled. “Sure.”

As we walked toward the music building, she said, “Tell me straight—what are the odds that we’re going to find out anything useful about where Jenna disappeared to?”

“Pretty good, actually. If we can find someone who saw her leave campus, then we can start piecing together who she was with and where they went.”

“Do you find it suspicious that this guy she was seeing made a big deal about keeping their relationship a secret? I mean, was he planning to abduct her all along?”

This was dangerous territory. I couldn’t tell Rachel the department’s theory on the connection between Jenna’s disappearance and Amy Donovan’s murder.

“Yes, I think it could be a possibility. He could have spun the secrecy thing as being romantic and exciting.”

A tear ran down her cheek. “And he turned out to be a monster.”

I stopped her and gripped her shoulders. “We don’t know that anything bad has happened to her.”

She sobbed, “I can tell from the look on Jayne’s face that she thinks the worst.”

I held Rachel close to me, stroking her back in an attempt to soothe her. I had recognized that look, too. Jayne had seen too much to hold out hope that situations like this ever ended any way but badly. After a few minutes, Rachel pulled away and wiped her tears with her jacket sleeve.

“This isn’t helping Jenna,” she said, her voice trembling. “Let’s go.”

Rachel and I scoured every inch of the music building, asking every person we found if they’d seen Jenna on Saturday night. We got the same answer from everyone: no. Dejected, we headed back to the Ashmore Student Center to get more flyers.

Jayne was looking even worse for wear, so I had Rachel pair back up with Miranda and Chelsea while I tried to talk Jayne into taking a break.

“Can I buy you a coffee?” I asked.

She didn’t look up from her phone. “You can buy a coffee and bring it to me.”

I put my hand on hers. “Jayne. You need a break. For your sanity. Have you eaten?”

“I can’t eat.”

“Bathroom break?”

“I don’t need to.”

“It’s after eleven-thirty. Are you planning to stay all night?”

Jayne finally flicked angry eyes up at me. “As long as it takes to find my niece.”

“Then you’ll need caffeine. Come with me. Ten minutes max.”

Her shoulders slumped. “Okay.”

The Starbucks in the lower level of the building had stayed open later than usual to provide drinks for people helping with the search. They were getting ready to close, but we managed to get our coffees before they stopped serving. I talked Jayne into sitting at a table in the adjacent food court instead of going straight back to her post.

She collapsed into a chair and rubbed her eyes. “This is all my fault.”

I placed my hand on her shoulder. “No, it’s not. You can’t think like that.”

“There’s something you don’t know.”

“I saw the note that was found in Amy’s mouth.”

Blowing out a breath, she said, “So you do know. This is bad.”

We sat there in silence, sipping our coffees, until Jayne got a call.

“Sheriff Walsh.” She listened for a moment, then her face drained of color. “You found… No… Are you positive?” Her hand fluttered to her mouth, and tears began pouring from her eyes. She managed to croak out, “Call Baxter and Sterling. I’m on my way.”

“Jayne, what is it?” I breathed.

“My niece is dead.”