I met Jenny in a dream.
We were sitting on the front porch and it was summer. That very day, I think—the day she disappeared. She was dressed just the way the articles described her. In pink shorts and a white striped T-shirt.
We were facing each other, sitting Indian-style. I was thinking I ought to be scared sitting there alone with her—like Chucky, Toni taunted me—but here’s the thing: I wasn’t.
I felt calm and peaceful instead.
Jenny was just a little six-year-old girl. Who reached out and hugged me. And whispered something in my ear.
Save me, she said. You can. You have to . . .
When I woke up drenched in my own sweat, I jumped into the shower and scrubbed myself head to toe, as if I was trying to wash her off. No dice.
So I went looking for a number.
Whose number, you ask? The one belonging to J. Pennebaker.
Who’d said, Tell Mrs. Kristal sorry, I won’t be calling anymore.
I thought maybe I should call him.
Finding that number turned out to be easy. I just looked through the mail.
West Elm, Target, and Victoria’s Secret catalogues. Something from the board of elections. A solicitation from the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
The phone bill.
Mind if I have a look, Mom and Dad? No? Great.
I immediately spotted that weird 404 area code, which Google confirmed was from the state of Georgia.
There was something weirder.
There were at least thirty calls placed from J. Pennebaker to the Kristals.
I counted them.
Thirty in one month, which seemed like an awful lot. Unless you were a member of the family, say, as opposed to someone trying to find a member of the family. Or at least he had been, more than two years ago.
Pennebaker had been calling nearly nonstop.
Most of the calls lasting exactly one minute. Why’s that? Probably because they’d gone straight to voice mail. He’d been calling, but the Kristals hadn’t been answering.
Something else was bothering me—add it to the growing list. Not just that Pennebaker called to say he wouldn’t be calling. It was that sorry he’d thrown in there. Why sorry? Sorry for what, huh?
The barrage of calls, probably. Sure.
Thirty of them, ending with the last one, the thirtieth—right after I’d come home.
And then I thought, Hey, if all those calls went to voice mail—maybe they’re still on there.
See?
This cold case detective thing wasn’t as hard as it looked.