Nancy Lindahl put the folder on the desktop. “Transcripts are usually destroyed after seven years. That’s the protocol. The diploma becomes the record.”
I felt a tiny sense of relief. The information had been wiped as a matter of procedure, not because the Warwick Services guys had hacked into a server and erased one more chapter from the life of Rose Doucette.
“I have a friend who’s the principal at Rose’s old school,” she said. “I asked him if there were any files from back then. He found a box of stuff in a storeroom. This was in it.”
Nancy slid the folder across the desk. Handwritten on the outside was, “Young Life 1994–95–Mrs. Callahan, sponsor.”
“What’s Young Life?” Mia asked.
“An extracurricular group that met at the school,” Nancy said. “Religious. What we call faith-based these days. Like the chess club, but they read the Bible.”
I opened the folder, slid out a stack of papers printed on a dot matrix machine, the pages yellowed and curling.
“Callahan was the principal in the 1990s,” Nancy said. “The box has more stuff in it, which you’re welcome to look through. This seemed the most relevant.”
The top page was a list of members for that particular chapter, a total of twelve including Rose and Boyd Doucette. The next few pages were about the organization, the goals, and the structure of a typical meeting.
At the bottom of the stack were four pages stapled together. The heading said PRAYER REQUESTS.
I scanned the first page. The entries were dated from September 1994 onward, a snapshot of troubled lives.
Please pray that Tanya’s father will find a new job.
Carlos’s mother has cancer again. Please pray for a speedy recovery.
Jimmy hasn’t been to class in a week. Please pray that his family is OK.
I flipped to the second page and found what I was looking for. It was at the top, dated October 15, 1994.
Please pray for Boyd and Rose. Pray for healing for whatever has happened to them. They were such good kids last year! Pray that Boyd and his friend J. will stop taking drugs! Pray that Rose will open up. She’s so different now!
Below that paragraph was a handwritten note that read, Rose & Boyd didn’t come back after Thxgiving break. Find out what’s wrong!!
Mia had been reading over my shoulder. “Does that mean Rose dropped out of school?”
“Sounds like it.” I flipped to the fourth page.
Another handwritten note was at the bottom: April ’95. No sign of Rose or Boyd. Pray for them, health & well being.
Rose was a straight A student, or so I thought. But she’d dropped out for at least a semester, maybe more; another slice of her personal history I didn’t know about.
Mia looked across the desk at Nancy. “Is there any way to tell what happened?”
Nancy shook her head. “Everything’s been destroyed. Plus, there wouldn’t be a record of why someone didn’t come to school.”
“What about Josh Gannon?” I asked. “Can you tell if he dropped out too?”
Nancy tapped on her keyboard, squinted at the screen. “Josh never graduated. So, yeah, he dropped for sure.”
The timeline made sense. They returned to school after the summer break and that’s when the trouble started. Something happened that caused the Doucette siblings to undergo a change so radical their principal noticed and beseeched a higher power to fix it.
Mia asked, “Could we see the box?”
“Sure.” Nancy pulled a cardboard container out from under her desk.
Mia and I rummaged through the contents. It was filled with office tchotchkes, items that might be left behind when someone changed jobs.
“What about Callahan, the principal?” I asked. “Do you know how to reach her?”
Nancy shook her head. “She died several years ago.”
I returned everything to the box.
“Rose Doucette,” Nancy said. “That’s the cop who was killed a few days ago, right?”
I nodded. “A homicide investigator.”
Nancy put the box back under her desk. “She sounded like a strong woman.”
“That she was.” I stared at the van Gogh print, pondering what to do next.
“Women like that, they make powerful men fearful,” Nancy said. “A threat to the status quo.”
I thought about Rye McFadden as I stood up. “Thanks for your help.”
Outside, the sky was cloudy, the heat and humidity oppressive like the tropics. Once we were back in the Escalade, I asked, “Do you have your tablet computer?”
Mia nodded.
“Let’s go somewhere quiet. I need to look for Rye McFadden.” She suggested a nearby shopping venue, which wasn’t a bad idea.
Northpark Mall was more or less between Tito’s apartment and the district’s headquarters. It had a number of coffee shops and secluded areas, a large food court. It was midmorning, so the place wouldn’t be packed. Yet it would be busy enough for us to remain anonymous.
“You need to do some shopping too,” Mia said.
“Seriously? Now?” I pulled out of the parking area.
“Just go to the mall.”
Ten minutes later, we stepped through one of the main entrances, a Chinese restaurant on the left, an Italian one on the right. Department stores and specialty shops loomed ahead.
“The food court’s on the second floor,” I said.
“We’re going somewhere else first.” Mia pointed me in the opposite direction.
Skylights lit the public areas. The air smelled like lemon furniture polish and damp potting soil, the latter from the containers of plants along the walkways.
“Where are we going?” I asked. “I need to get online.”
“This won’t take too long.” She pointed to a menswear store. “You need a suit. Rose’s funeral is this afternoon.”
I stopped. “Are you nuts? I’m not going to Rose’s funeral.”
“Oh, yes, you are. You need closure.”
“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the main suspect in her murder, and 99 percent of the people who are gonna be there want to see me on death row.”
“But you didn’t kill her. Her husband knows that, and maybe her partner does too.”
“I am not going to that funeral.”
Mia’s eyes narrowed into slits. “Yes, you are, Dylan. This one’s not open for discussion.”
I wanted to argue more but I couldn’t think of anything to say.
Thirty minutes later, I emerged from the store in a ready-to-wear black suit, white dress shirt, and a maroon tie, the clothes I’d had on in a shopping bag. The pants fit perfectly, but the jacket was a little loose. That was okay. My gun wouldn’t show as much.
I stared at myself in the reflection of the store’s window.
Mia stood behind me. “You look good,” she said.
“Thanks. Now it’s your turn.”
She raised her eyebrows.
“I’m not going to this thing alone,” I said.
“You don’t need a date for a funeral.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Really?” she said.
I didn’t reply.
“We’re not a couple, Dylan. We went over that last night.”
“But you’re still my friend, right?”
We ate an early lunch at the food court, both of us wearing our new duds. Mia had found a black, sleeveless dress that fit perfectly and a pair of dove-gray pumps.
As we ate, I searched for Rye McFadden on Mia’s tablet.
He was a ghost, much like Boyd Doucette. Entries were sporadic, except for links to various corporate entities connected to his family’s wealth, among them Reunion Investments. Beyond that, all I could find were a driver’s license from twenty years ago, a dormant checking account, and an expired passport.
His last known address was from a decade before, a home belonging to his aunt. Despite the staleness of that info, I wrote down the address anyway, and then stared into the distance, trying to figure out another angle.
According to Suzy Larson, Rose, Boyd, and Josh had been hospitalized for a period during the summer before everything fell apart for them at school.
On Google maps, I located Camp Eagle Bluff in the southeastern part of the county, a remote, undeveloped area.
I searched for hospitals nearby. Most were in the central part of the county near downtown, a long distance away. A couple were closer in South Dallas. I made a list of those. No idea how I’d find out if Rose had been a patient at any of them in the mid-1990s, but it was a start at least.
Mia asked what I was doing. I told her. She reminded me to look for places that had closed too. I entered that as a search and found a number of healthcare facilities in the area that were no longer in operation.
Only one was close to Camp Eagle Bluff though.
McFadden Memorial Hospital.