“Would you like to take a tour of the school? Some things have changed since you attended,” she says with a bright smile. Pride in her school, her accomplishments, her winning athletic teams . . .
All I remember are her failings. “No. I’m just here on a case.”
Her smile is slightly forced as she nods. “Yes. Right. You want to know about a potential employee—a Malcolm Jennings?”
“Yes. His wife insists he was starting a job here. That’s why they moved here from Florida just a few weeks ago, before the start of the school year.”
She shakes her head. “When you called, I pulled the file. As we told Mrs. Jennings on the phone, her husband doesn’t work here.” She hands me a file with a job application inside.
I scan it quickly.
“We interviewed him for the position, and we did offer him the job, which he accepted, but then he didn’t show up the first teaching week before classes were scheduled to start. We tried reaching him, with no luck. I hadn’t even known he was here in town. We assumed he changed his mind. Luckily, Ms. Lorette was ready to return to work after her maternity leave. She and her husband decided to share the leave. Three months each. Never knew you could do that. It wasn’t an option in my day.”
As if I give a rat’s ass about Ms. Lorette’s maternity situation. I have a missing child and an apparent lying husband. “So when was the last contact with Malcolm Jennings?”
“As I said, we offered him the position—just after the Christmas break, I believe.”
“And that was the last time anyone spoke to him?”
“Yes. As far as we understood, he was moving his family back here in the summer and getting settled before the start of classes.”
“Back here?”
“Oh yes. He was originally from Ellicott City. His parents—lovely people—lived here for years. They travel a lot now, but they still have a home here . . .”
“Have you seen them around?”
“Not for a while . . . no. I’m sorry, that’s really all I know.”
“And you never met Mr. Jennings’s wife or daughter?”
“Unfortunately not, no. I . . .” She pauses, looks unsure.
“What is it?”
“I don’t know if it means anything or not, so I probably shouldn’t comment on it . . . but I got the impression that his wife wasn’t thrilled about the move. About him accepting the position.”
Interesting. Kelsey Jennings reiterated several times that this move had been the right choice for their family. Change of heart? “Why would you say that?”
“I saw him in the parking lot after the interview . . . he was on the phone, arguing with her over it. He was annoyed that she couldn’t be happy for him . . . that the interview had gone well, I assume.”
“But you don’t know for sure that’s what they were arguing about?”
“I’m not certain. No.”
So, Kelsey Jennings wasn’t thrilled about this move at first. Who would be excited about leaving Florida and living here? But somehow, she’d agreed to it. Then Malcolm Jennings tells his wife he’s going to work at the school every day, but he never shows up? Where was he instead? How long did he think he could deceive his wife? Unless his plan to skip town with their daughter was one he’d been ready to carry out. What made today the day? Was he working with someone at the day care? Fran?
I feel a tinge of sympathy for Kelsey Jennings. Betrayed by her husband. Whether he’s abducted the child or not, he’s been lying to his wife and he’s nowhere to be found. Makes him the most likely suspect.
I stand and nod. “Thank you. I appreciate you taking the time. If I have any other questions, I can call you?”
“Of course, honey. You know anything I can do to help.”
Years before, she’d made the same promise to my father when my sister didn’t show up at home after cheerleading practice. Apparently, it was just something she said, because she hadn’t helped. In fact, the school had taken the stance that after-hours extracurricular activities on the property were at a student’s own risk, and once Julia had left school grounds, they were no longer liable for her safety.
I leave the office before I can place the blame and guilt I live with on her shoulders. She may not have helped, but it’s my fault my sister went missing in the first place.
As I reach the front doors, I hear her voice calling me from down the hall.
I stop and turn as she hurries up to me. Her expression is full of sympathy, concern as she places a gentle hand on my shoulder. “I just wanted to say that it’s time you stop blaming yourself for what happened.”
I move away from her and nod as I leave the school. She may be able to move on, to forget, to forgive herself in whatever part the school might have played in my sister’s disappearance, but that day will never come for me.
Julia was always afraid of the dark. When we were kids, she rarely spent a night in her own room. I got used to getting up in the middle of the night to sleep in a sleeping bag on my bedroom floor, letting Julia have my bed.
She believed in the stories about our hometown. The myth about the teenage ghost that haunted the halls of the old girls’ school, despite the lack of record of that girl ever attending. She’d take the long way to school every day, often making us late, so she wouldn’t need to pass the old historic building that served as part of the town’s haunted hike for tourists. She was terrified of seeing something no one actually ever had through the windows in the upstairs rooms.
She hated to be downstairs in our basement alone, where the old woodstove creaked and spooked her, its flickering flame casting dark shadows on the wall. She kept the bathroom door ajar in the hallway and would call out a conversation to anyone nearby while she did her business.
She didn’t like to be alone. She had this fear that something bad was always about to happen. She felt like someone was watching her, following her. She had nightmares about drowning, so she avoided the water. She feared heights, so she refused to fly, which meant family vacations were done by road trips, where we would spend hours arguing until the vacation was ruined.
I resented all her fears. I told her she was crazy. That nothing bad happened in our small town.
I always wished something would.
There were no murders here in Ellicott City. No abductions.
Not until that fall.
Fall evenings meant the darkness came sooner. Trees cast ominous-looking shadows along the woodsy trails, and the crisp leaves blowing across the ground in the wind sounded as though someone was creeping close by.
Turns out there was someone creeping in those woods near the river that flowed from our town into the next.
One by one, teenage girls started to go missing. No clues left behind. No trace of them. Always girls. Never boys. The community was filled with fear. Parents begged for justice, pleaded for their daughters to be returned. The police searched but came up with no answers. They urged everyone to stay safe. To not walk alone at night. To travel in groups and to report all suspicious activity.
My homicide-detective father worked long hours, around the clock. The growing stack of missing person files quickly meant all hands on deck for the investigation. He grew more and more agitated and on edge with each new disappearance and not one case solved.