Next Day Gone

by J C Wing

  “You’re Paige’s grandmother, correct?” Officer Donaldson asked.

  “That’s right. Her mother, Norah, is on assignment in California. Now what’s this I hear about not bein’ able to find my granddaughter? She’s a Riley. She’s opinionated and she’s loud. She’s not easy to lose.”

  “Mrs. Riley, it’s noon. The last time anyone saw Paige was at nine-thirty last night in the girls’ bathroom near her room on the ground floor of Mitchell Hall. According to Ms. Bell, coach of the field hockey team here at the school, Paige didn’t show up for practice. Mrs. Jarvis, hall parent for Mitchell, has done several room searches for Paige.”

  “She texted me last night,” Drew said, pulling his phone out of his pocket. Both he and Paige were careful to delete their text conversations in case one of them ever had their phones taken away by a faculty member. He hadn’t yet erased the last one he received. He pulled it up and handed the phone to the officer.

  “Did something take place here at the school last night?” he asked after reading the text.

  “Yes, sir. It was our yearly Halloween dance. They call it the Ghostly Gala. Paige and I went together, but she left before I did. She had early practice this morning and wanted to get some sleep.”

  “What time did she leave the dance?”

  “Around nine.”

  “Do you know that for sure?”

  “I do. She told me she’d text me after her shower, and I said I’d give her thirty minutes. I checked the time before she left.”

  “And you stayed at the dance?”

  Drew nodded. “For maybe fifteen minutes? I went back to Wallace and played some video games with Mr. Kennedy and a few other guys. She texted me while I was in the common room.”

  “Who is Mr. Kennedy?”

  “He’s the hall parent. He’s also a mountaineering instructor.”

  The officer read the text again. “What are the two of you talking about here? Why was she worried?”

  In his haste, Drew had forgotten that part of the exchange. He came up with something quickly, something that was the truth but didn’t actually pertain to their conversation.

  “Paige has a physics test on Monday. She’s been studying hard, but she’s worried about it.”

  “She gets good grades,” Anna added, “but she’s mentioned more than a handful of times since this year has started that physics has been a challenge.”

  Officer Donaldson took his own phone out and took a picture of the text. He was about to give Drew his phone back when there was a sharp knock on the door.

  “Come in,” Officer Donaldson said.

  Another policeman walked into the room. “We’ve just come from Miss Barlow’s dormitory,” he announced. “It’s obvious there was a struggle there. I don’t believe that girl left her room voluntarily.”

  MISSING

  Paige was missing.

  It felt like a week. A month. A year since Drew had seen her last. It had been two days.

  The police had gone through her dorm. Her purse and backpack were there. They’d found her phone. Because her closet and drawers were tidy, they assumed none of her shoes or clothes were gone. Drew hadn’t been allowed inside. No one but members of the Asheville PD had been in the room.

  “There was a struggle,” Officer Layhee had said. “Blood. Not very much, but some smeared on the desk.” “Laptop computer, cell phone, earbuds, tablet all found among the girl’s belongings.” “Last phone call answered came in from a contact listed as Grananna at 5:23 p.m., Friday, October 30, 2015.” “Last text sent to contact Drew at 9:28 p.m., Friday, October 30, 2015.”

  And then there were the thirty some texts and calls logged into Paige’s phone after her disappearance from Ms. Bell, Mrs. Jarvis, six of her teammates, and Drew. He didn’t know how many times he’d tried to call or how many texts he’d sent, but all of them had gone unanswered and unreturned.

  Because it was a boarding school, Winston continued to operate on a somewhat normal scale. The campus had been locked down by the police. Parents were called and a number of students had been interviewed. Some of them had packed a bag and were released to their legal guardians. In a twenty-four-hour time period, Drew had been questioned four times.

  “This is ridiculous,” Corinne exclaimed as she sat in Headmaster Chamberlain’s office. “Do you realize over the last two days my grandson and I have been in this room a total of six hours?”

  Detective Cabot looked a bit weary around the eyes. He’d been a cop for a long time. Most days were good. Some days were difficult. Then there were those days that clung to his memory, claws firmly implanted and refusing to let go. Those were the days that made for uneasy sleep and a steady diet of antacids to help keep his ulcers from burning a hole right through his chest.

  He’d spent quite a bit of time with Corinne and Alex Larsen seventeen years ago. He’d been an officer back then, and Asheville and Redwood were going through a real bad patch. It was a solid year of finding dead girls, all of them under the age of twenty, and all of them strangled and discarded around the city. After the third one had been discovered at the basilica, the FBI had officially declared them all victims of a serial killer. Fear grew around the city, and soon, as is often the case when an individual preys upon the populace, the killer was given a name. The Sleeping Beauty Strangler. Crime scene photos showed all the victims lying where they had been dumped, their light-colored hair arranged around their heads and their eyes closed as if they were sleeping. Willow Larsen had been no different, although much of her long blonde hair had been partially frozen in the icy waters of Crabtree Falls.

  Detective Cabot popped two more antacids into his mouth and crunched them between his molars. He looked up at the kid again. He’d studied pictures of the four victims for years, going over and over the reports as he worked each case. He’d seen all four of them progress throughout their lives in photos, the most striking, of course, were those from the crime scenes. Those images taken after life had been physically and brutally forced from their bodies had burned themselves into his memory. He’d seen enough photos of a sixteen-year-old Willow, bright eyed and full of life, to recognize her in Drew’s face.

  “Mrs. Larsen,” he sighed. “I know your family has been through unspeakable tragedy. Although you lost your daughter many years ago, I’m sure it feels like it was much more recent than that. A loss like the one you’ve suffered never gets any easier to deal with.”

  Corinne took a deep breath and moved her eyes over to Drew. “I just don’t know what other questions you could possibly have to ask.” She looked at the detective again. “Or how many different ways you can come up with to ask the same questions you’ve been asking.”

  “Drew was the last person to have contact with Paige before she went missing,” Detective Cabot reminded her.

  “Are you accusing Drew of having something to do with her disappearance?”

  “I’m not accusing anyone of anything right now, Mrs. Larsen,” Detective Cabot was quick to respond. “But Drew has admitted to having a romantic relationship with Paige—”

  “That was never a secret,” Corinne told him. “The two of them have known each other for two years and have been dating for nearly that long. I’ve been aware of that and so has Paige’s family. The state of their relationship is not news, Detective.”

  And Mrs. Larsen’s reaction was nothing new. Detective Cabot expected Drew’s grandmother to be defensive and would have been more suspicious had she not been. He’d also been in law enforcement long enough to know that oftentimes when a woman went missing, her significant other, especially when that person was a male, had something to do with it.

  “You’re right, Mrs. Larsen. I understand that your grandson and Paige kept their relationship low key here to abide by school rules. Still, whether Drew realizes it or not, he could be very fundamental in helping us find out what happened to Paige.”

  “G-Ma,” Drew said, reaching over to touch his grandmother’s hand. “The thin
g I want most is for Paige to be found. I’ll do anything I can if it helps them do that.”

  Detective Cabot watched Drew. He’d been doing this for more than thirty years and he’d gotten pretty good at reading people. He wasn’t completely certain, but something in his gut told him that Drew was as in the dark about his girlfriend’s disappearance as the Asheville Police Department was.

  His phone buzzed at his hip and Detective Cabot moved to answer it. “Yeah?” He kept his eye on the kid as Officer Layhee spoke to him on the other end of the line. “Really? Okay. I’ll take care of things here.”

  He ended the call and put his phone on the headmaster’s desk.

  “Remember the blood Officer Layhee found on the desk in Paige’s room?”

  Drew nodded. “Yes, sir.”

  “Well, it didn’t come from Paige.”

  It didn’t take Drew long to figure out what that might mean. “She fought back.”

  “It appears that she did.” Detective Cabot stood up, grabbed his phone and slid it into his pocket. “Mrs. Larsen, I’m gonna need a blood sample from Drew here, and I need your permission to have that done.”

  Corinne gathered her purse and reached over, wrapping her fingers around Drew’s arm. She pulled him from his chair as she stood up. She was already at the door before she spoke to the detective again. “You’ll get nothing more from either of us until I speak to my lawyer.”

  Detective Cabot went to shake a couple more antacids from the bottle he carried, but realized he’d eaten every single one of them.

  On Monday morning, Drew did as he told Paige he would. He arrived at Mr. Pierce’s classroom twenty minutes early and slipped through the still unlocked door.

  The sun streaming through the window was bright, and it was easy for Drew to look beneath his teacher’s desk and all the other desks in the room. He couldn’t find Paige’s strawberry hat anywhere. He walked around the room, making sure he searched everywhere, but the only things he found on the floor were a dry erase marker and a red and white scarf that had fallen from Mr. Pierce’s coat rack.

  He was still trying to figure out where the hat could have gone when he heard the door open.

  “Drew?”

  Drew blinked his eyes and realized his lashes were wet when he saw Mr. Pierce standing just inside the doorway. “Oh,” he said. “Hello, sir.”

  Mr. Pierce walked toward him, a look of concern on his face. “Son, are you okay?”

  Drew sniffed and tried to reach up and swipe away a tear that had fallen to his cheek without being noticed. “Actually,” he said, “I’m having trouble with chapter four, and I was wondering if I might be able to get some help.”

  Mr. Pierce watched him for a moment, then he took his coat off and hung it up. He stooped to pick up the scarf, then hung it up, too. “Did you get breakfast this morning?”

  Drew unzipped his pack and pulled out his biology book. “No, sir.”

  “Okay,” Mr. Pierce said with a nod. “You open your book, and we’ll go through it while you eat.”

  Mr. Pierce opened one of his desk drawers, then came to sit next to Drew. He set two granola bars and bottle of juice on the table.

  “Sorry it isn’t cold,” he apologized, “but not even I can concentrate on mathematical modeling without a few calories in my system.”

  “Mr. Pierce?”

  Both Drew and Mr. Pierce turned and found Ms. Emory, one of the school’s secretaries, in the doorway.

  “Yes?”

  “Oh, good,” she said. “There you are, Drew. I looked for you in the dining hall, but you weren’t there. Your grandmother’s here. She says you have an appointment.”

  Drew took a deep breath and slid his book back in the pack.

  “Take those with you,” Mr. Pierce said, indicating the snacks on Drew’s desk. “I’ll see you in in the morning.”

  The halls were full of kids trying to get to their first period classes as Drew walked toward the main entrance of the building. His mind was whirling, and he didn’t see or hear any of them as they passed him.

  “What happened, Paige?” he asked silently. “Where in the hell are you?”

  He looked up, and through a window in the main office he saw his grandmother talking to Headmaster Chamberlain. “And what in the hell happened to that damn hat?”

  THE GOLDEN LOCKET

  Drew came out of sleep slowly, not knowing what it was that had pulled him from his dreams. He kept his eyes closed and listened, but he couldn’t hear a thing.

  He rolled over, reaching for his phone. The screen was bright when it lit up, and Drew squinted. It was 2:31 a.m. and everything was quiet except for the loudness that swelled in his head.

  Paige had been missing for five days.

  The blood he’d given had been tested by the Asheville PD. He hadn’t been worried about a match. He knew the blood they’d found in Paige’s room wasn’t his, but he still carried an enormous amount of guilt around with him. Paige was gone. No one could find her, and even though he knew he wasn’t responsible, it felt somehow as if he wasn’t doing enough to bring her back home.

  He rolled over again. He couldn’t find a comfortable position. Everything ached. He didn’t know how much sleep he’d gotten since Paige had gone missing, but he guessed the hours could be counted on one hand.

  His grandmother had wanted him to come home. She’d even sent Elias to the school to try to talk him into leaving. The two of them had taken a ride out to Lake James in Elias’s company truck. It was black with L & H Landscaping painted on the doors.

  “I don’t know if I ever told you this or not. Maybe it’s because of all the stuff goin’ on right now with Paige, but I’ve been thinkin’ a lot about your mom lately.” The sky was a deep blue and it reflected in the water below. “I was just now rememberin’ that we were in this exact same spot when Parker and I had our first business meetin’. Willow was here with us and I let her drive. She teased me later about how me and Parker drank so much beer that day that the fish in the lake coulda come up with a better business plan.” Drew watched him as he looked out over the lake. He chuckled, but his smile faded quickly.

  “I guess y’all did alright,” Drew said.

  “Yeah, I guess we did.” He paused. “Have you heard anything about Paige?”

  Drew zipped his jacket and stuffed his hands in his pockets. “Not a single thing. There’s just nothing.”

  “They’ve got that blood. I don’t know how all of that works, but hopefully they’ll get a match.” Elias raised his head and squinted into the sun. “It’s all unsettled right now. Maybe it wouldn’t be the worst idea to come back home for a while.”

  Drew shook his head. “I knew it wouldn’t be long before G-Ma enlisted you to get me back to the house.”

  Elias didn’t look at his nephew, and when he smiled, he showed no teeth. “Your grandmother’s heart broke the day they found Willow,” he said quietly.

  “It’s not the same,” Drew argued. “What if Paige is still alive? God, I hope she’s still alive somewhere and we get her back—” Drew’s calm demeanor was heading the other direction quickly as he spoke, and Elias turned and put his hand on his nephew’s shoulder.

  “Hey,” he said, giving Drew a light shake.

  “We don’t know anything, right? I mean, she’s probably stuck somewhere just waiting for one of us to find her. This can’t be like Mom. That doesn’t happen twice to the same person …” He looked up into his uncle’s face. “It doesn’t. Right?”

  Elias pulled him to his chest and felt Drew fall apart.

  Drew didn’t go home that day. Leaving the school felt like abandoning Paige. That was the last place he’d seen her, and he was going to be there when she came back.

  He couldn’t sleep. His mind was too busy, and his body wanted to move.

  He sighed, then threw the covers to the side and climbed out of bed. He’d get in trouble if he was found roaming the grounds in the middle of the night, but he could no longer do n
othing. He stuffed his feet into a pair of sneakers and quietly left the room without seeing the large envelope that had been slid beneath his door and was hiding underneath his desk chair.

  Patches of clouds moved across the sky, the moon playing hide and seek behind them. It was chilly, somewhat breezy, and Drew could smell the change of the seasons as the air softly moved his over long bangs across his forehead. Then he heard it. It was a quiet sound. Distant. Familiar, but he couldn’t tell exactly what it was. Drew squinted as if that would make it easier to listen.

  He could see his breath rise in a cloud in front of his face. He looked around and realized he’d never seen the campus at this hour before. It was lit but not well. The breeze made the trees above him dance and cast shadows on the leaf covered ground. Drew heard the noise again and tried to figure out from which direction it was coming.

  Mindful of alerting any of the faculty to his illegal nighttime activities, Drew moved toward the courtyard. He heard rustling. It sounded like it was coming from behind him, but when he stopped, the rustling quieted as well.

  He moved around the science building. His fingers were getting numb and he wished he’d brought his gloves. The moon overhead was more than a crescent and shone down on him with icy light. There it was. He heard it again. Just off to his right.

  Drew pressed himself to the building and took another look around. He’d never been afraid of the dark before, but he had a tight feeling in his chest. He was breaking the rules, and the last thing he needed was to get caught being out of his dorm after hours. And what the hell was that sound?

  There was movement beneath a copse of trees. Drew squinted again, this time trying to separate the movements of human and shadow. It looked like a person down there, but it was impossible to tell who. Drew wanted to shout down to whoever it was, but his voice felt frozen in his throat.

  Chink!

  Drew saw the person move forward, then they threw their arms back. He realized then that the person was digging a hole.