by Rod Kackley
There was only one place left to look. They moved to a corner of the basement where Jimmy stumbled over a small pile of rocks. Under the rocks were a screwdriver and a hammer.
“Somebody was hiding these tools,” he said.
“Fuck,” Amanda whispered.
She pointed to the wall and a word that was scratched into the brick.
Together, Joy and Jimmy read the word aloud.
“Janice.”
The trio took turns brushing their fingertips over the six letters that made up the name of the woman they were trying to rescue.
Janice had been in the basement. They were sure of that now.
“Oh my God,” Amanda said, “you guys have to see this.”
Even Jimmy was taken aback by her discovery.
Amanda had moved three or four steps ahead of Joy and Jimmy and was brushing dirt and dried mud off the brick wall of the basement.
Other names were appearing.
Carol, Anne, Jasmine, and a few others that were so filled with dirt they were unreadable. But they were names. They were the names of women, who like Janice, had wanted to leave some evidence of their lives and their torment.
“Look over here,” Joy said.
There were straight lines scratched into the wall after another name, Debbie.
“It looks like Debbie had been trying to keep track of the number of days she had spent in the basement,” Jimmy said, almost whispering his conclusion.
In his mind, Jimmy was racing through the mental files he had kept on all of the girls who wound up dead in St. Isidore Park.
“Do you now any of those girls?” Joy asked.
“Yeah,” Jimmy said. “I know them all. I know them better than they know themselves.”
Jimmy had reams of evidence. Names, dates, places, and more. He never wrote any of it down. But he had never forgotten.
“It’s all up here,” Jimmy said, tapping his forehead. “These are the girls.”
“What now?” asked Amanda.
Neither Joy nor Jimmy hesitated. They only had one choice. Their personalities would allow no other.
They gave the only answer Amanda expected.
It was time to move forward.
“Amanda, you and I need to go back to the Chronicle and start writing this,” Joy said.
“And I need to go to the park,” Jimmy said. “I am not sure we will find Janice and Allie in the trees, but I have to rule it out.”
“What about back-up?” said Amanda.
Jimmy gave her a smile and a snort, the kind of thing that true equals would share.
“Back-up?” Jimmy said. “I don’t need no stinking back-up.”
Amanda rolled her eyes and started walking up the stairs.
Jimmy was right behind her, enjoying the view of Amanda’s strong form gliding up the twenty-or-so steps.
“Coming?” he said, glancing over his shoulder at Joy.
“In a second,” she said.
Joy looked at the wall, the bricks that listed the names, she believed of many, if not all of the women who had fallen victim to a serial killer Joy promised she would send to prison for the rest of his unnatural life.
Joy only wished she had been able to save at the last two of the women.
She used the forefinger of her right hand to trace the six letters scratched into a brick that had given her team new hope.
They were letters that contained the hopes, desperation, and final, perhaps, the surrender of a woman Joy wished she had been able to save.
J-a-n-i-c-e
Maybe she was alive. Maybe she was dead.
Joy only wished she had been able to ease her suffering, their suffering.
She traced the letters with her finger one last time.
“Sorry,” Joy whispered.
And she promised herself that no other women would fall victim to this monster, Tim Sheldon.
Thirty
Joy had finally come to terms with the idea that she would be staying at her St. Isidore Chronicle desk for who knew how long, with Amanda beside her.
They arrived at the imposing, cathedral-like Chronicle building together, yet separately. Their cars pulled into the parking lot at the same time. Joy came from the north side of St. Isidore, Amanda from her condo on South DeVos Avenue. Both arrived simultaneously in the parking lot, a sign of the way they had become synched ever since their first story, Janice is Missing, was published.
It created a firestorm.
Esther's father, who never like "trading internet pennies for print publication dollars" would have been happy to have a web version of the Chronicle available if only because the paper's presses couldn't keep up with demand on the street.
Advertisers stormed the gates of the Chronicle and requested web space, which the sales team was only too happy to provide at an astronomical price.
Demand had finally met supply and conquered same.
Everyone in St. Isidore read the article, discussed it with their neighbors and family, talked about the last time they had seen "Janice" and decided they knew best whether there was a serial killer living amongst them.
As Joy and Amanda beeped their cars locked this day, two years had passed since Joy had traced the names of those tortured and perhaps killed in that dark, dank basement and vowed “that monster, Tim Sheldon” would never again hurt a woman.
It was a promise she had been unable to keep. But Joy continued trying.
Esther, who was now the publisher of the Chronicle following her father’s retirement and sudden death, wouldn’t let them name Tim Sheldon in the story. There simply wasn’t enough evidence to do so without risking a libel suit that would close the newspaper.
Amanda and Joy rode the elevator up to their twenty-floor office. Yes, they had been moved out of the basement, and now had a staff of four reporters and five interns. Esther had given them the resources Joy demanded in exchange for acquiescing to her decision on whether Tim Sheldon should be named.
She had also given Joy the freedom to continue the quest to find the serial killer who had created such murder and mayhem in St. Isidore, along with digging into the political dirt and corruption that was rampant in the small city.
Amanda and Joy got off the elevator and began the morning the way they started every morning. They put four rounded scoops of Reading Room coffee, from the only bookstore in St. Isidore, into their coffee maker.
While it was dripping, they discussed the topic at the top of their collective mind this morning, and every morning: how could they bring down Tim Sheldon.
“I still can’t believe they didn’t find anything in that basement,” Amanda said, going back to the ground she and Joy covered on a daily basis.
“The state police even got into after our first story ran,” said Joy, “and then found nothing.”
“Nothing.”
“I could believe the Swinging Izzy P. D. would mess it up, but the state police, come on.”
“That fucker, Sheldon, must have really cleaned it out.”
Joy and Amanda poured the first cups out of the coffeemaker and walked into their morning meeting with the reporters and interns of their “Eye on St. Isidore” team.
The team came in with their usual bleary eyes, knowing they would soon be roused out of the morning’s complacency by the fire of Joy. Her zest for journalism was well known in St. Isidore. Politicians literally trembled when she called. And everyone either bought the Chronicle on the street every morning or paid an online subscription, to see who Joy and her team had targeted that day.
We came so close, Amanda thought to herself, as she gazed out a window and flashed back twenty-four months to the discovery she and Joy made in the St. Isidore Forest’s park.
She and Joy had an intense, marathon meeting that day with Esther and her father. The old man had been called into the meeting when Joy’s neck turned red and veins starting popping out in her forehead after Esther blacked out Tim Sheldon’s name in their first draft of the story.
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With the echo of a slamming door still reverberating in the hallway of the top floor of the Chronicle building, Joy and Amanda grabbed the keys to the company car and drove to the city’s park.
Forty-eight hours had elapsed since Jimmy had opted to go to the park instead of going with his female teammates to the Chronicle building. He went without backup, something that bothered Joy, but she had given in to his wishes.
“What choice did I have?” Joy said as she and Amanda pulled into the St. Isidore Park’s parking lot.
“I just wish he had waited for some other cops,” said Amanda.
“Me too, me too,” said Joy. “But you know Jimmy. There is nothing he can’t do better alone than with a team.”
“Always the smartest kid in class,” Amanda said.
Joy reached over to give Amanda’s hand a squeeze as she put the news car into park and turned off the engine.
It was a beautiful day, the kind of day that sparkles with the sunshine and fresh breeze of spring, a day when even St. Isidore looked good to Joy.
But she still believed in her heart of hearts that day the “Janice is Missing” story — that was the headline Joy, and Esther had agreed on — would be her ticket to a bigger market. Joy was already dreaming of Chicago, New York, or maybe even an overseas post with one of the wire services in London or Paris.
Maybe she’d like to come along, Joy thought as she glanced at Amanda.
But, first things first. They needed to get Jimmy and find out what he had discovered. It would have been so much easier if he had answered his cell phone. Of course, he had not.
“Such a bull in the china shop,” Esther had said when told of the unanswered phone and the resulting need to get the Chronicle’s one and only news car for a drive to the city park.
“He always has to do it his own way,” Esther said, dropping the keys in Joy’s extended hand.
“Jimmy must have taken the bus to get here,” Amanda said, as they walked under the ‘Welcome to St. Isidore Park' horseshoe-shaped sign.
“I’m surprised Esther didn’t tell us to do the same thing,” Joy said.
Well, at least it’s a beautiful day, Amanda thought, as they turned to the right and followed the main trail. It would lead them to kind of a curly-cue route around the perimeter of the park and then to its center. There were several small trails, both planned by city workers and forged by tourists, that shot off of the main artery. Jimmy could be anywhere on any of the trails, or he might have wanted into the woods.
It wasn't even worth tossing a coin in the air to decide which way to go. Joy felt like they had to begin somewhere so they might as well just turn right and start walking.
“You don’t think this is too obvious do you?” Amanda said.
They’d been walking for close to thirty minutes, covering almost a mile, when she stopped and pointed at the ground.
“Nicotine gum wrappers,” Joy said. “It must be Jimmy.”
“You think he’ll ever quit smoking?”
“Maybe. You know the police department’s doctor told Jimmy he had a couple of clogged arteries and needed a bypass.”
“You’re kidding!”
“Nope, Jimmy is planning to get it done as soon as our case is closed.”
“I can only imagine what kind of a patient he’ll be,” Amanda said.
The women laughed together and then made an “eww” sound as they thought about Jimmy in one of those hospital gowns that would leave a moon's eye view of his backside of the string in the back that never works.
“I don’t think he would even care,” Joy said, answering the question that didn’t need to be asked.
Sharing the moment, Joy and Amanda linked arms and skipped off with renewed vigor spontaneously breaking into a chorus of, “We’re off to see the wizard, the wonderful Wizard of Oz.”
Thirty One
Two years after she and Amanda had merrily skipped off on their mission to find Jimmy, Joy stood by the whiteboard, looking at her reporters and interns who were waiting for the morning meeting to start, each one with their eyes and full attention on her.
This morning wasn't special. But Joy always appreciated the spotlight her staff shone on her, even if some of it was illuminated by ass kissers who wanted to get into a bigger market as much as she once had.
God, I am in my glory, Joy thought the first time it happened. I don’t care if I am in St. Isidore or Elephant’s Breath, North Dakota. This is what I was meant to do.
Each pair of eyes was turned Joy’s way, except for one.
Amanda was staring out the window, while she absentmindedly scribbled on a yellow legal pad. Joy thought she saw a small tear dribbling its way down her cheek.
Joy knew what her second-in-command was thinking about. Joy spent a lot of time thinking about it too — the moment they found Jimmy.
Discovering Jimmy had been terrible. Watching the Glasscock Ambulance take him away had been worse.
“I thought they were a funeral home,” Joy remembered muttering at the time.
“They are, that too,” Amanda replied through her sniffles and tears.
“Likely a conflict of interest.”
“Likely.”
The “beep, beep, beep” of the ambulance/hearse reversing its way down the trail echoed in the trees.
“Well, come on, let’s go,” Joy said.
“Yup. Time to go,” Amanda replied and turned to walk back the way they had come.
“Nope. Wrong way,” said Joy.
She caught and grabbed Amanda’s hand, squeezing so hard it hurt.
“What?” Amanda said.
Joy didn’t reply. She pointed. About one-hundred yards away, something or someone, was hanging in the trees. Amanda wouldn’t have been able to spot what Joy was looking at if it wasn’t for a sparkle the sun reflecting off something.
It turned out to be a crucifix, a silver metal necklace that was around Allie’s neck. She wore nothing else.
Janice was one tree over, just as naked, just as dead, as Allie.
And Jimmy was just as dead as the women. So was their investigation.
“All the evidence died with Jimmy,” Joy explained to Amanda a few days later at the detective’s funeral. “He never wrote a single word of it down. It was all in his head.”
“So what do we do now?”
“We move forward. We start all over, but we move forward.”
This morning, Joy decided she would have to remind Amanda of that. It wasn’t right that she was still grieving two years later, not when there was work to be done and stories to write.
Joy rapped her knuckles on her desk to get everyone’s attention, feeling not unlike one of the nuns who had taught her third-grade class, when there were an answering three knocks on the door frame of the meeting room.
It was Esther.
She held back a smile as her eyes bounced from Joy to Amanda to each member of the Eye on St. Isidore staff.
Enjoying her moment as much as Joy had appreciated hers, Esther took a moment for the suspense to grow.
“We’ve got another one!"
Joy gulped. The interns and reporters gasped. Amanda stopped scribbling.
"Some girl named Bree has vanished. A guy was seen throwing her in the truck of a car,” Esther said, as a couple of her interns followed her into the room.
“It’s all over Facebook and Snapchat,” said one of the college students. Joy thought the intern's name was Sarah, or Samantha, something like that.
“What’s all over, where?”
“The kidnapping,” the second intern, Thomas, Joy remembered him being named. “See? Here are the pix of her being pushed into the trunk of a car.”
It was enough to snap Amanda out of her trance. Self-consciously, she glanced from one side to another to see if anyone noticed, as she wiped away a tear from each cheek, and walked between the interns so she could see their smartphones.
“It looks like something is being pushed into the trunk,”
Amanda said, “But I really can’t tell what it is.”
“It has its own hashtag #Bitchisgone and more than 100 tweets on Twitter,” said Samantha.
“And it’s own Facebook page,” Bree is Missing,” said Thomas.
Joy and Amanda look at each other. Joy squeezed her shoulder, and they walked back to her desk, where Amanda flipped open her MacBook Air so that they could open a new file.
A new investigation had begun.
Joy gave out the orders. Her staff of reporters and interns grabbed laptops, and even a few pens and notebooks, along with their smartphones and hit the streets of St. Isidore.
Joy took a deep breath and smiled at Esther.
Her joyful glance was returned.
Joy and Amanda were the next to last to leave.
After they had left, Esther walked over to the chair Amanda used for the meeting and the yellow legal pad she had been scribbling on to see what Amanda had been writing.
Esther saw just one word written over and over again.
Janice.
Esther pulled the page off the legal pad, walked over the paper shredder, pushed the button, and fed the crumpled yellow page to the machine.
Remembering the last time she has seen Janice alive, Esther walked to the front of the conference room, looked back for just a moment, and flicked the light switch off.
The End
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Did you love Janice is Missing: A Crime and Suspense Thriller? Then you should read A Wicked Plan: Book 1 From the St. Isidore Collection by Rod Kackley!
Abduction + Lust + Murder = Fame, Fortune, and Freedom
Bree is kidnapped. Her parents are murdered. Their house explodes.
No worries. It's all part of Bree's wicked plan. And it's all coming together. Some might consider it to be the height of criminal insanity, but not Bree.