by A J Rivers
“I’m exhausted,” Bellamy huffs. “I feel as if I weigh about forty thousand pounds and my hips don’t work anymore.”
“Your hips don’t work anymore?” I ask, confused and maybe just a hint horrified.
“Remember when I told you a few weeks back that my hips were hurting so much all the time? Even when I hadn’t done anything?” she asks.
“Yeah,” I say. “You said it constantly felt as though you’d worked out for hours.”
“Exactly. Well, apparently that was gearing up for all the tendons loosening. My doctor said the hormones in mid to late pregnancy signal the body to start preparing for birth. Which includes the tendons in my hips letting go so that it’s easier for the baby to pass through. In theory, that sounds like an awesome thing. Making me as stretchy and pliable as possible seems like a great way to make labor easier. However, in practice during these days when I’m not actively giving birth, it’s just leaving me with floppy hips. I’m waddling all over the place. It feels as though any second, I’m going to slide on something and hit one of those terrifying Barbie doll splits where her feet go up to her shoulders from the front and back.”
“Please don’t do that. It doesn’t sound good for you or the baby,” I say.
“I’m doing my very best to avoid it.”
“How about other than that?” I ask. “How are you feeling? What are you thinking?”
“I’m everything. I’m nervous and excited. Really uncomfortable but more in love with my body than ever. Anxious and eager to meet her, but not really ready to give up being pregnant,” she says.
“How about Eric?” I ask.
“He’s doing so great,” Bellamy says.
“He’s in the room with you, isn’t he?” I ask, immediately able to recognize the inflection in her voice.
“Yep,” she chirps.
“And he’s actually freaking the hell out?”
“So much,” Bellamy says.
I laugh. That sounds like Eric. He would do his best to stay calm and collected, but not being in control or able to determine how this happens would push him right to the edge. Eric is great at computers, numbers, organization. He’s not so great at uncertainty and having to just wait for things to happen the way they’re going to.
“Well, it won’t be too much longer. But then he gets to start freaking out about raising the baby,” I say. “So maybe you should just get used to this general state of his existence.”
Bellamy laughs. “Perfect. You’re still coming by today, right?”
“Absolutely. I’ll be over tonight.”
“Good.”
We finish talking and I’m getting off the phone as Dean comes back into the room.
“How’s Bellamy?” he asks.
“Very pregnant,” I say. “Ready for the baby to be born and not wanting to not be pregnant.”
“Sounds about right,” Dean says.
“Where’s Xavier?” I ask, realizing I haven’t seen him yet this morning.
“He got up early and had breakfast and he’s been in the office with your father since. When I walked by, I heard them mention something about inflatables being the far superior bonus option, but the potential that they could contribute to a helium crisis, resulting in the advent of more practical items,” he says.
“Still no clue?” I ask.
He shakes his head. “I’ve got nothing.”
“What did Ashley’s family say?”
“I talked to Misty Stevenson, Ashley’s mother. She’s ready to set something up whenever we are,” he says.
“Great. Well, as I said, I’m going to be going down to the campground in a couple days. Since they live in the area, we can find a time to get with them then,” I say.
“Actually, they happen to be in this area today and tomorrow. They’re visiting potential colleges for their older daughter. Apparently, she graduated high school a couple years ago, but wasn’t ready to go to college yet. She thought she might want to go right into a career. Now she’s changing her mind and might want to go to school, so they’ve started touring around different ones that caught her attention. They’re looking at a few within an hour of here,” he says. “So, they’re available to meet up any time this afternoon.”
“Great,” I nod. “Call them back. Set it up.”
Eight
“Thank you so much for meeting with us,” Dean says as we walk into the hotel suite. “I’m Dean Steele.”
“Of course,” says a slight brunette woman with tired, aged eyes, reaching her hand out to shake Dean’s. “I’m Misty Stevenson. This is my husband John. Our daughter Leona is spending some time exploring the campus and surrounding areas to see how she feels about it.”
“We’ll meet her another time,” Dean says. He steps further into the room and gestures toward me. “This is the cousin I told you about, Emma Griffin.”
“Agent Griffin,” Misty says, sounding almost relieved to see me here, rather than just Dean.
“Emma,” I insist, shaking her hand. “Thank you for having us.”
This is another one of those odd social exchanges, right up there with asking people how they’re doing. She didn’t invite us over for coffee or a pleasant chat. We are here to discuss the details surrounding her teenage daughter’s disappearance five years ago. It’s not a social call or something we should be happy about doing. We are the ones here to work on her behalf. And yet, I have the compulsion to thank her.
I’ve noticed I’ve become even more aware of, and critical of, basic day-to-day social interactions since meeting Xavier. There are things that have always stood out to me as being odd, but I went along with them without much thought because it’s just the way people engage with each other.
Now after getting to know Xavier and trying to understand how he interacts with the world, these things stand out to me even more.
Finishing the somewhat awkward dance of introductions with people who have already talked on the phone or have heard about one another, we move further into the room. Misty gestures at the sitting area in the living room portion of the suite. It’s separated from the bedroom by a door, which makes it less uncomfortable.
“Please,” she says, “sit down.”
Dean and I each take one of the overstuffed armchairs while Misty and her husband sit side-by-side on the small couch.
They both look at us hopefully, and Dean and I realize they aren’t going to start this conversation. Dean slides toward the edge of his seat cushion and leans slightly toward them.
“I’ve gone over some of the case with Emma, and she’s agreed to be a part of the investigation,” he starts.
“Thank you so much,” John says. “I know you are incredibly busy with your FBI career.”
I give a hint of a nod of acknowledgment, but want to reassure them.
“This case has really spoken to me,” I say. “I’m still actively investigating the campground and the incidents that happened there. But Ashley’s case in particular stood out to me and I believe it deserves resolution. Your family deserves resolution.”
“Thank you,” Misty says. “It’s good to actually hear somebody say that. The police aren’t doing anything at the moment. Not that they’ve done terribly much since Ashley disappeared.”
“What involvement have you had from the police in this matter?” Dean asks.
He’s treading carefully, as he should. In cases like this, it’s important not to interfere in a way that could compromise a police investigation that’s still going on. Often families feel that nothing is happening because they aren’t being continuously updated, or they haven’t seen massive strides being made in the case. What they don’t realize is that steps are being taken and progress is being made that can’t be openly discussed, to protect the integrity of the investigation.
“When she first went missing, there was some action. Of course, plenty of the officers immediately jumped to the conclusion that she was a runaway. She was thirteen years old and going through wh
at most thirteen-year-old girls do. Testing some boundaries. Wanting to be more independent. But she wasn’t a runaway,” Misty explains.
“She never went out without your knowing that she was going?” I ask. “Or was gone longer than she said she’d be?”
“No,” John shakes his head. “Never. She had an attitude sometimes. She didn’t always get the best grades when she was having a fight with her friends. But she was a good girl. She wouldn’t have just run off. There was no reason for her to. And that’s what we told the police.”
“Do you think they believed you?” Dean asks.
“Some of them,” Misty says. “And some of them dismissed us. Now, they seem to have lost interest in her completely. There was some movement when I reached out to the detectives to point out she was last seen in the area of all the disappearances and murders. But after that was eliminated as a possibility, they just stopped. It’s as if she doesn’t matter as much because she isn’t part of a massive crime.”
“You say there was movement in the beginning,” Dean says, trying to keep them focused. “But then it drifted off. What type of investigation did they do?”
“They performed a fairly cursory search of the area,” Misty shrugs. “They interviewed Ashley’s friends. That’s really it.”
“Why didn’t you push any more?” I ask.
Misty looks at me, her eyes narrowing slightly as if she’s confused.
“What do you mean?” she asks.
“Your daughter disappeared five years ago. You say you don’t have any more information and the police aren’t interested anymore. Why didn’t you press more about her disappearance during those five years?” I ask.
“We did,” Misty says, sounding almost offended by my question. “No one would listen. I just told you, they said she was a runaway. That she had gotten into some sort of argument with us or was mad that she couldn’t do something. They concluded she wasn’t happy at home. So, she ran off.
“That’s really what they wanted us to believe. It didn’t matter what evidence there was or who our daughter was as a person, once they decided she had run away, that was that. This has been awful for us, and for Leona,” Misty says.
“I understand that,” I say, “but…”
“No,” she cuts me off, shaking her head. “You don’t understand that. You can’t. We spent all this time having no idea what happened to our daughter. Finding out about the murders gave us almost this kind of hope. Do you have any idea what that’s like? To hope your child was murdered and chained to the bottom of the lake just so you know where she is? So you know she isn’t being starved or tortured?”
I feel my heart constrict. I shake my head. “No. I don’t.”
“You have children, Emma?” she asks.
“No,” I tell her.
“Then you can’t possibly come close to understanding. Don’t judge us, please.”
“I’m not here to judge you,” I say. “I’m here only to help.”
The woman locks her eyes on mine intensely. “Then help.”
A beat of silence passes. I give a solemn nod.
“Tell us what happened the day Ashley disappeared,” I say.
Misty and John exchange glances. They both draw in breaths before looking back at us.
“She was spending time with her two best friends, Vivian McLemore and Allison Miller. The three of them were practically inseparable. They were a year or two older than she was, but Ashley had always been very mature for her age, so they got along perfectly. It had been raining for several days and when the weather cleared up, Ashley wanted to get outside with her friends. She was feeling cooped up,” John says.
“It was summer,” Misty adds. “That’s when kids want to be out playing and having fun all the time. They don’t want to sit at home with their families.” She lets out a painful-sounding laugh. “She told us they were going to go to the park and hike.”
“You were okay with her going to such a big park by herself?” Dean asks. “Is that something she had done before?”
Misty shakes her head. “No. We didn’t think she was going by herself. Vivian’s family camped all the time. The girls had gone with them on several occasions, so we just assumed she was going with them again. We didn’t ask.”
I nod. “Go on. Ashley told you she was going to the park to hike. Did she tell you what area she was going to be in?”
“She mentioned the name of one of the trails. It was the same hiking loop they usually did. From what I understand, it’s not too far from the campground. As I always did, I told her to be safe. I said to make sure they were paying attention and didn’t get in the way of any bikers. That they didn’t go poking around in the abandoned cabins. That was the kind of thing I was worried about. That they would get wrapped up in some conversation and get hit by a biker or get in trouble for going to an abandoned area,” Misty says.
“So, you did expect for her to be alone at some part of the hike?” Dean asks.
“There had been a couple of occasions when Vivian’s family was setting up their camp and the girls were allowed to hike a short distance on their own,” John says. “It always made Misty so nervous because she didn’t like the idea of the girls walking around by themselves. But I told her there wasn’t anything to be worried about. They were in a park. The hiking trails are very clearly marked. And they were good, smart girls. Ashley had just turned thirteen a couple of months before and I told Misty it was time to stop treating her like a baby and really let her grow up.”
He hangs his head. It shakes back and forth as he draws in a shuddering breath, as if he’s trying to stop himself from crying.
“It’s alright,” his wife whispers, reaching over to rub his back.
It’s obvious this is a conversation they’ve had between them several times.
“It isn’t,” he says. “It’s my fault. If I had never said that she should be able to go, if I’d insisted she needed to stay with the adults the whole time, this wouldn’t have happened. She’d be home right now. She would be the one getting ready to go to college.”
“You can’t blame yourself,” Misty says. “You didn’t know what was going to happen.”
I brace myself for the next question I have to ask.
“When did you realize she was missing?”
Nine
Misty looks up at me almost as if she’s forgotten we were sitting in the room with her. She keeps an arm wrapped protectively around her husband.
“The next day,” Misty says. “We expected her to be staying at least one night in the park with Vivian’s family. Maybe even two. But she was to call us the next day to check in, like always. But we didn’t hear from her. Instead, Allison called us. She said Ashley forgot her backpack and was going to come by the house and drop it off. I was really confused. I couldn’t figure out what she meant. So, when she got here I told her Ashley wasn’t home. I thought maybe Allison hadn’t stayed with the others. Maybe she had gone home and for some reason had Ashley’s backpack.”
“We weren’t thinking clearly, obviously,” John says. “I can’t really imagine anybody would in that situation.”
He’s defensive now, already on edge as he waits for Dean and me to react to the story they’re telling.
“That’s completely understandable,” I say. “A situation like that isn’t something you ever expect to happen. You don’t know how you would react or what it would feel like. It makes perfect sense that you were confused. What did Allison say when you told her Ashley wasn’t home?”
“She was confused, too. But she wouldn’t explain why. Said she would go talk to Vivian and left really abruptly. I remember she was on her bike and she rode away so fast it almost looked as if she was going to lose balance. As though she wasn’t holding herself up well and was going to fall over. I actually remember standing there at the door watching her ride off until I couldn’t see her anymore because I was so afraid she was going to fall and get hurt,” John says.
“When J
ohn told me what was going on, I didn’t know what to think. If it wasn’t so horrible, I would almost say it was funny,” Misty says.
“What do you mean funny?” I ask.
“My husband is the more permissive parent. He always has been. Ever since the girls were little, he has encouraged them to explore and figure out who they are. That’s something we always try to instill in them. That they are individuals, and it’s important for them to figure out who they are as people and live their lives to their fullest extent. I was more cautious with them, but John really encouraged them to try new things, depend on themselves, see the world as their own and take it. He wanted them to feel strong and independent.
“I was always the worrier. I wanted them to be strong, independent, capable women as they grew up, too. But I still had so much of a mama bear heart. I was protective and wanted to know both my girls were safe all the time. It terrified me to think something could happen to them. That was why I insisted on her checking in, even when I thought she was with other parents. I needed to hear her voice and know she was all right. John and I had always told both of my girls that if they were ever in a situation where they were uncomfortable, or something was going on they didn’t agree with, they could call us.
“No questions asked, we would be there to pick them up and get them out of the situation. We had even come up with code words, so if they were in a situation when they needed help but didn’t feel comfortable saying that, they could use their own individual code phrases, and either John or I would know they needed us.