by A J Rivers
“Something happened after they left her in the emergency room. She didn’t just stay there. If Sean had something to do with that, it could explain his interest in getting close to Leona,” I say.
“You think he wants to relive what he did? Or the pain it caused the family?” she asks. “That’s sick.”
“That would be the behavior of a thrill killer. Someone who not only kills for fun, but also gets enjoyment out of watching how it affects people. This is the type of person who will be a part of the search party and go to the funeral. He’ll visit with the family and may even put on massive displays of grief or honoring the victim, even if he apparently didn’t know the victim very well. It’s purely for show; out of a desire to be wrapped up in the emotion and turmoil of the whole situation.
“But people who kill on the spur of the moment, or accidentally, may also be drawn to the family. Especially when the case is getting attention. They want to know what’s going on in the investigation and if law enforcement is on their trail. It keeps them a step ahead. But it can also create anxiety and make them act out,” I say. “That’s often how they get caught. They get so wrapped up in their determination to look innocent they actually end up showing that they are guilty.”
“Didn’t Allison say Sean took her to the hospital after leaving Ashley? One in another town?” Dean asks. “And then they went back to the camp?”
I check the timestamps we recorded from the moment the three left Ashley until she got up and left, and then until she stood and walked out of the frame of the security video outside.
“He left Allison at the hospital,” I say. “He didn’t stay with her. He didn’t want anybody to know he had anything to do with her or the baby, so he left her there. He came back later to pick her up, but there was enough time for him to get her there, leave her, come back to this hospital for Ashley, get her out of the way, and then go back for Allison.”
“But what would he have done with her?” Dean asks. “Why would he have kept her for five years?”
“Obsession,” I offer. “He was obviously into younger girls. Allison was only fifteen and pregnant with his baby. He could have been fixated on Ashley and have seen this as an opportunity. It’s interesting to me that he resurfaced at the same time she did.”
“Do you really think he could be the one to have done this?” Ava asks.
“I don’t know. We have to cover all the bases. Eliminate all the possibilities,” I say, a yawn suddenly creeping up on me. “It’s getting late. I’m going to try to get some sleep.”
We clean up from dinner and the rest of them head out of the room. Ava and Dean are in the hallway when Xavier steps back inside and comes to me where I’m still sitting, staring at the computer.
“You’re clicking your fingernails,” he says.
I look up at him. “Hmmm?”
“Your fingernails,” he repeats. “You click them when you’re stuck on thinking about something. What are you thinking about?”
I look at my hand and realize he’s right. As my thoughts churn through my mind, my fingers systematically flick against the pad of my thumb, clicking the nails against each other as they move up and down.
“When we were talking to Ashley about the night she went missing, she said she remembered the ground being cold and hard,” I say.
“She was sitting on a sidewalk,” he points out.
“But it wouldn’t be cold,” I say. “It was August. Even with the rain and the cooler weather, the concrete would have retained the heat. She also didn’t mention either of the guys who were there. Just Vivian and Allison. I can understand her not remembering much. The combination of the alcohol and the trauma of being abducted could make it extremely difficult to recall anything from that time.”
“But she remembers the park,” Xavier says.
I nod. “She remembers going to the park to camp, and what it was like walking around there. But she doesn’t remember that it was Vivian’s boyfriend who drove them? Or that the guy she had a thing for was there?”
“You think she really doesn’t remember?”
“Maybe it’s time we refresh her memory a little.”
Forty-Three
“Do you really think this is necessary?” Misty asks, wrapping her arms wrapped around her chest as we talk in hushed tones in the hallway just outside the living room.
“Yes,” I say. “It’s been several days since Ashley got home. We still don’t know exactly what happened that night or where she’s been for the past five years. I know I’ve said this to you a few times before, but I feel it bears repeating. The longer it takes for us to identify the person who has been holding your daughter, the less likely it is we’ll ever be able to find him. Not only does that mean that there will be no accountability for what he did to Ashley, but he will be free to do it to someone else. And I assure you, if he did it to her, the chances are extraordinarily high he will do it to someone else, if he hasn’t already. I don’t think I need to go into detail about the types of things she could have gone through, but…”
Misty shakes her head, closing her eyes as if so stop the words from getting to her.
“I get it,” she finally says. “I understand. I just don’t want to hurt her any more than she already has been. I wish there was some other way.”
“I know you do. But there isn’t another way. She is our only real source of evidence beyond a certain point in the night. The video I want to show her gives more of a look into the sequence of events of that night, but it doesn’t tell everything,” I say.
Misty looks confused. “The sequence of events? What do you mean? What happened?”
“I don’t want to say anything until Ashley has seen the video. I need her genuine reaction. I want her to be able to give whatever insight comes to mind without being influenced,” I say.
“You won’t even tell me what’s in this recording, but you expect me to give you authorization to show it to my traumatized child?” she asks, clearly offended and getting angrier.
Out of the corner of my eye, I notice Leona lurking just inside another room a few feet down the hallway. She’s obviously been listening to our conversation and is now looking at her mother with red-rimmed, widened eyes.
“Mom,” she says in a soft tone.
I pretend not to see her, wanting to know what she’s going to do.
“With all due respect, Misty, she isn’t a child. As I said in the hospital, she’s eighteen years old. She isn’t the same little girl who went out with her friends five years ago. She is an adult,” I say.
“Mom,” Leona whispers again.
“She might be eighteen years old, but you can’t possibly really think that means she’s an adult,” Misty counters. “Not after everything she’s been through.”
“Legally, she is. Until a court has determined she cannot be perceived as an adult, that is exactly what she is. I know she’s been through a lot, but that doesn’t automatically mean she’s been cognitively damaged or stunted. I know you want to protect her, but you have to give her the respect of acknowledging that she grew up in those years and can be an active part of this investigation,” I say.
“Alright,” Misty says.
“Mom,” Leona says again.
She says it almost as if she isn’t processing the change in the conversation. As though she’s just barely hanging on and waiting for her mother to respond to her.
“Where is she?” I ask.
“In her bedroom.”
I head up the stairs with Misty right behind me. I see the sign on the front of the door again, just as I had the first time I visited this room. Only this time, we don’t just go past it. We pause out in the hallway and knock lightly.
“Come in, “ Ashley says.
Misty steps into the room and gestures back at me.
“Honey, Agent Griffin is here. She has something she wants to show you and talk about.”
Ashley nods from her desk. I notice one hand is lightly rested on the
front of her computer, her fingertips just supporting it, as though she had been on the computer only seconds before we walked in.
I give her a “Hey, Ashley. How are you doing?”
She nods. “Fine. Glad to be here.”
“It’s good to hear that. I know this isn’t easy, but I need to talk to you again about the night you went missing,” I say.
“I already told you everything I remember,” she says.
“Having gaps in your memory is completely normal,” I reiterate. “But it doesn’t mean you’ll never remember. Sometimes all it takes is seeing or hearing something from that time for it to unlock the memories your mind might have buried. The investigation uncovered some additional details from that night, and I hope they’ll help you put the pieces together.”
“What details?” she asks.
“Before I show you, think again. You told me that you remember Allison and Vivian being there, and that the ground was cold and hard. You were at Sherando Ridge and set up camp for the night. Anything else?”
Ashley shakes her head. “No. I’m sorry. I’m trying.”
Misty rushes to her daughter’s side and squeezes her shoulders. “You have no reason to say you’re sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong.”
“No,” I say. “Of course, you didn’t. This isn’t about you. Okay? You’re not doing anything wrong. It’s just important to me when I investigate to give people involved as much space and freedom as I can to make sure they are really remembering, not just building off something they heard or were told. I wanted to give you one more chance to remember something else before showing you the footage.”
“Footage?” Ashley frowns. “Were there cameras near the campsite?”
“No,” I tell her, trying to gauge the emotion that filled her face when she asked that question. “But there were some in the hospital where you ended up that night.”
I watch her face, but there isn’t even a flicker of recognition. Misty is the one who reacts.
“She was in a hospital? How did she get there? Who was there with her? When was she there? How was I not notified of this?” she demands.
“Ashley, there is security footage of you in the emergency room waiting room and just outside. I’ve seen it. Can you think of anything that might be on it? Anything you might want to tell your mother?” I ask.
“No,” she says, her eyes slightly widened. “I don’t remember being at the hospital that night. Why didn’t they mention it when I was brought there?”
I shake my head. “Not that hospital. Will you look at the footage and tell me if it jogs anything?”
She nods, getting up from her chair to sit on the edge of her bed between her mother and me. I take my tablet out of my bag and hand it to her. The video is already cued up, so all I have to do is tap the center of the screen for the footage to begin. I purposely started it a few seconds before the group appears, to gauge her reaction and see if she seems to know what’s going on.
Her eyes flick all over the screen, searching the chairs and corners, trying to figure out what she’s supposed to be looking at. There’s no response. No change in her expression. Even when Vivian, Allison, and Sean show up all but carrying her into the emergency room, she doesn’t seem to realize what she’s looking at.
“Is that… Vivian?” Misty frowns, her hand clasped over her mouth in equal parts concentration and shock.
I nod. “Yes.”
She watches for another moment and gasps. “That’s Ashley. They’re dragging her into the hospital. Where did they find her?”
“Do you remember any of this?” I ask.
“Look at her,” Misty snaps, flinging her hand in the direction of the screen. “Does she look as if she’s in any condition to remember anything that was happening?”
I lift my eyes to her, staying calm and steady. “Misty, you need to let her watch and think.”
“They just left?” Ashley asks.
I nod. “This stays pretty much like this for a while. I’m just going to skip ahead a little bit.”
They watch the footage of Ashley getting up from the chair and walking out of the hospital.
“No one noticed,” Ashley says under her breath, almost saying it to herself. She looks at me. “What then?” I show her the footage from the camera outside, and she looks at me incredulously. “Then what?”
“We don’t know,” I say. “There are no other cameras that caught anything.”
“That’s it?” Misty asks. “That’s all you have? You have security footage of people who are supposed to be her friends dumping her at a hospital with who knows what kinds of injuries, then she just wanders away and that’s it? You lose her after that?”
“We didn’t lose her,” I clarify. “That’s why I’m here. I wanted Ashley to see this so that maybe she could remember something else.”
Ashley shakes her head. “I don’t. I don’t know what happened.” Her eyes go back to the screen and the empty corner of the sidewalk where she had just been sitting. “No one even noticed.”
“I can’t do this,” Misty says, standing up sharply from the bed and storming out of the room. “I need to get some air.”
“Why did they do that?” Ashley asks.
“Who?” I ask.
“Vivian and Allison. Why did they just leave?”
“They were afraid,” I say. “Something had happened that night before this. Something really bad. Do you have any idea what I’m talking about?”
She shakes her head. “No.”
“Okay. Give me just a second. I’ll be right back.”
“Can I watch it again?” she asks.
I nod. “Sure.”
Walking out of the room, I pull the door most of the way closed behind me and start down the hallway to look for Misty. I hear her voice before I see her. It’s low and muffled, a harsh whisper that says she wants the words out of her as fast as possible but for no one else to overhear them. Hers isn’t the only voice. I follow them both to the top of the steps. Standing just out of sight, I look down and see Misty and Leona standing in the entrance to the downstairs hall.
Their heads are close together and I can see Leona’s shaking as she rocks back and forth.
“No,” she says. “No. No. No. That’s not right.”
“Yes, Leona. Yes, it is. That’s what happened.”
“No,” Leona repeats. “It couldn’t have. I don’t understand. I don’t understand what’s going on.”
“Listen to me. Your sister is home. That’s all that matters. Do you hear me? Ashley is home.”
I sink back into the hallway, then walk down again with heavy footsteps to announce my presence.
“Misty?” I call.
“Yes?” she responds, rushing up the steps. “Is everything alright?”
“There you are,” I say. “We need to move forward with the next steps of the investigation. I wanted you to go over them with us.”
Forty-Four
Misty follows me back to Ashley’s room, where we find her curled up on the bed, her back pressed against the wall and her knees to her chest. One arm wrapped around her legs holds them close while the other hand supports the tablet. She’s fixated on the image on the screen.
“Ashley?” I ask. She doesn’t move. I take a step closer to the bed. “Ashley?”
Her eyes snap to me. I almost expect tears in them, but they’re dry. Instead, there’s confusion and anger. It passes quickly and she holds the tablet back out to me.
“I don’t know what happened after that. Just that I woke up in the house,” she says.
I nod and sit beside her again. “That’s actually what I wanted to talk with you about. You seem to remember the house better than anything else. Can you tell me more about it?”
She describes the house and the first moments she remembered being awake. Again, she talks about the man she called Wolf, but skirts around what he might have done to her. I don’t need her to go into detail. I already know. At least, I have a good
idea. The deeper dive into the details can come later.
“What do you think about taking me back there?” I ask.
Misty explodes beside me. “Absolutely not. Are you out of your mind? She just escaped that place and now you want her to just stroll back in there? Are you going to leave her alone in there with a big ribbon around her, too?”
“Misty, you need to calm down,” I say.
“Stop telling me to calm down when you’re saying you want to put my child in danger again.”
“I wouldn’t put her in danger,” I say. “I would be there with her the entire time. Along with the other members of my team. A backup team would be on stand-by, ready to come in if we need assistance. There would be no point at which she would be alone or vulnerable.”
“Seriously? Do you think that having you or either of those guys with her creates some sort of impenetrable force field? That it will create a shield around her that will deflect bullets?” she snaps.
“The chances of Ashley’s captor’s remaining there after she escaped are very low,” I explain. “This is a high-profile case. Staying would just be an invitation. That’s not how these types of criminals work. If there’s a chance of identification, predators don’t linger in the same place.”
“No,” Misty says. “No. You’re not going to take her somewhere that has so many horrible memories for her. Even if it’s empty, it’s not safe. As you said, this is a high-profile case. I was already afraid enough when she was in the hospital. If you make her do this, you’re just trotting her out and putting a target on her back. They will come for her. Don’t you understand that?”
That strikes me. “They?”
“What?”
“You said ‘they’. ‘They’ will come for her. Who do you mean?”