“The cops already asked that. And they would know, wouldn’t they? They could look at her phone records or something. They’d know she hadn’t been with one of us.”
“Besides,” Leila said. “Her mom already called everybody. None of us knew where she was. If she’d been with one of us, Mrs. Miller would have figured it out.”
“Unless Madison told you not to let her mom know.”
Leila shrugged.
“So she was with Noah,” Zachary said.
None of them argued with him.
“How often did she stay overnight with Noah?”
They all looked down, silent. Not telling Madison’s secrets.
“Every weekend?” Zachary suggested.
She was with him every day after school when she was supposed to be at work. Every weekend when she was supposed to be at work. All of those nights that her parents thought she was sleeping over with girlfriends. He had worked his way into her life so that she was spending every spare moment with him.
“How much time did she spend hanging out with you the last few months? The four musketeers?”
Katelyn was sniffling and wiping her nose. The first of them to show any emotion. “Not very much anymore,” she admitted. “We were always telling her that she needed to spend some more time with her sisters. I mean, boys come and go, right? But your girlfriends. They’re your real friends.”
“It bothered you that she wouldn’t spend time with you anymore?”
“No,” Josette said. “We all would have done the same, if Noah had picked us. It’s stupid to say that we wouldn’t. If we wanted her to spend time with us, it was just because we were jealous and didn’t like to see her with him all the time.”
“No,” Katelyn sniffled. “It wasn’t just that.”
Zachary let them sit and stew for a few moments. He scribbled in his notepad. Not because he had anything to write down, but because he wanted them to think about it for a bit. He didn’t want to rush the questions. They would tell him more if they volunteered it.
“It wasn’t just because we were jealous,” Katelyn repeated. “She was… different.”
“Yeah, because she had a boyfriend,” Josette declared.
“No. It wasn’t just that. I mean… she was…” Katelyn’s forehead wrinkled. She tried to tease the emotion out. “She wasn’t always happy. You know. If I was with a guy like Noah, I’d be over the moon. I’d be happy all the time. I’d be gloating to my girlfriends about how awesome the sex was and how great the clothes he bought me were. I’d be bragging to everyone about him.”
“And Madison didn’t?”
Katelyn shook her head. The other girls didn’t disagree.
“Why do you think that was? Was it just her personality? Maybe she was shy about it?”
“No. Maybe. Who knows what’s inside people’s heads. Maybe she felt guilty for being with him. Because her parents wouldn’t have liked it.”
“Or…?” Zachary let the word hang, hoping one of them would take it and come up with some ideas. Because he had no idea how teenage girls talked with each other about their boyfriends. He thought it was unlikely that Madison would be happy all the time. She had trials and troubles just like any other teenager. Even with the perfect boyfriend, she still had to deal with school and homework and her parents. With parents who wanted her to straighten up and start working with a tutor to improve her marks, when all she wanted was to be with her boyfriend.
Both the principal and Mrs. Wright had said that Madison had an attitude. That she had mood swings. They thought that something was wrong. Not that she was spending too much time with her boyfriend. But that she was using drugs or was upset by something going on in her life.
“If it was me, with a boyfriend like that, I wouldn’t be complaining,” Josette said.
“What did she complain about?”
Josette considered. She rubbed the center of her forehead, frowning. “She’d say that she had to go out with Noah. Act like she didn’t want to. If it was me, I’d want to. No one would have to convince me of it. And after a weekend together, she’d be, like, all crabby and tired. She’d say how exhausted she was, and we’d be like, we know why you’re so tired. And she’d just… be all mad about it.”
“Was he possessive of her? Forcing her to go with him?”
They looked at each other, shaking their heads. “He was always really soft-spoken in front of us,” Katelyn said. “She never said that he was making her. But she was… sometimes she’d act like she was having the time of her life. There were the new clothes, and booze, and parties, and she’d be on top of the world. She’d post selfies all over and make everyone jealous. And then she’d be down in the dumps, complaining about how we didn’t understand what it was like, and she just wanted to stay home for once, or hang out with us girls. But she had to go with Noah, because he was her boyfriend.”
“She scared me sometimes,” Leila said. “She’d get really dark moods, say that she was no good and her life was crap and that if her parents knew what was going on, they’d kill her. We all tried to get her to just chill. You know, who cares what parents think? In a couple of years, they won’t be able to dictate any rules. They’ll be calling us, begging us to come home and spend time with them. They’ll forget all about anything we did soon enough.”
“But she’d get really down,” Katelyn agreed. “You couldn’t talk her out of it. I thought…”
Zachary waited for her to finish, raising his eyebrows expectantly.
“I guess I thought it was the alcohol,” Katelyn said. “Some people are really downers when they’ve had a lot to drink. Or maybe she was using something else, and felt bad when she came down off of it.”
“Was she using drugs?”
None of them volunteered any knowledge of Madison’s drug use.
“I figured she probably was when I saw some of the pictures on her social media,” Zachary said. “She looked pretty out-of-it in some of those pictures. Glassy-eyed.”
“I don’t know.” Katelyn shrugged. “She never said she’d tried any hard stuff with me. Just alcohol. Maybe some pot. Nothing much.”
“None of you knew if she was taking anything else?” Zachary looked from one to the other, but couldn’t detect any signs they were lying. “Okay. So we don’t know. Maybe she was, maybe she wasn’t.”
He was silent, letting the minutes tick by. The girls were moving around restlessly, uncomfortable. No longer united on all points. Thinking their own thoughts and what they ought to tell.
“What do you think happened to Madison?” Zachary asked finally.
“I don’t think anything happened to her,” Josette said loudly. “I think she just decided not to go home. She’d had enough of being harassed by her parents and teachers, and just decided to stay with Noah. Why not? What could anyone else offer her? She had it good with Noah. Had everything she could possibly want. Why torture herself by going to school and putting up with her helicopter parents?”
Zachary didn’t answer. He looked at the other girls, waiting for their responses. Would they just follow Josette’s lead? Or would they venture opinions of their own?
“Yeah,” Katelyn agreed, in her small, sniffly voice. “I don’t think anything happened to her. I’m sure she’s okay, wherever she is. She’s just with Noah somewhere. She didn’t want to come back. Like Josette said.”
“Find Noah and you’ll find her,” Leila agreed.
But no one knew where to find Noah. No one even knew his last name.
11
Zachary talked to Madison’s guidance counselor about the boy. He kept the rest to himself, but he wanted to hear what Mr. Carlton thought about Madison’s romantic relationship.
“I never saw her around the school with any boy,” Mr. Carlton declared, running a hand through the hair on top of his head to make sure that the thinning strands were all arranged with the maximum possible coverage. “I wouldn’t have guessed that she had a boyfriend.”
“Apparently, he was older. He didn’t go to the school.”
“Oh. Well, that explains it, then.”
“But he picked her up here. And when he originally sought her out, it was after school, when she was just leaving here. He told her that he knew her from somewhere.”
“Maybe he did,” Carlton agreed with a shrug.
“You don’t find it disturbing that he would hang around the school grounds looking for her? Don’t you have security out there, keeping an eye on things, making sure that there aren’t strangers loitering around eyeballing the kids?”
Carlton grimaced. “It isn’t like it’s an elementary school, with creepers coming around to try to snatch little kids. It’s not like that at all. Our students are almost adults. They’re old enough to look after themselves. And to tell us if there is anyone hanging around that they feel threatened by. We don’t exactly have security or supervisors patrolling the school grounds, chasing off anyone who doesn’t look like they belong.”
So the answer was no. They didn’t have any security protecting the students from predators who might be looking for a mark.
“But you said that she’s been dating this guy for a couple of months,” Carlton pointed out. “If he was some creep or she was getting a bad vibe from him, she wouldn’t have kept going out with him for months. She would have told him to take a hike. Told the staff if he was hanging around here when she didn’t want him to. Our kids get lots of instruction on being assertive, speaking up, not staying in an abusive relationship. We have whole courses of study on it.”
Zachary didn’t point out that, trained or not, a teenage girl was not necessarily mature enough to recognize red flags in a relationship and know how to get out safely if something didn’t feel right. Children were socialized to do what they were told. Not to rock the boat. To get along and not hurt people’s feelings. All of those lessons were deeply ingrained and at odds with whatever relationship training the school was trying to do once they thought the students were old enough to make some of their own life decisions.
By the time Madison realized that she wanted out of the relationship, she might have been in too deep to get herself out.
With Rhys’s permission, Zachary filled Vera in on the fact of Madison’s disappearance and his agreement to do some inquiries to see if he could find out what had happened to her. Rhys sat cross-legged near the fireplace, staring down and running his thumbnail through the nap of the carpet while Zachary and Vera sat on the couch.
Vera’s eyes got wide as Zachary gave a broad outline of the case. “Is that what’s been bothering him?” she murmured, looking at Rhys. Rhys could clearly hear them, but he gave no sign that he knew he was being talked about. Vera looked back at Zachary, shaking her head. “I knew something was on his mind, but there are so many things for teens to worry about. I just didn’t know what it was.”
Zachary nodded his agreement. Neither of them said the obvious—that it was that much harder with a teen who was mute. Even when he wanted to share something, it was an effort for him to get his point across. His grandmother understood him better than anyone, but there was still a communications gap.
“I wanted to talk to Rhys about it some more,” Zachary told her. “Just the two of us… but I didn’t want you to wonder what was going on. I thought maybe we could go out for pizza, but you don’t like me taking him out…”
Vera was too worried about rumors getting started about Rhys. A white man who had been in the news too much recently taking out a vulnerable black teen would be an easy target for gossip.
“You can order pizza here,” Vera suggested. “The two of you can hang out in the kitchen or wherever you want. I’ll give you guys your space.”
Zachary knew that was as good as he was going to get. And, all things considered, it was probably better than going out. In a pizza joint or arcade, there would be a lot of distractions, things that could interfere with the already tricky flow of information between the two of them. Rhys could feel safe and secure in his own territory. It wasn’t the casual environment that Zachary had initially envisioned, but maybe it was better that way. Zachary’s questions were going to be far beyond casual.
He nodded. “That would be great. Sound good, Rhys?”
Rhys nodded, not looking up.
Vera quizzed him on what kind of pizza he wanted, but Rhys waved off her questions and pulled out his phone. He waggled it at her questioningly.
“Fine, order it on your app,” Vera agreed.
Rhys tapped away at the phone. He pointed to Vera and raised his eyebrows.
“I’ll have some of whatever you get. I’m not picky.”
He switched his gaze and his pointing finger to Zachary.
“Same here,” Zachary said with a shrug. “I’ll eat whatever you get.”
Rhys held his gaze. He knew from past experience that Zachary wasn’t likely to eat much.
“I promise I’ll eat a slice of whatever kind of pizza you get.”
Rhys held up two fingers. Vera chuckled.
“Okay, two slices,” Zachary agreed. He hoped that it wasn’t a huge pizza, where each slice was the size of a personal pizza. He’d be hard-pressed to get through one of those, let alone two. He was on meds that took away his appetite and left him nauseated much of the day, so trying to gain back the weight he had lost was a constant battle.
Rhys bounced his hand, emphasizing the two fingers.
“Yes, two slices,” Zachary repeated.
Rhys went back to his phone, tapping in whatever information the app needed. Eventually, he got up and walked over to Vera, showing her the screen. She took the phone from him, adjusting the distance and squinting at it. She didn’t take a long time to read before handing it back. “Yes, that looks fine, Rhys.”
Rhys held it up for Zachary. He didn’t want to take the time he would need to read through the long list of toppings densely listed on the screen. He glanced over it for anchovies or hot peppers, but it didn’t really matter even if Rhys had added them. Zachary had grown up eating different foods at each home he went to, and had become an expert at forcing down what he didn’t like. What was the point in fighting with a foster parent or supervisor when all he had to do to show compliance was swallow a bite or two of the meal?
“That looks great,” he told Rhys, handing it back to him.
Rhys frowned, and Zachary knew that he had responded too quickly. Rhys knew he hadn’t really read the list of toppings. He turned the phone back around, craning his neck to look at it and point out one word to Zachary. Zachary followed Rhys’s finger. He smiled.
“Yes, I’m okay with pineapple on pizza.”
Rhys turned the phone back toward himself, grinning. He tapped through the next few screens to place the order.
12
Zachary chatted with Vera while they waited for the pizza, with the occasional contribution by Rhys. Zachary was waiting until they had the pizza and Vera was out of the room to ask Rhys more questions about Madison.
When an extra-large, steaming, fragrant pizza arrived at the door, Rhys set it on the counter in the kitchen and got out a stack of paper plates.
“Oh, I can wash a few dishes,” Vera protested, heading toward the cupboard.
Rhys shook his head, handed her a paper plate, and pointed her in the direction of the pizza. No dishes. Your night off.
Vera made a few further noises of protest, but they weren’t genuine objections, and she helped herself to one of the large slices.
“I’m going to use a TV tray and put on a movie for myself,” she informed Rhys. “A grandma movie that wouldn’t interest you. You boys keep the food in here so I don’t have to clean it out of the carpet or the bed. Put the leftovers in the fridge.”
Rhys nodded obediently, giving her a little grin. After Vera left the room, he grabbed a couple of cans of soda out of the fridge and handed one to Zachary. They sat down at the table with their paper plates and Rhys took his first piece. Zachary tried to pick out the s
mallest piece of what remained. They were definitely too big for him to eat two full slices, but he would do his best. If he left part of the crust of the first and ate a few bites of a second piece, then he would make good on his promise to have two slices, even if he hadn’t actually eaten more than one slice. He took his first slice of loaded pizza and had a bite.
“Mmm. Very good,” he told Rhys. It was a privately-owned pizza restaurant rather than one of the big chains. “I can see why you picked them. Really good crust, too.”
Rhys nodded. He mimed stirring and then tossing a pizza.
“Hand made?” Zachary guessed. “Made fresh?”
Rhys nodded and pointed at Zachary.
Zachary took another bite. He didn’t pull his notepad out. If he did, he was sure to get food on the pages. But he didn’t really need his notes to start the conversation with Rhys.
“So, I talked with some of Madison’s teachers and friends today.”
Rhys nodded. He’d obviously already been aware of that. Zachary had intentionally not interviewed Rhys at the school at the same time as he had conducted interviews with her other friends. From what he had seen and heard, Rhys and Madison had not been close friends, and certainly not boyfriend-girlfriend, and he didn’t want to shine a light on Rhys and cause people to speculate as to what his relationship with the missing girl was.
“I’m getting a better picture of what was going on with her before she disappeared.”
Rhys continued to eat. Zachary hadn’t yet asked him a question, and he didn’t have anything to agree or disagree with.
“You had concerns about Madison.”
Rhys nodded.
“Before she went missing.”
Rhys paused in his consumption of the pizza, then nodded again, slowly.
“What, specifically, were you concerned about?”
Rhys thought about it, chewing and taking another bite. Zachary didn’t rush him. They had all the time they needed. Eventually, Rhys pulled out his phone. While he ate, he paged backward through photos. Zachary couldn’t see any dates or anything that would tell him the timeline Rhys was browsing through. Eventually, Rhys found the picture he was looking for and brought it up on the screen. He slid it across the table to Zachary.
She Told a Lie Page 6