The Last Day of Emily Lindsey

by Nic Joseph

  I kept walking, looking for anything out of the ordinary.

  I couldn’t shake the feeling that Dan Lindsey was hiding something, that behind his kind eyes, there was something more. When he’d let his guard down, just a bit, I’d seen something else, a deep anger with the way his wife was living her life. And he seemed to be upset about something in particular.

  But what would he have to hide?

  And there was still no indication about how she could’ve known about me. Or who the other man was whose name she’d scribbled next to mine.

  The breeze billowed through the trees, pushing hot air around my face, and I straightened, my eyes scanning the landscape for any clue about how and why Emily had gotten there.

  And then, I heard a noise.

  I spun around, my gaze searching the trees for what had made the crackling sound. It was the sound of someone, or something, stepping on dry foliage. Deer were known to roam Piper Woods, but it seemed unlikely that one would get so close to me.

  I kept walking, my body alert, sweat forming beneath my arms and above my lip.

  It’s probably nothing.

  It’s probably just the trees.

  But then I saw him.

  A man, whose face I couldn’t make out, wearing a tan suit and standing next to a tree about forty feet away from me.

  From the distance, he seemed to blend in with the background, and I almost missed him.

  “Hey,” I said, not loud enough for him to hear, as I started off in his direction.

  His gaze trained on mine, the man took a single step to one side, and then he was hidden, blocked by the tree.

  I picked up my pace and tore through the woods toward him, my chest tight, and when I reached the tree, I stopped and spun in every direction.

  He was gone. There was nothing. No one. No sign that he’d actually been there, that I wasn’t crazy, that I hadn’t made it all up.

  Nothing.

  I leaned back against the tree and reached into my pocket to fish out my Altoids case. Opening it with shaking hands, I popped a mint into my mouth and waited for my breathing to slow.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Then

  Shy Perry didn’t know exactly when he’d gotten his nickname, but he remembered the day that it stuck. It was when Mother Samantha added “shy” to his name one day in class and then giggled with the rest of the students as she corrected herself.

  “I’m sorry, Perry,” she said, as if it was a strain on her to say his name correctly. “It’s just that’s what everyone calls you, and I’ve gotten used to it.” She seemed embarrassed about the mistake, but she laughed it off with everyone else so that he ended being the one that was embarrassed.

  Perry was shy; he knew it. It was hard for him to forget it. He didn’t know why he was shy or what he could do to get over it. He wished he could, but shyness wasn’t one of those things you could just will away.

  He’d tried.

  He’d finally decided that it was easier to just live with it; he avoided people as much as possible and stumbled when he had to read aloud in class, only because he couldn’t think when anyone was watching him.

  Shy Perry was one of the last people the mothers would expect to try to break the rules on June 2. He just wasn’t the type. He tended to do what was asked of him, which wasn’t too dangerous, since he was rarely asked to do anything out of order.

  Maybe that’s why he’d said yes. Jack could have asked anybody, and he had asked him. Perry was pretty good at drawing, but he wasn’t the best by any means.

  It was April, and the whole team was sitting in the library. Jack, Lill, the twins, and Perry. They hadn’t met that many times, because it was hard to get all of them in the same place at the same time. But Jack had been adamant that they needed to spend time together, to get the mothers used to seeing them as a group, so that nothing would seem out of the ordinary. They were going to have to work together a lot over the next couple of months, and it would help if the mothers just thought it was a natural friendship that they’d seen develop before their eyes.

  As they sat in the library, Perry nervously twirled a pen in his hands. Jack had told him that he had an important job for him and that all he would have to do was draw. Today was the day he’d learn what that meant. Perry might be shy, but he wasn’t silly; he knew it wasn’t going to be as simple as the drawings he did every day during and after class.

  No, Jack needed something in particular, and Perry just hoped that he’d be able to pull it off.

  Perry continued to tap his pen against the paper in front of him. Brat was talking a mile a minute about all the things they still had to do in the next couple of months. Perry hoped she would leave time for Jack to talk about the drawing he needed.

  “We need a broom,” Brat said, smacking her gum. “That’s the only way we can sweep the sand up after we walk through it.”

  “A broom?” Gumball said slowly, smacking her gum. “Nobody said there were going to be chores involved.”

  “Well, what else would we do?” Gumball asked. “Float? We have to sweep it up. Right, Jack?”

  “Don’t worry about the broom,” Jack said with a small smile. “That will be the easy part. What we need to work on is the gate key.”

  “Yeah, how in the world do you propose we do that?” Lill asked. She took two fingers from each hand and rubbed her temples in slow circles. She did this whenever she was stressed. “I mean, assuming we have the stairwell key…” She trailed off, and Perry watched as Jack and Lill exchanged a look. He didn’t know what they’d done, but they said they had the stairwell key covered.

  Perry wasn’t sure what Jack meant when he said that getting the broom would be the easy part—but he believed him.

  Lill bit her lip nervously, still rubbing her head. “Seriously, what’s your plan, Jack?” she asked. “It’s impossible. Whoever is on duty will have the gate key with her at all times. And we don’t even know who that’s going to be. We won’t know that until it’s too late.”

  “That’s why we’re going to get the spare that Mother Beth keeps.”

  There was a collective gasp at the table, and Perry looked over to see if any of the mothers had noticed.

  Perry trusted Jack, but this was too much.

  Mother Beth was the writing teacher. She had a spare key, everyone knew, but it wasn’t one that came out often. Only once did she have to use her key, when one of the mothers dropped the key in the space between the elevator and the floor. It had taken them fifteen minutes to find Mother Beth and for her to bring her key down. The children had gathered near the first gate, waiting for someone to come relieve them.

  It had been terrifying, but Jack had locked the information away.

  “You want to get Mother Beth’s key?” Lill exclaimed, and they all shushed her and looked around the library. “That’s crazy. She’d kill us if she ever found out. We don’t even know where she keeps it.”

  Perry watched as Jack turned to him. “Right. Which is where we need your help, Perry.”

  Perry swallowed. “Okay,” he muttered. “Wha—what can I do?”

  “We need you to make some drawings of Mother Beth’s office.”

  “Some…drawings?”

  “Yeah, sort of like a floor plan.”

  “How should I do that?”

  “Every day, you walk by it, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “We need you to look inside, remember as much as you can, and draw it.”

  “But there’s no way I can get it all,” Perry said. “I walk by the room so quickly.”

  “I’ve seen what you can do,” Jack said. “You have to have faith in yourself. I know you can do it. Just do a little at a time.”

  “That’s crazy,” Lill said. “We walk by that office all the time, but he’d have to be inside to get a good l
ook.”

  “You just have to take your time,” Jack said again. “You won’t get it all at once, and it may take a couple of weeks, but that’s okay.”

  Perry wanted to protest, but he squared his shoulders and nodded. “Okay, I’ll try,” he said.

  “There’s no way that’s going to work,” Brat said, crossing her arms.

  The next day, Perry stood in the elevator on his way to class. As the elevator doors opened and he stepped out onto the floor, he took a huge breath. He filed into line behind the other students and walked toward the end of the hall where his classroom was located.

  As he walked past Mother Beth’s office, he slowed down as much as he could and turned to take a quick peek inside. He only got about two seconds—anything else would have been suspicious. It wasn’t enough. He walked sullenly to class and sat there staring at a blank piece of paper.

  The next day, he tried again, and he was able to sketch out one chair on the side of the room. And the next day, he did it again, and then the next day.

  A few weeks later, the group met in the library, and Perry pulled out his drawing. He laid it out on the table in front of them.

  A loud laugh escaped Brat’s lips. “You’re kidding!” she said. Perry had drawn one corner of the room, the corner where the bookshelves met, and nothing else. “There’s nothing there,” she said.

  Perry frowned and looked down at the table. He’d only been able to get a little at a time, and he wanted to make sure he wasn’t missing any details. But Brat was right. It had already been weeks, and the picture didn’t look like much.

  “Wow,” Jack said, and Perry looked up. “That’s amazing.”

  “It…it is?” Perry asked.

  “It’s perfect. The level of detail is right on,” Jack said. “This is just what we need. Keep going.”

  Perry smiled and placed the paper back in his folder.

  The next day, Perry peeked again, getting another side of the room, and then another. Another week went by, and Perry had one complete corner and large blocks to sketch out the rest of the room. He’d drawn squares for everything—the desk, the bookshelf behind it, the fake tree on the side of the room—but every square was perfectly placed on the page. Now, he would just have to go back and fill in details for all of the items, and he would be done.

  Perry was in class tracing over the square that represented the vase on Mother Beth’s desk when he felt a presence behind him. He felt his breath catch as he turned and saw Mother Beth herself peering over his shoulder.

  “What’s that?” Mother Beth asked.

  Perry froze, the pen between his fingers, his heart racing.

  He knew there wasn’t time to cover it up—she’d already seen it!—and he couldn’t think of a single response that would make any sense. So he sat there as Mother Beth reached over his shoulder and picked up the sheet of paper with the drawing of her own office, staring at it silently in front of the entire class.

  Perry felt his heart sink into his shoes. He turned and looked at Jack, who was staring back at him with an expression of horror.

  Mother Beth looked at the picture. She even turned it over in her hands. She seemed to do this in slow motion, spinning the picture around, upside down, turning it over and then back again. Then she just stared at it, as if it were moving, or as if she were waiting for it to do something. Perry thought he’d fall out of his chair, he was so nervous.

  “Perry, you really have to stop scribbling and pay attention,” she said. “And if you’re going to doodle in my class, you have to realize that everything that happens here gets judged. Since this is your work for the class, I’m going to have to give you a grade.” She took the cap off the red pen she wore on a rope around her neck and scribbled something on it. “If you don’t mind, I’ll take this up to the front of the room with the rest of the projects.”

  She walked through the desks with the piece of paper in her hands. It seemed like the slowest walk in history. The entire room leaned forward, their gazes on the paper, practically salivating, waiting to see just what it was that Perry had drawn.

  Mother Beth reached above her head and used a pushpin to secure Perry’s drawing above the chalkboard. She’d written “–5 pts.”

  Perry sat there, mortified, waiting for someone to say something or for Mother Beth to look more closely at the curves on the page and recognize what it was.

  But it never happened.

  Someone giggled, and someone else muttered something that sounded like “just a bunch of squares,” and then that was it. Mother Beth was back to her lesson, and Perry was still frozen in the exact same place, the same expression on his face.

  When he could finally breathe again, he turned to look at Jack. But the other boy was looking down at his book in front of him coolly, as if nothing had happened.

  Perry took a deep breath and tried to follow suit.

  Too close.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Now

  When I woke up the next morning, my arm had fresh bandages on it, and my razor was clean and put away. I rolled over and stared at Kit’s race car on the nightstand for a few moments before pulling the duvet up and over my head.

  Who was the man at the lake, and why the hell was he following me?

  What did he want?

  Did he know something about Emily? The symbol?

  And most important of all: Had he even really been there?

  I’d called it in as I left Piper Woods, but I didn’t have much to tell them.

  “That’s it, a man wearing all tan who ran away from you in the woods,” said Dori.

  “That’s it.”

  About an hour after I woke up, I finally sat up and reached for my phone on my nightstand. I had a missed call from Gayla. She was taking her niece to the doctor that morning and would meet me later.

  I texted Gayla back and told her I’d go to see Emily’s webmaster and that I would fill her in later. She’d simply written back K. I finished getting ready and left the apartment.

  We’d found Todd Rugel using the “contact the webmaster” link on Emily’s page. It took two requests, but he finally responded with his name and phone number. I pulled up to his home, a modern, five-story apartment building near the river. It was a beautiful building, with polished brick everywhere. I parked in an alley on the side of the building. I got out of the car and walked up to the buzzer, searching for his name.

  I rang his doorbell a little past ten, and he spoke a couple of seconds later.

  “Yeah?”

  “Todd, it’s Detective Paul. You spoke with my partner about Carmen Street? Wanted to ask you a few questions.”

  “Yeah,” he said again. “She said you’d be coming by. Come on up, third floor.”

  He buzzed the door, and I pushed it open and stepped inside the tastefully decorated, blue-and-tan lobby. I took the elevator up to the third floor and headed toward his apartment. I knocked, and the door swung open just a few seconds later.

  “Todd?” I asked the man standing in front of me.

  He tilted his head to the side. He was about five foot eight, with brown skin, curly black hair, glasses, sharp eyes, and a nervous energy that made me think he spent more of his time behind a computer than in front of people.

  “Yes,” he said. “Please, come in. You know, you could have parked out front in the permit area.”

  I frowned as I stepped inside. “How do you know I didn’t?”

  “I’ve been watching you since you parked,” he said, pointing at his open balcony door. “That overlooks the alley. You didn’t have to park there.”

  I didn’t ask him why he’d been out there in the first place. “It’s okay,” I said. “It often helps keep things quiet around the building. People see a cop car parked out front, and their minds go all sorts of places.”

  “That’s logic
al,” he said. We stopped walking at the edge of the living room, and he turned to me. “So, what can I tell you?”

  “I’m here to learn a little more about you and Emily—your relationship, how you met, how you work together,” I said. His eyebrows shot up, and I added, “Your business relationship.”

  “Oh, okay,” he said, putting a hand out for me to sit down. “Well, I do all of her web stuff—infrastructure, site architecture, maintenance, analytics. Whatever she needs. But you knew that already.”

  “Does she have a team of writers?”

  “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “I think it’s just her.”

  “And how was it that you came to start working together?” I asked.

  “I got in touch with her,” he said. “That’s how I’ve gotten about 35 percent of my clients.” He stood up and walked over to a computer, moving the mouse. He clicked a few times, pulling up a basic, two-column blog. “You know what this is?”

  I leaned closer and looked at the screen. “No. What is it?”

  “It’s Carmen Street, back when Emily first started it,” he said. “I got in touch with her when I kept seeing mentions of it. That’s what I do. I asked her what her metrics were. She didn’t even know how to track them, really. I couldn’t believe it when she finally found it and told me that her private blog had upward of three thousand visitors per month. That’s fantastic. I told her that with my help, she could double it, and we started working together for a fee. The site grew, my role grew, and here we are today.”

  I looked at the old site—it did look much different than the site Gayla and I had pulled up at the station the other night. This one looked like a basic template for a website that you could get on a free site.

  “So you do that often? I mean, approaching people and offering your services.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I send out notes at least a few times a week. It’s difficult to get new business, but once you get a client, it’s a pretty steady revenue stream for what can often be minimal work.”