Thread of Hope jt-1

by Jeff Shelby

  “Are you close to her?29"› I asked.

  Her gaze shifted to the window. “I like to think so.”

  “How about your husband? She’s close with him?”

  She smiled. “She’s probably closer to him than to me. She's our only child and she’s always been daddy’s little girl, as trite as that sounds.”

  I thought about what Matt told me, that there may have been something ugly going on between father and daughter. There was no hesitation when Olivia Jordan answered my question, no deciding whether to tell me something that wasn’t true or dress up something that was ugly. Her words seemed earnest, sincere.

  “Things between you and Jon are okay?”

  She arched an eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

  “Your relationship is good?”

  She let the eyebrow fall. “I don’t see how that has anything to do with Meredith.”

  “I’m trying to get a picture of Meredith’s life,” I said. “I wanna know what was going on around her. She lives with the two of you. And every time you say ‘I don’t see what this has to do with Meredith’ you are wasting time in helping to find her. So please. Stop.”

  Olivia Jordan’s face reddened and she started to stay something, but caught herself. She brought her hands up and fiddled with the scarf for a moment before answering.

  “Jon and I are alright,” she said.

  “Alright?”

  “We’ve been married almost twenty years,” she said, her voice flat. “He works a lot, more than I’d like. Do we argue? Do we fight? Yes, of course we do. But if you’re asking me is there some sort of problem or underlying tension that might be affecting Meredith, the answer is an emphatic no.”

  I got the impression that her marriage was in more trouble than she was letting on, but I wasn’t sure in what way. I didn’t believe whatever problem was there had caused Meredith’s disappearance but it did help me get a clearer picture of her life.

  “You said she didn't run away, that something’s happened to her,” I said. “Why do you think that?”

  Olivia studied her coffee mug for a moment, as if the answer lurked somewhere in the dark liquid. Then she looked at me.

  “My husband told me about you,” she said. “I’m sorry.”

  I nodded.

  “What was your daughter’s name?”

  I swallowed hard, felt the familiar dry mouth that arrived any time I said her name. “Elizabeth. Her name is Elizabeth.”

  “That’s my middle name,” she said, not quite smiling. “I don’t mean to be insensitive, Mr. Tyler, but when she…disappeared…did you feel something? Something that told you your child was in trouble?”

  All of the moisture was gone from my mouth and my throat tightened. I nodded again.

  “A parent knows, right? They know when something’s gone wrong with their child.” Olivia Jordan nodded, affirming her own words. “That’s how I know that something has happened to Meredith.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  Olivia Jordan gave me a list of Meredith’s closest friends. Phone numbers and addresses. I recognized the majority of the names from the basketball team. I considered calling the names I didn’t recognize, but knew I’d only reach their parents at home and they weren’t the ones I wanted to speak with. Teenagers were an insular group and even the most well meaning ones kept things from their parents. If I really wanted to know what was going on in Meredith’s life, I needed to speak with the kids without any filtering by their parents.

  I called Jon Jordan at his office and his assistant put me through immediately.

  “You spoke to my wife?” he asked, the familiar edge and tone back in his voice.

  “Yes.”

  “And?”

  “And she answered my questions,” I said. “She was helpful.”

  “In what way?”

  “In that she didn’t refuse to answer anything I asked,” I said.

  “Okay.” There was a pause and I knew he was fighting back the urge to press for details. “So what do you plan to do next?”

  “I’m heading over to the school right now. I was hoping you could make sure that I’m welcome on the campus.”

  “Hold on,” he said and the line went quiet.

  My work in the previous few years had taken me onto school campuses numerous times and rarely was I received without interference unless I had someone clearing the way. That wasn’t a bad thing. Parents and schools were looking to protect the children and that’s the way it should be. The general public can’t have unfettered access to a school, particularly to juveniles.

  But I wasn’t someone who was there doing the wrong thing. I was looking to help, not hurt, and that required jumping the hurdles that were in place to protect. Coronado was a public high school, but it operated like a private one, letting parents exert more influence than it should’ve. I was guessing that Jordan had the most weight to throw around and could clear a path.

  “You’re good to go,” Jordan said, coming back on the line. “Check in at the main desk, they’ll sign you in and give you a pass. You have any issues, let me know.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Know anything else?”

  “Your home was my first stop.”

  “What should I be doing?”

  It was an impossible question to answer correctly for a parent whose child was missing. They wanted to be active, to help, to search. But when you didn’t know where to go, it was a fruitless endeavor.

  “Stay by your phone,” I said. “Hope she calls. Think about the last few days. Make notes about anything you can think of. Her behavior, her statements, anything that comes to mind, no matter how trivial or miniscule. Put it all down on paper so that you don’t have to keep it in your head. I asked your wife to do the same.”

  “Alright,” he said. “I want to meet tonight so I can hear what you’ve learned.”

  “That’s fine.”

  He named a restaurant and we agreed on eight o’clock.

  “Eight tonight,” he reiterated. “I hope you have some information for me.”

  I was hoping for the same thing.

  FORTY

  Jordan told me that he’d called Coronado and arranged for a visitor’s pass for me. What he didn’t tell me was that I’d also find Gina Coleman.

  She was sitting in a chair outside the main office, paging through the school newspaper.

  She set the paper down when she saw me. “You took longer than I thought.”

  “You my babysitter?”

  “Depends.” She smiled. “Do you need babysitting?”

  “No.”

  “Then I’m just along for the ride.” She paused, watching me.

  I eyed the turtleneck she was wearing. “How’s your neck?”

  She pulled down the collar. There were several finger-sized purple and red marks just to the right of her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She let the collar slide back up her neck. “I’ll live.” She messed with the collar, getting it back in place. “So. How angry are you that I’m here?”

  I wasn’t angry. I was expecting something like this. Jordan wasn’t the type to take orders from someone else without pushing back. This was his way of pushing back. If he’d sent one of the two goons, I would’ve been angry. But Gina was competent and had been honest with me thus far.

  I shrugged and walked past her into the office.

  Lana McCauley was behind the desk. She slid a visitor’s badge across the counter to me. “Mr. Jordan arranged this for you, Joseph.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Please don’t misuse it.” Her tone was filled with disapproval.

  “I won’t. I’m just trying to help.” I hung the pass around my neck. “If I need to see a student’s schedule, who should I speak with?”

  “Me,” Lana said, her lips pursed, her thick eyebrows furrowed together. “The student’s name?”

  “Derek Weathers.”

  Lana tapped at her keyboard
.

  “What are you doing?” Gina asked, coming up next to me at the counter.

  I ignored her.

  The printer next to Lana’s computer buzzed to life and quickly spat out a piece of paper. She retrieved it and laid it on the counter in front of me. “There you are.”

  “I need a couple of others,” I said.

  Her lips pursed some more and her eyebrows furrowed deeper. “Joseph, I’m not sure…”

  “I’m trying to help find Meredith Jordan,” I said. “Nothing else. I can have Mr. Jordan call and confirm that again, if you’d like. But I want the schedules.”

  She tried to hold my gaze, but couldn’t. I didn’t like putting her on the spot and undermining what she saw as her domain. But I was hired to find Meredith and to help Chuck. I couldn’t worry about ruffled feathers.

  She shifted her eyes away from me and began typing. “Names?”

  I gave her the ones I wanted and thirty seconds later, the printer produced several more sheets of paper, She pushed them across the counter to me.

  I took them. “Thank you, Mrs. McCauley.”

  She gave a curt nod in dismissal.

  Gina and I stepped out into the hall.

  “You were kind of rude to her,” Gina said.

  I paged through the papers in my hand. “She wanted to have a pissing contest. If it was her kid that was missing, you think she’d give a shit about printing out a couple of schedules?”

  Gina shuffled her feet, but didn’t respond.

  When looking for my own daughter, I’d learned immediately to be direct with people, to put the onus on them. Most people didn’t understand the urgency in looking for someone that was missing. It wasn’t my job to make them understand. It was my job to get the information I wanted. If people got their feelings hurt, that wasn’t my problem. I wasn’t looking to make friends. I was looking for a teenage girl no one else could find. That was the only thing that mattered.

  “You know the layout of the school?” I asked. “Where the classrooms are?”

  “I know it well enough,” Gina said.

  I held out Derek Weathers’ schedule. “I wanna start with him.”

  FORTY-ONE

  Derek Weathers was in Room 246, studying AP English with a teacher named Mr. Ridley. The room was at the end of a long, wide hallway lined with classrooms and blue and red lockers. Painted signs hung on the walls in between the classrooms, exhorting various sports teams. The carpeting that lined the floor appeared to have just been vacuumed. It was quiet.

  We reached the end of the hallway and stood across from the classroom door. I was expecting a bell to signal the end of class, but instead it was a series of chimes that sent the students streaming out into the hallway, turning the quiet into an eruption of voices and laughter.

  Derek was one of the last students out of Room 246. A blue baseball cap sat backward on his head and a pencil was stuck behind his left ear. He wore a black Rolling Stones T-shirt that showed off the muscles in his chest, tattered cargo shorts and flip flops. A textbook hung from his right hand.

  He saw us immediately and froze in the doorway. His buddy Matt nearly ran up his back.

  “The hell are you doing, dude?” Matt asked, annoyed, chucking him in the back of the shoulder.

  Derek didn’t answer and Matt followed his gaze to us.

  “Got a minute?” I said to Derek.

  Derek’s face settled into the same cocky sneer I’d witnessed at the hotel. “Not really, bro. Got history now.”

  I held up the papers in my hand. “We got you a pass. Bro.”

  He shrugged.

  I motioned for the door at the end of the hallway and he started that way. Matt followed behind him.

  “I didn’t get you one,” I said to Matt. “Take off.”

  Matt’s face reddened. He pivoted and headed down the hallway, glancing back at us once before he disappeared around a corner.

  Gina, Derek and I walked through the glass door at the end of the hallway and stepped outside. The air was still cool, a slight breeze blowing across the athletic fields toward us. Moisture on the grass glistened in the sunlight.

  “Make it quick, alright?” Derek said, frowning at us. “I don’t wanna miss-”

  Before I could say anything, Gina grabbed his left arm and swung him hard into the building. His back thudded against the brick facade, the book flew from his hand and he grunted.

  “Don’t be an asshole, Derek,” Gina said, right in his face, a hand pressing against his chest. “I know it’s a challenge for you. But do your best.”

  He tried to put the sneer back on his face, but he was missing the arrogance he needed to make it work.

  “You know where Meredith Jordan is?” I asked. “And before you answer, think about this. If you lie to me, I’ll find out.” I stepped in right behind Gina. “Then I will break both of your arms. That isn’t an idle threat just meant to scare you, to make me seem tough. If you lie to me, I will find you and I will fracture your forearms.” I took his left arm in my hand and pressed my thumb into his ulna. “Right there is where I’ll do it. I’ve done it to guys a lot bigger than you. It will hurt like hell and you’ll cry and you’ll have trouble jerking off for six to eight weeks.” I stared at him. “So think before you answer.”

  He yanked his arm out of my grasp and pushed Gina’s hand off his chest. He looked back and forth between us several times. Indecision and fear lined his face.

  “I don’t know where she is,” he finally said.

  Neither Gina nor I spoke, waiting to see if he had anything else to add.

  He kept his mouth shut.

  “Who would know where she is?” I asked him.

  He licked his lips, trying to regain some composure. “Megan’s her best friend. If anyone would know, it’d be here.”

  “She doesn’t know.”

  He shrugged. “Then I don’t know, dude.”

  “Tell me about the time you saw her father hit her.”

  He couldn’t hide his surprise. “How’d you know about that?”

  “Doesn’t matter.”

  He blinked several times. “Fuckin Matt, right?” He waved a hand. “Doesn’t matter. Yeah, I saw it.”

  “What happened?”

  “Matt and I had gone over to pick her up,” he said, shifting his weight from his left foot to his right. “We were going camping for the weekend, out near Julian. Nobody answered the front door, so we went in. We went out back and her dad was yelling at her in their pool house. We didn’t know what to do, so we just waited. Couple of minutes later her dad comes storming out, doesn’t say shit and goes right by us into the house.” He looked at Gina, then back to me. “I went into the pool house to get her.” He pointed to the left side of his face. “He nailed her. Entire cheek looked like a tomato.”

  I took a deep breath. “What were they fighting about?”

  “She wouldn’t tell me right then,” he said. “Just wanted to grab her stuff and get out of there for the weekend. So we got her stuff and the three of us bailed.” He shook his head. “She told me later that he was pissed off about a grade on a test or some shit like that.”

  I thought about what Megan had told me, about the bruises she’d attributed to basketball. “Had he done it before?”

  He hesitated, then nodded. “I think so. She’s never said anything, but…I’ve seen other stuff.”

  I glanced at Gina. Her face was blank, fixed on Derek.

  “If you don’t know where she is, who would?” I asked.

  He started to say something, then stopped. “I’m done.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not a cop,” he said. He looked at Gina. “And neither are you. I don’t have to say shit to you.”

  “You don’t care that your girlfriend is missing?” Gina asked.

  “My dad’s an attorney,” he said, the surliness I’d seen before returning in full effect. He produced a cell phone and held it up like a trophy. “You wanna talk to me an
ymore, you run it by him.”

  He stared at me for a long moment, then looked at Gina. Satisfied that he’d stymied us, he chuckled and slipped the phone back into the pocket of his shorts. “That’s what I thought.” He picked up his book and gave each of us one last look. “Later.”

  He walked back through the door and into the high school.

  FORTY-TWO

  We stopped back in the main office so I could ask Lana McCauley to print me out one more thing. She did so without uttering a word.

  Gina and I walked outside into the courtyard at the front of the school. There was a large stone fountain in the middle of it and water trickled quietly.

  “Off the record,” I said to her. “Jordan seem like the type of guy who’d hit his daughter?”

  “I’m not sure what that type is.”

  “What have you seen, Gina?”

  She took a deep breath and sat down on the edge of the bench that encircled the fountain. “If I hadn’t seen anything, I’d tell you that, no, he’s not capable of it. He’s a good father. He’s got a brutal temper, but he’s a good father.”

  I sat down next to her. “But you have seen something.”

  She bit down on her bottom lip for a moment. Fine wrinkles rippled across her forehead. She brushed her hair back away from her face.

  “That thing he was talking about back there?” she finally said. “The camping trip? I remember when she came back. It was a Sunday night. Jon and Olivia left that morning, went to Chicago to meet with some investors. I drove him to the airport.” Her mouth twisted aimlessly for a moment. “Olivia went into the airport first. Jon hung back. He gave me an envelope to give to Meredith when she got home. He told me they’d fought before she left and he felt bad about it. He wanted me to make sure I gave it to Meredith the moment she came home.”

  The sun was hot on my neck. The breeze from the other side of the school where we’d spoken to Derek was nonexistent. I kept listening.

  “She came home late,” she continued. “About nine or so. I went up to her room and gave her the envelope. She was unpacking her bag. She opened it right in front of me, started crying as she read it.”