by J. S. Bailey
The victims’ names—Megan, Josie, Lauren, and Sarah—were listed along with those of their parents. Sidney had never heard of the girls. She had, however, heard of the latter victim’s parents, because she’d lived next door to them for close to eighteen years.
As Sidney barreled across the bridge into Kentucky, it dawned on her that she had never been to Cold Spring. Jessica mentioned that it was on U.S. 27. Following the signs, she took the first exit ramp on the left and merged into a line of slowing cars driving south out of Cincinnati.
She got stopped at a traffic light by the main entrance of Northern Kentucky University. Traffic crept forward. A few lights up, she spotted a green sign emblazoned with the name of the park and a pointing arrow. She turned right. Her heart pounded as if she had just jogged all the way from work. There. On the left. The park entrance.
She whipped her car into the lot so fast the tires squealed. She put the car in park and looked around. She recognized the Roman-Dells’ gold Lexus sitting a few spaces down from hers, but Wayne’s pickup truck was nowhere to be seen. They had left already? She might have passed them on the highway. The fact that they were gone did not necessarily mean they had returned home.
Some of Jessica’s relatives milled about smoking on the porch of a giant white building that proclaimed to be “The Kemper House,” judging from the fancy sign posted on the lawn. Jessica’s father leaned against the porch railing, holding a can of Bud Light in one hand while he talked to a bronze-skinned man who looked a little bit like Jessica’s Uncle Esteban but was somewhat fatter and had less hair. A cousin, she supposed. Jessica had about a million of them.
She got out of the car and ran up to them. “Stephen!” she said, panting. “How long ago did Jessica and Wayne leave?”
Stephen Roman-Dell stood about six-two, and his blondish hair grayed at the temples. Neatly trimmed sideburns stretched down to his jaw line. He didn’t appear to be a liar like the article made him out to be, but she knew that he and Maria had lied to Jessica for her entire life. Sidney wanted to ask them why but didn’t dare bring the matter up for fear of what she might learn.
Stephen’s eyebrows knit together when he saw her. “About twenty minutes ago. Why?”
The Hispanic man he had been talking to gave Sidney a skeptical look that made her feel more out of place than she already was. “I need to talk to them,” she said. “It’s really important.”
Stephen frowned and set his beer on the porch railing, swatting away a fly that had attempted to perch on the rim of the can.
“Have you tried calling her?”
“Her phone keeps going to voicemail. Did they say where they were going?”
Sadness filled his eyes as he shook his head. “Jess didn’t even say hi to me today.” He turned to his comrade. “She say anything to you, David?”
“Not a word.” Like all of the Reyeses Sidney had met, David lacked even the slightest Mexican accent. He brushed his hand absently through his sparse hair. “I thought she looked mad the whole time she was here.”
Sidney felt a flash of annoyance at her friend for being such a jerk to her own family, even if they were a bunch of liars. “Is Rachel at least still here?” Maybe she could talk to her instead.
Rachel needed to know the truth, too.
Stephen shook his head again. “She and Eric left around the same time Jess and Wayne did.” He started to lift his can of Bud Light to his lips but set it down again. “I noticed your cousin barely left Jess’s side the whole afternoon. Are they more than friends now?”
Like she knew. “I’m sure at least one of them wants it to be that way.”
“I knew it!” David exclaimed.
Stephen made a sort of half-smile. “Tell Jess we’re happy for her. And tell Wayne I didn’t mean to embarrass him like I did in the store one time. He’ll know what I mean.” His smile broadened. “Boy, will he.”
“I’ll do that,” she said, not having a clue what that last bit was about. “Sorry, but I’ve got to go now. I’m kind of in a hurry.”
Some of the cheer left his face. “If I hear from any of them, I’ll let them know you were here.”
“Thanks. Bye, guys.” She retreated to the car. When she had buckled herself in, she looked through the windshield at the porch one last time. Stephen and David had their eyes fixed on her like she was E.T. going home. They probably thought that the majority of her marbles had rolled out of her head and into the river. Maybe they had.
She made it back to Eleanor before four o’clock. The red pickup truck had returned to the driveway. She could hear its engine still ticking when she got out of the car.
“Jessica!” she exclaimed when she burst into the house, deciding not to waste time getting to the point. “I’ve got awful news!”
“She’s not here,” Wayne said, coming down the stairs. His leg braces lay beside the table in the kitchen, so he must have been exercising by walking up and down the steps without them. “She and Rachel decided to have a girls’ day out. What happened?” He stopped on the bottom step. His eyes bore a haunted look that put her senses on red alert.
She wanted to ask him the same thing. “I’ve been trying to track you guys down for over an hour and a half. Do you know where they went?”
“I have no clue.” He sank into one of the kitchen chairs and stretched his legs out in front of him as best as he could. “Why aren’t you at work?”
Her mind had become so overwhelmed in her quest to locate her friend that at first she didn’t know what he was talking about.
“Work?”
“Yes, that place where you’ve supposedly been employed for three years.”
“Oh. Work.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “I developed a sudden illness that mysteriously cured itself as soon as I left the station. Wayne, I have some really bad news.”
“It can’t be as bad as my news,” he said.
His tone made her gut squirm. “Why, what’s your news?”
“You tell me yours, first.”
“Fine.” She got out her laptop with shaking hands and set it on the kitchen table. She found the archived article again in less than a minute. She slid the computer across the table to him.
“Read it.”
He turned the laptop around so he could see the screen. His forehead creased, and she thought his face might have paled a few shades. “Wow.” He leaned back in the chair and rubbed at the slight stubble on his chin, seemingly lost in thought.
“What do you think?” she asked.
He stared dolefully at the screen. “Those murders happened two days before Jerry’s disappearance.”
“You saw that, too.”
“It’s kind of hard to miss.” He fell silent, but she could tell that behind his eyes his mind was churning. “Jessica told me that Jerry did something terrible, but he wouldn’t say what it was. I guess this is it.”
She’d come to the same conclusion the moment she’d read the thing. “Can you really blame him for not wanting to tell anyone?”
He didn’t answer, still lost in his own thoughts. “Someone found him out. That’s got to be why he was killed.”
“Exactly! If Jerry really did do this,” she said, gesturing at her computer, “and if Jessica told him her name when she met him in the graveyard, he’d have made the connection that she’s related to Stephen and Maria. That’s why he followed her here!”
“You think Jessica’s parents are responsible for his death?”
She shrugged. Two boring accountants, cold-blooded murderers? She almost laughed at the thought. “Maybe they didn’t do the actual deed, but they have to have played a part in it. Otherwise this would be too big of a coincidence. I think he wants Jessica to lead him to her parents so he can hurt them.”
The muscles hardened in Wayne’s face, and tears brimmed in his eyes. “Jessica zoned out and started talking nonsense at the reunion. She acted like she didn’t know who any of us were for a minute, and she kept talking about how she wanted t
o hurt Maria just like Maria hurt her when she was a kid.”
She swallowed. “Do you think it was Jerry talking?”
“I hope not. That would mean he’s already been in contact with her parents.”
Sidney didn’t want to think about what that might mean for the Roman-Dells. “Why did you let her go out with Rachel if she was acting like that?”
“I think it was Rachel’s way of keeping an eye on her for the rest of the afternoon. And I can’t just stop her from hanging out with her own sister.”
“Do you have Rachel’s cell phone number?”
“I wish I did.”
“And you don’t know where they went.”
He shook his head. “I don’t know if they knew where they were going.”
“Ugh.” This was frustrating. “This really has been a day for bad news, hasn’t it?”
Wayne leaned back in his chair and kneaded his reddening eyelids. “I haven’t even told you mine yet.”
He hadn’t? “What could be worse news than all this?”
He told her.
When he finished, he folded his arms and gazed at her with something like deep remorse shining in his eyes.
She had felt the blood drain out of her face while he spoke.
“And you didn’t tell Jessica?”
“Not much to tell, is there?”
“Could be a coincidence.”
He sighed. “Maybe.” But he didn’t look convinced, and now that the facts he’d laid out sank in, she wasn’t so sure she was convinced, either.
“All right,” she said, clasping her hands together and trying not to think about what he’d just said. “We can ponder that some other time when we’re all relaxing on a beach somewhere. But right now we’ve got to find Jessica!”
“She’ll turn up soon enough if we stay here. They won’t be gone all day.”
Why couldn’t Wayne understand how much danger their friend was in? “Don’t you get it? Somebody’s going to be hurt. That’s the whole point of this. Jerry’s killers were never caught, and now he’s going to make them pay.”
“How is finding Jessica going to stop him from doing that when she’s already seen her parents today?”
She moved to grab up her purse. “Because if we find or get a hold of Jessica, maybe she can try to convince him to be nice and move on without hurting anybody.”
Wayne lifted an eyebrow. “Move on to where, Sidney?”
“Hades,” she said without missing a beat. “I’ve heard the weather’s great.”
Where do you propose we go?” Wayne asked as he fastened the braces around his legs.
Sidney couldn’t stop tapping her foot on the floor. Her nerves were stretched so thin that the slightest touch would have made them snap. “I think Rachel’s staying with their Uncle Esteban. Maybe they’re hanging out there catching up on old times.”
Wayne rose and dug a phone book out of the cupboard.
“There’s no sense in driving out there unless we know for certain that’s where they are.” He plopped the book onto the table and thumbed through it. “Raleigh, Raymond, Remington, here we go. .Reyes.” He leaned closer to the page. “Esteban isn’t listed.”
“Are you sure that’s the right phone book? I think he lives near that park in Cold Spring.”
“Yeah, it’s the Cincinnati edition.” His eyes scanned the page. “Hmm. Marco Reyes is listed. I wonder if he’s still at the reunion.”
“Marco?”
“He’s Maria and Esteban’s cousin who does some weird tranny magic show. Hand me the phone.”
She passed the cordless phone over to him, and he dialed the number printed in the phonebook. He swore. “Nobody’s home.”
He glanced at the book again. “Ernesto’s listed, too.” He punched in Ernesto’s number. His face lit up. “Hi, Ernesto? This is Wayne Thompson. I met you earlier at the reunion. I was with Jessica. Uh-huh. I was wondering if you might have Esteban’s phone number. I really need to get a hold of Jessica, and I think she and Rachel might have gone back to his house.” He held the phone away from his mouth for a moment. “Get me a pen.”
She leapt up and swiped a pencil off of the counter. It would have to do. “Okay, go ahead,” he continued. He jotted down a ten-digit number in the white margin to the left of the names. “Thanks. Yes, I’d say it’s very possible that we’ll be meeting again. Same here. Uh-huh. Bye.”
He ended the call and immediately dialed Esteban’s number.
“Keep your fingers crossed,” he said.
She crossed all of her fingers. Nothing wrong with a healthy dose of superstition.
“Hello, Esteban? This is Wayne Thompson. Is Jessica there right now?” He swore again. “Did she say where she and Rachel were going? Wait. I thought this was your home phone number. I really need to talk to her, and her cell phone’s dead. Thanks.” He scribbled down another number. “Do you have Rachel or Eric’s cell phone numbers, by chance? Oh. Thanks anyway.”
He hung up and took an exasperated breath. “This is starting to get ridiculous.”
She held her own breath while he dialed the next number. Please be there, Jessica. Please, somebody answer the phone.
Wayne set the phone down after several seconds. “Nada. If they’re there, nobody’s picking up.”
“Not even Eric?”
“For all I know, he’s their chauffeur.”
“You think we should drive out there anyway, just in case?”
“I don’t really see the point.”
Sidney gritted her teeth. “We can’t just sit around here waiting for something to happen!”
“Yes, we can. Besides, I don’t even know the guy’s address. He’s going to think I’m some kind of overprotective nut going after his niece if I call him back and ask him where he lives.”
“You could call that Ernesto guy back and ask him.”
“No. Listen.” His face was stern. “You know Rachel is going to drop Jessica off here before going back to Esteban’s place. If we drive back to Cold Spring or wherever, we might miss them. And I think we should talk to the two of them at the same time, for obvious reasons.”
Sidney nodded. “You’d think someone would have mentioned it,” she said. “You know, that Sarah existed.”
“You’d think.”
“Or even if they hadn’t wanted to mention it, there would have been pictures. Old craft projects. Drawings. Stuff kids make. It’s like they buried her memories right along with her.”
He shrugged. “Maybe it was less painful that way.”
The phone’s shrill ring cut through the air, nearly sending Sidney’s heart into orbit. Wayne snatched up the phone and thumbed the button. “Hello?” A pause. “It’s Esteban again,” he mouthed. “They went to Kenwood? Geez. Okay. Just out of curiosity, does the name Sarah Roman-Dell mean anything to you?” Another pause. “Hello? Esteban?”
He removed the phone from his ear. “I don’t believe it. He hung up on me.”
ERIC HAD dropped Jessica and Rachel off at the Kenwood Towne Center on the northeast side of Cincinnati and then left to browse the Barnes and Noble across the street for more reading material that he could look at on the flight home. In reality, Jessica knew he’d left so he wouldn’t have to suffer looking at women’s clothing with them all afternoon.
She wished she could have gone with him, because walking around with Rachel here in the high-end mall in her crappy clothes made Jessica feel as out of place as a hobo in the White House. She’d only been to the mall one other time when she’d accompanied Wayne on one of his excursions to Macy’s. It hadn’t been enjoyable then, and it wasn’t now, but Rachel had insisted that she come with her. Jessica figured spending time together here was better than not spending time together at all.
“How can anyone afford this stuff?” she said as they wandered through Dillard’s. She caught sight of a black, spaghetti-strap dress that bore a $300 price tag and winced. That was as much as she made in an entire week at American Drea
m.
“Credit cards and eternal debt, baby,” Rachel said. “Ooh, isn’t this one cute?” She pulled a glittery red dress off of another rack and held it up to the front of her, striking what was probably supposed to be a seductive pose. “How do I look?”
Jessica pretended to give it great thought. “Like a tramp.”
“Thought so.”
She put the dress back and wandered off to another part of the women’s section. Jessica fell in step behind her, barely glancing at the other clothes. It felt like railroad spikes were being hammered into her skull. She had taken some Tylenol on the ride over, and it hadn’t kicked in yet. If she could just take a nap and sleep it off she would be fine, but she’d have to wait until Rachel had had her fill of window-shopping before she could find a nice, comfy bed to lie down in.
Rachel was saying something. “What was that?” Jessica asked, coming up beside her.
Rachel turned. “Oh, I thought you were right behind me. I wanted to know if you felt like zoning out again.”
“No, but I’m not feeling so great anymore.” She massaged her temples. This headache was starting to make the week’s bizarre pains feel like tickles in comparison.
“I saw you popping pills in the car. Headache?”
She nodded. “It’s about a twelve on the Richter Scale.”
“The Richter Scale only goes to ten.”
“I know.”
Rachel hoisted her purse straps farther up on her shoulder. “You don’t think this has anything to do with that weird spell you had earlier, do you?”
The thought had crossed Jessica’s mind, but she had dis-missed it immediately. More likely the headache had been birthed from her confrontation with Maria. “Only if they’re both from stress.”