by Dawn Eastman
“It’s okay,” Katie said. “You’re right, he’s an adult. And an adult who has been through a lot. I just hope he contacts her soon so she’ll stop worrying.”
“I’ll put out an unofficial alert to be on the lookout, and if nothing changes in the next day or so, we can make it more official.”
“Thanks, John,” Katie said.
14
Katie dumped her bag on the kitchen table when she got home. After a good rummage through the pockets, she found what she was looking for. Before she’d left her office, she had written down the contact information Taylor had given her when she first started her job shadowing over the summer. At the time, Katie had thought it was ridiculous that they needed so many forms filled out just to have someone watch her work.
She pulled out her phone and dialed in the number for Taylor’s roommate, Abby.
“Hello?”
She was surprised when Abby answered. Caleb had told her that no one answered their phones anymore. Everything was text or, in an emergency, voicemail. The voice sounded congested to Katie, and she briefly wondered if it was a cold or allergies. “Hello, is this Abby?”
“Yes?”
Katie couldn’t tell if she was not sure of her own name, or if Abby was just one of those students who phrased every statement as a question.
“My name is Dr. Katie LeClair.” Katie crossed her fingers and plunged on. “I was hoping to meet with you to talk about your roommate, Taylor.”
“Taylor?”
“Yes, Taylor Knox. She worked with me over the summer, and I know she’s been missing for a few days. I’d like to help find her.”
“I already talked to the police?”
Katie had her answer to the vocal tic question.
“I’m sure you did,” said Katie. “This isn’t anything official. I just really liked Taylor and …” Katie trailed off. And what? She thought she could solve the mystery of Taylor’s disappearance?
“You’re the doctor she worked with this summer?” Abby asked.
“Yes. I was very impressed with her.”
“Taylor is impressive,” Abby said. “She’s my best friend.” Her voice cracked and she sniffled loudly. Maybe not a cold or allergies.
“Would you be willing to meet me somewhere? I’d just like to talk to someone who knew her,” Katie said.
“Okay. I know she really liked you,” Abby said. “I don’t want to go anywhere because of the reporters? I almost didn’t answer when you called, but I thought it could be news on Taylor.”
“I understand.”
“You could come here, I guess?”
“I can be there in half an hour.”
“Okay,” Abby said.
Thirty-five minutes later, Katie knocked on the door of Taylor’s apartment on campus. The hallway held the distinct dorm odor that was like no other. Part teenager, part noodle-based cooking, part old furniture. It made her briefly nostalgic for her student days.
The door swung open to reveal a tiny dark-haired girl. Hair in a ponytail, no makeup, wearing sweat pants and a T-shirt that said OH, HOW I HATE OHIO STATE, and a loose cardigan. The girl looked about twelve years old. Her red-rimmed eyes and pink nose betrayed a recent bout of tears.
“Come in,” she said.
Katie lost her nostalgic feeling upon entering the apartment. The beige industrial furniture slumped sullenly in the living room. A battered dining table crouched under the weight of textbooks, papers, old mail, and takeout bags.
“Are you Abby?” Katie asked.
The girl nodded and gestured to the living room.
“Sorry about the mess,” she said. “I haven’t been able to focus on anything for more than five minutes since Taylor’s been gone.”
“I can imagine,” Katie said. “You must be so worried.”
Tears appeared immediately in Abby’s eyes, and Katie realized how she must be struggling to keep herself under control for this meeting.
Katie looked around the apartment, wondering how she could help.
“When was the last time you ate anything?”
Abby lifted a shoulder and looked down at her bare feet.
“Let me make you some toast and eggs. Do you have that stuff in your fridge?”
Abby nodded and slid into one of the chairs at the table. Katie cleared a spot on the kitchen counter and set to work scrambling eggs. She popped a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster, and in just a few minutes, she set a plate in front of Abby.
The girl picked at the eggs at first, but after a couple of bites, her pace picked up and she devoured the simple meal in less time than it had taken to make it. Some color had appeared in her cheeks and she seemed less forlorn.
Katie sat in a chair opposite Abby. “I’m sorry to have upset you,” she said.
Abby shook her head. “Everything upsets me these days. I just keep imagining these horrible scenarios. I can’t take not knowing what happened to her, you know?”
“Yes, absolutely,” said Katie. “That’s why I’m here. I want to do something to help find her.”
Abby looked up from her plate. “You think she’s still alive?”
Katie didn’t want to lie, but she didn’t want to upset Abby any further either.
“I don’t know what to think,” she said. “I know that she was a very smart young woman. I hope she’s just lying low for some reason, but we have to prepare for the worst.” Katie hesitated, but the doctor in her knew it was unfair to give false hope. “I think the longer we go without hearing from her, the lower her chances.”
Abby nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve. “That’s what I thought. So, what did you want to ask me?”
Katie had almost lost sight of her mission while tending to Abby. “I wanted to get a sense of her mood on that last day you saw her. I heard she was working on her sociology project?” Now Katie was doing it as well, making a statement into a question.
Abby rested her elbows on the table and put her chin on her hands. “That project took over her life. She was so obsessed with it?”
“Why do you think that was the case?”
“Her dad died a couple years ago? He was a cop?” Abby sat back in her chair and pulled her sleeves up over her fingers, hunching into the cardigan. “She got the idea that the guy who went to prison was innocent, and she was going to set the record straight.”
Abby smiled slightly, remembering better times.
“She’s like that, you know? She’s always running around trying to fight injustice and help the underdog.” Abby stared past Katie. “It’s one of the best things about her.”
“Do you know if she had started work on the paper yet?”
“The sociology paper?” Abby shrugged. “No idea. You can look in her room if you want. The police have already been in there.”
Katie hopped to her feet before Abby had time to think about whether that was appropriate or not. Abby got up more slowly and led the way down a hall toward the bedrooms. The last door on the left had a nameplate on it: TAYLOR. Abby turned the knob and pushed the door open.
Taylor’s room was nothing like the outer rooms in the apartment. It was fresh and bright with light-blue walls, white furniture, and black-and-white photos on the walls. Her desk was tidy, with only a few papers stacked to the right side. Katie went to it and opened a couple of the drawers. She wasn’t sure what she was looking for, but thought it would stand out in all this neatness.
“Taylor had her laptop with her when she left,” Abby said. “I remember her saying she would finish her research by the end of the weekend.”
Katie, who was a terrible backer-upper, wondered if Taylor had a backup computer drive. She certainly was more organized than Katie had ever been at her age. The top drawer of the desk held pens and pencils, phone chargers and gum. The next drawer was more familiar to Katie—filled with odds and ends like nail polish, lipstick, batteries, hand cream, plastic animal figures, and chocolate. The bottom drawer was larger and held files. Most were l
abeled by class, but there was nothing there that seemed pertinent to Taylor’s project.
Katie sighed. This had been a wasted trip.
“What are you looking for?” Abby asked.
“I was hoping that Taylor would have a backup for her computer, or some notes on her project,” Katie said. “But it looks like she took everything with her.”
“She left all these thumb drives,” Abby said. “Maybe there’s something on one of them.”
Katie looked at the drawer Abby had opened. “Thumb drives?” Katie asked.
Abby picked up the plastic elephant figure and pulled its head off to reveal the USB connector.
Katie suddenly felt very old. “These are all memory sticks?”
Abby nodded. “She collected them. I don’t know if she used them all, but she liked the animals.”
Katie took the elephant, cow, monkey, rooster, pig, and shark and put them on the desktop. She debated with herself. Should she call the police and tell them about these? What would they do with them? Instead, she decided she’d have her computer hacker brother take a look, and she could turn over anything interesting to John Carlson.
“I’d like to take these with me,” Katie said. “There might be a clue as to where Taylor could be.”
Abby shrugged. “I think it’s all just school stuff, but take them if you want. If you think it will help find her, I don’t think she would mind.”
Katie took a final look around the room. She picked up the stack of papers on the desk, which appeared to be flyers for concerts and events around campus. On the last flyer, a notice about a poetry reading, was a sticky note with names on it. Eugene Lowe was one of them. Katie grabbed it and shoved it in her pocket.
Katie followed Abby back out into the living room.
“Is there anyone else you can think of who might know where she would go if she wanted to get away?”
“Is that what you think happened?” Abby asked. “I don’t think Taylor would just go away without telling anyone where she went.” Abby’s eyes filled with tears again. “It’s why I’m sure something terrible has happened. She wouldn’t want us to worry. And she’s very close with her mom. There’s no way she would put her through this. If she was able, she’d contact us.”
Katie agreed. She hoped she was wrong, but thought that Taylor had definitely disappeared against her will. It was a sad commentary on the situation that not finding a body yet was the only consolation she had.
“But, to answer your question, the only other person I can think of is Colin, her boyfriend.”
“They’ve been together for a while, is that right?”
Abby nodded. “Two years.” She stared past Katie for a minute. “There might have been something going on with them. I’d never heard them argue, but I think they were going through a rough patch. Colin said she was obsessed with this sociology project. She was meeting with Professor Hunt all the time.” She lowered her voice as if there were other people around who might overhear. “He has a reputation, you know.”
Katie kept her face blank. “What kind of a reputation?”
“He’s dated students before,” Abby said in an offhand way. “It’s sort of an open secret.”
Katie cleared her throat. “How many students?”
Abby shrugged. “I’m a literature major, so I’ve never taken a class with him, but you hear stories. I mean, there are stories in my department too.”
“Do you think Taylor was involved with her professor?”
Abby chewed on her lower lip, thinking. “I’m not sure. She definitely went to his office hours a lot. But I think she would have told me. And she adores Colin. But Colin might have thought that. He can get pretty jealous sometimes.”
“Do you have Colin’s phone number?” Katie asked.
Abby pulled out her smartphone and scrolled with her thumb. She put it back in her pocket, and Katie heard her own phone buzz in her purse.
Katie thanked Abby, stuffed the animal thumb drives in her purse, and headed out to the parking lot.
She called Colin from her car, hoping she could arrange to meet him soon, while she was still in Ann Arbor. His phone clicked over to voicemail, and she left a quick message asking him to get back to her.
Katie pulled the sticky note out of her pocket. The names were listed with phone numbers neatly written in different colored ink, as if Taylor had filled in the list as she gathered the information.
Katie glanced down the list: Hope Frost, Brad Humphreys, Alicia Stewart, Nathan Nielsen, Danny Lloyd, Russell Hunt, and Eugene Lowe.
Katie studied the names, chewing her lip. Obviously, she knew some of them. Alicia Stewart was her patient and Eugene’s high school friend. She had married Nathan Nielson. Katie didn’t want to think about why Russell’s name was on the list. And the other three were unfamiliar. Danny Lloyd, Russell Hunt, and Hope Frost had lines through their names. Did that mean Taylor had ruled them out as suspects for her project? Or did it just mean she had talked to them? Katie wondered if the police had this information. Probably not, since it had still been in Taylor’s room.
Katie pulled out her phone and dialed Hope’s number. It went immediately to voicemail. “Hi, this is Hope. Leave a message.”
Katie skipped Russell’s name and tried Danny Lloyd.
After the second ring, a rough voice said, “Yeah?” There were loud noises in the background and men talking.
Katie cleared her throat. “Hi, my name is Katie LeClair. I’m a friend of a girl named Taylor Knox. I think you may have met her recently.”
“I already told her everything I know,” he said. “I can’t help you.”
Katie could tell he was about to hang up.
“Wait,” Katie said. “I don’t know if you’ve heard about the missing girl, but it’s Taylor. I’m just trying to find out what she was up to in the few days before she disappeared.”
The background noise became faint, and Katie assumed Danny had moved into a different area.
“I was sorry to hear about that, but I saw her a week before she disappeared. I don’t know anything. And I don’t need any trouble.”
“Can I just meet with you for a few minutes? I only want to find out what you talked about. I think she was doing some research that may have put her in danger.”
“Look, I’m sorry about your friend, but I don’t know anything about her or her disappearance.”
Katie heard a click and the dial tone. She glared at her phone.
She closed her eyes, counted slowly to ten, and took a deep breath. She pressed redial.
It rang and rang and went to voicemail. Katie called again.
The third time she called, he answered.
“What?”
Katie knew she’d have only one more chance to convince him.
“I know someone working on the investigation into Taylor’s disappearance. They may or may not know she met with you. I’d be happy to pass that information along. If you won’t talk to me, you can talk to the police.”
Danny sighed.
“I’m working late tonight,” he said. “I can talk to you for five minutes. If I get even a whiff that you’re a reporter, I’m calling the police.”
He gave Katie the address of the garage where he worked. That explained the noises.
“I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”
“Yeah, okay.”
Katie headed west of the main campus. The garage where Danny worked was located off Jackson Road near the car dealerships. Katie pulled into the auto body shop ten minutes later. She parked in the gravel lot and climbed out of her car. The noise from the highway and the pneumatic drill masked her steps as she approached the open bay. A red mustang convertible was up on a lift, and someone’s boots stuck out from underneath. Katie was debating whether to tap the boots to get the owner’s attention when she noticed a tall blond man approaching. His hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and he wore blue coveralls with combat boots.
After lightly wiping his
hand on a rag, he extended it for Katie to shake. His nails were rimmed in dark oil, but his grip was firm.
“I assume you’re Katie?” he said.
“Yes, thanks for meeting with me.”
He narrowed his eyes. “It’s not like you gave me a choice. I sensed you wouldn’t let up until I met with you. And now you have. I still don’t have any information for you.”
He turned and walked toward a glassed-in office area. Katie followed.
He sat behind a beat-up desk piled with manuals, files, papers, and old takeout food bags. He gestured at a chair with metal legs and a cracked vinyl seat that might have been army green at one time but was now dark gray.
Katie sat gingerly on the edge. “Can you remember the date that you met with Taylor?”
Danny glanced at a wall calendar pinned behind the desk. He pointed to the second week of October. “It was somewhere in here.” He gestured at a couple of days in mid-October. “I remember because she commented on a yellow Camaro we had up on the lift, and that guy picked up his car on the seventeenth.”
That was the week before she disappeared, just as he had claimed. Katie wondered if he was really as nonchalant about Taylor as he seemed.
“What did she want to talk to you about?”
Danny sighed and leaned forward to rest his elbows on the desk. “She wanted to talk about Heather Stone. Do you know anything about her?”
Katie nodded. “She was killed twelve years ago on Halloween.”
Danny rubbed his eyes. “Right. Heather and I dated the spring before she died. She had already dumped me by the time she died, but the police wanted to dredge up that old relationship. They seemed to think I might have held a grudge.” Danny spread his hands out. “Like a brief student romance would cause someone to kill his ex. If that were true, no one would ever survive college.”
“Did you go to University of Michigan as well?”
Danny shook his head. “No, I picked up a few classes at the community college, and then I opened this place.”
“How did you meet Heather, then?”
“Back in our early twenties, my friends and I would crash frat parties and other events on campus. It was a good way to meet girls.” He shrugged. “Too old for that now. And honestly, Heather put me off of college girls anyway.”