by A J Rivers
“Yes,” he says. “But most bracelets like that do.”
Again, he starts to walk away, but I hold my ground.
“It says ‘Call Me JMEG’,” I say.
Victor turns around slowly and stares at me with fire in his eyes. “How do you know that?”
“Is that what it says?” I ask.
“Emma, how do you know what the inscription is on a bracelet belonging to a nearly dead teenager found in the woods?”
“It doesn’t belong to her. And I know that because I bought it thirteen years ago as a gift. JMEG. J-M-E-G. Julia Meyer, Emma Griffin.”
He draws in a sharp breath through his nose and pulls me into an office to the side of the hallway. Sam steps in behind us and closes the door.
“What the hell is going on here, Emma?” Victor asks.
“I don’t know all the details yet,” I say. “I’m still working them out. But I need you to talk to the officers at my house and get that hand to the lab. They need to run DNA from the hand against DNA from that girl. Then call Claire and Bill Meyer. They’re Julia’s parents. They’ll need to give DNA, too.”
“The hand doesn’t belong to the girl,” Victor says.
“No, but it could belong to her mother.”
Chapter Fifty-Five
“Emma, are you going to explain to me what’s going on?” Sam asks when we’re back in the car headed to my house.
“In the news report about Marissa’s death, they were interviewing some of the neighbors. One said she didn’t know the family who lived there very well. That they were quiet and kept to themselves. Sometimes they would have people over, but not very often. The one thing the neighbor did remember was that when her children were young, a little girl who lived at Marissa’s house would come to the park with her nanny,” I say.
“Marissa?” Sam asks.
I shake my head. “No. She said the nanny was young, like a student at the college, and that she stopped seeing both the nanny and the little girl around the same time. She figured the family must have split up. In the surveillance evidence from Carla Viceroy’s death, there are images of Julia at the mall that night with a little girl. She was bringing her to see Santa. That’s not something a nanny usually does.”
“It could be. Depending on how busy the parents are,” Sam says.
“She’s talking to someone off screen. And in her day planner it mentions a visit that night. Just like the other days that say she has a visit. A nanny doesn’t call it a ‘visit’ when she is taking care of children. She calls it work. She was visiting her daughter,” I say. “That’s what Marissa wanted to tell me.”
“Her parents didn’t mention anything about a grandchild,” Sam says, “Did they? Wouldn’t that be something that they would want to know about when she disappeared? And why would the child not live with her mother or grandparents?”
“Her parents don’t know about her,” I say. “Remember, in the day planner it says to tell her mother that she was volunteering at the hospital. A position that doesn’t even exist. Much like the study-abroad program she took seventeen years ago. It was for the end of the first semester, and the second semester as well, right? About seven months? Long enough for a girl who just found out she’s pregnant to conceal it. Have the baby. Come back and start school as if nothing ever happened.”
“Why would she do that?” Sam asks.
“Because she thought her parents would never accept the pregnancy. She thought she was doing what would protect both of them.”
“But what happened between then and now?” Sam asks. “And what does it have to do with this calendar and the missing girls?”
“That’s what I’m still piecing together.”
“Emma, I have to go back to Sherwood. When I left, I said I would get back as soon as possible. A lot of people took off for the season because I said I would be there.”
He sounds regretful, but I shake my head to try to ease his worry. “I know you do. That’s okay.”
“Are you sure?” he asks.
“Of course. You’re the sheriff. They need you. I can handle this.”
“Promise me you’ll accept help. That you won’t just do things on your own,” he says.
“You know I can’t promise that, Sam,” I say.
“Then promise to be careful. To take care of yourself,” he says.
I nod. “Always.”
After Sam leaves, I change my clothes and go to the university. I stop by Professor Harris’s office, but he isn’t there, so I go to the administration office. Nancy looks up at me with a smile.
“Hello, Emma,” she says. “How is everything going?”
She looks hopeful, but I don’t want to give anything away. I nod.
“Going well. I have a few things I’m trying to figure out, and I think you might be able to help me. Are there any pictures or participant lists for the criminal justice club? I have a bit of a hunch I want to follow up on, but I need to have the names of people who were involved in the club and any pictures that they might have taken for the University,” I say.
“Sure,” Nancy says. “I can get that for you. Just give me one second.” She starts typing commands into the computer. “All clubs registered with the University have to maintain records with the participants, insurance forms, dues, all those details. We maintain the records for the alumni association, so we should have them all the way from the beginning.”
“Thank you. I really appreciate it,” I say.
She prints out a stack of papers and hands them to me. I scan through them and notice the dates on the top of the last page. It should be listing the participants of the first club, but the years are off.
“Oh,” I say. “I think you missed a couple of years.”
“Did I?” she frowns. She looks at the screen and shakes her head. “Nope. That’s all of them.”
“Professor Harris mentioned the club has been going for twenty years,” I say.
“He must be counting the years that he taught before he transferred here,” she says.
“I didn’t realize he started teaching at another school.”
She nods. “Came here highly recommended, though.”
“I’m sure he was. I’ll clarify it with him when I can catch up with him. I went by his office, but he wasn’t there,” I say.
“I wouldn’t think he would be,” she says.
I was reading through the lists waiting for something to pop out at me, but now my eyes snap up to her. “What do you mean?”
“He’s probably seeing to the arrangements for the funeral.”
My stomach sinks. “Funeral?”
“Yes. For Marissa. The woman who was murdered? She was his housekeeper.” Nancy shudders. “They found her in his driveway. Can you even imagine? And he’s just too kind-hearted to make Marissa’s husband try to put together all the arrangements himself.”
My mind explodes in a rush of connections and flashing links as images and words settle into place. Holding up the file, I thank Nancy again and rush out of the office. My first stop is the library’s computer bank. It only takes a few minutes for the picture I was looking for to come up.
“That piece of shit,” I mutter to myself.
A few more minutes later, papers in hand, I leave the library and make a phone call. When I’m done, I head for the seminar room in the building across the street. Murillo is just getting her notes written on the projector when I storm in. She sighs and rolls her eyes when she sees me.
“I have no interest in speaking with you again, Emma,” she says.
“Either step outside with me or tell your students to leave,” I say. “You don’t want them to hear this.”
“I’m not going to do either,” Murillo says. “But you are going to leave. I have a study group to instruct.”
“Then I guess you don’t mind if they hear about you and Professor Harris.”
“I told you we wish to keep that confidential, but if you refuse, then I can’t stop you. Les
and I are both adults,” she says.
“Is that what you told him when you found out he was sleeping with Julia?”
She straightens, her eyes widening and color rising to the tops of her cheekbones.
“I’ll be right back,” she says to the class filtering into their seats. “I suggest you take out your notes and start preparing yourselves. This session will go quickly.”
We walk out into the hall and she ushers me into an empty classroom.
“Tell me, Eleanor, did you always know? Or did you convince yourself that she was just a one-time thing?” I ask.
“What is it that think you know?” she hisses.
“Is that the way you’re going to approach this?” I ask with a mirthless laugh. “Alright. Then I’ll dispense with the small talk. You and Professor Harris have been together for a long time, yes?”
“Fifteen years,” she says with a note of defeat in her voice.
“But you aren’t married?” I ask.
“No.” She straightens up and her tone intensifies. “And we don’t need to be. Our commitment doesn’t require a piece of paper to make it valid. I’ve known from the beginning that Les doesn’t believe in marriage, and I made the decision that being with him is more important.”
“He told you he doesn’t believe in marriage?” I ask.
“Yes.”
“Then would it come as a surprise to you to find out he’s married to Julia Meyer?”
“What?” she gasps, somewhere between incredulous and crushed.
I hold out one of the papers in my hand. “A copy of their marriage certificate. From another state, of course. He wouldn’t want anybody finding out he’s married to a girl who has been missing for thirteen years. That might bring up some inconvenient questions, now wouldn’t it?”
She shakes her head. “No. No, this can’t be. They can’t be married.”
“Oh, but they can be,” I say. “You see, I just got off the phone with an old friend of theirs. Corey Matteo. Does that name ring a bell?”
“Corey?” she asks. “That’s the TA Julia was stalking at her old school.”
I laugh. “You really believed that? It was all a story, Professor. Your Les was teaching at Larsonville when a certain young girl came to tour the school. She caught his eye, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her. Then another pretty girl passed his way, and he couldn’t stop thinking about her, either. That one ended up dead. At least, that’s the way it looks. I’ll have time to prove it later. Right now, all I’m thinking about is the first girl. Julia. By the time she came back for orientation, they were sleeping together. When the semester started, they were in a relationship. Only things weren’t going quite the way he wanted them to. Julia was pregnant. And getting a lot of attention from younger guys. I’m guessing she tried to break things off with him and it didn’t go well. Or maybe he is just naturally screwed up. Considering the murders, I would go ahead and put him in that category.”
Murillo clasps her hands to her mouth but says nothing. I continue.
“However it happened, he decided the way he was going to get to her was through the pain in her past. He spread rumors about her and Corey, who was in his criminal justice club at the time at Larsonville. He made fake pictures and created stories that would make her look crazy and eventually get her socially ostracized so she would leave. Which is exactly what happened. Only then they had to figure out how to handle the baby. Her parents were never going to accept them together, and he wasn’t about to lose Julia or their child. So, he created a fake study-abroad program. Her parents lapped it up. She stayed away just long enough to have the baby.
“So, this is where things get interesting. The two of them came here. Separately, of course, with no one knowing what was really going on. He met you and you started a relationship, while all the while he was raising his daughter, doling out time with her to Julia, and promising a future together. How am I doing? Sound about right?”
“Yes,” Murillo says weakly.
“But here’s the thing. What he wasn’t telling either of you, other than about each other, was that he was getting his kicks and filling his criminal justice research files by murdering girls on the side. Julia found out. I can’t be positive how, but I’d bet it had to do with that scarf she borrowed when she was visiting her daughter. I’m all but certain it was the scarf he used to kill Samantha Murray, and he just couldn’t stop himself from keeping it as a souvenir. To his surprise, she was fine with it. She loved him so much, all she cared about was their being together. He decided it was time to start their lives, so she left school, they got married, and he’s just kept on with his double life, playing both of you. Turns out that little piece of paper really did mean something, didn’t it? How did I do?”
“No,” Murillo whispers. “No. This can’t be real. They can’t be married.”
“Tell me. What did he say happened to his daughter? You must have at least seen her a few times before she left,” I say.
“He said he sent her to live with her mother so it could be just the two of us.”
I laugh. “I have to give it to the man. He’s smooth. And I guess he was telling the truth. At least about that part. He did send her to be with her mother. But it was never going to be just the two of you. He wouldn’t even live with you. He wanted to make sure he had plenty of time to be with his wife without your realizing it.”
“No,” Murillo repeats, shaking her head hard and nearly yelling.
“I guess it is difficult to wrap your head around the idea that the man you thought you were going to be with for the rest of your life is married to a girl you thought was dead for thirteen years. Why is that, by the way? Julia is obviously just fine.”
“No,” she says. “No, she’s not. And they can’t be married. She’s dead. I killed her.” She sags into a nearby chair and lowers her face to her hands, sobbing. “I killed her.”
“Eleanor,” I say, coming up to the side of the chair and crouching down so I can look at her face. “Listen to me. Look at me. The marriage certificate is fake. I made it. But the rest is true, and Julia is still out there. He manipulated you, Eleanor. He’s been lying to you for fifteen years. I need to know what happened.”
I listen as she tells her story. When she’s done, rage is coursing through me. I stand up and stare down at her.
“Tell me where to find him.”
Chapter Fifty-Six
“Sam?” I ask when I hear the other side of the line pick up, not giving him time to say anything.
“Emma,” he begins, but I cut him off.
“I have to go back in the woods we already searched,” I say. “Let the local cops know. I’m on my way.”
“So am I. I’m turning around,” Sam says. “I’ll call them, but you will probably get there first.” There is a pause, and he sighs. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into waiting for me to get there?”
“No,” I say. I’m not mad at him for asking, and I understand why. But I also can’t wait. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
“I’ll be there soon,” he says. “Keep your eyes open.”
“I will. I love you.”
“I love you too,” he says.
I hang up the phone and contemplate using the flashlight. I figure it will end up just alerting him to my presence more than it will help me see anything. My eyes will adjust to the lack of light but shining a light like that will only make me a bigger target.
I shut the car door quietly and take my first few steps toward the edge of the woods. The darkness is even more oppressive than I thought it would be. The chill in the air stings my lungs. I try to breathe slowly, deeply, both to calm my heart rate down and to not make as much noise or billow as much steam. The element of surprise is my best friend.
There is a faint path of brown muddy dirt, and I try to follow it as it winds its way into the trees. Several times, I think I see something in the distance, and I stop, not holding my breath but trying to slow it down even further. Holding it
would just lead to a big exhale. Each time, it turns out to either be a trick of my eyes or an animal.
A deer scoots off into the distance at the latest stop, and I keep moving along the path. The trees are thinning, and it looks as though there is a small clearing ahead. I must be a mile into the woods, and my eyes have almost adjusted to the darkness enough that, when I get into the lightly wooded area, the starlight above me seems to light up the night like streetlamps.
Dark heavy shadows are cast by the tall, thick trees, but huge patches of white snow covering untouched grass carpet the area, and I look for footprints. Light, tiny flakes are still falling from above. The first really heavy snow of the year started just hours ago, and I am surprised to see it sticking already. Xavier would be so excited. He would want to make…
Angels.
I shudder, pulling my thick coat tighter around me, hoping not to freeze before I find them. My eyes keep scanning the white powder and finally I see something. On the other side of the clearing, something depresses into the snow, creating a print that I can see as I run toward it. It’s a footprint, and it’s some distance from another one, further toward the edge of the trees. As if someone was in mid stride when she encountered the fallen snow for the first time.
I take a few more steps, following the footprint’s direction, and I hear the snap of a twig behind me. I freeze in place. It’s probably a deer, but it could be something else. It could be Professor Harris.
I turn just in time to catch a glimpse of a brown blur tackling into me. We land hard in the snow, and I try to scramble out from under when an elbow cracks me in the side of the skull. It hurts, but I keep moving, shifting my hips to maneuver out from under the body. I can recognize the cologne. It’s his.
His hand claws at my neck, trying to wrap his fingers around it, and I clasp onto his wrist and shift hard. I slam my head forward with everything I can muster, and I hear it landing hard in his jaw. He groans in frustration and pain. His grip lessens for just long enough that I roll to my right, wrapping his arm in the process and forcing him in a hammerlock.