“That’s right. Mary Elizabeth Sooner dropped out. That was in one of the articles you found. And then she disappeared less than a year later.”
“So he could have been hunting girls at school?” Everett grimaced at his own words as they finally reached the right unit. He crouched down at the lock to turn the digits to the correct code.
“Turn on your phone light,” he said, before rolling the garage-style door halfway up with a wince. This was always the worst part. The noise, echoing off concrete and metal siding. It was even more terror-inducing on the way out, when he couldn’t see who might be coming.
She ducked in and he followed, lowering the door again after them. “Sorry. I can’t leave it open or she might notice.”
“All these boxes!” she said. “Jeez, that’s a lot of stuff.” Everett pointed out the bulletin board, and she drifted toward it, pulling him along with her phone’s light. The scent of old newspapers and aging cardboard pressed in from the darkness.
The huge corkboard sat propped against file boxes on the cement floor. At first glance it was a muddle of photos and scraps and thumbtacks, but after examining it several times, Everett could see it had been an organized grid before extra notes had been piled on, obscuring the original lines.
“Wow,” she whispered. “This is spooky.”
It was spooky, but it felt less so today with his partner in crime.
“There’s Mary Elizabeth Sooner.” Josephine pointed to what looked like a school photograph of a white girl with big blond waves and a bow in her hair. “And Lynn Cotti.” This time she pointed to a photograph of a laughing teenage girl whose frizzy blond hair was in a high ponytail.
Everett leaned closer to look at the yellowed paper tacked next to her picture. It was the second page of the article he’d folded up and taken with him.
Though initial stories indicated she’d had an upcoming court appearance and might have left town to avoid legal problems, it has since been revealed that the court date was a minor issue involving a traffic ticket. Lynn Cotti has not been seen or heard from in the two years since. Her mother says it’s unlikely she would stay out of touch for so long. “She struggled a bit in high school, but she is a good girl. She came home every Sunday for dinner and games with her two little sisters. Gin rummy. Monopoly. Things like that. We always had lots of fun. She was arrested a few times, yes, but the stuff in the newspaper has been so wrong. My little girl has a family who loves her, and a room always waiting for her at home.”
Sadness sank into his skin. “It’s weird,” he said. “Those women were all young. Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one. It seems like there would have been a bigger deal made. Five women in four years? That’s a lot, especially in Herriman.”
“It seems like most of them were dropouts or druggies. Cops don’t care about women like that.”
“Even here? White girls?”
She shrugged. “When I started looking up information, there were a lot of articles about girls that disappeared in the ’80s and ’90s and no one cared. Some serial killer recently confessed to, like, a hundred murders, and no one ever bothered connecting them because of who the women were.”
Everett looked around, his skin crawling. “Seriously, are we in a serial killer’s lair?” He’d meant it as a joke, but as soon as the words were out of his mouth, they both fell silent. He was holding his breath, and he thought Josephine might be too. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up until he couldn’t take it anymore and swung around to check the space behind them.
No one was there, though the flash of Josephine’s light off a mirror made him jump. “Whoever it is, he’s probably just an amateur detective.”
“Yeah,” Josephine agreed. “Or maybe a relative of one of the girls?”
“I guess we don’t even know that they’re dead. They’re only missing. Maybe they got the hell out of this town and never looked back.”
Josephine scowled, but she agreed it was possible. “But whoever made that chart didn’t think they were missing. Maybe because he knows they’re dead.”
“Still, he’s really old now. And the murders stopped a long time ago.”
“True.”
When she started snapping pictures, Everett turned away from the flash to look for the light he’d stowed near the door. His vision had turned into patches of blue from her phone’s glow, and he had to inch his way slowly back through the boxes. He still couldn’t see it when he reached the corner, though.
Confused, he turned toward Josephine. Then he saw the flashlight. In front of her. Placed carefully on a shelf. His gut clenched tight with fear, shooting alarm through his body.
“Stop!” he shouted, the word far too violent against the metal walls.
Josephine froze, eyes wide, hands rising in defense. “What? What’s wrong?”
“Someone’s been in here. I left my flashlight right by the door. It’s on that shelf now. I didn’t put it there.”
She took a step back toward him. “Are you sure, Ev?”
“Yes. We need to get out of here right now.”
She looked wildly around. “There’s not a camera, is there?”
“I don’t . . .” He cleared the painful dryness from his throat and tried to get out more than a croak of sound. “I don’t think he would suspect anything, right? He would’ve put on a new lock if he did.”
“Right,” she agreed, but her eyes still touched on every surface, her nervousness ratcheting up Everett’s fear. He’d thought himself brave and angry just a few minutes before, but attracting the attention of an actual murderer suddenly seemed like a bad idea even for a rebellious kid.
He waved Josephine toward him so they were both near the door. Gesturing toward her phone, he whispered, “Turn that off and we’ll look for any lights.”
A starless midnight fell over them when she turned off the phone. His voice dropped to the barest breath. “Do you see any LEDs or a glow or anything?”
They were so close he could feel her head swiveling as she looked. “No. Do you?”
“I don’t think so.”
She turned the light back on, and they both sighed out a relieved huff of air. “Okay, this is officially dangerous and not okay. Let’s go.”
Everett put his ear to the metal. They held their breath for a long time, and he listened so hard he could hear the static fuzz of silence in his aching ears.
“Ready?” he finally asked.
When she nodded, he yanked the door up as quickly as he could, and they both ducked to clear it before he lowered the metal more slowly so it wouldn’t bang against the concrete. He engaged the lock, and they rushed back the way they’d arrived.
“Have you seen him around?” Josephine whispered as they made it to the far fence line and slowed to a more normal speed. “Has he been here this week?”
“I don’t think so, but I’m at school most of the day. He looks like a regular old white man, so he wouldn’t stand out either.”
“What if he’d caught us?”
“Yeah, we can’t go back in there now.”
“No.” She shuddered. “We can keep looking online, though. And if we find anything, police take anonymous tips, I think.”
Everett nodded, but his heart fell a little. For some reason, this had felt like something he needed. Like he could have been a hero, and then he wouldn’t just be the son of a criminal anymore. His mom wouldn’t have to hide and always try to keep pulling Everett back behind her for safety.
Josephine seemed to sense his mood and gently shoved his shoulder. “Let’s go do that reconnaissance. See if he’s even still around. He might have moved, and that’s why he rented the locker.”
“Yeah, good point. Let’s go.”
They slipped out the front gate and cut across the road to where it dead-ended at the field. Everett was already hitting the trail when Josephine said, “That’s weird.”
“What?” he yelped, imagining an old man with white hair walking toward them. But Josephine was craning her neck to watch over her shoulder as they walked, and the only thing he saw was a dark-colored car parked down the street. “It’s just a car.”