My saliva tasted like hot lead in my mouth. Had our killer been working on his “project” for fifteen or twenty years?
“They were only able to identify one of the bodies. There was a bracelet tangled on her.” Will sucked in a sharp breath. “A bracelet with her remains. She was called Gretchen. Gretchen Von Dow.”
Chapter Eleven
The high-pitched, hysterical laugh that came out of my mouth echoed through the empty hallway.
“That’s funny to you?”
“No.” My heart thumped in my throat. “Gretchen Von Dow—we were at Mercy at the same time. She didn’t go missing though. I’m sure of it. Nina and I looked it up just last night. She wasn’t missing. Unless—unless it was far after high school.”
“Clothing with the Mercy logo was dumped in the makeshift grave. How are you so sure that she didn’t disappear when she was in high school?”
I licked my lips, confidence welling up inside me. “Because she was a foreign exchange student. From Hamburg, Germany. She went back during our junior year. It’s in my yearbook. ‘We’ll miss you, Gretchen,’ etcetera. Did someone try to locate her in Hamburg?”
There was a beat of pregnant silence on Will’s end of the phone. “I think you may have gotten some bad information, Soph.”
“No, no.” I started to tremble, started to need to be able to explain to Will. “It’s in the yearbook. Gretchen Von Dow was a foreign exchange student. If something happened to her while we were in high school, I would have known. I would have.”
I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Will or myself.
“Sophie,” Will tried again.
“No,” I said, wagging my head. “Gretchen Von Dow left during our junior year. Legitimately. She was a foreign exchange student.”
I could hear Will’s fingers flying over a keyboard. “Open your iPad.”
I paused, then slowly pulled the iPad from my bag and flipped it open. “Okay.”
“Gretchen was a foreign exchange student?”
I nodded as though Will could see me. “You know, they come here, we go to their country. An exchange. For foreigners.”
“Look, I know you people consider San Francisco its own planet or whatever, but I’m pretty sure the school system would step in and disallow exchange students from San Mateo.”
“What?”
“I’m sending you the information now.”
I forced myself to look at the text populating my page.
Gretchen was born in San Mateo County and lived there until she disappeared.
I swiped the screen and frowned down at the birth certificate that flashed on my screen.
“She went back to Hamburg,” I mumbled.
“Gretchen Von Dow went missing the August before her junior year in high school.” I imagined Will scanning the screen, the black words reflected in his hazel eyes. “There were no leads, no witnesses. She was filed as a possible runaway.”
My legs went to jelly and I slid down the lockers, my butt hitting the floor, hard. “I can’t believe this. How did we not know she went missing?”
“Apparently, because you thought she was a foreign exchange student.”
“Well, yeah, that’s what all of us at Mercy thought, but, but, a kid missing. That would have been in the paper, right? That would have been big news.” I bit my lip. “Right?”
The keyboard clacked again on Will’s end of the phone. “Open those,” he commanded.
There was a little plink! then a message from Will. I opened it and files started popping up all over my screen.
“These are the local papers from the day after Gretchen was reported missing.”
I scanned one after the other, a vague recollection of headlines blaring news about a Black Friday movement, the parks in peril. “There’s nothing here.”
I began clicking through page after page of the paper, getting further and further away from blaring headlines and moving closer to the not-as-noteworthy news.
“Here!” I said, strangely triumphant. “The police blotter.”
“‘Sixteen-year-old high school student Gretchen Von Dow was reported missing by parents Lola and Howard Von Dow after failing to return home from school Thursday afternoon. Police are investigating .’”
My stomach turned in on itself. “That’s it? That’s all there is?” I yanked the article down the screen and maniacally scanned for something else, something with more meat on Gretchen and her disappearance. “There isn’t even a photo. Or a ‘she went missing from here.’ Didn’t anyone care?”
I could hear the crack in my voice, could feel the hot sting of tears behind my eyes. “Didn’t anyone look for her?”
Will’s voice was soft. “I’m sure someone looked for her, love.”
“But—but—” I flopped the cover back on my iPad. “No one did anything. And I—I didn’t even know her. I didn’t even know she went missing. None of us did.”