She sniffed, wiping the tears off her cheeks, trying to take in a breath that wasn’t shaky.
One of the hardest things she’d ever done was read Cass’s autopsy report—what there was of it—and look at the crime scene photos. And she would be damned if she traumatized poor Mrs. Martin by digging her child up and subjecting her to that horror.
There had to be another way.
She had to find a lead. She was the journalist. That was what she was good at.
Still wiping her tears away, Abby got to her feet, feeling shaky but determined. Her purse was tossed on her bed next to her laptop, and she dug inside it, where she’d tucked the piece of paper with Jayden’s phone number on it. Maybe Keira Rice’s best friend had some information that could be helpful.
Knowing she probably looked like hell, she went into her bathroom and splashed water on her face, and then came back into her bedroom and booted up her laptop. She clicked open her Skype app, logged in, typed Jayden’s phone number in, and sent her a friend request. In the “message” box, she wrote: I want to talk about Keira.
She could hear Zooey’s and Paul’s voices—indistinct murmurs—floating through the open window, and she tried to ignore the anger she felt flashing through her.
She knew Zooey was a scientist. She understood that dead bodies and exhuming them was maybe nothing new to either of them in their line of work. But it was Cass. Paul should understand.
A pregnancy changes the case, he’d said. Maybe he was right. Maybe the only way to catch Cass’s killer was to figure out who the father of her baby was.
But surely there was a different way of doing that than digging her up.
Abby drummed her fingers against the edge of the computer as her call to Jayden Michaels still went unanswered.
The video call rang and rang, no one picking up. Just when Abby was about to press Cancel, the screen suddenly changed, Call Accepted flashing across the computer.
The face of a girl around eighteen or nineteen, her hair pulled in a high ponytail, appeared. She was frowning at the screen, and her oversized tank top and her messy hair made Abby think she might’ve caught her on her way back from a workout.
“Sorry, I think you have the wrong number,” she said.
“Are you Jayden Michaels?” Abby asked.
Jayden frowned. “Yeah.”
“I need to talk to you about Keira Rice,” Abby said. “I’m working with the FBI on a case.”
Jayden’s eyes widened. “You . . . did you find Keira?” she asked, her voice shaky on her best friend’s name.
“That’s one of the things we’re trying to do,” Abby explained. “We had a meeting with Keira’s father and had the chance to look around her room. I noticed that you still call her.”
Jayden’s cheeks turned a dull red. “What were you doing snooping in Keira’s room?” she demanded.
“Jayden, I get it,” Abby said gently. “Almost sixteen years ago, my best friend was killed. I know how hard it is to lose your best friend. But the thing is? I think the person who killed my best friend is the same person who took Keira. Which is why I’m here.”
“What? You think Keira’s like, with a serial killer?” Jayden asked, mouth open. “This isn’t an episode of Criminal Minds!”
“We’ve uncovered a pattern,” Abby explained. “And Keira’s disappearance falls into that pattern. What we’re trying to do is figure out everything that happened the night she disappeared. If there was anything unusual. If she talked about meeting someone or being creeped out by someone.”
“No,” Jayden said, much too quickly. More red crawled up her face. “You want the details, you read the police report. If you’re really FBI, you can get it.”
“Jayden, why do you call Keira every Wednesday?” Abby asked. “I noticed it when I looked at her missed call log. You call every Wednesday without fail. I thought at first that maybe that was the day of the week she went missing, but she went missing on a Saturday night. So why Wednesday?”
Jayden bit her lip. “It’s none of your business,” she said.
“It is, though,” Abby said. “Look, Jayden, I can have the FBI go to a judge and get him to order you to come up here and talk to us.” She had no idea if that was true or if it was an empty threat . . . Paul would probably be furious if he knew, but she didn’t care. “I don’t want to disrupt your schooling. Why don’t you just tell me what really happened here? Because you’re obviously holding back.”
A long silence, where the teen obviously was fighting against her conscience.
“Do it for Keira,” Abby urged softly.
“Fine,” Jayden snapped, her eyes brimming with tears. “Fine. I call her every Wednesday because that was the day she was supposed to call me, so I knew she was safe . . . after.”
“After what?” Abby demanded.
“After she ran off with the guy she was seeing,” Jayden said.
Abby’s heart lurched in her chest. “She left that night to meet him. Her parents, they aren’t like, mean. She loves them and they love her. But they are really old-school. She wasn’t allowed to date until college. Those were their rules. And she met this guy at one of our soccer meets I guess and they hit it off. The thing was, he was older.”
Abby frowned. “How much older?”
“I don’t know,” Jayden said. “I never saw them. She never even told me his name. Everything with them was super secret.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone this when the police got involved?” Abby asked, trying not to feel frustrated since Jayden had been a sixteen-year-old girl at the time. You did stupid things as a teenager in the name of friendship.
“I really thought she would call,” Jayden said. “And then I thought . . . okay, maybe they just went off to Vegas and got married and lived happily ever after?”
But the look on the girl’s face told Abby she knew that wasn’t what happened. There were tears in her eyes, guilt in every smooth line of her face.
“She’s dead, isn’t she?” Jayden whispered.
Abby bit her lip. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I’m trying to find out. Is there anything else you knew about this guy? His name? If he was older, did he have a job?”
“I think he had dark hair, because she once compared him to Patrick Dempsey,” Jayden said. “She loves Grey’s Anatomy. She was always talking about the drives they took.” Her eyes widened. “His car!” she said, suddenly, excitedly.
“What about his car?” Abby asked.
“There was one time where my parents were out of town, and Keira was spending the night with some of our other friends. Just a big slumber party thing for the girls. But she ended up ditching us, saying she had somewhere to be. I went outside to make sure she got off safe, and I saw his car. It was one of those Karmann Ghias. I remember because my brother loves them. And because it was like, bright yellow.”
Abby’s mouth went dry at her words. “Are you sure?” Abby asked.
“Yeah,” Jayden said. “One hundred percent.”
“Okay,” Abby said, an odd sort of numbness beginning to sweep over her body. “Jayden, thank you. I’ve got to go.”
She barely heard the girl’s goodbye as she shut her computer down.
For a moment that seemed frozen, she sat there on her bed, a shaky, horrible sensation of knowing sweeping over her as her mind clicked the puzzle pieces together.
She had thought it odd that Sheriff Baker had been the one to discourage the truth in the ME report. Baker had been a good man and a good cop. Cass’s murder had been the case that had seemed to finally break him. He’d retired shortly after it.
Had it affected him so because he’d buried evidence? Because he’d chosen to cave to someone with more power instead of doing the right thing?
The only person who had that much power in Castella Rock was the mayor. And back then, the mayor was Dominic Clay.
Her ex-boyfriend Ryan’s father.
A hysterical little sound burst from her throat.
She had figured it out.
She knew what happened now.
Chapter 22