Chapter 23

They took the steps to the second floor, this time Noah directly behind Heather. "What kind of message?" he asked.

Heather didn't answer until they were inside the barren master bedroom. Ghostly imprints of the message were still visible along one of the white walls where the letters had been spackled and painted over. "He used some kind of knife or other sharp object to carve it into the drywall of her bedroom."

Josie stared at the words. A peculiar fluttering filled her stomach.

STAY AWAY

"But why write ‘stay away?'" Noah said. "Stalkers usually want the opposite. Domestic abusers, as well. A lot of what you described sounds like something an intimate partner would do—the feminine hygiene products, destroying her clothes, her mattress, the message being in the bedroom."

"True," said Heather. "But I think this guy was trying to get her to leave Newsham. I just don't know why, or who this guy could possibly be."

Josie found a photo of Seth Lee on her phone and showed it to Heather. "Did the name Seth Lee ever come up in your investigation?"

Heather took a good, long look at Seth's face before shaking her head. "I stopped at my office on the way here and reviewed the file again. I don't recall coming across that name, but I can double-check. I'll send you a copy of my file as well."

Although Seth Lee was a person of interest in April's murder and the attack on Mira, he wasn't a suspect until they could put him at the murder scene. They had to keep all avenues of investigation open and not try to make what they learned fit the narrative that Seth was the perpetrator.

Heather continued, "The local PD asked April several times if she had any idea who might be behind the stalking, and she swore that she had no idea. Once, she suggested it was a case of mistaken identity."

"How about former partners?" asked Noah.

"None recent or significant," Heather said.

"What about her family?" Josie asked. "Did they have any idea who might have targeted her?"

Heather shook her head. "None. According to them, April was well-liked by everyone she knew and hadn't had any conflicts with anyone."

"It sounds like even if she had, she wouldn't have told them," Josie said.

"I agree," said Heather. "Listen, I turned over every possible stone here. I even found this weird connection between her and another missing person in her hometown—Hillcrest—but nothing came of it."

Noah arched a brow. "What kind of connection?"

"You might remember this guy's name—Shane Foster? He was a police officer on the Hillcrest PD. He went missing about three years ago. I actually assisted on that case."

The state police were always brought in when a local law enforcement officer was reported missing, although it was a rare occurrence. Josie did remember his name precisely because she couldn't remember the last time an officer had gone missing in Pennsylvania.

Heather continued, "He was late thirties, divorced. No kids. Veteran on the force. One day he drove to Nockamixon State Park, parked his car near the lake, and was never seen again. We searched the lake for days but turned up nothing. He left his wallet and phone inside the car. No sign of any kind of struggle or violence. A lot of people speculated he died by suicide but if that were the case, I would have expected to find his body. We chased leads until our feet were ready to fall off and got nothing."

"What was the connection to April?" asked Josie.

"They went to the same gym. Met there. Went on a couple of dates right before he disappeared. I actually interviewed her. She was devastated. Guess they hit it off really well. Then two years later I'm out here in Newsham, investigating her disappearance. I'm not big on coincidences but I couldn't find anything at all linking the two cases."

"Sometimes that's how it goes," said Noah.

"April's case was as frustrating as Shane Foster's. I interviewed all of her friends in Bucks County as well as most of her former coworkers and the principal at the school she taught at before she moved here. No one had anything of use to tell me. They were all just as baffled as her family that she'd decided to pull up stakes and move here."

Noah stared at the faded message on the wall. "You don't take a pay cut, leave everyone you know and love behind, and endure months of harassment without a reason."

"That's what I think." Heather's doorbell notification sounded again. She took her phone back out and tapped in a response to a message at warp speed. "I just don't know what that reason was. Her phone records, emails, all that stuff checked out. I went back as far as the phone companies and the judge signing the search warrants would let me, which was two years. Her social media was practically non-existent but apparently many teachers either don't have social media accounts or if they do, they don't post. Privacy issues. Students and parents can get intrusive, I guess. Whatever her reasoning, whatever she might have known about the stalker, she didn't put it in writing anywhere."

Josie said, "What about parents or students? Were there any issues while she was at her old school?"

Heather gestured for them to follow her back downstairs. "None that stood out to the staff or principal."

Back on the porch, Josie sucked in the rose-scented air. A cool breeze lifted the ends of her hair. The thought of April Carlson going from living in this quaint little house to being cut off from sunlight for almost a year sickened Josie and made her even more grateful than usual to be standing outdoors. Once Heather locked the door, Josie pulled up the photo of the child's drawing on her phone. "We also found this in April's hand." She swiped to the child's message.

"Oh shit," Heather said.

Noah waved to a couple pushing a stroller down the street, as though it was perfectly normal for three detectives to be hanging out on the front porch of a vacant house. The man waved back. The woman looked away, hurrying their pace. "Yeah," he said. "Somewhere, there's a child who drew that. We need to find them. Yesterday."

"As you know, April didn't have kids. Other than her students, there weren't any young children in her life," Heather said. "Her youngest brother and his wife were about to have their first child when April disappeared."

Josie said, "Did you talk to anyone at the school here where April taught?"

"Of course. She hadn't been there that long, so there wasn't much to find out. Talking to the teachers she had the most contact with, it was clear that she missed her family terribly. After the harassment reached the point that she could no longer hide it from them, her principal asked why she didn't just go back to Bucks County, and all she would say was that she couldn't."

"Couldn't?" Noah echoed.

What would make April Carlson believe that she couldn't return to her family and the place she had called home her entire life? The fluttering in Josie's belly intensified.

Noah eyed a jogger passing on the street. The man never even glanced at them. "Did Mira Summers's name ever come up during your investigation?"

"Not that I recall," Heather said. "But again, I can double-check and you can triple-check when you get the file."

"When we met last year," Josie said. "You were showing April's photo at truck stops. Why?"

"She was last seen at a truck stop between Hillcrest and here. She parked her vehicle in the lot. Went inside the stop and bought a soda and a chocolate bar, waited outside the entrance for ten minutes, just looking around, and then she walked back to her car. She used her phone to take one call from a burner phone. We never could track anyone down using the number. After that call, she drove twenty-three miles west on Route 80."

Josie's stomach turned at the thought that the chocolate bar would be one of the few things April ate for the next year of her life. "Not a lot of cameras on 80."

Heather sighed and reached back, smoothing her ponytail. "Exactly. She pulled onto a wide part of the shoulder. Then poof! she's gone. Left her car, phone, purse. Everything. The burner phone only turned on long enough to make that call and it didn't show up in the geofence. It bounced off a tower a few miles from where April pulled over, but it wasn't on long enough for us to pinpoint it in any location where we might catch the user on camera. Dead end. The only other thing we found where her car was left was a set of tire tracks that belonged to a commercial vehicle. A truck, probably, but not a semi."

Josie glanced over at Noah. He was thinking the same thing. "Maybe a box truck," he suggested.

Heather shrugged. "Sure, but good luck finding it."

They could at least try to match the photos and casts the state police had taken near April's car to the ones found at Tranquil Trails.

Josie's phone rang. "It's Hummel."

Heather descended the porch steps. "On that note, I'll leave you to it. As soon as I get back to my office, I'll send over the Carlson file."

Josie swiped answer and put him on speaker so Noah could hear. "Tell me you have something."

Hummel laughed. "Oh, I've got a bunch of somethings. One of them's pretty big, too."

Noah said, "We love it when you talk dirty to us, Hummel. Where are you?"

More laughter. "I'm at the impound lot."

"We'll be right over."