Chapter 6

CHAPTER

6

LINDSEY

Present day

WORK THAT DAY was steady. Marnie and Pete had to, once again, escort a group of people off the premises who were making true crime videos. One woman claimed to be a "big time" YouTuber who wanted to interview people about my sister's case. She had also demanded to speak to me. I was happy to tell her that if she wasn't a paying guest she was trespassing.

The fervor around my sister's case was reaching a fevered pitch. I couldn't escape it. Coverage and speculation were everywhere. Every time I logged on to one of my social media accounts, I saw people I knew talking about it. I even saw shared posts from the other missing girls' families. Seeing those was particularly distressing.

People were picking through every unsolved disappearance and murder that had occurred in North Carolina in the nineties. Some of the more interesting theories revolved around an as-yet-unnamed serial killer—someone who had operated in the area and had avoided apprehension. Considering how ineffectual the police had been, it wasn't the most outlandish possibility out there.

The problem was that in the excitement to hash out every detail, everyone seemed to forget that there were real people impacted by it. These people were far removed from the events they were obsessing over. For them, it was like an online game of Clue. It was easy to lose sight of the humanity of those involved in an effort to feel part of a community that seemed, on the surface, to have good intentions—to solve a decades-old unsolved case.

I was even having to field emails to the Monarch's business account. Thankfully, the owners were understanding, but it made me incredibly uncomfortable.

On top of that, I worried that all of the attention would muddy the waters and complicate things for the investigators.

So, I was thankful to be buried in paperwork. It felt good to get lost in it and forget about the case, and everything surrounding it, for a few hours.

However, I was brought back to reality later that night when Ryan came to the front desk and I realized how quickly the day had gone.

Marnie appeared in the doorway, knocking lightly, her smile, as always, apologetic.

"There's a guest out front for you. It's the man from last week. He says he'll wait for you outside." Marnie looked as if she wanted to ask me a dozen questions, but she was far too polite to do so.

I looked at the clock on my desk—it was six thirty on the dot. I found it endearing that he was right on time.

I closed my laptop and stood up, grabbing my purse and phone as I headed to the door. I took my jacket off the hook and slipped it on.

Outside I found Ryan waiting. Once he caught sight of me, his smile widened appreciatively. "You look amazing," he commented. I was only wearing my work clothes—a black pencil skirt, white blouse, and flats—but he made me feel like a beauty queen. Receiving his compliments was starting to become addictive.

"Thanks," I said a little awkwardly.

"Hungry?" he asked.

"Starving," I replied as we started down the sidewalk.

Ryan fell in step beside me. "Me too. This hotel is great, but it's still hard being cooped up inside all day."

"We can take a walk through the park, it's really pretty at night, and there should be some food stalls still open."

"Sounds perfect," Ryan readily agreed.

We crossed the street to the large park and I guided him down a winding path toward a grove of trees. It was a chilly evening, so I zipped up my coat and shoved my hands deep in my pockets.

"I've been working on my article since first thing this morning," Ryan told me as he rubbed his hands together to stay warm, "I hadn't realized how cold it had gotten."

"Yeah, but the fresh air is nice." My stomach flipped with nervousness at being near him again, and I knew I needed to keep myself in check. But for once I pushed away my misgivings and had to trust what my instincts were telling me. That Ryan was a decent guy and I could trust him.

"Are we really talking about the weather?" he asked playfully. "If so, this isn't going well for me." He fake-winced and I found myself laughing.

I had thought of little else but Ryan since meeting with him at the coffee shop. I still wondered if I was being foolish in how quickly I was coming to enjoy his company—and to tentatively trust him. But I couldn't deny how good it felt being around him. How he gave me permission to just be me. And that was a feeling I hadn't realized I was missing so badly.

Yes, I wanted to learn more about my sister, but I was also figuring out a little bit about myself, too, which I hadn't expected.

"You're doing fine. More than fine," I told him. My cheeks heated, despite the cold. I kept my eyes in front of us, too embarrassed to look directly at him. I had never been this bold before, particularly with a man I barely knew.

"That's good to know," Ryan replied. "So, food …"

"You're going to want one of Stan's Burgers. They're the best around," I suggested, seeing the food stall on the path ahead.

We made our way over and placed our orders.

"Don't wait for me," Ryan said, seeing my eagerness and, not needing any encouragement, I took a huge bite of my burger.

"I was hungrier than I thought," I chuckled sheepishly, wiping my mouth with a napkin.

I was already halfway finished when Ryan handed me a coffee. "One mocha latte for the sweet tooth."

I smiled. I couldn't help it. I liked how he cataloged details away, making note of things that to others wouldn't have mattered. He was observant. And empathic. He was good at making me feel special. A nasty voice in the back of my mind warned that it was all an act, but I hoped that my common sense was right and that he was as honest as he came across.

We walked slowly down a cobbled path, eating in silence. It felt comfortable and not at all awkward.

"It's nice here," Ryan observed.

Even at night the park was pretty, with neat planters and clean flower beds. Old-fashioned bulb-shaped lights were strung between the streetlamps and wrapped around the wooden bandstand in the middle of a clearing of trees.

"Starting in June, the hotel puts on a summer concert series. We hire local up-and-coming bands to perform every Friday evening." I indicated the gazebo-like structure. "It's become a huge tourist attraction. People come from all over. We've had some bands that have gone on to become pretty big names."

"That sounds like fun," Ryan said.

"It is. It's a nice change from how things used to be. At one time, this town was a tourist's dead end. It's taken a lot of work to claw back from that and to turn this into a place people want to go." I finished my burger and balled up the wrapper, throwing it into the nearest trash can.

As I sipped on my coffee, my phone rang. I fished it out of my purse and saw my mom's name. For the first time I felt annoyed at her checking up on me. She called at least once during my shifts. I knew it was something born out of uncontrollable anxiety. I never blamed her for it and it had never bothered me.

Until now.

I switched the phone to silent. I only had twenty minutes before I needed to get back. I would call her then. I was already anticipating the earful I'd receive for not answering, but right now, I didn't care.

"Another reporter?" Ryan questioned.

We sat down on the nearest bench, sitting close enough that our arms pressed against each other.

"Not this time. It was my mom. She always calls to check I'm at work. Or at home. Or wherever I'm supposed to be." I cringed at how that sounded.

"She worries. It's understandable." Again there was no judgment.

He was right, it was understandable. It made me feel like a bad daughter for being irritated by her.

"So, listen," Ryan began, thankfully not prying any further into my relationship with my mother. "I was typing some of my notes today, and something came up that I wanted to ask you about."

"Off the record?" I asked.

Ryan looked at me uncertainly. "Does it have to be?"

"Depends on what you ask."

He paused for only a second before answering. "I guess that's fair. I want you to trust me, Lindsey." He sounded so sincere.

"Okay then, what is it?"

"Have you ever heard the name Dr. Clement Daniels?"

I shook my head. "No. I don't think so. Who is he?"

"He was a professor at Southern State University at the time Jess went there. He's retired now," Ryan explained.

"Okay …" My stomach twisted into knots in anticipation.

"It was common knowledge that he had multiple affairs with students. Including Tammy Estep." Ryan looked at me closely. "Remember, she was the RA in Jess's dorm."

"Right, I remember," I said.

Ryan's eyes narrowed. "He was questioned about Tammy's disappearance. By the time the local police department became involved, weeks had passed since she was last seen. And the lead investigator was useless. They dismissed Dr. Daniels as a potential suspect almost as quickly as his name entered the conversation, but everyone knows the college had a huge hand in that. They work hard to protect their reputation, and that includes the reputations of their faculty. I have sources at the school who said the president back then, Dr. Hamilton, made sure the police met nothing but dead ends."

He sounded frustrated and I could see why. If the police had been more proactive, things probably wouldn't have been overlooked. One only had to look at the recent discovery of the remains at Doll's Eye Lake. Police ineptitude was everywhere you turned. I knew the department claimed their hands had been tied because an official report wasn't made about Tammy until she was gone for weeks, yet no one can deny that it was their sloppy investigative work that was the greatest failure in these cases.

"What does this have to do with Jess?" I asked. I had never heard of Dr. Daniels. Mom and Dad had never mentioned her taking a class with him.

Ryan picked at his thumb nail. "I know for a fact that Dr. Daniels was also seeing Phoebe."

"How are you so sure?"

"A journalist never reveals their sources, remember?" He flashed his oh-so-appealing smile before becoming serious again. "Did you know she was a friend of Jess's?"

My entire body froze. "Jess knew Phoebe, too?" It came out as a broken whisper.

"They were both pledging the Pi Gamma Delta sorority. From all accounts, they got along."

"That's got to mean something right? That Jess was connected to not only Tammy, but Phoebe as well?"

"It may mean something or it may mean nothing at all. It's a small college after all. People's paths overlap constantly. But aside from that, we can't overlook the fact that all these women went missing around the same time and no one did anything about it. One disappearance would have been awful. Four is a damn tragedy."

Ryan was watching me closely.

I didn't want to ask my next question, but knew I had to. "Was Jess seeing Dr. Daniels, too?"

"Jess audited one of his statistics classes during that spring semester. And yes, there were questions about what else was going on between the two of them," Ryan said almost angrily.

"I find that difficult to believe. I can't imagine Jess getting involved with her teacher—"

Ryan's expression hardened. "People have secrets, Lindsey. We don't always know everything that's going on with them."

I was taken aback by his harsh tone, but wondered if I'd misinterpreted it. "Sure. I get that. But from everything I know about my sister she wasn't that kind of person."

Ryan looked away. "That you know of." He was quiet for a beat before continuing. "But maybe you're right. I hope so, anyway."

I instinctively disagreed with Ryan's assessment of Jess and her potential relationship with her professor. Everything I'd ever learned about her was that she was studious, hardworking and had a lot of friends. Thinking of her with an older man—one of her teachers no less—didn't fit the image I had of her. But what did I really know of her?

"So the police never made Dr. Daniels a person of interest?" I asked, trying to shake the strangeness I was feeling.

Ryan shook his head. "There was nothing tying him to any of the girls but rumor and speculation. He was a respected member of the faculty. He was close to being tenured. No one could believe he would prey on his students. People are willfully blind if it's something they don't want to believe. Because of that, the police barely questioned him. And no one wanted to think he could be a killer."

There he said it.

This wasn't a case of missing women.

This was a case of murdered women.

"But I've been working on getting someone on the inside to talk to me. Okay, maybe I've been hounding them, but I think they're about ready to spill. And I think they have the information I've— we've —been looking for."

"That's good. Hopefully we can get some concrete answers." I felt impatient. I wanted to knock the door down and blow this thing open now .

"And get this, apparently Dr. Daniels left his previous teaching job pretty quickly. He taught at a small community college in Tennessee before coming to Southern State. He was only there for a year before he uprooted his family and came to Mt. Randall. I dug into it, but on paper, there's nothing I could find that says why he left. But, I drove there, had a poke around, talked to a couple of people who are still around from the nineties, and it seems there were rumors at that school as well."

"About him with his students?"

Ryan nodded curtly. "Yep. But it seemed that the administration was less inclined to turn a blind eye than Southern State." He picked at his thumbnail, clearly agitated. "One man said it was thought that Dr. Daniels was asked to resign to avoid charges being filed against him. One day he came into work, spoke briefly with the college president, then packed up his stuff and left without talking to anyone. That same week he left the community college, sold his house to a family friend, and got out of Dodge. He resurfaced a few months later when he was hired at Southern State University. It was clear he moved his wife and kids two hundred miles to get away from something." His eyes met mine.

My head was buzzing. "It's not enough though, is it?" I asked. Ryan shook his head.

"It's only hearsay. It doesn't actually prove anything."

"But it at least shows that this guy should be looked at a little more closely" I argued.

"That's true, but it's not enough to press charges. It's not even enough to get a warrant to search his house, that's for sure," Ryan reasoned.

I balled my hands into fists. "But it can't be a coincidence. Anyone with half a brain can see that." The burger I'd eaten churned in my gut.

"It doesn't matter how it looks. It only matters what can be proved," Ryan countered. "After all these years the police are going to be careful in how they handle this. And right now, there doesn't appear to be any evidence to tie anyone to those missing women. Someone knows what they did and they got away with it."

"But the body that was found may be the key. Maybe they've uncovered something that will finally bring that scum to justice." I sounded desperate, probably because I was.

Ryan looked away from me, staring at some point off in the distance. "My sources say there's nothing. Not a scrap of suspect DNA. Only an old blanket, and even that doesn't appear to hold any clues."

I briefly closed my eyes in anguish and frustration. Eventually, I opened them, feeling the sting of angry tears. "So we're back to where we started. With nothing."

Ryan's face was expressionless. "I need to get my inside source to talk." He threw his coffee cup into the trash can next to us. "I'm hoping that by hearing more about the case and the evidence, then perhaps I can find something that points to Dr. Daniels hurting Jess—hurting all of them." He sounded slightly frantic.

"So, that's what you think happened? That he hurt her? Hurt all those women?" I asked.

Ryan seemed sure of himself. "Yes, Lindsey, that's exactly what I think happened. I think Dr. Daniels wanted Jess. She was this beautiful, intelligent girl and he couldn't help himself. And I'm going to prove it if it's the last thing I do."

"What about the idea that it's an anonymous killer who decided to make Mt. Randall his hunting ground?" I asked.

Ryan appeared to not hear me. He was too lost in his theories and conjecture. He seemed to have a one-track mind when it came to who he thought was responsible for Jess's disappearance.

Then a thought came to me. "We have a couple of boxes of her college stuff at home. I'll have a look through it, see if there's anything of importance. I'm sure the police have combed through it already, but if they weren't looking for something that ties her to the other girls or to this professor, they likely would have missed it."

Ryan's eyes lit up. "That would be great, Lindsey. Maybe you could bring them to me and we'll look through it together. They say two sets of eyes are better than one." He seemed to barely be able to contain his excitement. But then his face darkened into something dangerous. "It's not fair. He's still happily going about his life and living in his big, beautiful house with his sweet, unsuspecting wife. If he's responsible, he's gotten away with it for decades. Hell, he could still be preying on young girls. And all because the police couldn't put A, B, and C together."

I wasn't sure why this case affected him so much, but it was obvious it did. It was his passion for finding the truth that made me believe if anyone could discover what happened to Jess, it was Ryan McKay.

"Maybe we can go and get those boxes now," he suggested eagerly. I was about to answer when his phone rang. He looked at the screen. "Sorry, I need to take this." He stood up and walked a few feet away, putting the phone to his ear.

At the same time, I felt my phone vibrating in my purse. I pulled it out, seeing Mom's name. I needed to answer it or she would really start to panic. Guilt bloomed in my chest.

"Hey, Mom."

"Lindsey, where are you? I've been trying to call you." She sounded upset, but that was to be expected.

"I'm sorry. My phone was on silent and—"

"Your dad and I got a call from Lieutenant Higgins, the lead detective on your sister's case." She sounded winded, barely able to get the words out quick enough.

I stood up, needing to move.

This was it.

"I wish they'd find her body and get it over with."

"She got the results of the DNA test." I could hear her short, uneven breaths. Her voice whispery soft as she gulped back tears.

"Is it Jess?"

I braced myself for the affirmative. I waited. Soon, after all this time, I'd be able to say the words that everyone else dreaded, yet in some twisted way, I welcomed.

Jess would no longer be missing. She would be dead.

The air felt thick and I became dizzy.

I looked over at Ryan who was pacing back and forth. Then he stopped. He glanced at me, our eyes locking. He spoke words I couldn't hear from this distance. His face was a mixture of emotions I couldn't quite place.

What was going on?

"Lindsey," Mom cried, and I sucked in a breath, "it's not her. It's not my baby girl."

I didn't know what she said next. The phone fell from my hand and I squeezed my eyes closed.

It wasn't Jess.

There was relief. But also so much anguish.

It wasn't Jess.

I felt Ryan beside me. He cupped my face between his hands, his eyes bright. Was he holding back tears, too?

"It's not Jess," I choked out.

"I know. I just heard," Ryan said softly, pressing his forehead to mine.

I stood there for a few minutes, needing his presence, then I realized what he'd said. I took a step away from him and he dropped his hands.

"What do you mean you just heard? How do you know?"

"I have sources, remember. It comes with being a reporter for the past decade." He was unapologetic. "That was my guy in the police department. He could lose his job telling me this stuff, but we go way back. He and I were in the same fraternity in college. You know, brotherhood and all that." He gave me a wry smile. "He told me that the DNA report came in and it said with 100% certainty that the remains at Doll's Eye Lake aren't Jess's." He seemed relieved.

"Do they know who it is?" I asked.

Ryan narrowed his eyes. "It's Tammy."

We stared at each other, taking in the news.

"They found Tammy Estep."