37. Hidden Files

37

I think perhaps there was a brief moment where Chance and I considered not going through the drive. He had told me he wanted to be done with it, that he was worried for both of our safety. But that was before we were handed what could likely be a smoking gun.

And so, before he could ask, before it became something we needed to discuss, I assured him that I was all in. We'd be as careful as possible, but we had to at least try. And I was glad that I did, because the shit that was on that drive was toe-curling, motive-making, and I was certain it would lead us to some sort of conclusion.

Like accessing Daniel's laptop, due to the sheer amount of data, and because of the lack of time, due to our full-time jobs as teachers, it took us weeks to comb through and make some sort of sense of everything we found.

Daniel had been working on multiple stories, and while he seemed to try to keep his files organized, I thought he might have only done so in batches, so all the most recent files were dumped in one area, which made things significantly more difficult for us to wade through.

"Can we go through what we've found so far?" I asked, tucked under Chance's arm, with my laptop warming my legs. "It's been a minute since we've regrouped."

"We're only sorting through his work on the two relevant cases, right?" Chance confirmed.

Because, like us, Daniel had uncovered the original missing students, and had also suspected them going missing was somehow linked to the headmaster, who he had been investigating for grooming underage girls at Montgomery for decades.

"Yes," I confirmed.

"We don't have as much on the missing girls. From the file dates, it looks like he only started working on that a few months before he went missing himself," Chance surmised.

"Do you think he could have gotten access to the same file we found in the headmaster's office?" I asked.

"If his source works or worked at the school, which is what I'd guess, then I think it's definitely possible."

"Is there anything about the missing girls that Daniel had that we haven't discovered ourselves?"

"Just his notes, which give a little bit of insight into his personal thoughts about everything. He was clearly disgusted by Winston, but I think he may have been a little too earnest to pin the case from the nineties on him without enough proof. It would certainly make the more recent story that much more splashy."

I thought it noble of Chance to try and be as objective as possible when it came to the case. I had come to the same conclusion about Daniel seeming a little too overzealous about the potential connection in his notes, without much else to go on, other than Winston's pattern of abuse.

"But the grooming is a different story. He had written testimonials from eleven women, including his source," I noted.

"But all of those testimonials are anonymous. Do you think he could have gotten traction without at least one name? Would any career journalist or major publication have wanted to pick up Daniel's reporting without at least one name?"

"I don't know." I frowned. "What do you make of the source?" Daniel had recorded written transcripts of all their meetings. It was possible he had audio files, but we couldn't locate them on the drive. However, the witness statements came via email, so assuming they were real, they would likely be of more interest to the authorities.

"I can see why he felt wary of her. He seemed intimidated by her. And she did bring him all the other witnesses, who seem to have panned out. He was a teenager, so I could see him feeling out of his depth," Chance commented.

"She got more aggressive as he continued to work with him. It felt like she was anxious for the article to be published, and she didn't understand why it was taking him so long to write it, but from my point of view, he was trying to cover his bases, doing his due diligence, like any reputable reporter should. You can't go accusing old white men in high-ranking positions of such heinous crimes without proper evidence."

"From reading the transcripts, do you think she could have hurt him?"

"No." I shook my head. "She reads as skittish. She was probably putting a great deal on the line coming forward and was trying to prepare herself for the fallout. There was enough specific information about how Winston groomed her that he probably would know who she was. I'd be scared too. She never threatened Daniel. Did you read it differently?"

"I agree with you. She was agitated, but without knowing who she is, I don't think I could say whether she was capable of hurting him or not. But according to the transcripts alone, I suppose it never gets that serious."

"And the other statements, you think they're real?" I asked. Since they had come through emails, I supposed that anyone could have made new accounts and sent their stories in to Daniel. But that would have been an awful lot of trouble to go through to bring down Winston, and would have quickly unraveled the entire case, if they had been fake.

"They read like different people for sure." Chance seemed certain. "I look out for this kind of thing when I'm correcting papers by students to make sure they aren't paying someone to write their homework for them. These are all quite distinctive voices, with specific choices in wording. Some have more limited vocabularies than others, and differences in punctuation, style, flow, and phrasing." He leaned back into the couch. "If someone faked these, they did a damn good job of it. I think they're legitimate."

"Which means Winston is a fucking predator," I spit, unable to hold the disgust from my voice. "We need to figure this out and do something fast, so we can turn this over to the school or authorities or someone who will keep him from being around these girls."

"Do you think he's still pulling this shit?"

"I don't know." I stared at the fire, trying to stop my heart from hurting at the idea of him luring young girls into his web. "The source seemed to think it had stopped, but with men like that, you just never know. Sometimes it's a mental compulsion."

Chance narrowed his gaze at his screen. "Something's not right here."

I peered over his shoulder. "What?"

"It says the total files on the drive here." He pointed to the screen. "But if I highlight all the folders and look at the properties, there are over a hundred more files listed in total."

"That's…weird." I hadn't seen something like that before.

Chance yawned and closed his laptop. "I can't see straight. I've been staring at this thing too long."

I closed mine in agreement. "Yours or mine?"

"Yours." He gave me a peck on the lips before standing, his hand extended to help me up.

"Hidden files!" I shouted, scrambling up the trapdoor stairs into the lounge, knowing that Chance was already up there waiting for me, as I had volunteered to grab dinner from the kitchen that evening.

"What?" Chance came around the study table to take the food containers from me.

"I ran into Milton on my way to the dining hall—I asked him about the file number discrepancy, and he said they were probably hidden files."

The food forgotten, I loomed behind Chance as he did an internet search, quickly finding directions for how to locate the files. A few clicks later, and boom, we were staring at the interview audio files and some photos.

"The transcripts," I breathed.

Chance hit play on one of them, and Daniel's voice could be heard through the laptop speaker.

"When did the grooming start?" Daniel asked. His voice sounded even younger than I remembered, but he was confident. My heart broke hearing him.

"It's hard to tell." The source's voice was distinctly female, but it sounded as though she was using some sort of voice filter to modify it so it would be unrecognizable. "I went to Montgomery for four years, and he was always very nice to me, but it wasn't until I was a sophomore that he started asking me to help him in his office, and then maybe a couple months after that was when he started touching me."

I had to pause the audio, not wanting to hear more. I'd already read the transcript. I knew what was coming next. My stomach was churning. Hearing her recount it made it feel so much more real, so much more disturbing, and so much more heart-wrenching.

"The source is definitely female, but her voice sounded strange, kind of like auto-tuned. They must have had these interviews over the phone or internet," I suspected. "What's that?" I pointed to a single video file at the bottom of the folder. Curiously, it was dated right before Daniel went missing.

Chance double-clicked on the video and it began to play immediately. The footage was so dark, it was hard to see anything. Chance stopped the video and tried to brighten his screen, but it didn't help much.

"I'll turn off the other lights," I told him, already on my way around the room. The fire couldn't be helped; the lounge would be freezing without it.

"I think it'll work!" Chance shouted across the room when I flipped the last switch off.

The video was still dark and very grainy, so fine details couldn't be made out, but it appeared the video had been taken inside. Frankly, the room looked like something out of a horror movie. Dust and cobwebs coated much of the expansive space, the windows were covered by tattered, thick, heavy drapes, and everything else was in ruin.

I noticed a kitchen area in one corner, with cabinetry and vintage appliances, tarnished and dusty with age. Perhaps he had discovered an old residence on campus, hidden in the woods?

But there was something oddly familiar about the room, though it could have been anywhere on campus. There were plenty of unexplored and decrepit nooks and crannies around, long abandoned by past inhabitants. My lounge was a perfect example of how easily things were abandoned and quickly forgotten.

Because of the date of the video file, which was a few weeks before Daniel's disappearance, I assumed it had to have been on campus, but I supposed we couldn't be sure who had filmed the video.

"Oh shit!" Daniel's voice came out of the video suddenly, startling both Chance and me. Then the camera started shaking violently, as if he was desperately scrambling to get as far from whatever had spooked him as possible. In the last few seconds of the video, the camera was a blur, jostling around as he ran, the sound of his panting breath the only audio, and then the video stopped abruptly.

Before Daniel shouted, there had only been sounds of muffled movement and Daniel's soft breathing. Both of us were trying to catch our own breaths from the accidental jump scare.

Something was bothering me about the video. "Can you rewind, frame by frame?"

"I think so." Chance tried pressing the arrow key, and sure enough, it worked.

"I want to see if he got on camera whatever scared him."

Leaning forward to get a better look, Chance clicked back through the video at my instruction. There was a single frame, while the camera was swinging from one side of the room to the other, the split second before Daniel's frantic escape, that was clear enough for us to see what had frightened him.

"No way…" Chance breathed.

Partially hidden under a dusty tarp was what looked like the mummified skeletons of two girls, their hair still framing their skulls.

Daniel had discovered Faith and Hope Marshall.