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Chapter 2
April
I didn’t want to be in the courtroom any longer. My friends hadn’t been sure I should go, but I’d felt like I needed to. They’d gone with me. Even when they thought I was losing it, they were still there for me. They’d always been there for me. I wasn’t sure they would be when it was all over. I wasn’t even sure I would be there anymore. Even so, they were right beside me, trying to support me.
The judge looked at the man sitting at the table beside his defense attorney. His mother was there, sitting near the front. She had a sad look of disbelief on her face, as though she couldn’t believe what was happening, yet somehow accepted it. She was possibly sitting there to support him in some way, but not the way he’d hoped when he’d called her for help. If it hadn’t been for her, he may have never sat before a judge. He may have still been somewhere far away, hiding, everyone still wondering where they both were. She looked so…alone sitting at the front of the room. But she raised that monster somehow, and I couldn’t find it in my heart to forgive her, either.
I glared at the back of his head, hoping my eyes would actually get past that stringy blonde hair and bore holes of fire through his skull. Spontaneous human combustion was a thing, I was pretty sure. Maybe hatred caused it, because I almost felt like I could right then. He was pure evil. And I wanted him to die.
He’d never really looked out of the ordinary, even though there was always a weird vibe about him when you were near him, something that made you bristle immediately. At a glance, though, he looked like a normal guy. He wasn’t normal, though. He was a stalker, a real one that made the movie stalkers pale in comparison. Because he was a real person, who caused real harm.
They found a room in his apartment, hidden behind a bookcase. It was small, just some kind of storage room, but it was a room he hadn’t wanted anyone to find. It had been converted into an absolute shrine. The walls were completely covered with photos, every single one a photo he shouldn’t have had. There were screen grabs from social media accounts he shouldn’t have been able to find. Photos from the college website that should have only been accessible to students. Photos from a high school yearbook no one was sure how he’d gained access to. Advertisement photos, probably what had started the obsession in the first place.
And then there were the photos he took himself. So many photos. The ones he took were the most unnerving. Jamie at work. Jamie walking down the street. On his bike. In the diner. At the coffee shop. On campus. He was following Jamie, following us, even when we didn’t know he was there. The photos were proof. There had been so many times he’d been there and neither of us had a clue. He was there all along.
The detective had pulled me aside. “Listen, there are…photos of you. All of this might come up in court, and we can block out faces and…certain things, but I just want you to be aware, he was watching both of you. There are pictures of you…together.” He tried not to freak me out more than I already was, but I needed to see. There were photos of us in my dorm room, from outside the window. Photos of us outside that damn office building the night I’d met him at work to ride with him and hadn’t been able to keep my hands to myself. Photos of us in Jamie’s dorm. He always knew where to find us, he was watching us the whole time. A shiver ran up my spine as I realized those private moments hadn’t been ours alone, after all.
Both my room and Jamie’s were upstairs, so he’d only caught us kissing in those while we stood visible in the window thanks to his telescopic lens, but a blush crept into my cheeks as I glanced at the detective, realizing that our time outside in that other photo could have gotten us arrested. He didn’t seem worried about that, though. He was worried about Jamie, and about me.
Jamie’s stalker had no doubt been headed back to his apartment to destroy the evidence when he’d been caught. Where he’d been before the police arrested him outside that shitty motel was a mystery, and one that needed solving immediately.
The detective let me listen to the 911 call from the man’s mother. After she identified herself, she sighed. It was obvious she didn’t want to call the police that night. I doubt she’d ever been a neglectful mother. She was, after all, the person he’d trusted when he was at his lowest, most desperate place. There was probably something inside of her telling her to keep quiet, to help him. But in the end, her duty to another mother won out. “My son…he…he just contacted me. I think he's done something bad. He was scared and upset. He hung up, but he told me he’d call me back. I wanted someone else to hear it when he did.” Her voice broke because she knew she was betraying her son’s trust. But she also knew there was another life on the line. A life her son was holding in his own hands.
She was questioned when he first went missing. Her home was searched, as were the woods nearest her house. The police found no evidence that her son, or Jamie, had been anywhere in the vicinity. She was distraught the whole time they searched, crying and telling the police that her son would never do such a thing, that he was a good boy who’d never been in trouble with the law. But when shown the evidence of such a severe obsession, when shown that room fully dedicated to the man who belonged to me, she stopped claiming as much. She started to understand.
The police were already at her house when he called her back a half hour after the first call. They were recording the line and were already prepared to start a trace. He obviously never thought his mother would betray him, because he didn’t even attempt to hide the location of the call. I was allowed to listen to the recording. The detective on the case had been really nice to me the whole time, but I think he realized I was still clinging to the hope that I refused to let go of. I think he thought it would give me closure, that it would help me understand even though it would hurt. It didn’t give me closure, though. The grip on my hope was starting to slip, the thin rope fraying, but I’d never let go. Not until I saw proof for myself.
He was panicking on the phone call to his mother, crying and nearly incoherent. But his words were clear. He said Jamie was dead. He didn’t use Jamie’s name, but everyone who heard the call knew who he was talking about. He said he’d done something terrible, and now he was in trouble. He wanted his mom. When she asked where he was, he wouldn’t say. He refused to tell her where he’d been, or where the person he was talking about could be found. Regardless, his words had cut me like a knife. His description, his admittance. They stabbed into my heart and cut all the way down to my stomach, and I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to scream, cry, or vomit, or all three at once. But something was nagging at me, and I could not accept those words as finality.
Even though he wouldn’t speak his location out loud, and the number showed up as unknown, the police had no problems tracing the call to an old motel on the highway, the kind of place where drug addicts liked to hole up and prostitutes used for an hour at a time. It was about fifteen miles out of town, and there were already three squad cars on the way there before he even hung up the phone. He mentioned to his mom only that he’d stopped somewhere on his way back home. They all knew he was going to go destroy that shrine, but he didn’t know they’d already found it. It wasn’t mentioned on the news. If he was watching, he knew they were looking for Jamie, and for him, but he didn’t know how much they’d already found. He probably thought he had a chance to get away with it at that point. He ended the phone call with the words, “He’s gone…he’s gone.”
When I finished listening to the phone call, my heart and soul already cut in two, the detective completely destroyed my world. “I’m sorry, son, but we’re just after the suspect now. The search and rescue mission has been officially called off. We’re still hoping for a recovery but, Caden, in light of this new evidence, Jamie Bryant is now presumed deceased. I’m so sorry.”
I broke down in the police station for what was not the first time. The detective was standing in front of me, telling me from his perspective it was over. They had their man, and Jamie was gone forever. I refused to accept it. I needed to hear it from him plainly, needed to see Jamie for myself.
They arrested their suspect as he was leaving the motel. He refused to admit any of it to them, even though it was obvious he was the one who’d taken Jamie. Even though they told him they’d found his secret room. The fool thought he was going to plead not guilty even after his own mother had turned him in. Even listening to his own phone conversation, he stayed silent. He asked for an attorney, claiming he was misunderstood.
He had that attorney, and at his preliminary hearing, where the police were trying to make sure he was unable to bond out of jail, they both sat at the table somewhat smugly. Like he was going to get away with murder. Like Jamie didn’t even matter as long as that guy didn’t go to jail. Neither of them cared. Despite everything, he was still refusing to admit guilt.
I finally put my head in my hands and stared at the floor, because I didn’t feel like I could physically hold it up anymore, and he wasn’t catching on fire, anyway. I wasn’t sure how life had gone from so, so good, to so absolutely awful so quickly. My life was a nightmare since Jamie went missing- the agony, the terror, the feeling of being helpless, as well as being questioned by the police like a suspect. The detective made it clear he was just doing his job and didn’t think I was responsible, but that didn’t really make me feel better. I knew everyone close to Jamie was questioned, but I was the boyfriend, and some of the cops looked at me in a way I never wanted to be looked at. They judged me, for so many reasons. I was there for hours, and even though they never outright called me a suspect, I knew some of them were thinking it. I even heard the words “jealous boyfriend,” floating around a time or two.
The worst part was, I did feel like I was to blame. I should have done more. I should have been there. I should have stopped it. I was supposed to protect him. I had made a vow to myself. I had promised myself that I’d never let anything happen to him. But in the end I couldn’t protect him. I had failed him.
I still had all the screenshots of the messages he’d sent me. I’d forwarded them all to the police but saved all of them. The cops weren’t doing enough. It was an open and shut case for them, just another day’s work, a case that was nearly over. But that was a life. He was someone important. He was my whole world. And if they wouldn’t do their jobs, then I would.
I would keep going through the messages, looking for anything that would point me toward the answers I was searching for. I scrolled through them day and night. I’d written down everything he said in that phone call so I could pore over the words. I had the police photos of the shrine they’d finally released to the public, a few carefully left out of the news. I looked over all of it obsessively, trying to find any clues, any hint of where they’d been or where Jamie was.
If I accidentally fell asleep, I dreamt of Jamie every time. It hurt so bad when I woke up and realized he wasn’t there, to the point that I didn’t want to go to sleep. I knew I was nearly at the same point of obsession as the man in front of the judge, only in a different way. But I could do little to stop it.
I wanted to go up there, right in front of the whole courtroom, and make him tell us all where he’d been when he’d disappeared with the person I love. I wanted to make him tell me where Jamie was. I wanted the truth. But he wasn’t even remorseful in the slightest. I saw him notice me, and I was pretty sure he was enjoying what I was going through. He hated me badly enough that he reveled in it.
I seemed to be the only one who hadn’t given up by the preliminary trial. The only one who didn’t believe that because of that man’s words there was no hope. I didn’t know if the cops knew more than they were letting on, because they wouldn’t tell me. They wouldn’t tell me what was said in his interrogation, nor what he had his attorney tell them. They hadn’t even released the phone call to the public, they simply stated they believed Jamie was deceased, and that the man at the front of the courtroom was responsible. What they would tell me is that they had no body. They had no location, and they had no proof.
Everyone looked so hard, before that asshole claimed that Jamie was dead. We looked everywhere we could think of. My friends were always right there with me, looking for him. When we drove under that interstate sign close to campus where they’d put out an alert even though he didn’t really fit the criteria for an alert, my heart broke. Partly from the words themselves, and partly because I knew how serious it meant it was. He was too old for an Amber Alert. Too young for a Silver Alert. Not eligible for a Purple Alert. But the police made an exception and posted it on all the highway signs around us.
Missing 21-year-old Hispanic male. 5’11, 140 lbs. Black hair, brown eyes. Phoenix tattoo on right side. In extreme danger. Call 911 immediately with information. It was already all over social media by that point: the Sherriff’s department’s, the school’s, the town’s, as well as our personal accounts. There were photos of Jamie everywhere. Photos of his abductor. There were signs all over campus and town, as well as the neighboring towns. My hopes had shot up and been dashed every time there was a possible lead. And my heart sank to my toes every time someone tagged his name in a found body post. But none of the leads, good or bad, had been Jamie.
The first time we passed under that sign, we were heading for the woods near his abductor’s apartment. There were huge groups of people combing the woods all over town. People who didn’t even know Jamie but cared enough to volunteer their time. Despite everything, that warmed my heart. It didn’t matter in the end, though, because we didn’t find him. The police dredged the nearby lake. They dug through the garbage dump. People spread out to traverse the forests outside of town. A group of people even went into an abandoned factory a couple of miles out of town. But there was no trace of Jamie. No sign of where he could have been taken.
