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“Oh,” he replied, lowering his gaze for a moment as he turned into the Jerrell driveway.
Kay took a moment before climbing out of the vehicle. A couple of hours ago, she’d promised Jenna’s mother she would find her daughter. With every fiber in her being, she had believed that she would find Jenna alive.
Elliot looked at her without a word, waiting. She opened the door, climbed out, and then walked over to the door.
TEN
SORROW
The Jerrells lived in a small, single-story bungalow with light-green siding and a nearly flat roof. It seemed dated, although it hadn’t fallen into disarray. The lawn was clean of debris and trimmed, albeit showing some bald spots here and there. The peach door was decorated with a wreath made of white wildflowers. On the porch, two Adirondacks and a small wooden table had been painted in the same shade of pink.
Her hand caught in midair, about to ring the doorbell, when the door swung open. Mrs. Jerrell’s eyes, filled with hope, searched Kay’s and found the truth she feared more than anything else. Gasping for air, she dropped to her knees, wailing. Her hands clasped Kay’s clothes spasmodically.
“No… my baby… no.” As Elliot was helping her up, she looked at Kay, pleading. “Tell me it’s not true.”
Kay knew the words to say on such occasions; she’d delivered next-of-kin notifications more times than she cared to remember. Yet the words didn’t come to her that day, not when the memory of Jenna’s body lying broken and bloodied at the bottom of that ravine was so fresh in her mind. She didn’t trust herself to speak; instead, she clasped Mrs. Jerrell’s hand and squeezed it.
A man was sitting in a wheelchair with his mouth agape and hollow eyes, blocking the doorway. He rolled the chair backward, making room for Elliot, then watched powerlessly as Mrs. Jerrell finally settled on the couch, sobbing in Kay’s arms. He just looked at Elliot with an unspoken question in his eyes.
Elliot nodded slightly, his eyes lowered, his hat in his hand.
“She was being bullied, you know,” Jenna’s father said. His voice was hoarse, as if he smoked or had had a recent cold. “Brenda said she mentioned that this morning.” The man, whose age was showing in the lines around his eyes and sunken corners of his mouth, spoke softly as if all the fight had left his body. “If I only knew who—”
“We’ll find out,” Elliot said. “I give you my word we will find out.”
“Whoever it was, it’s in here somewhere,” he said, rolling over to a small table and returning with a laptop on his knees. He gave it to Elliot. “Find them. Make them pay.”
“We will,” Kay added, gently pulling away from Mrs. Jerrell. “Is there anyone we can call? Family, someone who could be with you?”
“There’s no one,” Mrs. Jerrell said, her voice barely a whisper. “She was all we had. My sister’s… she’s in Detroit.”
“Since we spoke this morning,” Kay said, still holding the woman’s hand, “is there anything else you might want to tell us about Jenna?”
She raised her tear-filled eyes and looked at Kay. “How did she… um, did she suffer?”
Kay shook her head slowly. “I promise you; she didn’t suffer. It was instantaneous.”
“How?” Mr. Jerrell asked, his weak voice breaking. He looked at Kay briefly, his eyes haunted, hollow.
Kay hesitated, but he had a right to know. “She fell off Wildfire Ridge.”
Mr. Jerrell lowered his head. A tear dropped on his jeans, bleeding into the denim. “I didn’t know she was going hiking. She said she was meeting friends.”
“Any idea whom she met with?” Kay hesitated for a moment, then added, “I’m afraid there’s more… she was sexually assaulted. I’m so sorry.”
Mrs. Jerrell gasped. “My poor baby,” she sobbed, covering her open mouth with her hands. Her husband shook his head bitterly. His lower lip quivered. “I should’ve asked. If I had, she might still be alive. Some father I am.”
“Sir, there’s no—” Elliot started to say, but the man held his hand firmly in the air, stopping him.
“After Brenda came back from the precinct, she and I remembered Jenna’s depression started after she went camping with her school.”
“When was that?” Kay asked quickly.
“In April, on the seventeenth.”
“It was just a day trip,” Mrs. Jerrell added.
Kay nodded and stood, extracting a business card from her pocket and placing it on the coffee table.
