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Leading the way, he looked over his shoulder for Zack and Bryan. They needed to stay closer together for this stretch. Zack was only a few yards behind, but Bryan was almost at the starting point, walking slowly, looking at his phone. By the rapid swiping movements he made with his fingers on the screen, he was playing some stupid game.
Pete rushed back toward him and extended his hand. “Give it,” he demanded. “You have to pay attention, or else you could break your neck out here.”
Bryan laughed dismissively. “Nah, I’ll be fine.”
Zack approached. “No, he’s right. Stop with the stupid phone already, man. Let’s get the hell up there and back, okay?”
Bryan wasn’t going to budge. He hid his phone behind his back and tried to run past Pete, but his foot slid on fir needles. He landed hard on his side with a groan and a loud thump. His phone slipped from his hand and rolled into the ravine, bouncing and rattling, quickly disappearing from view.
“Oh, shit,” he shouted, taking Zack’s hand to get up. “Now what?”
“Now you go down there and get your phone,” Pete said, grinning wickedly. The ravine was deep, the slope had a steep incline, and the terrain was treacherous, with rocks and loose boulders covered with moss and dry needles. “Or you could leave it there; either way, that’s fine by me.”
Bryan looked at him with frustration in his eyes. The time for giggles had passed. Pete had expected Bryan to ask him to go after the phone in his stead, and he would’ve gladly done so, only Bryan had suddenly turned stubborn and proud just as much as he was offended. As if Pete had thrown his phone into the ravine.
Bryan started his descent, purposely ignoring every bit of advice Pete was trying to give. A beginner in all things hiking, he did everything wrong; he let himself climb down too fast, holding on to thin branches for balance, too thin to hold his weight. Eventually, one of those branches gave, and Bryan fell. He slid forward on his butt for a while, bouncing like a rag doll, yelping and groaning whenever he hit something. In about ten yards or so, he came to a stop at the bottom of the ravine and screamed, desperately squirming to get away, his voice sending echoes bouncing against the rock face.
Then he screamed again, a bloodcurdling shriek of pure terror.
FIVE
MISSING
Before entering the interview room, Kay stopped briefly by the observation window and looked inside.
The woman seated at the dented and scratched metallic table was dressed in powder blue hospital garb and looked tired. Black circles under her eyes glistened with tears. Restless, she was wringing her hands incessantly, staring worriedly at the wall above the two-way mirror, where a clock showed the time.
Kay opened the door and stepped inside. Elliot followed.
The air within the cramped room was stale and smelled badly, of sweat and fear, of human misery. The fluorescent light on the ceiling flickered, one of the tubes yellowed out, and about to die, lending the walls the look and feel of a decrepit basement.
“Mrs. Jerrell?” The woman sprung to her feet, the legs of her metallic chair screeching in protest against the stained floor.
“Y—yes.” She nodded vigorously. Her eyes were red and swollen. “I’m Brenda Jerrell.”
Kay gestured toward the chair. “Please, sit down. You needed to report a missing person?”
The woman swallowed hard and licked her dry lips. “My daughter, Jenna. She didn’t come home last night. Her name is Jenna,” she repeated. Her voice was breaking despite her visible efforts to hold back her tears. Her hands gripped the edge of the table, her knuckles white as if she was about to fall into an abyss and that table was the only thing keeping her alive.
“When did you last see Jenna?”
“I—yesterday morning, but, um, that’s not relevant,” she stuttered. “I pull double shifts these days, and I’m never home. My husband last saw her yesterday afternoon, at about four. She came back from school, changed, and rushed out, saying she was meeting with friends.”
“Do you know whom she was meeting with?” Elliot asked. He was still standing, leaning against the scratched wall.
Mrs. Jerrell wiped the corner of her eye with her fingers. “We—he didn’t ask.” She lowered her gaze to the floor. “You see, it was one of the few times she was going out since April. We were thrilled for her.”
A slight frown creased Kay’s brow for a moment. A teenager who doesn’t go out? “How old is she?”
“She turned seventeen this summer.” She let go of the table’s edge and clasped her hands together tightly as if in silent prayer. “In June.”
“At seventeen, she doesn’t go out with friends? That’s unusual,” Kay commented, careful not to instill more anxiety into the woman’s heart.
Mrs. Jerrell nodded a couple of times, then lifted her gaze from the floor and looked at Kay with a silent plea. “She used to before she…” her voice trailed off on a shattered breath. “We think something happened to Jenna last spring.” Her hands grabbed the edge of the table again, and she leaned forward, closer to Kay. “We think she must’ve been bullied, or worse.”
“Tell me what happened?” Kay asked, pushing a box of tissues across the table. “What did Jenna say?”
Mrs. Jerrell shook her head. “She didn’t; that’s the problem. Our daughter didn’t trust us to tell us what was going on. She just… stopped living. She didn’t go out anymore. She spent all afternoons in her bedroom with her door closed. Sometimes, when I worked days, I would hear her crying herself to sleep.”
