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“Itisjust a story,” Josie assured them. “The person who took Kayleigh is a human being, not a mythical figure. We’re looking for a man, not a character from children’s folklore.”
“Don’t you think you should be taking this more seriously?” said Dave. He pointed to Savannah. “My daughter woke up screaming last night because the Woodsman took her sister.”
“Again,” Josie said, trying not to let her impatience show, “the Woodsman is not real. What we are taking seriously is evidence, which is why we’re about to conduct line searches outside. We’ll be looking for anything that might lead us to Kayleigh. In the meantime, I need to ask you some questions about your daughter.”
Shelly looked over at Savannah, who slept on, snoring slightly.
“Your daughter, Kayleigh,” Josie clarified.
“Right,” said Shelly.
“Like what?” Dave asked.
Josie decided to start with the easy stuff. “Where does Kayleigh work?”
Shelly said, “The Timber Creek restaurant.”
Dave said, “Why do you need to know that?”
Shelly squeezed his arm. “Honey, please.”
Glancing at her, he said, “No. Why are you turning this onto Kayleigh? She was kidnapped. You should be looking for her kidnapper.”
“We are looking for her abductor,” Josie assured him, keeping her tone calm and even. “I’m sure you can understand that in a case like this, we have to consider every possibility, no matter how remote it may seem. Although it doesn’t appear that Kayleigh was targeted, we must consider the possibility that her abduction was not random.”
“What are you saying?” said Dave.
Shelly sighed and pushed him away from her. “She means that someone might have been stalking Kayleigh. Followed her into the woods and taken her. Right?”
“More or less,” Josie said. “While some of our questions may seem intrusive, it’s crucial that we don’t miss anything. The faster we get answers to our questions, the faster we can move the investigation along.”
Dave still seemed reluctant, but Shelly nodded eagerly. “What else do you need to know?”
“Who is Kayleigh’s best friend?”
“Olivia,” answered Shelly. “Olivia Wilcox. They go to the same school—Denton East High—and they both work at Timber Creek as hostesses. Kayleigh sleeps over at Olivia’s a lot. They go to the movies together, shopping, that sort of thing.”
Josie took out her phone and pulled up one of the photos of Kayleigh with the redhead. She had transferred the photos she needed to show the Patchetts from Kayleigh’s phone to her own. “Is this Olivia?”
“Yes,” said Shelly.
“I noticed that there are no social media apps on Kayleigh’s phone,” said Josie.
Dave said, “We don’t allow her to have social media.”
Josie said, “You’ve never allowed her to have social media, or she had accounts and no longer uses them?”
“Never,” said Shelly. “It’s a distraction. We wanted her to focus on softball.”
Josie thought of the nasty text exchange between Kayleigh and Braelyn from softball.My parents won’t let me quit.“Does Kayleigh enjoy softball?”
“She doesn’t understand the benefits,” Shelly said. “It keeps her healthy, in shape. Teaches her teamwork. Keeps her out of trouble.”
Josie thought about the fact that Kayleigh hadn’t had her phone when she was abducted. “What caused you to take Kayleigh’s phone from her yesterday?”
The parents looked at one another, some silent communication passing between them. Dave gave a small nod and then Shelly turned back to Josie. “She was reading smut on this app she has on her phone. It’s called StoryJot. People upload their own stories. We let her download it because she wanted to read fan fiction about characters from one of her favorite video games. It was all pretty innocent at first. It kept her occupied.”
“Then we came to find out that the stuff she was reading on there was basically porn,” Dave said. “She left her phone out with some story on the screen at the kitchen table and Shelly saw it.”
