Under a Spell

No.

There were bodies—multiple bodies. And if it was true that Suri and Gretchen had gone missing, Fallon couldn’t have had anything to do with it. She would have been a toddler then. But if she . . .

I made a beeline for the Mercy library and the librarian pointed to a tiny nook in the back of the room. “The yearbooks are all over there,” she said. “Every year. They’re getting very popular lately.”

“Excuse me?”

“You’re the second person who’s asked to see them in as many days.” She smiled thinly. “I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

I settled myself in, pulled out my sparkly unicorn notebook, and yanked out a handful of books. I started with last year’s, flipping back and forth between the sweet-smiled Alyssa and the broad-smiling Cathy. Then I checked the index, writing down every page where the girls commingled.

There was only one.

“Lock and Key Club,” I said to myself in a low whisper. “They were in Lock and Key and one literature class together. Okay.” I bit my bottom lip. “That’s a start . . . I guess.”

I reached for another book, opening it on my lap.

“Oh, holy crap!”

I didn’t realize I’d screamed it until a selection of narrowed eyes squinted at me in a universal, “Shhhh!”

“Sorry,” I mouthed, picking up my cell phone.

“Hello?” I whispered into it.

“Shh!” This time from the librarian.

“Let me call you right back.”

I shoved the yearbooks back onto the shelf and my unicorn notebook into my shoulder bag, then apologetically made my way into the hall.

“Will?”

“Nice to hear from you, love.”

“What do you mean ‘nice to hear from you’? I’ve been calling you all morning.”

He yawned loudly into the phone. “Did you?”

“If you didn’t get my messages, why are you calling me?”

“I’m calling you because the PD came back with some info from your hole.” Will paused, then broke into a round of schoolboy giggles.

“Seriously, Will?”

“That came out wrong.”

“I know which hole you meant. What did you hear—and how did you hear it?” Alex’s pained face flashed in my memory and just as quickly skittered away.

“Not important. According to the bobbies, the bones of three different people were found there. All three women, all three seem to be in the range of sixteen to twenty-two.”

I bit my lip, my stomach roiling. “Are any of those bodies Alyssa?”

“Not likely. The bones were old. The decomposition was natural, so they’re placing the kills between fifteen and twenty years ago.”

My saliva tasted like hot lead in my mouth. Had our killer been working on his “project” for fifteen or twenty years?

“They were only able to identify one of the bodies. There was a bracelet tangled on her.” Will sucked in a sharp breath. “A bracelet with her remains. She was called Gretchen. Gretchen Von Dow.”

Chapter Eleven

The high-pitched, hysterical laugh that came out of my mouth echoed through the empty hallway.

“That’s funny to you?”

“No.” My heart thumped in my throat. “Gretchen Von Dow—we were at Mercy at the same time. She didn’t go missing though. I’m sure of it. Nina and I looked it up just last night. She wasn’t missing. Unless—unless it was far after high school.”

“Clothing with the Mercy logo was dumped in the makeshift grave. How are you so sure that she didn’t disappear when she was in high school?”

I licked my lips, confidence welling up inside me. “Because she was a foreign exchange student. From Hamburg, Germany. She went back during our junior year. It’s in my yearbook. ‘We’ll miss you, Gretchen,’ etcetera. Did someone try to locate her in Hamburg?”

There was a beat of pregnant silence on Will’s end of the phone. “I think you may have gotten some bad information, Soph.”

“No, no.” I started to tremble, started to need to be able to explain to Will. “It’s in the yearbook. Gretchen Von Dow was a foreign exchange student. If something happened to her while we were in high school, I would have known. I would have.”

I wasn’t sure if I was trying to convince Will or myself.

“Sophie,” Will tried again.

“No,” I said, wagging my head. “Gretchen Von Dow left during our junior year. Legitimately. She was a foreign exchange student.”

I could hear Will’s fingers flying over a keyboard. “Open your iPad.”

I paused, then slowly pulled the iPad from my bag and flipped it open. “Okay.”

“Gretchen was a foreign exchange student?”

I nodded as though Will could see me. “You know, they come here, we go to their country. An exchange. For foreigners.”

“Look, I know you people consider San Francisco its own planet or whatever, but I’m pretty sure the school system would step in and disallow exchange students from San Mateo.”

“What?”

“I’m sending you the information now.”

I forced myself to look at the text populating my page.

Gretchen was born in San Mateo County and lived there until she disappeared.

I swiped the screen and frowned down at the birth certificate that flashed on my screen.

“She went back to Hamburg,” I mumbled.

“Gretchen Von Dow went missing the August before her junior year in high school.” I imagined Will scanning the screen, the black words reflected in his hazel eyes. “There were no leads, no witnesses. She was filed as a possible runaway.”

My legs went to jelly and I slid down the lockers, my butt hitting the floor, hard. “I can’t believe this. How did we not know she went missing?”

“Apparently, because you thought she was a foreign exchange student.”

“Well, yeah, that’s what all of us at Mercy thought, but, but, a kid missing. That would have been in the paper, right? That would have been big news.” I bit my lip. “Right?”

The keyboard clacked again on Will’s end of the phone. “Open those,” he commanded.

There was a little plink! then a message from Will. I opened it and files started popping up all over my screen.

“These are the local papers from the day after Gretchen was reported missing.”

I scanned one after the other, a vague recollection of headlines blaring news about a Black Friday movement, the parks in peril. “There’s nothing here.”

I began clicking through page after page of the paper, getting further and further away from blaring headlines and moving closer to the not-as-noteworthy news.

“Here!” I said, strangely triumphant. “The police blotter.”