“Are you suggesting something about Ashley?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head for emphasis. “I’m not suggesting anything. All I’m asking is if you ever heard your daughter talking about guys, or if you think that she might have met up with one that night.”
“No,” she repeats. “That’s ridiculous. Not Ashley. She wasn’t like that. She had her rebellious moments, of course. All thirteen-year-old girls do. But not those kinds. She was still just a little girl.”
“Okay,” I say, pulling back before she can totally shut down. “How about her computer and her phone? Were they part of the investigation?”
“Her phone was with her. It’s never been found. The police searched her computer, but said they didn’t come up with anything,” she says.
“Is it still here?” I ask.
She nods. “Yes. I kept her room just as it was. I suppose that’s silly.”
“No. It’s perfectly normal.”
I know I need to meet Dean and the others at the campground. There’s evidence to review, and I need to do another search of the area where I found Elsie. But the lure of the computer is too strong for me to leave just yet. I have Misty’s permission now, but it might not stay.
Misty takes me upstairs and down the hallway to a closed door. A small white plaque hangs on a white ribbon from a nail in the center of the door, her name painted in red script across it. Misty touches it with hesitant fingertips.
“Her favorite color,” she says with a hint of a bittersweet laugh. “I always thought it was too bold. It’s hard to find decorations and things for a little girl in red.”
She opens the door and I step backward five years. This is certainly the room of a thirteen-year-old. The details in it show that strange place thirteen can be, straddling childhood and teendom. This is when so many girls want to be seen as grown up, but also aren’t ready to let go of their teddy bears and ballerina jewelry boxes. Some never will. They’ll carry those things with them throughout their lives, unafraid of what anyone thinks of them.
Others will have them forced from their hands.
“Are there passwords you can give me?” I ask as I sit down at a desk against the wall and open up the old laptop. “For her email, social media, those kinds of things?”
“What are you looking for?” she asks, opening the top drawer of the desk and pulling out a small pad of paper.
“Anything I can find,” I explain. “Sometimes there are little things that are easy to miss but that tell a big part of the story. Friends you might not have known. Events she was looking forward to. Interests she might not have shared with you. You remember being that age, don’t you?”
“I do,” Misty nods. “It was different then. The internet wasn’t like this. There wasn’t so much influence.”
Misty can’t be much older than I am, but I know where she’s coming from. It’s a different world than it was when we were younger. I’m reminded of it all the time. In some ways that are fantastic, like being able to call and see Dean and Xavier, or my father, even when we can’t be together. And in other ways that are horrific and sobering.
Like Lakyn’s life cut so brutally short.
Like Mary Preston, killed in a horrific attack.
Like a teenager disappearing without a trace.
Twenty
Misty shows me the list of all of Ashley’s passwords and then leaves the room. As I’m signing in to the computer, my phone rings.
“Hey, babe,” Sam says when I answer. “How did it go today?”
“It went as well as I could have expected it to. Misty did great. She got emotional, but she kept it together,” I tell him.
“What about her friends?” Sam asks.
“I was watching them for as much of it as I could. They were doing all the right things. Crying, looking worried. I had asked Xavier to keep an eye on them, so I’m going to talk to him when I get to the campground and see if he has any impressions of them,” I say.
“You aren’t with him?” I ask.
“No,” I say. ”I’m at the Stevensons’house. They gave me permission to look through Ashley’s computer to see if I can find anything.”
“What about Ava?”
“She’s with Dean and Xavier,” I say.
“Isn’t she supposed to be shadowing you?” Sam asks.
“She’s supposed to be watching how I work,” I say. “And this is how I work. This issue with Ashley is sensitive enough as it is. I can’t just bring in another person to sit around and observe. Right now, she’s at the campground, watching the evidence brought in and processed. Dean is working on the investigation and Xavier is… I’m not sure what Xavier’s doing. But I’m never sure what he’s doing, so that isn’t really a change. I’m going to look through this and see if anything stands out to me. Then I’ll meet them there. I just really hope the televised plea does something.”
“I know,” Sam says.
“I just wish I didn’t know that the ‘something’ I think I might find is going to lead us to information about what happened to Ashley, not to Ashley herself. You know as well as I do that the chances of her being alive are next to nothing,” I say.
“Remember Iris. Plenty of people said the same thing about her and Julia. You were the one who fought for them,” he says.
“I know,” I say. “But it’s not the same thing. Just as it wasn’t the same thing when I was first looking into the deaths at the campground. Iris didn’t just disappear. I wish I could believe that Ashley is fine out there somewhere, and maybe she is, but the realistic part of me says if she was envisioning a fairy tale, it didn’t have a happy ending for her.”
“Do you know when you’re going to be back?” he asks.
“I’m still aiming for two more days.
