Before She Was Found Read online

  Text Message Exchange

  Between Jordyn Petit and Violet Crow

  December 21, 2017

  Jordyn:

  Can u believe Cora did that to me?

  Violet:

  Yeah, that was crazy!

  Jordyn:

  She ruined the whole thing

  Violet:

  It was pretty bad. Poor Kaley

  Jordyn:

  Poor Kaley and poor me! Did you see Gabe’s face?

  Violet:

  I don’t think Cora could believe it herself

  Jordyn:

  I’ll get her back. I don’t know exactly how, but she’ll pay

  Case #92-10945

  Excerpt from the journal of Cora E. Landry

  Dec. 4, 2017

  I haven’t been able to stop thinking about JW44. In my head I know someone must be playing a joke on me, but mostly I want to believe it. To believe in him. I decided that if what JW44 said about the yearbook in the library was real, then I’d believe everything else.

  Today Jordyn complained to Mr. Dover that we’d hit a dead end with finding any more information about Wither. Dover asked us what we tried and she listed all our sources. “Keep looking,” Mr. Dover said, putting his arm around her. “I have faith in you.”

  At lunch I brought up the idea of going to the library to see what we could find out. “I hate the library. It’s so dumb,” Jordyn said, putting her hands around her neck as if studying there would bore her to death. “Besides, it’s so dinky it probably won’t have any new information, anyway.”

  I told her that it wouldn’t hurt to try and that I was going to the library with or without them, that the project was due soon and we had to get it done. Violet said she would go and then after a minute Jordyn shrugged and said she’d go, too.

  When we got to the library I really wanted to go to the yearbooks but Jordyn went straight to the librarian and told her what we were working on. The librarian said we should look at old newspaper articles and took us back to the microfiche machine and asked us what dates we needed.

  She went into a back room and came back with a box of microfiche film from 1944 and ’45. The spinning microfiche pages made me dizzy but we did find an article that talked about the Wither house burning down. In the story the sheriff said that he thought that Joseph probably started the fire and then ran away.

  Then we found another news story that came out a few weeks later that talked about a fourteen-year-old girl named Loretta and her twelve-year-old sister named Helen. Loretta, who was found dead by the railroad tracks, was strangled with some kind of rope and Helen was missing.

  So Kendall and Emery weren’t lying to me. They were right, at least about this part of the story. The sheriff said they wanted to talk to Joseph Wither about the murder and the kidnapping.

  The really scary part is that the Wither family lived on the same street as Violet. Obviously, the house isn’t there anymore, but still, it’s pretty creepy. After that we couldn’t find any more articles that mentioned Joseph Wither and Jordyn got all mad and said that we can’t do a report with only one dead body, that it wasn’t really a legend, then.

  Violet said that of course we could do the report; we just had to look harder for more information. I brought up the idea of looking at the school yearbooks and Jordyn laughed. That’s stupid, she said. There isn’t going to be anything about the missing girls in them. But Violet said there might be pictures.

  She was right. We went to the reference section where there were pictures of Joseph, Loretta and Helen in the yearbooks. Jordyn said Wither was cute. I thought he was, too, but I didn’t say that. Wither had sad eyes, which kind of makes sense since he and Lucy weren’t allowed to see each other. Violet drew a picture of him in her sketchbook based on the photograph. It was really good. I told you she was a good artist.

  While Violet and Jordyn went to make copies of the yearbook at the copy machine, I found the Pitch High School yearbook from 1991 and pulled it down from the shelf. I flipped through the pages, not sure what I was looking for. JW44 said the girl’s name was Rachel so I started with that.

  I found a picture of a girl named Rachel Daly, who was a senior in 1991. She was pretty even though she had the really big hair that Kendall said was popular during that time. I looked at the picture carefully, but I couldn’t see anything that would tell me that JW44 would know who she was.

  I turned back to the index and started going through the long list of student names and came across another Rachel. Rachel Farmer. She only had one page number next to her name. I turned to page thirty-six and found her picture right away. My stomach did a flip-flop. Someone had drawn a heart around her face and had written next to it in tiny letters JW+RF.

  Jordyn came up behind me and asked me what I was doing. I slammed the yearbook shut and said nothing. She gave me a weird look and said she had to go home and would see me tomorrow.

  So JW44 must be real. The yearbook proved it.

  I thought about Rachel Farmer and JW44 all night. I haven’t been sleeping very well lately. I keep hearing scratching at my window so I get up and check, thinking it might be Joseph wanting me to let him inside. Sometimes I think I see him hiding in the shadows.

  During the daytime, it doesn’t seem so scary, but at night it’s different. After I go to bed I hear sounds coming from the vent above my desk. I think it might be Joseph Wither whispering my name over and over through the vent in my bedroom.

  But that’s impossible, right?

  The first few nights, I went into my mom and dad’s room and told them I was having a bad dream. My mom would walk me back to my room and lay with me in bed until I fell asleep. But after the third night, my dad said enough was enough and I needed to get to sleep on my own.

  I’ve been trying, I really have. Last night I didn’t hear anything coming from the vents and there wasn’t any scratching at the window. It was quiet. Too quiet. Now I’m afraid I did something wrong and he won’t come back.

  Beth Crow

  Tuesday, April 17, 2018

  I sit at the kitchen table, a lighter, a pack of cigarettes, a cup of coffee and a pocket-size can of pepper spray in front of me. I’ve been sitting here for hours watching in case whoever spray-painted our house comes back. When the sun finally comes up, I still can’t bring myself to move from this spot. I pick up the pack of cigarettes, tap one out and roll it around in my fingers. I haven’t smoked a cigarette since I found out I was pregnant with Violet, haven’t even craved them until I found the half-smoked pack and lighter in the pocket of Max’s jacket. I can’t even be mad at him.

  I started smoking when I was in ninth grade and didn’t stop until I was in my midtwenties. I just was hoping he would be smarter than I was. I don’t even plan on saying anything to him about it. I suppose it’s the least of our worries.

  As for the pepper spray, I bought it years ago after my purse was stolen while I was walking with Max and Violet through a mall parking lot. It was the middle of the day; we had just been to a movie and stepped out into sunshine, intense after the darkened theater. Max was doing an uncanny imitation of Jim Carrey and Violet and I were laughing. A man swept by, brushing roughly against my shoulder. Excuse me, he said apologetically and kept moving, taking my purse with him.

  He was gone before I realized what happened. I lost my ATM card, my credit cards, my driver’s license and a bit of cash. Thank God I had my car keys in my hand at the time. After calling the police and filing a report I drove to the nearest Walmart and bought the pepper spray and clipped it onto my key chain.

  I don’t know if it even works anymore but it makes me feel a bit better having it within arm’s reach.

  Boomer whimpers from the top of the steps. Violet begged to have him sleep with her last night and his short legs and round belly make it impossible to manage the stairs on his own. My arms and shou
lders ache from carrying him up and down the steps.

  I sigh and push my chair back from the table but before I stand Max materializes from his bedroom. He is barefoot and wearing his favorite Star Wars T-shirt, fraying and thin from hundreds of washings, and an old pair of sweatpants that are an inch too short. With his tangle of black curls, he looks much younger than his sixteen years. “I’ve got him,” Max says, stifling a yawn.

  I glance at the clock on the microwave. Eight thirty. Officer Grady will be here at nine. Grady wanted me to bring Violet to the station so he could interview her but I told him no way. That Violet got way too upset when she was there. He finally agreed that he would come to the house in the morning.

  I made him promise not to upset Violet and he made me promise to keep my mouth shut while he asked the questions. He didn’t say it quite like that but I got the gist. He also promised to have an officer drive by the house a few times during the night to make sure that no one was sneaking around. That made me feel a bit better but I still slept with my pepper spray under my pillow.

  I just have time to get Violet up and dressed and give her breakfast before Officer Grady arrives. I meet Max at the bottom of the steps. Boomer is cradled in his arms and I can’t help but smile at the sight. “Officer Grady will be here in a half an hour. Why don’t you get dressed and I’ll make you some toast.”

  He grimaces and carefully lowers Boomer to the floor. “Do I have to be here?” he asks.

  “I think you should,” I say and reach up to brush an unruly curl out of his eyes and he pulls his head back. “There’s no school and don’t you want to find out what’s going on?”

  “I guess.” He shrugs and opens the front door to let the dog outside.

  “Plus, I think it will make Violet feel better having us both there. Hey, what else do you know about Joseph Wither?”

  “It’s just some stupid urban legend,” Max says and I begin to go upstairs to get dressed and wake Violet. “I think he’s here,” Max says. “There’s a police car pulling up.”

  “Shit! Let him in and tell him we’ll be down in just a minute.” I rush up the steps, taking two at a time. I was hoping to wake Violet slowly. Gradually. Now I have to hurry her, never an easy task.

  “Violet, honey,” I say, trying to keep my voice upbeat and easygoing. “It’s time to get up.” Violet buries herself more deeply beneath the covers and mumbles something. “Come on, Violet.” I ease back the covers. “You have to get up. Officer Grady is here to talk to you.”

  This immediately gets her attention, but not in a good way. “I don’t want to talk to him,” she moans. “He’s mean.”

  “He’s not mean,” I say, trying to keep my voice relaxed. “He’s trying to find out who hurt Cora. Don’t you want to help him do that?”

  “I already told him,” she complains.

  “Well, sometimes the police have to ask the same questions in a lot of different ways. Just tell him the truth and then he’ll be on his way. Got it?” Violet nods reluctantly and swings her legs over the side of the bed. “You get dressed, wash your face and brush your hair. We’ll go downstairs together.”

  I go to my side of the room and dig through my dresser for clean clothes. I pull on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, shove my feet into a pair of tennis shoes. On the other side of the room divider I hear Violet doing the same thing. “Can I come through?” I ask, wanting to give her privacy to change.

  “Just a sec,” she says. Someday I’ll have enough money saved to move into a house with more than two bedrooms but until then or until Max goes off to college we’re stuck with this. I grab a brush off my dresser and start running it through my hair until she says it’s okay for me to come over to her side of the room.

  “I have to brush my teeth,” she says sadly and leaves while I hang behind. Just peeking out beneath her bed is one of her sketchbooks. I feel sort of guilty looking but Violet’s drawings sometimes tell me so much more about what’s going on with her. Violet is a perfectionist when it comes to her art and the first few pages are of subjects she has drawn a million times: unicorns, peace signs, Boomer.

  I have to admit she is very talented and I wish I could afford to pay for the extra art classes I know she would love. I flip to the middle of the journal and land on the first hesitant strokes of her project. The paper is smudged from the rub of an eraser and she abandons the page. This goes on for the next several pages until I can tell that she’s trying to draw a face, though I can’t tell whether the subject is male or female.

  I keep turning the pages and eventually the face of young man with intense eyes is looking back at me. He has a long, straight nose and prominent cheekbones. Though he’s only drawn from the neck up, there is something old-fashioned about him. Maybe it’s the way his hair is swept away from his forehead, maybe it’s the seriousness of his expression—something that I’ve always connected with old-time portraits.

  In any event, the drawing is astonishingly realistic for such a young girl to have drawn. Centered, at the bottom of the page are the initials JW. My blood runs cold.

  Could this be the person pretending to be Joseph Wither? Who is he? And why is Violet sketching him? Or maybe a picture is just a picture and it has nothing to do with Joseph Wither.

  “Mom,” Max calls from downstairs, “Officer Grady is here.”

  Startled, I close the sketchbook and put it back beneath the bed where I found it. “Coming,” I call back and on shaky legs go into the hallway and tap on the bathroom door. “Vi, are you ready?”

  Violet opens the door and, though she’s dressed, has washed her face and combed her hair, she still looks exhausted. She must have slept about as well as I did last night. Purple smudges stain the thin skin beneath her eyes and crusty sleep has collected in the corners.

  I put my arm around her shoulders and she doesn’t pull away. For this I’m glad. Together we walk down the steps where Officer Grady, standing by the front door, is waiting for us. Boomer sniffs curiously at the soles of Officer Grady’s shoes and Max sits on the couch looking like he’d like to be anywhere but here.

  “Morning, Beth, Violet.” He nods at us. “I heard about the vandalism. Any more problems last night?”

  “Come on, I’ll show you,” I say and lead him back outside. I yank on one of the sheets and it comes floating down to reveal the graffiti.

  “I’m glad you called it in,” Grady says, taking in the slash of angry words painted across the house.

  “It’s scary,” I say, unable to keep my voice from shaking. “Did you find out who did it?”

  “No, but we’ll stay on top of it,” Grady says as he helps me tape the sheet up again.

  “I barely slept. All I can think about is what happened at the train yard and how someone is creeping around our house. I’m afraid for my kids.”

  “We’ll do our best to have someone drive by your house several times throughout the day.”

  “And night?” I ask hopefully.

  “If it comes to that, yes,” Officer Grady assures me.

  We head back inside. Officer Grady and Violet take a seat at the kitchen table and Max lingers in the entryway. I offer coffee to Officer Grady and he accepts. As I’m getting the coffee cup out of the cupboard and waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew I notice Officer Grady looking around the room. I try to see my kitchen through his eyes.

  It’s outdated for sure with its counters and appliances courtesy of the early ’90s, but it’s clean and cheerful. Max’s and Violet’s school pictures hang on the refrigerator along with a math paper that Max got an A on and a picture of Boomer that Violet had drawn.

  On the counter is the cookie jar that we hauled all the way from Algodon. It had belonged to my grandmother and had once been filled with cowboy and peanut butter cookies. Now it held store-bought sandwich cookies but Officer Grady wouldn’t know this. He eyes the pack of cigarettes
and canister of pepper spray on the table and I gather them up and replace them with a steaming cup of coffee. “Any news? Have you caught anyone yet?” I ask.

  He takes a cautious sip from his cup before answering. “Not yet. We’ve been canvassing the neighborhood nearest the depot and have been gathering evidence from the train yard. Hopefully, that will give us the information we need to solve who did this.”

  Across from him Violet fiddles with the salt and pepper shakers, clinking them together and creating an annoying beat. I cover her hands with mine to still them and she returns the shakers to their spot in the center of the table and places her hands flat atop the table.

  “Why don’t we get down to business?” Officer Grady says, reaching into his pocket for a small notebook and pen. “I have your permission, Beth, to ask Violet questions about the events of April 15 and 16, correct?”

  I nod. “Of course. We want to help in any way we can.”

  “Violet, you said yesterday that someone named Joseph Wither was the one who hurt Cora. How do you know this?”

  Violet shrugs. “I don’t know. I just do.”

  Officer Grady looks like he wants to push further on this and I don’t blame him. I want to know the answer, too. I think about the drawing of the young man in Violet’s sketchbook. Instead he pauses to take another sip of coffee and then leans forward in his seat, his elbows on the table. “Why don’t you tell me about the overnight at Cora’s house?” he asks conversationally. “What time did you get there?”

  “Around six, I think?” She turns in her chair to look at Max, who has hoisted himself up onto the kitchen counter to sit. “That’s when you guys dropped me off, right?”

  “Yeah, around six sounds about right,” Max says, a bit taken aback at being drawn into the questioning.

  “How did you spend the evening?” Officer Grady asks. “What kinds of things did you and the other girls do?”