Before She Was Found Read online

  Anyway, Violet and I already started a list of urban legends we could choose from: bigfoot, a twenty-foot alligator in the sewer or maybe Johnny Appleseed. After school some kids were talking about researching Bloody Mary or the Babysitter and the Clown Doll or the Mothman, who my sister says is this creepy seven-foot man with red eyes and wings like a moth who would show up just before something really bad happened.

  Gabe asked me and Violet what we were going to do our project about and Jordyn butted in and said, “Probably something babyish.” I swear she loves embarrassing me. But then Gabe came to my defense and said to Jordyn, “What’s your genius idea, then?”

  That shut Jordyn up and Violet and I told Gabe about our urban legend.

  * * *

  Me again... The weirdest thing just happened. My sister told me someone was on the phone for me and when I went to answer it no one was there. I kept saying hello but it was just quiet. I finally hung up and when I asked Kendall who it was she rolled her eyes and said she wasn’t my secretary. Like I said, weird.

  Dr. Madeline Gideon

  September 14, 2018

  “What do you think?” Dr. Soto asked. “Would you like to meet Cora?”

  “Sure, why not?” I remember saying.

  Dr. Soto rapped his knuckles gently against the window to announce our arrival and then slid the door open. “Mr. and Mrs. Landry, this is Dr. Gideon. She is the mental health professional I was speaking of. Dr. Gideon, this is Jim and Mara Landry, Cora’s parents.”

  “Hello,” I said and extended my hand out to Mr. Landry. “I’m sorry to hear about what happened to Cora. How’s she doing?”

  Jim clasped my hand and gave it a shake. His skin felt rough and dry against my own. Almost reptilian. “Not great. Look at her,” he said, voice shaking. “Some maniac stabbed her.”

  “She’s going in for surgery soon,” Mara said and swiped at her tears with a soggy tissue. She was a slip of a woman who looked as if she could collapse beneath the weight of her worry. “Dr. Soto says the surgeons here are very good.”

  “He’s right,” I agreed. “World-class. She’s in the best hands. Cora has been through an awful ordeal and so have you. Please know that we have many supports that you might find beneficial to Cora and to your family...”

  “Listen, Dr. Gideon,” Jim said, his voice tight with forced patience. “I don’t want to be rude, but honestly a psychiatrist is the last thing that Cora needs right now. The last thing we need right now. What we need is for Cora to get into surgery so that the doctor can try and put her face back together.” Jim’s volume rose with each word until his wife reached for his arm and shushed him. I got the feeling she had to do this often. “What I need—” Jim lowered his voice “—is a crowbar and five minutes alone with whoever did this to my daughter.”

  “Jim, stop,” Mara said, dissolving once again into tears.

  “I’m sorry,” Jim said as if surprised by the intensity of his own anger. “I’m going to go see if the police have any more information.” He brushed roughly past us and out of the room.

  “He’s scared,” Mara explained. “It’s just so hard seeing her like this. He hates that he wasn’t there to help her.”

  “Don’t be sorry. I understand.” I pressed my business card into Mara’s hand. “Please call me if you need anything or if I can answer any questions. I often work with children and families who have experienced traumatic events.”

  “Thank you.” Mara sniffed. “But I don’t think so.”

  “Is there someone I can call for you? A family member or friend to come sit with you during surgery?” I asked. Support systems are crucial during tragedies such as this.

  “My parents are on their way with our other daughter,” Mara said. “They should be here soon. But thank you.”

  I smiled and lightly touched Mara on the shoulder as Dr. Soto slid the door open.

  In silence we walked to the bank of elevators. “Maybe after the surgery the Landrys will be more open to visiting with you,” Dr. Soto said. “I worry about Mr. Landry. He’s a very angry man.”

  “Mrs. Landry does seem more approachable,” I agreed. “But I don’t expect a call from either of them. I can drop by Cora’s room later today and check on them.”

  “Thank you again, Madeline,” Dr. Soto said as he took his leave. “I owe you a favor.”

  I remember the elevator doors opening and inside was a young couple clutching hands. The man—a boy, really—held an empty car seat in his free hand and the girl pressed her face into his shoulder. He averted his gaze as if embarrassed by his red, swollen eyes.

  “I’ll grab the next one,” I said and turned away. Down the hallway, Mr. Landry was speaking to a police officer. Though I wasn’t able to see his face and couldn’t quite make out what he was saying, I could hear the frustration in his voice. The policeman stood placidly by, allowing him to say his piece. I knew that the father’s anger was understandable, normal even, but Jim Landry seemed to be becoming unhinged. Finally, the police officer held his hand up as if to silence Mr. Landry.

  “Do not tell me to calm down!” Mr. Landry’s voice filled the corridor, causing people to stop and stare.

  The elevator doors slid open and I reluctantly stepped inside. I had been in the presence of the Landrys for just a few minutes and already recognized the hallmarks of a family ready to implode. And there was something about Jim Landry that in my line of work had become much too familiar to me. Angry, aggressive men who liked to be in control, whatever the cost.

  I wish I would have paid more attention to this—the family dynamics. Would things have turned out differently? Maybe not. I became so fixated on Cora and how she was dealing with the trauma of the attack and her injuries that I missed the bigger picture—what happened before they found her and why it all happened in the first place.

  Case #92-10945

  Excerpt from the journal of Cora E. Landry

  Nov. 4, 2017

  Violet came over to my house yesterday after school and we had so much fun! We jumped on the trampoline for a while and then I showed her my room. She told me she thought I had the best room she’d ever seen.

  We found out we actually have a lot in common. Cheese pizza is our favorite food and we both like to draw. Violet is really good but I’m just okay. She showed me some pictures she made in her notebook. I told her that she should write graphic novels when she grows up. Violet got all red when I said that but I could tell that she knew I meant it.

  I told Violet I hated volleyball and she said she did, too. I said that social studies was my favorite subject this year and that the only bad thing about it was that Jordyn is in the class.

  “She’s not that bad,” Violet said. “She helped me open my locker the other day. Plus, I’m going to her house this weekend. Did you know her grandpa owns a bar?”

  HA! I wanted to say. Jordyn has no problem screwing me up when I try to open my locker but she’s all nice when Violet needs the help.

  I wanted to tell Violet to be careful, that Jordyn was two-faced and sneaky. I wanted to tell her about the time in second grade when Jordyn put her brownie on my seat just before I sat down and it looked like I pooped my pants and I wanted to tell her about how mean she was to me in volleyball practice.

  But what I really wanted to tell Violet was how last year Jordyn stole Gabe from Gemma, who was supposedly her best friend. Gemma liked Gabe first and they were “going out,” which is really stupid because going out in fifth grade just means sitting by each other at the high school football games.

  Gemma got mono and when she came back to school a few weeks later, Gabe and Jordyn were dating. Gemma didn’t talk to Jordyn for like a week but then, like Jordyn does, she acted all innocent and hurt. Like it was Gemma’s fault. Of course Gemma ended up forgiving Jordyn.

  I guess if I was being honest, I probably would have done t
he same thing. No one likes having Jordyn on their bad side.

  So I wanted to tell Violet all this but then my sister pounded on my door and yelled that Violet’s mom was there to pick her up so I didn’t get the chance.

  Then the house phone started ringing and when I went to answer it whoever was on the other end just sat there and didn’t say anything so I just hung up.

  This happened like five times until my mom stepped in and answered the phone and told them that we had caller ID and she was going to call the police and report them for harassment. We don’t have caller ID but the phone calls stopped. I bet it was Jordyn.

  Thomas Petit

  Monday, April 16, 2018

  Thomas pulls Jordyn’s damp jacket from the washing machine. The blood appears to be completely washed away. He lifts it just inches from his face to get a better look. He’s tempted to douse it with bleach but quickly dismisses the idea. It was just a spot of blood. Kids bleed all the time. Hell, as youngsters his boys were plastered in Band-Aids on any given day from all the scrapes and scratches they collected.

  But niggling doubts keep crowding his head. As much as he loves his granddaughter, she has always had a bit of a devilish streak. A quick tongue and an even quicker temper. There was the time when Jordyn was about six and the school called saying that Jordyn pinched a girl in her class so hard it left a bruise. “Why?” Tess had asked, wanting to understand.

  Jordyn scowled and said, “She took my spot on the carpet. I told her to move but she wouldn’t.”

  There was the time when Jordyn was benched in soccer for purposely trying to trip her opponents. Jordyn promised she didn’t do it on purpose and Thomas wanted to believe her but there was also the incident last year when Jordyn slammed a locker door on a classmate’s hand, breaking two of her fingers. Again, Jordyn insisted it was an accident but the injured party disagreed and so did her mother. Jordyn was suspended for a day.

  But these examples are eons away from stabbing someone and Thomas pushes the doubts away. He tosses Jordyn’s damp jacket in the dryer, sets the dial to permanent press and then goes out to finally get that cup of coffee. His head pounds from lack of caffeine and the sharp ammonia fumes.

  He checks his watch. They need to be at the police station in fifteen minutes and he can still hear Jordyn banging around up in her bedroom. Thomas grabs a broom leaning against a corner and lifts it, soundly tapping it against the ceiling, and Jordyn stomps her foot two times in response. Normally, Tess would scold them both for this noisy mode of communication but over the years it has become a game between them. Today he finds no humor in it.

  Thomas pours a cup of coffee into a mug that Jordyn made for him when she was in second grade and takes a tentative sip. His stomach bubbles with nerves. When the boys were young, a visit from a police officer or a sheriff’s deputy wasn’t an uncommon occurrence.

  It shouldn’t have been a surprise given Donny’s and Randy’s lack of supervision. It was a catch-22, Thomas thought. If he and Tess kept the boys at the bar where they could keep an eye on them, the questionable clientele and their bad habits were sure to rub off on them. And if they let them run wild they were bound to go searching for trouble with no chance of Thomas or Tess being there to yank them out of harm’s way. It was no wonder that Donny and Randy found themselves in a number of scrapes with the law.

  There was many a night when Randy and Donny were deposited on their front step by Sheriff Tate after being caught drinking, carousing and trespassing on some poor farmer’s land while trying to tip a cow or two. It’s all harmless mischief, Thomas used to tell Tess after the boys, pale and hungover, were out of earshot.

  Yes, until someone gets hurt, Tess would shoot back until it became kind of a joke between them. They laughed halfheartedly at the time but it was with great relief when Randy finally graduated high school and went off to a nearby community college. Donny went his own direction and left Iowa for college in Oregon. Out of sight, out of mind, Thomas thought. And it worked, at least for a few years. Until Randy showed up on their doorstep with a round-faced spitfire of a four-year-old in tow and they found themselves worrying all over again. This time about Jordyn.

  Again Thomas pummels the ceiling with the broom handle. He’s discovered over the years that with girls, with Jordyn, anyway, it was different but much more complicated. The boys only had two moods: silly and sleepy. Jordyn, on the other hand, had too many moods to count. But how Thomas loved that girl.

  Thomas was sure that Tess felt the same way, though they never really talked about it. Maybe it was because they’d never had enough time with Betsy. Jordyn had the same round cheeks, the same widow’s peak, the same belly laugh as their daughter.

  Thomas knows that Jordyn is just on the edge of growing up. That there’s going to be a lot more sass than sweet in the years to come and it scares him to death that Tess might not be around to guide her, and him, through it. Jordyn needs her. He needs her. He tries not to think about life without Tess. It was just a fall, a bad fall, but Tess is tough. Hell, she put up with him all these years. She’ll be able to get through a pesky setback like a broken hip.

  With a sigh, Thomas gives up banging on the ceiling and makes the long trek up the stairs. He pushes open her bedroom door only to find it empty but in typical disarray. Jordyn must be in the bathroom.

  The book bag that Jordyn took with her to Cora Landry’s house for the overnight sits in the middle of the floor. Thomas bends over and pulls out the pair of sweatpants and a University of Grayling T-shirt that Jordyn wears as pajamas and adds them to the ever-growing pile of laundry to wash. His hand grazes something soft and Thomas finds Ella, the gray-and-pink stuffed elephant that Jordyn insists she has outgrown but that always seems to find its way into bed with her. He presses Ella to his nose and inhales Jordyn’s familiar scent. A combination of her shampoo and the Juicy Fruit gum that Jordyn chews incessantly.

  He digs more deeply into the book bag and pulls out a pair of socks and underwear, a hairbrush, a toothbrush sealed inside a plastic baggie. His hand lands on a social studies textbook. It’s heavier than he expects and it tumbles from his fingers and hits the ground hard, thrusting a folded sheet of paper from its pages. Thomas reaches for the paper. It is difficult to pick up but after several tries he is able to snag it with his thick, arthritic fingers. The paper is onion-skin thin and the color of weak tea.

  Thomas pushes aside a stack of books sitting on the foot of Jordyn’s bed and sits down to get a better look. Carefully he unfolds the paper and immediately recognizes Jordyn’s narrow feathery print. Pitch is written neatly across the top and below it is a remarkably detailed map of what looks like the train yard.

  Below a diamond-shaped compass in the upper right-hand corner is the boarded-up depot, the crisscross hatch marks of the railroad tracks and a half-dozen rectangular-shaped boxcars.

  Thomas wants to believe that the map is a geography assignment for Jordyn’s social studies class but the fact that his granddaughter and two friends snuck into the train yard the night before leads him to believe it’s no simple school assignment. Two girls, one with braids, the other with her hair in a high ponytail, are hiding behind one of the boxcars, mischievous grins slashed across their round faces. Jordyn and Violet. A third girl, smaller than the other two, is standing all alone in the middle of the tracks, her mouth opened in a round, black scream.

  He examines the drawing more closely and among the wispy pencil strokes meant to represent the winter wheat next to the train yard is a shadowy spot, more of a smudge, really. Thomas takes the paper to the window and holds it up to the light. Yes. There among the grasses is a vague, faceless shape of a person that inexplicably fills him with trepidation.

  Again he thinks of the bloodstain he just scrubbed from Jordyn’s jacket. Thomas folds the paper in half and then folds it again, and again until it’s the size of a thick postage stamp. He slides it into his pocke
t and steps into the hallway. “Jordyn,” he calls out gruffly. “We need to get going. Now.”

  Case #92-10945

  Excerpt from the journal of Cora E. Landry

  Nov. 9, 2017

  Violet and I have been eating lunch every day for the last few weeks. She’s quiet, like me, but we talk to each other. I even told her that I liked Gabe and I held my breath waiting for her to say that he was too cute or too popular for me, but she didn’t. She just nodded like it made sense.

  We don’t even have to talk all the time. Sometimes we just sit there and eat, not saying anything, and it doesn’t feel weird. Violet always gets hot lunch and I bring cold lunch from home. I think that maybe Violet gets free lunch. I think this because for the last three days the lunch lady only gave her a peanut butter sandwich, apple slices and a carton of milk. My sister says that’s what kids get who are behind on paying their lunch bill.

  My mom always packs me a sandwich, a clementine, a bag of chips and some kind of dessert. Today she put in a monster cookie. I broke it in half and tried to give Violet some but she said no thanks. I put it on her tray, anyway.

  The other night my mom dropped Violet and me off at the high school basketball game. I was excited because I hardly ever go to the basketball games. Gabe was already there and waved us over so we could sit next to him and his friends. Jordyn was sitting behind us and I could feel her glaring at me from three rows up.

  During the game, Gabe asked me for my cell phone number and I had to tell him that I didn’t have one. Violet jumped in and gave Gabe her cell phone number and said that we could text each other using her phone whenever I wanted. No one has ever done something that nice for me before.

  Violet decided to do our urban legend project on Pop Rocks candy and soda. Violet said she heard from her brother that this kid from an old cereal commercial died when his stomach exploded after drinking Coke mixed with Pop Rocks. I’ve never had Pop Rocks but Violet said that she’ll ask her mom to bring home a few packs from the gas station where she works and I can try them.