With the piece of gum turned over for processing, I’m back in the conference room, digging through the information about Walker’s disappearance and trying to make connections with Haley. Though nothing immediately stands out about the two of them, I can’t ignore the fact that both went missing within such a short time frame of each other.

  I’ve read through more than a dozen pages of statements before something catches my attention. I read it again just to make sure that I’m seeing what I think I am.

  “Noah, you have to look at this.”

  He looks up from his own search. “What is it?”

  “This tip. It’s in the file about Walker, but it’s about Haley. Apparently, somebody called in with a tip about her disappearance, and it was filed with his case. It doesn’t look like it was even investigated,” I say.

  “What’s the tip?”

  “It’s from a guy named Aaron Holland. He was actually the subject of a tip about her. Somebody saw him following her and called the police after she went missing. They recognized him because he was in one of their classes, and they said that he was walking right behind her on the sidewalk. But they went to talk to him, and he said he was just worried about her and saw her talking to some other guy. But there’s no follow-up on that.”

  I grab my phone. I know it’s been a few years, but I’m hoping the contact information for Aaron Holland has stayed the same. It’s a relief when the phone rings.

  “Hello?” a man answers.

  “Is this Aaron Holland?”

  “Yes. Who’s calling?”

  “My name is Emma Griffin. I’m with the FBI. I am investigating a case, and your name came up. Are you still in the Stoneville area?” I ask. I could be friendlier, but I really don’t have the time to soften things right now.

  “Yeah, I am. What’s this about? What case?”

  “I’d rather talk to you in person. Are you available?”

  “Now?” he asks.

  It didn’t occur to me until right now how late it is. I shouldn’t have even called him at this time of night, but now that I have, I’m not backtracking.

  “If it’s possible. This is an urgent situation,” I say. “You can come to the police station, or I could meet you somewhere if that’s easier for you.”

  “Yeah, I’d rather not go to the police station. You can come to my apartment if you want.”

  “Just give me the address, and I’ll be on my way.”

  Noah and I are at Aaron’s apartment within fifteen minutes. He looks like he just threw some clothes back on, and I realize that I probably caught him when he was getting ready for bed. But he welcomes us inside, and we sit down in the living room.

  “I don’t know how much you’ve been paying attention to the news, but there is a girl missing in the area. Her name is Brianna Wright.”

  “Yeah, I heard about that. But I don’t understand what that would have to do with me.”

  “We’ve made a connection between her case and Haley Young.”

  Aaron draws in a breath. Hearing Haley’s name obviously had an intense impact on him. He sits up straighter, stretching his arms out and pressing his hands to his knees.

  “Wow, it’s been a while since I’ve heard that name,” he says.

  “Did you know her well?”

  “We weren’t close or anything, but we knew each other. We had been in a couple of classes together.”

  “Okay. So I found the statement that you made after somebody said they saw you following Haley that night. It doesn’t look like it ever got investigated. What can you tell me about that?”

  “Well, I can definitely tell you that it never got investigated. After the cops came to talk to me, they pretty much brushed me off when I told them what happened. They never took another statement from me. It was like they didn’t even care. I can almost guarantee you they thought I was making it up just to try to get the heat off me. Not that it worked completely. Plenty of people still think I had something to do with what happened to Haley. Even though I was completely cleared. They proved I wasn’t near her earlier in the night or after I was seen with her, but people still talk.”

  “So tell me what happened. I know that somebody reported you for following her down the sidewalk. What was that about?”

  “Just like I told the police, I was worried about her. I recognized her from school, and I could see that she was worked up. Not frantic or anything, but she seemed a little confused and maybe a little drunk. She was just alone walking down the sidewalk late at night, and I was worried. So I followed her just to make sure that she’d be okay. I followed her until I saw her talking to some guy.”

  “Some guy?” I ask.

  “Yeah. He was leaning up against a car, and when she walked past, he stood up and started walking next to her. He put his arm around her. She didn’t resist at first. I couldn’t tell if she actually knew him or was trying to be friendly and not cause problems. But then she did duck out from under him and kept going. He kept following her. He put his arm around her again. I was about to step in, but then a girl came out of a store that they were walking past and saw what was going on. She went up to Haley, took her by her hand, and pulled her back into the store with her. The guy ended up leaving, and I saw Haley come back outside with the girl.”

  “Did they look like they knew each other?”

  “They were talking. I didn’t recognize the other girl, but at that point, I figured I needed to just get out of it. The next day I found out that she was missing when the police came to talk to me. Apparently, somebody she knew had seen her, and when the police talked to them, they said they saw me following her,” he says.

  “Did that other person see the guy who was with her?”

  “Not that I know of. Like I said, I told the police that whole thing that I just told you, and they acted like it was nothing. From the timing of it, she was seen after that, so I really don’t know anything else.”

  “Can you give me a description of the guy who went up to her? I know it was a long time ago, but do you remember anything about him?” I ask.

  “He was pretty tall. Big, like he worked out. He looked young, around our age. He had dark-brown hair. That’s really it.”

  “Okay. Just one more question. Did you know Walker Harrison?”

  “Doesn’t ring a bell.”

  “Thank you.”

  Noah and I leave the apartment and get back in my car.

  “Walker disappeared right at the same time as Haley, and yet he was pretty much forgotten.”

  “What about the guy?” Noah asks. “Any way that could have been him?”

  “No, the description doesn’t match up. Aaron said that he was a tall guy. Pretty big. Walker was about five eight. Not tiny, but slim. But here’s the thing, when I talked to Scarlet at the bakery, she described Roxy being followed by that man, right? That’s the same description that she gave me. Tall guy. Big, like he worked out.”

  “It’s not much,” he says.

  “But it’s something. I want to scan all the police reports from the time around Haley’s disappearance and in the last several days. See if there are any reports of similar behavior. If the guy that Aaron saw talking to Haley was only around their age at that time, he would be in his mid-twenties at this point. Still definitely young enough to be hanging around a college campus without being too noticeable.”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I’m back at the bakery the next morning, going over all my notes and the information again. Reading and rereading everything I have available to me is one of the most important steps in my investigations. It’s incredible how information can shift and change in your mind the more times you read it. You might think that you have fully comprehended something, only to notice a new detail or interpret a word in a different way.

  The more I find out about a case, the more I want to go back and read what I’ve already found. Connections can pop up; new threads can appear. At this point, I’m looking for anything that will link all these cases together beyond just the DNA.

  The bakery is slow, so Scarlet came to take a break and sit with me. I can’t talk to her about the case beyond the information that’s already been released to the public. As we sip coffee and eat the banana nut muffins that came fresh out of the oven when I walked through the door, she tells me what she remembers from when Haley Young went missing and was found murdered.

  “I was only a few years older than her, so it was pretty disturbing. It was the first time anything like that had happened so close that I could really remember. I’m sure there were other disappearances and even murders when I was younger, but I didn’t really process them. This was the first time that I was paying enough attention to what was going on around me that I got all the details. I can still remember when she was reported missing. There was definitely the sense that she had just run off.”

  “I remember her mom being on the news and saying there was no way that she ever would have just left without telling anybody. Saying that she was happy. She was doing well in school. She had friends. Everything was going well in her life, so there was no reason that she would want to just disappear. But it had only been a day. There was something about that that really struck me as off. Even then,” she says.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I just found it really weird that she lived in a different state. She was obviously independent. But her mom was already so upset after such a short time. I don’t know. I don’t have children, so I can’t really put myself in that position. Then she was found murdered, so I guess there was a lot to be said for how she was feeling.”

  My phone rings. It’s Noah. I’m assuming he’s calling with information about the reports. Scarlet takes her cup and waves, walking away from the table.

  “Hey,” I answer. “You’ve got those reports for me?”

  “No. I have a new missing person.”

  Noah meets me on campus.

  “Destiny Lewis. Seventeen years old. Freshman at the university.”

  “How long has she been missing?” I ask.

  “You’re not going to like the answer to that.”

  “Why?”

  “She was last seen Thursday night.”

  “Thursday night, like the night before Brianna went missing?” I ask. “That was a week ago. Why is this just being reported now?”

  “Her roommate is apparently the last person to see her. They saw each other Thursday night, and then the roommate went out of town. She was gone until Monday. When she came back, Destiny wasn’t in the room. She didn’t come back that day. Then the roommate noticed that a lot of her stuff was still there. She doesn’t know Destiny’s mother well enough to have her phone number or anything, so she reported the situation to security, and they contacted her mother. Josephine Lewis came to town yesterday and decided this morning that they needed to get the police involved.”

  We are not far from Destiny’s dorm, and by the time he has explained what’s going on, we are at the front patio. An anxious-looking woman sits at one of the metal picnic tables, ripping apart a napkin that probably came with the paper cup sitting beside her. She jumps to her feet as soon as she sees us.

  “Mrs. Lewis?”

  “Yes.”

  I shake her hand. “I’m Special Agent Emma Griffin.”

  “Special agent? FBI?”

  “Yes. I am investigating another situation in the area, and it could have something to do with your daughter,” I tell her.

  “Another situation? What other situation?”

  The news about Brianna’s disappearance has not stretched far beyond the Stoneville area, so I’m not surprised that she hasn’t heard about it.

  “An eighteen-year-old girl went missing not far from campus Friday night.”

  I choose not to go any further into it. The DNA link has not been made public knowledge yet, and I don’t want to potentially muddy any situation with too much information. But even the brief description that I’ve given her seems to overwhelm Josephine. Her hands fly up to her mouth, and tears immediately pour from her eyes.

  “Oh no! No, this can’t be happening. I knew she shouldn’t have come here,” she says.

  “Why not?” I ask.

  “Destiny’s too young. I didn’t want her to go straight to a big university like this right after high school. She graduated early, and I really wanted her to go to the community college in our town for at least a year. I wasn’t telling her not to pursue her life or anything. I just didn’t think that she needed to leave home and come to a place like this by herself while she was still so young. I thought that a couple of years at a smaller school would do her good and then she would be ready to do something bigger,” she says.

  “A lot of people go to college at your daughter’s age,” Noah says.

  Josephine sniffles and wipes tears away with the shreds of the napkin that still remain in her hand. “Not people like Destiny. She wasn’t ready for something like this. She is shy and such a good girl. She’s… naive. She was always so sweet, even when she was a baby. It’s like she never wants to see the bad in anyone. And that hasn’t changed. She is loving and kind, but not ready for the kinds of things that happen on a college campus like this,” she says.

  “How often did you talk to your daughter since she came here for school?” I ask.

  “Once a week. When she first came, I called her every day. I just wanted to check on her and make sure that she was doing okay and didn’t need anything. But my husband told me that I was being a helicopter mom and needed to leave her alone and let her figure herself out. So after Christmas when she came back to campus, we decided we would talk every Friday morning. She doesn’t have classes Friday morning, and both my husband and I are off on Fridays, so it was the perfect time.”

  “And you talked to her last Friday?”

  “Yes. Just like clockwork. She called, and we talked about her week. How her classes were going. She said she didn’t have any plans for the weekend. Everything sounded fine. Then I got a call from building security saying that her roommate hadn’t seen her and nobody could get in touch with her. I got the first flight that I could. My husband couldn’t make the trip with me. He told me not to panic, that everything was fine and she was probably just spending the night with somebody and her phone died. That’s one thing that we’ve always had a problem with her. She just doesn’t think about putting her phone on the charger, and it dies all the time. But after getting here and not finding her but seeing all her things still in her room, I knew there was something wrong,” she says.

  “All right. I’d like to see her room. Is her roommate here? Do you know?”

  “Natalie. She’s here. I can bring you up to the room.”

  We go to the glass doors of the dorm, and Josephine takes a card out of her pocket. I see that it is a student ID with a picture of a dark-haired teenager on it. She presses the card to a sensor beside the door, and a magnetic lock releases. We go inside, and security personnel wearing vibrant yellow jackets sitting behind the front desk look at us almost suspiciously. Josephine continues on without hesitation, but Noah and I both pause to identify ourselves and explain the situation. When security has noted our presence in the building, we meet up with Josephine at an elevator.

  She can’t stop moving as we climb slowly up to the fourth floor. There’s too much nervous energy in her body, and she keeps shifting her weight and pacing a couple of steps back and forth. Finally, the doors open, and she leads us down the hallway to room eleven. She knocks on the door, then uses a key to open it. A blonde girl in a purple sweatsuit is sitting cross-legged in the middle of one of the beds.

  “Natalie, this is Agent Griffin, she’s with the FBI. And this is Detective White with the police department. They are here to talk about Destiny,” Josephine says.

  “Hi,” the girl says.

  “I’m just going to look around for a second,” I say.

  She nods. “Her side of the room is over there.”

  I walk over to the other side of the room and look around. It is reasonably neat, the bedding pulled up so the bed is at least partially made and the desk is organized. There are a few things scattered on the nightstand and a trunk at the end of the bed, but it doesn’t look any different than most of the dorm rooms I’ve seen. I immediately notice a phone plugged into a charger next to the bed.

  “Is that her phone?” I ask.

  “Yeah, it was there when I got back.”

  “Is that unusual?” I ask.

  “No,” Josephine says. “Like I said, she’s not good with her phone. She lets it die. And if she does remember to plug it in, she forgets that it’s there.”

  “Is that something you noticed?” I ask Natalie.

  “Yeah, I make fun of her for it all the time. I call myself her secretary because I would answer her phone so often when she’s not in the room.”

  “When you saw her on Thursday, did she seem like everything was okay?”

  “She was fine,” Josephine says. “I told you that. I talked to her Friday morning, and everything was fine. She was getting ready to go to class.”

  I look at Noah. He reaches out to put a soothing hand on Josephine’s back and says, “I could really use a cup of coffee. Could you show me where you got that drink and tell me more about Destiny?”

  They leave the room, and Natalie visibly relaxes.

  “She’s a lot,” she says. “I’m sorry, I know I probably shouldn’t be saying something like that about my roommate’s mom. Especially considering what’s going on.”

  “It’s fine. Do you mind if I sit?”

  “No, go ahead.”

  I sit down in the chair next to Natalie’s desk.

  “Is Destiny like that?”

  “Not at all. I was actually really shocked when I met Mrs. Lewis. I mean, I know that most people aren’t like their parents all the time, but they are so different,” Natalie says.

  “I hear Destiny is pretty quiet,” I say.

  She gives me a look. “Did her mother tell you that?”