Chapter 16

Not long after Agent Radcliff left to get a copy of the student directory, Agent Bolson came in with a soda, a pad of paper, and a pen. The big man set all three down on the table in front of me and said, “Write down your whereabouts from when you spoke to Francine James at the Student orientation until her disappearance made the news.” He didn’t have a deep or menacing voice which mildly surprised me. It was probably why he didn’t talk when we first met, because I didn’t feel quite as threatened by him as before. He left, and I was alone with the task he had set to me.

I looked at the paper and frowned. How was I going to explain my whereabouts? Then I realized, they didn’t ask me that. They only asked where I was. They would want to know if anyone could verify my whereabouts too. If kept that simple, the task they set me to wasn’t so daunting. I picked up the pen and set to writing. It didn’t take very long.

Radcliff said she wouldn’t be gone long but it wasn’t until I had finished writing that she came in. I had a feeling they were either stalling or trying to find out more about me before letting me go. Whatever the case, they were watching me. Paranoia wasn’t a bad thing.

She set a laptop on the table and said, “Our copy of the student directory includes photos of everyone in attendance at the school.” She sat across from me and maneuvered the laptop so we could both see it, as well as anyone behind the mirror. “We can narrow down the search by entering a few key attributes.”

I gave her descriptions of one of the girls and while it narrowed down the list, there were still a lot to go through.

She stood up. “Keep looking through the pictures. If you find them, write down their names.” She tore off the top sheet of paper that had my list of whereabouts and left the pad and paper. Then she left the room again.

I found the first girl, Barbie Gifford, in about fifteen minutes and wrote down her name. Having watched how Agent Radcliff changed the stats for the program, I found the eye color and changed it from blue to blue-gray, along with a few other changes. It took me longer to find the second girl, almost an hour. Her name was Trudi Horvath.

Rather than sit and wait for Agent Radcliff to return, I walked over to the mirror and pressed the paper to it. I counted off enough time for someone else to either write down or type in the names somewhere and then went back to the computer. I closed it, moved it to the corner of the table closest to the door, and went back to my seat.

I stared at the girls’ names. I knew those names, but I couldn’t think of where I had heard them. The school was huge, with over thirty thousand students both in attendance and online. I might have heard similar names or mixes of the names. With that number of students, anything was possible.

Radcliff came in a few minutes later. The first thing she asked was, “Are you SURE those were the two girls you saw?”

I nodded and was curious about her question. “Yes, why? Have you talked to them already?”

She shook her head, opened the laptop, and made some changes. She turned it to face me and said, “Those two were reported missing six and seven weeks prior to the night you saw them.”

Among the faces of several other girls, Barbie and Trudi stared at me from the screen. The header of the page said, “Missing Girls, Arlington, Texas.”

I frowned and stared at the screen. I had no idea what this meant. “If they were missing, then what were they doing with Francine that night?” I asked.

“A good question,” Radcliff said, closing the laptop. “This only makes this investigation even stranger than before.” Her tone sounded grim.

I looked up. “Then you believe me.” I wasn’t sure whether I should have asked or stated it.

She sighed. “I would rather believe your story with these girls included than the alternative. This is the first confirmation we’ve had that any of the missing girls are alive.”

“Oh,” I said, mildly surprised. “Then I’m glad I could help,” I said, getting to my feet.

She frowned at me. “Where are you going?”

I looked at her. “To work,” I said. “I don’t want to be late.”

She shook her head and pointed at my chair. “Sit back down. We’re not done.”

“What else could you possibly want to know?” I asked, feeling frustrated.

She sat in her seat and looked pointedly at mine.

I slowly sat down; my brain was in overdrive, trying to think of what else they could possibly ask. There was only one conclusion I came up with. I looked at Radcliff and shook my head. “You cannot say that I had anything to do with those two going missing. I was living in North Carolina at the time.”

“Other than family, is there anyone who could corroborate that?” she asked.

I nodded. “Mr. Chambers could. I don’t know his first name, but he owns a small auto shop on the edge of town.” I also remembered his phone number and wrote it down on the pad of paper still in front of me along with his name. I was never sick, but I didn’t want to lose that job either.

Radcliff watched me and nodded. “And how did you arrive in Texas?”

“I flew.” I told her and wrote down the flight number too. “And the cab driver was heavy-set man in his forties. I didn’t get his name, but then I was too excited about starting school.” I wrote down the cab company and the number I remembered from the markings on the cab.

She watched me with a frown. “School didn’t start for almost two weeks after you arrived. You couldn’t have been that excited about it.”

I shrugged. “I was ready to get away from home and all of the people accusing me of things that didn’t happen. I certainly didn’t expect to end up facing the same thing again.”

Radcliff never blinked. If anything, she acted as if she expected my indignant retort. “I have not accused you of anything, Mr. Connors. If I had, you would have been read your rights, put in restraints, and escorted to a cell.” She paused for a second, settling into her chair. “What I am doing is establishing exactly what happened.”

My first instinct was to apologize, but that would be the same as admitting I was wrong. I decided moving forward would be better. “Ask your next question,” I said with a hint of resignation.

She pulled out the sheet of paper with my list of whereabouts. There were red scribbles in the margins. “My next question regards your whereabouts.” She glanced at the paper. “You went to a pool party with Jordan Krumm.” She looked up and had a very skeptical expression on her face. “What did you do at this pool party?”

I didn’t understand what that had to do with Francine’s disappearance and was tempted to ask what she would do at a pool party, but that wouldn’t help anything. “I ate some food, had a soda, and went swimming.”

“The entire time you were there?” she asked.

I remembered something else and shook my head. “No, we played a team’s version of Marco Polo.”

“A team’s version?” she asked. “How does that work?”

Again, we were getting into details that I didn’t want to discuss. I wasn’t nervous so much as a little embarrassed about the game and my reactions to Jordan that night. “Everyone formed partners, and you had to stay in contact with your partner, like you were a single unit.”

Radcliff leaned forward. “Now, I’m guessing there were girls at this pool party. So, who ended up being your partner?”

I blinked and remembered. “Everyone seemed to be there as dates because all of the pairings were boy-girl. Jordan and I were the odd ones out, so we partnered.”

“And you had to maintain contact by holding hands?” she asked.

I swallowed and shook my head. “Strategically, it was smarter to move as one and stay as close together as possible. So, Jordan was usually pressed up against my back with her arms and legs wrapped around me.”

“And this happened the day after your incident with Francine, correct?” she asked and I nodded. “Then Jordan must have made you nervous.”

“She did,” I said, “but I knew it was just a game and focused on dodging the chasers. Besides, Jordan didn’t try to do what Francine did.”

Radcliff nodded. “Okay, so how many other people were at the pool party?”

I thought about that and counted off eight couples. “Including myself, Jordan, and Danielle the hostess, there were about nineteen people total.”

Radcliff nodded at the pad in front of me. “I need you to write down the names of everyone there.”

I shook my head. “I didn’t know any of them. I had just arrived in Texas the night before and was fortuitous enough to be invited to the party by a friend of the hostess, two people I didn’t know prior to that day. Yet you expect me to remember sixteen other people I never knew before or seen since?”

“Would you recognize any of them if you saw them again?” she asked, sounding frustrated.

“Maybe some of them,” I said.

“What about the hostess, Danielle? Would she know them?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “It’s possible but there were fliers around campus about the party.”

Radcliff’s expression “dropped” for lack of a better term. “So, anyone from campus could have been there without being invited.” She sighed and shook her head. She looked at the list again and said, “Okay, after the party, you went to ‘Raven’s house.’” She looked up. “Raven who?”

I shrugged. “I’ve never gotten her last name. For that matter, I think ‘Raven’ is a nickname. She has raven-black hair.”