“Sit and go through your notes while I clean up,” I order when she finishes her small plate of food.
“You’re bossy,” she says but pushes her plate toward me. “That’s not very assistant-like.”
“I’m an initiative taking assistant.” I rummage through her sink cabinet for the dish soap and a sponge. While I wash and rinse, she flips through her notebook.
“There are three guys missing. Cole was the first guy who went missing, according to his on-again-off-again girlfriend. After asking around, someone mentioned that they hadn’t seen Johnny Simon either. Johnny is a regular student. No sports, no extracurricular activities that I could find.”
“And the third?” I wipe my hands with a towel and then lean back against the sink, watching her while she reviews her notes.
“Todd Rodriguez. He’s a junior, unlike Johnny and Cole. He’s also Hispanic, whereas Johnny and Cole were both white. I don’t know if that matters.”
“Sometimes it does.”
She nods. “He comes from a big family. Three sisters, two of them are older and graduated, and one is younger. The youngest is still in elementary school. He was supposed to pick her up from school last Friday but didn’t show up. His oldest sister, Cammie, came to school the following Monday looking for him. She didn’t get the answers she wanted, and we could hear her yelling at the principal saying things like it’s the school’s fault he’s missing.”
“Did you hear why she said that?”
Josie shakes her head. “No, and I tried to ask, but she brushed me off. I went over to the Rodriguez apartment, but they wouldn’t open the door for me. Are there any missing guys from your school?”
“To be honest, I never paid attention. Niki and I barely go to class. We’re, ah, working a lot.”
She narrows her eyes. “And work is what again?”
I kind of want to lie to her, to make up some story about how I help old ladies cross the street and feed the poor at soup kitchens, but my only experience at soup kitchens was getting the handout, not ladling up the food.
My hesitation gives me away. “That bad, huh?” she says but without any judgment.
“It’s not something I’d want your dad to know.”
“Oh, really bad then.”
“We’re helping people keep promises.”
Josie snorts. “Say no more.”
I don’t know if she’s being sarcastic, but I take her words at face value and clamp my mouth shut.
“None of these guys have much in common other than they’re male. They don’t look alike. They don’t hang with the same crowd. Cole played basketball, Johnny was in some math club, and, like we talked about before, Todd did nothing.”
“Does there have to be a connection?”
“No, but isn’t it odd that three guys are missing? Did you ever watchMindhunters?”
“No.”
“It’s about how the FBI established their Behavioral Science Department. One of the cases that they were trying to solve at the time was the Atlanta missing children cases. All these Atlanta boys went missing, and it was because a guy, a normal seeming guy, was offering them talent auditions, saying he could make them a star. He’d lure these boys into his car and then take them someplace and do terrible things to them.”
“You think that’s what’s happening here?”
Josie sighs. “I don’t think so, but I can’t rule it out. I should have inspected Cole’s body more closely to see if there were signs of other kinds of activity.”
She means abuse.
“I’ll do it.” I don’t want her out late at night, and I don’t want her inspecting some boy’s body, even if it’s to search for clues. “I’ll go now before the animals get to him, and then I’ll call it in so that the police can tell the family. I don’t think you and I should be the ones to do that.”
She taps her chin as she considers my suggestion. “Okay. I’ll text you what to look for.”
I make sure she locks her doors, and I stick my face in the camera so her dad sees me leave. He’s not the type to want guys staying over, especially ones with tats like mine. I’ll win him over eventually, but spending the night here while he’s gone would place a black mark next to my name. I’ll have to sneak in the back to avoid the Ring camera when I return.
