What Has Become of You (23 page)

Below that was an email contact for those who wanted to request an application. There was a boldfaced note near the bottom of the home page inviting anyone who had information about the case and wished to remain anonymous to click on the link below. Vera’s cursor hovered over it for a few seconds. Then she moved it away.

Elsewhere on the home page was a basic overview of the case and, in that same swimming font, a section titled “A Word from Jensen Willard’s Mother.”

If you have come to this website, thank you, first of all, for your interest in our missing daughter and her safe return.

On the evening of March 30th, our daughter and the light of our life, Jensen Alice Willard, packed up her army knapsack and headed for a sleepover at her friend Phoebe’s house. The last time we saw her was when we dropped her off at the address she gave. Since then, we have learned that no girl named Phoebe is enrolled at Jensen’s school. The address where she was dropped off was not the house she said it was.

Jensen is fifteen years old. She stands five foot two inches tall and weighs about one hundred pounds. She has dark-brown hair cut a little below chin length, often worn in a short ponytail. She has light-brown eyes and light skin with a few freckles.
When she chooses to share it, she has a beautiful smile.

Being a teenager has not always been easy for Jensen, but she is a strong girl. I always say that she might seem meek, but if you back her into a corner, boy, will she come out fighting! Because of that, I believe that wherever she is, she must be okay. But there is a huge feeling of emptiness in these last few days since our daughter has been gone. If somebody knows her whereabouts, please let us know. If you have her, please return her—no questions asked.

There has been too much loss in Dorset lately, and too much within the course of our own lives. We cannot have Jensen be another tragedy.

The site had enabled a feature for public comments, which Vera presumed were screened before they were made visible to the public. There were words of encouragement and sympathy, of support and condolences. There were stories from other people whose loved ones were also missing—parents’ accounts of children who’d been found living and dead, as well as the continued, wistful hopes of those whose children had never been found. This outpouring of pain made Vera feel voyeuristic, as though she didn’t have the right to be privy to this particular brand of sadness. Still, she wanted to read every post. She wanted to see what people on both ends of the equation had to say—those with losses and those with reclamations. But that, she thought, was best saved for another time.

She did, however, take the time to save Jensen’s picture in her documents and print it up. She taped it on the wall above her laptop, taking care so that the edges of the paper aligned with the faces of Heidi Duplessis, Angela Galvez, and Sufia Ahmed. The row of missing and dead was growing, occupying a greater stretch above her laptop. She wondered when and where it would stop.

Wednesday morning on her way to school, Vera stopped at the bodega and pumped herself a cup of coffee out of the self-serve coffee urn. But then a strange thing happened. Staring at the arrangement of creamers, sugar, artificial sweetener packets, and stirrers, her mind went blank. She could no longer remember what she liked in her coffee or even how to prepare it. She stood motionless at the counter, willing the memory to come back, the ease of this morning ritual, until she slowly lifted the spoon for the nondairy creamer and tore open several sweeteners. The next several minutes were spent looking for the lids to the cups, which were stacked right in front of her.

She didn’t see how she could be expected to make it through her classes in this fugue state, even though she would be only administering a test—an easy day for her. She started to make her way over to the counter with her coffee, the cup sloshing over a little—she hadn’t affixed the lid tightly enough—as she dragged her bumping, rattling suitcase behind her. Next to the counter, the latest
Dorset Journal
headline caught her eye.

Missing Girl Possible Runaway

She seized the top newspaper from the stack and tossed it onto the counter as though it were smoldering.

“You read newspaper now, eh?” the clerk said, whistling through his teeth as he rang her up. “Before, you just get coffee. Now you like newspaper, too.”

Outside again, Vera propped her suitcase against the bodega and stood under its canopy, hurriedly reading the article in the
Journal
. She had not expected another article to appear so soon, and this one was worse than she could have prepared herself for.

Jensen Willard, 15, who disappeared last Friday, may have taken some inspiration from a novel she was reading for her sophomore English class.

When last seen, Willard was dropped off at 113 Wheaton Road, which she gave as the address for a friend of hers named Phoebe Caulfield. Police have since verified that no one bearing that name lives there and that Phoebe Caulfield is a character from
The Catcher in the Rye
, a novel that is required reading for tenth graders at Willard’s school. This was brought to the police department’s attention through multiple tips after Officer Gerard Babineau made a presentation at the Wallace School.

According to Willard’s English teacher, Melanie Belisle, who is currently on maternity leave,
The Catcher in the Rye
is a story about a 16-year-old boy who hides from his family after being expelled from school. “Jensen Willard is not a student I got to know as well as some,” Belisle told the
Journal
. “She was very private. But it isn’t hard to imagine that she might have run away to look for some excitement.”

Willard’s parents disagree. “If Jensen had a problem, she always came to me,” said her mother, Linda Willard Cudahy, 55. “She has had some trouble with depression and got help for it. Since then she has been fine. It’s hard to believe she’d just up and run away.”

On March 30, the day before she disappeared, Willard withdrew several hundred dollars from her bank account, leaving only a small sum in savings.

Recent national statistics on missing teenagers show that the vast majority of children between the ages of 12 and 17 who go missing each year are runaways. However, Babineau says that the police force is “looking at all options and possibilities.” The law enforcement response to date has included interviewing neighbors and relatives, contacting registered sex offenders, and questioning drivers who travel the Wheaton Road in case they might have seen something unusual. Yesterday a sheriff’s team covered a 12-square-mile area extending from Willard’s home to the point on the Wheaton Road where she was last seen, and farther past that into Portland.

People have called in with tips about sighting a girl matching Willard’s description, but none have panned out.

Vera read the article again. She was still holding her leaking coffee cup in her free hand, and she set it down on the ground by her suitcase. She thought of the desk clerk at the Roundview Hotel; why wasn’t he coming forth with what he knew about a young girl named Phoebe Willard? Recalling the clerk’s enlarged pupils, the pungent and unmistakable smell of weed that had wafted up as he leaned over the counter, Vera thought that maybe he didn’t have the brainpower to put two and two together after the fact. But this was not something to be counted on with any sense of security.

Digging around in her purse for her phone, she called the number of the Wallace School and got Sue MacMasters’s voicemail. Her impulse had been to call in sick, but the sound of Sue’s voice made her lose her resolve; she hung up without leaving a message. Still, she felt soul-sick and a little doomed, like someone whose days of grace are numbered, as she dragged her suitcase in the direction of the school.

 • • • 

Vera arrived in her empty classroom almost an hour early and set about arranging her handouts for her three English classes. While she was reviewing her day planner, a woman came into her classroom with a clicking of high, stiletto-heeled boots.
Please,
Vera thought,
please don’t be another cop.
Dressed in an exquisitely tailored jacket, her hair slicked back into a chignon, this woman looked at least as old as Vera was—possibly older. As she came closer, Vera saw her smooth, taut skin, marred only by one poorly camouflaged pimple on her forehead; she then recognized one of the young teachers she’d met in Sue MacMasters’s office.

“Hi,” the teacher said as though she and Vera were old friends. “How are you doing?”

“Not too bad.” Vera tried her hardest to remember the woman’s name and to keep this particular ignorance off her own face. Amanda? Amber? Something that bore no resemblance to either?

“I hope you don’t mind if I bug you for just a minute. It’s about Jensen Willard. Have you seen this?”

Vera was expecting to see that copy of the morning paper again, but instead the woman handed her a printout from the home page of the BRING JENSEN HOME website.

Are you a whiz at computers? Handy at making flyers?

“Oh, the website? Yes, I
have
seen it.”

“Well,” the woman said, “my husband, Paul, is one of the organizers. He’s known the Cudahys for years. And I’ve signed on to help him as much as I can. I know teachers are busy—I’m definitely busy myself—but those of us with
any
time to spare owe it to one of our students and her family to offer some small bit of help, don’t we? Even if it’s just an hour out of our day.”

Vera gave this quietly impassioned young woman a long, appraising look. “I’m so embarrassed to say this, but I’ve drawn a blank on your name.”

“Amy Nimitz.”

“Oh. I knew that, I think.”

“I’m Jensen’s psychology teacher.”

Vera hadn’t heard that Jensen had been studying psychology. She felt a twinge of envy. How fascinating it must be to teach psychology to such a psychologically unusual specimen as Jensen Willard. “You teach in an interesting field,” she said, looking at Amy Nimitz with new respect. “I took quite a few psych courses as an undergrad myself.”

“My background is in sociology, but I’m credentialed to teach psych, at least at the high school level. Anyway, can I interest you in taking another look at BRING JENSEN HOME? You know, we’ve set up temporary headquarters at the print shop on Chamberlain Street, so we have some actual manpower. There’s a downloadable volunteer application on the website—only two pages, nothing too complicated. Karen Provencher has already been approved to work with us. And Lacey Tondreau—she’s Jensen’s French teacher.”

Vera remembered the young teacher, who had sat next to Amy in Sue’s office. “I’ll certainly give it some thought. What is this organization doing, exactly—are you doing organized foot searches?”

“Oh, no, nothing like that. Don’t worry—you won’t have to get dirty! This is more like clerical stuff—working with photocopies, emails, phone calls.”

“Ah,” Vera said, a little disappointed. She wouldn’t have minded getting dirty. “I’m sure it sounds like a worthy venture, and I’d like to be a part of it if I could. May I ask you one other question? Sort of a . . . personal question, just between you and me?”

“Of course.”

“As Jensen’s psychology teacher . . . what was your impression of her? I mean, was there anything about her overall emotional well-being that struck you, either positively or negatively?”

“Well, as you know, I’m not a therapist. But there was nothing about her that struck me as all that unusual for a girl that age. Maybe a little rebellion, but that’s normal enough, don’t you think? I said more or less the same thing to the police when they asked that same question.”

“I see,” Vera said, as though that explained it all. “I do thank you for dropping in, Amy, really. I’m sure we’ll be in touch.”

After Amy Nimitz left, Vera thought:
There is no way this is ever going to happen. No way in hell can I apply as a spontaneous volunteer.
She knew that such nonprofit agencies worked closely with the police, and any applicant would need to be screened. And while her criminal record was as clean as a whistle, she was well aware that the local police did not hold her in high regard at this moment. They might question her motives, her desire to draw herself closer to the case. Perhaps they would even think the worst. Perpetrators often return to the scene of their crimes or offer to help in search parties; Ivan Schlosser, for instance, had later admitted that helping volunteers comb the woods in search of one of his victims had given him a great thrill.

Vera, alone in her classroom again, seated herself at the school-issued computer and typed in the URL of the BRING JENSEN HOME website, looking at the home page whose features she had already committed to memory. She looked again at the icon where one could fill out an online application to volunteer for the committee.
I had better be careful,
she thought.
I’d be better off avoiding this like the plague.

On the other hand, wouldn’t her role in looking for Jensen help vindicate her somewhat? Wouldn’t it show her goodwill? Wouldn’t it demonstrate that she
cared
? And better still, wouldn’t serving on the volunteer committee give her access to information she might not otherwise have—information that might even allow her to locate Jensen all on her own? The more she flirted with this thought, the more her muted excitement grew—for she could not deny that this was an
exciting
prospect, filled with possibilities.

Vera kept thinking of Jensen’s mother and stepfather, wondering how they were coping with it all. Her own mother had called her the night before to ask about the missing girl she’d heard about on TV. “This really scares me,” she had said, after Vera had recounted for her a much-abridged version of Jensen’s case. “Two girls dead, and now another one missing? You have to promise me you won’t walk around in the dark.”

“Nobody thinks there’s any connection between the three girls,” Vera had said.

“Well, that doesn’t make it any better. Dead girls are dead girls.”

“Only two are dead.”

“That you know of!” her mother had said. “Just be careful. Promise me.”

“Me? I’ll be fine, Mom. Even if there
is
someone who snatches people off the streets, he prefers young girls. I’m too old now.”

Vera sat in deliberation for a few minutes. There was no way her mother could know exactly how enmeshed she’d become in the disappearance of Jensen Willard. The worry might kill her, Vera thought. But providing Jensen’s parents with what little information she had just might save them. They deserved to know about their daughter’s hotel stay and what Vera had observed on that last Friday night.

She clicked on the icon asking for anonymous information. In all lowercase letters, which she hoped would help her masquerade as someone whose English skills were subpar, she rapidly typed:

i have reason to believe jensen willard checked in and checked out of the roundview hotel on the night of march 30.

after that she probably walked in the direction of home.

police might want to focus on that area. thank you.

She paused, and then, almost reluctantly, highlighted and deleted all the text she had just written. IP addresses could be traced, she knew. She moved the cursor elsewhere on the page—back to the icon linking to the application for the BRING JENSEN HOME volunteers. She skimmed the requirements of the document—contact info, available hours, specialized skills, criminal history, and three personal references—and began to type.

 • • • 

Vera had walked to the copy center on Chamberlain Street on a Thursday afternoon. She had been greeted by an older woman who sat knitting at a front desk, an L.L.Bean tote bag of yarn tucked between her enormous, parted knees. “Paul’s in the back room” was all she said when Vera handed over her ID, and the large woman pointed to a doorway past the computers and photocopying machines.

The copy center had been set up in an old split-level house, which was often the way with small local businesses. The back room, Vera found, was only one of many back rooms on the ground floor. It was dominated by a massive, unused fireplace and a long conference table. At one end of this table sat a well-muscled woman with a short buzz cut; she hardly bothered to look up from her assiduous envelope stuffing as she noted Vera’s arrival. At the other end, pacing back and forth as he spoke into his cell phone, was a short, intensely energetic-looking man whom Vera guessed was Paul Nimitz. “Vera!” he said, covering the mouthpiece of the phone with his hand. “How nice to meet you.”

Vera had hoped that Amy might be at the center, too, or even Karen Provencher or Lacey Tondreau; any familiar face was better than none. Not that Paul was unwelcoming by any means. After terminating his call and introducing her to the woman with the buzz cut—Robin was her name—he gestured for Vera to follow him and led her into yet another room—an employee kitchen, by the looks of it, outfitted with one small table that took up most of its floor space.