Page 87 of Before This Ends (Before)

“Detective Thatcher and Detective Martinez I presume.” The woman greets us at the bottom of the stairs. Her long colorful skirt and sweater sway around her thin frame.

“Yes.” I don’t offer my hand since hers are wrapped around her waist, and she hasn’t made a move to let herself go.

“I’m Dr. Ashley Mayer, we spoke over e-mail. If you’d like we can speak privately in my office.”

“That works.”

“Please follow me,” she says over her shoulder already on the move so the two of us follow as she leads us back behind the stage and up a short set of stairs. She lets us into her office which is nothing but a small windowless room. I glance around, there are musical posters, and awards covering each wall, the desk is cluttered with papers and boxes and there are odds and ends on every available surface. “Here let me clean this off for you.” She starts to move stacks of papers from one of the chairs in front of the desk while mumbling, “Before every show, things tend to get away from me.”

“We can stand,” I tell her quietly and she stops, then nods and moves to stand behind her desk. “Thank you for agreeing to meet with us today.”

“Yes, well we all miss Anna and Grace terribly and want whoever harmed them caught.”

“We want the same.” I relax my hands at my sides when she eyes the gun on my hip wearily. “Can you tell us a little about them, what kind of students they were, maybe who their friends were outside of your class.”

“Like I told the other officer when he was here both girls were perfect students, neither of them ever complained. They always went above and beyond to help out however they could.” She swallows. “They both loved theater and were fantastic on stage. Anna was much more outgoing than Grace but that’s normally how it goes. There is always one friend who is willing to take a risk and step outside their comfort zone and another who is more reserved and cautious but tags along when asked to go on an adventure.” Her smile is small but fond. “They brought the best out in each other, and no one ever had a single bad thing to say to them or about them.”

“Their other professors have said the same,” Martinez says and she nods like she’s not surprised to hear that. “Do you know if Anna or Grace had a boyfriend?”

“I’ve heard from my students since the girls’ demise that Anna was seeing someone, but she never mentioned a boyfriend to me and as far as I know no one ever met him or got his name.”

“Does the name Kelce sound familiar?” I ask and she shakes her head.

“No but this is a college campus so there might be a student by that name who attends here. Are they a suspect?”

“At this time, we’re trying to figure out who he is.” She presses her lips together seeming disappointed. I don’t blame her. “Do you mind if we talk with a couple of your students?”

“Of course not,” she says pushing her thick red framed glasses up higher on the bridge of her nose. “Who would you like to speak with first?”

I give her the name of one of the girls who was with Anna and Grace at the Waffle House the night they were murdered, and after a quiet goodbye she leaves. A couple of minutes later Lacy comes into the office and we ask if she ever heard the name Kelce brought up and if she knew why Anna would have had a pregnancy test. Unfortunately, she has no information for us and neither do any of the other kids when they come in one by one to speak with us.

If Anna ever talked about her life outside of theater to anyone it’s becoming apparent that she only did so with Grace, and Grace took any information she had with her to the grave.

When we leave the campus to head back to Nashville we are exactly where we started and I’m just as frustrated as I was weeks ago.

* * *

Sittingat my desk I carefully go over the list of names that have been collected from the bars on the strip, marking each name off one by one so I don’t miss the one I’m looking for. And with thousands of artists coming into Nashville to play live downtown each week Martinez and I have our work cut out for us.

When I come to the end of another page, I sit back and rub my hands down my face. I’m exhausted. It was a long fucking day and then tonight when I was about to follow Emma to bed after we showered, Martinez called to let me know that he sent me an e-mail with another list of names. So instead of crawling into bed with Emma, I kissed her goodnight and came in here to work. Three hours later I’ve still got nothing and about a dozen pages left to go through.

Dropping my hands from my face I look up when I sense movement out of the corner of my eye and find Emma standing in the doorway. Her face sleepy, my tee brushing her thighs and her hair down around her shoulders. Beautiful, always so fucking beautiful.

“Hey,” she says quietly. “I didn’t want to interrupt; I was just checking on you.”

I scoot my chair back and hold out my hand toward her. “Come here.” Without a word she walks around the edge of my desk and takes my hand. “Did you have a dream?” I pull her down to sit on my lap.

“No.” She turns sideways to look at me and slides her fingers through my hair. “I just woke up and you weren’t in bed.” I wrap my arms around her.

“Sorry.” I rub my lips against the side of her neck and smile when she shivers.

“What are you doing in here?” She examines the top of my desk and the stack of papers I still haven’t gone through.

“Looking for a name.”

“What name?” She picks up a sheet of paper from the top of the pile.

“Kelce.”

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