Page 60 of My Child is Missing

Shelly said, “We heard that a young woman had been found dead. We didn’t know—we thought it might be Kayleigh. No one had called us. We heard, from other parents, that it was Felicia, but we had no way of confirming that, so we came here to find out if it was true or not. I needed to know. I needed to hear it from someone official that it wasn’t Kayleigh. Then we saw Felicia’s parents. We didn’t expect them. I know it’s just terrible, but we were relieved that it wasn’t Kayleigh.”

Josie said, “I think any parent would be relieved to find out that it wasn’t their child who had been killed.”

Dave stopped pacing but his face was even ruddier than before. “Is it the same guy? Did the same guy who took Kayleigh kill Felicia?”

“We don’t know that for sure,” Josie said. “We believe that it was the same man, but we have no proof. Not yet.”

Dave pointed a finger at Josie. “What the hell are you doing? Where is Kayleigh? Why haven’t you found her yet? You found Felicia! Why not our daughter? You’re all just standing around with your thumbs up your asses while our daughter—while Kayleigh—you aren’t even looking for her!”

“Mr. Patchett, we’re doing everything we can,” Josie said. “We’re waiting for evidence to be processed and we’re following up on some leads. Believe me, this department is working around the clock to locate Kayleigh.”

The uniformed officer watched Dave carefully as he glared at Josie. “This Woodsman is out there kidnapping and killing kids and you’re all just sitting on your asses.”

Josie worked hard to maintain her composure. “Mr. and Mrs. Patchett,” she said, casting about for some way to change the subject, to distract Dave so that maybe he would calm down. “We found some text messages between Kayleigh and Felicia on Felicia’s phone. There was some dispute over a story. It seems like you and Felicia’s parents were also arguing about it.”

“We weren’t,” Shelly said. “I don’t even know why they had to bring it up. It was resolved.”

“Can you tell me what happened?”

Dave said, “Good lord. You’re really something, you know that? Wasting our time asking dumb questions when you could be looking for our daughter. I’m sick and tired of hearing about this damn story. No one cares! It doesn’t matter! Why don’t you just do your fucking jobs!”

With that, he stormed out of the station. Josie silently scolded herself. She’d done the exact opposite of defusing the situation. She’d dealt with hotheads like Dave Patchett before, but it had never gone so badly. Either the stress of the case or her sleep deprivation, or both, were starting to get to her. She tried to reset and refocus.

Shelly watched her husband go, eyes wide with shock. When she turned back to Josie, her cheeks were colored with embarrassment. “I’m sorry,” she muttered. “He’s just—”

“A father whose daughter is missing?” Josie filled in. “It’s fine. Mrs. Patchett, I know that some of the things we ask seem strange and irrelevant but in investigations like these, we never know what might lead to something useful. In the texts that Kayleigh sent to Felicia, she was extremely upset.” Josie stopped short of telling Shelly that Kayleigh had used the threat of her boyfriend to make Felicia pay for stealing her story.

Shelly cleared her throat. She glanced at the front doors, as if expecting her husband to burst back in, but only the uniformed officer stood there, as if guarding the entrance. “Everyone was upset. Us most of all. We didn’t think we raised a child who would lie on such a grand scale.”

“What do you mean?”

Shelly twisted her purse strap in her hands. “There was a writing contest at school. All the girls in the after-school club submitted a story. The winner of the writing award would be guaranteed a slot at Denton University’s Youth Summer Writing Program. It was a big deal. Kind of like when I was young, we had Governor’s School. Do you remember that?”

For years, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s governor’s office had sponsored summer programs in various subjects where specially chosen students from all over the state could join. They went away for several weeks each summer, like they were going away to college, and they worked on their craft. Josie had never been interested in them, but she remembered how prestigious they were, how hard they were to get into, and how much other students at her high school coveted spots. “Yes,” Josie said. “I remember.”

“Sasha—Felicia’s mom—went to the Governor’s School for the Arts when she was in high school. She’s a pharmaceutical rep now, but whatever. Anyway, the Governor’s School for the Arts was discontinued in 2005, but Denton University hosts something very similar each year—for young writers.”

“Did Kayleigh want to go?” asked Josie.

“Yes. After she joined that after-school club she got it into her head that she should go. We told her that she needed to focus on softball. She should let someone who had been interested in writing for longer try for the spot. She said she was interested in stories. She’s always said that, but we’ve never seen any stories. Plus, her English grades have never been that great. Dave didn’t even want her to join that after-school club, but Kayleigh promised she’d try harder at softball if we let her. Somehow, she convinced him. Huge mistake. Like I said, the students submitted stories and when the teacher saw the submissions, she realized that both Kayleigh and Felicia had submitted the exact same story. The teacher confronted them. Both girls said it was their original story. There was really no way to tell whose story it was but let’s face it, aside from that club, Kayleigh doesn’t write even though she claims she always wanted to. We had already told her not to enter.”

Josie thought about the texts between the girls. Felicia had borderline admitted to stealing the story. “Did you ask Kayleigh if she had written the story?”

Shelly looked surprised. “Why would we do that? It wasn’t her story.”

“How did you know that it wasn’t hers?” asked Josie, now feeling like she was going out on a limb. For her purposes, it didn’t matter at all whose story it was, it only mattered that Kayleigh had told Felicia that her boyfriend would kill her for taking it and passing it off as her own.

Shelly’s gaze swept the floor. “Sometimes with your kids you have to be brutally honest. This is going to sound harsh to you, but it’s the truth. That story was too good to be Kayleigh’s. Felicia insisted she had written it. Felicia’s mom had gone to Governor’s School. She said that Felicia always wrote stories, since she was a little girl. It was clear to everyone that Felicia had written it.”

“What was the story about?” asked Josie.

Shelly waved a hand in the air. “I don’t remember that well. Evidently it was a fantasy story.”

“In these messages between the girls, Kayleigh says it was her ‘SJ’ story. Does that mean anything to you?”

“No. I don’t know what that means.”

“Felicia won the award, didn’t she? As well as the spot in the program?”

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