Page 64 of My Child is Missing

I’m right under their noses and they don’t see me. So much care has been taken to make sure that the police would not capture me and yet, they seem to know nothing. Just yesterday, the Chief of Police was on television attempting to discredit me, saying that I’m not real. I certainly showed him. Yet, even with my latest kill, the news reports spend more time asking questions and speculating about the investigation than reporting anything at all. At least they are still talking about me. The entire city is in my grip. Fear is a haze that thickens the Denton air. The police can say what they wish.

I will not be denied.

FORTY-ONE

It took twenty-four hours to get the information they needed from StoryJot. Josie did an internet deep dive on the app and its founder. Lucky for her, it was a US-based company. The founder was from California, so she searched the state’s corporation database to find an address and phone number for the company so they could serve the warrant before she went home to sleep—or not—for the night. Thursday morning, at the stationhouse, Noah waited until mid-morning due to the time difference to call them to follow up, impressing upon their legal department that getting the information about user Ajax2733 might very well be a matter of life and death. By mid-afternoon, after Noah made several more calls, StoryJot released the IP address to them by phone. The subscriber information would take longer. Josie’s heart raced as she punched the IP into a database. Sometimes the IP address search could give them a fairly specific location and other times, the area it belonged to was too wide to be of any use. Relief sent her heartbeat ticking upward even more when she got the results—an address. She read off the address as she entered it into a separate database. “This IP address is coming from Romig’s,” she said.

“The bar?” Noah said. He circled the collective desks to look over her shoulder. She could smell a whiff of his cologne and coffee on his breath.

“Yeah.” She pulled up a map and pointed to its location.

“That’s pretty damn close to where Felicia Evans’s body was found. I think there are apartments over the top of that bar.”

“I’ll call the owner and find out,” said Josie. “I know him from a few cases. He’s a good guy.”

Fifteen minutes later, she pumped a fist into the air. “Got him! Asher Jackson Jenks. Twenty years old.”

“Let’s go.”

While Noah drove, Josie used the Mobile Data Terminal to pull up a driver’s license photo for Asher Jackson Jenks. It was difficult to tell if it was the same person they’d seen in the photos from Kayleigh’s phone, but he had shaggy brown hair. His eyes were a dull blue. He had no criminal record and he’d lived over Romig’s bar since he was eighteen. Romig’s was one of Denton’s oldest bars, located on a strip of road about four miles from the Stacks. The owner had taken one of the two-story houses along the road and converted it into a bar. It had gray siding. The front door was now an emergency exit and a door along the side had been installed as the bar entrance. The windows on the first floor were blacked out. Wooden stairs had been affixed to two sides of the building, leading to the apartments on top.

Happy hour was just beginning. Music blared from the bar, so loud that the air around the building seemed to pulse. Noah cruised through the parking lot out front, which was packed with cars, and circled the building. The parking lot out back was even more crowded with vehicles. Josie spotted Asher Jenks’s Subaru among them. It was blocked in by two other vehicles. Noah found a spot next to the dumpster and they got out. The stairs leading to the apartments trembled along with the bass of the song coming from inside the bar. Josie felt it through her feet and in her hands when she grabbed onto the railings.

Behind her, Noah said, “How does this guy sleep?”

At the top of the steps, Josie used a fist to pound against the door, hoping that if Asher was inside, he would hear it over the music. A long moment passed, and she pounded once more. She waited a beat longer and as she was about to try again, the door swung open. Asher Jenks stood before them in a Nirvana T-shirt, a pair of cargo shorts, and bare feet. A thin moustache clung to his upper lip. A line creased his forehead as he looked from Josie to Noah and back. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the music. “Who are you?”

They produced their credentials. He studied them for a moment and then pointed to the ground. “It’s the bar.”

“What?” said Noah.

“The noise violation,” he said. “It’s the bar. I’m not the owner or anything, I just rent this place.”

Josie said, “We’re not here for a noise violation. Are you Asher Jackson Jenks?”

One corner of his mouth lifted. “Are you middle-naming me? What kind of mom shit is that?”

“Are you Asher Jackson Jenks?” Noah repeated as if he hadn’t spoken.

“Yeah, but everyone just calls me Ash.”

“Not J.J.?” said Josie.

“You mean A.J.?”

“No,” said Josie. She stopped and waved a hand around them. “Mr. Jenks, it’s really difficult to talk with the noise from the bar. We’d like you to come with us to the Denton police station.”

He pressed a hand to his chest. “Me? What for?”

Noah said, “We need to speak to you about Kayleigh Patchett.”

“Who?”

Josie couldn’t decide if he was being genuine or if he had rehearsed not reacting to Kayleigh’s name. While he awaited their answer, he started cracking his knuckles.

“The teenage girl who was abducted over the weekend,” Noah replied. “Right here in Denton.”

“Is that the girl on the news?” he said.

---