Page 68 of My Child is Missing

“Several times, yeah.”

“But you didn’t want to come forward on Kayleigh’s behalf.”

“Well, at first I told her she had some recourse through copyright law, but the more I thought about it, I realized she was just a kid, you know? If she wanted to go that route, she’d need an attorney and to get one, her parents would have to hire one. The last thing I needed was those two psychos finding out about me. So yeah, I didn’t want to come forward. It was a dumb high school contest. She could sacrifice one story to protect our relationsh—to help me out.”

“It wasn’t just a story, though,” Noah said. “Was it? Felicia Evans was admitted to Denton University’s Youth Summer Writing Program on the strength of that story.”

Asher looked at his feet. His hands twirled around one another at warp speed.Crack, crack, crack.

Noah added, “As someone whose father didn’t understand his facility with words or his ambition to be a writer, I’d think that you of all people would understand how devastating it must have been for Kayleigh. Not only was her story stolen but her spot in that program.”

“Sure,” he mumbled. “I was upset for her. Of course. I’m not a monster.”

“Did you tell her there were other ways to make Felicia pay?”

Asher’s gaze swept back up toward Noah. “Well, yeah, but I meant that she should try some other way to expose Felicia. Like going onto TikTok or something and making one of those viral videos. Showing how she’d posted the story on StoryJot months before Felicia turned it in at school. I didn’t mind her using StoryJot as long as she didn’t involve me. No one would have to know I edited for her that way. She could prove it was hers, probably by the timestamp on the app.”

“You never suggested that you approach Felicia directly?”

“What? Hell, no. I told you, I wasn’t getting involved.”

“You and Kayleigh never discussed you carrying out some sort of revenge on Felicia Evans? Even if she didn’t know who you were?”

“Are you crazy, man? No.”

“You never said you’d kill Felicia Evans?” Noah said.

Asher’s face twisted in disbelief. “What? No. I never said that.”

“Not even privately to Kayleigh? Maybe in a postcoital flush? You know as well as I do, men will say anything right after sex.”

Asher’s cheeks flamed. “No. I did not say that. I would not say that, and I sure as hell wouldn’t threaten anyone with violence, certainly not a teenage girl.”

“Okay.” Noah took his phone out one more time, scrolling and swiping until he found a photo of Henry Thomas. He turned it toward Asher. “Last question. You know this guy?”

Asher stared at the photo, giving a slow blink. He cracked his knuckles once more. Josie counted four seconds. He recognized Henry Thomas, and by the nervous glance he shot at Noah, he knew that Noah knew. He licked his lips.Crack, crack.“Um, he looks familiar.”

“Okay,” said Noah. “Where have you seen him?”

Crack, crack, crack.“Oh, I remember. He lives up on Murder Mountain. He’s got like some cabin or something up there. Creepy as hell. Some of my friends thought it would be cool to drive up there and check it out. People think it’s haunted. Anyway, we drove up there once, saw this driveway and we thought that’s how you got into the fields. I mean, the city planted this whole field of flowers, you know? We thought that was the entrance, but then this dude comes out of this little log cabin and starts screaming at us to get the hell off his property. I thought he was going to kill us.”

“You know his name?”

Asher looked at the photo again.Crack.“No, man. I only saw him that one time with my buddies and we got the hell out of there. He wasn’t exactly inviting us in for drinks.”

Noah nodded and took his time standing up. “Great. I’ll go see where we are with those warrants.”

FORTY-THREE

By the time they were ready to execute the search warrants on Asher Jackson Jenks’s apartment and vehicle, Noah had gone home to rest, replaced by Gretchen. While Hummel’s team used a flatbed truck to impound Asher’s Subaru, Josie and Gretchen searched his apartment. It was small, cramped, overflowing with books, and it reeked of fried food and stale beer. In his bedside table were condoms and lubricant. There were long brown hairs on the pillow beside his and a nearly full bottle of women’s bodywash in his bathroom, but other than that, there was no evidence that he had abducted or killed Kayleigh Patchett, or that he had killed Felicia Evans, in spite of his apartment’s proximity to the scene of her death. There were no snare traps or blood evidence. They found the drugs that Asher had mentioned. Not enough to charge him for possession with intent to distribute, but damn close. Josie was certain that he was Kayleigh’s supplier. They took his devices into custody for processing, but Josie doubted they’d find anything that would suggest he was a killer.

He was too careful.

The shifts rotated again, with Noah relieving her late that night. She went home to Trout, again taking him for a long walk and initiating a lengthy play session with him, hoping to wear herself out as much as him, but sleep still wouldn’t come. Her eyes burned. Her limbs ached. Even her stomach rebelled, burning with acid no matter how many antacids she consumed. In bed with Trout snoring happily beside her, she lay awake, staring at the silver moonlight streaming through the windows, turning the case over in her head.

She had the sense that Asher Jackson Jenks, aka Ajax, was lying about something but she didn’t know what. He had a connection to Kayleigh, and by extension, Felicia Evans, which he’d admitted to, and he’d gone to great lengths to hide his association with Kayleigh even though their relationship was not illegal. That level of deviousness and cunning would serve him well if he wanted to kill. He had admitted to having hunted and trapped, although his assertion that he had no affinity for it was believable. Henry Thomas also had experience trapping, and he still regularly associated with Morris Lauber whose trapping license was current. Henry had trapping equipment in his home even though, according to the ERT, all they’d found were footholds that were old and rusted. He was older than Asher, more sophisticated, and he had a prior conviction—a proven history of violence. He had no connection to Kayleigh other than the fact that Blue had followed her scent into his cabin. Not that proving a connection was necessary. If Henry Thomas was some kind of serial killer who hunted and trapped kids in the woods, his run-in with Kayleigh could have been random. Ballsy to do it in broad daylight only miles from his own home, but it still could have been random.

Still, Denton PD couldn’t prove that either Thomas or Asher had taken Kayleigh or killed Felicia. Even if the DNA from the hair found in Henry Thomas’s cabin came back as belonging to Kayleigh, they’d have enough to arrest him, but there were still pieces missing—like Kayleigh’s body, for one. If the cases in the other counties and Felicia Evans’s murder were connected to Kayleigh’s abduction—and Josie believed they were—then the pattern dictated that Kayleigh had been killed. Josie considered the cases in Lenore and Montour Counties. It was difficult not to take them into account, but the fact was that they were out of Denton PD’s jurisdiction. Even if she could prove that either Thomas or Asher were in those counties on the dates of the murders, that didn’t help her solve her own cases.

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