Without Mercy (13 page)

CHAPTER 11

“L
ook, there’s nothing more I can tell you,” Cheryl Conway said over the wireless connection. Jules had tried one last time to reach the missing girl’s parents before leaving for work. Finally, Lauren’s mother, who lived in Phoenix, had taken the call. “Lauren’s still missing, but we’re holding out hope that she’s okay, that we find her soon. Oh, God.” Cheryl Conway’s voice broke at the thought of losing her child, and Jules felt like a real jerk for having forced the woman to talk about it.

“I’m sorry,” she said, gesturing with her free hand, though she knew the other woman couldn’t see her. “I hope she comes home soon.”

“We all do.”

“I’m calling because my sister’s a student at Blue Rock Academy, and I’m concerned about her.”

“I … I don’t know what to say.” Jules heard another voice—deeper and definitely male—say something in the background, but she couldn’t make out the words, just the admonishing tone. Was it Lauren’s father? Or an older brother? Some authority figure.

“Mrs. Conway?” she said.

“Uh … please … Look, I’m sorry …” Cheryl’s voice became a squeak as she tried to control herself and failed. “I … I really can’t talk about this. I shouldn’t. If you have any other questions, take them up with the sheriff’s department.”

Cheryl Conway hung up, and Jules stood in the hallway near her front door, her cell phone still clamped to her ear, feeling that she was missing something. Cheryl Conway had wanted to tell her more, but her husband had admonished her.

Why?

She slipped her phone into her purse.

What had she hoped to learn by tracking down beleaguered, frightened parents who, though “holding out hope,” were worried sick that their daughter was already dead? The phone call had provided little information. It just reaffirmed Jules’s fears about the school.

“Nancy Drew, I’m not,” she told Diablo. Aside from working for a collection agency as a file clerk while going to college, she had no skills at being a detective of any kind.

Still, she felt an urgency to spring Shay from Blue Rock, and some of her anxiety sprang from Shay. Lord knew she was manipulative. Jules snagged her keys and checked her reflection in the narrow mirror by the front door. Her hair was piled on her head, her white blouse pressed, black skirt straight. Her makeup hadn’t smeared, so she was ready for work at a job she really didn’t mind but wasn’t in love with. There was always Tony, the manager, with his sexual innuendos to deal with. Then there was Dora, a whiny waitress who loved to complain. “But it pays for Tasty Treats,” she told the cat before grabbing her coat for the night shift at 101. The hours were long, the crowd noisy, the prices steep, and the tips great. The best thing was that it was a night gig,
so if a migraine interrupted her sleep, or the nightmare returned, she could ignore the alarm clock in the morning.

She was lucky to have the job. “I’ll see ya later,” she promised the cat, then, outside, waved to her neighbor Mrs. Dixon before dashing through the drizzle to her sedan. The car, sometimes stubborn, started on the first try, and she was halfway to work when her cell phone rang. She wouldn’t have picked it up and risked a ticket for driving while talking on a cell, but she recognized the out-of-area number as the one she’d last dialed—Lauren Conway’s parents in Phoenix.

“Hello?”

“This is Cheryl Conway again,” the woman whispered. “I couldn’t talk earlier, not really. My husband doesn’t approve. He wants to do everything by the book, but I can’t stand to think that someone else’s daughter might end up missing if I don’t help. The sheriff’s department … it’s not enough; they don’t have the manpower. Sometimes you have to do more.”

“Do more how?” Jules asked.

But Cheryl ignored her question and just kept talking. “I don’t know you or your sister, but trust me, something’s very wrong at that academy. They have a program that breaks kids down or builds them up or something, but the students are left alone in the wilderness to find themselves and learn to rely on themselves. Sometimes for days. You know, some of the schools do that, leave the kids to fend for themselves for twenty-four or forty-eight hours in the forest to teach them to survive. I … I can’t help but wonder if that’s what happened to Lauren. If she was left in the forest and there was an accident, and the school’s decided to cover it up.”

“They wouldn’t,” Jules said automatically, not really believing that the school would cover up something so horrid.
Not the school, but someone in the school. It just takes one person with a secret agenda or an owner who could lose millions in a scandal and a lawsuit.
Jules thought of the huge mansion on Lake Washington. Worth millions. Someone was living the high life and wouldn’t want to risk it.

Suddenly Jules felt as cold as death.

“Who knows what ‘they’ would do?” Cheryl said. “All I know is my daughter is missing, and the last time I talked with her, she confided that the school wasn’t what people thought it was, and she was going to prove it. She isn’t a teenager, you know. She was recruited, yes, but not to be a student; it was to be a part of some counseling program, a teacher’s aide of sorts. She’d get her college paid for while helping troubled kids, and she jumped at the chance.

“I tried to talk her out of it, to stay here at the university, but Lauren was always looking for an adventure, a challenge, pushing herself to the edge. That’s why she was recruited and I think … I mean, it’s possible that the very reasons she was chosen are the reasons she’s missing.” There was desperation in the woman’s voice. “Reverend Lynch insists that she left by choice, of course, but I know my daughter. She wouldn’t let us worry like this.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“We’re going to find her.” There was a renewed conviction in her tone. “No matter what it takes, we’re going to find her. I’m not trusting the sheriff’s department or that Reverend Lynch to do what it’s going to take. Just because Lynch is supposed to be a man of God means nothing these days.”

Didn’t Edie say the house on the lake was owned by a preacher? No, that wasn’t right. The school owned the property and a preacher lived there part-time. She’d mentioned Lynch by name.

“I’m serious,” Cheryl continued. “If you value your sister’s
life, then get her out of Blue Rock Academy. But do not call my house again. My husband is very upset.”

For the first time since she’d heard of the school, someone was confirming Jules’s worst fears.

“I have to go,” Cheryl said.

“Wait! If I need to get in contact with you—”

“I have a cell phone.” Cheryl rattled off the number, then hung up. Repeating the number over and over again, Jules found a pen and wrote the ten digits on a gas receipt she’d tossed into her empty cup holder. After she parked her car on the street three blocks from the restaurant, she would punch the number into the contact list of her cell phone.

She thought about everything Cheryl Conway had told her, and her blood ran cold. Shay was at the academy, alone. Remembering Shay’s last phone call, her desperate plea, Jules knew she had to do something; she couldn’t just let her sister meet with the same fate as Lauren Conway.

Jules glanced at her watch. Late again! As Jules fed the meter for the next few hours and hurried into the restaurant, Cheryl Conway’s warning chased after her:
If you value your sister’s life, then get her out of Blue Rock Academy.

Jules would.

And she knew just how she would go about it.

“And you left your last teaching job because the school was cutting positions?” Dr. Rhonda Hammersley asked over the soft sound of classical music wafting through the room.

“I was one of the last teachers hired, the first to be let go,” Jules said, and she felt her palms begin to sweat. She sat across from the dean and kept her trembling hands under the polished wood table to hide her nervousness.

After taking Cheryl Conway’s advice to heart, Jules had applied to Blue Rock Academy online. Within two days, she’d been called for an interview, not at the school, but, here, at the house on the lake where the two poodles were lying by a fire, heads on their paws, dark eyes staring at her as if silently accusing her of lying. This had been a quick process, with the people interviewing her flying up from southern Oregon. “The district was also eliminating art and music in the school with the budget cuts. Since my major was in art, I was let go.”

“Oh, yes, there’ve been so many job losses with the falling economy. Your minor was in history and you have a credential to teach it, according to your résumé.” With short brown hair and a runner’s build, Hammersley struck Jules as a serious woman, though a hint of compassion shined through.

“That’s right.”

Hammersley studied Jules over the top of her reading glasses, then glanced down at Jules’s application and credentials spread out on the table. “I have to admit, I like what I see, though I’m just part of the committee.”

The committee had been interviewing Jules for more than an hour. Hammersley was the third person to come to the polished table. First she’d been grilled by Dr. Burdette, the dean of women for Blue Rock Academy. Wearing a smart black suit, Burdette had been all business, crisp and distracted. She looked at her watch three times during the interview and wound a finger in her kinky reddish locks before catching herself and stopping abruptly. Permanent frown lines were beginning to form at the corners of her mouth and between her eyes. Jules had guessed that Adele Burdette, Ph.D., was not a happy person.

The following interviewer had been Dr. Williams, a tall, slim, black woman who was as friendly and warm as Burdette had been uptight and icy.

Mutt and Jeff,
Jules had thought.

“Please, call me Tyeesha,” Dr. Williams had insisted while shaking Jules’s hand and flashing a megawatt grin. Nearly six feet tall and dressed in a rust-colored sleeveless dress and multicolored bracelets, she seemed as comfortable in her own skin as Burdette had been itching in hers.

Finally, she’d met Rhonda Hammersley, the woman seated across from her. Solid yet kind, Hammersley seemed intent on wrapping up the meeting.

“Of course, Dr. Lynch has final say. He’s reviewed all your documents.” She leaned closer, elbows on the table. “You know we have a stellar reputation as a school that can do miracles for troubled teens. We offer kids without any other option a new lease on life, so to speak.”

The door behind Jules opened as if on cue. The poodles rose to their feet and started wiggling. A man’s voice said, “Jacob! Esau! Sit!” The poodles quit moving and planted their rear ends on the floor near the hearth.

“Oh, Reverend Lynch,” Hammersley said, standing. She was practically beaming.

Jules followed suit and rose to her feet, turning to find the reverend towering over the tiny, prim woman Jules had met at the door of this house about a week earlier.

“You must be Julia,” he said warmly, and extended a big hand. “I’m Dr. Lynch, and this is my wife Cora Sue.”

Mrs. Lynch also reached forward, the diamond on her right hand glinting in the firelight. “Pleased to meet you.” Her eyes glittered like the rocks on her fingers as she studied Jules with cool gloss. “You look familiar. Have we met?”

“Not that I remember,” Jules lied, hoping her appearance had changed enough to fool the woman. She’d taken the trouble to add blond streaks to the curls that fell around her shoulders. She’d also bought a pair of high heels she couldn’t really afford, though the slim skirt and matching blue
jacket hadn’t been worn since she’d graduated from college. Conservative blouse, strand of pearls her grandmother had willed her, and makeup that had been missing in their last meeting. Jules had done her best to alter her looks, and still Lynch’s wife wasn’t certain.

“I’m sure I would remember you, Mrs. Lynch,” Jules said, and sounded almost sincere.

The knit of Cora Sue’s eyebrows relaxed; she seemed satisfied.

“I know this interview isn’t traditional, but at Blue Rock we like to think of ourselves as family, so I ask people to interview here, rather than at the school. Let’s talk about Blue Rock. Come on into my study. Cora, dear, could you get us some coffee? Or tea?” Lynch asked Jules.

“Coffee,” she said decisively. The last thing she wanted to appear was wishy-washy. She knew instinctively that an I-don’t-care attitude wouldn’t fly, and she was desperate to see her sister again; this was her best chance. Maybe her only chance.

“Coffee it is, Cora. But tea for me, please.”

Cora Sue nodded stiffly.

The reverend paused to pet the expectant dogs on their heads, then with a quick “Go with Momma” and a snap of his fingers, he sent the poodles down the hallway to pad after Cora Sue and Dr. Williams.

Jules’s stomach was jumping, her nerves getting the better of her. Her four-inch heels clicked loudly on the marble floor while cutting into the top of her foot as she walked with Dr. Lynch under a glimmering crystal chandelier that hung from three stories above the foyer. While the other women and the dogs headed toward an archway to the far side of a sweeping staircase, Jules followed Lynch through double doors to a study near the rear of the home. Inside, floor-to-ceiling bookcases flanked a massive fireplace
where a gas fire hissed over “charred” ceramic logs. This room overlooked the lake where the seaplane that had taken Shay to southern Oregon was tied to the dock.

Lynch followed her gaze as he settled behind a carved desk big enough to serve six for lunch. “The plane,” he said with a chuckle. “I guess it’s a bit of an indulgence, but it does make things easier. Our academy is remote, as you know, though there is a road that’s open most of the year. It’s impassable sometimes with the snowfall in the winter. If the weather warms too quickly in the spring, the runoff from the mountains tends to wash the road out.”

Again his softly amused chuckle. “Not to worry, though, we have the seaplane and a helicopter pad. Only in the very worst weather are we completely isolated, and even then it’s not a problem. With our own generators, live-in staff, and stores of supplies, we can get through any catastrophe God sees fit to send us.” He waved Jules into a visitor’s seat at his desk and settled into a leather executive chair opposite her. “Well, I guess we might not survive the ten plagues of Egypt as they were described in Exodus.”