Chapter 28 Where’s Lucas?
WHERE’S LUCAS?
ELYXANDRE
“Officer Hookstead!”
Elyxandre stopped and turned to see Juliette walking swiftly toward her in the hallway.
“Have you seen Dr. Vaughn?”
“Not since this morning. I know he had a meeting with Superintendent Sealy about Kennedy Dixon. Maybe he’s still there.”
“No, he’s not. He left the office just before ten a.m., and he never came back. The superintendent called, mad as all get-out because he never showed up at one, like he was supposed to.”
Confused, she checked her watch. “He told me in our morning meeting that he was going to the administration building to meet with him at ten.”
“I know. That’s what my calendar said too. Superintendent Sealy was adamant that the meeting was for one o’clock, so I double-checked with his assistant, and she said her calendar for the boss said one p.m.”
“It’s almost one thirty.” Elyxandre frowned at Juliette. “Are you telling me no one’s seen Dr. Vaughn since just before ten a.m.?”
“As far as I can tell.”
Elyxandre bit her lip. Lucas was meticulous about his schedule. There was no way he got that time so wrong. There was also no way he would miss an appointment unless it couldn’t be helped, and he’d call if he was going to be even so much as a minute late.
She started back in the direction of the office, noting that his truck was parked out front of the school building, as always. “Did we radio him? I didn’t hear anything go out, but I might not have since I was out in the preserve.”
“We tried several times. He never responded.”
Elyxandre went to his office. He always carried a radio on him, as well as his cell phone. If there was trouble, he had two ways to call someone. Neither was sitting on his desk. “And he didn’t say he was going somewhere besides the superintendent’s office?”
“No. He was going there, and then he was supposed to meet with Lieutenant Axton at two. That was all he had on his calendar today because he wanted to be free for anything related to Kennedy.”
“He doesn’t like to sit still. Maybe he’s out at the preserve looking around.”
“Didn’t you just come from there?” the assistant asked, worry etching her face.
“Yes, but there are several entrances and exits. I wouldn’t necessarily have seen him. The police are monitoring those. I wouldn’t think they’d let him inside, but maybe since he’s the principal, they would.” She grabbed her radio. “Lieutenant Axton, come in, please.”
“This is Axton. What can I do for you, Hookstead?”
“Has anyone let Dr. Vaughn into the preserve, or seen him recently?”
“Let me check the log.” A tense minute followed. “Dr. Vaughn was here at eight a.m. and talked to me. No one has seen or talked to him here. I’m supposed to meet with him in about half an hour.”
“Hold off on that. What’s your current location?”
“North entrance.”
“No need to come here. I’ll be there shortly.
” She looked at Juliette. “Say nothing to anyone about Dr. Vaughn being missing. I’m going to need you to do something for me.
I need you to check that every radio is accounted for.
Note who has it and where they are. You’re going to need to manufacture a reason that’s plausible.
You’re also going to need to space them out.
Two minutes between, five minutes, three minutes, whatever.
Nothing in the same time interval. If someone is listening in who shouldn’t be, I don’t want them to know we’re onto the fact that he’s missing. ”
“Should I call them on their cell phones?”
“No. I want to verify that the radios are in actual use. As radios come in today, shut them off and take the batteries out. If anyone asks why, say we’re doing a battery switch because of high use from homecoming weekend.
If we get to the end of the day and he still hasn’t turned up, call me on my cell. You know what the duress phrase is?”
Juliette blanched. “You mean, like if someone has him at gunpoint?”
“Yes.”
Voice shaky, she replied, “He’ll tell us he’s going to be late getting home, and Ezra needs to let the dog out.”
“Good. I’m going to go check the camera feeds. He went out the main door?”
“Yes.”
She placed a calming hand on the woman’s forearm.
“Hang in there, Juliette. You can do this. And remember. Tell no one what’s going on.
If someone asks for him, tell them he’s in a parent meeting.
If they say it’s an emergency, farm it out to one of the assistant principals.
If they won’t take no for an answer, call me. ”
“Got it.”
As Juliette went back to her desk, Elyxandre took a last look around Lucas’ desk.
He kept things neat and tidy, although he did have a lot of sticky notes lined up, each with a single note on it.
He told her he preferred that method because crunching up a completed task and throwing it away was more satisfying than crossing an item off and still being able to see it on the page.
She took pictures of them with her phone, then scanned them.
Nothing leaped out at her as out of place.
Making sure to lock his office door behind her, she proceeded down to her office and sat behind the computer.
The screens on the far wall showed her all of the camera views on campus, but she knew exactly which door to watch, so she went to the app on her computer and pulled up the feed for the main entrance.
Scrolling back, she found him leaving the building.
He didn’t appear stressed, and there was no one with him.
He left the building during the middle of a class, so it was six minutes of no one entering or leaving before he left, and four minutes after he left.
“Where are you going, Lucas?” she whispered to herself.
She exited the feed, then went to the next camera he would have passed based on the direction he was heading.
He passed it, looking exactly the same as he did when leaving the main entrance.
The next camera he would be caught on was at the administration building across the road. She hopped to its view and waited.
And waited.
And waited.
He never passed the camera’s eye.
“What the fuck?”
She checked the time stamps on the feed.
It should have taken him less than a minute to reach the doorway where the camera was positioned.
The space he had to cross contained the bus lane, one of the entrances to the student parking lot, and the access road to the custodial loading dock, the auto shop, and the greenhouse.
He would have been out in the wide open where anyone could see him.
Quickly, she sped through the feeds of all the cameras on the back side of the building. Nothing. Where the hell did he go? Even if he went to the tennis courts, he would have shown up on a parking lot feed. How did he just disappear?
Making a split-second decision, she switched screens on her computer and looked up Ezra’s schedule.
The clock on the wall showed that it was two minutes until passing time.
Quickly, she rang the classroom of his current teacher.
“Sorry to bother you. Could you please, quietly, ask Ezra Vaughn to come see me in my office immediately when the bell rings? Thank you.”
Impatiently, she waited for Ezra to arrive. When he did, he looked nervous. “Close the door, Ezra, and have a seat.”
He shut the door, let his backpack fall off his shoulder, set it on the floor, and sat down in one of the chairs opposite her desk. “What’s going on?”
“Ezra, did your dad mention having an appointment today? Anything that would take him off school grounds?”
He frowned. “No. There’s no way he would have left today with Kennedy missing.”
“Did he mention meeting anyone today on school grounds?”
“No. He doesn’t usually share that stuff with me. I figured he’d be in meetings all day today. What’s going on?”
“I don’t want you to panic, but… we can’t find him.
He left the building at just before ten, supposedly to go see Superintendent Sealy, but he never made it there.
On top of that, it turns out that the meeting wasn’t actually until one, so we have video of him leaving the building, but then he never shows up once he hits the corner of the building. ”
The frown left his face, and in its place, she saw indecision.
“Ezra, do you know where he is?”
“No.”
“Do you know something about what’s going on?”
“Of course not.” He chewed on his bottom lip.
“You know something though.”
“I don’t know anything. It’s just… Dad was asking me a lot of questions about Ryker this morning.
It got me thinking. He’s in my AP Computer Science class, and he challenged me this summer to hack the school website.
Said he didn’t think we could do it, but…
I’m pretty sure he and a couple of kids at least tried.
I blew him off. No way was I going to mess around with that with early acceptance to MIT on the line, plus my dad’s the principal.
“He’s been off lately. Ever since Dad caught him cheating last year, to be honest. Angry all the time.
Blames everybody for everything that goes wrong when it’s really his fault.
He won’t tell anyone, but he lost his full ride to school next year because of it, and several other schools retracted their invites.
No one on a college campus is going to touch a cheater.
They’ve got enough problems on campuses without letting someone in who’s just going to create more issues.
“On top of that, Judah told me he’s been trying to steal Kennedy from him.
Says he’s been obsessed with her for a long time, but she won’t have anything to do with him because something about him reminds her too much of her dad.
Supposedly, when she kept turning him down, he got totally pissed off.
Rumor is he was trying to stack the votes so that they would be homecoming king and queen.
“After the punishments came down for the homecoming raid, he totally flipped out. Told people you’d be sorry, was telling everybody he was going to get you and Dad fired. All kinds of bullshit. I blew it off because Ryker’s a blowhard, and nobody takes him seriously, but now…”
She leaned forward on the desk. “This is very important. Was he at the study zoo all night on Saturday?”
“That’s just it. He was. He got there before me, and he left after I did.”
Kennedy’s call came in around eleven thirty.
The students went straight from the dance, which ended at eleven forty-five, to the Lewis household.
If he arrived at the study zoo thirty minutes after that, was it enough time to snatch Kennedy, stash her somewhere, then get to the group to avert suspicion?
“What about today? Was he missing at all today from somewhere he should have been?”
He sat there, thinking. “I’m certain he was in all the classes we have together.
He didn’t so much as ask to leave to go to the bathroom, and we share a lot of classes together, so we usually take the same paths to the next one.
When I have study hall, he’s in econ, and I have theatre when he’s in English.
The only other class we don’t have together is last period. ”
So it didn’t sound like Ryker snatched Lucas from anywhere. Was it possible that the two disappearances were unrelated? That really would be too much of a coincidence.
“Thanks, Ezra. We’ll find your dad. Hopefully, this is all just a misunderstanding, and he’s squirreled away in a meeting we didn’t know about.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Can you handle going back to class without breaking down? What about practice?”
“Gotta admit, my concentration won’t be good, but I’m guessing it’s better if I go to class than sit around up here. Coach gave us today off for the win on Friday, so normally, I’d study in the library until Dad’s ready to leave.”
“Continue as you normally would, then.”
“Right. Don’t want to alert anyone if they’re watching that you’re on to them.”
This kid. He really was way too smart.
She stood, as did Ezra. “We’ll find him,” she promised.
“I know you will. Besides, knowing him, if he’s stuck somewhere, he won’t quit until he gets back to us. He knows a good thing when he sees it.”
With a weak smile, he picked up his bag and exited her office, heading to his last class of the day.