17. Rowan
Author’s Note:
So, a lot of people have sent messages asking about the whole kidnapping thing.
I think it barely counts, since I was only technically “kidnapped” for like an hour.
I was just doing some research on neo-Nazis for this book, and apparently white supremacist gangs don’t like when you go poking into their business.
But anyway, everyone is sufficiently dealt with, and I’m fine.
I didn’t even get tortured or anything. Not that I wanted to be tortured, but the threats and stuff were all a little tame, and they seemed a little confused when I kept giving them better suggestions for making me talk.
(Which, according to the one guy, I apparently do too much of already.)
ROWAN
We went to the dorm first, which was supposed to be a secure building that you needed to swipe your card to get access to.
It was easy enough to just walk in, though, because some college students held the door open for us as they were leaving.
I wasn’t sure if it was a testament to how unaware humans were or to how safe they felt their college was. Perhaps a combination of both.
The dorm was co-ed, so two guys walking around didn’t cause any upset.
We made our way to Betsy’s room first. No one answered our knocking, and we heard no noise from inside.
The door was, predictably, locked. Milo made a sound of disapproval, but I just put my hand on the knob, forcing a little hellfire into the lock.
Yes, it wouldn’t quite work correctly after this, but I figured finding Betsy was more important.
“Neat trick,” Milo said as the door opened, then he went in, pulling me in after him and shutting the door.
The room was… miniscule. “Is all college housing so small?” I asked.
Milo snorted. “The girl has a single; she isn’t rooming with someone. This is practically spacious by college dorm standards.”
We both started looking around. The room was neat, with some posters of artwork and some photographs hung on the walls.
There were stars stuck on the ceiling that looked like they probably glowed in the dark, and it made me think of Betsy as younger than she was.
The room was decorated, but the furniture was sparse.
There was a dresser, a desk, which had books and a computer sitting neatly on it, and a bed, which was made.
Milo went over and started looking around the bed, in the dresser, and even in the garbage can.
I walked around, scenting the air. It was almost impossible to distinguish individual people.
Although Betsy lived alone, this room had not always been hers, and there were plenty of people who must have visited her.
I didn’t pick up a hellborn rot in the air, but that didn’t mean much.
After all, we weren’t sure exactly where or when Betsy even disappeared.
She’d gone to at least one class yesterday, and she hadn’t been in class this morning, so it was obviously at some point in that time frame.
“Nothing around to give any clues,” Milo said. “No cell phone or purse sitting out, so she had those with her at some point.”
“I can’t smell anyone distinct, and there’s no stench of the truly evil, but that doesn’t mean much. Someone could still have kidnapped her.”
Milo raised his hand. “Hold on. Wait a minute. Are you saying someone could kidnap a sweet art student and not be evil? What the fuck kind of rule is that?”
I sighed. “Humans are… human.” I shrugged. “They make mistakes. They do bad things. Sometimes they do really bad things, but there are a lot of factors that go into making someone hellbound.”
“Such as?” Milo asked.
“Well, intent matters. If someone was coming to kidnap Betsy and torture her to death, they would be hellbound. Finding joy in the pain and misery of others is pretty irredeemable. But someone could kidnap her for ransom and have no intention of harming her, and then, no, they wouldn’t be hellbound.
Morally gray and on their way, but it isn’t the worst thing in the world. ”
“Her family doesn’t have money for ransom,” Milo told me.
“Well, a stalker would think that their motives for taking a person were good, especially if they didn’t mean to hurt them. Again—morally gray, but not hellbound.”
“What about bullies?”
I had to think about how to answer that question.
I sighed. “Bullies are… more difficult. Children are almost never hellbound, and they’re often bullies.
But they’re learning, and they’re still redeemable.
Most bullies are redeemable. Usually they have to have other horrible traits or cross some very huge lines—like murdering the person they bullied—before they would become irredeemable. ”
Milo looked thoughtful.
“It takes a lot to be hellbound, as it should. It’s an eternal sentence. Humans have free will, and there is almost always the chance for redemption. Not everyone takes it, but enough do and have over time that we cannot judge people prematurely.”
“I guess that makes sense.” Milo shrugged. “I guess that’s also sort of good news for us.”
“How so?” I asked.
“Because whoever took Betsy wasn’t truly evil, so that’s something.”
I nodded, and I decided not to add that she might not have been taken from this room. We really didn’t know if the person was truly evil or not; we only knew that no one truly evil had been in her bedroom.
“Time to check the computer,” Milo declared, and he sat down at the desk and opened it up.
We got the password on the third try—Betsy’s mother had given Beatrice some good suggestions for what Betsy would use.
Milo combed through the files while I looked through her notebooks and textbooks.
She took meticulous notes with the tiniest handwriting I’d ever seen.
It almost looked like a computer had written her notes.
There was a sketch pad that was full of drawings and ideas for what looked like carvings and jewelry.
She was a talented artist, and I enjoyed looking at her work.
Milo hummed.
“Did you find something?” I asked.
“Maybe? Her files are all clean, and her email used the same password as the computer—someone needs to talk to this girl about cyber security. There’s nothing much in her inbox or outbox, but her trash has some messages that could be vaguely threatening.”
I put down Betsy’s sketchbook and put my hands on Milo’s shoulder, reading the email he had open over his shoulder. It talked about how beautiful Betsy’s most recent sketch was, and it talked about going out together.
“I’m not sure how that’s threatening,” I stated. It seemed like an email one friend would send another.
Milo closed out of it and opened the trash bin. There were at least ten messages from the same email address, but that still didn’t mean it wasn’t a friend.
“She’s trashed all these messages, and she hasn’t once replied to any of them.
Not only that, but this isn’t a university email account.
It’s just some random account that literally anyone could open up.
And if she never replied to a single email, then continuously referencing them going out would be threatening. ”
I hummed in agreement. “Also, perhaps the references to her work were threatening.”
Milo turned and looked at me, confusion on his face.
“Someone being able to reference all her work in such detail must mean that they were watching her. It was someone close by, at the very least.”
“I hadn’t thought of that, but you’re right.
Unfortunately,” Milo continued, “that doesn’t give us much to work with.
She seemed to have a stalker, but there’s no way to trace this email, there’s no defining elements to give us clues, and the authorities wouldn’t take any of this as threatening since it isn’t obvious. ”
“What now?” I asked. “Investigating crimes isn’t really my forte. Usually I’m given the information and I go in and clean things up.”
“Now we go talk to people,” Milo said. “And we can start with the RA for the dorm.”
The RA was a pink-haired woman who was short but clearly in charge. Luckily, she believed that we were investigators hired by Betsy’s mom. We didn’t even need to show her ID, but I guess we knew enough about Betsy and her mom that we were believable.
“The last time I saw Betsy? Hmmm… maybe two days ago? Not today and not yesterday, anyway,” she told us.
“She went to class yesterday morning,” Milo told her.
The RA, Jodi, scoffed. “Maybe. A lot of professors don’t really take attendance and just mark everyone present as a default.
Or they take attendance in their books, and it reflects on their grade.
Few professors actually use the college’s attendance system.
The college saying she attended class doesn’t really mean she did.
They only get involved if a student shows up as missing a lot of classes a lot of times.
They try to step in and help if that type of situation evolves. ”
“Was anyone bothering her?” I ask.
“Betsy? She was a sweet kid. She didn’t complain about anything, and she had a good group of friends she hung out with. If she had any issues, she didn’t tell me.”
“Do you know the name of her friends?” Milo asked.
“Oh, yeah, I can tell you those.” She left her door open and went into her room, grabbing a pad and pencil. She wrote down some information and tore off the sheet of paper. Before she handed it to us, she stopped, asking, “Is she okay? You guys don’t think, like, something happened to her, do you?”
I wasn’t sure how to answer, but Milo took over. “Don’t worry. If Betsy is in trouble, we’ll fix it. It’s what we do.”
With that, Milo grabbed the paper, and we said our goodbyes to Jodi.
Luckily, most of the names were in the same dorm, although they weren’t on the same floor.
We made our way to each friend, giving them the same story and asking questions.
It turned out that Betsy had not, in fact, been in class yesterday.
According to her friends, no one had heard from her since the day before that.
“Man, I just figured she went home. She does that sometimes to work on a project she’s trying to get done,” her friend Matt said.
Most of them didn’t know anything, until we got to Sarah on the tenth floor. “Oh, yeah, she was getting some creepy emails. She told me about them. She was freaked out but trying not to be, you know? She said it was probably just one of our friends, but I told her none of them would do that.”
“Did she have any idea who it could be?” Milo asked.
Sarah shrugged. “She figured it had to be someone in the art department, because they were constantly talking about her art pieces. I think that’s what freaked her out the most. She was really private when she was working on a piece, and she didn’t tend to show unfinished work to anyone.
I said maybe it was her one professor—he’s always been kind of flirty with the students—but Betsy totally blew me off and said there was no way. ”
“What’s the professor’s name?” I asked.
“Stopher, pronounced like the food brand. He’s in the art building most of the time—you guys can probably find him there.”
It was pretty late, but Milo insisted we try anyway, so off we went to the art building.
As we walked across campus, the sun was setting, and the sky was a beautiful riot of pinks, purples, and blues.
I had the urge to grab Milo’s hand in mine, but I wasn’t sure it was appropriate considering we were looking for a missing woman.
I looked over at Milo and smiled at him, and he took the decision out of my hands, literally, by grabbing onto my hand and holding it, almost like he could read my mind.
So we held hands and made our way to the art building to continue our search.
I knew I shouldn’t have been so happy—Betsy was still missing—but Milo did that for me. He made me happy.
Almost like my phone was tapped, it rang at that moment.
Great. It was my family.