Chapter 15 #2
Tate waited until Alvarez was ready, then started to talk.
“Bethie never left the school grounds. Her body is in a basement…either in the school or in the gymnasium. The body is inside what looks like an old laundry chute, or what a coal chute would look like. The chute’s location isn’t obvious anymore.
It’s hidden behind metal shelves holding stacks of something—boxes, I think.
Maybe old school records from before computers?
When you finally find the chute, and the door to the chute, her body will be there. ”
The Shipleys were in shock at the description, and Alvarez was wavering. The certainty in Bandy’s voice was scary real.
“There’s one other thing,” Tate said. “The DNA of her killer will be all over her clothes, and beneath her fingernails. You don’t have to believe me now, but you will later. The Shipleys have my contact info if you need further assistance. Did you get all that?”
“Yes. Yes, I did,” he said.
“Okay, then we’re done here,” Tate said. “Godspeed your search. Bethie needs to come home.”
He signed off and shut his laptop. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry you had to hear all that, but he needed to know you were here to even listen to what I had to say.”
Yvonne hugged Tate where he sat, and Louis kept patting him on the shoulder.
“You did more in five minutes than the entire Las Cruces PD could do in a year,” Louis said.
Tate shrugged. “It’s not their fault. Not everyone can see through walls.”
“When they find her, we will send you the reward. Please give Yvonne your address. So many people donated to it. It has to be given, to honor the givers.”
Tate nodded. “Understood. I will be moving soon, but I will leave a forwarding address. Now, let’s get you two back to your motel. You have a long drive to get home, and I know you’ll want to be on-site when the search begins.”
As they got up, Tate went to the back door. Lilith was in the garden as he called out again. “Mama, I’m taking the Shipleys back to their motel. Be right back.”
She waved, then went back to her gathering.
A short while later, Tate drove up to the Star Ridge motel and stopped at the office. “I’m truly sorry for your loss,” he said.
Yvonne just shook her head. “Thank you, but we lost Bethie a long time ago. Now when she’s found, we will finally get to bring her home.”
He waited until they let themselves into their room before he drove away, then thought of what Briar said, about him already being gone. Now he understood what she meant. He was a link between the lost and the found. The living and the dead. And they were out there, waiting for him.
* * *
Even though Bethie Shipley’s Las Cruces high school had yet to begin a new semester, administrators, support personnel, and the teachers who were already on-site had just been notified of the impending search.
They were all on edge, horrified to even think of what this could mean.
Had something happened at the school overnight?
Were students and drugs involved? It never occurred to them that it would be related to a girl who’d gone missing so long ago.
Detective Alvarez didn’t tell his team where the new lead on Bethie Shipley came from, and when they showed back up at the school campus with squad cars and unmarked cars, the superintendent was waiting for them in the parking lot.
He approached the officers and detectives as they began exiting their vehicles.
“I’m Lars Redding, the superintendent. I have keys to access every building on campus, and am at your disposal,” he said.
Detective Alvarez nodded. “Before we begin, I have questions. Clearly, these buildings are old, and I’m certain all of the heating and electrical systems were updated years ago.
But do you have any knowledge of old coal chutes on campus?
I know in the early days, this part of the state was once involved in coal mining, and I assume buildings this size would have used coal for furnaces to heat them. ”
Redding nodded. “Yes, they were. I know the chute that once existed in the school was removed during renovations, but I believe there’s still one in the basement of the gymnasium. Of course, it’s long since been boarded up, but—”
“Can you show me?” Alvarez asked.
“Of course,” Redding said. “Follow me.”
Alvarez motioned for his team to follow as they walked across the campus to the big brick edifice housing the school gymnasium, then circled around to the back of the building.
Alvarez immediately saw the opening. His first thought was that it was entirely too small, then he remembered Tate Bandy saying something about boxes being stored in front of the chute, which meant down in the old basement.
“I assume this chute emptied into the basement when it was in use. We’re going to need access, and lights,” Alvarez said.
“We need to go inside from the front entrance,” Redding said, and led the way, into the gym, then down a long hall and through a door and steps leading down. He flipped on the lights at the head of the stairs, then led the way down.
It was huge. Nearly the entire footprint of the building above, and the old furnaces were still in place at the far end of the building. Even from where Alvarez was standing, he could see portable metal shelves lined up near a wall, with boxes on them.
“What are in those boxes?” he asked as they neared the area.
“Old school records from the 1920s through the 1950s. Most everything else has been digitized,” Redding said.
The skin crawled on the back of the detective’s neck.
So far, Tate Bandy was two for two with describing the scene.
As they approached the shelving, he saw the old coal chute behind them, with a metal, boxlike structure at the end.
For a moment, the urge to turn around and run was huge. Instead, he issued an order.
“Men, I need those shelves moved away from the chute.” And so they began—moving boxes from the shelves and dragging the shelves aside. “Who’s got the crowbar?” Alvarez asked.
An officer stepped forward, already gloved and ready. “I do, sir.”
“Then pop off the cover, and do it carefully,” he said.
The officer stepped forward, first prying off a rusted padlock and then wedging the prybar beneath the cover and pushing up.
The metal cover came off and hit the concrete floor with a clang, and then he staggered backward in shock.
“Sweet Jesus,” he mumbled, and turned away and threw up.
There was no mistaking the decomposed body, and Alvarez had the file with him of what she’d been wearing when she disappeared. Blond hair. Red shorts. A red-and-white top, and red sneakers. It had to be her, and with her head pillowed on what looked like her backpack.
“God in heaven,” Alvarez mumbled. “Three for three. Bandy called it.” He pointed at one of his detectives. “Get forensics down here. According to my tipster, there will be enough DNA on all of this to ID the killer too.”
Redding had turned away in shock and was unashamedly weeping. “All this time. All this time,” he kept mumbling. “If only we had known.”
“Mr. Redding, this is a dump site. This girl was already dead when her killer hid her here. You couldn’t have changed her fate.” Then Alvarez began issuing more orders. “Get up top, cordon off this entire building. And I have two phone calls to make. One to the parents, and one to the tipster.”
“Maybe the tipster was the killer,” one of his officers said.
Alvarez shook his head. “No. Bethie’s parents went looking for the same guy who helped find Dan Stennett’s kidnapped son and saved that reporter from KSDK in Missouri from the stalker who’d been trying to kill her.
Mr. and Mrs. Shipley were with him this morning when I received a Zoom call from his home in Missouri.
I thought the kid was a scammer. I didn’t believe he was real.
But he told us where to look, and what we’d find and where.
And there she is. We tore up this state for over a year looking for her, and in five minutes, he gave us a blueprint to what was left of her.
The mistake we made was that cursory search on the first day she went missing.
We assumed she was taken on her way home. Lord, Lord.”
Every officer and detective went silent, staring in disbelief at their boss. Cops deal in facts. Not psychic shit. And yet here they were.
That was when Redding turned around. “Tate Bandy. That’s his name. I remember Mr. Stennett saying it. And I saw Amy Wall name him from KSDK when she aired her own story, and now this.”
“Mr. Redding, I’m asking you to say nothing about what we’ve found until I can officially notify her parents. They’re supposed to be on their way home from Missouri. The police will make the announcement at the proper time.”
Redding nodded. “Yes, of course. If you have no further need of me, I’ll get back to my office.” He walked away with his head down and his shoulders slumped.
Alvarez put two officers on guard in the hall above the basement, and more in the parking lot outside as they were roping off the area.
Seeing the crime-scene tape strung up at school was never good, and it didn’t take long for the word to get around that something dire had happened at the gym.
But not once did anyone think it had to do with “the little girl lost.” In fact, most people had forgotten that she’d never been found.
* * *
Louis and Yvonne Shipley received the phone call on the trip back and cried off and on the rest of the way home.
The news was not a shock. This was what they’d feared all along, which was why they’d gone looking for Tate Bandy.
Now their daughter was no longer lost, and they could finally lay her to rest.
* * *
The sun had long since set by the time Alvarez stopped to make that phone call to Tate. He didn’t want to talk to him, but he felt he owed him that much respect.