In other words, the dream student.
Miriam closed the file and moved on to the next.
Name: Deanna Williams
Wait. Miriam slapped the file closed. She’d been reading them in alphabetical order and knew of at least one student whose surname began with a T.
Ben Thibodaux aka Troublemaker.
She rustled through the remaining files. The final four of the full high school enrollment total of fifty-two. She checked her notes, counting the number she’d already explored.
Forty-seven.
I’m missing a file. Miriam hit the buzzer on her intercom for Stephanie. When her secretary failed to appear in the doorway, Miriam went in search of her.
She approached Stephanie’s unmanned desk; the girl’s opened diet cola had been left behind. The clock above the entry door read 3:40 p.m. Stephanie didn’t usually leave until four o’clock, so she still had another twenty minutes to go. Miriam saw her secretary’s coat hanging on the coat rack beside her own and Nick’s. She was still in the building.
The girl had probably taken a bathroom break. Miriam decided to check the file cabinet and skirted around the desk to the cabinets lined up on the wall. She pulled the heavy metal drawer wide and flipped through each file, starting back with the A’s until she reached the end of the line with the S’s. The rest were on her desk, all except for Ben Thibodaux’s.
A quick glance on Stephanie’s desktop showed no sign of it there, either. Her gaze drifted to the cabinet beside Stephanie’s desk. Her secretary considered it her personal drawer, so Miriam didn’t want to open it, out of respect.
After another five minutes, Miriam walked to the hallway and peered down the empty expanse toward the faculty restroom.
She always carried a notepad and pen in her pocket in case Nick wasn’t with her and she needed to write something down to a person. She patted her right suit pocket to be sure the items were there and struck off down the empty hall.
Miriam reached the bathroom marked Faculty Women. Knocking would serve no purpose, so she pushed the door and entered, letting it swing closed behind her. The room contained two stalls, one of which was closed.
Mariam refused to speak. She hated speaking. She hated not knowing what she sounded like. She hated the looks people gave her when she tried. There had been a time when her mother and teachers had urged her to speak, even forced her to, but no one could force her now.
She crossed the yellow-tiled floor to the stall door and pushed on it. It opened easily. Empty. Stephanie wasn’t in there, after all.
Miriam headed back to the door. She curled her hand around the cool metal handle and pulled.
It didn’t budge.
She shook the handle a few times, wrenching it toward her, but no matter how much muscle she put into the pull, the door stayed shut.
Is it locked? But the door didn’t lock on its own. It had to be locked with a physical key. A key that Stephanie kept on her desk. Had Stephanie locked the door for the night, thinking no one was in there? Wouldn’t she have checked first to make sure?
Miriam pounded on the door. If Stephanie was still out in the hall maybe she would hear the banging and come back. Miriam fisted her hands and kept up the banging.
Please hear it, Stephanie, please! Miriam’s words were only in her head. But in the next moment, the lights went out, and Miriam opened her mouth to speak aloud.
It was now necessary.
She hoped she was getting the words out correctly and loud enough for someone to hear. Her fists pounded harder. She fumbled in the pitch blackness for the door handle and yanked again and again. She banged and yelled some more. She banged through throbbing hands. She banged until they were numb. Someone had to still be there. Someone had to walk by sooner or later. If she let up, they would never know she was in there.
She pressed her cheek to the cool wood, feeling her drubbing vibrations pick up speed to a level of thrashing. Her heart rate joined the pace until sweat drenched her and she couldn’t stand on her feet any longer. Her pounding weakened and slowed as her strength fizzled. She had no idea how long she’d been in there. It felt like at least an hour. Everyone was surely gone by now. Slowly she turned her back to the door and slid down to the floor.
Where was her dark-haired rescuer now? Probably down at the pier having dinner with one of the pretty local girls, laughing over something that wasn’t even funny and making friends with people who could understand him.
Someone not like her. The freak, as Mother always said.
Miriam touched her face with pulsing hands and felt hot wet streaks of tears. She vaguely wondered when she had started crying as she stared off into the black room. She accepted she would be spending the night locked in this dark room as though she were ten years old again and being taught a lesson. And like all those other times of punishment, Miriam wasn’t sure what she had done wrong this time to be locked away, once again isolated into a cold, dark world, when all she ever wanted was to find a home.
She closed her eyes, preferring the darkness behind her lids to the darkness around her. It gave her a sense of control in a situation where two of her senses were lost. Her hands moved by memory, calling on her heavenly Father as she had all those times of punishment in her mother’s home. And once at her grandmother’s when she’d come to Stepping Stones to visit with her mother.
That had been the worst darkness ever. So much so that Miriam, to this day, tried to block the horrifying images out, never wanting to relive the terror of that room in her grandmother’s basement again. With its damp dirt floor and salty, musty air, it had been so much scarier than the closet at home. Her chest tightened. Pain ripped through her lungs from the remembrance. Images that could only have been the workings of her wild imagination still haunted her.
A woman with bulging eyes. A man’s hand grabbing at her.
No one had been in that room with her. Mother had told her she’d made it all up. But if that was the case, why did it feel so real? So real that even though she now lived in her grandmother’s house, she still refused to enter that room. It was locked, and it would stay locked forever.
Breathe, she told herself. I’m not there now. I’m in a bathroom at school. Nothing scary here. Please, God, find me. She leaned back and called on her true rescuer—the only one who could find her in the darkest of places.
THREE
The radio at Wes’s belt chirped out a code that referenced a disturbance at the docks. “That’s my cue to hightail it out of here.” He headed for the classroom door. “I’ll call you tonight to go over the plans for the impromptu locker searches tomorrow.” He stopped in the doorway. “Oh, and Owen? Thanks for not being too mad at me for leaving out the fact that Ms. Hunter is deaf. I was afraid you wouldn’t come if you knew. I know it’s a tough topic for you...with your son and all.”
Owen glanced up from his chair behind the teacher’s desk. He could see that Wes was worried. “I’m over it.” He hoped he sounded convincing and picked up the English class syllabus to change the subject. “Besides, the fact that Ms. Hunter gave me this intense of a class when I’m supposed to be investigating only makes me think you might be right about her. If the signing duo’s guilty, their secret won’t last for long.”
Wes relaxed with a grin. “Great. I knew calling you was the right thing to do. Good to be catching the bad guys with you again, buddy. See you tomorrow.”
Owen jerked his head as a goodbye, but his attention was fully absorbed by the syllabus still