Pamela Tracy - What Janie Saw

He’d just noted the absence of sound, the lack of pencil scratching against paper, when Janie asked, “Do you think Derek died because of the art book?”

“Anything I say would be speculation, and this early in the case, I’d rather not speculate.”

She gave him an indignant glare that spoke louder than words. “But if—”

“If is a pretty powerful word,” Rafe returned.

She gripped the pencil tightly, scratching out words on the paper as if she had to get them out, away from her. Finally, she finished, but not before whispering, “I’m afraid.”

“I understand,” Rafe said. “I’ve not slept a full night since Brittney disappeared. Neither have her parents.”

She let out a deep breath and turned the last paper so he could see it. “I’ve re-created everything I remember.” She finished by tapping on the last paper. “When I got to her name and then the blood in the dirt, I stopped and headed for my division chair.”

Blood in the dirt...

He’d have to, in some form or another, repeat this information to Brittney’s parents, so they didn’t hear it on the news. Reporters were like cockroaches, they showed up where they didn’t belong and were hard to get rid of.

No matter how much Rafe wanted to handle Brittney’s case without sensationalism, the media would get involved, would push the envelope, wouldn’t care whose emotions got trampled as long as their ratings soared.

“And you’re sure you’re done?” He nodded toward the paper on his desk.

She glanced again at Brittney’s photograph on the flyer and then picked up the pages she’d created. Four in all. Slowly, carefully, she examined each one. After about fifteen minutes, only erasing a few things or adding a detail here and there, Janie scooted the paper across the desk and settled back in her chair. “I’m done.”

It took him just two minutes to scan the haunting sketches.

“This is it, all you remember?”

“There wasn’t that much more, but after I got to this, I stopped and went to see Patricia.”

It had been the right move. The moment she realized what she had in her hand, she should have turned it over to the authorities—too bad it hadn’t been the local police. Rafe could only imagine the grief Nathan was giving the campus cops over the art book’s disappearance.

Still, he wished she’d read the whole thing, memorized every picture.

“What I’m most sorry about,” Janie admitted, “was not paying attention to the numbers on the license plate. He’d included them, but I did no more than glance at the numbers because they were so tiny.”

“Could you distinguish the sex of the occupants?”

“They were tiny stick figures but with details.”

Still, they could label the occupants—Derek and Brittney were in the back, Chad was driving and Chris was the front-seat passenger.

“I know you’ve said that nothing happened in class, but I still want to hear about the last week. All the events leading up to you reading the art book. Don’t leave anything out.”

Her sister returned.

Janie glanced at Brittney’s photo again, then showed it to Katie. To Rafe, she said, “I’m assisting with two classes this semester. Both art. In the late afternoons, if I get an appointment, I work in the Writing Tutoring center. I’m pretty good with English, and it’s extra money.”

“And she’s taking classes at the University of Arizona as well as being employed at Bridget’s,” Katie threw in.

“My Monday/Wednesday class starts at six. I didn’t have a student appointment yesterday,” Janie continued. “So last night, I got there right on time.”

Rafe noticed a sudden blink of her eyes, a quickening, slightly out of sync. She’d either just told a lie or she’d left something out.

Janie regained her composure, smoothed back her unruly strawberry-blond hair, and went on, “I’d earlier set up the stations and put handouts on the back table. So, when I got there, the students were signing in and already starting to work on their major projects.”

“What was Derek working on?”

“It’s a medieval battle scene. Very detailed. He’s done two others so far. All pretty much the same focus. Lots of blood, battle, destruction.”

“You say you got there right on time. Is being on time important?”

She hesitated before answering, “Yes, for both me and the students. I take points from students who are late. If they’re more than twenty minutes late, I count them absent.”

Rafe nodded. So, Miss Janie Vincent was a free spirit who also liked rules. “Seems to me that someone as concerned about punctuality as you are would arrive to class early, just in case a student needed to talk to you, or something.”

Her lips pursed together before she said, “I used to get there early, but then...”

“Then?”

She looked him right in the eye. “Then Derek Chaney started arriving early, too. At first, it wasn’t so bad. He asked questions because he claimed he also wanted to paint murals. I gave him some books to read. He kept them a while, then returned them.”

“And this behavior caused you to stop arriving to class early?” Rafe had to give her credit. She was a master lip purser, but she didn’t squirm at all.

“Look,” Janie said, giving him a haughty glare that reminded him of his own college days and how a professor could reduce him to age twelve without blinking. Few, however, had made him want to achieve more than a pass in the class. And none had been as pretty as Janie Vincent. “I don’t want anything I say here to slant the investigation. I—”

“Slant the investigation?” Rafe sat up. “What do you mean?”

“I mean if I tell you this guy creeped me out, had anger issues, you might believe I’d already condemned him. I can answer impartially, and—”

“Janie,” Rafe said carefully, “right now, we can only label Derek as a person of interest, that’s all. His art book and drawings are probably just the work of a young adult crying for attention.”

She gave a slight shake of her head. She hadn’t given her opinion on fact versus fiction earlier, but she clearly had an opinion now.

Not fiction.

He agreed but couldn’t let on to that.

“Innocent until proven guilty,” was a double-edged sword. In Rafe’s profession, his job was to decode, visualize, analyze and interpret. Years ago, a cop’s perspective—his intuition—had counted for something. Today, because of politics, Rafe didn’t dare share what he thought. It could later be used against him in a court of law.

Plus, Jane Q. Public—especially in the case of a missing or wayward child—wanted optimism.

“Do you want to know how many people have come forward with information about the disappearance of Brittney Travis? Hundreds. And all of them turned out to be dead ends.”

“How many of the hundreds attended the same college?” Katie jumped in.

“More than you’d believe.” Rafe leaned forward. “We investigate all leads, and certainly, we hope this one will take us closer to the truth, but chances are it won’t. Chances are you have the misfortune of reading some misguided young man’s work of fantasy.”

“I know fantasy when I read it,” Janie muttered. “Derek draws fantasy and his writing was nothing like his usual drawings.”

She had him there. And, he figured, by the end of the interview she’d get him a few more times if he wasn’t careful.

“Did you tell Professor Reynolds that he creeped you out?”

“Yes.” Janie filled him in on some of the suggestions Patricia had made for dealing with a difficult student—like one who invaded personal space, who believed in staring as a way to intimidate, and who got argumentative when given constructive criticisms. She explained how ineffective those suggestions had been and finished with, “Derek left during the break Wednesday, a week ago, and didn’t return.”