Ten
Outside the natatorium, Noah turned right and headed to upper campus where the police headquarters were located. Josie followed Christine Trostle through the parking lot, which had begun to fill up. In fact, the campus was far busier now than when Josie arrived. Some students stopped and gawked at the couple of police vehicles remaining out front of the natatorium but others went on their way, chatting to one another or on their phones, oblivious to the tragedy that had just occurred.
They came to the front of the Ervene Gulley Arts & Humanities building on the other side of the parking lot, the one that was just out of view of the pool building cameras. Josie said, “Christine, where are the commons?”
She stopped walking and pointed to her left where twin paths led downward to lower campus. “Over that way.” She turned in the opposite direction and pointed to the tallest building on campus, which Josie knew was the library. “It’s not that far a walk from the commons to the library. I’ll show you the shortcut from here to our student housing complex.”
They circled around the Ervene Gulley Arts & Humanities building. In the rear was a small parking lot, and on the other side of that, a wooded area with a cut-through in the brush. The path was one person wide and had obviously been made by hundreds of students trekking through it. Josie followed behind Christine, estimating the distance between the edge of campus and the small, unused street they came out on to be about thirty yards. When they stepped onto the asphalt, Josie saw the back of a row of several small houses. Each one had a postage stamp-sized backyard. Most were filled with grills, sports equipment, coolers, and trash bins. Josie knew from dealing with the university over the years that this area was called Hollister Way. It was a collection of six rows of tiny houses joined together and usually rented to sophomores who wanted a little more elbow room and privacy than dorms provided. Spots in Hollister Way were competitive because of its proximity to campus. Josie followed Christine as she walked around to the front of the closest row of houses. Each house was allotted two parking spots and nearly all of them were filled. Christine turned right down the third row of housing and Josie followed to a door marked with the number 14. As Christine worked the lock, she pointed to a light blue Honda Civic in front of the house.
“That’s Nysa’s.”
Inside, the house was nothing more than a living/dining area, a tiny kitchen, and a set of steps, at the top of which was a bathroom sandwiched between two bedrooms so small, they looked like glorified walk-in closets. Christine showed her Nysa’s room. An unmade twin bed with a laptop sitting at the foot of it took up most of the space. There was a tall dresser and a desk jammed beside one another along one wall. A stack of textbooks sat on top of the desk. On top of the dresser were two framed photographs. One was of a small white dog, and the other appeared to be Nysa Somers with her family at a swimming event. She wore a one-piece red bathing suit with a swim cap. A medal hung around her neck. Flowers were tucked in the crook of her arm. An older man and woman stood on either side of her, smiling widely. Beside the man was a grinning teenage girl with a more reserved smile who closely resembled Nysa. Parents and sister, Josie thought, before she had to look away. Her heart broke thinking of the news they were about to receive and how it was going to permanently destroy the happiness they’d known before this horrible day.
Christine stood in the doorway weeping quietly while Josie had a look around. There was nothing of interest other than the fact that three bathing suits were folded neatly in the top drawer of the dresser, and a small mesh bag with what looked like swimming supplies was tucked beneath the desk. Josie snapped on a pair of gloves and took a quick look through the bag. Inside were goggles, a swim cap, nose clips, a water bottle, protein bar, and a towel. She did not see a backpack anywhere or a cell phone.
Her phone rang and she took it out of her pocket to see Mettner’s face flash across the screen. “Mett?” she said after swiping answer.
“I’ve got the library footage,” he said. “Nysa left at closing time—alone. She had a backpack.”
“Okay,” Josie sighed. “Have you tried following her path using the other campus cameras?”
“Yeah. I’m with Hahlbeck and Fraley at the campus police building now. You’ll want to see this.”
Eleven
Josie walked back through Hollister Way until she found the cut-through. She stood at the mouth of the path for a long moment, taking in the surroundings again. A few students trickled out of it, backpacks on, eyes on their phones, each one startled to find her standing at the end of the path from campus back to Hollister. One student came from behind Josie and took the path to campus. It was quiet and no one lingered. No residents poked their heads out of the backs of the houses facing the cut-through. People came and went without anyone noticing. A car pulled up along the wooded side of the small road. A male student stepped out, slung a bag over his shoulder, locked his vehicle and jogged past Josie up to campus. Along the side of the road, Josie noted a muddy divot where the asphalt ended and the forest began. Various tire tracks had imprinted in the mud. This was an area where students parked frequently to use the cut-through, which meant that someone could have been parked there the night before when Nysa emerged.
She had emerged, hadn’t she? Josie wondered. She hadn’t spent the entire night in the woods, had she? There were roughly eight hours unaccounted for in the last night of Nysa Somers’ life. Josie wasn’t sure why, but she felt those hours were vitally important to figuring out why Nysa was dead. Stepping onto the path, Josie walked slowly, panning from side to side to see if there were any breaks in the branches or brush alongside the path. She identified a couple of sycamore trees, two birch trees, and a maple tree. Most of the ground was thick with waist-high ragweed, crape myrtle, goldenrod and bull thistle.
Josie got almost to the campus side, which was on a slight incline, and turned to look back, surveying all she could see from the higher angle. There were no breaks in the brush on either side of the path, no places where it looked like someone had trampled down the plant life to get into the woods. However, from where she stood, there looked to be a break in a large thatch of bull thistle plants to her right, about thirty feet from the path. Most of the plants stood tall, their tips thorny green bulbs with purple or pink flowers thrusting out the top, like several hairs standing on end. Any casual observer would think the first thing that Josie did—an animal, likely a deer, had come through and trampled part of the thistle. But as Josie started back down the path toward Hollister Way, craning her neck to get a better view, she saw a flash of something dark. Not dirt. Fabric.
She took out her phone and took several photos before trying to find the least destructive way through the brush to the item she had spotted. As she picked her way through, a couple of female students came down the path from campus. “You okay?” one of them hollered.
Josie waved them off with a smile, pushing aside some goldenrod plants, as she worked her way closer to the thistle. A moment later, the object came into view. A black backpack. It looked as though it had been tossed there, rather than placed, as it rested unevenly on top of some partially snapped bull thistle plants. She looked back toward the path. It was feasible someone could have thrown it this far from there. Josie took several photos, carefully picked her way back to the path, and then called Officer Hummel.