by Kathi Daley
“Did Rose have a boyfriend?” I asked.
He slowly shook his head. “Not that I remember. Like I said, she was the quiet sort. I do remember this one guy. I think he was just a friend and not a boyfriend, though. He was about her age. Maybe a year or two older. He came in a few times looking for Rose.”
“Do you remember a name?” I asked.
He paused. It appeared he was thinking over my question. “I think his name was Noah. I’m pretty sure he’d graduated high school the previous spring. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure he was only in Gooseberry Bay for a short time before joining the Navy.”
Rosalie, like Caroline, seemed to check all the boxes. The question was, if Rose didn’t live in town and hadn’t been seen since nineteen ninety-six, how on earth were we going to find her now?
“I don’t suppose you have contact information for Rose,” I wondered.
“I have an address in Seattle, but it’s over twenty years old. I doubt Rose still lives with her parents. She’s probably married by now, so I doubt she even has the same last name.”
“At this point, Rosalie Watts is the only lead we have,” I said, hoping that the man believed our story and didn’t think us to be stalkers. “If you’d be willing to share the address you have on file, maybe we’ll be able to use that as a starting point to track her down.”
He hesitated.
“I know giving out employee information is probably frowned on, even if that information is a quarter of a century old, but if we can help my client find her mother…” I let the thought dangle.
“Are you sure the mother of this woman wants to be found? It seems to me that if the mother of this girl left her in a church and never once reached out after that point, she probably wants to stay anonymous.”
“Then why leave the bracelet?” Jemma asked.
The man shrugged. “Okay. I’ll give you what I have. I doubt it will be useful after all these years, but I guess if the mother of this woman, whether she actually is Rose or someone else, must have wanted to keep the door open for some future meeting, or she wouldn’t have left a clue.”
Once Tony had provided me the last known address he had for Rosalie, Jemma and I thanked him and left. We headed to lunch, and after ordering, I took a moment to call Ellery and let her know what we’d found. She was excited that we had a name, although I think even she realized that finding the woman with little more than a name and a twenty-five-year-old address would not be easy. I promised her that once we got back to the cottage, Jemma would get on the computer and see what she could find, and I also promised to call her with the results of our search no matter what we did or didn’t find.
Chapter 13
As it turned out, Jemma was able to do quite a lot with the information we’d received that afternoon. Based on the address provided, Jemma was able to determine that Rosalie’s parents were named Edward and Anna. Edward was the minister at a small church in Seattle, and Anna served the congregation by visiting the elderly and sick and helping to feed those in need. Edward and Anna Watts had five children. Four boys, two older than Rosalie, the only girl, and two younger. As Tony had indicated, the church ran a summer camp for underprivileged youth in Gooseberry Bay during the nineteen nineties. The counselors were mainly teens, aged sixteen to eighteen, who volunteered to help out. There were four paid staff members: the camp administrator, a woman named Lora Wilder, the cook, a woman named Elise Crenshaw, a male head counselor, a man named Elroy Winters, and a female head counselor, a woman named Polly Bolton.
There were group photos from each of the eight summers the group ran the camp. The photo for nineteen ninety-six featured, among others, a woman with dark hair and a shy smile, who really did look an awful lot like Ellery.
“I think we found your client’s mother,” Jemma said.
I gently nibbled on my lower lip, a habit I often retreated to when I felt nervous or uncertain. “Maybe.” I looked at the photo closely. “The question in my mind is, why would this young woman abandon her baby in a church? Rosalie was part of an intact family who looked to be close. Her parents were obviously religious, so I can understand that if and when Rosalie found herself pregnant, abortion wouldn’t have been on the table. But they also seem like the sort of family who would support their daughter and help her raise the baby. Or at least help her find a family to adopt her.”
Jemma continued to surf around. “I found a link to some old sermons on the webpage, and it does look as if Pastor Watts tended toward subjects relating to fire and brimstone. If I had to guess, Rosalie’s father was conservative in his approach to religion. It’s clear that he cared about his parishioners, and both he and his wife lived a life of service, but that doesn’t mean he would have taken kindly to his only daughter having a baby out of wedlock.”
“So maybe she ran away, or maybe her parents kicked her out. She was seventeen when she came to Gooseberry Bay that summer. She might have turned eighteen, and her parents might have set her loose to sink or swim on her own.” I paused and then continued. “There’s no way to know why, even if Rosalie Watts actually is Ellery’s biological mother, she made the decision to abandon her baby the way she did.”
“Unless we find her and ask her,” Jemma pointed out.
“Yes,” I agreed. “Unless we find Rosalie and ask her.”
Jemma continued to look for additional information while I decided to call Ellery. While I was on the phone with my client, Parker called to let Jemma know that she’d picked up Kalen’s video game console from Kalen’s mother since she never had made it to the Rambling Rose and would bring it by in about an hour. My client was excited about the progress we’d been able to make, but I could tell by the tone of her voice that Ellery was getting nervous now that we had a name. She shared that while she really did want contact information if we could find it, she didn’t want us actually contacting Rosalie. She wanted to give the situation some more thought before reaching out. I agreed to this, and I also agreed to let her know if we came up with anything concrete like an address or phone number or even a married last name.
“My client would like us to try to obtain an address or phone number, but she doesn’t want us to actually contact the woman at this point,” I shared with Jemma.
“I get it. Looking for answers that seem impossible to find is a different decision than actually acting on those answers.”
“Do you think we can find anything current for this woman?”
Jemma nodded. “Assuming that she remained in Seattle and didn’t move to another town or state, I should be able to track down a marriage certificate, if one exists, through the county records. Just give me a few minutes.”
“If we can get a current name, we can do a search for a current address or at least a current email. That sort of thing seems to be widely available on the web.”
“Exactly.”
Jemma continued to type, and I stood next to her and waited.
“It looks like Rosalie Watts married Jeremiah Langston in August of two thousand and five.” She continued to type. “I found a wedding announcement which tells me that Jeremiah was a native of Spokane, Washington and that he worked at a welding shop with his father.” She talked and typed at the same time. “I found a phone number for Langston Iron Works. If nothing else, you should be able to track Rosalie down through that. I’m going to look for something more specific to her, however, so give me another minute or two.”
Jemma continued to type, and I continued to wait.
“I got it.” Jemma sat back. “Rosalie is a real estate agent. She has her cell number and her email listed on her website. I’ll forward everything to you, and you can pass it on to your client.”
To say that Ellery was thrilled with the information we’d been able to dig up was putting it mildly. She still wasn’t sure if she would use the information to reach out, but at least she had a place to start. I asked her to call or email me if she ever contacted Rosalie. I felt pretty confident that
we’d tracked down the right person, but until someone actually spoke to Rosalie, we wouldn’t know for sure. Ellery agreed to stay in touch, and I wished her well.
By the time Parker arrived, Jemma and I were ready to switch gears and focus on the missing boys. Josie had come home as well, so she grabbed a snack and joined us at the dining table.
Luckily, Jemma was able to easily access Kalen’s video game console. It was a newer model, and like Zane’s, there was a window for messaging as well as access to various files relating to a variety of different games. The user log showed that End Days was the only game Kalen had been logged into for the past couple of months. It also showed that, like Zane, he’s spent a lot of time climbing through the levels.
“So, how can this help us?” Josie asked. “I get that this proves that two of the missing boys seemed to be obsessed with a specific online multiplayer game, and it’s reasonable to assume that we’d find a similar pattern on Trevor’s video game console if we had access to it. But how does this help us figure out what happened to them or where they might be now?”
Jemma sat back in her chair. She didn’t speak, but she did seem to be considering Josie’s question.
“Okay, so we know that Zane, Kalen, and Trevor were all into this game big time,” Parker said. “It looks like they began working together as allies of some sort after climbing to level fifteen, where presumably the game changes in some way. Do we know how the game changes?”
“Not really,” Jemma said. “From what I understand, the quests are single-player challenges until you reach level fifteen, and then players either group themselves or are grouped in some way by the game, and the challenge is to work together. Maybe we need to find someone who has played the game to obtain additional information.”
“Were there other players logged in when the three missing boys were logged in?” I asked.
“Sure,” Jemma said. “A lot of players seemed to be logged in at any given time.” She frowned. “I was going to try to use Zane’s account to reach out and contact some of the others, but I never got that far. Maybe we can send a message to one of the other players who’ve been mentioned and see if they’ll respond.”
“I remember the names Zork, Halo, Nomad, and Reaper,” I said.
“Reaper was the one who was supposed to meet with Zane, Kalen, and Trevor. I have a weird feeling about that,” Jemma said. “Let’s try the other three.”
“What are you going to say?” I asked.
She looked at the screen. “I think I’m going to say that I’m a friend of Zane’s who knows he’s missing and is trying to track him down. I think I’ll just ask if the gamers I contact are willing to talk to me. I’m not sure they’ll want to chat in person, but the message board used in the game is too public, so I’ll create a private chat room for them to log into. I just have this feeling that there’s a predator out there using this game to recruit kids for one reason or another.”
“What reason?” Josie asked.
“I don’t know,” Jemma admitted as she typed.
“Did you share what we’ve found out with Deputy Todd?” I asked Parker.
“I did. The man seemed unimpressed by my research. According to Todd, there seems to be evidence that the three boys planned to run away together. I guess he found texts to support this. And that may be what happened, but if the boys planned to run away, why didn’t they just meet up and go? Why spread things out over three days?”
“Maybe they wanted to make it look more like an abduction than a runaway type situation,” Josie suggested.
“Maybe,” Parker agreed.
“I feel like both scenarios could be true,” Jemma said. “It seems to me that if there is a someone who is using the game to recruit kids, then this someone might convince these kids to run away.”
“Run away to where?” I asked.
Jemma shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe a commune. Maybe the person who’s using the game to recruit teenage boys is a cult leader of some sort.”
“Okay,” Parker said. “Then how do we put a face to this guru?”
“It seems that the key to finding out who might be using the game would be to find someone else who has made it to the upper levels of the game,” I said.
“What about one of the kids who were on the other two teams the guy at the comic book and video game store mentioned,” Jemma wondered. “One team is based in New Mexico, and the other is in California.”
“Do you have a way to track them down?” I asked.
“Maybe. Give me a minute. I’m going to message Zork, Nomad, and Halo first to see if I can get one of them to respond. Once I do that, I’ll see if I can find anything relating to the two teams who reached the final level before the team from Gooseberry Bay.”
After several hours of phishing, Jemma was still unable to track down the real names of the three individuals from New Mexico who had completed the game, but she had found their usernames. Two of the three usernames were no longer being used in any game that she could find, but one of the usernames, Xenon 1426, had been used recently in another multiplayer game that Kalen had played from time to time. Taking a chance that the Xenon 1426, who was currently playing Ultimate War, was also the Xenon 1426 who was part of the team to make it to the final level of End Days, Jemma messaged him. No one answered for a good half hour, but eventually, Jemma received a reply.
“So what are you going to say to this person?” Parker asked. “Are you going to pretend to be a player looking for information?”
“No. I think I’m going to pretend to be Ainsley and tell Xenon 1426 that I’m a private investigator trying to find a missing teen. This may scare the kid away, assuming that Xenon 1426 is a kid, which is not something we know with any degree of certainty, but if no one from this group has leaked the details of how the game works beyond a certain level by now, then someone has convinced them to keep what they know to themselves.”
Jemma typed out her response to Xenon 1426’s inquiry and waited. After a few minutes, a link to a chat room appeared. Jemma followed it. Once she was logged into the chat room, she explained about the game and the missing boys and wondered if the person she was chatting with was one of the first three to conquer the game, End Days. Eventually, Xenon 1426 answered that he was. He asked what she wanted to know. Jemma explained that we really just wanted to track down the three missing boys and that it was our belief that the game might have had something to do with their disappearance. She asked if he was willing to share his experience with the final levels. He messaged back that he was sworn to secrecy as to the content of the final levels, but Xenon 1426 would say that after the final level was reached and conquered, he and the other two players on his team were issued an invitation to meet with someone named Reaper. Apparently, this Reaper was going to give them something of great value as a reward for staying the course and coming so far.
“Did they meet?” Josie asked.
“No,” Jemma said. “They planned to meet. They even set up a time and date and everything, but then the boys were involved in an auto accident on the way to the meet. The boy who was driving was injured and was taken to the hospital. The other two were fine, but by the time they were checked out and released, they’d missed the meeting. Reaper never reached out to them again.”
“So this Xenon 1426 had no idea what this person going by Reaper was actually after?” I asked.
Jemma shook her head. “He says no. He just said that they were promised some sort of reward, and they were to meet with this Reaper at the designated time and place in order to collect the reward. They were late, Reaper wasn’t there, and no one ever reached out again. When they logged into the game after the missed meeting, the game had reset itself, and all three players were back on level one. I guess they talked about starting again, but the friend in the hospital was there for several days, and by the time he got out, they decided to move on to something else.”
“I’m totally freaked out that the meeting that was set up as a
result of mastering all the levels in the game was an in-person meeting,” Parker said.
“Me too,” I agreed.
Jemma thanked Xenon 1426 and logged out. He wasn’t willing to share any details of the game, so asking those sorts of questions was a dead-end, and it really did seem that he’d told her everything he knew about Reaper.
“We need to take a closer look at all the messages to and from Reaper on both Zane and Kalen’s video game consoles,” I said. “And we need to try harder to get Trevor’s.”
“I’ll call his mom right now,” Josie said. “One way or another, I’ll convince her to give it to us.”
Chapter 14
The four of us worked late into the night, trying to figure out who Reaper was and whether or not the meeting that was being set up the previous weekend had already occurred. It most likely had. The question was, why exactly had this Reaper wanted to meet face to face with the boys, and what had he done to or with them once they’d met.
Parker had decided to take another stab at Deputy Todd. She explained what we’d found and what we suspected. She shared that Todd seemed reluctant to consider the kidnapping or cult leader theories, but by the time she left his office to join us on the peninsula, he agreed to take another look at things.
“So if the boys all planned to meet this Reaper, why did they go missing at different times?” Josie asked.
“What if the boys made it to the final level on Friday night,” Jemma jumped in. “We know they had a marathon session that actually went into Saturday morning, so maybe they were close, and they knew it. They wanted to finish, and then when they did manage to beat the final level, Reaper contacted them and set up the meeting. We know that Reaper had been chatting with the boys for a couple weeks, so at this point, I have to assume he was monitoring their progress and baiting the trap by promising them something when they finished.”
