Sheep's Clothing

by Josi Kilpack

  “Our computer?” Julie asked. Had something happened in her house? She heard the back door open, and knew it was Clay. He’d taken the day off and run to the store to get some milk. Britney glanced quickly at her dad before continuing.

  “On the night of Spring Fling, when Jess came over to get ready, she asked to use the computer for a minute. I said sure, and when she came back I asked what she needed the computer for. She said she had to tell some friends she was going to the dance.”

  Julie’s thoughts were spinning. She needed to slow things down and not jump to conclusions. “So someone at school was probably going to be there, and Jess wanted to tell them.”

  Britney shook her head. “She said I didn’t know them—I think she met them on mybulletinbored.com.”

  “What’s that?” Clay asked, pulling out yet another kitchen chair. Sheila started fussing, and Julie picked her up and bounced her while Britney continued.

  “It’s a place where kids make their own web pages and put up pictures and things—they call the pages boreds, like B-O-R-E-D—get it? Bored. When you’re bored, you go to mybulletinbored.com. Jess and I made a bored a few months ago.”

  Julie was shocked and exchanged a look with Clay, who was equally surprised. Britney had made a web page? They were very clear with their kids that they couldn’t participate in those things unless Mom and Dad gave their approval and knew their passwords. But Julie ignored that for the moment. “Did she say who she met or what their names were?”

  “Well, I know she was e-mailing a girl named Emily awhile ago. But before the dance she was talking about two of them, and she wouldn’t tell me anything. I thought that was weird. But, well, Jess has been acting kinda weird about a lot of things lately.”

  “Show us this website,” Clay said while Julie was still processing the information. Britney nodded and stood. They followed her to the computer in the living room and watched her go through the steps to bring up the website. Sheila pulled at Julie’s hair and Julie shifted her to one hip, slightly annoyed by the baby’s distraction. Within a minute they were looking at a picture of Jess in the formal dress she’d worn to Spring Fling. It was eerie, and Britney started to get emotional. Julie pulled her into a hug with one arm, while Clay sat down in front of the computer.

  He began opening up tabs and scrolling through lists. Julie didn’t have a clue what he was doing. “What was the date of the dance?”

  “April 28,” Julie said, remembering all the preparations leading up to it. Britney, though still in her mother’s one-armed embrace, turned to see what her dad was doing. “Why?” Julie asked.

  “That program I installed, Cyberwatch—the program that sends all the kids’ e-mail to our in-boxes for us to approve—also records all websites visited and e-mails sent for thirty days.”

  Julie approved the kids’ e-mail every morning, but she didn’t realize the program did more than that. Her heart rate increased as he brought up page after page of websites and e-mails.

  “Bingo,” he said. All three of them leaned forward and read the e-mail.

  “Emily and Colt,” Britney said as they all read the e-mail Jess sent.

  “There are e-mail addresses here,” Clay said. “Britney, did Jess use this computer other times?”

  “Well, yeah, but I don’t know what days.”

  “Should I call Brad and Kate?” Julie asked.

  “Not yet. Let me see what we’ve got first—the police will take the computer once they realize there’s something on it.”

  He turned to look at Britney. “Think hard about what days Jess used the computer. Jules, get Britney a calendar.”

  63

  Your wife was unable to come?” the detective asked when he ushered Brad into a room. It was after three o’clock—he’d been waiting for hours. They’d told him more than once he could go home, but he refused.

  “She’s home with our other children. I think it’s best that I’m here alone,” he said, trying not to show his concern too strongly. Since reading the journal he’d been a bit dazed.

  “I understand,” the detective said with sympathy. “These are tough situations. We’re still looking over the journal and computer, but some things are lining up.”

  Brad’s stomach sank. “What?”

  “Well, over the four days before your daughter disappeared, someone was deleting large amounts of information from your computer’s hard drive. We’re assuming it was her.”

  “What does that mean?” Brad asked.

  “It means she was hiding something.”

  “We already know that,” Brad said in frustration.

  The detective took a breath. “Mr. Thompson,” he said. “One of the things we’ve come to believe is that there is no Terrezza.”

  Brad said nothing. It didn’t make sense, but then again none of this did.

  “We have found no evidence, outside of the note left by your daughter, to suggest that this Terrezza even exists. And in one of the journal entries she says Colt told her to leave a note. It’s possible that he told her to make up a name so there would be nothing to track. We also found evidence that the instant-message program—a program that Britney Peterson knew nothing about—was a homemade thing and only linked two computers. It was deleted Saturday, and none of the conversations were saved.”

  “She deleted it after I caught her,” Brad said, slowly piecing together the information as a fire built up in his stomach. He’d been right there. Jess had lied to him, and he’d believed it. The monster this already was grew bigger as the seconds ticked by. It was all so . . . organized, so specific.

  “We did find one e-mail,” Detective Smithton continued. “Something she wanted to save in paper form. The printer had some kind of error the first time she tried to print it, so she sent it again and it worked. But the first attempt stayed in the printer queue.” He pulled open a drawer and removed a piece of paper, but he didn’t hand it over. “I would consider this an almost miraculous development since she was so painstakingly diligent in removing everything else from the computer. This was a very simple oversight, but it might make all the difference.”

  Brad stared at the paper, afraid to touch it.

  “Mr. Thompson, you need to understand something before you read this,” Detective Smithton explained, keeping the paper face down on his desk. “Your daughter not only deleted information, but she emptied the recycle bin and she removed cookies—not something we would expect with an innocent relationship. Even she thought it strange to go to such painstaking efforts to hide these things. But this guy had so much power over her that she did it anyway.

  “These kids get to know people through the Internet and often feel more comfortable with them than with their own family and friends. These online relationships are powerful, intoxicating—especially for young girls. We are still working on data recovery to see if we can glean any more information from it, but the IM conversations and e-mails weren’t stored anywhere anyway. The mystery now is who he is, whether he really was who Jess thought he was, and if she was planning on coming back home and then didn’t.”

  Brad could hardly breathe and had to close his eyes in order to keep his composure. When he opened them, he looked across the desk at the detective. “She didn’t take any clothes, and her birthday is next Wednesday. She wouldn’t be gone for her birthday.”

  “But she didn’t come home,” the detective said. “And she deleted the program, closed her e-mail, and left a note.”

  Brad swallowed and stared at the paper in the detective’s hand. After a couple of seconds, the detective nodded and handed over the paper. “This is what we found in the printer queue. We do not believe we are dealing with a high school boy, Mr. Thompson. We believe we’re dealing with a predator.”

  Brad took the paper with trepidation and started reading.

  ——Original Message——

  From: coltinator_51@yahoo.com

  To: jjk_hollywood@hotmail.com

  Sent: Sunday, May 7, 1:
14 PM

  Subject: Re: Nerves

  Jessie,

  I can’t wait to see you

  I can’t wait to hold you

  I can’t wait to tell you how much I love you

  I can’t wait to take moonlight walks with you

  I can’t wait to gaze into your eyes

  I can’t wait to hold your hand

  I can’t wait to promise myself to you forever

  I can’t wait to make all your dreams come true

  I can’t wait to caress your face

  I can’t wait to tell you how beautiful you are with my own voice

  I can’t wait to kiss you in a way that makes you realize that you are the only girl in the world that could ever make me feel this way.

  I love you Jessie—just hold on to that, okay. I promise all this will be worth it. Please write me back as soon as you get this, I need to know you’ll be waiting for me.

  Love you, Colt

  64

  “Kate?”

  It was Friday evening. Kate looked up from where she was sitting on the couch, a sleeping Chris in her arms, and was surprised to see her mother standing in the doorway. They’d talked on the phone that morning but Kate had told her again that she didn’t need help, that she was fine. Joy’s flight back to Oregon had left over an hour ago, and though Kate hadn’t thought about it, she’d assumed her mom was on it.

  “Mom?” she said, easing Chris out of her arms and onto the couch. She was losing energy fast, the storm pressing in on her. Marilyn still had the other kids, and Justin had gone to a neighbor’s house. “I . . . did you miss your flight?”

  She stood up and looked at her mother, too exhausted to summon any of the negative feelings.

  “I know you didn’t want me to come, and I went to the airport and everything, but . . . I couldn’t go. I know the timing is bad, but can we talk?”

  “Sure,” Kate said quietly, although it was the last thing she wanted to do. She didn’t have the energy. Unsure of what she was getting into, Kate gestured toward the front porch and Joy nodded, following her. Without discussing it, they sat down on the front steps. It had stopped raining, but the smell of spring was in the air. Kate took a breath, anxious about what was about to take place; then she turned her head and met her mother’s eyes.

  “I should have taken you up on shopping,” she said, trying to smile. “Jess heard what I said to you. She was really mad at me for it.” Would she still be here if I’d let my mom watch the kids so she could stay at Britney’s? Kate wondered if there was any one thing she could have done to prevent all this. A hundred “one things” came to mind.

  Joy shook her head and held Kate’s eyes for several seconds, tears brimming. “I love you, Kate,” she finally whispered, looking away as if embarrassed to say it out loud. Kate hadn’t expected this. She’d assumed her mom wanted to talk because she was feeling bad about not being included. “I know growing up with me was hard—I wasn’t much of a mother, never have been. But I do love you, and I love your kids and . . . can I please . . . can I please stay?” She looked up, and Kate had never seen such humility and sadness on her mother’s face. “Isn’t there some way I can help you?”

  Kate felt tears rise in her eyes again and felt stupid for being so hung up on her mother’s faults. She looked away. “I’ve made my own mistakes, Mom. Big ones. And I’m a hypocrite to be so hard on you.”

  “Kate,” her mother continued. Kate looked at her again, tears coming to her own eyes as she realized that she had never been so honest with her mother; they’d never talked like this. Joy’s chin trembled. Her tears were causing her mascara to rebel and make black tracks down her powdered cheeks. “I’m so proud of you.”

  Kate’s own tears overflowed, and when her mom pulled her into her arms, she didn’t hold back the tears and she didn’t resist. Had her mother ever held her this way? Had Kate ever looked to her for strength? And were her own feelings toward her mother any different than Jess’s feelings toward her? “You are remarkable,” Joy said into Kate’s hair after several minutes had passed. “And I’m so sorry this has happened to you. I haven’t prayed for years, but I’m praying with all my heart that Jess comes home, and that you one day will get to look at the woman she has become and be proud of her too, even if you weren’t the perfect mother.”

  65

  As the day dragged on, Kate prayed for strength, prayed for calm, but felt as if a storm was pressing in upon her. Jess had been gone almost forty-eight hours. Kate was sitting at the kitchen counter, listening to Marilyn and her mother take care of the kids, feeling as if she were imploding, when the front door opened. She listened to Brad come inside, heard him hug Justin, whisper with his mother, and say hi to Joy as if it were perfectly normal for her to be there.

  “We need to talk,” he said quietly, when he reached Kate. But Caitlyn overheard from where she was sitting at the table finishing dinner.

  “What happened?” Caitlyn asked. “Where’s Jess?”

  “I need to talk to your mother,” Brad said calmly. But it was a forced calm. Kate could feel it and wondered if this internal dread spiraling inside her was what Brad had been feeling all along. While she’d been so sure Jess would walk through the door, had he felt like this? Joy and Marilyn shared a look with one another and then went back to what they were doing.

  “But I want to know too!” Caitlyn said, starting to cry. “Why won’t you tell us anything? Where is she?”

  “I need to talk to your mother!” Brad snapped, causing Kate to jump. She looked around and saw Caitlyn’s face crumple. Brad let out a breath and shook his head, but Kate could see the tension in his face, and it helped her snap out of it.

  “It’s okay, Caity,” she said, longing for someone to say that to her. “Let me talk to your dad, and then we’ll talk to you.”

  But Caitlyn ran downstairs.

  “I’ll talk to her,” Joy said, following after her.

  “I’ve got this,” Marilyn said, herding the other children into the living room. “We’ll watch a show.”

  Kate nodded and followed Brad into the bedroom, trying to prepare herself but not sure if she could.

  66

  Brad watched Kate, who was sitting perfectly still on the edge of the bed. He stood awkwardly in the middle of the room and relayed the information he’d received at the police station. He spoke in monotone, afraid to summon any emotion at all for fear that it would reduce him to a bawling child. Kate stared at the floor, making no reaction. When he finished they both remained still, silent and scared.

  “I . . . I can’t believe it,” Kate finally said, her voice barely a whisper.

  Brad just nodded. He was finding it harder and harder to feel anything as the details sunk in. Relaying them to Kate had been like telling her Jess was dead. The thought suddenly made him shudder. Was she alive? Would they ever see her again?

  “Um,” Brad said, going through the lists in his mind of what needed to be done. People needed to know this wasn’t a runaway; he’d need to explain it to his work, to his family members. Maybe he should call the news stations, even though the police didn’t feel they had enough details to garner the media’s interest yet. But there were other things that needed first consideration. “We need to tell the kids.”

  “Tell them what?” Kate said, looking up at him, her eyes frantic, glassy. “Tell them she ran away with some boy . . . or someone, and we don’t know where she is or when she’s coming home or if—” She pursed her lips together, her chin shaking, and clenched her eyes closed. He watched her, not knowing what to do, and soon her hands began to shake; her whole body began trembling. “How do we tell them that!” she suddenly screamed, causing Brad to flinch. “How do we—” she cut herself off with a sob. Brad finally moved, rushing to her, wrapping his arms around her as she dissolved from the strong capable Kate into hopeless sobbing. She didn’t return his embrace, pulling away as if his touch made it worse. But he only held on tighter. “Kate,” he said, tryin
g to calm her, aware that the kids on the other side of the door could surely hear this.

  But she didn’t calm down. She continued crying, the sobs turning into near-screams. Brad pulled her closer, caressing her hair, trying to soothe her. “It’s okay, Kate,” he said, even if he didn’t believe it. “It’s going to be all right.” She finally gave up resisting and melted into him, like a child, but the tears didn’t stop. She dug her fingers into his shoulder, still crying, groaning—reacting to the full terror of this moment. He realized that she really had thought Jess would just walk in the door. And without that hope, what was left for her? Their family was her life.