Before She Was Found - Heather Gudenkauf Page 0,70

boxcar and I step in front of him.

I nod. “Please, just stay outside and I’ll talk to her. If I can keep her calm, will you please send the ambulance away?”

“I can’t promise that,” he says.

Officer Grady heads back toward the depot and I return to the boxcar. “Violet, please,” I beg through the doorway. “You have to come out.”

The very worst thing I can do is yank her from her hiding place. Violet is not a violent girl, but when she feels cornered or anxious, she kind of freaks out. Has since she was a toddler. In kindergarten she was known as a runner. The kid who would dart from the classroom and out the front doors when things didn’t quite go her way. I thought she had outgrown it.

I climb back inside the boxcar, the skin on my hips and shoulders rubbed raw from the narrow fit. We sit shoulder to shoulder in silence for a few minutes, though I’m eager to get her out of here. I don’t know how long Officer Grady will be patient.

“They’re bad,” Violet whispers and a shiver runs through me.

“Who is?” I ask. This is the first time I heard her mention more than one person.

“You won’t believe me,” she says tearfully. “No one believes me.”

“I believe you,” I say fiercely. “I promise. Do you know who stabbed Cora?” I ask. “Can you describe them to Officer Grady?” I wonder if there is a sketch artist in a police department of this size. Probably not. But then I think of the drawing in Violet’s sketchbook. Maybe that will be enough.

“I told you—Joseph Wither.”

I try to keep the frustration from seeping into the expression on my face. I promised Violet I would believe her. “Okay, it was Joseph Wither.” I think about what Officer Grady said about questioning the known pedophiles in the area. Pedophiles—plural. I’m not naive but how can such a small town have more than one? “How did he know you were going to be there?” I manage to ask.

“Cora talked to him,” Violet says, setting her chin atop her bent knees. “They talked to each other.”

“Cora?” I ask, thoroughly confused.

“Through a chat room and emails.” She begins to cry. “I think he’s going to get me next.”

I slide my arm around her shoulders. “He won’t. I promise you there is no way I’m going to let anyone hurt you, but you have to talk to Officer Grady. You have to help him find the people who hurt Cora so they can’t hurt anyone ever again. Okay?”

“I don’t think I can,” she says, looking helplessly up at me.

“Of course you can. You’re my brave girl, right?”

“You can’t catch someone who is already dead, can you?” she asks and it takes me a second to realize she’s serious. She thinks a ghost or a ghoul, whatever this Joseph Wither is, stabbed her best friend and evaporated into thin air.

“Who else was there, Violet? Who else hurt Cora?”

She hesitates but finally speaks. “Jordyn.”

“Jordyn?” I repeat. “Jordyn helped stab Cora?”

Violet shakes her head. “No. I don’t think so. I don’t know. We were just going to play a joke on Cora. Scare her, but Cora wasn’t scared. She said she already knew that we were going to play a trick on her—that she wasn’t scared one bit. That she knew that Wither wasn’t going to hurt her. He loved her.” Violet pauses in her story to take a deep breath.

“Jordyn called her crazy, said he wasn’t real, and Cora said he was. Jordyn pushed Cora down. Hard. She fell against the train tracks. That’s when I ran. I ran and hid.”

I’m afraid to speak. Afraid that my voice will interrupt Violet’s train of thought and she’ll stop talking. But I have so many questions. When I’m sure that Violet isn’t going to go on, I say, “If Jordyn pushed Cora down, don’t you think it makes sense she stabbed her, too?”

Violet shakes her head. “No, Jordyn ran away, too. I saw her run.”

“But she could have come back, right?”

“I saw something moving through the grass. It was going toward Cora. She was sitting on the tracks holding her arm and crying.” Violet shivers and presses her face into my neck. “I couldn’t watch. I ran away but I heard the screams. I swear someone else was there. It was him. It was Joseph Wither.”

“Oh, Violet,” I say, holding her more tightly. “You have to tell Officer Grady all of this. You have to