Page 86 of Vanish From Sight

“What did you get up to yesterday?” Noah asked.

“Where do I start? Yesterday we got confirmation on the dental records. So, we have a positive on Katherine. We also found out that DNA from Sawyer’s cup is a match to Katherine’s fetus. It’s his kid. That’s not even the half of it all. Sawyer’s alibi checks out for the night of Laura’s death, barring twenty-five minutes when he went to a liquor store, but even if he was speeding, I can’t see him being able to kill Laura, stash his vehicle here, hike it back to his truck and return all within that short window. However, someone is lying.”

“About?”

“Well, we visited the Academy.”

“Without me?” Noah asked.

“McKenzie would have gone alone had I refused to go with him.”

“And?” he asked, still eyeing the charred remains.

Callie shifted her weight from one foot to the next. “Seems as though Sawyer’s alibi for the night Katherine was found is a crock of crap. That meeting he said he had was canceled according to Hawthorne, which means Sawyer doesn’t have an alibi for the night Katherine died.”

“Or Hawthorne’s lying,” Noah added.

“That’s possible. If Katherine told Sawyer about the baby and he decided he wanted her to have an abortion and shedidn’t, it’s possible that he lost it and killed her. And maybe Laura knew.”

“And so, you think that’s the connection with the school nurse?”

“Well, that’s the interesting part. According to staff members, they were close friends but something about it doesn’t add up. When we told Hawthorne what Nicholas had shared about Katherine being forced out of her job due to rumors of interfering with students, he didn’t deny it. In his words, he gave her an option to leave before it went any further than a rumor. The thing is, he can’t verify who the rumors came from because they were shared in confidence with Laura.”

“Who’s dead.”

“Exactly. You’d think she would have gone to Katherine directly?”

“We’ll never know if she did,” he said, staring at the wreckage.

“Anyway, apparently, Laura held back the names of those Katherine supposedly interfered with from Hawthorne, at least that’s what he wants us to think. And because Katherine never dug her heels in when confronted, the rector felt there was no need to go any further. The matter was dropped.”

“Because he wanted to protect the Academy.”

“You got it. Parents never learned about the interference. They dealt with the issue inhouse. The alleged victims obviously were persuaded not to say anything out of fear of tainting their educational record or they chose not to say anything to their parents out of embarrassment. Who knows? Either way, the matter was quashed with Katherine’s exit.”

Noah shook his head. “So where does that leave us?”

“I managed to dig up an incident report from State Police of an arrest made at the Academy a year prior to Katherine’s death.Four teenagers assaulted another in what is considered a hazing gone wrong. The victim was Charlie Delaney.”

“That’s the kid Nicholas mentioned Katherine was seeing before she left.”

She nodded.

“You dug that up?”

“Devil’s in the details, right?”

He smiled. “So?”

“We think that the hazing was related to the stress Katherine was going through when she left her marriage the first time, as it was around then that Charlie started seeing her for counseling. Before we left yesterday, Erin Spencer, the new residential counselor, gave us a list of names and dates for students that Katherine met with over the past year one-on-one.”

“Any record of what they talked about?”

“Sealed. We’d need a warrant. Client confidentiality.”

“There are limits to that.”

“Yes, but without knowing what was shared, and Katherine not being alive and Charlie no longer continuing therapy with Erin, they have no justified reason to share those records. And also, it depends if Katherine even took notes. According to Erin, she was told by Hawthorne that Katherine wasn’t in the habit of keeping good records. Apparently, it wasn’t her style.”