Time had passed, but it wouldn’t be that hard to roll back to when Jenna had been here. If someone around campus had caused her harm, that person likely had bothered someone else as well, possibly gotten kicked out of the college. Evie would check at the provost office for discipline problems, everything the campus security had worked on for the three years on either side of Jenna’s disappearance. Cops would have pulled that information in the past, but it never hurt to get a fresh copy of the data.
Evie checked the campus map and headed toward the admin. building, hoping her badge would clear the way to some cooperation. First rule out the personal—boyfriend or ex-boyfriend at the time—then dive into the fellow-student pool of possible candidates and start eliminating names. That she would be walking the path other cops had taken before didn’t bother her. She’d see facts in a different order, maybe make a connection they had missed.
Someone knew who had done this. Find him or her through Jenna or through other things he or she had done and connect back to Jenna. It was just a matter of working the angles to get the right one to come into the light.
It helped having the governor interested in what the task force was doing. It took only three referrals to get to the person who could make a decision about what she asked to see. She wouldn’t get everything she hoped for, but she would get enough to be useful.
Satisfied with what she had put in motion, Evie strode across campus toward the apartment building where Jenna had lived. If she was lucky, the current resident didn’t have afternoon classes and would be home.
“Jenna lived here? The student who disappeared years ago? This apartment?”
Evie tucked her badge back into her pocket and pulled in a sigh. The girl might be in college, but Evie’s guess put her on the very young side of being a freshman. “The locks have been changed many times since then, security tightened with numerous cameras,” Evie reassured her. “This block has had very little crime in the last several years based on data I’ve seen. I’d only like to step inside, look around, if you don’t mind, get a sense of the floor plan of the apartment.”
The girl named Heather bit her lip, but nodded. “Yeah, okay,” and stepped back to let Evie enter.
It was a typical college student’s small apartment, decorated by a young woman away from home for the first time, free to enjoy her own style and colors, but clinging to family and the familiar with photos and high school memorabilia on the walls.
“This is supposed to be one of the safe neighborhoods since the sorority houses, the sports stadium, and the bars are on the other side of campus. It’s mostly premed majors and science types in this area.”
“We’re not even sure Jenna disappeared from here or if she had gone out again that night,” Evie reassured. “She simply wasn’t home when friends came looking for her.”
The apartment was narrower than Evie had realized from the photos. A living room area to the left led out to a small balcony, to the right a small galley kitchen with a narrow counter, a table that doubled as a desk across from the counter at a window, then a short hall to a bedroom and bath. A guest stepping into the apartment would either have to step into the living room or into the kitchen-study area.
Evie noted where they were both standing. Heather had stepped into the kitchen entrance to let her enter the apartment. Jenna would have done the same if she asked someone to come in, automatically moving back into the kitchen between the counter and refrigerator to clear the doorway. It was a contained space, hard to escape from—you’d have to climb over the counter, and there wasn’t much within reach to slow someone down—throw a toaster, a coffeepot?
“Is there a lot of street noise when you’re sitting at the table studying?” Evie asked Heather, wanting to get her talking.
“If the balcony door is open, or the windows, it’s steady noise, but you learn to ignore it after a while.”
“What about the other apartments? Do you hear their music? Hear doors close as they come and go?”
“Sure. Late at night, you can tell in a general way that someone is still up—cabinets being closed, music on, voices in the hall when people come and go,” Heather replied. “It’s not a quiet building. It’s got a routine that you start to recognize as normal. Who’s most likely to come in late, the pattern of people’s schedules. Sometimes when you’re having people over, you can get a complaint to hold it down after ten p.m. We’re pretty considerate of each other as we’re going to be neighbors for at least a semester, and we’ve all got to study.”