detective
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The tape stopped. Janet stood horrified, hardly breathing. Her phone rang, startling her. She took a few breaths as she grabbed her phone. “Hello,” she shakily answered. “Janet,” Caylix said, shouting over the sounds of police sirens heard in the distance. “Are you at the church?” “I am. I—” “Maddie said you would be. Listen,
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“Mind if I smoke,” Scott asked, taking out his pack. “It’s gonna be a long story and it’ll take a while for police and a coroner to get here.” No one minded, as they were all outside. He sat down, the teens around him, and lit up a cigarette. Connor began recording before asking if
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Being in the church for the first time, she wanted to take her time, mainly to find out where to use the key she just found. She soon found the confessional booths and thought it was a logical place for the matching lock. She eventually realized that there were no locks, save the six-digit combination
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The teens waited inside the cabin for Janet. Merc went to the basement with Lydia to look around Scott’s room again, but they quickly returned to the others. “We can’t get into Scott’s room,” Lydia said. “The door’s jammed.” “Something probably fell over on the other side,” Merc assumed. “It’s fine,” Maddie said. “We have
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The teens had been talking through most of lunch. Even Maddie seemed a little livelier than usual. Janet was the only one who didn’t talk much, even opting to eat in her room upstairs, saying she wanted to think on her own. Almost an hour later, she returned downstairs. The teens said that they were
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They met the boys at the front steps of the hospital. They explained that they combed every part of the sewers that they could get into but did not find a key. As the six of them made their way to Dr. Johnson’s office, the power’s return was self-evident. “And that thing you did find,”
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The next day, Sunday, the group met for breakfast, not really knowing what to do next, besides heading for the playground to look for a tree stump with a 24-year-old present that might not even be there anymore. They seemed closer to the truth, yet further away at the same time. Given Steve Moss’s notes,
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During dinner, seeing Sofia’s chest and the combination buttons, Lydia used the numbers on the locket found at Scott’s cabin on it. It worked and the group went through the contents. Inside was a sewing kit, some blue yarn, a pair of scissors, and some letters from Father Matthew, who was in Indonesia on missionary
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“High school teens with nothing else to do for the rest of the summer.” That’s what Athena Avenir called them when her friend Janet Kelly called her after she, Janet, had to cancel her weekend plans to go to Lake Michigan with her and their other friends because she volunteered for an assignment after a
A. Renee Art 