Chapter 4: What Ruth Knew

The initials belonged to Galen Marsh, who had served as Ashwood's facilities manager for over thirty years. He maintained the school, the library, the community center, the town hall. He had master keys to every building, knew the alarm codes by heart, and moved through the town's infrastructure like blood through veins. He was also on the volunteer search committee for both Ruth Emory and David Chen. Nora spent two days building a timeline. She interviewed former library volunteers, retired teachers, and longtime residents who remembered Ruth. A picture emerged slowly, like a photograph developing in a chemical bath. Ruth had noticed irregularities in the library's access logs months before her disappearance. Doors opening at odd hours. Books reshuffled overnight. She mentioned it to colleagues, who dismissed it as a glitch in the aging security system. But Ruth was meticulous. She started keeping a personal record, cross-referencing the anomalies with Galen Marsh's maintenance schedule. The overlap was almost perfect. The red circles on Ruth's map marked locations where she had found evidence of unauthorized access. Nora believed Ruth had confronted Galen, or had been preparing to report her findings, when she disappeared. David Chen, according to his colleagues, had recently complained about someone entering his classroom after hours and going through his filing cabinets. He had mentioned it to the principal, who told him to change his door code. He changed it on a Wednesday. He vanished on Friday. Nora released a preliminary episode of her podcast detailing the pattern without naming Galen directly. Within twenty-four hours, it had been downloaded three hundred thousand times. The Ashwood town council issued a statement calling her reporting irresponsible. Chief Hobson held a press conference urging residents not to cooperate with outside media. Her mother called and asked her to stop. But someone else called too, a voice she did not recognize, whispering a single sentence: Check the old mine shaft on Ridgeline Road.