Gone The Next (16 page)

Erica Kerwick had left a comment under the status update of a young man who had recently graduated from high school. The graduation part was obvious, because the kid was wearing a cap and gown in his profile photo, and because he had said, ‘Done with high school!’ So you can understand how I pieced it together.

The comment from Erica Kerwick read:
I am so proud of you! We all love you and know you have a bright future ahead! xoxo Aunt Erica

But it wasn’t the outfit or the comment that caught our attention. It was the kid’s name.

Curtis Hanrahan.

“I’ll start with the middle-aged people,” Mia said.

“Good idea.”

She clicked on the first middle-aged person listed: Craig Marks, an uncle. He didn’t have a Family section, so Mia went straight to Craig’s photos, which is what I would have done. Craig had plenty of albums to sort through, but he was one of those people who, when he was uploading a collection of photos all at once, simply let the date serve as the name for the album. But first in the list of albums was Craig’s past and present profile photos, which Mia skipped, clicking instead on Craig’s album called “Wall Photos.”

“See, they’re still calling it a ‘wall,’” I said.

She gave me a dismissive snort as the album opened into a page full of thumbnail photos. Lots of people at parties and eating in restaurants. At the lake. Dogs. Children. Somebody had bought an expensive-looking sports car. Nothing helpful. Mia scrolled downward. There were literally hundreds of thumbnails on the page. Craig liked his camera. Liked snapping photos of just about anything.

“Here we go,” Mia said.

She was right. We’d just reached a photo of yet another gathering of some sort. A backyard, near a pool. Group shot. Everybody smiling.

There was Craig.

There was Erica Kerwick.

There was Kathleen Hanrahan.

The caption read:
Pat and Kathleen’s place in South Padre.

“Bingo,” I said.

“Really? That’s what you say in these situations? Bingo? I always wondered.”

“Save that photo,” I said.

She dragged it to the desktop, creating a copy.

We kept going and found Kathleen Hanrahan in several other photos, and we eventually found Patrick Hanrahan in a couple, all taken in or around a nice beachfront home. We didn’t ascertain how everyone was related, but that probably wasn’t too important. Right now, it was enough to know that the Hanrahans knew Erica Kerwick, and obviously Erica Kerwick knew Brian Pierce.

And I was back on the see-saw, convinced once again that I had in fact seen Tracy Turner at Pierce’s house five days ago. Hell, at this point, it was virtually undeniable. But it felt great. Honestly, I was totally buzzing with vindication.

“What are you thinking?” Mia asked.

“There aren’t many possibilities. First theory that pops into my head is that Erica Kerwick and Brian Pierce kidnapped Tracy Turner and they will eventually ask for ransom.”

“But wait — how would that work? Later, when they released Tracy, wouldn’t she identify Erica Kerwick as one of the kidnappers?”

“That’s assuming they are going to release her.”

“Oh, man I don’t even want to think about that.”

“Or they aren’t letting Tracy see her aunt, so she can’t identify her.”

“But they are letting her see Pierce.”

“Evidently.”

“It just seems so cold-hearted. One of Hanrahan’s own relatives kidnapped his daughter?”

“It happens. Desperate people do desperate things.”

“What now?”

“I think we need to look through every album — every last photo — and see if Pierce is in any of them. If we can find one, maybe it’ll give us some idea how Erica Kerwick knows him.”

“In that case, we’ll probably need to go through all the photos of all the relatives.”

“No argument here.”

“You’d better pull up a chair.”

“Harder to look down your blouse.”

“Grab a chair, you perv.”

We spent the next two hours wading through all of the Facebook pages of the people listed in Curtis Hanrahan’s Family section. Sometimes those pages led to yet more pages of additional people. It was back to being boring, mind-numbing work. But I’m glad we kept digging, because there was one more big break to come. Maybe the biggest break yet. Certainly the most unexpected.

We were sorting through more photos, this time in an album owned by a man named Skip Grogan.

“Skip,” I said. “Who names their kid Skip?”

“Probably a nickname.”

“Still.”

Mia took a moment to stretch her arms. “I’m losing track. How is this guy related to the Hanrahans? Or Erica Kerwick?”

“Hell if I know. I can barely keep track of my own relatives. You want a Coke?”

“Love one.”

I went to get refreshments while Mia continued with our chore. When I came back with two cans and a bag of tortilla chips, Mia was clicking through photos of some fancy black-tie affair. She said, “You know, there’s a theme here: Seems like everybody in this family has money.”

“Which family?” I asked. “The Grogans or the Hanrahans?”

“I hope that’s a rhetorical question.”

“Indeed.”

I sat back down in the chair beside her, and if I’d been just a second later, I would’ve missed it. A photo was on the screen, but only for a split second before she clicked to the next one. I had seen something. Well, someone. Or I thought I had seen someone. Couldn’t be. Impossible. I was tired. Seeing things. Had to check, though. Just as I’d had to check when I had seen — or thought I’d seen — Tracy Turner.

“Go back,” I said.

“Huh?”

“Go back one photo.”

And she did. I was staring at a bunch of happy people in tuxes and cocktail dresses seated at a long dinner table. Not a posed shot, a candid shot, as when a photographer floats through a ballroom and takes discreet photos documenting some ritzy event. The kind of photo that shows up in the society column of the newspaper.

Off to one side of the photo, and more in the background than the intended subjects of the shot, was a waitress. A blond waitress. My waitress. Jessica.

Mia could tell I was stunned. “What is it?”

“That’s the girl I just went out with.”

“Sorry, guy, but you’re gonna have to narrow it down a little.”

“The waitress from the other day. Jessica.”

“Oh, that one. She’s pretty. Really pretty. What in the world is she doing in this photo?”

“You tell me, because I don’t have a clue.”

“You think she knows the Hanrahans or Erica Kerwick?”

“I am completely and totally baffled. Let’s try her Facebook page.”

Jessica appeared in the search results, but her privacy settings didn’t allow us to see much. Couldn’t see her wall or her photos. But we could see her friends list, and none of the people we’d been investigating were on it.

“I got nothing,” I said.

“Well, regardless, we have to go to the cops, right? Call that detective you talked to?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“Roy?”

“Think about it from the cops’ perspective. What exactly do we have? I’ll tell you. We have evidence that Brian Pierce knows a woman who knows the Hanrahans.”

“Not just one woman, two. Erica Kerwick and your new girlfriend. Pierce knows both of those women, and those women know Hanrahan.”

“She’s not my girlfriend, and we don’t know whether Jessica knows the Hanrahans.”

“But she was a waitress at some event they attended!” Mia was starting to raise her voice.

“Exactly,” I said. “She was a waitress at some event they attended. So what? Despite how that looks to us, it could actually be a coincidence. She might not know the Hanrahans from Adam — and Eve.”

“Do you believe that?”

“I don’t know. I do know that we don’t have evidence that Pierce knows the Hanrahans. In other words, we still don’t have anything that will compel Ruelas to act. He won’t be able to get a warrant.”

“Are you sure?”

“He’s still going to think I’m a nutjob and that I’ve got some sort of obsession with Pierce.”

“But it’s logical. The Hanrahans’ daughter went missing, then you saw her with someone who has a connection to them.”

“Yeah, but I don’t have any evidence that I saw her. And, again, we don’t know that Pierce knows the Hanrahans.”

“He has to.”

“It seems likely that he does, but that doesn’t make it so. I bet a rich power couple like the Hanrahans know a lot of people, so that means there are a lot of people who know someone who knows the Hanrahans.”

“Weak, Roy.”

“You think? Let me ask you something: Have you ever friended someone on Facebook, only to learn that you have a mutual friend in common that you never knew about?”

She rolled her eyes. She was resisting me, but I thought it was a good thing. This debate was forcing me to think things through more than I normally do.

“Come on, Mia.”

“Yes. I have.”

“Okay, then.”

“That’s a lame comparison and you know it. Bottom line — what if Pierce has the girl, Roy? Pierce and Erica Kerwick and the guy who attacked you. What if they kidnapped her?”

I sat silently.

She said, “If they have the girl, and you don’t go to the cops with what you know, and then something happens to her...”

I let out a sigh of frustration.

Damn it.