AllFreeNovel
Share Us
They split the tasks to conquer them faster and burn as little daylight as possible. With an understandable groan, Kay had taken one, leaving the other to him. She used her own computer to access Jenna’s stream while he took the girl’s laptop and set it on the side of Kay’s desk. And he’d been scrolling for a while.
Nothing had been posted on Jenna’s accounts since April. Whatever it was that had uprooted her world, she never talked about it. She stopped talking altogether, not responding or engaging with other people’s postings anymore.
Before April, and specifically, April seventeenth, her social media told a different story.
Those kids were whistling up the wind all day long, posting on those sites, and Jenna had been no different back then. Out of curiosity, he took a moment to count, and there were over a hundred posts Jenna had written or interacted with during one day before April. When did these kids find time for any school? For anything, for that matter?
Realizing his thoughts resembled those of a bitter old man, he grumbled some swear words and resumed his endless scroll through the musings of Mount Chester’s high school juniors. He was only thirty-five; no need to think like a golden-aged coot. Traditional police work might’ve become a dying art in favor of video surveillance, social media investigations, and database searches, but every generation of youths managed to surprise, outdo, and impress even the most cynical of critics. Those kids would probably do the same, and end up being all right.
His rumblings earned him a quick glance from Kay before she sunk her eyes into her own pile of digital manure. He followed suit, reading a few exchanges between Jenna and her closest connections.
She used to have a few close friends. There were two girls, Mackenzie Trenton, whose avatar was the movie poster forTwilight, and Alana Keaney, whose photos seemed more suited to a centerfold wannabe than a high school student. Alana was obsessed with jewelry of all kinds and always showed skin in lascivious poses, even in photos with her apparent boyfriend, Nick Papadopoulos. That young man was into Beemers and racing and talked about competing in rallies once he went to Harvard. It seemed he’d already been accepted, but he was posting at least once every few days that he’s still weighing his options, as if to say, “I’m going to Harvard, bitches, and I’m not letting anyone forget it.” What an infatuated jerk.
Jenna also used to have a boyfriend, a young man named Tim Carter. He liked Ferraris and cats, and he skied a lot on Mount Chester; he’d even won a couple of competitions. That had been the case until April. After a brief absence from social media, Tim had reappeared with a new girl, a sophomore named Kendra Flannagan. His last posting about Jenna had been on April fifteenth. His first about him and Kendra, on June twenty-fourth.
Confused by the absence of questions about Jenna, Elliot returned to her last few active days online. Right before April seventeenth, Jenna had posted daily, albeit a bit less in the final few days leading to that date. Then she disappeared from the social network. And no one had bothered to reach out to her, ask about her, or comment on her absence. Mackenzie continued posting news about Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson, what they wore, what other parts they played in what movies, and who they were dating. Alana Keaney was all about herself and no one else, taking at least fifteen selfies a day. Every move she made was documented online. What she wore, where and with whom, what she ate, what clothes she bought. And she bought a lot of stuff.
Jenna had stopped interacting with her group of friends, and no one had said a word. Not even out of curiosity, which meant they all knew why she’d vanished. They knew, and they kept it on the down low, never commenting about it. Not one of them, not even by accident.
Damn.
Maybe some good old-fashioned detective work would answer his questions, assuming he or Kay could get those kids to talk.
One final step before closing the lid on Jenna’s social media life, and that was going through her messaging app. The same story was reflected in her chats, lots of interactions with the same friends until April, then silence, except for one profile, a man she called DeGraw in her messages.
He was a new friend, this DeGraw, someone Jenna had met online after April, more precisely on May seventh. They’d chatted for a while, and Elliot could see from her messages that she was depressed, didn’t want anything, and was chatting with him more to have a shoulder to cry on. Almost an hour into reading countless messages, Elliot was able to notice how their relationship bloomed, becoming more and more engaged, with Jenna opening up to that man and developing feelings for him. Then the two arranged a meeting face to face.
Last June, on the ninth, in Mount Chester.
DeGraw drove over from San Francisco just to meet Jenna. Based on subsequent messages, their first date was something Jenna remembered fondly. Then they met again and again, at least once every two weeks, when the mystery man would travel to meet the sullen teenager who was slowly falling for him.
He clicked on his name in the messenger to open his profile. There wasn’t one, just a blank avatar and no personal information, no photos or interactions with anyone else.
“I got nothing,” Kay said, letting out a long sigh loaded with frustration. “I can’t believe the amount of crap these kids generate every day. Nothing useful; it’s as if she completely vanished after April seventeenth, and no one cared to notice. Not a tweet, not a single email, nothing.” She rubbed her nape vigorously as if to dissipate the tension coiled in there. “I’m missing something. Any luck on your end?”
“Yeah,” he replied, turning the laptop her way. “We need a warrant. She was seeing someone, a man who was driving over from the city every few weeks to be with her.”
A deep frown ridged Kay’s forehead as she read through the more recent messages between Jenna and her secret boyfriend.
“This is a grownup, Elliot,” she whispered, then bit the tip of her index finger. “An adult. Could be a predator, some pervert who found her online and—” She stopped talking, focused on what she was reading. “This man’s a ghost. We have the dates he traveled here and the approximate times. If nothing else works, Golden Gate toll cameras will help us track him down. We need to know who he really is.”
“We need a subpoena for the social network to reveal the man’s ID.”
She crinkled her nose. “I believe I might have a faster route.”
Of course, she had a faster route. She always had, as if her time was made of New York minutes. Waiting was a concept unknown to his partner’s vocabulary.
“An old buddy of mine from the FBI might be willing to run an unofficial search for us.” Kay fished her phone out of her pocket and scrolled through the saved contacts list until she found whom she was looking for. She initiated the call and waited impatiently with the phone at her ear, rapping her fingers against the scratched surface of the desk. “Hey, it’s Kay Sharp,” she spoke softly into the phone, standing up and putting some distance between them. “Got a minute?” Approaching the window facing the parking lot, she kept her face turned away from him as if what she was about to discuss was private. Personal.
He leaned forward casually, pretending he was still scrolling through Jenna’s laptop, but perked up his ears as if he were night hunting for wild hog.
“Need a favor from you,” she was saying. “I have a vic who’s been dating someone she met online. Screen name is DeGraw, but I’m sure that’s fake. You’ll find him in my vic’s messenger.” A pause. “Yes, I can. Her name is Jenna Jerrell, seventeen years old, from Mount Chester. Yes, California, where else?” She laughed, the subdued, warm laughter of people who had shared more than an office. “Sure, I’ll wait.” She paced back and forth in front of the window, keeping her eyes warily on any movement in the precinct. It was quiet at that time, almost four in the afternoon, and Sheriff Logan hadn’t returned yet. “Yeah, I’m still here,” she said, after a few minutes of tense waiting. “His name is what?” A beat. “And you’re sure about that?”
He could swear he saw consternation shading her face, even from that distance. A little pale, she ended the call and slid the phone into her pocket, then came back to her desk as if nothing had happened.
“So?” he asked casually, lifting his eyes from the computer screen. “Any luck?”
Her glance veered sideways. “Oh, they’ll get back to me when they have a name.”
