Free Finding Magic (downside ghosts) by Stacia Kane Page A

Jillian didn’t see it—well, of course she didn’t, she wasn’t peering into Chess’s bag like some kind of purse busybody. She just kept talking. “The best way to start is to just type in the name you’re looking for. It’ll bring up whatever files exist. You can narrow it down by birth date or whatever, and then when you open the files there are usually pictures, and … well, that’s it.”
    Jillian sat down at the next computer. Damn, couldn’t she have at least moved one more down, so Chess had a little privacy? Having someone sit so close to her … it was like being breathed on. Kind of gross and uncomfortable, but there was no decent way to request that they stop. What was she supposed to say to Jillian,
Don’t watch what I’m doing in the Church’s private restricted files
?
    No. Somehow she thought that wouldn’t work very well. She glanced around, hoping she could use other people in the library as an excuse to move, but no; a one-way mirror separated the computers from the rest of the library, so no one could see over her shoulder.
    Okay. Put it out of her mind and focus. This was her shot, right? Yes. She typed “Mark Pollert” in and waited, and when the results came up she had to admit that was pretty cool. Her first official act as a Church employee. That she technically wasn’t a Church employee yet and was doing a side errand that probably had no bearing on the actual case didn’t matter; it was still a big deal.
    Only a few Mark Pollerts existed, which was nice because it meant it was easy to find the one she wanted. Born January 20, 1980, orphaned at age ten, moved from house to house—yeah, she sure as fuck knew that drill—until ending up at the New Hope Mission. With the Warings.
    “Hey, Jillian, can I keep this file open and do another search?”
    “What else do you need to search?”
    Shit. Somehow she didn’t think Jillian was going to approve, but … “I wanted to see if there’s anything on the Mission. The one the Warings worked for, where Mark lived for a while? I thought …” Double shit, because Jillian’s eyebrows were rising and Chess was pretty sure that didn’t mean Jillian loved her fantastic idea.
    She plowed on, though. “If I can get some information on the Mission and the people who ran it, maybe I can get a more complete picture of Mark’s life. Maybe some people I can talk to about him, or would be talking to about him if I was actually doing that.”
    Jillian didn’t reply; Chess dug her fingernails into her palms to keep herself from saying more, to keep her face calm. Jillian was considering it, Chess knew it, and if she started gibbering justifications and arguing her case, she’d only convince Jillian to say no. The only way to get what she wanted was to act like she didn’t really care.
    Sure enough, it worked. “Just hit the plus sign there.”
    A couple of clicks, a few seconds of typing, and Chess had the records of the New Hope Mission in front of her and her heart beat much, much faster with every line she read, every
name
she read, from the list of employees and volunteers at the Mission between 1990 and 1997.
    They all looked familiar. “Where’s the list of victims?”
    “Why, what—oh. Oh, wow. How did Trent and Vaughn not see this?”
    Maybe because Trent’s tunnel vision led only into his own colon. Chess didn’t say that, though. Instead she said, “Maybe the others didn’t have souvenirs of the place in their house, and nobody knew they’d worked there.”
    “That’s true.” Jillian typed something on her own computer. “Yeah. The first victim, Harry Stark, there’s nothing in his file.”
    “Would stuff they found searching his house be in his file?”
    Jillian stood up, already clicking keys on the computer with one hand and pulling out her phone with the other. “No, it wouldn’t. Come on. We need to go see Trent and Vaughn. Right away.”

Chapter Eight
    T he Warings’ house seemed like the logical