Free Run by Becky Johnson Page A

research was relatively easy. I found answers almost immediately. The family of Leslie French had set up a website in her memory. The website had a brief biography as well as information about her death, and information from the police report. I felt like I was moving faster than I ever had before. The website had a small section on Georgia Layeen, but most of the information focused on Leslie.
    That afternoon I drove to a parking lot with a lot of traffic where I would be able to go unnoticed. I took a little break to walk Max and Kitty. After taking care of my babies I sat in my car again. Bertha was becoming a bit of a mobile office.
    I needed to find something different or something similar about these girls in order to figure out why the killer took both of them at the same time. The girls’ families had been vacationing together. That night, Leslie and Georgia were up on the boardwalk. Their families expected them home by 10:00. According to the website, they didn’t start to get worried until midnight. The families called the police and organized a search of the area. They walked the boardwalk and asked everyone they could about the two girls. The police didn’t declare them missing until the next day. By that time, the families had already talked to store keepers and others on the boardwalk. They discovered that the girls had been seen talking to a “college-aged” boy. He was wearing a baseball cap and had his back to the store so the clerk wasn’t able to give any further information. A month later Leslie’s body was found. The body of Georgia was never found. Police found her sweatshirt with her blood on it in a warehouse in Atlantic City. The conclusion was that her body had been disposed of some other way, burned or buried.
    It looked like Georgia had been an unintended victim while Leslie was the focus.
    Both girls were 15, dark haired, and small. That however is where their similarities ended. Leslie was outgoing, involved in sports, popular, and a straight “A” student. Georgia, on the other hand, was shy, bookish, uninvolved in school and activities; by all accounts Georgia was smart, but she did not do well in school. Leslie was beautiful, with pretty long hair, and classic features. Georgia was awkward, with glasses, bad hair, and acne. It was hard to imagine that the two girls were friends, but the girls had grown up together. Their families were close.
    It looked like Georgia was not the target, but a victim of opportunity. So what was different? Why didn’t he wait until Leslie was alone? Why didn’t he kill Georgia right away if she wasn’t his intended target? Instead, he kept her alive for over a month. Nothing about it made sense. Despite all of the information I now had, I still felt like I had more questions than answers.
    I pulled out the other cases. Maybe there was something in one of them that would give me more information. I felt like there was something I was missing. There was something about the Leslie and Georgia case. I had all the information I could find. Nothing was jumping out at me. There was something I was missing. There had to be.
    I needed to spread out and the car wasn’t working. I was half-afraid to stop moving, obviously he had found me before and he could find me again. If I stopped it might give him a chance to find me, but in order to continue my search I needed to move, to find someplace to stop, someplace to spread out, think and review. If I stayed someplace I would be taking a risk. If I didn’t, I might miss some vital piece of the puzzle (not to mention the fact that my hair didn’t look right if I didn’t shower every day, vain right?).
    For right now , I figured I would stay in my car and keep moving. I drove for another hour avoiding areas that might have traffic lights. I found a motel that looked promising. I decided to drive around for a while before checking in. Meanwhile, I ran through the information I had so far in my mind. He had killed 23