Free Gone The Next by Ben Rehder Page B

deserved to know what I was doing out here, and why I might be here tomorrow, and maybe for several more days.”
    “Interesting,” she said. “And here I thought you might be a burglar.”
    “No, ma’am.”
    “Glad I didn’t call the sheriff.”
    “Me, too. And I really need you to do me a favor. I need you to promise that you won’t tell anyone why I’m parked here.”
    Emma Webster made the familiar my-mouth-is-zipped motion and didn’t say another word. I figure, for her, that would be a monumental undertaking. I hoped she could live up to it.

    After she continued on her walk, I stayed parked where I was. The sun fell and the woman in the Jetta never left, and if she had, it probably would have taken me a minute to snap to, because my mind was racing.
    Brian Pierce had been seen with a little blond girl a few months ago. Then he denied it. This was, to put it mildly, a cause for alarm, at least it was for me. Who was the little girl? Where had she come from? I hated to even wonder it, but was Pierce a serial child abductor with a predilection for blond girls?
    I tried to remember any headlines from February or March about a missing girl, but I didn’t recall any. So I jumped online and started searching various news sites. Didn’t take me long to determine that there hadn’t been a case like that in the Austin area. Of course, Pierce could’ve made a road trip, so I cast my net wider and searched a public database of missing children on the website for the Texas Department of Public Safety. They operate a very user-friendly site that allows you to narrow your search by age, gender, height, weight, date of birth, race, and so on. Which means it’s easy to get quick results. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t a missing girl in the entire state that matched up with this blond girl Emma Webster had seen.
    I visited Pierce’s Facebook page again and began to scroll downward, back in time. I paid particular attention to his status updates from late winter and early spring. I’d reviewed these postings before, but I wanted to check them again in light of this new information.
    There was only one comment that interested me, but it would be a stretch to say that it was significant. On March 3, Pierce had simply written: Love comes from a lot of unexpected places.
    Kind of odd, considering that none of his other posts were in the least bit philosophical, and considering that he didn’t appear to have a girlfriend or boyfriend, nor did he seem to date regularly.
    Could mean anything. On the other hand, it could be disturbingly creepy. It would be nice to have some context, but none of his updates before or after that one seemed to relate, and none of his friends had commented.
    There weren’t many times when I’d stay on a stakeout all night, but I decided this would be one of those times. I ate a cold ham sandwich, drank a Coke to keep me awake, and along about midnight, my tenacity paid off. No, I didn’t learn anything about Brian Pierce, the blond girl, or the woman in the Jetta.
    What I learned came once again from the media. This time, a talk radio program was reporting that Patrick Hanrahan — Tracy Turner’s stepdad — had agreed to, and failed, a lie-detector test.
    Twice.

17
     
    “I feel like I’m on a seesaw,” I said. “One minute I’m sure Brian Pierce had something to do with Tracy Turner’s disappearance, the next minute some strange development happens with the parents.”
    “What about what you said the other day?” Mia asked.
    “My rant about the parents always being the first suspects? Well, the mom ending the interview was one thing, but this...I guess there comes a point when you have to start to wonder.”
    “I’ll be honest. My money’s on the parents. At least one of them, but maybe both.”
    “One covering for the other?”
    “Exactly.”
    “You could be right.”
    “The mom won’t talk and the stepdad is lying to the cops. Something is happening there.”
    We