Lost (7 page)

Whatever, I’m not about to remain confined to the kitchen. With an extra mug of tea as my excuse, I slip upstairs, into Kelly’s room, and find him at her computer. Making her prim little swivel chair look small indeed.

“You said tea, so I thought maybe you drank it, too.”

Without looking up from the screen he says, “Thanks. Leave it on the desk.”

“Any progress?”

“I’ll know in twenty-six minutes,” he says, grunting softly to himself as he hits a key. “Make it twenty-five.”

There’s a clock on screen, counting down.

Shane swivels in the chair, picks up the mug, takes a cautious sip. He studies me with a good internist’s eyes. “You look better,” he says, rendering judgment.

“I am, thank you.”

“Proprietary software,” he explains, nodding at the screen. “If Kelly left her password anywhere on the hard drive, we’ll find it, and if need be the software will crack it. Preliminary search indicates numerous references to both Seth and S-Man, so once I get the files open, we should know a lot more.”

“You found his last name?” I say. “That’s great. I’ll call the county cops. I mean police.”

“Cops will do,” he says with a slight grin. “No, not his last name. Not yet. Just a search engine tracer showing there are references buried within the files. E-mail folders, HTML folders, chat room folders.”

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to. It’s just the way computers organize themselves. Each folder has a name and a location. I was able to list the folders by title, but can’t open them without the password. If this particular software doesn’t get us there, I have other ways.” Making it sound almost ominous. Like no mere microchip would dare defy him.

“So you’re, um, a computer expert?”

“In a limited way, yes. As you say, I’m something of a geek.” He smiles, letting me know that geekness doesn’t offend him. “Actually, for the last several years before I left the bureau, that was my primary role, overseeing the development of software applications.”

“You don’t look old enough to be retired,” I point out.

“I resigned under special circumstances,” he responds, in a way that shuts down that particular line of inquiry.

Retired or fired, gunslinger or geek, it doesn’t matter. If the big man manages to get a line on the mysterious Seth,
and Kelly’s location, I don’t care what his specialty is or was, or why he left the FBI.

“Have a seat,” he suggests. “I need to get some background.”

There’s only one chair in Kelly’s room, so I perch on her bed. Amazingly enough, this stranger is offering me a seat in my own house. Not that he’s trying to be offensive—far from it. He’s focused on a task, on helping me, and for that I’m grateful. Still, I can’t think of the last time a single man has been in my home, let alone one of the bedrooms.

No ring. I noticed. Not that I’m even slightly interested—every fiber of my being is focused on getting what I need to find Kelly.

Shane glances at the clock on the screen, seems satisfied with the progress, then takes a small notebook from his briefcase. “First things first,” he begins. “Where is Kelly’s father in all this?”

“Nowhere,” I respond, a little too fast.

“I take it you’re no longer married?”

“I’m a single mom.”

He nods. Not a judgmental nod, just noting another fact. “Has the father been informed that she’s missing?”

“There is no father,” I tell him, a flush rising into my cheeks. “Can we leave it at that?”

“For now,” he says, conceding nothing. “So. How do you make your living?”

“Weddings,” I tell him. “I design and make wedding gowns, bridal gowns, bridesmaids gowns. Or anyhow, that’s how I got into the business. I still do custom gowns when requested, but mostly we work with a couple of different gown manufacturers. Small specialized factories. We do the fittings, they do the sewing.”

He makes a note. “So you’re in sales.”

I shrug. “Bridal design, we like to say.”

“Dissatisfied customers?”

“It happens. But no one has been upset enough to take it out on my daughter.”

Duly noted.

“You’re sure about that?” he asks without looking up from his notebook.

“Last time it happened I refunded their deposit, simple. That was more than a year ago.”

Mrs. Hampton-Barlow of the Sag Harbor Hampton-Barlows. The bridal gown arrived on time, but the bridesmaid gowns were lost in transit, and no time to make them again. We arranged for perfectly good store-bought versions. No fault of mine, but I couldn’t really blame her for being upset. We parted with a formal apology on my part, and a promise to return her deposit, which I did. The Hampton-Barlows had their wedding and moved on. Me, too.

“Okay,” he says, ticking that off. “Ever been involved in a lawsuit?”

“Small-claims court, does that count?”

“Depends on the circumstance.”

“Collecting an unpaid bill. The marriage was annulled and the couple walked away from their debt.”

“You never collected?”

“There was nothing left to collect. That’s what they told me.”

“And this was when?”

“Three or four years ago. Cost of doing business. Happens every now and then. You try to cover your outlay with the initial deposit. In that case, I got stuck on the wrong side of the estimate. My own fault, you might say.
They upgraded an order, I failed to upgrade the deposit. Live and learn.”

“Uh-huh.” Scribble, scribble. “Personal animosities?”

“Excuse me?”

“Does anybody hate you, Mrs. Garner? Hate you enough to hurt your daughter?”

What a question. And yet it has occurred to me, of course. Is there someone out there in the world who is angry enough at me to lure Kelly away? After a moment, I say, “No one I can think of.”

“No personal vendettas? How about angry boyfriends? Stalkers?”

That’s easy. “No boyfriends, period. No stalkers that I know of.”

Shane’s eyebrows lift. Men always seem to think that any reasonably attractive single woman under the age of forty is being hounded by suitors. Guys with flowers constantly ringing the doorbell, begging to sweep you off your feet. If only.

“Has Kelly complained of unwanted attention?” he wants to know. “Mentioned someone following her or watching her, or exhibiting menace?”

“No,” I say with a quick head shake. “But to be honest, over the last few hours I’ve been thinking about that a lot. And I’m not sure she’d tell me. Yesterday I’d have sworn on a Bible that Kel would share the important stuff, but today I’m not so sure.”

At that moment her computer chimes.

Shane’s eyes snap to the screen. Beneath his trim, neatly cropped beard his lips turn up in a slight smile.

“Bingo,” he says.

14. Flygirl

My mother put up with a lot. It wasn’t that I was a surly adolescent, not like Kelly, because my pathological shyness extended to the family. We had learned, Mom and I, never to raise our voices in the presence of my father. How to hide in plain sight. But I had my silent, secretive ways, and that probably bothered Mom more than surliness or back talk. What are you thinking? she would ask me, as if she really wanted to know, and I would never say, or mutter something and go hide in my room, or have long phone conversations with Fern where we said nothing much at great length.

Poor Mom. All she wanted were a few clues, a guidepost or two, and I couldn’t or wouldn’t oblige. Now I know my punishment for letting her down, all those years ago. It’s right there on the computer screen: Kelly has a secret life. Or, more accurately, a life she has kept from me, and apparently from her friends as well.

Her user name is
flygirl91.
The number is, of course, the year of her birth and the “flygirl,” well, to this mother’s ears it sounds slutty somehow. Wild and crazy, at the very least.

“But she swore she didn’t have a page on MySpace!” I wail, staring in horror at all the messages and responses in the files she calls “Facers” and “S-man.”

“She doesn’t,” Shane explains, manipulating the mouse as we scroll through the files. “You don’t have to post a Web page on MySpace to have access to the site. It appears Kelly logged in as a member but never set up an accessible Web site. She seems to have been deeply involved in searching categories for particular types of individuals.”

“Oh my God,” I say, hand to my mouth. “She was trolling.”

Shane chuckles and shakes his head. “I believe it’s called
‘browsing,’ Mrs. Garner. Simply a way to search through the millions of entries for someone you might find interesting. The folks on MySpace often affiliate themselves with groups or common interests. Just like people tend to do in real life.”

The Facers file contains dozens of images of young men, mostly posing with their computers or leaning against their cars. One has his shirt off, showing tattoos on his arms and chest. Another, his new nipple ring. There are several motorcycles and a hang glider proudly displayed by boys who look ready to die at a moment’s notice. All of it heart attack material for the mother of a teenage girl.

“This is interesting,” Shane says, clicking on the photo of the kid with the nipple ring.

“It must have hurt,” I say, wincing at the very thought.

“No, I mean what’s missing. Your daughter saved this image, but there’s no indication she ever messaged this particular individual.”

“Thank God for that.”

“It’s true for most of these images,” Shane says, making eye contact. “She was culling pictures but not necessarily making herself known to the subjects.”

“But what does it mean?” I ask.

Shane shrugs. “Hard to say. Might just means she liked the pictures. Maybe because they fit her definition of a Facer, whatever that is. Kind of a wise guy, out-there type, maybe? Any thoughts? Have you heard her use the word?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe. The cool words change from day to day, you know?”

“We can Google it later, if it seems to be pertinent. Right now I’ll concentrate on the file contents.”

Shane scrolls through my daughter’s secret life, or her fantasy life, all of it reduced to thumb-size snapshots. I’m
standing over his broad shoulders, close enough to smell his deodorant—kind of a pine scent—aware that under normal circumstances this level of intimacy with a stranger would be, for me, uncomfortable. But these are not normal circumstances. Far from it.

“You think that’s how she met this Seth person?” I ask “Because she saw his picture—his Facer—on the Web site?”

“Yet to be determined,” says Shane, manipulating the keyboard with all ten fingers, a level of typing skill never mastered by yours truly.

“Ah,” he says, as another folder opens. “Here we go. This is linked to a message Kelly mass-mailed to forty-six recipients.”

He deftly places the e-mail in the center of the screen, enlarges the font so we can both read.

Young, aspiring pilot looking for flight instruction. Willing to help with cleaning, maintenance of aircraft. Ready to learn.

I’m too stunned to speak.

“You notice she doesn’t mention her age or gender, other than to say ‘young.’”

“I never knew. Never had any idea.”

“That she wants to learn how to fly?”

“Any of it. Willing to help with cleaning? I can’t even get her to vacuum the hallway! She takes care of her own room, that’s it.”

Ready to learn. The question is, and it breaks my heart to think it, was she ready to learn more than flying? Was this her very clever way to make herself interesting to grown men?

“Four,” Shane announces.

“Four?”

“Responses to that particular e-mail.”

The first response comes up with a snapshot of a guy who has to be in his thirties. Deep in his thirties, with crinkled eyes and a jaunty handlebar mustache. Wearing a distressed-leather flight jacket as he poses in the open cockpit of an old-fashioned airplane. Two wings, like Snoopy used to fly.

“That’s a Waco,” says Shane. “Famous stunt biplane. Big bucks.”

“Stunt plane? You mean like loop-de-loops?”

“Yup,” says Shane. “If you like flying upside down, Waco will provide.”

I almost say, I’ll kill her, then bite my tongue. The guy may have a leather jacket and a big mustache, but he’s not the young man from her photo collection.

As it happens, the second response is from our mystery boy. There’s no photo, and not much of a message, just a succinct more details, please, but it does include a name, Seth Manning, and his e-mail address, [email protected].

“This is dated six weeks ago,” Shane notes.

“S-Man,” I say. “The folder. Can you open it?”

“Already there.”

The S-Man folder contains over a hundred e-mails, messages from S-Man and responses from flygirl91.

“She didn’t have to mention gender,” I point out. “Flygirl kind of gives it away.”

“Good point. If you don’t mind, I’d like to print these out,” Shane suggests. “It’ll be faster and easier than opening each e-mail.”

Maybe he’s not that comfortable having me hover over his shoulder. Fine. Whatever, Kelly’s printer starts spitting out pages at a rate of twenty per minute. I sit on the edge of her bed, devouring her correspondence with Mr. Seth Manning, flight instructor and seducer of teen girls. Or maybe not.
From the tone, right from the beginning, my darling daughter seems to be the aggressor.

What have u got 2 lose? Flygirl will make it worth yr while.

Hw old r u? Don’t lie.

Will b 18, all legal and tender, on 4th of July.

Two lies, actually. Her sixteenth birthday was in May, a few weeks before flygirl started trolling for flyboys. By the time Shane hands me the next batch of pages, I’m feeling physically ill. Partly its residual guilt, for violating her privacy, but mostly what’s making me ill is righteous, motherly anger. How dare she take such outrageous risks with her life and well-being! There’s scarcely a broadcast of the local evening news that doesn’t include mention of Internet predators. It’s not like Kelly didn’t know the danger. She just didn’t care. Or worse—and this might be what’s really making me sick—danger is precisely what she’s looking for.

All legal and tender.

Cool, oily sweat suddenly pours from my scalp into my eyes, and I barely make it to the bathroom before heaving. On my knees, gagging, emptying my stomach.