by Skylar Finn
“I think we’ve all had that feeling, at one time or another. I know I have.”
“I have it every day of my life,” he said.
Agent Brown had sent Agent Manning to interview the boy whose YouTube videos Brittany had watched. Peter Moss had been sulky and inhospitable, his parents threatening lawsuits and generally impeding the process.
“I told them we’d be back,” she said grimly. “Let’s see how the two of you do.”
The real Peter Moss lived in a rambling old house on the river with his parents, two younger brothers, a border collie, and a mean-looking barn cat roaming around outside, looking for things to kill. His mother, a diminutive, wide-eyed woman, seemed nervous and kept glancing over her shoulder when she opened the door for us.
“His father’s in his study,” she said in a scared little whisper. “With our other two sons. We decided it was best if he stays there, after last time. He got into it with that horrible Manning person and almost ended up getting arrested, but really, he just has Petey’s best interest at heart. He didn’t mean anything bad by it. Of course, we want to do whatever we can to help Cynthia and Daniel get Brittany back. I would hope anyone would do the same for me.”
She ushered us into their living room. Peter was sprawled on the couch, a sullen expression on his face. His thumbs twitched aimlessly over the controls of his XBOX while he stared at the screen.
“Peter?” his mother ventured. She sounded like she was asking for permission from him for something.
“What,” he said, sounding annoyed.
“There are these people here from the FBI to talk to you,” she said timidly. “Can you put your controller down, sweetie? Just for a second.”
“Oh, the FBI? Really?” he said with a sneer.
“Peter, please remember what we talked about. One of your classmates is missing, and this is very serious—”
“Whatever.” Peter flung the controller off to the side. “I’m listening, okay?” It was never the bad ones who disappeared, it seemed.
I took a seat across from Peter and sat silently, observing him. He stared back at me insolently. Harper remained standing, towering above him.
“I’m going to cut straight to the chase, just so we don’t take up too much of your obviously valuable time here, Peter,” said Harper. He sounded like a totally different person from the one who had interviewed Mrs. Hayes—dry, sarcastic, biting. Rude. Like the corrupt agent in a movie where all the lawmen are on the take.
“Great,” said Peter. He still sounded utterly insouciant, but I could see his left eye twitch slightly. “Let’s get this over with.”
“Did you speak to Brittany Hayes outside of school?”
“I told that other guy—I never talked to her in school. Or anytime, anywhere. Why do people keep asking me that?”
Harper turned to Peter’s mother, sitting meekly on the couch beside him like his personal valet. “Do you monitor all of Peter’s communication online?”
“Of course we do,” she squeaked. “We would know if he’d been talking to that girl before she disappeared. We know what’s going on in our children’s lives.”
“Are you aware that someone pretending to be your son was talking to Brittany Hayes online?”
“No!” she said, horrified. “Of course we didn’t know. How would we know something like that? Why would anyone even do such a thing?”
“God, Mom, are you retarded?” said Peter in exasperation. “Do you know how easy it is to pretend to be someone else? Any rando pedo in a three-thousand-mile radius could look up the class roster online—which is why it shouldn’t even be posted, obviously—and pretend to be a kid talking to another kid. The guy could be from Russia, for all we know.”
Harper sat on the ottoman across from Peter, his buddy now. “Do you know of anyone like that who worked at the school? Anyone hanging around, acting strange?”
“What, a guy holding a sign saying, ‘I’m a pervert’? No, there wasn’t anybody like that. Isn’t that the whole point, they’re not allowed to live near schools, or something like that?”
“In theory,” I spoke up from the armchair.
Peter and his mom turned to me, surprised, as if they’d forgotten I was there.
“The ones that have been caught.”
Peter’s mom emitted a gasp of dismay. Peter merely shrugged. “Then I guess some perv could have grabbed her, in that case,” he said. “Whatever it was, I had nothing to do with it.”
“Do you think it could have been one of your followers? Or one of your subscribers on YouTube?”
“Would they be dumb enough to subscribe? Or comment on any of my stuff, if they were a murdering kidnapper? I mean, that would be really weird, but if you want to go through all my stuff, good luck. I have eighty thousand subscribers.”
“Peter is already generating an income from his channel,” his mother said proudly. “If he keeps it up, he can probably pay for college.”
“Thanks a lot, Mom. Good to know you and Dad never started a college fund for me.”
“Peter!”
I heard a voice like a bear-turned-human bellow from the kitchen. I guess his dad had gotten restless. Peter turned pale. So did his mother.
This time, I was the one who left my card. It was in Peter’s mother’s hands so quickly I might as well have been a magician. I was at the door before Harper could even blink.
“Thank you for your help,” I said. “If you think of anything, please don’t hesitate to call us.” If the apple was this much of a prize, I shuddered to think what the tree that it fell from was like.
“That kid was like a walking advertisement for birth control.”
I snorted. We were on our way back to the CARD team headquarters. Despite the grim circumstances under which we’d met, Harper’s dark sense of humor was proving one of the sole respites of the case.
“I bet his dad’s a real peach, too.”
The busy activity in the back room had barely slowed. If anything, it had increased in intensity. Agent Brown swooped down on us as soon as we walked through the door.
“Anything?” she asked. “Or did that massive idiot think he could intimidate two agents this time instead of one?”
“It seems highly unlikely Peter Moss had anything to do with this, or even knew about it,” I said. “It’s apparent that someone hijacked his identity for the purposes of using it to infiltrate Brittany’s life.”
She sighed deeply. “The real Peter Moss is a highly unlikely suspect. Right now, we’re primarily interested in the absentee father whom no one has been able to track down, and Daniel Hayes, who has been acting suspiciously through his detachment and overall absence from the case. Either he was completely indifferent to his stepdaughter, or he’s avoiding us because he has something to hide.”
“He definitely seemed skittish, that was for sure,” said Harper.
“Katy Lipman conveniently had an emergency at their current site and took off without talking to us,” I said. “Which we also found highly questionable.”
“We’re keeping an eye on them,” said Agent Brown. “Right now, CARD is focused on finding Brittany Hayes’ father, Arthur Redmond. Lipman and Hayes have a site in Sistersville, which is where they keep vanishing, seemingly whenever we want to talk to them. Lipman taking off when you wanted to talk to her could be the perfect excuse to go out there. See what they’re up to.”
“Do you think there’s a possibility they’re keeping Brittany there?”
Agent Browning frowned. “I can’t imagine why. It’s unclear what, if any, benefit kidnapping his own stepdaughter would have for Daniel Hayes. It’s more likely that their business is a front for something else—meth, or maybe pills. Both have been a problem in the area. If Daniel Hayes got in bad with the wrong people, then maybe they’re the ones who have taken Brittany. As leverage.”
It would account for his nervous, skittish behavior—along with Katy Lipman’s passive-aggressive refusal to speak to us at all. I
f Lipman and Hayes were up to something dark behind the façade of their otherwise above-board business, they could have easily gotten in over their heads and wound up owing the wrong people. Which would have endangered everyone else in their lives. Like Brittany Hayes, for example.
“We’ll head there first thing in the morning,” I said.
It was dark and getting darker. I was sure Lipman had left the site for the day, and that was only assuming she’d even gone there in the first place. She could have just as easily gone out back and hidden in the woods until she saw our car leave to avoid us.
“All right, then,” said Agent Brown briskly. “Head out early. You don’t need to check in here first. Come by afterward and let me know what you’ve found.”
Harper and I went out to his car. I mulled over what Agent Brown had told us. It seemed likely that Hayes and Lipman were hiding something, and likelier still that whatever it was could be related to Brittany’s kidnapping. I couldn’t see them embroiled in wrongdoing and coincidentally being wholly unrelated to the disappearance of his stepdaughter.
Then again, I wasn’t yet ready to rule out the possibility that she’d run away—or had at least planned to. Based on how controlling Mrs. Hayes was, I wouldn’t have put it past a young and rebellious girl to buck her authority in the worst way imaginable. Combined with the unsettling conversation with the catfish, it would have been easy for a stranger to lure her from her home and take her to a second location. But had it been a complete stranger? Or was it an enemy of Daniel Hayes?
I also wasn’t entirely satisfied with our conversation with Dana at the Dairy Bar. The girl had seemed nervous beyond just talking to figures of authority. There was something about her backward glance at the other girl, Crystal, combined with what Mrs. Hayes had told us about the girl. It was clear that Crystal was the boss and Dana was the worker within the context of their friendship. I wondered if Crystal had instructed Dana to keep quiet about what they might know in order to keep themselves out of trouble.
“Penny for your thoughts?” said Harper, startling me from my reverie.
I voiced my theory about Crystal and Dana. “I’m primarily concerned with what Hayes is up to—it’s clear he’s got something to hide. But I think those girls are hiding something, too. It might be something trivial, something they think would get them into trouble that would prove largely meaningless and inconsequential to getting Brittany back. Or it could be something much larger.”
“Do you think they might know who Pete Moss is?”
“They might. They might think they’re protecting Brittany. Or they might just be protecting themselves.”
“Either way, it’s worth a follow-up,” said Harper. “Let’s plan to swing by there after we stop at the site in Sistersville.”
“Agreed,” I said.
Harper passed the bridge. Within minutes, he was pulling into the parking lot of the New Martinsville Inn. I thought of the sleepless night ahead of me and sighed.
“What’s up?” asked Harper. “Did you think of something else?”
“No.” I smiled wryly. “Only the short stack of pancakes and bottomless coffee I’m probably going to get at Bob Evans when I walk over there after ten minutes of claustrophobia I endure back in my room.”
“That doesn’t sound like a bad idea.”
“Do you ever stop eating?”
“It’s more that I don’t plan on sleeping any time soon.”
“Me either.” I unbuckled my seatbelt and got out of the car. “I’ll probably devote my ten minutes to a shower, in that case. I’d like to wash this day off of me.”
“Agreed,” he said, echoing my earlier sentiment. “I think it might take me two showers to wash away the conversation we had with that scumbag kid.”
“It could be worse,” I said.
“How’s that?” he asked.
“You could be his dad.”
Harper laughed. We parted ways at the end of the hallway, and I went to my room. I turned on the TV just to have some background noise. The artificial sound and light made me feel less alone.
The local news was on. They’d just wrapped up the weather, and a solemn-looking newscaster had taken over the broadcast.
“Local police, in conjunction with the FBI, continue the search for missing local teen Brittany Hayes,” he droned. There was a brief shot of the exterior of the Hayes household, heart flag whipping in the late winter wind. “The teenager disappeared from her home Tuesday night, and kidnapping is suspected. If you have any information, please contact your local police department or the tip line at the number on the bottom of the screen.”
I watched as they flashed the number as a banner across the bottom of the Inn’s old box TV. I had no doubt in my mind it would draw out all the crazies. Out of a hundred calls, maybe one might yield some halfway relevant information, but in a town this small, I doubt there would be even thirty in total—which considerably reduced the odds that even one of them would be relevant.
I took the world’s fastest shower and ran the blow-dryer attached to the wall over my head for a few minutes, putting on a hat once I got dressed so my hair wouldn’t freeze to my head. Then I put on my overcoat and shut out the lights, pulling the door shut behind me as I anticipated yet another endless night that lay ahead.
8
Not in Nottingham
Sistersville was on the river in neighboring Tyler County. It was even smaller than New Martinsville at less than half the size, with roughly fourteen hundred people. It was named for two sisters, the daughters of a pioneer whom the local inn was named after. In the summer, the ferry ran across the river into Fly. It was once a boomtown with a population of over fifteen thousand after a local struck oil in the late 1800s. But that was then. Now, it looked more like a ghost town.
There was a Dairy Queen and a pizza place, along with the usual local staples that made up a town—Main Street, library, courthouse, banks, churches. But there was barely anyone on the streets, and it gave the illusion that the town was uninhabited, like there was no one around. It was obvious from the grandeur of the architecture that the town had once flourished, which made its current status seem even more tragic somehow. It didn’t seem fair that a once great place had been forgotten.
Harper drove out to Lipman and Hayes’ construction site at the edge of town. High on a hill was the skeletal construction of what looked like a large house. There was no sign of anyone or any motion, which seemed odd for an active construction site. He parked at the bottom of the hill and cut the engine.
“Why build out here?” he asked. “It’s not exactly flourishing. I wouldn’t expect the real estate to be in high demand.”
“They’ll probably rent it out to the gas and oil men,” I said. “There was a pipeline straight through here a couple of years back. I remember my mom talking about it. She read some environmental piece about how there were houses so close to it that if anything happened, they would have been blown sky-high.”
“Do you think it’s just a front for their real racket?” he asked. “Whatever that might be.”
“It’s hard to say,” I said. “As you mentioned, I have a hard time believing that construction is all that lucrative around here. Would it cause them to turn to crime? Maybe. It’s possible. Then again, anything’s possible.”
We’d gotten up early, while it was still dark. Harper had worked construction through college and said they would likely be on site by dawn. It was well after sunrise by the time we saw a lone set of headlights sweep up the winding temporary gravel driveway embedded in the side of the hill.
“There goes Lipman,” I said. “The lone worker.”
“Where is everyone?” he said suspiciously. “What kind of construction site is this?”
Lipman flashed her lights at us as we went by. I would have been curious to wait and see what she was up to—was she working? Or was this a clandestine spot for her to meet up with someone?—but she knew we were there.
We got out o
f the car and climbed the hill. It was briskly chilly, but there was something about the air that I loved. Maybe it was the proximity to the hills, or the river. Something about the area had always appealed to me, and I tended to romanticize it in my mind. Maybe it was just the stark contrast between this and the lush subtropical climate I’d always known.
We reached the top of the hill and approached Katy Lipman’s Jeep, overcoats billowing in the sudden wind that whipped up. I drew my scarf tighter around my throat. Lipman was still sitting in her Jeep. She rolled the windows down.
“Detectives,” she said, sounding tense. “Can I help you?”
“We’re not detectives, ma’am,” said Harper, polite as can be at her window. “We’re federal agents.”
“We never got a chance to speak with you yesterday,” I said as I approached the passenger side window. Her head whipped in my direction. She had the look of a trapped animal. “Unfortunately, you had that emergency out here to take care of, with the foundation and all.”
“That’s right,” she said quickly. “It’s off the flood plain here, but we gotta be careful.”
Opposite me, Harper raised his eyebrows. Foundation? he mouthed. It had gone from the plumbing to the wiring to the foundation in less than twenty-four hours. Either this was the most problematic construction site known to man, or they were lying. My money was on the latter. I could tell Harper’s was, too.
“What’s this you’re building here?” asked Harper, glancing up at the partially constructed frame.
“Boarding house,” she said. “Temporary housing in these parts can’t keep up with the demand. A lot of folks are renting out rooms in their houses when the hotels get full, but there are still those who have to commute from as far as Wheeling or even Pittsburgh.”
“I see,” I said. “How well do you know Brittany Hayes?”
“I don’t see her very often.” She looked confused about whether or not to get out of her Jeep, then appeared to resign herself to staying put. She didn’t want to have to open the door and try to get past either one of us. “I mean, I’ve met her, of course, but there’s nothing for a kid to do at the office. She’d be bored there.”