Chapters (46)
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Acknowledgements
- one
- two
- three
- four
- five
- six
- seven
- eight
- nine
- ten
- eleven
- twelve
- thirteen
- fourteen
- fifteen
- sixteen
- seventeen
- eighteen
- nineteen
- twenty
- twenty-one
- twenty-two
- twenty-three
- twenty-four
- twenty-five
- twenty-six
- twenty-seven
- twenty-eight
- twenty-nine
- thirty
- thirty-one
- thirty-two
- thirty-three
- thirty-four
- thirty-five
- thirty-six
- thirty-seven
- thirty-eight
- thirty-nine
- forty
- forty-one
- forty-two
I moved on to Internet searches. As I expected by now, the motel didn’t offer Internet service. Luckily, Paige showed me how to tether my laptop to my iPhone, which was a relief, because as cool as that little browser app is, it’s a bitch for doing serious Web work.
The first person I looked up was Michael Kennedy. With a name like that, can you imagine how many hits I got? Even knowing he was from Texas didn’t help.
Eventually, I found a newspaper article about a case he’d worked. Being a photogenic guy, his picture was included—one of him turning away, unimpressed with the prospect of being captured on film. It was clearly him, though, so his story was legit.
Next on my list: Cody Radu, a name that was much easier to search. The first hit I got was Facebook. One look at the picture and I had my guy, and a read through his profile gave me more information on him than I cared to know. That alone suggested the diner folks were right about Cody. He was one of those people who pretends to be an open book, putting every bit of minutiae about himself into the public domain, as if to say “See, I’m not holding anything back,” which tells you that he is.
I tried pairing up Cody with search terms like drugs, sex, gambling, everything I could think of that might link to illegal activity. Nothing. If it were that easy, though, Bruyn would have nabbed him by now.
So I switched to Alastair Koppel. Plenty of hits for him. There was a Facebook group and a Web site run by the parents of girls who’d joined his commune. Neither were exactly flattering to the old guy.
He wasn’t that old, though. Midforties. Decent enough looking. Dignified. The kind of guy whom lost little girls would flock to.
Flock they did. Megan hadn’t been lying about that. I found a dozen message boards with young women asking how to get into the commune, and more from young women agonizing over why they hadn’t been accepted.
Megan hadn’t been lying about the cookies either. The small business had been written up in a handful of magazines as a model of entrepreneurship. Of course, they glossed over the commune part, preferring to praise the company’s “unique and philanthropic” model, which combined rehabilitation with enterprise.