“Copy.”
“I’m gonna run up and take a shower, then head south. If they follow me, fall behind.”
I jumped into the shower and changed into something loose in the event our company got frisky. I pulled the Porsche out slowly to give them time to make me, then turned onto McClurg and hung a sharp left on Illinois on my way to Lake Shore Drive. By the time I climbed up the entrance ramp, I could see the Ford Taurus a few cars back, and a couple of cars behind them I could see Mechanic’s black Viper.
My cell phone buzzed.
“I have the plate,” Mechanic said.
“Good,” I said. “Text it to me. I’m gonna test their V-6 a little.”
The light at Monroe turned green. I floored the pedal, then upshifted into second gear, then third, quickly getting above sixty. The other lights turned green in sequence, and the chase was on. Passed Buckingham Fountain, a blur by the Field Museum, then Soldier Field, with a quick beep in honor of the Bears. I was up to about eighty, and the Taurus had climbed up with me. Mechanic’s Viper was probably still just warming up in first gear.
I turned up the ramp heading to the expressway. They followed as inconspicuously as they could. I jumped on 90/94 West, bobbing and weaving through the light traffic. They kept their distance but weren’t giving up any ground either. I jumped into the right lane, which led to an exit heading to the western suburbs. They joined me, as did Mechanic. Just when the lane was about to funnel up another ramp, I downshifted, sliced left in front of an eighteen-wheeler picking up speed, and returned to the expressway heading west. They were blocked by a line of trucks and had to keep going in the other direction. I slowed and watched as they headed up the exit ramp. Mechanic stayed behind them. I took the Ohio Street exit and headed over to Wells Street to grab a quick bite at Yolk.
After I had gotten settled in a booth near the window, the waitress brought over a tall glass of freshly squeezed orange juice and a cup of honey-and-cinnamon tea without me asking for it. She asked if I’d be having the usual, to which I nodded. I pulled out my cell phone and dialed my cousin’s number. Gordon Cayne picked up on the third ring.
“You busy right now?” I asked.
“Just looking through some financials,” he said. “You need something?”
Gordon was my uncle’s youngest son, a recent Princeton graduate and a star lacrosse player. He was working for one of those big firms in New York and making more money in a month than I’d made in half a year as a rookie cop.
“I need some social media help,” I said.
“It’s about time you joined the rest of the world, Ashe,” he said.
“I’m not that interested in what someone ate for dinner last night or seeing their kids dance with the dog.”
“There’s a lot more to look at than that,” Gordon laughed. “What help do you need?”
“I’m trying to locate someone’s friends.”
“This one of your cases?”
I gave him a quick rundown of the Tinsley Gerrigan case. “I want to find out more about her friends,” I said. “I went to her Instagram page, but it’s set to private. Then I checked Facebook, but I couldn’t find her.”
Gordon laughed. “I thought you said she was twenty-five, not sixty-five.”
“She is.”
“No one under the age of thirty uses Facebook,” he said. “I deleted my account years ago. Let me call you back from a landline so I can search on my phone easier.”
We hung up, and he called me right back. “I don’t want to request to follow her on Instagram, because I don’t want her to be able to see my profile,” I said. “But you could follow her, and if she accepts your request, you could search her page for me.”
“That is if she accepts me,” Gordon said. “But if she’s missing and not active on her page, it won’t matter, because she won’t respond to my request. But don’t worry; there’s a new hack around the privacy feature.”
“How?”
“Every other week a developer comes up with a new tool that can go behind the privacy block. They don’t usually last for more than a few days before the IG techs learn about it and patch the hole. Give me a sec.”
I could hear him typing on his keyboard. Then he said, “I’m in.”
“That fast?”
“This new tool is amazing.”
“What can you see?”
“Everything. She’s fine as shit. There’s a selfie of her on the water that’s killer.”
“Do you see any pictures with her friends?”
“She doesn’t post a lot. Most of her posts are pictures of art.”
“She’s a painter.”
“Some of this is pretty good. She has a lot of pictures of her dog. Hold on. Here’s one of her and another girl. Short hair, athletic.”
“Does it say her name?”
“Tinsley tagged her in a post: @rainbowgirl2015. I can see her page now. She has lots of pictures with Tinsley. She’s only posted a few hundred times, but it looks like a quarter of them are with Tinsley. Her name is Hunter. She doesn’t mention her last name.”
“Morgan. They’re best friends.”
“Lots of pictures of her at the Bulls games,” Gordon said. “She’s sitting courtside in all of them.”
“Not surprised,” I said. “Her family has money. Go back to Tinsley’s page. Do you see her with any other friends?”
“There’s a couple of shots from three years ago where she’s with a group, but she didn’t write their names, and she didn’t tag them. Wait. Here’s one with her and some guy. He’s got his hands around her waist, and they look like they’re about to kiss, or they just finished.”
“Must be her boyfriend, Chopper.”
“Never would think a guy who looks like he was born in Brooks Brothers would be named Chopper.”
“Is the guy black?”
“No, it’s a
