mother and that is important. I didn’t know I was going over there until I left the station and ran into Rad in the parking lot. It was an impromptu visit, but we need more information.”
He turned onto the Longs’ street and slowed to 20 miles per hour as he headed down the long, quiet, shady side street. Large well-kept homes lined either side and there wasn’t a car visible anywhere. People in this neighborhood parked in garages, and most were at work.
“The Longs know we’re coming?” Carl asked.
“Yup. Eileen Long said Kathleen had a computer in her bedroom. She knows we’re coming with a subpoena for the hard drive and didn’t have a problem with it.” Perry had been distracted all morning at the station, especially when he ran a check on the Suburban’s tags and came up with nothing. The tag was fake, a crime in itself. “Sorry I didn’t tell you about this before we headed out. These teenage girls meeting some prick off the Internet and then ending up dead is hitting a bit too close to home, I think.”
“Are you worried about your sister’s kids?” Carl stuffed the pictures back into the file and placed it in Perry’s open briefcase on the floor at Carl’s feet. “She’s got all girls, doesn’t she?”
“Yup. And about the same age as these girls. When I get time I’m going to find out if they knew Kathleen.”
“I’m sure you’ve had enough involvement raising those girls for them to know better than to meet some stranger off the computer.”
Perry nodded and pulled up in front of the house. They weren’t quite up the walk to the front door when it opened and Eileen, a woman not much older than Perry, and fairly pretty, nodded to the two of them. She looked as though she hadn’t slept and leaned heavily on the doorknob when she stood to the side so the men could enter.
“How are you doing today?” Carl asked, always the concerned cop.
“Not very well,” she answered honestly, offering both of them a small smile and then taking the copy of the subpoena Carl handed her. “This way. Her computer is in her room.”
They followed Eileen up the stairs and down a wide hall to a bedroom, whose door was closed. She pushed it open and walked in ahead of them. There were clothes on the floor and the bed wasn’t made, giving all indications that someone had slept here the night before and headed out that morning in a hurry. Perry guessed Eileen hadn’t touched it since her daughter disappeared by the somewhat musky smell in the room.
“Do you know what chat programs she used?” he asked, pulling out the wooden chair from the desk and sitting in front of the home computer.
“We all use AOL,” Eileen said. “But I think Kathleen used Yahoo! Messenger sometimes, too. I’m sorry I don’t know her passwords or anything. I guess I should have made her give those to me.” She sounded defeated.
“From what you’ve told us, it sounded as if Kathleen was a good girl,” Carl offered.
“She was the best.” Eileen choked and covered her hand with her mouth. “When she approached us and talked to us about meeting a boy who went to another high school but whom she’d been chatting with online we had a long discussion about it. Mitch and I thought Kathleen understood the danger involved in meeting someone from the Internet, even when the situation appeared harmless. We even offered to invite him over to the house so they could meet that way.” Her voice cracked and she covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry. Do you need me in here? I’ll let you two do whatever you need to do.”
Carl walked out of the bedroom, offering words of support and asking if Eileen and her husband had considered counseling for dealing with the loss of their daughter. Perry let Carl console Eileen and studied the contents of the desk while the computer booted up. His instructions were to remove the hard drive and return to the station, but he wanted to search the computer for what he could find before doing that.
He stood, walking over to the briefcase Carl had placed on Kathleen’s bed, and pulled out a ziplock bag and gloves. Then returning to the computer, Perry gently removed the pictures that had been taped around the monitor, pictures of Kathleen and her friends, different poses, different friends. A few of them were class pictures. Either way, they created a profile on her, helping him know who her group of friends were.
He went through the programs on her computer, took a look at the list of songs that were on it, and opened a few files that seemed to be nothing more than homework assignments.
“Find anything?” Carl entered the room. “Mrs. Long is downstairs if we need her.”
“Nothing yet,” Perry said, closing the ziplock bag and handing it to Carl as he slid back into the chair in front of the computer.
“She gave me a list of pet names, birth dates, anything she could think of to help us with passwords.” Carl didn’t bother handing the list to Perry but pulled out another bag and slipped the paper inside.
When they took the hard drive down to the station, passwords wouldn’t be an issue. They could crack into any password-protected program once they hooked the hard drive up to the computers there.
Perry clicked on Yahoo! Messenger, knowing it was his nieces’ preferred chat program. The long, slender box appeared on the screen, Kathleen’s screen name and her password already saved into it.
“We’re in luck,” he said, and Carl moved to his side. “We find a screen name with Pete, or Peter, and we might have to add pornography charges to kidnapping, rape, and murder.”
“Do you think Kathleen is connected to the other girls who’ve disappeared?”
“I’d bet my life on it,” Perry muttered, and watched as Kathleen’s buddy list appeared. He scrolled down a long list of screen names and then back up again. Not one of them used any form of the name Peter.
“Maybe she talked to him on AOL,” Carl suggested.
Perry was already on it, although he said nothing. While signing onto AOL, which also had the password saved, he went through Yahoo! Messenger again, hitting the preferences and changing her settings so that the actual screen names were displayed instead of each person’s name. Still, there was nothing. It was the same with AOL. Not one screen name came close to Peter.
“Maybe she used another screen name,” Perry mused out loud.
“They’ll be able to tell down at the station. Ready for me to pull out the hard drive?” Carl reached into the briefcase and slid a screwdriver out of the side pocket.
No, Perry wasn’t ready. He wanted to tear into the computer himself and not turn it over to Rad, who in turn would probably ship it out to Kansas City’s larger police department or, worse yet, the FBI field office. Since this wasn’t officially his case, he would have to sift through red tape just to learn what they found.
“One more minute.” He clicked the drop-down box on AOL to view the other screen names. Then flipping open his notebook, he jotted down the names. “How many brothers and sisters does she have?”
“Just a younger brother.”
Perry guessed the screen names on AOL all belonged to family members. More than likely, the account holder was Eileen or her husband and they would authorize any new screen names. Since there were only four names, Perry doubted Kathleen used AOL for a lot of chatting.
He looked through the programs on the computer, pulled up IE, and then typed in:
He thought about how Dani showed Kylie the way people chatted using Web sites.
“Your hunches are usually right.” Carl stepped around him and then unscrewed the back of the tower.
Perry wished Rad felt the same way. He was a damn good cop, one of the best on their force. And it wasn’t bragging rights that allowed him to say that. The facts spoke for themselves. In his years on duty, he’d brought in more criminals, solved more cases, than any other man, or woman, in his department. Yet for some reason, Rad wouldn’t assign the case to him. That in itself bugged the crap out of him, too.
Dani and Kylie’s conversation kept popping into his head as well. There were other ways to talk online. He wanted to be the one figuring this out and not some IT geek.
When they arrived back at the station, Perry headed straight for Rad’s office, keeping the hard drive in his possession. Rad looked tired when he glanced up from paperwork and gestured for Perry to enter.
“I got something to show you,” Perry said, closing the door to the Chief’s office. He swore Rad’s expression turned wary as he leaned back and watched Perry approach. “Remember those Web sites I showed you last week?”
“Yeah.” Rad leaned forward on his desk, resting his elbows over paperwork, and plopped his chin in his hands. “What about them?”
