“I know who he is.”
“Whoa. We got a bug up our ass today?”
“What is Pastori finding?” Diverting a brown tentacle coursing toward the edge of the table.
“I’ll spare you the bullshit about URLs and partial URLs and embedded sites, blah, blah, blah. Bottom line, it don’t seem like much.”
I heard a wet sound as Slidell thumbed his tongue, flipped a page, went on. “No shopping trips to eBay, Amazon, that kind of thing.”
“Not surprising. Shelly Leal was thirteen years old.”
“She visited some game sites let kids play dress-up with cartoon characters. You know. Put Barbie in a tube top and braid her hair.”
I held the phone with my shoulder as I lifted and blotted.
“There was a site lets kids create aviators for moving around virtual worlds.”
Knowing Slidell hadn’t a clue about avatars, I didn’t bother to correct him.
“What the hell’s a virtual world? That some kinda make-believe where everyone’s good?”
“That would be virtuous. What about chat rooms?”
“The kid didn’t hit porn sites, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“You know it isn’t.” Wiping off the chair seat.
“She linked to a site called AsktheDoc.com. You put in questions about your prostate, someone claiming to be a doctor answers.”
“Is that what she did?”
“What?”
“Ask about her prostate?” What little patience I had was fast disappearing.
“You could try tweezers.”
“What?”
“To pluck that bug crawled—”
“What questions did Shelly ask?”
“Pastori couldn’t get that.” Paper rustled. “The only other site he managed to pull out was a forum on a disease called dysmenorrhea.” He pronounced it “dies-men-o-ree-ah.”
“It’s not a disease. The term refers to severe pain associated with menstruation.”
“Yeah. I don’t need no details.”
“What did she do there?”
“He couldn’t get that, either.”
“Why not?” Sharper than I intended.
Slidell let a few beats pass, his way of telling me to lose the attitude. “First of all, you’ve got to have an ID, and the forum’s got a shitload of members. Pastori says he skimmed through a couple hundred posts. But he had no idea what to look for. And even if he did figure out who Leal was, she could have been a lurker. That’s someone—”
“I know what a lurker is. Did he attempt to figure out her ID?” I almost said “aviator.”
“With what little I could give him, yeah. Family names, pets, initials, birthdates, phone numbers. Got nowhere.”
I thought about that. “Was he able to determine what cartoon characters she chose on the game sites?”
“Hmm,” Slidell said.
I bunched the towel, walked to the door, and tossed it into the sink. Coffee dribbled on the floor as it arced across the kitchen.
“This whole Internet angle may be a dead end,” Slidell said.
“Or she may have met someone in that chat room.”
“It’s a site for people whining about cramps.”
Seriously? “Gee. You think some of those whiners could be adolescent girls?”
“You’re saying our target visits this chat room hoping to hook up with kids? Maybe pretends to be a doctor or something?”
“A doctor, a teacher, another kid having difficult periods. People lie on the Internet.”
“No shit.”
“No shit. Have Pastori stay on it. If someone walked Leal through the process of wiping her browser history, it was for a reason.”
Slidell gave a long dramatic sigh. But he didn’t disagree.
“And talk to the mother. See if she has suggestions about passwords or IDs Leal might have used. Find out how much freedom she allowed Shelly online. And ask why her daughter was interested in dysmenorrhea.”
“Eeyuh.”
“Maybe revisit Leal’s bedroom? See what she was reading. What dolls or animals she had. Anyway, get what you can for Pastori.”
“You know the guy is an Olympic-class gasbag. Runs on and on, I’m guessing to fluff his geeky little ego. Every time I call him, it’s half my day.”
I imagined the exchanges between Slidell and Pastori. My sympathies were definitely with the latter. “Is the media still clamoring?”
“Some asshole videoed us working Leal’s body at the underpass, can you believe that? Wanted their fifteen fucking minutes of fame.”
I changed the subject. “What about the age progression on Anique Pomerleau?”
“Yeah. I got that.”
“Did you plan to tell me?”
“I am telling you.”
“How does it look?”
“Like she got older.”
“Send it to my iPhone. Please.”
I briefed Slidell about events on my end. The unsatisfying interviews. My subliminal breakthrough after studying the dossiers from 2004 and talking with Sabine Pomerleau. The property in Vermont.
“Not bad, Doc.”
“If she did use the Corneau home as a hidey-hole, she’s long gone now.”
“When will you toss the place?”
“When Rodas gives the word.”
“He ask for a warrant?”
I hadn’t thought of that. “Gotta go.” I disconnected.
9:46.
I cleaned the coffee off the kitchen tile, then unpacked the carry-on I’d brought from Charlotte. Took a shower and dried my hair. Dressed in jeans, wool socks, and a sweater.
10:38.
I checked my phone, hoping a text had landed while I was engaged in toilette. Nope.
I paced, too wired to sit still. Why such angst? I felt what? Stunned that I’d been right? Maybe right. Thrilled that we might have found the spot Pomerleau first went to ground? Might have. Outraged that Rodas and Ryan had sidelined me? Definitely.
The phone finally rang at ten past eleven. Area code 802.
“Brennan.” Cool as snow in Vermont.
“Ryan’s on his way to pick you up.”
“Is he.”
“You need to get down here. Fast.”
CHAPTER 21
THE SNOW STARTED as we crossed the Champlain Bridge. Turned to sleet as we hit Stanstead, just north of the border.
I watched the wipers chase fat flabby flakes, later slush, from the windshield. Now and then a wind-tossed leaf hit the glass and was whipped free, brittle and shiny with moisture.
The car’s interior smelled of wet leather and wool. Stale cigarette smoke.
“Look for the Passumpsic Cemetery.”
The first words Ryan had spoken in almost two hours. I was good with it. After he’d relayed what he knew, which was virtually nothing, we’d both burrowed deep into our own thoughts.
Occasionally, I’d check my iPhone. An email with an attachment arrived from Slidell just past noon. I downloaded and enlarged the image.
You’ve seen pictures of Charles Manson. No matter what his age is, his eyes send a frigid wind knifing straight through your soul. His hair may be shaggy or shaved, his cheeks full or gaunt. You feel like you’re gazing straight into the heart of evil.
That’s how it was with Pomerleau. She was in her teens when the sole existing photo was taken. Now she would be thirty-nine.
The computer had softened the jawline, drooped the lids, and broadened the lips and facial contours, transforming the child face into that of a woman. Still the eyes looked stony cold, reptilian, and unfeeling.
As they had on our last encounter. When she’d doused me with accelerant, then coolly lit a match.
I did as Ryan asked. We’d just passed through St. Johnsbury, were now seeing mostly farm fields, trees, a few clusters of homes.
“There.” I pointed to the cemetery. It was old, with headstones and pillars, rather than ground-level plaques for the convenience of mowers. A perfect Poe tableau in the wintry gloom.
Maybe a quarter mile more, then Ryan slowed, signaled, and made a left from Highway 5 onto Bridge Street. We passed a church, a general store and post office combo, a gray building with an old red auto seat on the porch and a red plastic kayak affixed to the top of the front overhang. Passumpsic was written in white on the kayak’s side. A wooden sign above the door identified the Passumpsic River Outfitter, LLC.