10

By the time Terri Collins managed to get into the hard drive on Jennifer’s computer and copy everything without simultaneously destroying it, it was midmorning and, even with a catnap on a couch outside of an interview room, she was still exhausted. The office around her had awakened. The other three detectives on the small force were at their desks, making calls, sorting through various open-case tasks. She had also received a summons from the chief’s office, wanting a midday update, so Terri was scrambling to put together some sort of analysis of Jennifer’s disappearance. In order to keep processing the case, she needed to create at least the impression that a crime was taking place because, otherwise, she knew the chief would tell her to do what she had already done—put out a picture and description and the appropriate statewide and national bulletins and then get back to work on cases that actually might result in arrests and convictions.

She looked guiltily at the stack of case folders cluttering a corner of her desk. There were three sexual assault cases, a simple assault—that was a Saturday night Yankees–­Red Sox fistfight in a bar—an assault with a deadly weapon—what was that sophomore from the tony Boston suburb of Concord doing with a switchblade anyway?—and half a dozen drug cases ranging from a nickel bag of marijuana to a student over at the university arrested selling a kilo of cocaine to an undercover campus cop. Every file needed attention, especially the sexual assaults, because they were all more or less the same—girls taken advantage of after they’d had too much to drink at a frat house or a dorm party. Invariably, the victims wavered, imagining they were somehow to blame. Perhaps, Terri thought, they were. Inhibitions had been washed away in beery excess and provocative dancing, maybe they had heeded the catcalls of show us your boobs! that were commonplace at campus gatherings. Each case was awaiting toxicology results and she suspected they would all test positive for Ecstasy. These cases all started: “Hey, baby, let me get you a drink” in a crowded room, music pounding, bodies packed together, and the girl not noticing the slightly odd taste as she sipped at her plastic cup. One part vodka, two parts tonic, a dash of date-rape drug.

She hated seeing sexual predators skate away when the embarrassed and sobered-up girls and their equally embarrassed parents dropped all her carefully constructed criminal charges. She knew the boys involved would end up boasting of their conquests as they matriculated on to Wall Street or medical school or into some other high-powered profession. She thought it was her policewoman’s duty to make sure that this ascension wasn’t without some sweat and some scars.

Terri went and poured herself her fourth coffee of the long night becoming a long day.

She thought that every other case on her desk should take precedence.

Saving Jennifer Riggins from whatever emotional morass that had instilled in her the need to run was way beyond the detective’s job description.

Yet she could not bring herself to just let her run. Terri knew the statistics far too well.

And, she reminded herself, she knew the necessity of running away with an intimacy that she would never forget.

You had to run once. Why do you suppose this is different?

She answered: I wasn’t sixteen. I was grown up and with two babies.

Almost grown up.

But you still had to run, didn’t you?

The question reverberated within her and she plopped down and rocked in her seat at her desk, trying to imagine where Jennifer had gone. She leaned forward and took a long pull at the coffee cup. Hers had a large red heart and World’s Best Mom written on the side and had been a predictable Mother’s Day gift from her children. She doubted that this sentiment was true, but she was doing her damned best to try.

After a second she sighed, then took the flash drive copy of the hard drive on Jennifer’s computer and plugged it into her own. She sat back and started to survey the sixteen-year-old’s life, hoping that some road map would appear on the screen in front of her.

Jennifer’s Facebook entry was surprising. She had friended a very small number of her classmates at the high school and several rock and pop stars, ranging from a surprising Lou Reed, who was older than her mother, to Feist and Shania Twain. Terri had expected the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus, but Jennifer’s tastes were very much outside the mainstream. Under the category Likes she had written Freedom and under Dislikes she had put Phonies. Terri guessed that word could be applied to any number of people in Jennifer’s world.

In the Profile section, Jennifer had quoted someone named Hotchick99, who had written on her own Facebook entry: “Everyone in our school hates this one girl.”

Jennifer had replied: “This is kind of a badge of honor to be hated by people like her. I never want to be the kind of person she would like.”

Terri smiled. A rebel with any number of causes, she thought. It gave her a little non-cop respect for the missing girl, which only made her sadder when she considered what was likely to happen to Jennifer on the streets. Escape wasn’t going to seem so great then. Maybe she’ll have the sense to call home, no matter how terrible that will seem.

She kept looking through the hard drive. Jennifer had also tested a few computer games, made a number of Wikipedia inquiries and Google searches that seemed to correspond to courses she was taking in school. There was even a Translate the page inquiry, where she’d submitted something that Terri suspected was a Spanish assignment. Beyond the ordinary, Jennifer did not seem particularly computer-dependent. She had a Skype account but there were no names listed on it.

Terri raced through an American history paper on the Underground Railroad and an English paper on Great Expectations that she found under Word Documents. She half expected to find these were written by a term paper mill but was pleased when she did not. Her impression was that Jennifer actually did most of her own work at school, which made her the exception rather than the rule.

She also seemed to like doggerel. She had downloaded samples from Shel Silverstein and Ogden Nash, which were odd choices for a teenage girl in this day and age. She found a file called 6 Poems for Mister Brown Fur, which were rhymed couplets and haiku written for her teddy bear. Some—there were many more than six—were quite funny, which made Terri smile. Smart girl, she thought again.

She continued searching. There were frequent visits to vegan websites and new age entries, which, Terri guessed, were efforts to understand her mother and quasi-stepfather-slash-boyfriend.

Terri kept clicking through the computer’s history. She hoped to find some heartfelt misguided teenage longings diary but could not. She wanted some document that outlined Jennifer’s plan, such as it was. But this eluded her. She found stored pictures, but most were of Jennifer and a few friends laughing, hugging, cutting up at sleepovers or parties—although it always seemed as if Jennifer stood just at the perimeter. She kept searching the picture files and finally came across half a dozen nude shots that Jennifer had taken of herself. They couldn’t have been more than a year old. Terri figured she had set up her point-and-shoot digital camera on a stack of books and then posed in front of it. They weren’t particularly sexy, more like Jennifer had wanted to document the changes taking place in her body. She was slender, with breasts that barely curved away from her chest. Her legs were long, and she coyly crossed them, so that only the slightest shades of her pubic hair were visible—as if she had been embarrassed by what she was doing even though she was doing it alone in her room. Two of the shots seemed to have the teenage version of sexy come hither looks on her face, which only made her seem younger and more childlike.

Terri examined each one carefully. She kept opening them up on the screen in front of her, expecting to suddenly see a naked boy pop into the pictures. She wanted to believe that kids that age weren’t sexually active. That was the mother part of her. The hard-edged detective part of her knew that they all had far more experience than any parent imagined. Oral sex. Anal sex. Group sex. Old-fashioned sex. The kids knew it all, and had experienced much of it. Terri was secretly happy that the only provocative photographs on Jennifer’s computer were of herself alone.

She stopped and thought there was something sad about the pictures. Jennifer was fascinated by who she was becoming but, as naked as she was, she was still more naked in her solitude.

She had almost finished her search when a pair of Google requests caught her eye. One was for Nabokov’s Lolita, which Terri knew wasn’t on any high school reading list. The other was for men who expose themselves.

This inquiry had produced a wide range of responses. More than eight million entries. But Jennifer had opened only two: Yahoo Answers and a psychological forum website that was a link to an Emory University Medical School Psychiatry Department series of papers on the psychological ramifications of Peeping Toms and flashers. This second result contained medical jargon that was far too sophisticated for a sixteen-year-old, although that apparently hadn’t stopped Jennifer.

Terri leaned back in her seat. She didn’t need to know anything else, she thought. Right in front of her was a crime that couldn’t be proved—it would be Jennifer’s word against Scott’s and even her mother was likely to err by believing him—but which made all the necessary pack your bag and run away sense.

Terri went back to the poems for Mister Brown Fur. There was one that began with the line: You see what I see.

Maybe he did, Terri thought, but a teddy bear sure as hell can’t testify about it in court.

The phone on her desk rang. It was the chief demanding his update. She knew she had to be very careful with what she said. Scott was well known and had many powerful friends in the local community. He’d probably treated half the city council at some point or another, although treat was a word that Terri used cautiously. She said, “I’ll be right up.”

Terri gathered some notes and was halfway across the room when her phone rang again. With a muffled obscenity she hurried back and stabbed the receiver on the fifth ring, just before it went to voice mail.

“Detective Collins,” she said.

“It’s Mary Riggins,” she heard. Sobs. Gasps. Barest controls over a voice that seemed wildly turbulent.

“Yes, Mrs. Riggins. I was just on my way to see the chief—”

“She’s not a runaway. Jennifer’s been kidnapped, detective,” the mother on the other end half sobbed and half screamed.

Terri did not immediately ask for details on how or why Mary knew this. She listened to the sounds of maternal anguish leak over the phone line. She had a sensation that something akin to a nightmare was happening. She just didn’t know precisely what.