Ethan decided to stop in El Paso. During the drive his brain had noodled through a few ideas, and he wanted to work on them. He stopped at an ATM and withdrew six hundred bucks from the card his dad left him. Then he grabbed a family meal from a Pollo Feliz, picked up a bottle of red wine and some toiletries from a convenience store, and checked into a low-slung motel off Interstate 10. Although it must have been something when it was built in the 1950s, now only truckers and old cars were parked in the lot. When he pulled in and the manager saw his car, he told Ethan he’d better park it by the office or someone was bound to break into it. Looking at his classic car, in perfect condition compared to the others in the lot, was like looking at a diamond in a pile of dirt. So he did as the manager suggested, leaving him an additional forty dollars for his help.
The motel room was as old inside as it was outside. With the exception of the cheap flat-screen television, Ethan could have been in the episode of The Andy Griffith Show that had been on the Browns’ television. Still, he sat and mechanically ate half the happy chicken and sides, knowing that he needed the energy. Then he went to bed, forcing the thoughts out of his head, images of his dead father; the dead boy at the trailer park; the firefight; June Brown, dead but living forever in effigy; Shanny; then Matt. So many deaths. So many failures.
A horn blaring in the parking lot woke him at 2:00 a.m. He listened while a man who had to be a pimp yelled, then scolded someone, presumably his hooker, for not doing everything she’d been told to do. Ethan pulled himself out of bed and went to the bathroom, still listening to the drama unfolding outside. After another resident of the hotel screamed out the window for them to leave, and the pimp screamed back several rather imaginative things for the man to do with a dog, two car doors slammed and a car roared away.
Ethan washed his face and hands, uncorked the bottle of wine, and poured himself three fingers’ worth into one of the plastic cups the hotel had provided. He sipped the overly fruity beverage while he went through the process of logging on to the Wi-Fi, then creating an anonymous profile on Facebook.
The problem at hand was that he didn’t know who the contact was in San Antonio—1,500,000 people made a pretty big haystack. So how to find the person in that haystack was a serious issue. Luckily he knew he could decrease the size of the haystack considerably if he could determine what the similarities were between Matt and this mystery person.
Once his new Facebook account was created using the name Leon Alberti and a picture of one of the New York Giants linemen from 1999, Ethan put in a request to join the closed group Real Giants. He could do nothing but wait until it was accepted. He considered checking his own timeline and those of his family members, but they would probably be monitored. Right now he could be anyone, but if someone or an algorithmic tracking program were to track his viewing behavior, they might be able to determine who and where he was.
Luckily he didn’t have to wait long. His request to join came back rejected within five minutes.
He poured himself another drink as he tried to figure out why they’d reject him out of hand. After all, he was just a guy who wanted to read conspiracy theories about giants. Nothing more. Then he saw it. His born-on date. He was less than an hour old, belonged to no groups, and had nothing on his timeline. He might as well have been one of those girls trying to be friends with every wealthy American she could. Ethan had had his share of those requests and had gleefully denied every one.
So now what?
He had no choice but to log in as himself.
He logged off Facebook, then used a proxy server to hide his real IP address. Once this was accomplished, he went back on Facebook using his own log-in. He was immediately hit with hundreds of notifications, messages, and friend requests. He ignored these and requested again to join the group Real Giants. Five minutes later, he was confirmed as a member. He went straight to the group where they were currently discussing the giant mounds and fortresses that had once been in the Mississippi Valley. He searched through the member list, looking for any version of Matthew Fryer he could find, but he was immediately stumped. There was no Matt or Matthew Fryer. He did find sixteen variations of a last name preceded by Matt or Matthew, but that didn’t help much.
Then he remembered how Freivald had addressed Matt. Dornecker.
Ethan typed in the first three letters and was relieved when the name Dornecker Johnson populated. He right-clicked on the link so it would open in a new tab. He stayed on the Real Giants group page, selected the Discussion link, and began to scroll down, searching for any iteration of the name Dornecker for the next hour. When he found one, he wrote down the names of those Matt had interacted with in the conversation.
Once Ethan had a hundred names, he stopped and began to cross-reference which ones were personal friends with Dornecker. Seventeen of the names matched. He then searched each of the names for locations to see where they lived. Six of them had no locations listed, so he had to do a bit more sleuthing. For three of them he was able to determine what state they lived in by the occasional place they liked or said they visited. The remaining three he put on a separate list.
Ethan sat back, drank more wine, and looked at his results.
Ninety-seven of the names were not from San Antonio.
Three of the names had no location.
The most active members of the group should be represented by the hundred names he’d selected. Of those hundred, seventeen were personal friends of Dornecker’s. As a superuser and group admin, Matt should have been friends with others with like access. Of those seventeen, three could not be located. And that was a problem. If they were superusers and wanted anonymity, they could easily shield their location. It meant not tagging or liking or checking in. It also required the location tracking to be turned off on all iOS devices. To do all this and remain anonymous indicated a particular kind of discipline that not everyone had… like one’s friends.
The first of the three names was Ronald Spate. Before Ethan checked his Facebook profile, he checked Google to see if there were any hits for the name. He reduced the number of hits from 269,000 to 289 by using quotes around it. He found Spates living in Michigan, New Jersey, and Alaska. He thought he might have found the right one when he saw another Ronald Spate had gotten married in Texas, but it turned out to be Houston, rather than San Antonio. Still, it was Texas.
He felt his hopes go up.
Spate had more than three thousand friends, so Ethan spent the next forty-five minutes on Spate’s timeline, checking each and every one of the friends who’d commented or shared a link to discover their locations, and to see if they shared any groups, such as high school or any other alumni organizations. Ethan was eventually able to determine that this Spate lived in or near Sarasota, Florida, by his affiliations.
Definitely not a San Antonio contact.
The next name was Walter Barber. There were even more hits for this name. Of the 27,500 hits generated from the name in quotes, many of them were for a recurring role on the daily soap opera The Young and the Restless. Walter Barber also fought in World War II for the Australians, and in World War I for the British. There was a Walter Barber board-game designer. There was even a Red Barber, whose first name was Walter, who was a famous sports announcer from the early 1900s. Bottom line, there were too many Walter Barbers to merely search Google for the answer.
Plus Walter Barber had five thousand friends on Facebook, which was the maximum number to have.
Ethan sighed, took another drink, and prepared himself for an hour or two ensconced in Walter Barber’s life. But fifteen minutes in he scored a hit. One of Walter’s friends, named Nikki Sixx, had among his or her friends the San Antonio Spurs—San Antonio’s professional basketball team. Not that it was a smoking gun, but it marked a single connection, one which he hadn’t had until this point.
Within minutes, he found three more connections. Nikki Sixx was careful, but not as careful as he or she thought. Twice Nikki had done a check-in at the same Starbucks. Nikki had also liked a restaurant called Biga on the Banks, which was located on San Antonio’s famous River Walk.
Something about the name, however, had been bothering Ethan. A quick check on Google showed that Nikki Sixx was none other than the guitarist for Mötley Crüe, a famous rock band, which meant the name was a pseudonym.
Damn.
He put that name in his back pocket for later. Now he was going to concentrate on Walter Barber. Ethan thought about it for a moment, then sent him a message:
Dornecker is dead. Need help.
Ethan checked the clock. It was 5:00 a.m. The sky was already beginning to lighten. He realized he’d drunk half the bottle of wine and he was starving. He got up and started eating the cold chicken and tortillas. He was on his third bite when he received a response to his message.
Fuck off!!!
“Now that’s no way to talk to a fellow bone chaser.” Ethan leaned over and typed:
Freivald is dead too.
Within seconds, Walter repeated himself, this time with twice as many exclamation points.
Ethan typed:
Don’t you care about Dornecker?
We were coming to see you when 6fngerdman killed him.
Walter responded:
Dornecker was already dead. Died nine months ago.
Gotcha!
He did that as a cover. He was alive until Freivald’s compound was stormed.
Walter responded:
Go away. You’re too hot. There’s a warrant out for you in Phoenix.
That came as a surprise. Ethan had to be doubly careful. Any interaction with law enforcement, no matter how innocent, could send him straight to prison. Still, without Walter’s help he wouldn’t get anywhere, so Ethan decided to lay it out on the line.
Please, I need help. They killed my father and my girlfriend.
I need your help.
Then he held his breath. Walter didn’t need to help. In fact, helping Ethan would put Walter in danger. He’d be crazy to help Ethan. Still, Ethan prayed silently that he’d have a shred of human decency and—
Fuck off!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!