Chapter Forty-Nine
Quinn skulks back into the apartment. His thoughts are spinning about the encounter with Kenny Pearl.
What does it mean? He quietly heads to the bedroom he uses as an office, shuts the door behind him.
He turns on the computer, listens as the modem screeches and pings and pongs and then the electronic voice says, “Welcome.” One of the benefits of working at Midwest Investigators is they taught him how to use the World Wide Web, gave him the equipment so he could log in from home, though he doesn’t go on the Web much since it charges by the hour.
He loads Netscape and searches the name: “Megan Tucker.” The results take forever to load. The Web is getting better, but it’s still new, doesn’t have a ton of information. But government agencies and newspapers have starting archiving records, so that’s his best chance for a hit.
Only a few results appear, all from the Ashwell Daily Gazette.
Ashwell is in the western part of Nebraska, Dad’s hometown, about four hours away.
Mom attended high school there but moved to Monarch her senior year when her parents divorced.
Dad followed after graduation and they got jobs at the potato chip factory, which had just opened and was hiring.
A couple years later Mom got Uncle Pat a job at the company’s DeKalb plant.
He clicks on the first link. The results take a whole minute to crawl onto the screen.
The newspaper headline reads: ASHWELL GIRL STILL MISSING. It’s from 1972, twenty-four years ago. That’s unusual but it’s a line from the story that ricochets around in Quinn’s head:
“Police have arrested Rick Riley on suspicion of Tucker’s disappearance.”
Dad? How …
Another story from a few days later grabs him by the COLLAR: ASHWELL HIGH SCHOOL STUDENT FOUND brUTALLY MURDERED.
Quinn is already having trouble catching his breath, but then there’s another punch in the gut: a photo of the missing seventeen-year-old.
She’s smiling in what is probably her senior photo.
She has long straight hair but is wearing something unusual for a girl her age.
Something eerily familiar. A pair of distinctive pearl earrings.
Quinn jumps to his feet, scrambles to the bedroom, causing Holly to stir. He opens the bedside table and retrieves the novel he’s been reading. He yanks out the photo of his family that he uses as a bookmark. Turns on the light.
Amped up on adrenaline, he examines his mother in the photo. He’s looked at this photo a million times and he has no doubt: She’s wearing the same pearl earrings with the little gold prongs as the dead girl.
Even as he tries to make sense of it, one detail becomes clear: Mom’s “Pearl” mention wasn’t about Kenny Pearl. She was referencing Megan Tucker.