Page 107 of Trapper Road

If she is a sociopath, I completely missed it, which makes me a pretty lousy investigator.

I start with her computer, going through her history the same way I went through Kevin’s. They couldn’t be more night and day. Juliette spent alotof time watching makeup tutorials. She also watched several fashion shows, and videos about how best to pose for photos.

I switch over to her phone, using the one her parents gave me with the most recent back-up rather than the extracted version in the FBI files. There’s something more personal about holding a phone and flipping through apps the way she would have, rather than skimming to a report of its contents.

As I’m looking through her phone, however, I notice something unexpected. Both she and Kevin have the same game installed. It stands out because Juliette doesn’t have any other games installed, not even solitaire. Kevin, on the other hand, has a ton, but they’re all sophisticated and complicated. This one looks really, really basic — not something that would usually interest him.

The problem is that I don’t actually have a copy of Kevin’s phone. The FBI used a program to extract all the data from it and generate a report of the contents. So it lists all the apps that were on his phone, but they’re not actually operational. I can’t open them.

I can open them on Juliette’s, however. That’s the benefit of having an actual clone of her phone: it’s fully operational. I open the app and am immediately greeted with a simple start screen. It prompts me to name my character and I think for a moment before typing in “Juliette.” The screen freezes for several seconds before crashing. I try it a few more times with several different names and get the same result.

I shrug and am about to discount it as a broken app, but something makes me pause. If it’s broken, why keep it installed? Both of them have their phones set to offload apps they don’t use, so the fact that this game didn’t have to be reinstalled to open it means that it’s been used recently.

How is it that two people with hardly anything in common have both recently used the same broken app? It doesn’t make sense. I switch over to my computer and dig deeper into the extraction report for Kevin’s phone. Oddly, the app takes up an extraordinary amount of space — well more than any other games.

Something is off. I open a new tab in my browser and search for information about the game. My eyes widen when I click on the first result, and I almost laugh. It’s not a game at all. It’s a chat program masquerading as a game.

It’s a secret app.

Which means I need a password to open it. I try Juliette’s lock screen code, but it doesn’t work. I sit, staring at the load screen, trying to figure out what my next step should be. Then I remember Connor explaining how he gained access to Juliette’s dating site account. He said there’s a list of her passwords in the investigative report and that together they present a clear pattern.

I pull out the file and flip through it until I find the page he was talking about. Sure enough, she has a standard password that she uses as a base, with variations added to it depending on the site. I know I should feel uncomfortable with doing the same thing I’d just admonished Connor for so recently, but that doesn’t stop me. It takes only a few tries before I’m able to guess my way past the game’s start screen.

I’m rewarded with a chat interface. There’s only one contact she’s been messaging with: Beau. Presumably the same Beau she met on the dating site. The Beau we traced to Trevor Martindale’s house.

Anyone can fake an IP address, I remind myself. Trevor wasn’t necessarily the person texting with Juliette.

I start scrolling. There are hundreds of texts. Maybe even thousands. They stretch out over months. I pause when I come across a photo of a familiar face. It’s a text from Beau, but it’s a photo of Trevor. He’s crouching by the row of old cars in his back yard, a puppy cradled in his arms.

I blink, trying to understand. I’d almost convinced myself that Trevor was innocent — somehow set up to take the fall for someone else’s crime. Given the confession and what I’d learned from his grandmother, it seemed impossible Trevor could have been the one who took Juliette. The only real link between him and Juliette was Willa and Mandy’s identification and even that had started to look flimsy.

But now I’m not so sure. I keep scrolling until I find another photo. Again it’s Trevor. He’s standing in the bed of his truck, shirtless with his arms raised over his head and the sunset a brilliant chorus of colors behind him. There are more photos of him as well, with friends, at the beach, at a football game.

I lean back against the headboard, mind spinning. It’s difficult to come to any other conclusion than the fact that Trevor is Beau. Beau is Trevor. He catfished Juliette, but to what end?

I know what end, I think to myself with a sinking stomach. I scroll back through the texts, until I reach the end. The last series of texts was sent days before she disappeared.

Beau: Let’s meet. In person.

Juliette: You mean it?

Beau: Yeah, let’s do it.

Juliette: How? When?

Beau: I’ll take the car and start driving south. I’ll figure out a place to meet where we can be alone. I’ll text the deets.

Juliette: Really? I get to finally meet you in person? I can’t believe it! I’ve dreamed of this moment for months.

Beau: I know. Same.

Juliette: I love you.

Sure enough, the next text from Beau is simply a link. I click on it. The maps app opens with a flag dropped in what looks like the middle of nowhere. I scroll out until a road name appears: Trapper Road. It’s a winding road that twists through a nearby state forest.

I toggle to the satellite view so that I can get a better look at the area. It’s an area dense with pine trees, a logging road sometimes visible as it cuts through them. I zoom back in and am surprised to find a smudge of something darker on the map. It looks like it could be some sort of structure.

My heart begins to beat faster. Seems an odd spot to choose for a meeting. Unless you wanted to make sure no one would interrupt whatever you had planned.

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