Page 43 of Possession

Chapter 25

Joseph

It waslike our roles were suddenly reversed. Nat was the calm and collected one, whereas I was raging both inside and out. I was barking at every colleague to get them moving faster toward finding Madeline. It was almost ten, and she’d been missing for five hours. I knew there was no chance I’d be getting any sleep tonight, which meant that most likely no one else was going to be sleeping either. I knew Nat wouldn’t. He’d be the next one in line behind me pushing these people to get us some answers.

Kurt had already volunteered to stay and work on the case, which was where we were headed now. Nat trailed behind me as we made our way to his office. He was located in the basement in the far corner. I had no idea why anyone would want to be that far removed from the rest of the staff and offices, but it obviously suited him fine.

“Tell me you have something, Kurt,” I bit out the minute we entered his domain, bypassing any sort of greeting.

Kurt remained tapping away at his keyboard, not offended in the least by my brusque demand.

“I was able to tap into various street cams and video feeds throughout the city. I caught a few glimpses of your suspect driving a white van with the back windows painted over in white. I got a tag number, but the plates were stolen. The last known spotting was on I-275 heading west out of the city. Unfortunately, after that, I haven’t been able to find him again. But, I’m still working on it and this one other thing.”

My toe tapped in a staccato rhythm matching the sound of his fingers pecking away at the keys. With a final heavy tap with flourish, he mimicked a bomb exploding with his hands and fingers.

“Boom. I got it.” He turned and faced Nat and me. “So, I got a call from the forensics team. They found a partial print inside the house from when the dead woman was found. It wasn’t much, but somehow they got lucky and were able to find a match in the system. It belongs to one Grady Larson, age thirty-seven, born in San Francisco. Mother, alive. Father, deceased. There was actually an investigation into his death in fact. The wife called the police saying she believed their son, Grady, murdered him. He was questioned, but no concrete evidence was found linking him to the crime. The coroner ruled it an accident. The son moved away shortly after the investigation was over, but the mother still lives in Mill Valley, just outside San Francisco.”

“Have you figured out if there’s a connection between Madeline and this Grady?” Nat asked.

Kurt sent an annoyed glance, almost affronted that Nat would doubt his thoroughness. “Of course I did. Apparently, they were in the same fifth grade class at Mill Valley North. The Larson’s had just moved to town and the younger Larson began attending a new school. Your Ms. Parrish was one of his classmates. I located a couple other possible classmates, but unfortunately haven’t been able to reach them.”

Nat smacked him on the back in a congratulatory move. “Your skill amazes me.”

He brushed off the praise. “There’s more. I’m also looking at Larson’s bank records. He gets a direct deposit bi-weekly from his employer, a local cable company. He’s one of their installation technicians, who just happened to not show up for work today according to his supervisor. And get this, I found an unusually large withdrawal last week. Like the majority of his savings account was cleared out. It’s possible he bought the van with cash, which is why the plates are stolen. So, that’s most likely a dead end. I also have his current home address. Our suspect is quite the vagabond. Want to take a guess how often he’s moved over the last four years?”

Kurt looked between the two of us expectantly.

I responded with certainty. “I’m gonna go with once every six months.”

“Bingo. I pulled up his past residence history and Mr. Larson here has lived within two blocks of each and every one of our victims. I don’t know if he moved and then found his victims or if he found his victims and then moved. But I do know he certainly wasn’t Mr. Rogers and I wouldn’t want to be his neighbor.”

Nat cursed. “Son of a bitch. What about his skill with computers? You’re the one who said this guy was good. He’s a cable technician for fuck’s sake. How does someone like that get the type of hacking skills that give you trouble?”

Kurt leaned back in his chair arms crossed. “By getting his Master’s degree in computer science with a minor in cyber security from Stanford.”

“What the fuck is a computer science geek, no offense, doing working at a cable company?” I queried in confusion.

“Opportunity, maybe? I mean, working as a cable technician gives him the perfect opportunity to enter people’s homes at anytime. He can show up to their door and tell them there’s a cable outage in the area and he needs to check to make sure everything is working properly. Believe it or not, there are people who would actually let someone like that into their house. Some of them don’t know the difference. And, if he’s in a real uniform with a real company truck in their driveway, it’s easy. Neighbors spotting the truck would assume the resident had called the company for a repair. It’s actually pretty genius, if you ask me.”

“So, we have opportunity. What about motive?”

“Sorry, that I can’t help you with. Out of my area of expertise.”

“We know you’re doing the best you can. We’re just frustrated because there isn’t much we can do at this point.”

Kurt nodded in commiseration. “I totally get it. I promise you though, we’re all working as hard as we can to find your woman. If I were you two, I’d be feeling the same impotent rage at being unable to do anything for the woman I loved. Try not to worry. We’ll find her for you guys.”

My eyes darted to Nat’s in surprise. We’d never mentioned our proclivity of sharing women to anyone in the agency. Not that we were ashamed, it just wasn’t anyone’s business. Although really, our level of fear and commitment to finding Madeline was obviously a clue to what she meant to us. Or at least to one of us. But for Kurt to make the automatic assumption was telling.

“Thanks, man. We appreciate all the hard work everyone is putting in to find Madeline. I know I haven’t been the nicest person to work with.”

This admission from Nat didn’t surprise me. He’d become less angry and volatile since Madeline came into our lives. Darkness continued to reside inside him, most obvious in his sexual play, but occasionally a sliver of light peeked out.

Kurt just shrugged. “Honestly, you’re not the worst dickhead I’ve ever worked with. Don’t worry about it man.”

Just then, his computer pinged, and he spun around in his chair to return to his keyboard. We assumed there was nothing more we could do at this point, so we turned to leave.

“Text us Larson’s address will ya? We’re gonna see about getting a court order to enter the premises.”

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