Page 38 of My Child is Missing

“You lost me at flywheel, Fraley,” Gretchen said.

Noah laughed. “It’s located between the engine and the transmission.”

“Okay,” Gretchen said. “Keep going.”

“Basically, it uses fluid to transfer power from the engine to the transmission.”

“It makes the car go,” said the Chief. “And Thomas’s El Camino doesn’t have one.”

Noah added, “And we did not find one anywhere on his premises, although if he wanted to install one himself, it would take a couple of hours. It’s not something he could just pop in and out easily or quickly to get the El Camino on the road.”

“This is why we looked at Thomas’s associates,” said Gretchen. “If we stick with the idea that he’s the one who took Kayleigh and then he needed to get rid of her, but couldn’t do it himself, he’d need someone to come get her—or to help him dispose of her body.”

“Hummel processed Morris Lauber’s truck,” said Josie, tossing the GPS report onto her desk.

“He found no evidence linking the truck to Kayleigh Patchett,” Gretchen said.

Josie asked, “What did his GPS show?”

“He was nowhere near Thomas’s cabin Saturday,” said Gretchen.

“Also, there were no phone calls or texts between the two of them on Saturday,” said Noah. “We’re still waiting for Thomas’s phone records from his carrier to make sure we can see anything he might have deleted, but it doesn’t look promising.”

Gretchen said, “Morris let us look at his phone. There was nothing between him and Henry on his phone either. I was going to prepare a warrant but without being able to place him near the scene or produce any evidence that he could be involved, I don’t think a judge will grant it. If the two of them communicated, we’ll get it from Thomas’s phone records.”

“What about Morris Lauber’s girlfriend?” asked Josie.

“We talked with her at length,” said Noah. “She was extremely cooperative. Pretty unhappy with Morris. She said she’s tried to get him to stop hanging around with Henry for some time, but he keeps going back out of some misguided loyalty to Henry’s late father. Anyway, she was at work at Sublime Cupcakes all day, from eighta.m. to eightp.m. Her car was in the parking lot. We pulled video. It didn’t move, so there’s no way that Morris Lauber could have taken it while she was at work, driven it to Thomas’s cabin, taken Kayleigh Patchett off his hands and done something with her.”

“We’re back to Thomas acting alone,” Josie muttered. “What about his laptop? Could he somehow have communicated with someone through that? Hummel had a chance to look at it. Did he get anything?”

“There was a lot of porn,” said Gretchen. “Not much else.”

“Social media?”

Gretchen shook her head. “No accounts.”

Josie turned back to the board, this time studying the timeline.

7:00a.m. Henry Thomas wakes up

8:00a.m. Shelly and Dave Patchett wake up

8:13—8:52a.m. Henry Thomas eats at the Denton Diner (confirmed by surveillance footage)

9:02a.m. parents arrive at grocery store (confirmed by surveillance footage)

9:53a.m. parents leave grocery store (confirmed by surveillance footage)

10:00—10:15a.m. parents arrive home

11:30a.m. parents begin to search for Kayleigh and Savannah

11:33a.m. parents contact neighbor south of them (confirmed by neighbor’s phone)

11:37a.m. parents contact neighbor north of them (confirmed by neighbor’s phone)

2:30p.m. (approximately) Neighbor four houses to the south reports Shelly Patchett in their yard (confirmed by neighbor’s statement)

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