Gone(11)

“Oh, so does he. And he got this great idea . . .”

“. . . Put GPS dots on certain refuse items, track them digitally, then show up with the camera crew along the way.”

She seemed surprised and pleased that Stokes knew all this. “That’s right, that’s right . . .”

“Good title, too,” Stokes said. “Nothing Disappears. I like that.”

“I came up with it.”

“You did?”

She nodded, pleased with herself. She was suddenly quite happy-go-lucky for someone whose brother, niece, and nephew were missing.

“We were working on the tagline when we spoke last,” Addie said. “Some may think that’s premature, but in today’s market you’ve got to get your promo going way head of time.”

Stokes was a fan. “There is no throwing ‘away’. It’s a good tagline. People toss something they’re done with, and it’s out of sight, out of mind. But all that plastic ends up floating in an ocean gyre . . .”

“That’s exactly right.” She gave Stokes a knockout grin.

Rondeau broke back in. “Tough to get that funded then? I assume he has to get funding, right? Get a . . . what-do-you-call-it . . . a producer to put the money in.”

“Partly,” Addie said. “He’s still raising the rest.”

Rondeau scratched a fresh note. “How?”

“Crowdfunding,” Stokes blurted out. Rondeau speared him with a look. He wanted Addie to answer, not Stokes. Stokes shrank back into the files piled behind him.

Addie bobbed her head in agreement. “That’s right. He used a crowd-source platform and, last I checked, had raised two hundred and thirty thousand.”

Rondeau whistled. “Is that enough, though? I don’t know how much movies cost.”

“Well, the big studio movies cost more all the time, but the whole filmmaking world has been democratized by the digital revolution.”

She just said something, Rondeau thought, but I’m not sure what. He nodded his head like he understood. Maybe what she was saying was that the barrier for entry was lower because cameras and film didn’t cost as much as they used to.

“He hired a drone and everything,” Addie said, staring off. She was marveling over her enterprising brother while Rondeau felt suddenly riveted to the chair. Here was some confirmation.

“A drone?”

“Well,” she hedged, “It’s correctly called a quadcopter. The quadcopter has small cameras attached. You can use it to fly over the landfills, get those big sweeping shots.” She moved her hands in the air to mimic the aircraft in flight. In the meantime, Rondeau and Stokes traded looks, thinking the same thing: Hutchinson Kemp could be the owner of the quadcopter Millard shot down. Or, at least, it could be relevant.

Rondeau asked, “Addie, any reason you can think of why your brother and his family have disappeared?”

She dropped her hands and slumped back in the seat, as if remembering why they were all there. She looked down and slowly shook her head. “No.”

“Does he do this? Has he ever done this? Just pick up with the family and go somewhere, unannounced?”

“I think if you thought that, we wouldn’t be here.”

She fell silent. They all did.

After a moment passed, Rondeau spoke again. “I need to ask the painful questions now. Okay? You can just give me yes or no answers.”

She steeled herself, rolling back her shoulders, sticking out her chin. “Okay.”

“Do you know, or do you suspect, your brother was having an affair?”

“No, I don’t suspect. He’s as monogamous as they come.”

“Okay. Has he ever hit his wife, Lily? You said they were having problems . . .”

“No. Absolutely not. I didn’t say that, exactly. . .”

“He ever strike either of the kids?”

She looked mortified. “Of course not. No.”

“Has he had any financial problems lately? I know we sort of talked about the money . . .”

“No. He was well on his way with the crowdfunding for his film. I put in a bit myself. And he knows if he ever needs anything, he can come to me. My business is doing well. We didn’t come from money. Our parents died and didn’t leave us much. What we have, me and Hutchie, we’ve worked hard for.”

Hutchie, Rondeau scribbled. And, Dead Parents. “I’m sorry to hear about your parents. What happened to them?”

She let out a long breath. “They died in a hit and run. Nine years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

The interview went on for another hour. Rondeau covered the Kemp family’s medical history (they were waiting to talk to the family physician, but sometimes siblings knew more than the doctors), their previous residences, places they liked to vacation, a list of every friend of her brother’s Addie could think of, his wife’s friends, where they each went to college. Partway through, Stokes got a call on his cell. He left and didn’t return. Rondeau’s own phone had been vibrating in his desk drawer. He thanked Addie and told her he’d be in touch, then checked to see fourteen new messages.

He had gone through one whole legal pad, now he took out another. With a fresh cup of coffee he started listening to his voicemails. It was going to be a long night. And really, what his mind kept coming back to — besides the family, those little kids in trouble, or dead — was this documentary the guy had been working on. He’d need a court order to pull data from Kemp’s equipment, but felt sure Judge King would push it through. For now, they had the warrant to search the home.