Gone(17)

“Like what happened to that family,” Hayes said.

Peter suddenly slammed on the brakes. His head was buzzing again. He pulled off the road, the tires throwing gravel and dirt.

The cruiser came to a rest and Peter watched Hayes’ shape in the mirror, the points of light in the man’s eyes. “Say that again?”

“The family. The one that disappeared.”

“What about the family? You know something about that, Hayes?” He thought of Maggie, the little girl.

Hayes squeaked through his bludgeoned nose. “I seen the fella couple times. Kemp. Down at the store, with his kids. You know the type — liberal.”

“Okay . . . and?”

“You just know something is going to happen to a guy like that.”

“That’s it?”

Peter waited for more. When Hayes didn’t say anything else, Peter got the car moving again, off the shoulder and back onto the road. He drove a bit slower, though, the surge of anger and frustration left behind.

“He pokes around too much,” Hayes went on at last. “He looked too close, asked too many questions.”

Now it just sounded like the usual jabber. Peter picked up the radio. “Stock County; SCS-14.”

“He’s a disruption,” Hayes said about Kemp.

“Uh-huh.”

Over the radio: “Go ahead, 14.”

Peter pressed the button. “I am minutes away with John Hayes, en route to the jail, over.”

“Copy that, 14, will relay.”

Peter hung the radio on the dash. He kept his eyes on the road. “Just an overnight stay, Hayes. A nice bed, a meal in the morning. Could be worse, right?”

“Oh it could be,” Hayes said quietly.





CHAPTER ELEVEN / The Footage

Rondeau hung up the phone. County Jail was a good place for a guy like John Hayes to cool his heels for the night; Deputy King had made the right decision. In the morning, Rondeau would call Mental Health and ask for Hayes to be assessed. Deputy King said that Hayes had mentioned the family. Even if Hayes was spouting paranoid bullshit, it all had to be checked out at this point. Rondeau didn’t know Hayes like King did — the deputies had direct contact with more people in the county than Rondeau, who had only been here a relatively short time. King said Hayes was a commercial truck driver, sometimes worked for the Highway Department, running a plow in the winter. Other seasons, he was hard up for work. He took to drinking and mouthing off about the government. His antics reminded Rondeau of a more aggressive Millard. King said Hayes had been upsetting the Rafferty brothers, local contractors. Didn’t know about what, if anything, besides general politics and opinions.

The Rafferty brothers were possibly the contractors who had built the Kemp home. So there could be a connection there, too, however circuitous, worth keeping an eye on. Deputy King agreed he’d follow up on it the next day. For now, he said, he was going home. Put ice on his eye.

Rondeau swirled the drink in his cup. Apple cider. Best this time of year, when the orchards were bursting with fruit — McIntosh, Cortlands, and more. It was a small pleasure, the cutting, bittersweet taste of it. He almost forgot about everything for a moment.

He set the empty glass on the kitchen counter and walked into the gloomy dining room. The table was covered in papers. He didn’t know when the last time he’d used the table to sit down and eat a meal. Most of his meals were eaten in the car, or standing over the sink.

He pushed some of the papers aside until he revealed the “Best Practices Protocol” document he’d handed out that afternoon. He set this aside, too. Next was a thick file. The reporting mechanics on a single missing person were extensive. For a whole family it multiplied. It began with the basics for each person — name, aliases, date of birth, identifying marks, height, weight, gender, race, hair color, and so on. Of course there was the clerical data, too — driver license and social security. Recent photos were obtained. Description of clothing the person was last seen wearing, notable items they may have been carrying. It included their primary care doctor, even their dentist.

Then the same mechanics needed to be run on all available extended family members. Addison Kemp was going to have a fun-filled morning of blood work and DNA samples. She was the sole sibling of Hutchinson Kemp, but Stokes had found more family members for his wife, Lily, who had been contacted. Patrick and Mary O’Connell hadn’t seen their daughter in over three months, when they’d been up for a week in the summer. They were retired and lived in South Carolina. Same as Sheriff Dunleavy.

Mary hadn’t spoken with Lily for a week. She said that her daughter wasn’t a huge Facebook person, so her dormant page hadn’t aroused any concern. Then the mother, according to Stokes, who’d spoken to her by phone, had broken down and cried. They were either going to book a flight or drive up. Either way, it would take them some time to arrive.

Social media was its own animal when it came to missing people. Public profiles were fine to access without a warrant, but digging into Hutchinson Kemp’s crowdfunding sites would require a sworn affidavit. Tomorrow was Sunday, so the signing would have to happen in Judge King’s home.

The Kemp home itself had a profile, a story to tell. There were the contractors, possibly the Raffertys. Then there was the finance. Who paid the mortgage? Money played its role in almost every case. Even the property realtor, the broker; these elements could shed possible light.