"Maybe they did the same thing last year?"
Chase shrugged, pulling his phone out of his jeans pocket and opening the app. A minute later he was on the Peak Games official page and was scrolling through posts.
Lots of scrolling. Apparently they relied heavily on social media marketing, as there were several posts a day. Sometimes several an hour.
"This is going to take forever," Sam moaned.
Actually it took slightly less than forever, but by the time Chase was finally getting to posts from August of last year, we were back inside the main hall, sitting on a bench outside of the Sega booth, where a Sonic the Hedgehog with weird teeth was dancing to game music played nonstop from the speakers.
"Look." Chase pointed at his screen. "Here's a picture of the interns' last day last summer."
Six people looking in their late teens to early twenties stood arm in arm in front of the backdrop of monitors we'd seen in the Peak lobby, smiling for the camera. My gaze roved over each face, but none were tagged to say who they were.
Chase scrolled back some more, going through several posts about summer sales, a new game release, lots of press about Connor.
"There!" I stabbed my finger at his screen as the words Intern List fairly jumped out at me.
"Jacob Stark," Chase read off the tagged names. "Allison Parker, Amanda Chang, Devan White, Tyler McGowan, and Michael Davenport."
"So which one do you think worked under Connor Simon?" Sam asked, crowding up next to us to peer at Chase's screen.
Chase clicked on the first name, taking him to Jacob Stark's page. Nothing terribly telling there. Lots of posts in celebration of graduating from UCLA in the spring. No mentions of Peak games or Connor Simon.
Chase did a repeat with each of the names on the intern list—seeing lots of posts about graduations, school accomplishments, college affiliations. Enough that I was starting to feel like I was falling way behind in the race to adulting.
Finally he hit Tyler McGowan's page. Which was possibly the most sparse, but thankfully he had heartily celebrated his internship last summer by posting a photo of Connor Simon along with the words My boss for the summer!
Bingo.
* * *
Fifteen minutes later, Chase, Sam, and I pulled up to the address listed on Tyler McGowen's LinkedIn résumé, which ended up being in a residential area of San Jose, just a few blocks from my own home. It was a two-story blue house with bright white shutters and flower boxes in each window. There was scalloped trim along the roof, and a white picket fence surrounded the small lot. It was cute. Almost a little too cute. Like the type of houses we drew as kids in elementary school. It only needed a blue cloud of smoke from the chimney and a crisp yellow sun with straight-lined rays in the left corner of the sky.
"Adorable," Chase said, stealing my thought. Only his tone was filled with cynicism.
We walked up the flared cobblestone walkway to a small front porch that was only big enough for a single white wicker chair and a mini palm tree in a peach-colored ceramic pot.
Sam stood just behind me texting as I rang the bell. None of us said anything as we waited.
The door opened and a skinny guy wearing a burgundy T-shirt and baggie cargo shorts stared at us. His sandy brown hair stood erect at several different angles, and his feet were covered in fuzzy, bright red socks with the words Ho, ho, ho in white lettering.
I wasn't sure what I'd been expecting, but in person this guy looked no older than Sam and I.
"Are you Tyler McGowen?" Chase asked.
The guy scratched the side of his head, his gaze going from me to Sam. "Who wants to know?"
"We're from the Herbert Hoover High Homepage," Chase explained.
"What's that?" the guy asked with a squint.
"A newspaper," I supplied.
"They still have those?" He smirked.
"Can we ask you some questions?" Chase asked.
"About what?" the guy replied.
Well, he didn't deny he was Tyler, so at least we had the right house and right person.
"We're doing a story on Gamer Con and Connor Simon's death," I said.
At the mention of Connor's name, the smirk died, and the guy's expression went immediately dark. "I don't know anything about that." He took a step back, ready to shut the door.
But Chase had the reflexes of a cat and jumped into the doorframe. "You did intern with Connor last summer, right?"
"Yeah." Tyler paused. "So?"
"So, we