by being a pushover.
Clive and Jay Gunderson had been the biggest blights on her relationship with Clint when she’d been nineteen.
Clive Gunderson and Luther Beise had been good friends. Despite what Clive had done—and she’d heard from her grandmother that there was far more that people didn’t know about—Clint would probably always have to live with the ghost of Clive’s actions riding on his back.
Miranda wondered what kind of ghosts Pauline had.
“Come on, Knight. Let’s go ghost hunting.”
“Lead on. You’re the boss, Talley.”
“I am, aren’t I?”
“This time, anyway.”
29
Jac studied the printouts and looked at her supervisor. Carrie was on her cell, giving her husband instructions on what to do for their two children. They had a toddler, she thought, and an infant. Or maybe they had one infant, and his brother Seth and his wife had the toddler? It was hard to keep the Lorcans straight. There were a lot of them in PAVAD now. She waited until Carrie disconnected. “I think I may have found someone. One of the sons.”
“Who?”
“Lesley Beise. The oldest boy.” She turned the top printout toward Carrie. They were working out of an actual jail cell. The door was open, of course, but it was still a cell. It looked like something off a 1970s television show, complete with thin cot, shiny metal toilet—yuck, she’d just pretend it wasn’t there—and a small table. There were copies of the Bible and War and Peace on the table, waiting for the cell’s next occupant.
The Masterson County Sheriff’s Office was probably the tiniest office she had ever worked out of. But they were making do. They were PAVAD—adaptability was one of their hallmarks, after all. Maybe it was a hallmark Jac struggled with—she liked routine and order and a plan—but she didn’t let that stop her from doing her job.
“What do you have?” Carrie asked.
“Lesley was really heavy into cars. And he didn’t care if the parts he used to refurbish were…less than ethically supplied. He had a small charge on his juvenile record that wasn’t sealed. It happened two weeks before they disappeared, so he had a warrant with his name on it for failure to appear in court. It’s long past the statute of limitations, but it’s still visible.”
“How does this help us locate him?” Clint asked.
“Car parts. There were only so many suppliers for the car he drove back then. And the car disappeared the night the family did.” Jac handed Clint the papers nearest to her.
“Keep going. I’m listening.”
“Well, it was a rare car—an overseas model from the seventies. I went over your files and those from fourteen years ago. Lesley Beise’s car wasn’t mentioned anywhere.”
“I had no records of any of the Beise kids owning cars in their names.”
“Well, there aren’t very many of these cars in the region. And it was actually in his grandmother’s name. Not Helen. The Beise grandmother. And only one junkyard that supplied parts for it. Lesley Beise ordered an alternator from the junkyard a month before the family’s social media presence ceased. He picked up the part a week later.”
“How do you know?” Clint asked.
“I called. Got a sheriff’s deputy in Della County, Wyoming. He headed to the junkyard and asked if anyone still purchased parts for that make and model of car. The junkyard has two wrecked cars that have similar parts. They’ve sold a total of twenty-three vintage parts to one man in thirteen years.”
“How do you know it’s the same man?” Carrie asked.
“I’m not one hundred percent certain, but the guy who ordered the parts is named Lesley Meynard. So I did a check on all the Lesley Meynards in this part of the country. Three of them. But only one is below sixty. He lives on the outskirts of Della, Wyoming. Fifteen miles from Pauline. And his date of birth is the same as Lesley Beise’s, according to credit card statements. I pulled his driver’s license photo. Carrie’s going to compare it to the one we have for Lesley Beise as soon as she gets the system booted up. But I’m 95 percent certain Lesley Meynard and Lesley Beise are the same guy.” Jac clicked a button on her laptop, sending a photo of a driver’s license onto the projector screen Carrie had insisted on setting up against the back of the holding tank they currently occupied.
“Then someone needs to go down to Della and meet him,” Clint said. “While the remainder of the team stays here and looks for the rest of