torn down and that's when they found it. The identification process took a little while due to decomposition but it's done now - Bradley Harrington, twenty-one years old."
Ryan was thirty-four but with one mention of that name he was a teenager again. He and Brad had grown up together, their families life-long friends. At the end, they hadn't been best buddies but they'd run in the same crowd, going to the same parties, and hanging out at the same places.
"Brad? Are they...sure?"
It seemed impossible. It had been thirteen years ago.
"They're sure," Logan replied, handing over a manila file folder. "The identification details are in here along with the information about the area where they found the body."
Numbly, Ryan accepted the file but didn't open it. He was still stunned, to be honest. After so many years, he'd been sure that they would never find out what happened to Brad.
"You knew Bradley Harrington," Logan said when Ryan didn't respond. "You were friends?"
"Kind of. We were good friends when we were kids but you know how it is as you get older. We went to different colleges and sort of grew apart. We had the same friend group, though, so during holidays and summers we would all get together." Ryan shook his head. "Sorry about this. I'm just...blown away. It's been years and we never heard anything else after about six months from when he disappeared."
"What do you remember about the case?"
That it had almost been too bizarre to be real. Even now it sounded like something out of a movie or book.
"We were all partying that night, bar hopping and generally being wild-ass kids. We'd all finished our junior year and we hadn't been home long. A few weeks? I remember thinking that I shouldn't stay out too late because I had a flight out of O'Hare at noon the next day. We all did, actually. We were going to celebrate the end of the school year with a vacation in Hawaii."
"Is that what you did? Go home early?"
Ryan grimaced at the memory. He and Mariah had almost missed their flight. They'd made it by the skin of their teeth.
"Not as early as I should have. We overslept the next morning but made it."
"And Brad wasn't there?"
Logan obviously had more information about the case than he'd let on in the beginning of this conversation.
"No, but we weren't worried. We figured he’d overslept like we did and missed the flight. We assumed he'd be on the next one."
"But that didn't happen."
"He never made it to Hawaii."
Even then Ryan and his friends hadn't been all that concerned. Brad had always been a wild one, doing his own thing. It wouldn't have surprised any of them if he'd met up with someone and spent the week drinking and partying. To Brad there was no such thing as a stranger; he made friends wherever he went. Ryan had tried to call him several times and there was no answer, but they'd all laughed and said that Brad must be having one hell of a time not to pick up his phone.
"When was the last time you saw him alive?"
Swallowing hard, Ryan rubbed at his chin. "At the bar. We were doing shots."
"From the police report that was the last time anyone saw him. The security cameras showed him entering the bar but never leaving it." Logan pointed to the file folder still in Ryan's hand. "They found the body in the lot next to that bar. It had been under construction at the time of his disappearance. The police theory is that your friend got drunk, stumbled out the back door, and fell into a hole or ditch."
Already shaking his head, Ryan finally opened the folder. "That couldn't have happened. The back exit was one of those fire doors. If anyone opened it an alarm went off. A loud one. Ask me how I know. He couldn't have gone out that way without everyone knowing. As for that lot, it was under construction but there weren't any holes or ditches that I remember. They were almost done with the building."
"It's just a theory at this point. The investigation is ongoing." Logan sat back in his chair, his gaze intent on Ryan. "May I ask what you thought happened to him?"
"You can but I'm not sure that I have a simple answer. For a long time after Brad's disappearance we all had various theories. A few even thought that he might have been trying to fake