Detective Marsha Green looked around the room as Dr. Dane Lane shut the door behind her. She briefly wondered if she should be more worried than she was, after all she was in a strange room with two men she barely knew, who had made her leave her cell phone outside before letting her come in. But then again, they didn't make her leave her gun behind, just the phone. She felt like she still had the advantage.
"Detective Green? This is Dr. Claude Lauzon, he is the one who found the information about Jean not being who we thought she was."
"Nice to meet you, please call me Claude. I only use Doctor Lauzon when meeting friends of my mother."
"Then please call me Marsha. Since I'm working off the record right now that seems appropriate."
"And I'm Dane. So now we're all squared away. Claude? Will you show Detect...I mean Marsha what else you've found since we put together the folder."
Claude walked over to a workstation he had set up and opened a webpage. "This is the board that I first found information about JJ's disappearance."
"JJ?"
"Yeah, sorry. I've started thinking about Jean as JJ since her real name seems to have been Joanna and calling her Jean/Joanna didn't seem efficient."
"Gotcha." Marsha motioned that he should continue.
"So this is the board. You can see the address here," he pointed to the printout he had made for Dane and Marsha. "But if you look now, that whole thread is gone."
"Okay...."
"This board has a strict no delete policy. A lot of alternative sites do it. It's to keep people honest. You agree not to delete what you've posted to keep down the incidents of gaslighting. No gaslighting, less fighting, more transparency, less bullshit. This is a strict no deletions board."
"But they deleted it?"
"The OP didn't and the board owners say they didn't. Here." Claude handed them each a print out of a new thread. It was discussion about the deleted post. "This is gone now too."
"So somebody is deleting these posts."
"They haven't found these yet though." Claude closed the window he had been showing them and opened another one.
"Who is they?"
Claude shrugged, "Best guess? The government. But really nobody here knows either. There are a few theories, most of them are not worth following but this is interesting."
Claude highlighted a response thread for Marsha and Dane to review. It seems like JJ wasn't the only odd disappearance. There was a photo of a young man who had sent word to a friend that he was starting a new job in his city and that he wanted to get together for drinks or dinner soon. His friend had never heard back from him, which he wasn't too suspicious about at first. It happens, people say let's get together and then never follow through, but when he tried to contact him about another mutual friend he got nothing but bounceback messages from his email. Then he tried calling and his phone had been disconnected. He tried backing in to his old home address and he had moved out as scheduled, but there was no forwarding information left with the landlord. He had tapped into the post office records and found they didn't have a forwarding address for him either. Then he posted on a missing persons board. And his post was deleted. He posted again and it was deleted again. Over and over.
"So missing persons who somebody wants to stay missing?"
"Yeah. JJ and Steve here have a few things in common, no family, only tenuous ties to friends, an ex-boyfriend in JJ's case and a casual friend in Steve's. And a recent new job. So nobody to look for them, or notice they are even gone."
Dane rubbed his face, "Well that's not creepy at all is it?"
"Back up just a bit for me. This guy here was able to tap into the Post Office records?"
Claude smiled at Marsha, "This isn't like a Facebook group. To be able to even find this part of the web, let alone post on one of these boards, you have to be pretty well versed in computers and the internet. And how to find things."
"So you're all a bunch of hackers?"
"You say that like it's a bad thing."
"Well..."
Claude smiled again. "I see from your point of view that it might be. But there are a lot of people in the world who don't like closed doors and so they work to open them. It's why Dane and I became doctors, and it's how Dane became really stinking rich. Opening doors. I just branch out, not just neurobiology but a little of this as well..." Claude motioned toward the computer screen.
There was a knock on the door.
Dane glanced at his watch, "That would be Alice."
Claude got up and opened the door, "Alice, have you met Marsha?"
"Yes, we met briefly when Jean was...well...yes. We've met. Detective." Alice nodded toward Marsha.
"Please call me Marsha." she turned toward Dane, "Is there anyone else that you've brought in to this loop?"
"Gloria knows what I know, well except for what we just learned. And my wife knows that there is something troubling about California and Jean but nothing specific."
"Okay. So what next?"
"I think we need to contact JJ's ex-boyfriend."
"I think you're right, Alice. Claude what do you think? On this board?"
"No, I think someone should meet him in person. Intercept him at work, not prescheduled, not posted about, no heads up given."
Marsha scowled, "Just blindside him?"
Claude nodded, "Yeah, I would bet he's been tagged. I mean, look at this, they stopped the police looking in to the missing person's report he filed, they've tracked his web presence enough to find him posting on the other site and deleting those, you know they have to have tapped his phone and are possibly following him as well. I think we send one of us to him and try our best to have a conversation with him that isn't tracked."
Marsha just shook her head. She wasn't sure how she had ended up in a spy thriller but here she was. "So who do we send?"
Dane held up his hands, "Probably not me, I'm too recognizable as the head of Memory Lane. I wouldn't think you, for the same reason, your face is known as the investigating officer. Gloria might be a good choice but she's got a pretty packed schedule with the kids. Claude? Alice? One of you?"
Alice nodded, "I think both of us. Claude can speak this type of geek more fluently than I can. He can explain how we found him and why we want to talk to him. But I think I would be less suspicious in first contact. I don't think I've been on anyone's radar."
"Claude? You okay going?"
"Hell yeah. I would have insisted if Alice hadn't suggested it. Let me do a little back tracking here to lock in his schedule and then we will go."
Masha scowled again, "Do I even want to know how you are going to do that?"
Claude smiled, "Probably not."
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