“Andrew Ryan.”
“That’s a lovely name. Have you communicated with him since his child’s passing?”
“One visit and one email.”
“My, my. That’s hardly devotion.”
“Mmm.”
“Did he tell you where he was going?”
“He told no one.” Defensive.
“Others are looking for him?”
There’s no slipping anything past Mama. “Some detectives would like his help on a case.”
“Is it something just too wretched for words?”
Mama had always shown keen interest in my work. In my “poor lost souls,” as she called the unnamed dead.
Seeing no harm, I described the cold case investigations involving Vermont and Charlotte. Anique Pomerleau and Montreal. I said nothing about Shelly Leal.
Mama asked her usual questions: who, when, where. Then she settled back on the chaise and recrossed her ankles. I waited. After a full minute she said, “These other detectives think your Andrew Ryan can catch this dreadful woman?”
“Yes.”
“Do you?”
“Maybe.” If he hadn’t fried his brain with booze. Fried himself with grief and self-loathing.
“Then we shall find him.”
I snorted.
Mama’s jaw tightened.
“I’m sorry. I just know you have other things on your mind. You need to focus on recovery. I don’t doubt you can find him.”
I didn’t.
When she was fifty-eight and emerging from a particularly cavernous funk, I bought my mother her first computer, an iMac that cost much more than I could afford. I held little hope that she’d find the cyber world attractive, but I was desperate for something to occupy her attention. Something other than me.
I showed her how to use email, word processers, spreadsheets, the Internet. Explained about browsers and search engines. To my surprise, she was fascinated. Mama took class after class. Learned about iTunes, Myspace, Facebook, Twitter, Photoshop. Eventually, as was typical, her mastery of the new sport was way beyond mine.
I wouldn’t call my mother a hacker. She has no interest in the secrets of the DOD or NASA. Doesn’t collect credit card or ATM numbers. Nevertheless. When she’s on her game, there’s nothing she can’t tease from the World Wide Web.
“Do you still have his email?” Mama asked.
“I suppose I could find it. But all he said was—”
“I’ll be right back.”
Before I could object, she was up and into the house. Moments later, she returned with a Mac the size of a fashion magazine.
“You use Gmail, don’t you, darlin’?” Lifting the lid and tapping a sequence of keys.
I nodded.
She patted a spot to her right. When I shifted to her chaise, she placed the laptop on my knees. “Pull it up.”
I logged in to my service provider and entered an identifier I thought might work. Seconds later, Ryan’s email appeared on the screen. I opened it.
Doing well. Miss you. AR.
I passed the computer to Mama. She clicked on a tiny triangle to the right of the reply arrow. From a drop-down menu, she chose the command “Show Original.”
A block of data appeared. The font looked like something produced by the old mainframe I used as an undergrad.
Mama pointed to a line about halfway down. The header said “Received.” Embedded in the gibberish was a string of four numbers divided by periods. “Every email has an IP address. It does basically the same thing a street address does for snail mail. That’s our sweet baby there.”
She highlighted and copied the numbers to the clipboard. Then she logged out of Gmail and entered a site called ipTRACKERonline.com. “Now we do what’s called geolocation.”
After pasting the string of numbers into a box in the middle of the screen, she hit enter. In seconds, a Google Earth satellite image appeared. On it was a red circle with its root stuck into the ground.
Below the map was information organized into three categories: Provider info. Country info. Time info.