Disgusted as she was with Nadine’s father, Angie didn’t press the issue. If it were absolutely necessary, she would drive up to meet Mr. Jessup in his home, where he was living with his new young wife and printing money thanks to a new corporate executive job. But it wasn’t necessary, at least not yet. And while it was comforting to know Greg’s checks would clear, Angie cared a hell of a lot more about finding the missing girl.
Bryn Mawr was a very affluent village and home to many of Philadelphia’s business leaders. Angie figured Greg Jessup was nesting, getting ready for Family 2.0. That could have contributed to Nadine’s feelings of abandonment and her decision to run away. Daddy’s lack of compassion aside, Angie trusted her radar. She didn’t get a creepy vibe from Greg. That didn’t mean he had never sexually assaulted his daughter. It happened plenty of times, in plenty of cases. Any evidence of it would turn up in Nadine’s bedroom, in a journal, on her computer. Angie didn’t get a list of Nadine’s closest friends because Daddy was too out of touch with his daughter to know them.
From elementary school right through college, Kathleen DeRose could list everybody Angie had been close with, including the posse who’d hung out with Sarah Winter before she’d disappeared. Being a good parent took more than just a checkbook. It took caring enough to ask questions and get involved even when your kid couldn’t think of anything worse you could do.
Carolyn more than compensated for Greg’s deficiencies. Her drinking problem aside, Nadine’s mom compiled a list of her daughter’s closest friends, boys and girls, including Sophia Kerns, who was apparently the best friend. Angie had names, addresses, and phone numbers. She would speak to each kid on the list. But first she had to go through Nadine’s bedroom.
Angie was in a spitfire mood—cranky, short-fused, and jacked up as if she’d had Red Bull in her coffee. It was the energy of the hunt. Her blood buzzed and she felt all her senses come to life. No detail could be overlooked, no lead ignored. It was day two of Angie’s investigation and already new cases came in—the phone didn’t stop ringing on account of Nadine—but she farmed out those jobs to her & Associates. Finding Nadine would take focus and a team effort.
Accompanying Angie was a Vietnamese semi-pro skateboarder and computer expert named Bao Johnson. He was twenty-two, had long dark hair, plenty of piercings and tattoos, and wore flannel as if grunge was still the music of the day. Angie had met Bao when she’d tracked him from Washington to Boston after he’d fled his foster home. She’d met him again after she’d tracked him from a new foster home in Delaware to a rundown motel in Jacksonville, Florida. She’d met him again when he ran from a foster home in Maryland to a skate park in Newark, New Jersey.
He’d stopped running at age fourteen when Angie introduced him to a couple she knew who later agreed to adopt him. The dad was an accountant, mom a schoolteacher, and the perfectly normal home life provided Bao with what all these kids wanted. Bao had run because the foster families Child Services had placed him with wanted the payday more than they wanted the kid. Didn’t happen all the time, but it happened with enough frequency to make Angie’s business a profitable one. Truth be told, she’d gladly give up the income to make the problem go away.
Bao’s adopted family had rules, of course, and expectations he’d had to meet, grades and such. They’d asked the hard questions. They didn’t change a no to a yes just because he got angry, just because he told them that he hated them and was going to run again. It wasn’t easy, but Bao’s parents knew every kid he hung out with, where he went, who he went with, what time he’d be home—and surprise, surprise, he never made good on that threat to run.
A few years later, just after he’d turned twenty, he went to work for Angie as a certified computer forensic consultant. He was incredibly helpful, not only because of his skills and expertise at the keyboard, but also because he knew how runaway kids thought.
Sitting at Nadine’s desk, Boa was looking at her PC, mumbling to himself, which Angie took as a good sign. While he worked, Angie scoured the bedroom, looking for a journal or anything that might reveal more about Nadine or give a clue where she might have run.
As far as bedrooms went, Angie didn’t think anyone would pin this to a Pinterest board, but it was nice enough. Compared to a lot of the bedrooms runaways abandoned, this one was practically palatial. The color scheme was white with a splash of fuchsia. Cutouts from magazines of the “it” celebs of the day were taped to poster board, so they could be replaced with a new contingent of “it” when the fashions changed. Books stood in the bookcase, clothes hung neatly in the closet, a collection of stuffed animals too precious for the trash lined the bed.
She was rummaging though Nadine’s dresser when Carolyn entered carrying a laptop computer. It used to be, long before Angie’s time, that the photographs she had asked Carolyn to gather would have been put into a shoebox or displayed in photo albums. Now they were mostly in pixel form.
“I made a digital album of all the recent pictures of Nadine that were on my phone. Some of them Greg sent me, but he didn’t have a lot.”