Page 101 of Capturing You

That settled, Brooklynn took a picture of the notebook page Forbes had filled with names and sent it to her sister, then tapped a text faster than he could type on his laptop.

They had a solid lead, an actual name to go with an actual photo of a person he knew was involved.

Bryce Dawson was too young to have been involved in Forbes’s family’s murders, but if Forbes’s theory was correct, then he worked for The Network.

That reminded him…

“Brooklynn?”

She looked up from her phone.

“Tell your sister we’re looking for a man named Niles, or maybe someone with a name that starts with N. In your photos, he was the one on the beach, looking like a manager.” Forbes described what he remembered about the man who’d searched the house with Bernie/Bryce a few days before. “It’s not a lot to go on, but maybe he’s a son or family member of one of the people the journal referred to.”

“Gotcha. I’ll send his picture. And text Bryce’s name to Nathan.”

He pulled the pile of files closer and started flipping through them, looking for doodles and feeling like an idiot. Who cared if his father liked to draw birds?

When Brooklynn set her phone down, he slid half the pile to her. They worked in silence. Whenever he found the doodle, he turned the page horizontal and set the file aside.

He was surprised at how often he found them.

After half an hour, he started to believe that this wasn’t as futile an exercise as he’d first thought.

When he finished the last file, he looked up to find Brooklynn watching him.

When he caught her eye, she looked away. Did her cheeks pink?

“You got through the stack?”

“Yup.” She eyed his files with papers sticking out sideways. “Mind if I?—?”

“Go ahead.”

She slid them closer and studied the doodles. “All seagulls.”

“I noticed.”

“See any patterns?”

“All the doodles are on the back sides of printed reports. The front sides are typewritten, of course, but the doodles are with handwritten notes, unlike the other content.”

“Same with my pile.”

“And the content doesn’t match.” He skimmed through the files and pulled one sheet out. “For instance, this file is related to a construction project in Reading, Mass. An office building built back in the mid-eighties. But the dates on the…doodle-note are in the late nineties.”

“I’m seeing the same thing. The dates don’t match, and there are initials, like we saw in the ledger.” She opened one of the files she’d looked at. “Like this one.”

He held his hand out, and she gave it to him.

The first line read,

MM (G. Bazz) CAHAL—>SC

This was why he hadn’t focused on the notes when he’d gone through the files. Because they made no sense.

“MM Bazz?” He looked at Brooklynn. “That mean anything to you?”

“Nope.”