Page 29 of The Catcher

The laughter continued until they heard someone shout.

“All right, all right, break it up. Landry, give me that!”

The screen went black.

“That was Pete Landry drawing on his face.”

“Who was the kid on the floor?”

“Nicholas Wilson. There’s been a lot of trouble between him and others in the class. Words were exchanged, but that doesn’t excuse what Landry did.”

Noah nodded. With the screen open, he browsed through some of the text messages inside and the last phone calls made. Among the text messages, he saw mention of going out to the cinema on a group chat with other teens. He quickly looked inside the rest of the photos and saw various snapshots of Landry with his girlfriend, his truck, and different sites around High Peaks.

“The Wilson kid. You know what class he’s in?”

“You’d have to speak with the principal. I only have him for social studies.”

“Who else has access to your drawer?”

“Just me.”

Noah nodded.

Porter asked for a moment with Noah, so he stepped outside the room. In the meantime, McKenzie grilled Emerson over some finer details about Landry, his friends, and Wilson.

“What is it?” Noah asked.

“It was turned on.”

“And?”

“The phone company can only ping a phone if it’s turned on because it has to send out a signal. The youths went missing two days ago. Emerson said he took the phone off Landry two days ago. Now, if he had left the phone on, it would have run out of power by now. He must have powered it on today, or someone else did because otherwise, it wouldn’t have pinged. Why didn’t he contact us if he powered it on today?”

Noah went back into the room. “Mr. Emerson, you said you were off yesterday. What was that regarding?”

“I didn’t feel very well.”

“Did you go see a doctor?”

“No. I took some meds and curled up.”

“And here you are back at it.”

“I don’t know about you, detective, but I can’t afford to take too much time off. I felt a little better today, so I came in.”

“You have anyone that can confirm your whereabouts from two days ago after school until this morning?”

“My wife works from home as a therapist, and in the evening, my son and daughter are home. I’ll give you their phone numbers. How’s that?” Noah caught an edge to his voice. He could tell he didn’t like being put on the spot or made to feel as if he had some involvement in the disappearance of the teens.

Noah shifted his weight from one foot to the next. “Did you turn on that phone earlier today?”

“Yes, I did.”

“Why?”

He groaned. “I just told you. To show Principal Wright the video. However, I didn’t get to do that because I got called away. I put it back in my drawer. I eventually was told about the two teens and…” He trailed off, looking genuinely concerned. “Well, you’re here now.”

“Did you know the Matthews girl?”