Looking at the kids’ bedrooms was almost too much. Lucy could generally suppress her emotions—partly because of her personality and partly from her training. She wanted to believe with all her heart that Ricky Albright was alive and well … but realistically, he’d probably been murdered as well. Buried far from the others. And the call to his grandparents wasn’t him but a cruel prankster.
Yet there was a sliver of hope.
She picked up the three photos of Ricky’s room—obvious because it was all boy. Baseball pictures—his team was the Astros—a signed ball under a glass dome, though she couldn’t make out who had signed it. The room was messy—clothes tossed randomly in a corner, books stacked every which way on the lone floor-to-ceiling shelf. The top of his dresser overflowing with comics and Legos and Army men. His desk covered with his schoolwork.
Wait.
She straightened. “Nate, his books.”
Nate looked at where she pointed.
“Yeah?”
“This is a math book. A schoolbook. And a binder. A pencil box. This is…” She squinted. “This looks like a grammar book, I can’t quite make it out.”
“Okay.”
“There’s no backpack.” She flipped through the other photos and showed him that two backpacks were in the laundry room. “The notes say these were Tori’s and Becky’s backpacks. Ricky’s backpack wasn’t found in the house.”
“Didn’t we agree that the killer likely grabbed him when he was coming home from the Youngs’?”
“Yet his books are here. Books that he would have had in his backpack.”
“He could have left his books at home that day. Especially if he didn’t need them.”
“But there’s a binder and pencil box. We need to talk to the Young kids again. Find out if these items were in his backpack when he left.”
“Would the kids remember something like that?”
“They might remember if Ricky didn’t have his math book in class,” Lucy said. “It’s a long shot, but his backpack is not inventoried and neither is his bike. But if these books were in his backpack that Friday, that meant he came home when he left the Youngs’, then disappeared again.”
“The killer could have returned and found him. That’s why he wasn’t buried with his family,” Nate said.
Nate was right. But still … it seemed odd. Because why would the killer dump out the books and then take Ricky’s backpack and bike?
“We both think there’s a chance he survived, right?”
Nate nodded. “The call to his grandparents. It’s something.”
“We can’t overlook this.”
She frowned.
“I’m with you, Lucy. I want Ricky to be alive, too, but we don’t know where to look.”
“He went home,” Lucy said. “After he left the Youngs’ house, he went home. He packed a bag to leave … he went somewhere. But he was nine years old. He couldn’t have gotten far. Where would he have gone? I think back to the Youngs’.”
“I don’t think that JJ Young was lying to us,” Nate said. “And if we accuse his son of lying, he won’t let us through the door.”
“It’s not his son who is lying,” Lucy said. “It’s bugged me since the interview yesterday, but Ginny was very quiet and she didn’t really look us in the eye.”
“She’s a twelve-year-old kid being interviewed by two federal agents,” Nate said. “We need to tread really carefully.”
Though Nate was being cautious, she had him thinking.
Lucy gathered up the photos. She wanted to look at them again, just to see if she missed anything. She looked at the log in the folder. They’d been taken the Thursday after the Albrights disappeared—nearly a full week. According to the Kerr County Sheriff’s Department, they didn’t go into the house on Monday when they were doing a welfare check. The FBI enlisted a locksmith, who unlocked the property after they secured a warrant.
But there had been no information at that point about their whereabouts.
“Laura, is it unusual that you were unable to find anything on their computers or phones about their plans? No maps or searches or research? No one goes to Mexico without some sort of plan, even last minute.”
“We never recovered their phones. We had a warrant to ping them, but they never popped, telling me they took out the batteries and then destroyed them. If you’re trying to avoid police, you get a burner phone. The computers in the house showed no sign of travel research, but those are just the ones left behind. There was a laptop missing, and family believed that was Mrs. Albright’s work computer, which was never logged into the Internet for protection of client data. A lot of accountancy firms have superfirewalls because of the financial data and risks. Albright likely would attach a flash drive to export the old-fashioned way.”
There was no evidence found of cell phones or a computer with the bodies.
Becky’s best friend said that she gave no hint that she was leaving town. That Tori had grabbed her from practice and she told her friend that she’d call later.
What if the mom felt threatened? Asked her girls to come home, then planned to run? Pick Ricky up on the way … except they couldn’t. Because someone stopped them.
Or they weren’t planning on leaving the country, but maybe she wanted to send the kids away because she thought there was some sort of threat to her family. Had she considered going to the police? Maybe she agreed to embezzle the money for someone else … and got cold feet. Sent the kids away with her husband so she could go to the police without fear of them being in danger.
“I want to talk to that bank manager again,” Lucy said. “If he knew Denise Albright, why didn’t he notice that something was amiss?”
“She was a good actress. Or he didn’t want to see anything wrong.” Laura shrugged. “Would he even remember three years later?”
“It doesn’t hurt to talk to him,” Lucy said. “I’m going to take these files home. I don’t understand the financial and accounting stuff as well as you, but I want to look at the Albrights’ personal information and study these pictures in more detail.”
“I’ll review all the client information tomorrow while I’m at the courthouse,” Laura said. “I may have missed something.”
“I doubt it,” Lucy said, “but we’re looking at this in a completely different way now. Is there anyone who has a business that might have been used for criminal activity? Think outside the box.”
“I hate that expression,” Nate said.
Laura laughed. “I know what you’re looking for.”
“We appreciate it.”
“It’s my job. And I hope you’re right and that little boy is alive.”
So did Lucy.
Chapter Sixteen
Max arrived at the Mills home in Fredericksburg that evening, later than planned because of the shooting and her subsequent follow-up with the detective. Stanley Grant was in critical condition and the odds didn’t look good. He hadn’t regained consciousness.
The police had no suspects, but Sean was pretty certain that the shooter had been caught on tape outside the archive building. Maybe the police had already ID’d a suspect and weren’t announcing it. Max hadn’t gotten anything out of Reed today, but she would try again tomorrow. Or she’d go up the ladder. She found that in some jurisdictions she could parlay the media card into information if she talked to the right person. Cops didn’t generally like reporters, but she had a few friends.