She Once Vanished, page 7
“Okay.”
Zachary could hear Heather typing and, on a slight delay, tasks appeared on the task list on his computer screen.
“If you come across any internet friends who seem to be very close to Elysse or Dain, let me know. I need to talk to people who know either of them personally.”
“That’s going to be difficult. The people who know them personally aren’t going to want to talk to anyone, especially about private, undisclosed stuff.”
“We’ll figure out the approach after identifying them and how they know Elysse or Dain. Find them first.”
“Will do,” Heather agreed.
“Good. I think that’s everything for now.”
Heather was good at identifying other things that might be helpful on a file. She would follow her instincts, chasing down rabbit trails to uncover any hidden details. He trusted her to do that. All he needed to do was start her off in the right direction, and she would perform beyond his expectations.
“Before you go, Zachy?” Heather stopped him from disconnecting the call.
“Yeah?”
“I just wanted to know… how you’re doing. Is everything good?”
Zachary considered the question. “The letter bomb?”
“Well… yes. That was a pretty big deal. You do seem to find your way into… trouble.”
Zachary cleared his throat. He was well aware of his talent for finding trouble. The letter bomb had not been his fault. He had not said or done anything that anyone could have foreseen as being dangerous. He had just been interviewing the old school friend of a victim. He hadn’t identified her as a suspect. He hadn’t known that because of what he had unwittingly seen and heard, she had identified him as a threat that needed to be eliminated.
“I’m fine,” he assured Heather, “almost totally healed. The next time you see me, you won’t be able to tell anything happened. I can walk around in public and no one looks at me funny.”
The scabs on his face made people think he was a meth addict, and they looked away from him even faster than they did when they just perceived him as an unshaven bum. Certainly, no one looked him in the eye.
“And emotionally? Being… targeted like that, opening the bomb without realizing the danger, that can’t be easy to handle. The trauma.”
Zachary blew out his breath. “Well, that will probably take longer to get over. But I have practice in dealing with… trauma stuff.”
“You’re talking to someone about it? I worry about your depression.”
“I’m seeing my therapist every week. We talk about it when it is relevant.”
Less than Dr. Boyle would have liked. Zachary was more inclined to ignore new trauma than to deal with it. But Dr. B was working on him, bringing it up regularly and probing around the edges.
“Okay, good,” Heather approved. “Glad to hear it.”
14
Finding people who might be able to give him insight into Elysse and her relationship with Dain was not proving to be an easy task. Zachary had left messages with various family members or friends who had spoken to the media, figuring they were the most likely to agree to talk to him. But it was obvious that not everyone who talked about her knew her. Those who were truly close friends would be less inclined to speak with him.
When he tired of leaving phone messages likely never to be returned, Zachary again went to the internet. This time, he wasn’t looking for Elysse’s social media or what her fans had posted on her profile; he was looking for deeper discussions about Elysse’s disappearance and what had happened while she had been gone.
He dug down deep and started posting in chat rooms and discussion threads with new aliases. Nothing that would lead back to him. He looked for the people who seemed to know something rather than just the wild speculations about alien abductions or rants about entitled social influencers being babies and having meltdowns. Somewhere out there, someone knew more about what had happened to Elysse. Zachary didn’t believe she hadn’t seen anyone for five days. Someone must have known where she was. Her phone had been out of service, but she must have run into someone, talked to a friend, or maybe called someone from a borrowed landline, old payphone, or burner phone.
He recalled from Elysse’s interview on TV that she’d been in possession of a burner phone when she had been discovered in the Grand Canyon. The interviewer had made a point of bringing it up.
He mused over its significance—why get a phone and then not contact anyone?
The police would not have been able to get her phone logs; there was no crime in Elysse disappearing or buying a new phone. No crime in leaving her old phone and old life behind and starting up somewhere new.
With a burner phone, Elysse could have been in constant contact with friends or family members, despite going dark for the rest of the world.
Zachary had seen an unknown number ring through on his phone, but he had been deep in his research and had decided he didn’t want to be interrupted by a potential telemarketer. When he next looked at his phone, he saw that he had a voicemail message. His heart speeding, he tapped it to find out who had called. It could still be a telemarketer or spammer. He got plenty of voicemail messages from purported agents of the IRS or Homeland Security claiming that he needed to call them back right away to avoid prison time.
But it wasn’t a spam call this time.
“Mr. Goldman, I am returning your call. This is Kristy Echols from… you know who I am. You have my number; give me a callback. I’ll be available for a couple of hours.”
Kristy Echols was on Elysse Allan’s staff. Or at least she had been when Elysse had been in Vermont. It was quite a break in the case for her to be willing to contact Zachary. Zachary tapped her number to call her back.
Recognizing his number, Kristy answered after just a couple of rings.
“Mr. Goldman.”
“Thank you for calling me back, Ms. Echols. You can call me Zachary; I’m not big on formality.”
“Then you can call me Kristy. How can I help you, Zachary? Are you a photographer?”
“Well, I am, actually, but that isn’t why I was calling you. What exactly is it you do?”
Sensing a possible opportunity, Kristy was eager to give him the details.
“Think of me as a caddy for photography. A golfer has a caddy to hand him the club he needs for his next shot, to give him advice on the direction the ground breaks, hazards, and techniques to use. I do the same thing with photographers, especially those taking pictures for social media. I can set up your tripods and equipment for you, advise you on trending posts, topics, or challenges, help you establish an aesthetic, and even suggest what hashtags to use or time of day to post.”
“Wow. I didn’t know there was so much involved in posting pictures to social media.”
“It depends on your goals. If you want to extend your reach and get your pictures trending, you need more expertise than just sharing pictures of your kids with your extended family. Some people are happy just to share with a small group of close friends and family as a way to stay up to date on what people are doing.”
“But if you want to become an influencer like Elysse Allan, you need more expertise.”
“Well,” she gave a bit of a laugh. “I’m not going to promise you I can get you up to Elysse Allan’s level of fame. But I can certainly get you onto more phones than you are now. I have plenty of experience and deep knowledge of the industry. You might think that it’s simple to post a picture to social media, and it is, but if you want it to trend, you have to either be very lucky or you need someone like me, who is actively studying the platforms and knows the best practices to widen your reach and spread your brand.”
“That would be a lot for me to learn by myself in a short period of time.”
“Exactly,” Kristy agreed. “Just like there is a difference between someone making a peanut butter sandwich at home and a restaurateur designing a sandwich menu for his venue. You don’t get to be a chef at a three-star restaurant by making sandwiches.”
“That makes sense,” Zachary told her. “It must be a fascinating job. You would be exposed to a lot of interesting people and products.”
“Yes.” She sounded more stressed than excited. It probably wasn’t easy to work with people who thought they were good enough to become world famous and expected Kristy to promote their brands. A lot of egos to be stroked and redirected. People who probably didn’t take direction well.
“How long were you working with Elysse Allan?”
“About… a year, I think. I would have to check my records to see when I started working with her.”
“So you had been with her for the entire vacation tour?”
“Yes. I would often go to a location ahead of her, set up the gear, analyze the lighting and view lines, then she and Dain would arrive and I would run them through what they should do and give them the posting instructions. If the photos were complicated or we needed ‘couple’ shots, I would stay and help take the pictures. If not, I would go on to the next location and get started there.”
“What were the posting instructions? They knew how to post on all the social platforms by this point, didn’t they?” It didn’t seem to Zachary like it was that complicated. Once he posted a few times on a social network, he knew what he needed to do.
“Like I said, if you want it to trend, you need to know what hashtags to use, too. There are filters, stickers, certain trending tags or challenges, and it all had to be consistent with Elysse’s brand so that she would reach her target audience and they will recognize her posts from one day to the next. Someone scrolling should be able to recognize her aesthetic immediately, without seeing what account it was posted from.”
“And that’s good.”
She didn’t answer immediately, seeming thrown by his question.
“Uh—yes. You want people to recognize your content and to stop to read it, comment on it, or engage with it. That helps to boost it so that more people see it. And the more people who see or engage with your content, the better. That’s how you make money as an influencer. By getting lots of views and engagement. No one will hire you to promote their product if you don’t have a proven viewer base.”
“Is that the only way to make money by posting to social media? Sponsored product placement?”
“No, of course not.” She sounded irritated, but quickly smoothed out her voice so that it was simply informative. She had experience in explaining social media monetization to the uneducated. “You can enable ads if you are getting enough viewership, so you get money every time someone is exposed to an ad while they’re on your feed. If you’re getting millions of views, that is a significant income stream. You can sell directly and use social media as your advertising platform. You can establish yourself as an expert in your industry to establish social cred and trust. You can engage directly with customers to build relationships. There are a lot of ways that social media allows you to build your business, whatever it is. What exactly is it you do, Zachary?”
“Well, I haven’t done much with my photography. Some family and friends have suggested that I should do more. Post it on social media, maybe publish a coffee table book or sell digital wallpapers. There are a lot of opportunities out there, I guess, but I’ve never pursued them.”
“I assume you have a day job. What is it you do again?”
15
“I’m a private investigator. That’s why I called you about Elysse Allan.”
Zachary had been quite clear about that on his voicemail. Kristy had apparently gotten distracted by her own upsell.
“Oh, right.” Kristy gave a little chuckle. “Well… you found me. I haven’t had a lot of people reach out to me about Elysse. It wasn’t like she mentioned me in her posts or had anything branded with my business. Most people wouldn’t realize that she had a social media consultant or the amount of work that I put into her posts.”
“They thought she just did it all on her own.”
“Yeah. And that’s how it should be. My contribution should be invisible. It should boost her bottom line but not be obvious to her followers. They want to see her, not me.”
“I wonder if we could get together to talk? Where are you located?”
“I’m in Nevada right now. Have a client who is kicking off a new brand. I don’t think a face-to-face is going to be possible.”
“Oh, okay. We could maybe video chat later if I need to follow up on something.”
“Mmm.” She didn’t sound too excited about that fact. “I don’t know what you are looking for, but I think we can cover it in a quick voice call. I’m not going to share confidential client information with anyone. If you want to get in touch with Elysse, you’ll have to reach out through other channels. I won’t be sharing any private email addresses or phone numbers with you.”
“No, no, of course not,” Zachary tried to put as much shock as he could into the words. “I wouldn’t ask you to do that. I’m just making some inquiries for Dain. You worked with him, so I’m sure you understand how concerned he is for Elysse and what she has gone through.”
“I’m sure he is,” she said with reserve.
“They were very close. They’d been together since their school days,” Zachary pointed out.
“I saw them together, Mr. Goldman. I think I understand their relationship better than you. You can’t believe everything Dain tells you.”
“I know they were a passionate couple. They had their share of disagreements and short breaks. But they had stayed together this long. I think Dain knew her better than anyone else. He’s concerned about what happened to her and how she is dealing with it.”
“What do you mean, what happened to her?”
“About what happened to her during the time she was missing. I’m sure you know she didn’t just go off on her own like she told the press.”
“I don’t know what you think happened,” Kristy said coldly. “I only know what Elysse told the media.”
“She didn’t say anything to you before or after she disappeared? You must have felt pretty irritated. You were there for her, ready for the next shots, all set up, and she didn’t show. And didn’t show at any of the next locations. That messed things up for you, didn’t it?”
“My contract covered the full tour, whether she showed up or not. I knew it would be paid for.”
“But still… you must have been concerned when Elysse just didn’t show up. Unless she had already told you something about it.”
“I wasn’t very concerned. People with big followings can be very self-centered. Always looking inward, not thinking about how their actions affect others. It isn’t unusual for a client to change their mind about something or not show up at a previously planned shoot. They get distracted by something else, decide to go somewhere else with their campaign, whatever.”
Zachary nodded. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to constantly work with people like that, who just bailed on their commitments and jumped to the next fad or shiny object. Kristy said she had been paid either way, but it would still be irritating to put up with such childish behavior.
“At some point, did you start to be concerned? Dain said she missed three locations where she was supposed to shoot.”
“Yes. I was starting to wonder if something had happened, but I wasn’t… that concerned. Dain was her partner, and it was up to him to decide whether there was anything to be worried about. He could call or text her or her family or friends. I just did the shoots. And if they wanted to pay me for sitting around…” She grunted. “Whatever. I could take some pictures myself, make some phone calls, work on other stuff on my phone while I waited around. Vermont in the summer is nice. Warm and green and not too crowded. I’d picked out the sites for her photos myself. I live in Vermont, so I know all the good spots. Told her she should take some pictures here before going on to New York.”
“You’d been with them for the rest of the tour?”
“Yeah.”
“How had things gone at the other locations?”
“Fine.”
“Were there any problems? Things that didn’t go well? Arguments?”
“Some teams like this are constantly arguing. It’s nothing. People get really anxious when their success or failure could depend on just the right frame of just the right shot, with the perfect filters, hashtags, and caption. A lot rides on those little pictures, meant to look casual and carefree.”
“So people were grumpy. Easily irritated.”
“Sure. And if things went well, they got a good shot or had a post that was already trending, they were delighted. Bouncing around, excited like little kids, refreshing their screens every two minutes. Enjoying the ride.”
“Did Elysse and Dain argue a lot? More than most couples? Less?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think it was anything special.”
“Did you ever see anything that concerned you? Maybe… physical abuse? A bad display of temper? Concerns that someone could get hurt or things could go too far?”
“I don’t know what you mean by physical abuse. Did they fight? Sure. Did I see them beating each other in front of me? No.”
“A verbal argument, maybe some nasty names or threats thrown in. Trying to humiliate each other in front of an audience. Or even coming to blows.”
“A slap?” Kristy asked tentatively.
“Yes. Elysse is reported to have slapped Dain at the gas station when they were arguing.”
“I can see that. But I wasn’t there when it happened.”
“But she had slapped him before?”
“Yeah. On occasion.”
“And had he slapped her? Or done anything else that could be construed as physically abusive?”
“He might slap her or shove her, sure. But it wasn’t like there were injuries. No one was getting hurt.”
