Susan nodded her head sideways at a headshot of smiling middle-aged man in a Sears photoshoot who I assumed was Dave. His mug was pinned up on the wall next to a toaster.
“Dave passed just a couple years after Kirsten went missing. Pancreatic cancer. Awful. I think he was poisoned by the awfulness of what happened to our only daughter. We spent all the money we had on his no good pancreas and the pursuit of any clue we could with Kirsten. Had to eventually downgrade to this jalopy, move out of the community we raised Kirsten in, but, the good news is, we got our first god forsaken clue, for free, fifteen years after I had given up, right?”
I didn’t know how to react.
“It’s okay. I’m as happy about it, as I can be,” Susan went on. “And I’ll give you a break. I had you come here because things aren’t as simple as you might think they would be.”
“Okay…”
I couldn’t help but be pensive, and not just because one of Susan’s dogs was licking my ankle.
“We believe someone was actively working against us in the Dallas Police Department. Anything we ever, I mean ever, turned in as evidence always seemed to go missing. Any question we had, we never got an answer to. They blamed everything on Dave putting the investigation into his own hands early on, saying he crossed a lot of boundaries that negated evidence, but it was bull. Dave only made a few calls. Checked out Kirsten’s dorm room, talked to her roommate, because the police weren’t. Kirsten’s roommate called us up one day asking if the cops were ever going to talk to her because it had been weeks and they hadn’t even contacted her.”
“Wow.”
“But supposedly, Dave inviting Kirsten’s roommate over here for salad one night was enough to poison the whole investigation. So…that’s why I don’t want you to just turn over that yearbook to someone. I also want you to know that…this is hard to say…but…you might want to be careful with how you handle this as well. We had some early potential leads from a couple kids at Texas Christian who may have saw something, knew something, but they quickly fell off into the ether, and we never found out why. So…I don’t know what in the world it is, but just know that dialing that number, may have changed your life.”
“Okay, well, thank you, I guess.”
“I’m sorry. It is what it is. I want to ask you if you are comfortable answering some questions though?”
“I guess I might as well.”
“You said the yearbook you found belonged to Luke Hanratty?”
“Yeah.”
“And what is your relation to him if you don’t mind me asking?”
“Ex-boyfriend.”
“Oh, sorry if I opened a wound.”
“It’s okay. It was already still open. It’s only been a few weeks.”
