“So,” Kat said, “if any of those pictures were somewhere else on the web . . .”
“The image search would find them.”
“And that’s what happened?”
“Not at first. At first it came back with no hits. But here’s the thing. Most search engines only look through what is currently on the web. You know how parents are always trying to scare us kids by telling us that anything on the web is on it forever?”
“Yes.”
“Well, that’s true. It becomes a cached file. This is getting more technical, but when you delete something, it isn’t really gone. It’s like you’re painting your house. You’re just painting over the old color. The old color is still there if you take the time to scrape off the new paint.” He thought about that. “That’s not really a perfect analogy, but you get the point.”
“So you scraped off the new paint?”
“Something like that. I found a way to search through deleted pages. A buddy of mine who runs the computer lab at UConn wrote the program. It’s still beta.”
“What did you find?”
Brandon spun the computer toward her. “This.”
It was a Facebook page. The profile picture was the same photograph Jeff had used for YouAreJustMyType.
But the name listed on the top was Ron Kochman.
There was nothing much on the page. The exact same photographs had been posted. There were no posts, no activity, since the day the page was created four years ago. So the pics were four years old. Well, maybe that explained why Jeff aka Jack aka Ron looked so damned young and handsome. The last four years, Kat thought, had probably aged him a ton.
Yeah, right.
But of course, the greater question remained: Who the hell was Ron Kochman?
“May I take a hopeful shot in the dark?” Stacy said to her.
“Sure.”
“Are you certain that’s your old fiancé and not some guy who looks like him?”
Kat nodded. “It’s a possibility.”
“No, it’s not,” Brandon said. “You instant messaged him, remember? He knew you. He told you that he needed a fresh start.”
“Yeah,” Kat said, “I know. Plus, Stacy knows better too, don’t you, Stacy?”
“I do,” she said.
“How?” Brandon asked.
Kat ignored him for now, trying to put it together with Stacy. “So eighteen years ago, Jeff moves to Cincinnati. He gets in a bar fight. He changes his name to Ron Kochman—”
“No,” Stacy said.
“Why no?”
“You must think I’m the worst private detective on God’s green earth. I checked through the databases. If Jeff changed his name to Ron Kochman, he didn’t do it legally.”
“But you don’t have to do it legally,” Kat said. “Anyone can change their name.”
“But if you want a credit card or a bank account . . .”
“Maybe he didn’t want one.”
“That doesn’t really add up, though, does it? You think, what, Jeff changed his name to Ron. Got married. Had a kid. His wife died. Then he went on YouAreJustMyType to look for dates?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
Stacy thought about it. “Let me run a full background check on Ron Kochman. If he was married or has a child, I’ll find something.”
“That’s a great idea,” Brandon said. “I started doing Google searches on him, but I didn’t find much. Just some articles he wrote.”
Kat felt her heart go thump-thump. “Articles?”
“Yeah,” Brandon said. “Seems Ron Kochman is a journalist.”
• • •
Kat spent the next hour reading his articles.
There was no doubt in her mind. Ron Kochman was Jeff Raynes. The style. The vocabulary. “Ron” always had a great lead sentence. He pulled you in slowly but consistently. Even the inane was woven into a rich narrative. The articles were always well researched, backed up by several independent sources, thoroughly investigated. Ron worked freelance. There were pieces with his byline in almost every major news publication, both in print and on the web.
Some of those publications featured photographs of their contributors on the editor’s page. There was none of Ron Kochman. In fact, no matter how much she searched, she couldn’t find one article on Ron Kochman. His biography merely listed some writing credits—no mention of a family or residence, nothing about his education or background or even credentials. He didn’t have an active Facebook or Twitter account or any of the now standard promotional tools all journalists employ.
Jeff had changed his name to Ron Kochman.
Why?
Brandon was in her apartment, working feverishly on his laptop. When she stood up, he asked, “Is Ron your old fiancé, Jeff?”
“Yes.”
“I checked some databases. So far, I haven’t been able to find when or how he changed his name.”
“It would be hard to find, Brandon. It isn’t illegal to change your name. Leave that to Stacy, okay?”
He nodded, his long hair falling into his face. “Detective Donovan?”
“Call me Kat, okay?”
His eyes stayed on his shoes. “I need you to understand.”
“Understand what?”
“My mom. She’s a fighter. I don’t know how else to put it. When my dad got sick, he gave up right away. But my mom . . . she’s like a force of nature. She pulled him through for a long time. That’s her way.”
He finally looked up.
“Last year, Mom and I took a trip to Maui.” Tears filled his eyes. “I swam too far out. I’d been warned. There was a riptide or something. Stay close to shore. But I didn’t listen. I’m a tough guy like that, you know?” He gave her a half smile, shook his head. “So anyway, I got caught in the riptide. I tried to swim against it, but there was no way. I was done. It kept dragging me down and farther out. I knew it was just a matter of time. And then Mom was there. She’d been swimming near me the whole time, you know, watching, just in case. She never said anything. That was just her way. So anyway, she grabs me and says to hold on. That’s it, she says. Just hold on. And now the tide was pulling us both out. I start panicking, pushing her away. But Mom, she just closed her eyes and held on to me. She just held on to me and wouldn’t let me go. Eventually, she steered us toward a small island.”
A tear escaped his eye and ran down his cheek.