Now May could see that Owen was energized by the job of doing research.
"Okay. I'm going to have a look at his home address and background. Let's find out a little more about him. If anything stands out, we can always contact the Floral Ridge police and ask if he’s ever been in any trouble."
While Owen bent to his task, working between two different laptops, May grabbed a third slice of pizza. Finally, this was starting to fill the hole from not eating all day.
Then she, too, joined him, typing in the information, checking out the comparisons, searching with an eagle eye to find out if there was anything at all irregular that might point them in the direction of investigating Coach Adamson further. Once they had checked him out thoroughly, May decided, they could go on to the others. If nobody rang any alarm bells, she guessed they would need to make a personal visit to the school and interview every single staff member, checking their whereabouts and potential alibis.
They worked in silence, quietly and efficiently. May was aware of the sound of their breathing - the only sound in the room apart from the clacking of keyboards and the regular rustle of the pizza box.
There were no speeding tickets, no parking fines, nothing. If anything, Adamson was a little too clean.
But maybe, May thought, he was clean for a reason. Maybe something had happened long ago that had caused him to try and become a reformed character. Maybe he'd done that, but now his demons were surfacing again?
The thought enthused her. That could be a real possibility. And it was fairly easy to search. She'd done it before.
Frowning, May corrected herself as she tried. It had been easy to search last time. What was going on? Was she doing it wrong this time?
After jumping back and forth between the databases, May gave a frustrated sigh.
"This is weird."
"What's weird?" Owen asked.
"I think I'm doing this wrong. I was looking for older background, and I can't seem to find anything on this coach going back more than about eight years. I've looked in other databases. There's nothing to be found. Is your system online?"
May wondered if hers was offline or hiccupping.
"Mine is online, yes." Owen looked closer, tapping more keys. "I'm going in now, too. It was clever of you to think of doing that, May. Sometimes older records can be very helpful."
There was silence except for the click of the keyboard.
"There's nothing. I mean, I'm looking everywhere now. Every database. Now this system is going really slow,” May complained.
Owen stuffed the last of the pizza into his mouth.
"It's slow but it's working, and it's telling me that this guy didn't seem to move from anywhere. He just appeared. Eight years ago, he materialized in Tamarack County, and got a job at a junior high school. From there, he moved to the school where he is now."
"Nothing beyond that?"
Owen seemed hell bent on his mission now.
"Okay, I'll switch to another system. Maybe I can find something on him there?" He paused. "I'm in. I see the correct screen, May. Look, I've found him. Finally! But there's no information on him."
He leaned back in his chair, rubbing his forehead, and then glared once again at the screen.
"We have to try and research this further," May said.
"How are we going to do that?"
May felt a sense of doom descend. She could think of only one way to do it.
This was a really, really bad time. In fact, it could not be a worse time. If she did this, she was going to owe Kerry big time, at a moment in her life when Kerry wanted her to spend an undetermined, but extraordinary number of hours personally researching hundreds of venues dotted all over Tamarack County.
And yet, the might of the FBI could open doors in a flash, where the local sheriff's department would be knocking forever.
"I'm going to have to call my sister," May said, feeling as if fate was really not working with her here in terms of timing. "She might be able to tell us."
Owen's face lit up.