Damien
Now that we had our crumb, our information on John Allan grew quickly.
Egan and I dug in deep. Julian made use of all his contacts. Marcus assimilated all the information. Hours later, we had our profile.
“Okay,” Marcus began. “Here we go. John Allan—aka Stewart, Jeffrey, and Andy—that we know of. IQ puts him at the genius level. Wealthy family, only child. Mom died when he was young. Father never remarried. School notes indicated he got bored easily. Needed distracting all the time. That was a constant all his life. Decent kid until he hit his teens. Always into computers, games, and—” he lifted his head, meeting my gaze “—drama club.”
“Obviously kept that up.”
“Yep. So, he started with petty theft, bullying at school, bothering the girls. He was accused of lurking, being a peeping tom, stealing from the lockers of the girls he liked. He got attached easily, and they never returned his affection. He was written up several times. Kicked out of three schools. At sixteen, charges were filed for forcible confinement, uttering threats, among other things. The charges were dropped, the family of the girl who instigated the charges left town, and of course, the records were sealed since he was a juvenile. Egan found a large payout in the old bank records he dug up.”
“So, his father paid off the family, and they moved.” I surmised.
“The father paid off a lot of things.” Marcus cleared his throat. “Didn’t do him any favors.”
“Never does,” Julian inserted.
“John escalated. Hacking. Drugs. Dropped out of school. At nineteen, his father died of a heart attack. Kid became a billionaire overnight. He dropped out of sight for a while, then he disappeared. Completely off the grid. The money was gone, and so was he.” He paused and took a sip of water. “I noted one drama teacher’s notes from class stated that John had ‘the ability to lose himself so deeply into character, it was almost as if he became that person.’ I think our boy likes to be other people as much as possible.”
“So, he didn’t disappear,” I said. “He became someone else.”
“Yes.”
I rubbed my face. “How often has he done this?”
Egan grunted. “Probably more than we want to know. I’m looking at similar cases in other cities, but I need time to check them all out. I would say his obsessive tendencies reached epic proportions when he found Raven.”
“The only persona that seems constant is Jeff Drew. He pays taxes. Owns property. A decent bank account. Employees. Even has a driver’s license, although I’m certain all of them are fake and planted. He has his wealth hidden, somewhere offshore, no doubt. He certainly has the brains and knowledge to make that happen. I think if we dug deep enough, we’d find he was ‘born’ around the time John disappeared.” Marcus sighed. “But I think he only uses that as a cover. I’m sure he is out in the world under many other faces.”
“Why was he so careless with Stew’s persona?”
“You said Raven and Deb made plans the day before. He wouldn’t have much time, so he copied and pasted. Probably assumed no one would look that hard. He would have added other layers the longer the persona stayed around. He wanted to be in that coffee shop and ‘bump’ into Deb.” Marcus rubbed his chin. “Made a quick profile. Printed a few cards. Done. I think he was starting to get careless. First mistake. Second, not wiping down the car. Both have gone in our favor.”
“I thought him a bit odd. Raven disliked him. Said he gave her the creeps. I should have listened to that.”
“You can’t blame yourself. She spent time with Andy—you didn’t. On some level, her psyche knew it was him, and she was reacting. But she didn’t recognize him. That was the point. He was flaunting how close he could get to her without her knowing.”
I shuddered, wondering how close he was now. I couldn’t even think of that or I would go mental.
Julian drained his coffee mug. “He’s having the time of his life right now. Think about it. He’s acting different parts daily. Fooling people. Using his intelligence to stalk someone, while making more money doing it. It’s astounding how much money the dating site makes. I think it’s all a game to him. And he’s done it before. When he gets bored with it, he simply disappears and adopts new personas. He has the money to reinvent himself. The brains to know how to circumvent the system. No doubt he has legit-looking documents for every character. When he needs more, he gets them. Life is just a huge stage to him, and he enjoys the power of playing the game.”
“So, Raven is what in this game?” I asked.
Marcus joined in. “An obsession. I think somehow related to his past. Maybe she reminds him of someone he was infatuated with when he was younger. His mother. I have no idea.”
Egan interrupted our discussion. “Listen up. The Real Connection is owned by a numbered company. Which is owned by another one and so on. Easy for him to dismantle and move. But I have traced two properties to one of the companies. The building where his off-site backups are stored, and a place not far from there. An older house. The building where The Real Connection is located is leased under Jeff Drew’s name. There is an apartment there as well. Everything else is hidden.”
He moved the screen so we could see his monitor. “I think she’s in the house. It’s set back from the road, with a gate and a garage that has a private entrance leading into the house. He could have driven right in, shut the door, and moved her undetected. He has security monitors and cameras around the property. That’s our best bet.”
“We need to override those cameras and system.”
He grinned. “Good thing we’re experts at that.”
“I want some recon too. We need pictures and more information. And it has to happen fast.”
He nodded. “We need to make sure he isn’t there. He’ll be watching—carefully.”
Egan pursed his lips. “When we met with Jeff, I noticed he scanned his index and middle fingers to get into the room. I’m willing to bet all his security is controlled the same way.” He grinned. “And we have those fingerprints. With some planning and luck, we can override his system and get what we need.”