“Not whoever this drawing reminded you of,” Frank confirmed.
“Exactly,” she said.
I considered my own childhood. Thought of the summers I’d spent with my mom on Kiawah Island. It was hard enough making friends back home. But on vacation? If you were odd like me and found one person to connect with, you held on tight.
“Did Freddie have a best friend?” I asked. “Someone he saw every summer?”
Natalie smiled. “He did, actually. Some Polish immigrant kid. Real dreamer.”
“He took the bus in?” Frank asked.
“No,” she said, scoffing. “He lived here. With his mom. Above a pancake restaurant on the pier where she worked.”
“And he and Freddie were tight?” Frank asked.
“Oh yeah,” she said. “That kid was a real storyteller. Once toldFreddie he was the heir to some big hotel chain.” She shook her head, smiling. “The billionaire next door. Living above a run-down restaurant.”
“He wasn’t?” Frank asked rhetorically.
“The boy was pathological,” Natalie said, shaking her head. “Perfect friend for Freddie.”
“This kid have a name?” I asked.
“None I would remember. And that restaurant is long gone.”
I glanced at Frank. We needed to either dig in or let go, so I pointed at the sketch.
“We have good information that this man met your cousin fifty-three minutes before Freddie’s death. They drove back to his trailer together. And then this man shot Freddie in cold blood. So he’s not just a person of interest, Ms. Kastner,” I said. “He’s our prime suspect in your cousin’s murder.”
I’d seen Shooter take this approach, switching from witness to suspect to get a reaction.
And it did. Natalie grabbed the paper from Frank’s hand and stared at it again. But after a minute, the result was the same.
“Sorry,” she said, her face crumpling.
But Frank continued anyway, trying to keep the rapport going.
“Your cousin,” he said. “Do you have any pictures of him?”
“Not as an adult,” Natalie said, “but my mother was a photographer. After I got my own place, I inherited more childhood photos than I have space for.”
She walked over to an ornately carved credenza, covered in framed pictures.
I stayed in the chair where I was, mentally moving through the nine known victims and anything we hadn’t yet followed up on.
“Gardner,” Frank said, and I stood. Walked over to the credenzaand stared at a framed photo of two kids outside a boardwalk ice cream shop. From their facial structure, I identified Freddie Pecos as the boy. Beside him was Natalie Kastner, their arms draped around each other.
In other pictures on the credenza, Natalie sat on the laps of various teen boys, sometimes in boats, sometimes at boardwalk bars, even though she did not look old enough to drink.
Frank asked Natalie if he could hold on to the picture with Freddie in it, and she agreed.
“There’s a woman missing right now,” I said. “Kidnapped. You can’t tell us anything?”
“Gardner,” Frank said, but I kept my focus on Natalie.
“I told you everything I know,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Frank thanked her for her time, and I took out a card. Left it with her.
