The Roads That We Explore - 7. Looking For Them

“Are you sure about this, Brandly?” Detective Brandly looked up from where he had been working with the desktop of one of the missing college students. Two weeks before, they had gone missing and no one had any idea of where they were.

Detective Kran, Brandly’s partner, raised an eyebrow at him with a smile. “Yeah, I am,” Brandly replied. “We don’t have any fucking knowledge as to where they are. Their phones aren’t popping up, their GPS doesn’t show, and the only communications that we can get at a quick enough point is their computers. We’re rather lucky that Mrs. Kandra allowed us to look at her son’s computer. I learned that all students in their history class has forums to connect with others for their schoolwork. The teacher will set up the group subsections and allows them to assign their own names as long as he knows them.”

Kran took a seat next to his partner, watching as Brandly turned on the computer and typed in the password that their techs had found in a locked booklet in the dorm room. Watching as the screen loaded, they stared in surprise at the multitude of files that sat on one side of the screen. “Are there any flash drives, memory cards, or something like that?” he asked.

Brandly pointed to a small blue box to the side. “That is an external drive. They found three of them. One is labeled movies and looks like movies that she downloaded from various services. One is labeled book slash research. And the last one is labeled schoolwork. That one there is the schoolwork one. It seems as if he was seriously paranoid about anything getting lost or needing it for future use. He made copies of everything that he’s done since middle school. His mother said that since he started college that he would bring his in-use ones’ home and transfer the semester’s files to his larger one. If he had a need for a file, he was able to access it remotely.”

Kran blinked at that. Brandly smirked, opening the forum app that he had been told to look for, finding it already logged in. Finding the right forum, he sorted it so that it would go in order from oldest to newest. The first subject was ‘What to write about’ and created by Kyle.

Opening the subject, he found that it started with Kyle listing subjects that they could choose from and asking what the others wanted to focus on. The resulting conversation was all about the pro’s and con’s of each subject before they decided to do their mid-term report on myths and legends on the city.

“It looks like they decided to do myths and legends of the city and start with that one estate way out there,” Kran mused. “See? Alendra talks about what she knows about the Estate. A lot of murders and sudden deaths. They all agreed that starting there would be a good idea,” he said.

Brandly nodded his head, looking for the next forum post, which was just a general talk forum. They scanned through the posts, finally finding what they were hoping the kids had talked about. “Shit. They went to the estate,” he said, frowning softly at the screen. “You don’t think that they actually did go there right?” he asked.

“I think they did,” Kran sighed, his eyes running over the decision that they had come to and the plans. There was a link that moved the conversation to it talking about the trip and found the details they needed.

“They did tell their friends that they were going to be gone for about four days, remember? Two days traveling, two days there for their recording and research,” Brandly read. Kran made notes. “Let’s see. They were going to take two vehicles: Alendra’s car and Alexander’s truck. Alendra would hold her, Maria, and Richard, along with three of their coolers, a lot of water and other drinks. Most of it in her trunk. Alexander would have him and Kyle in his truck, enough food to last more than just the four days, even more water, enough wood to last for a month, their camping gear and more clothes. They planned this out.”

“Didn’t Mr. Krin say that his son, Kyle Krin, had an appetite because of his active lifestyle?” Kran asked.

Brandly looked at his notes and nodded. “So, they were planning to feed a lot of hungry adults barely out of their teens,” he said. He shook his head. “At least they were prepared. But we still haven’t found a damn thing about them so far. And now we know why there are no leads. I suppose that we’re going to have to our own ghost town and check it out. They were talkin’ about staying on the estate land as their home base and hike around town. See?” He pointed at the screen at a message. “They have some generators to recharge the off-road electric boards that a few of them bought and their equipment batteries. They made damn well and sure that they had everything for at least two weeks as a safety precaution.”

Kran hummed, standing from the desk. “Welp, looks like I’m going to check out a car. I’ll fill the tank and get my cooler to. This is going to be a long ass trip. I’ll also talk to the chief and warn him that we’re heading out that way,” he said.

Brandly grunted and started to get the forum printed out in full, finding a few large, empty binders. “I’ll go get these ready so that we can go over them while we’re on the road,” he said. “Make sure that you have bullets and extras for your gun. Just in case,” he instructed. Kran nodded.

They split up and headed for their own jobs. Brandly continued to print out each forum post, punching holes into the pages using their extra large three hole puncher and putting the pages into binders. With laptops packed into their bags, he met Kran at the car, putting Kran’s into the back. Kran held up the detective card that they could use for their gas while they drove and a hotel room overnight.

They knew the history and the legends. Knew about the old cases that were connected to the estate. They silently wondered if they were walking into a bloodbath or not.