Chapter 19: The Gap
The New York Public Library's research terminals were ancient—screens that flickered, keyboards with sticky keys, connections that dropped without warning.
I'd been at the same station for four hours, digging through digital archives while the afternoon light shifted through tall windows. The connection dropped twice. The third time, I moved to a different terminal and started over.
Joe's employment history before Mooney's was a ghost. The PI report mentioned a previous bookstore, but no name. Cross-referencing Joe's timeline with local business closures gave me three possibilities within a five-mile radius.
One had closed for lease issues. Another had been bought by a chain. The third—a small rare books shop in the Village—had shuttered abruptly two years ago with no public explanation.
That one felt right.
I shifted to social media archaeology. Joe's current accounts were sparse and recent, but old tags couldn't be fully erased. People he'd known before his digital reinvention might have tagged him in photos, mentioned him in posts.
The search took another hour. Most results were dead ends—wrong Joe, wrong location, wrong timeframe.
Then I found her.
A photo from twenty-six months ago. A literary event at a bar I didn't recognize. Joe in the background, younger-looking, less polished. And beside him, arm looped through his, a dark-haired woman with a wide smile.
The comment thread named her: Looking good, Candace!
Candace Stone.
I clicked through to her profile. Public enough to see basics, private enough to hide details. The last post was twenty-three months old. Before that, regular updates—poetry, book recommendations, relationship-adjacent quotes that suggested she was seeing someone.
Then nothing.
Her friends had noticed. Miss you Candace, hope you're doing okay. Haven't heard from you in forever, text me? Where did you disappear to?
The comments tapered off over months. People stop asking when they don't get answers.
I dug deeper. Mutual friends, tagged locations, any thread that might explain the sudden silence.
One conversation caught my attention. A friend asking another: Did you hear about Candace?
The reply: Yeah, bad breakup apparently. She left the city suddenly. Super weird.
Bad breakup. Left suddenly.
My Pattern Recognition connected the dots before conscious thought caught up.
Candace Stone had dated Joe. Something happened. She vanished—either dead or running. Joe reinvented himself, moved to Mooney's, started fresh.
Beck wasn't his first obsession. Just his most recent.
And somewhere, maybe, Candace Stone was still alive. A witness. Proof.
The librarian announced closing in fifteen minutes. I'd lost track of time completely.
My back ached from the cheap plastic chair. My eyes burned from screen glare. I saved my search history to a document on my phone and logged out.
The walk home took me past a bagel shop that was already closing. I bought one of the last everything bagels, slightly stale, and ate it cold while walking. The carbs hit my empty stomach like a gift.
Candace Stone.
I said the name out loud, testing how it felt. A real person. Not just data in my Memory Palace, but a woman who'd loved Joe once, who'd seen behind his mask, who'd survived long enough to run.
If she was alive.
The alternative sat heavy in my chest. Joe might have killed her. Hidden the body well enough that no one looked. Made her disappearance seem voluntary.
But the pattern didn't fit perfectly. Joe's kills—the ones I knew about, suspected—were obstacles and perceived betrayers. Benji was an obstacle. Ron was an obstacle. The closed bookstore's rumored "incident" sounded like an obstacle.
Candace was a target. Like Beck. And targets that stopped being perfect in Joe's eyes... those he abandoned, didn't he? Moved on to the next?
Unless she threatened to expose him. Unless she became an obstacle to his reinvention.
Too many unknowns. I needed more information.
Back at the apartment, I wrote "Candace Stone" on a sticky note and pressed it to my bathroom mirror.
The name stared back at me while I brushed my teeth. While I washed my face. While I stood in the dark, thinking about the woman who might hold answers to everything.
Finding her became the priority. If she was alive, she could confirm what Joe was. If she was dead, her case could be reopened.
Either way, Candace Stone was the key.
I opened my laptop and started a new search. This time, looking for where she might have gone.
Author's Note / Promotion:
Your Reviews and Power Stones are the best way to show support. They help me know what you're enjoying and bring in new readers!
You don't have to. Get instant access to more content by supporting me on Patreon. I have three options so you can pick how far ahead you want to be:
🪙 Silver Tier ($6): Read 10 chapters ahead of the public site.
👑 Gold Tier ($9): Get 15-20 chapters ahead of the public site.
💎 Platinum Tier ($15): The ultimate experience. Get new chapters the second I finish them . No waiting for weekly drops, just pure, instant access.
Your support helps me write more .
👉 Find it all at patreon.com/fanficwriter1