SURVIVAL INSTINCT

CHAPTER: 20

Detective Tanya Hudson seemed capable, Sarah felt. Also snooping on Sarah's part would be unladylike. Also, it was not as if she had a personal stake in the matter, to justify her interest. The detective did not suspect her, as she had been elsewhere when Diana was killed, and Sarah did not care enough about any of the others to worry about them being suspected. Except maybe Parker, but nobody in her right mind would suspect him.

On the other hand, Ryan Johnson was her client now, by default, and maybe she owed it to him to keep him out of jail. As long as he was innocent, of course. Which she was not ready to bet much on. Still, for her own safety as well as for any other reason, surely it would not hurt just to make a few inquiries.

She started by searching Ryan Johnson on one of the people search engines and leaning back in her chair while the computer did its work. It ticked and buzzed for a wild, then dinged to let her know that the search was complete. There were a few people who shared the name Ryan Johnson, but none with an address in Kansas, or St. Louis, or for that matter anywhere in Columbia. So the Sheriff Mr. Ben. Stevenson had either misunderstood about Ryan living in Columbia or that Ryan had lied. Imagine if that was the case. Sarah then switched on to Google. 

The thing about Googling somebody is that you get hits on all sorts of things. Every Ryan with a presence on the internet showed up, as did every Johnson. It was not very often that both the names converged, that happened only once or twice. None seemed to apply for the Ryan Johnson she knew unless he was actually a professor of micro-engineering at Arkansas or a pediatric dentist in Memphis or in the habit of winning online poker tournaments, which seemed a possibility. Sarah couldn't put it past him. The only bonafide mention she could find was in the St-Louis report where Aunt Rita the local reporter had written in the society column, which was a fortnight ago when Isabel Johnson's obituary had run in the local newspaper.

The obituary was pretty basic. Name Isabel Johnson, with her date of birth, date of death as determined by the medical examiner. Her cremation had already taken place, and there was no mention of flowers or contributions to be sent to a favorite charity. Sarah guessed that if it was Ryan who had drafted the obituary, had not expected anyone to care enough to want to send flowers. It didn't seem if he had cared much himself because there was nothing about beloved, or dearly, or missed, or any of the sentimental twaddle. Survived by her son, Ryan, was as far as it went.

Since Sarah was on the St-Louis reporter's site anyway, she went to their homepage and typed in Isabel Johnson for an internal search. There she found another oblique mention, from the time the body had been discovered. Sheriff Ben. Stevenson confirmed that Isabel Johnson has been found dead in her home in the marsh, but emphasized that the police had no clues, and were unsure that a crime had even taken place. They had not yet notified the next of kin. But once they had a chance to go through the Johnson house, the sheriff said, he was confident that they would be able to find a way to contact him. There was stuff there from thirty years back, so it would take a while, but Sheriff Stevenson was sure the information they needed was there. As indeed it must have been because she knew that they had found Ryan eventually.

The paper's online archives did not date back far enough for Sarah to discover anything new about Ryan's arrest twelve years ago and without knowing more about it, she did not know where else to look. So that was pretty much about Ryan Johnson, at least for the present.

Next, she decided to visit the Kansas City, Metropolitan government website. If she could not do any more research about Ryan, she could at least do some research for him, and possibly be successful in figuring out why he was so interested in that house on 102 South Massachusetts Avenue while she was at it.

Property assessments are a matter of public record, at least in the state of Kansas, and the powers that be had laid them out on the internet, in great detail. The property address and color photograph, owner's name, square footage, and the number of rooms, it was all there. There was even a schematic drawing of each house, to make it easier for potential burglars to get around. It is a great resource, whether the purposes of checking are nefarious or not.

The official owner of record for 102 South Massachusetts Avenue was Jemima Atkins. The previous owner had been one Danny Atkins; probably a father or husband maybe, and now deceased, and before that, the property had belonged to someone named Owens. Mark Atkins was not mentioned, as the owner, co-owner, previous owner, or anything else.

This was just fine as far as it went; Daniel, Courtney, and Sarah did not show up as owners on their mother's house, either. It is hers outright, to do with whatever she wants. But if she tried to sell it, they would be there with bells on, to keep an eye on the transaction, and if there had been any question at all about her legal competence, which there certainly seemed to be in the case of Mrs. Atkins, we would make sure she had an attorney, in fact, to handle everything for her. We would not be leaving her to handle things on her own, the way Mark seemed to be doing.

There was not anything Sarah could do about it, though. Turning her mind to other things, Sarah finished up her session by Googling the Olympia building, but all she could come up with were other realtors' websites advertising apartments for sale, plus the homepage for the downtown neighborhood association. There was no information online about Diana's botched plan fifteen years back, nor any mention of the resulting lawsuit. She guessed the Kansas papers were not any better than the St-Louis Reporter about online archives. But whereas she could not very well drive down to St-Louis and walk into the Reporter paper's office without causing all her friends and relatives to have a heart attack over her interest in Ryan Johnson, thus visiting the Kansas library's research room was no big deal. Sarah turned off the computer, gathered up her handbag, and set out.

On her way to the Kansas library, she took a long route through South Massachusetts Avenue. Not because she had any business there, but just out of idle nosiness. She had left Ryan on the front porch of 102 South Massachusetts Avenue four hours ago, and although she doubted he was still there, she wanted to check. 

Sarah was in two minds about Ryan. On the one hand, she did not feel as if she was in any danger from him. He had startled her and crowded her, and even jokingly, she thought he had threatened her, but she had not got that nervous or got a creeped out feeling one gets from some people. But she would not go as far as to say that she enjoyed his company, but she would not go out of her way to avoid it, either.