Familiar Lies by Brian J. Jarrett

girl, not the spaced out shell of a person he’d seen on the video. The website had her age listed at sixteen when she’d disappeared a year ago.
    Her last name was Potter. Amanda Elizabeth Potter.
    A pretty name for a girl who Max feared was probably now dead.
    But at least he had a name now and that was a hell of a lot more than he’d had an hour ago. Max opened a new tab in the browser and searched for Amanda by her full name. Those results came back instantly, the first in the list being a Facebook page dedicated to finding her. He found a contact page with a form he could fill out, should he have any information leading to the search and recovery effort underway.
    Recovery, not rescue. Even her parents thought she was dead.
    Max stared at the blank form, but his fingers froze. He had no idea what to say or where to begin. How could he tell them what he’d seen on that video? And how could he prove it? He didn’t even have the DVD anymore. He had nothing to offer in the way of proof, outside his statement and the address of the basement where the video had been filmed.
    Maybe it would be better to say nothing. Amanda’s parents would never know what happened to their daughter and maybe that was a good thing. If she was never coming back to them, did it make it any better to know the terrible things she’d done?
    But as he considered that notion, he realized how important it had been for him to know what happened to Josh. It wouldn’t bring his son back, but Max would know.
    And he might just have a chance to make somebody pay for it.
    He had an obligation to tell Amanda’s story, horrific as it might be. Max began typing, clicking the send button before he could second-guess himself.
    * * *
    Max napped for a few hours. By the time he awoke, night had fallen. He reached for the lamp beside the bed and flipped it on. The energy-saving fluorescent bulb burned dimly, casting the room in a pale, artificial glow.
    As he sat up and attempted to get his bearings, he rubbed his eyes and allowed them to adjust to the brightening light. A minute or so passed and he stood, taking a much-needed bathroom break before sitting down at the laptop again.
    He checked his email to find a response from Amanda’s mother waiting. He froze, staring at the subject line, not wanting to open the message. He almost wished now he hadn’t sent it.
    But he had sent it, so he opened it. He read the email wherein Liz Potter told him to contact the police with his information because they could no longer sift through false leads. She provided the name of a local homicide detective, Jack Cook, along with his number, before thanking Max for his time.
    He had more than a false lead; Max had a smoking gun. He only needed to convince Mrs. Potter of it. He thought back to the video, fighting through the disgust that came with it and retrieved a piece of information from memory that he thought might persuade Liz Potter to meet with him.
    The surgery scar on Amanda’s abdomen.
    Twenty minutes later Max found himself in his car, on his way to meet Liz Potter.

Chapter Twenty-Two

    Liz Potter was a year younger than Max though she looked five years younger. Random strands of gray hair intermingled with an otherwise jet-black mane of long, curly hair that stretched just past her shoulders. Tiny crow’s feet formed around her eyes when she smiled at him, a perfunctory gesture at best. Max couldn’t necessarily blame her for not trusting him. Had the circumstances been reversed, he wouldn’t be so sure that he’d have even agreed to meet.
    After their introductions and a handshake, they both sat. Liz had agreed to meet him at the closest restaurant, which in this case happened to be a Waffle House. It would do in a pinch. A waitress behind the counter placed two napkins on the table, followed by a knife, fork, and spoon on top. Liz ordered coffee, Max ordered coffee and wheat toast.
    “Thank you for meeting me,” Max said after the waitress left their