Missing

The unmarked Crown Vic rolled up the gravel road towards the abandoned farms house and its adjacent barn. A sea of red and blue flashed against the mid-afternoon sun that streaked across the property, casting shadows longer than the buildings were tall. Detective Jesse Andrews parked the car within the shade and just on the outside of the blue sawhorses they used to barricade the crime scene. As soon as she had the door pushed open, a cold winter wind caught her hair and whipper it around her face. She tied it back with a rubber band and flipped up the collar on her coat to keep the breeze off her neck. As situated as she could be, she stepped up to be amongst the other officers.

They stood in the barn and were about as panic frozen as the old man on the phone had been. He was currently sitting in the back of one of the police cruisers, his head between his knees that he tried hard to keep from shaking. Jesse looked around at anything she could before she let her eyes fall on the real reason she had been called in. Most cases, homicide would have been ruled out, if not for the violent nature their victim had been left in. Pale, shoeless feet swung at eye level and were caked in red that had dripped into the hay and the dirt below them. Jesse could not make herself look up at the rest and decided to leave it for the full team workup. She turned to one of the responding officers who, like the old man, was sitting a fair distance away from the body with his head between his knees.

“She was found like this?” Jesse asked him.

“Yes, ma’am,” he croaked.

“Any sign of someone having left the premises?”

“No, ma’am,” he croaked again. He looked, to Detective Andrews, like he was about to pass out.

“Hey,” she half barked, looking all over his uniform for his name tape. “Officer Bradley, tell me everything you know, starting from the beginning when you got the call.

Jesse was sat at her desk at precinct one when the file hit her desk. It landed with a light slap and she could not help but look up at who dropped it down. Her chief stood there dauntingly over her with an impatient expression on his face. She always found him to be a bit brash and unapproachable, but it never stopped her from speaking out if he got out of hand. She never liked bullies, and he tried to run his detectives like he was one.

“Missing persons case, Andrews,” he growled. “You know the drill, forty-eight hours.” And he huffed away, his boots clicking against the concrete floor.

“Well, there goes my holiday weekend,” she mumbled to herself. She grabbed the file and opened it up to the first page.

Miss Holly Grene, age fifteen, had gone missing following a church function Saturday afternoon. They were caroling around the neighborhoods and delivering gift baskets the congregation had put together. Jesse knew this from having received one herself and, when she looked at the provided photo, instantly recognized the girl as one of the group who came knocking at her door. Long blonde hair and her deep blue eyes. This close to the holidays, a kidnapping would not be out of the question. She was walking home, alone, from Missions on 2nd Street. It was the last she had been seen by anyone who knew her. Jesse was quick to plug it into her maps as well as the provided home address, 45 East Cherry Lane, almost five miles from the church. She checked the maps for any stops that could have interested a young girl of that age. There were a lot of clothing stores that housed teen fashion as well as three different convenience stores. Jesse grabbed the keys to her old Ford as well as the file and set off to start her chase.

As Jesse traversed the blue line on her maps, she continued to grow more and more frustrated with the case. Every person she talked to seemed to have missed a young blonde girl walking into their stores. Their responses all amounting to the same go-to answer. It’s the holiday season, there are hundreds of them walking in and out of their stores all day. She was beginning to give up when she came up to a convenience store that did not fit the demographic of the rest of the street she had questioned. She parked at one of the many vacant pumps and strolled inside.

A short, stout, and unshaven man stood behind the counter with the faint glow of a cigarette hanging from his lips as he flipped through a worn-out magazine. Detective Andrews approached and caught a glimpse at one of the pages, a swimsuit mag. Not necessarily a nudie mag, but close enough for her to determine the kind of guy she was dealing with. She cleared her throat at him and he glanced at her, not once changing his leaned position against the counter.

“What do you want?” he asked. He blindly flipped the page before going back to the scantily clad college girls n the page.

“I was hoping for a bit of information,” Jesse responded casually.

“I ain’t in that business anymore, sweetheart.” He brushed some fallen ash from the page before flipping it again. “Why don’t you check with Joe? He runs the smoke shop on ninth.”

“I’m looking for someone,” she began fishing for the photo of Holly when he spoke up again.

“Ain’t we all?” he asked with a chuckle. He looked up at her again. “It’s the holidays, babe. In case you haven’t noticed, we’re all looking for someone.” And then he looked at her like he hadn’t gotten a good enough look the first time, his eyes trailing up and down her like he was analyzing one of the girls from his magazine. “You don’t look too bad yourself though, to be frank. So long as you keep your tree trimmed that is.” He smirked then went back to his ‘reading.’

“I’m looking for this girl,” she said, exasperated and holding up the picture to him. “Her name is Holly Grene and she may have stopped in her the other day.”

“Call the cops,” he grumbled. “They’ll be more than willing to help you.”

Detective Jesse Andres had never once had to play the badge card in the manner that she had been about to. Most people saw her coming to ask questions and half of them would practically offer up their firstborn children to her. Especially the men. However, the former prom queen was running out of patience and practically slammed her badge down on the counter for him to see. Babe? Sweetheart? Who does this guy think he is? Then it dawned on her. Joe with the smoke shop. They had been trying to bust him on drug trafficking for years, but never got enough dirt on him to take him in. This was Marcus Fletcher, a man known for helping him launder the funds away for safekeeping.

“How about this?” she asked, a hint of malice in her voice. “You can either help me, or,” she paused waiting for him to look up at her again and he did, “I can always come back with a warrant, the county safety inspector, and we can just start digging around. Maybe even find a stash of cash that’s not in your books?” This time, he looked pale.

“What do you want?” he asked, finally flipping the magazine closed and giving her the attention that she was used to. She flashed him the picture again.

“Holly Grene, you seen her?”

“Sure,” he said, nodding slowly. “She comes in a lot for candy and sodas. Don’t mind the mess of the place when the prices are so cheap.”

“Did you see where she went?” He shook his head.

“The cameras might have picked something up. I don’t care much for jailbait like her.”

“Show me,” she ordered.

Ten minutes later, she was looking at a three-by-three grid of the store and the pumps outside. The footage was grainy, and one of the camera feeds was all static. It was almost nothing to go on until she finally caught her. She saw Holly walking in the door with a gentleman whose age was almost impossible to catch with the baseball hat he had pulled over to cover his face. Jesse followed them around the store until she saw them pay at the counter and leave. They walked out to the pumps where they talked for a minute before both getting into an old step van that could have been anything from a deep shade of blue or grey, if not black. The part that confused Detective Andrews was that Holly had gotten in voluntarily. At least, that was how it looked on camera. She looked back at the clerk from the footage.

“Did you happen to catch anything they were saying?” she asked him. He shrugged. Lovely she thought. Even more mystery to the goose chase.

She thanked the clerk for his time and got back into her car. The clock on the dash told her there was no more running with it that day and decided she would go home and put fresh eyes on it in the morning. Then, a thought struck her. She pulled out her cell and dialed a friend she had that could run potential makes and models for her. The phone rang for what felt like an eternity before the line opened and a very static sounding hello resonated from the speaker.

“Hey, Von! It’s Jesse. I need you to run a search for me.”

“What kind of search?”

“I need you to get a list of possibilities for me to thumb through. It’s an older model step van. Could be blue, grey, or black.” There was a pause and the sound of key clacking before Von finally came back to her.

“I’ve got a list of about twenty in the city center.”

“Great!” She thought about it a moment. “Can you include anything in the surrounding rural areas as well? Just in case.”

“Detective Andrews, always being thorough.” There was more clacking. “About thirty as far as ten miles from the city limits.”

“Send them to me?”

“Already done!” they chirped.

“Thanks! You’re the best, V!” She hung up just as her email pinged with the list of vans and their owners. “Just like clockwork,” she said to herself.

She drove home in the silence of her thinking mind. Part of her was wondering if she should go to the mother, another part of her knew that there was no new information to grab out of her. Nine times out of ten, a missing persons case that led back to asking the parents questions left them getting overly emotional or defensive. They started to act as if the investigating officer or detective was saying that they were the ones to blame for their child going missing. It was never the case, but it never stopped them from believing it.

Jesse was startled out of her thoughts when her phone began going off in the cup holder. She looked at the screen and saw the number was unknown. It was suspicious, but curiosity took hold of her. Who else, outside of the bullpen, had access to the number she used for work? She swiped right to answer the phone then hit the button to transfer over to speaker.

“Detective Andrews,” she called out.

“1357 East Juniper Lane,” was all that came through the other end.

“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” she asked, but the call had already gone dead. She pulled over and dialed Von.

“What’d you forget?” they asked with a slight annoyed amusement.

“Can you run a trace on the last call to this cell?”

“Sure, just a sec.” The clacking of her keyboard was heard in the background, followed by the silence of their waiting. “Bupkis,” they said. “Sorry, Jes.”

“No worries. How about an address?”

“Should be easy enough. Shoot.”

“1357 East Juniper Lane.” More clacking, but no waiting.

“That’s actually at the top of my list here,” they said puzzled. “Give me a sec.” Jesse waited. “Looks like there is an officer responding to a call there right now. Do you want me to patch you through to them?”

“No, that’s not necessary.” Detective Andrews thought about it again, but still did not ask to have her patched through. Something else was itching at her. “Cross check it with the list you just sent me,” she said. Her gut was telling her something, and all of those late nights watching crime shows told her to go with it. She was glad she did. Von’s sharp intake told her that.

“You’ve got a hit,” Von said. “Property belongs to a Norman Winchester, who just so happens to own a 1970 Chevrolet P10.”

“City or rural?”

“Rural. Another good call if I might add.”

“Indeed, it is,” Jesse added. “Show me responding as well, V.”

“10-4, Detective Andrews.”

She hung up the phone and shook her head. It was starting to feel too easy. Suspiciously easy, but she wasn’t going to look a gift horse in the mouth. It was hard not to want to use her light and her siren to blow through the busy streets. Von sounded like it hadn’t been to important of a call for urgency. Most of Jesse’s excitement was the adrenaline that stemmed from the desire to scratch that itch in the back of her mind. She used the time, still, to think. Her Crown Vic held the speed limit as she drove through the clearing city streets that eventually led out into the rural farms. Five miles outside the limits, she found herself pulling up the drive of an old farm that looked to be mostly abandoned. The weeds had grown up around the fenceposts whose paint was chipped and thinning. Off of the main road was gravel and her old Ford nearly slipped into the mailbox from how loose it was under the weight of the tires. As she eased further in, she found herself staring at the familiar blue barricades, the city’s CSI van, and the medical examiner’s van. An old man sat in the back seat of one of the responding police cruisers, and she could barely see the body strung up inside the decrepit barn’s wide-open doors. The young body of missing fifteen year old, Holly Grene.