The Vanishing

by Gabrielle Lord

  Phoenix worked steadily, photographing the prints revealed by the black dust. ‘I’ve just realised that for the first time since my suspension, I’m happy. We’re doing something important, something that might help crack a very serious crime. Something that my dad might be proud of. This is much better than hacking into the school’s computer system.’ Phoenix abruptly stopped speaking.

  Jazz straightened up from her work, and saw Phoenix was blushing, as if he was embarrassed to have said so much.

  ‘I agree with you,’ she said. ‘I’m really glad you’re helping me do something to help Anika.’ And she was. The feeling of total helplessness had gone, replaced with a small but growing hope that between her knowledge and Phoenix’s access to equipment, they would be able to help bring Anika home.

  They continued their work companionably. As she added the date to another sample, Jazz became aware of Phoenix standing quite still near her. ‘What is it?’ she asked, looking up to find him staring at Anika’s photo board.

  ‘Just seeing all these photos of Anika doing stuff, it became a bit more . . . real . . . to me.’ Phoenix shrugged. ‘I got a bit caught up in the process, and forgot that there are people involved.’

  Jazz nodded. ‘She’s a really great friend. She’s fun and noisy, and a great sprinter—’ Jazz looked at the ribbons and trophies displayed around the room ‘—even though she’s only tiny. Not like me.’ Jazz glanced at her tall body in the mirror and noticed that there were tears in her eyes. As she reached for a tissue, a floorboard creaked under her feet. ‘Anika reckons that floorboard only squeaks when I step on it, but I think she just avoids it so her folks don’t know when she’s sneaking downstairs for snacks.’

  She went to throw the tissue in the bin.

  ‘Wait, I might need that for a sample,’ said Phoenix.

  Jazz froze. ‘You are joking, right?’

  A grin broke Phoenix’s usually sullen face. ‘Of course I am. A cheek scraping will be fine.’

  Jazz noticed something as she dropped the tissue in the bin. She bent down closer. ‘Look,’ she said, pointing to the panelling near the floor. ‘Something’s wrong here.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Phoenix leaned over. ‘This panel looks like it’s lifting away from the wall.’

  Phoenix started yanking the panel hard towards him. He almost fell backwards as it pulled away easily.

  Jazz stared in astonishment. Instead of the wall behind the panel, there was nothing—just a dark gaping hole in the masonry.

  ‘No way! The kidnapper must have tunnelled in!’ Jazz exclaimed.

  Phoenix shook his head. ‘To the second floor? This is no tunnel. This was already here.’ He examined the panel, which was fitted with a sturdy handle on the inside.

  Jazz gasped. ‘A laundry chute!’ Her mind went back to Crimes that Stopped the Nation. ‘I read about a robbery where the burglars came in via a laundry chute. They had them in old houses to push all the washing down into these huge ceramic tubs. The burglars tried to get off by claiming it wasn’t technically a break-in!’

  ‘Thanks for the history lesson,’ joked Phoenix. ‘I’m going to get a better look.’ He climbed up onto the bottom edge of the masonry and peered into the dark hole. ‘I think I can see some faint light right at the bottom,’ he said. But as he leaned further, aiming the light on his mobile with his extended arm, stretching out as far as possible in order to see where the laundry chute ended, his feet slipped from the narrow ledge. Phoenix overbalanced, clawed wildly at the empty air, and fell into the darkness.

  <37:00>

  Jazz heard a bang and a thud.

  She froze. I hope he’s OK, she thought. He made a lot of noise. Surely the Belmonts must have heard that? She tiptoed to the door, but all was quiet and still.

  Going back over to the hole in the wall, she called down as loudly as she dared, not wanting to unduly worry Anika’s already distraught parents. ‘Phoenix! Are you OK?’

  ‘Bit dusty,’ he called back up. ‘Are you going to join me?’

  ‘I think I’ll take the easy way down—you know, stairs and doors.’

  ‘At least we know how the kidnapper got in and out!’

  ‘Are you crazy? They would have woken up the house falling down there.’

  ‘Look again, Watson,’ said Phoenix, shining the light from his phone on the walls of the chute. Uneven brickwork had left handy foot grips at regular intervals.

  ‘You wanted an easy way out,’ teased Phoenix. ‘Come on down!’

  Jazz clenched her fists in annoyance. But she didn’t want Phoenix to see she was afraid of the small, dark space and of slipping off the brickwork. So she gritted her teeth, put the bag over one shoulder and climbed into the chute, clinging awkwardly to the walls. She tried not to think about Phoenix staring at her backside the whole time she climbed down.

  ‘What took you so long?’ Phoenix grinned at her from where he stood in the old laundry. She smirked back at him when she saw his face, streaked with dirt and with a large smudge on his nose that made him look a bit like a pug dog.

  ‘Very funny, Phoenix,’ she said, reaching for an old towel hanging on a hook. ‘You look like a—’

  Phoenix hissed, ‘Stop right there. Don’t take another step. We might destroy evidence.’

  Despite the dim light coming through the grimy windows, clear footprints were visible on the dusty laundry floor. The marks were either left by someone with a big shoe size or someone wearing boots. They appeared to go in both directions.

  ‘That’s got to be our kidnapper!’ Jazz said.

  ‘I’d say it’s a good bet,’ Phoenix replied. He pulled a small can out of the bag and gave it a shake.

  Jazz couldn’t suppress a laugh. ‘You carry hairspray with you?’

  ‘Not for my hair,’ he said, flicking his fringe away. ‘It’s a good fixative.’

  He crouched to spray the prints then moved around carefully, taking photos of the marks in the dust.

  Then he stood up and levelled the camera at Jazz, quickly taking a shot before she could protest. He cackled as he checked his handiwork. ‘You look like a crazed panda!’

  ‘Show me!’ said Jazz, grabbing for the phone. Phoenix turned the screen. Jazz was startled to see she’d somehow managed to get dirt into her eye sockets. A diagonal smear across her lower face gave the impression of a demented crooked grin.

  ‘Put that online and I’ll tell everyone you carry hairspray in your bag,’ she growled.

  They looked around the dark and dusty room.

  ‘I’m thinking this isn’t where the Belmonts do their regular laundry, is it?’ Phoenix asked.

  ‘I didn’t even know this room was here. They’ve got a laundry inside.’

  Phoenix looked at her across dust motes dancing in the disturbed air. ‘You didn’t know about it, but the kidnapper did. Not just the room, but the boarded-up chute as well.’

  ‘That means,’ said Jazz, thinking aloud, ‘that the kidnapper is someone who knows the house very well. It could be someone who lived here before the Belmonts bought the house. Or a tradesperson.’

  Phoenix pushed his dark hair out of his eyes again and rubbed at the dirt on his cheek. ‘Or a member of family.’

  Jazz shook her head vehemently. ‘No way. No-one in Anika’s family would do this. Besides, what would be the point? They could have taken the journal at any time.’

  ‘You’re letting your emotions cloud your judgement,’ countered Phoenix. ‘The evidence points to an inside job.’

  ‘You’re jumping to conclusions before considering all points of view,’ snapped Jazz. ‘Remember, it’s not just Anika that the kidnapper was after—it’s that jewellery box. What if taking Anika is just a diversion?’

  ‘Well maybe there are some priceless jewels hidden in the box, and what if it’s some poor relative of Anika’s who’s heard about them? They can’t just start searching the house while they’re visiting without raising suspicion, but if they took Anika and demanded the jew
ellery box in return for her safety, her parents would have to look for it. The kidnapper then gets the box, returns Anika, and—’

  ‘—and that sounds way too complicated,’ said Jazz.

  ‘Maybe. Investigators always have to keep an open mind. Haven’t your books told you that?’

  ‘OK, it’s a possibility,’ admitted Jazz reluctantly as she followed Phoenix to the door.

  Could their investigation really be leading them to someone Anika knew?

  <36:45>

  Creeping out through the old laundry door, the two investigators found themselves at the side of the house. They took off their protective gear and stuffed it into the Belmonts’ wheelie bin near the gate to the front driveway.

  ‘No CCTV here,’ observed Jazz, looking up at the eaves. ‘But you wouldn’t get through that gate without the camera at the front of the house picking it up.’

  ‘Then I say we go the other way,’ said Phoenix.

  They scurried past the terrace along the back of the house. Phoenix trailed Jazz through a gate in the fence that separated the Belmont property from the derelict Deepwater mansion. A narrow overgrown strip of land ran between the Belmonts’ fence and the old stone boundary walls of Deepwater. Weeds and grass grew between the stones and in some places the wall had completely collapsed into a pile of broken sandstone rocks.

  ‘Look,’ said Jazz, pointing to a couple of large deep footprints in some mud near the lowest part of the wall. ‘They look like the kidnapper’s boot prints again. But where’d they go from here?’

  ‘I have a hunch,’ said Phoenix, walking towards the derelict mansion’s driveway. ‘Here!’ he called. ‘You can see the impressions of a tyre tread.’ They followed the treads over the uneven ground. In one area, where the tyre had travelled over a sandy part of the driveway, it had left a very clear imprint. Phoenix photographed the lines of zigzag patterning carefully. ‘This is good,’ he muttered. ‘We might be able to match this to a database. I’ve got the Treadmate app. It matches tyre prints to brands.’

  ‘You mean we might get an idea of what kind of vehicle the kidnapper used?’

  ‘Yeah, well, I mean, the tyres, at least.’

  The tyre prints became fainter as they approached the heavily overgrown stone pillars and the rusting wrought-iron gates where the driveway met the footpath next to the street. The gates were partly opened and quite immovable.

  ‘Could a car even get through here?’ wondered Jazz out loud.

  ‘Only just,’ said Phoenix. ‘Look here.’ Phoenix directed her attention to some scratches in the rust on the right-hand gate. ‘Something’s scraped past there.’

  Jazz looked closer. ‘You’re right. I can see flecks of green paint caught in the rust.’ She turned to Phoenix. ‘Can we analyse them?’

  ‘Yep, and I’ve got just the thing,’ he said. He pulled a little paintbrush and sterile tube from his sports bag and brushed some of the paint samples in.

  ‘Hey! You kids!’ An angry man, wearing dark jeans and a T-shirt with a security company’s logo on the pocket, was storming down the driveway towards them.

  ‘Damn, security!’ said Phoenix.

  ‘This is private property!’ yelled the man, thudding down closer to them. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’

  Under his stout belly, he wore a dump belt with a truncheon and a two-way radio. He had a mean expression on his pudgy face.

  ‘There was a—a robbery next door,’ said Jazz, thinking fast, ‘and we’re looking for clues.’

  ‘Were you here last night? Trespassing in that SUV?’ the angry man questioned.

  ‘What colour was it?’ Phoenix asked.

  ‘I’m asking the questions here. So you’re admitting it?’ the security guy said.

  ‘I’m not admitting anything at all. I don’t have a green SUV,’ Phoenix answered.

  ‘Just because you don’t own one doesn’t mean you didn’t steal one.’

  ‘Oh, so it was green then?’ Phoenix quipped.

  The security guard was getting angrier. ‘How did you know that? Come on. I’m taking you down to the police station and you can tell the sergeant your tricky lies.’

  ‘No, you’re not. We were just leaving!’ said Jazz, breaking into a run. Together she and Phoenix thudded along the footpath towards the corner. ‘Where should we go?’

  ‘Doesn’t matter!’ said Phoenix. ‘Let’s put some distance between that security guy and us!’

  Finally, three blocks away from the gates of Deepwater, they slowed down, puffing, and then stopped.

  ‘I think we lost him,’ said Jazz, flinging herself down under a tree. She pulled out her tablet.

  ‘You’re stopping now?’ asked Phoenix.

  ‘I’ve got to note down everything we just found out. Better to do it straightaway before I forget anything.’

  She opened up CrimeSeen and started making notes.

  ‘Ah, Jazz,’ said Phoenix. ‘You might want to hurry things up.’ He nodded his head down the block, where the security guard, red faced and wheezing, had just rounded the corner.

  ‘Yikes!’ Jazz cried, stuffing her tablet back into her bag. ‘Let’s go!’

  <35:59>

  Running up the front path to his house, Phoenix was relieved to see his mum’s car still wasn’t back in the driveway. They’d be able to get straight into the lab and start looking at the samples they’d gathered. Fortunately, they’d lost the cranky security guard by leading him away from the area and then doubling back.

  Jazz watched again as Phoenix punched in the code on the keypad to the clean room. Inside, Phoenix put on a hair cap and gloves. ‘Here,’ he said, thrusting a fresh set of PPE at Jazz and stepping into the lab with the bag of samples.

  Once similarly kitted out, Jazz followed him into a long room that was filled with the kind of scientific equipment that she had never seen in the science laboratory at school. Jazz could recognise fume cup-boards and Bunsen burners, and much of the glassware was familiar, but there were banks of gleaming white machines whose functions weren’t immediately clear. It all looked very exciting.

  ‘Wow, what’s this?’ breathed Jazz, pointing to what looked like a large white-hooded stove, except for a lidded housing area that had dozens of tiny wells in it. The whole system was connected to a TV monitor.

  ‘That’s the DNA sequencer,’ Phoenix said grandly. ‘Mum’s latest acquisition.’

  He opened the bag, and Jazz saw straightaway that the small field-to-robot tubes containing the swabs from Anika’s bedroom would fit perfectly into the machine’s tiny wells.

  ‘It’s super fast and super accurate. You don’t have to prep the samples, which used to take hours,’ explained Phoenix. ‘They go directly into these wells and then the machine cycles through the DNA analysis automatically and prints out profiles for each individual you sampled so you can compare.’

  Jazz had read about this type of sequencer on one of the forensics blogs she followed. She was impressed that Dr Lyons had one, and even more impressed that Phoenix could use it. She’d seen graphics of the printouts and knew they were very complicated.

  ‘Great. Let’s load it up then,’ said Jazz. She reached with her gloved hand into the carry bag’s interior.

  ‘Sure,’ said Phoenix. ‘I’ll just, um, turn it on.’ He fiddled with some switches then said, ‘It’ll take a while to boot up. We’ve got those hair samples, and some fingerprints. And that paint scraping we took. Why don’t we work on those first?’

  Phoenix switched on a stereoscopic light microscope as Jazz passed him the tube containing the green flakes of paint. Taking a clean glass slide from a packet on the bench, Phoenix sprinkled the paint scrapes onto the slide and then fixed it in position under the lenses of the microscope, peering down the eyepieces.

  ‘Very interesting,’ he drawled. ‘You can see a little history in this paint.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘See for yourself.’

  He moved away so that Jazz c
ould position herself at the eyepieces of the microscope. The paint flakes, highly magnified now, revealed more about the car than they could have detected with the naked eye. Under the green was another layer of colour, a dark red. She drew back, turning to Phoenix. ‘The duco’s been repainted,’ she said. ‘A classic tactic for committing a crime using a stolen car!’

  ‘Maybe,’ said Phoenix. ‘That dark red could also be rust proofing of some sort.’

  ‘So,’ said Jazz, ‘if we find a vehicle we think the kidnapper drove, and it has matching scrape marks on it, that would go a long way towards proving that the vehicle was there, next to the Belmont’s house.’

  Phoenix nodded. ‘It’s a great clue.’

  ‘Can I get a screenshot of this?’ asked Jazz.

  ‘Sure,’ said Phoenix. He started fiddling with cables to plug the microscope into a monitor. ‘It’s not going to make much of a screensaver, though.’

  ‘It’s for my app, stupid.’

  ‘OK, let’s look at those hair samples,’ said Phoenix, moving across to another complicated-looking piece of equipment. ‘This one’s a comparison microscope,’ he explained. ‘We can view two samples, on two slides, at the same time for comparison.’

  Jazz passed him tubes containing lifts of Anika’s hair along with the short, pale hair she had found. Phoenix took a small bottle from the shelf above the microscope.

  ‘Clear nail polish?’ Jazz asked in surprise. ‘Do you give manicures in here as well?’

  ‘It’s a good general mounting medium,’ he said, fixing the hairs in place with the clear lacquer then deftly dropping a cover slide onto each. ‘There are specialised mounting fluids for different types of jobs, but nail polish is quite a good all-rounder.’

  He applied himself to the eyepieces and stared down. He drew back suddenly, frowning.

  ‘What is it?’ Jazz asked.