by Skylar Finn
“I have nightmares about it.” I exhaled, quickly reversing on my overshare. “I mean, who doesn’t? About the past. In this line of work, anyway.”
It was the most I’d talked to anyone about that case since its dubious conclusion six months ago. My best friend Carmen, a detective on the local force who helped me track the killer down, insisted I needed “serious therapy.” I didn’t argue with her. But, however many hours I spent in a therapist’s office would immediately come undone by the next case and the next case after that. It would be Sisyphus pushing his boulder up the hill, only to have it roll back down again.
“Believe me, I know.” Rather than sitting on the bench next to me, he leaned against the brick side of the building, keeping his distance, which I appreciated. “I have more than a few of my own.”
“What do you know about this case?” I asked, putting my cigarette out with my boot. I really needed to stop. Then again, there were so many other things that could kill me on a daily basis that it was hard to keep my long-term health in mind.
“I met with the CARD team this morning,” he said. “It’s pretty low resource around here, so right now they’re set up in the back room of a church. Apparently, the girl spent a lot of time online. Mother closely tracks her social media use, but some of it was bound to slip through the cracks. One contact repeatedly appears in messages on her laptop and on her social media accounts, one her mother says she isn’t familiar with in terms of her classmates. A Pete Moss.”
“Peat Moss?”
“Clever, right?”
“Not really. Continue.”
“Obviously, the mother’s concerned. But right now, we’re pursuing every angle, including several other avenues.”
“Such as?”
“Is it a runaway or a kidnapping?”
“There’s no ransom?”
“Not yet. Mom’s posted up by the phone every minute of every hour, and we’ve got the line tapped.”
“What about the father?”
“Stepfather. Father’s out of town, on the road. Gas and oil man. Industry’s booming here, but he’s working elsewhere.”
“Do they get along?”
“Father and daughter do. Mother and father loathe each other; you can tell by the way she talks about the guy. Stepfather, it’s unclear. Seems amicable enough. Maybe a little detached.”
“Is it possible the father might have taken her?”
“Possible. Also unlikely. Not the kind of lifestyle that lends itself to family. If he did, it would be out of spite toward the wife. Like I said, we’re pursuing every avenue. I’m planning to interview the girl’s friends tomorrow if you want to ride with me.”
“Sure.” I flexed my hands, dismayed I had nothing in them to distract myself. “I’m an early riser.” The reality of the situation was that I rarely got more than four hours of sleep at night, constantly startled awake by whatever dark dreams I’d been having. Sometimes I woke up after only two hours, hyperventilating, unable to get back to sleep. I grabbed my sleep in fits and starts whenever I could.
“Same here.” His smile was wry, and I thought I detected a trace of the fatigue I’d come to know so well behind it. Nightmares of his own, indeed. “Sleep tight.”
“You, too.” I was reluctant to finish the old saying about not letting the bed bugs bite while I was in a hotel, where bed bugs are always a real possibility in the wake of the hundreds of strangers that pass through. I didn’t want to jinx myself.
Back in my room, I poured another small drink and turned on free HBO, one of my favorite parts of being on the road. I would remain awake for the next several hours, and gradually nod off with the TV playing in the background, into a light half-sleep I could rouse at once from at any moment. Before anyone or anything—including my own nightmares—had time to close in on me and catch me off my guard.
3
Out-of-Towners
Both the coffee in the room and the lobby were borderline undrinkable, so the first thing I suggested when I met Harper out front was that we get coffee.
“Do they have Starbucks around here?” he asked dubiously as he pulled out of the parking lot, glancing through the windshield. “There’s a Bob’s Big Boy. They have coffee. Don’t they?”
“No Starbucks,” I said. “I know someplace better. Turn right and go straight.”
He obliged. The light was brief. There wasn’t much traffic to speak of, let alone wait for.
“Where are you from, anyway?”
“Chicago,” he said. “Well, Michigan, originally. Grosse Pointe. I went to Chicago for undergrad.”
“That explains it,” I said.
“Explains what?” he asked, looking at me quizzically.
“Your comical look of confusion at being in a small town,” I said. “Stay in the right lane; you’re going to make a right.”
“I look comically confused?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Is there a Starbucks?” I imitated him. We passed the football field and the high school. By then, we were downtown. It didn’t take long. “Make a right here,” I said.
“You’re familiar with the area,” he observed.
“My mother grew up here,” I said. “I used to come up here all the time to visit my grandparents.”
“Oh, are they still here?” he asked politely. “Your grandparents?”
“They’re dead,” I said. “Turn left.”
“Sorry,” he said, flipping his turn signal on.
“What for? You didn’t kill them.” My macabre sense of humor was generally too much for people when I made an initial impression—and for the rest of time after that. “I mean, it was a while ago. Years. They were old.”
“Your mom doesn’t live here anymore?”
“My mom left the second she turned eighteen. Said she felt trapped. I find it kind of peaceful, but then, I didn’t grow up here.”
“I guess the grass is always greener, huh,” he said.
“I guess,” I said. “You can park in front of that big Victorian house with the purple trim.”
“Wow, look at all these parking spots,” he marveled. “Are we near the coffee shop?”
“This is the coffee shop,” I said. “It’s also a pub. But that’s in the basement, and only after five.”
We climbed the steep wooden steps to the creaking front door. It was just as warm and homey as I remembered it being. I didn’t recognize the barista, but it had been years since I’d been there last. She wasn’t old enough to have worked there the last time I’d visited my grandparents, anyway. She looked to be either in high school or a student at the local community college up the block.
“Can I help you?” She eyed our long, dark coats quizzically.
The town was not hostile to outsiders by any stretch of the imagination. I’d long considered it one of the friendliest places in the world—at least out of all the places that I’d been. But it was a place where everyone knew everyone, and it was immediately noticeable if you were an outsider—an out-of-towner, to be more precise.
“Could you make an extra dry cappuccino with skim?” he asked. “Or, failing that, a macchiato?” Behind him, I sighed inaudibly.
“We’ll take two large coffees, black,” I told her. I steered Harper into the next room. It was the living room—or the parlor; I could never quite tell which—and I sat at the table next to the unlit fireplace, opposite the window overlooking the street.
“Are you ragging on my coffee order?” he asked.
“Kind of,” I said. “There’s no need to out us as big-city feds our first morning here.”
“Am I that obvious?” he asked, surprised.
I glanced around the living room-turned café. The only other customer was a man in a John Deere cap and camouflage jacket, eyeing us discreetly over the top of his newspaper. When he saw my gaze land on him, his eyes quickly flicked back to the sports section. “Only a little,” I said.
The barista dropped our coffees on the table. “Let’s
go outside,” I said. I was often antsy and restless these days, unable to remain in one spot for very long. Especially if it was inside. It made me feel trapped with my own thoughts.
I led Harper through the next room, down the narrow hallway past the bathroom and out the back door. There was a massive deck overlooking the Ohio River and the surrounding hillside. It was one of my favorite places. There were no hills in Florida, and there was something endlessly peaceful and bucolic about the view.
“Quite a view,” he said, echoing my sentiment.
“It’s nice,” I said mildly, sitting at the high-top closest to the railing. There were a couple of elderly vets on the bench in the nearby covered pavilion drinking their coffee and looking out at the river, but other than that, we were alone. It was still a little chilly to have a morning coffee outside.
“So how’d you end up working a kidnapping?” he asked. “I thought you were BAU-3.”
“I am,” I said. “I’m familiar with the area. I spent some time here when I was assigned to the field office in Pittsburgh, investigating a rash of homicides that turned out to be related to a pill mill in Belmont County. There’s a lot of meth and a lot of pills here. It’s a huge issue for the area. It’s heavily dependent on mineral resources, and the decline of the coal industry combined low energy prices have left a lot of people hurting.”
“Meth and pills.” He looked out across the river. “Sounds like a rough case.”
“Aren’t they all?” My coffee was nearly gone already. I would have to stop for a refill on the way out. Without caffeine, my life would almost certainly have ground to an unceremonious and abrupt halt.
“If you ever need to talk,” he began, his tone somber.
I glanced up to see his gaze had shifted from the river to me. I glanced away, uncomfortable.
“Just call. Or text. Or knock on my door. You know?”
“Sure,” I said. “I appreciate the offer.” It was one I had no intention of taking him up on. I slid off my seat, turning away from him as I did. “Should we maybe get going? The Dairy Bar should be opening soon, and it’s on the other side of the river. It’ll take us a minute to get there.”
“Sounds good. Let’s get going.” He didn’t push the issue, and I felt relieved. Talking only did so much, in my opinion. And by so much, I’d found that it generally meant nothing at all.
The Dairy Bar was across the bridge on the Ohio side of the river. There was construction work on the bridge, but it had stopped for the winter. It was still tented to protect the work they’d done so far, and it felt strange driving under it, like passing through a tunnel. We drove through the equally small towns of Hannibal and Duffy into the equally small town of Sardis. In a few months, if it rained heavily, the river on the left side of the road would rise enough to flood the road.
The Dairy Bar had been around so long that my mom had worked there when she was in high school. It was like stepping into a different time. My mom had told me there had once been a drive-in on the hill out back with a pool in front of it. I tried to imagine what it might have looked like. Not enough had changed in the area that it was difficult to picture. Take out a few trees and subtract a few houses, and I could easily imagine my mom and her gang at sixteen, partying in a pool in front of a drive-in screen.
The parking lot was full of pick-up trucks: gas and oil men picking up lunch early. There was a line to the door in the small dining room, with only one girl behind the counter. No one was seated in the dining area. We took the smallest table in a booth near the window.
“Quaint,” observed Harper, glancing around at the wood-paneled walls and cushy, red vinyl booths.
“The black raspberry ice cream is exceptional,” I said.
A girl suddenly materialized next to our table. It was a different girl from the one behind the counter. She had an order pad in hand and her brown hair in a high ponytail. “Can I take your order?” she asked.
“I’ll just get a burger, fries, and a Coke,” I said, sliding the menu to the edge of the table.
“Just water with lemon for me, thanks,” said Harper, doing the same.
“He’ll also get a burger and fries,” I said. “And when you have a minute, we just have a couple of questions about your co-worker, Brittany?”
All at once, the girl’s eyes went scared and wide. “Brittany? What about? I already talked to the police, and my parents have been thinking about maybe getting me a lawyer—”
“It’s nothing to worry about, we’re not the police,” I explained. “We’re part of a special task force who are trying very hard to find Brittany now. We’re not questioning you, just want to see if you can tell us anything about Brittany to help us find her, that’s all.”
The girl was visibly relieved, her shoulders dropping. They’d been bunched up around her ears as she looked prepared to spring through the window like a gazelle. “Oh, okay. I probably can’t talk till the end of the lunch rush, if that’s all right.”
“That’s fine.” She took the menus and scurried back to the kitchen past the line of men waiting for pick-up orders.
“A special task force?” Harper raised his eyebrows at me.
“I’m not telling some scared kid that the FBI wants to talk to her, obviously.” I arranged my silverware roll in front of me next to the ketchup. “She would have jumped out the window.”
“I’m not suggesting otherwise.” He mirrored my movements with his silverware and the mustard bottle; I eyed him, wondering if he was messing with me. “Is ordering water a faux pas on par with ordering a dry cappuccino, in these parts?”
“It just makes you look weird, is all. I’m merely suggesting that you not attract any more attention to yourself than you do already.”
The server reappeared and dropped off my Coke and Harper’s water. Her nametag read DANA.
“Thank you, Dana,” I said.
She smiled and ducked her head shyly, heading back to the counter.
“Am I that conspicuous?” he asked.
“I mean, yes,” I said. “Highly.”
“And you’re not?” he asked.
“Not as much as you,” I said.
His gaze wandered over to the now-dwindling line. “I didn’t realize this was such a booming area. All the accounts I read before I got here indicated that there was a huge economic downturn here.”
“They’re fracking,” I said. “A lot of people have leased their land out for drilling.”
“Fracking?” A look of dismay colored his even, streamlined features. “That’s horrible.”
“You try telling someone who hasn’t worked in ten years why they shouldn’t take a forty-thousand-dollar payout from a gas and oil company to lease their land,” I said. “Oh, look. Here’s our food.”
Dana dropped two plates on the table and hesitated, hovering. I preoccupied myself with putting ketchup on my fries so she wouldn’t bolt. “I have a minute now if I wouldn’t be bothering you while you ate,” she said.
“Not at all,” said Harper. He smiled encouragingly. “Have a seat.”
Dana slid into the booth across from ours. “What did you want to ask me?”
“How long have you known Brittany?” I ate a fry. I wanted to project a seemingly casual air with this girl. Kids scare easy. I didn’t want her to balk.
“We go to school together,” she said. She was soft-spoken, hesitant. She twirled her ponytail absently around her finger as she spoke, probably a nervous habit. “Always have.”
“Are you guys friends?” asked Harper. Not like an agent, but more like a friendly teacher. He was good with kids.
“We hang out sometimes. Not as much recently.” She glanced over at the counter.
I turned to see the other girl leaning against the register, boredly swiping through her phone. Her eyes flicked upward and met Dana’s for just the briefest of instances before flicking back to her phone.
“How come?” I asked. “Just grew apart?”
She hesitated. She see
med conflicted about whether or not to say anymore.
“It’s okay,” I said. “We genuinely just want to find Brittany. Anything you tell us—even if it seems like something small—could be useful and relevant. It’s really not about you; you know what I mean? We just want to get her back to her family.”
“Well, we did used to hang out all the time, after school and sometimes after work,” she said. “But she’s been distracted lately and hasn’t wanted to hang out as much. Not in a mean way, just like…she met a guy and has been more into that.”
“A guy? Do you know who it is?” asked Harper.
“Just somebody she met online, I guess. She wouldn’t tell us who it was.” Us. I glanced at the counter again. Dana’s co-worker remained immersed in her phone. “They texted all the time. She said he was older and that they were gonna meet.”
“Did she say when?”
“No, she was really vague about it. Crystal—that’s my friend back there—said he was a catfish and Brittany got mad and stopped telling us stuff. We don’t know what he looked like or did or how old he was or anything. I’m not even sure she did.” She stopped, looking troubled, her expression distant. “I keep thinking maybe I should have said something to her family. You know? Maybe they would have stopped her talking to him.”
“Dana, this isn’t something you could have prevented,” I said. “Okay? This is something completely beyond your control. I want you to put thoughts like that to the side.”
She nodded. “Do you think maybe he took her? The guy she’s been talking to?”
“That’s what we’re trying to find out,” said Harper. He took his card out of his wallet and slid it across the table. “Would you maybe give us a call if you think of anything? Anything at all. No matter how small.”
“Sure.” She reached out a dainty hand, embellished with glittery purple nail polish and silver butterfly rings. She took the card. “That’s all I can think of for right now. Is it all right if I get on back to work?”
“Of course.” I watched her go. I finished my burger.
“What do you think?” Harper asked.
