Hearing the others laugh as he sniffed himself, I shut the door to the office and rolled my eyes at Alex, who was chuckling.
Picking up the coffee waiting for me with a grateful smile, I pointed at one of the reference numbers on the dry erase board on the wall. Instead of writing down names or identifying details, we’d given them our own cold case reference numbers.
“I read through the folder on that case from ‘98—the one about that missing boy, Ainsley Lewis. He was one at the time he disappeared, so that’d make him twenty-four now.”
Leaning back in his chair, Alex watched me closely. “That’s right.”
Copying how he was sitting, I pulled out a piece of paper with some notes I’d made on it.
“Okay, hear me out on this. A couple of days ago, there was a television show about cold cases, and they were looking at a case similar to this one. Theirs ended up being some sort of cult thing, and sadly the poor kid had ended up in some sort of Jonestown scenario, but it got me thinking. We have a much smaller population here than the city they were working in, so we need to look at the residents around the age he should be.”
Bear with me. This wasn’t a groundbreaking, outstanding suggestion, but it was a start. All too often, we went with the worst-case scenario—death—when miracles did happen, i.e., life.
“You think he’s still here after all this time?”
Shrugging, I took a sip from my mug. “I have no idea, but it doesn’t hurt to make sure he isn’t.”
Alex looked intrigued by the idea. “You think whoever took the kid kept him alive and passed him off as their own?”
“Maybe, or maybe they said they’d adopted him? And that’s even if he’s still here. It wouldn’t be a smart idea to keep the kid in the area where people would recognize him, so there’s every chance he was taken out of it, but we can’t rule it out. There’s also every chance he isn’t alive, but no CODIS hits have come up, so we can’t rule out him still breathing, and maybe even in this town.”
“This is true,” Alex conceded. “How do we know he’d be registered here, though?”
“We don’t,” I admitted, “but we look at the ones who are, then we ask around to see if anyone knows of anyone who suddenly got up and left around that time. We’re going to be going back through the file and speaking to the witnesses again anyway, so two birds with one stone.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “I hate it when you make sense.”
“No, you don’t,” I snickered. “Because me making sense helps us clear these files and also helps when you’re looking into shit on current cases. I’m the brain for our operation.”
The smile that split across his face had me groaning internally. “Judging by the comments I hear from women in town, you’re also the beauty.”
We formulated a plan for a while, but then DB opened the door with a scowl on his face. “Y’all are needed up at Bates’ Retirement Home.”
Glaring at his son, Alex got up from his chair. “Can’t Mark and Reid go?”
“His face helps calm them down.” DB pointed at me, the comment telling us which residents required police assistance.
Mrs. Keating and Mrs. Bane—the two women who loved to hate each other and hated when other people hated them because that’s when they loved each other. It was a freaking mess, and we got called out to split them up regularly.
That said, the depth of their friendship had been proven months ago when Gynnie Bane had been involved in one of our cold cases. It’d just so happened to also involve Sheriff Bailey’s dad and had led to him shooting up P.V.P.D.
Downing the rest of my coffee and ignoring the pain in my throat and chest from it, I got up slowly and made my way to the door. I couldn’t say I hated this part of my job because that’s what I was employed to do, but I also couldn’t say I loved this part of it.
Working on the cold cases and toward becoming a detective to help Alex out was my passion. With the town growing and expanding, we worked with the neighboring police departments for a lot of things, but we were also looking at increasing the size and facilities available in our own. Right now, one detective covering every type of crime there was…it wasn’t easy, but we had some new recruits joining us soon, all of whom were experienced in different ways, so hopefully, things would get easier.
As we drove toward the home, Alex brought up the gift I’d given Naomi again.
“So, we didn’t get to talk much about it the other day, but how’d she take the gift? Feel free to add details this time.”