“I… I don’t know,” I replied.
“When was the last time you saw him?”
“Yesterday morning,” I replied.
“Does he have a contact number?”
“Yes,” I said.
After I had given him Brent’s contact number, he thanked me for talking to him and left. The moment he was gone, I raced through the apartment as alarm bells went off in my head. I had ignored my instincts this whole time in favor of what Brent, my so-called brother, had told me. It was time to stop listening to what I was being told and start listening to what my gut was telling me.
I looked through every nook and cranny of the apartment and that was when I remembered the locked closet in Brent’s room. There had to be something in there that he was hiding, right? His room was never locked, so I walked in and looked around. I went straight for the closet, but as I expected, it was firmly sealed off. There was a tiny lock, but no key in sight.
I tried to pull it open, but the lock held. I decided not to resort to breaking it open just in case there was nothing inside. That would be a tough one to try and explain to Brent in any case. So I found a hairpin and tried to jimmy the lock. I had to watch a couple of tutorials on YouTube, but after almost forty minutes of trying, I finally got it right and the closet door clicked open.
With a deep breath, I pulled the door open and looked inside. It was a mess of clothes and shoes and old, broken things that Brent should have thrown out a long time ago. It just looked like a bunch of forgotten stuff that he’d thrown in there when he was lazy.
I rifled through everything, but nothing out of the ordinary jumped out at me. I was starting to feel
really silly about my suspicions when suddenly I noticed a little latch that seemed to be built in to the wall. Frowning, I pushed aside everything surrounding it. I realized that it wasn’t built into the wall. It looked almost like a makeshift safe—except that it was a tiny chest that looked like a singular cupboard. I pulled the latch and it opened out slowly, but I couldn’t see what was on the inside.
Unwilling to let it go, now that I had found something, I pulled harder and put my hand inside. There didn’t seem to be much there, but I was pretty sure I was holding something bag-like. I pulled it out and realized I was looking at a Ziploc bag that held a white dusk like substance. It took me two seconds and then my heart went cold with realization.
“Oh my God,” I whispered to Brent’s empty apartment.
I put my hand inside and removed every single thing that was held inside. There were three more Ziploc bags with equal quantities of the white powder and a few more with large quantities of pot.
I rushed to the living room and grabbed my phone. I fumbled with it for a moment before I managed to find officer Manolo’s number.
“Hello?”
“Officer Manolo,” I said, with my heart beating hard. “This is Megan.”
“Megan… is everything all right?”
“Um, not exactly,” I stammered. “I… I stumbled across something in my brother’s closet. There was a hidden panel there…”
“What did you find?” Officer Manolo asked, and his tone suggested he already knew what I was about to say.
“Drugs,” I replied shortly.
“Come to the station,” he said. “I’ll meet you there as soon as possible.”
“I… should I bring—“
“Yes,” Officer Manolo replied. “I’ll notify my colleagues.”
I put the drugs in a carrier bag and headed to the station immediately. The moment I got there, I asked for Officer Manolo.
“What is this in regards to?” the policewoman at the front desk asked me.
“It’s about a case,” I said.
“A case?” she said, with raised eyebrows.
“Yes, and it’s urgent,” I said. “I need to speak with him now!”
“Oh,” she said, and realization dawned on her face. “Are you Megan Jacobs—”