“We have to look at the possibility that maybe she just ran off.”
“She was planning to go to the concert, her parents said she was looking forward to it,” I said. “And she didn’t take a car or have access to a large sum of money.”
“Sometimes people, especially teenagers, don’t think things through,” Laura reasoned. “And if she was that wound up to go to the city, and this big chem test was bearing down on her, she could have made a rash decision and run away.”
“I know about this kid, and I just don’t think she ran off. I don’t have any proof, but I have a hunch.”
“You still think it’s the boyfriend?”
“It could be. Or someone else. But it’s something shady going on. It’s about to drive me out of my mind, Vance. Rockford Falls is supposed to be a safe haven. Shit like this doesn’t happen in this town, not on my watch,” I ran my hands over my face.
I looked up and realized we were at the station, that I’d parked in my spot. That I’d been talking about the case, not even realizing I’d arrived. I rubbed my eyes.
“We need some water,” she said. “We’re both tired and going around in circles.”
“I should’ve had you drive. I was so absorbed in the case and so tired, I didn’t even realize we were already here.”
“We made it. It’s okay. You’re running on fumes, Chief,” she said with a half-smile.
“You must feel sorry for me. You’re not even busting my balls about driving while impaired. We both know sleep deprivation causes a lot of accidents.”
I pushed open the door, got to my feet and stretched. We went in the station and I grabbed a couple bottles of water from the fridge. I chugged half of mine down and paced the length of the room. Most of the other officers were already back, and they hadn’t turned up a trace of Becky either. I headed for my office, ate a handful of almonds from the can in my desk, and did some stretches to clear my head. The frustration was getting to me. The trail on this kid would go colder the longer this took. Even if it looked like she was a runaway, I didn’t buy it. So I’d have to find evidence, and find the kid.
After a while, there was a knock at my door. “Come in,” I called out. I was surprised when Laura walked in with a couple cups of coffee. I took a cup, thanked her, and cleared my throat because I shouldn’t have been thinking about how good she looked in her uniform, how she filled it out perfectly. I indicated the chair across from my desk and she had a seat.
“I was thinking,” she said. “A case I worked about five months back, we found the girl. She was zip-tied in a storage unit. She was dehydrated and beat up, but she was alive. She wasn’t a runaway. And it wasn’t a boyfriend that did it.”
“Who was it?”
“Sister and the sister’s boyfriend. The younger sister had always been jealous of her, and when big sis got engaged, there was all this attention and a party and presents, it was too much.”
“So it wasn’t the fiancé. I would’ve bet on him,” I said. “How’d you figure it out?’
“We didn’t get pigeonholed on the idea it was gonna be intimate partner violence. We looked at work, had her boss or coworker made unwanted advances? Was there anybody that felt like she cheated them? Did she owe money? Did the fiancé owe money and someone was using her to get the money back? I was asking all these questions, and it seemed like the only person who thought she might be unpopular and disliked was the sister who kept bringing up how even if everybody acted like she was perfect, her sister was far from it.”
“So you saw the jealousy and used it as a clue?”
“Pretty much. So we dug in on the sister and found that the boyfriend had rented a storage unit even though he didn’t have a vehicle, motorcycle, or boat registered in his name—nothing to need such a big unit all of a sudden and only paid for a month.”
“That was some damn fine detective work, Vance. How long was she in there?”
“Two days. She was gone twenty-four hours before the fiancé called. The mom wouldn’t report it because the little sister kept insisting she’d just gone off for a spa day and not told anyone, turned off her phone, whatever.”
“That’s cold. But I’m impressed at her commitment. She sounds vicious.”
“And calculating. But not good enough to outsmart the investigators. So we’ve got to think outside the box on this one.”
“You have a point. I’ll try not to fixate on the ex-boyfriend.”