“I know that statistically, he’s the prime suspect. Especially if there’s a recent breakup or threat of one. So we’ll keep him in our back pocket as a possible lead, but we need to branch out,” she said. “And I know I said not to rule out the idea that she’s a runaway, but that’s just one avenue to pursue. There’s more than one possible answer. That’s what’s so frustrating. It’s not a clear, easy case.”
“And it’s worse because I know the parents, and I don’t wanna see this kid come back in a body bag.”
“Agreed,” she said, setting her coffee on the edge of my desk.
“Thanks for telling me about your case. I’ll keep an open mind on this one. Even when I want a straightforward answer.”
“I know you’re not afraid of detective work. If you weren’t the best cop on the force, they never would’ve made you chief.”
“Damn, Vance. That was pretty close to a compliment—you better watch yourself,” I said with a wry laugh, “you might accidentally be nice to me.”
“Why would I want to go and do that? I don’t want you going soft.”
“I don’t have a softer side,” I said, lying.
“Really? That’s why you coach Little League? Because you’re such a tough bastard with ice water in your veins?”
“Yeah, something like that,” I said. She had me dead to rights and she knew it.
She rolled her eyes at me in a way that set my whole body on edge. The way we teased and bickered, the easy back and forth of it, was full of this energy and kinship and it was confusing because it was so much like flirting. And because I liked her, really genuinely liked joking around with her. She could give as good as she got, and I loved a woman who could dish it out.
The thought made my blood pressure spike. How had my thoughts roved to anything that started with ‘I loved a woman who…’? There was overtired and then there was unhinged. I wasn’t interested in finding another wife, not even a girlfriend. I had my job, my friends, the team I coached. I didn’t want complications, certainly not smart-mouthed, round-hipped, dangerous complications that worked for me. She was all kinds of off-limits.
I was trying to come up with a graceful way to make her leave my office. Some excuse to send her to deliver a message or talk to the secretary or something. The office was small enough without her and what must be some intoxicating pheromones filling it up. I felt drunk around her, relaxed and at ease with myself and like I had shaken off the discipline and the strictures that I depended on to keep my life in order. Things seemed possible when I was wit her that really weren’t possible. It was hazardous to me to hang around with her, and I wouldn’t be spending any time with her outside of work. In fact, I wouldn’t ask her to ride along with me again. The intimacy of hours of driving and searching, the exhausted stream-of-consciousness conversation that loops around to how long we’d known each other, how much we had in common. A shared history, an attraction, the way she’d looked back over her shoulder at me when we were at the falls, with the water crashing in the background and the wind catching the loose tendril of her hair. The way that fresh breeze had felt on tired, sweaty skin was exactly the cool, refreshed feeling she gave me. Like everything seemed lighter and too dangerously possible. She was impossible. I would do well to remember it.
My phone rang, the landline on my desk. I picked it up.
“Hey, Brody,” Clint said. “I got something. I knew you’d want me to tag it and bag it, but I thought you’d want a heads-up. I think I found Becky Simms’s cell phone.”
“Where you at?”
“I was walking a field over west of town. I cut across here to get to the pond on my grandpa’s land to do some fishing sometimes. I thought since there was an empty barn out this way I’d check it out. There was nothing in the barn, no sign of anything, but when I was headed to the car, I saw something on the ground. Good thing we had a dry year and the beans ain’t too good or they’d be bushed out where I couldn’t see what was on the ground between rows. It was just inside the edge of the field, screen’s cracked but when I tapped it, the pictures of Becky and two other girls.”
“That’ll be it. Good work, Clint. Bring it in. I want to send a picture of it to her parents to identify that it’s hers and not one of the other girls’ but this could be a big help. Send me your location, right where you found it. I just want a clear picture of where she was or where the person who had her phone was. Thanks, Clint.”