When I was eight years old, I swore that all life happened from my classroom to the black top. In Junior year, if you told me that there was more to life than high school, you'd be hard pressed to make me believe wise. During college, twenty dollars seemed like all the money in the world, where a six pack and a Wednesday afternoon was all anyone ever really needed. Eventually, I met a girl who made life...better, but it seemed as if we fell in love, got married and then divorced, all at the same time. I moved on, got a new job, made some new friends, and you know. Life was good, not great...but good (I could just imagine my English teacher, Mrs. Peterson, "Superman does good, you're doing well, Mr. Joyner.").
Well, after everything was said and done, and with all of the moments in between, if you told me that there was still more to come, that life wasn't done with me yet, well...I would have never believed you.
But, it's a funny thing, life.
Just when you believe things to be at an end, there always seems to be one more thing. One more strand of string, the kind you'd pull on an old sweater – the kind that would begin to take whatever it was that used to hold everything together and unravel it until you're sitting there – without a sweater and wondering how you came about a ball of yarn.
"Joyner," a stack of papers sloshed its way onto my desk from a passing attendant, "About that case you're working on..." the captain paused slightly, the ruffle in his tie glanced from a subtle blue to a bolder hue, "...what is that?"
"Sorry captain, just scribbling."
"Oh, hey, you go on and finish that up. I'll just hand this off to..." Captain Muellar rapped his knuckles harshly against my desk, "Get your ass outta that chair for I find a different table weight to sit in it," he shouted.
"Won't happen again, Sir."
"No! It won't happen again, not on the department's time, and definitely not on my time, you hear me detective?"
"Understood Captain."
"Now, that case, the latina."
"Felicia Santana."
"I want you to wrap it up," he said while pressing a wide thumb onto the new stack, "Finish whatever it is that you've got, and then report back to me by the end of the day."
"End of the day, Sir."
The captain always got a little tight ended near this time of the year, I couldn't blame him, it was October. Which had statistically been Brunsworth's highest rate of murders, going on nine. With every department backed up, murders, missing persons. Six problems for every officer in a chair, and six more in the trash bin. And the staff feeling shorthanded, while the accountants of the city's politicians kept telling them otherwise; it was no wonder that nerves were running high.
I flipped through the manila folder again, "Felicia Santana, twenty-three, 5'2, brown hair, green eyes, brown of skin..." a photograph of the woman hanged neatly on the right side of her profile. She had a fair face, but posed rather expressionlessly, saying nothing much about her. Statistically this meant that officers on her case couldn't connect with her during the investigation – creating a lack of emotional attachment, which is associated with many unsolved cases, "Officer comments: [...] missing since, April 6th; that's what? Three days ago. [...] Prime suspect, husband. [...] Disappeared without a trace, vehicle not found. [...] Didn't have any contact with her relatives. Felicia, who took you? [...] Officer on site reported no foul play, although, husband did not report her missing until three days later. [...] Husband thought she left for her mother's, after a particularly bad argument. [...] Never been outside of the state. [...] Identifying Marks: a tattoo of a butterfly, above her ankle; black with faint greens."
I spent the rest of the day doing some leg work, chasing loose ends, coming up with nothing, it was as if she disappeared into thin air. Even the husband's trail was cold, the neighbors had seen her leave, riled, but she left, and the man had laid drunk on the front steps until the next morning. There was nothing more I could do as the sun set off somewhere in the distance. I ended back in the captain's office, empty handed.
The captain thumbed through the folder, "So young," heaving a sigh, "How many man hours have we put on this?"
"Totaling the officers and my time re-questioning witnesses and potential suspects, over 80 hours."
"What do you propose we do next?"
"All we can do is wait for her to resurface, paper trail, sighting..."
"Is there anything constructive you could do besides waiting?"
"I've questioned local businesses, checked CTV cameras, got statements in a wider radius from her home. And still nothing."
A knock suddenly came at the door, "Sorry to disturb you," officer Rachel Munn stuck her head through the door, "...but there's been a double homicide on Franklin, and all other available detectives are already on other cases."
The captain rubbed his forehead, "Joyner."
"Yes, sir?"
"Get a jump on this."
"What about..."
"File it away, have Jane put out an transcribe APB for a missing person state wide, keep an eye out, and if she resurfaces, I want to know."
"Yes sir."
The captain started flipping through several papers on his desk, this was my cue to leave.
I stopped by dispatching and found Jane working the lines, "Hey, can you put out a line for an APB on a Felicia Santana?" I handed her the case file.
"Sure thing, darlin' – I'll get that right up."
"Thanks."
YOU ARE READING
Red October: The Blood Moon Rises
Mystery / ThrillerFear has always been a part of man, it's innate as breathing, you have about as much control over it as a blink. You can hold it, but eventually the world comes to a close. Now what if some one, or rather some thing, carved themselves into your soul...
