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10

"I listened to those recordings last night and I think I might have a lead."

"Really? I thought they were all pretty useless."

"They were. Mostly." Hazel shrugged, slipping down in her chair at the table in the cafe as she tried to idly put her notebook back together after all of the unattached slips of paper had fallen. It was a good reminder to keep on top of sticking things in.

"There was one, Amelia Karr. She mentioned that Jason said he was going home to pick something up, so that could help to narrow the timeframe of when he went missing."

The day was dark. It was the typical type of dark of late autumn weather when the sun only started to rise at 8 am. And while the pair sat in the cafe at 7 am, seeing each other properly for the first time since Archie left the previous day to speak to Roderick, they used the time to discuss crime in the silence of the cafe.

Stewart was in the kitchen, the door open to hear for any customers but unexpectant due to the early hour.

The place was silent and bare of life as things moved slowly.

"Really? I didn't notice that recording..." Archie said, continuing on with the discussion of their new case. "Did it say anything else? Mention anyone of interest?"

"No. I wrote it all down if you want to read it. But for the most part, it was just about who he was. Popular guy, well-liked, lots of friends... I can't see why he would run away. So, at this point, I'm going to scratch that out as a possibility."

"Seems odd though, doesn't it?" Archie asked, slumping back in his chair. "If he was so popular, why would that Ryan kid drop him like he did?"

"And he's pushing Amelia away, Jason's girlfriend," Hazel recalled. "But, I don't want to jump to conclusions. We don't have enough evidence to consider suspects yet... If I could get my hands on more information, I might consider it."

"I'll go to the station again and see if any of the guys who were on the case have any reports saved on their computer somewhere."

"Please," she nodded as Stewart stepped out of the kitchen with a tray of cookies.

"I'll go in a bit," Archie decided, "Roderick should get to the station at eight, so I'll go then."

"For now, I'll look over what we have again."

"Are you two going to be alright?" Stewart asked, popping his head up for a moment while he kept busy putting cookies on display. "You both seem exhausted. When did you get proper rest?"

Hazel, who had already begun to get to work reading through files and glancing to the door every so often, didn't even acknowledge the question. She was a girl with a distant mind and once she started something, it was unlikely that she would stop. So Archie was left to answer, his eyes turning from her own dark ones heavy with bags, towards Stewart's.

"Rest?" Archie repeated almost with a laugh. "It's been a while. Too long. We haven't slept properly since this started and even before then, we were busy on another case that lasted a few months. Hardly slept then either... We should probably be more worried for Hazel though."

"What? Why?"

"During our last case, she was thrown down the stairs. She was in a bit of a bad state after that, but she never got the rest she needed to recover from it since she picked this case up on the same night."

They turned wordlessly. She seemed normal, there wasn't anything different about her. But, that was because she was in a constant state of exhaustion. If she turned up when she didn't look exhausted, people would think she was an entirely different person. She didn't shift at the sound of her name, but, she furrowed her eyebrows as she read a sentence and then, after a pause, she read it again.