Tweetie

13

"There's so many aspects of this case I'm not fully understanding. I've looked into Jason Barber, I've figured out pieces of who he was, the people he was surrounded by, how he was seen... but it's not making any more sense to me now than it did before about why he went missing."

Hazel leaned down into her seat, the wide window behind Roderick's desk dark, lit only by the street lights outside and distracting her with passers-by every few moments and across from her, she saw Roderick as he worked, typing at a computer then turning to a file and flicking through pages. Archie sat to the side of the room, listening and looking through another box of evidence, unrelated to the crime but hopeful that some evidence might have been slipped in there by mistake.

"A broken phone, no witness at any point after he left the school, trouble-making friends, missing evidence and testaments from the people around him that don't make sense. I can't figure it out. Who would want Jason Barber gone?Why would they want him gone?"

Roderick, flicking through her file, her notebook and everything with her current progress on the case could only let a sigh escape him which lingered in the silence for a moment too long, making Hazel feel a knot in her stomach as she wondered if he was so quiet because he was disappointed. Was he upset that she hadn't made any progress in the case?

"There must be more to him," he said, scratching his chin, "I have no record of him, his family is clean, what you have is pretty much everything that was found out about him last time, if not a little more. There must be more."

"I hate to throw blame so soon," Archie spoke up from the side of the room, placing a slip of paper down as he gave the conversation his focus. "But those boys must know something. There's no denying that they knew him, and it just so happened that a few months before he went missing, they broke away from him."

"And then Jason's girlfriend at the time, Amelia... I see them pushing her away, running when they hear she's coming." She slumped against her knees, trying to ignore the chattering voices further into the police station behind her, muffled by the closed heavy wooden door. "They're the only link I have, them and Amelia are the closest friends I could find to Jason Barber, everyone else seemed more like acquaintances. Unless there's something I'm missing, then they are the only people who could have some idea of what happened. But why would they stay so quiet if they have information? What happened between them?"

She let a long groan escape her.

"That could be it," Archie suggested, approaching from his corner to crouch by her and put a hand on her shoulder in his attempt to ease her when she was so clearly stressed. "I personally don't trust them, or at least that Ryan James kid. He isn't clean himself, his father is a criminal, he consistently causes trouble and still to this day is getting into fights. Who's to say they didn't have a fight and it went too far? I've seen similar cases before."

This time the silence that floated through the room was suffocating.

It made sense. Logically, Ryan would have some experience with crime, especially if his family was involved in it in some way. Though, how involved, she still didn't know. She never saw his dads file, but at this point, with Roderick in the room, she could potentially get her hands on it. Legally, this time. And even then, she knew Ryan was getting into frequent fights, she knew he was a strong guy and bubbled with anger easily.

It was possible and now the idea was in her head, it wouldn't go.

"I'll look into it." She nodded, getting a short smile from Archie who likely worried about stepping over boundaries for making accusations. "I'll look into those boy's backgrounds a bit more, their parents and families- see if there are any possible connections there- Roddie?"

"Yup." He nodded, not even needing to look up from his work to know what she was asking. "Would you mind grabbing it, Archie?"

His answer was said wordlessly as he pushed himself up, patted Hazel on the head and left the room in search of more files. There was a brief moment as the door opened when the sounds of the office outside flooded into the room like water, stopping only once the door shut again and the barrier between them and everyone else returned with just a click.

The silence lingered.

"Maybe I'm looking at this all wrong," Hazel uttered, her voice a little quieter now. "Maybe it has no connection to anything. A wrong time, wrong place kind of situation. He was taken by somebody who left the city already, grabbed without warning and taken by a stranger. No correlation to him or his life."

"Anything's possible... but I'm doubtful that's the case," Roderick said, meeting her gaze as he pulled his hands away from his keyboard and leaned into his desk on crossed arms. "This case doesn't sit right with me. I've been keeping as quiet as I can about the investigation in the station- I mean, the missing evidence. Things don't up and disappear like that."

"You think a police officer was involved?"

"It's possible. But it was two years ago, tons of officers have been and gone over that time. It wasn't the first case to lose evidence like this, but it's the most we've lost. I'm certain we had plenty more, but it's completely gone." He shook his head the more he thought about it. "I don't like how it looks. If the missing evidence is related to the crime, then I don't think it was just a random thing. There was something in the missing evidence that was incriminating, and somebody didn't want it seen. Maybe they paid somebody here to get rid of it, maybe somebody here was involved. I don't know."

She nodded, taking that information in and keeping it at the front of her mind. Admittedly, she was glad to hear it. She found the lack of evidence just as strange, and the fact that it wasn't some outside person who was no longer in the city felt even better. She wasn't just chasing shadows, she was chasing somebody and she hoped she would find the foot the shadow latched to.

"Archie had a point before," Roderick continued, "about that boy, Ryan. I know him well, well enough to know he has severe anger issues that get him into plenty of trouble, but not well enough to say for sure that he wasn't involved in some way. So if you're planning on sticking by him, please be careful. I don't want to see you hurt... again."

"I'll try." She nodded, not agreeing but not denying him what he wanted either. She knew she wasn't the most careful person alive. The state of her face proved as much.

When she parted her lips to say more on the subject, she was stopped by the sudden voices of the office then the squeak of the door which clicked only moments later as the voices faded.

Then, a hand emerged above her head, holding out a file towards her.

"I couldn't find much on those other boys, but Ryan's dad was an easy find."

She took it from him, her head tilting and her lips parting as her curiosity grew, staring at the file in her grasp for a moment, then another moment, still not opening it.

"I will..." she hummed, looking past Roderick and towards the clock. It was reaching seven in the evening. "I will read this at home. I'm tired and can't focus."

Archie nodded along and with a gentle smile he put a hand on her back.

"We'll get going now then. You need to rest."

She didn't argue. She doubted she was going to rest, but she at least wanted to be in the comfort of home, even if it didn't always feel comfortable with the pile of work that always loomed over her there. But it was better than fighting sleep in a police station.