Then, as time continues to go on, I consider that she may have been taken. It would be a very brazen and indeed reckless act to do so after I made it quite clear what happened to those who touched her last time, but some people are slow learners.
I recall overhearing a few snippets of conversation between Laura and the good doctor the other day. She feels comfortable talking with him about quite intimate and personal subjects.
I call the doctor, in case he has some insight on the matter. Aside from me, he has spent the most amount of time with her lately. It’s possible she’s said something to him about her plans.
“She might have run away,” Dr. Black suggests almost immediately.
“Why would she do that?”
“Why does a rat chew out of a cardboard box?”
I frown. “Are you suggesting she is a rat?”
“I am suggesting you are a cardboard box. And before you kill me and put my limbs on display, remember you need me for various things.”
He has an abundance of attitude, and I have no patience for it.
He is right, though. I cannot afford to kill him, not even under the guise of teaching him a lesson.
I end the call, and think. This is probably not all that complicated a problem. She does have some cash thanks to the fact she sold the car I tried to give her, but I don’t think she has the kind of personality that leads to really running away, not far, anyway. She’s very anchored in her world.
She might have left her phone here, but I don’t need to track her anyway. She’s quite obviously gone home. She’s too invested in the lives of her family to abandon them. Of course, I know where her mom lives. I know everything I need to know about Laura. I have a file on her that comprises all the information that’s ever been made available about her. There are even some little finger paintings in it she did when she was small. I am a thorough stalker.
I go to her family’s house and watch from the road for some time. Small children play via the medium of hitting each other in the garden. A middle-aged man sits on the front step, drinking beer and watching them. The house has a lot of aged wood siding from which the paint has been peeling for far too many years. The whole place has an air of cozy decay. One day this will be a fond memory, an image that will be yellowed even though there’s no reason for it to be because nobody uses film anymore.
The yard is roughly mown with tall weeds along the fence line, and dotted with myriad toys for the clearly spoiled youngest siblings who have the benefit of their father being able to maintain a relationship with their mother.
She ran from my much nicer home to this. I could feel a pang of rejection, but I am aware that Laura suffers from an abundance of sentimentality when it comes to her family. It’s a common enough trait, even if I do not share it myself.
It’s possible that Laura is inside with her mother, but I do not catch sight of her through the windows. The directional sound machine is somewhat useful, but it mostly picks up the sounds of disgruntled offspring.
“Mom! She’s wearing my tank top! I’m going to kill her!” A teenage girl’s voice is raised in angst.
“Do it in the bath,” their mother replies.
I’m not sure if she heard what was said to her or not. Either way, it’s amusing.
I decide to simply go and ask after Laura. I am wearing a suit with a vest and I am aware that I will make a mostly positive impression on these people who do not have the benefit of such fine attire.
A low chain-link fence keeps the children in the yard. I step through the gate, though it would be just as easy to walk over it. There’s a garden path going to the house, but it is cracked and crumbling in multiple places. Laid without any kind of reinforcement, I suppose. A DIY job.
Laura’s stepfather stands up as I approach. He is wearing loose two-tone blue on blue shorts and a band t-shirt. His hair is thinning at the front and long and messy at the back. He makes eye contact with me while the small children ignore the both of us in favor of finding new things to hit each other with.
“Hello. I’m Doctor Rollins. I’m a lecturer at…”
“I know who you are,” the man says.
“You do?” I do not need to feign surprise.
“I saw you on TV once,” he says. “You’re the psychologist who says women shouldn’t date using apps.”
I have a faint memory of a puff piece I did for one of the major networks a year or so ago. I do them from time to time, for moments like these. People trust people they’ve seen on television.
“So I did,” I say. “I’m also teaching a class at the local college. I was wondering if Laura was in. She was supposed to pick up some extra credit work, but she didn’t show up, and that’s very unlike her.”
“I don’t know if she’s here,” he says. If someone else said that, it might be an attempt to dissuade me, a lie. In his case, I think it might be the truth. There are enough people in this house that a man like him, who has taken the youngest two on almost exclusively, might very well not pay much attention to what the older girls are doing.
“Mom!” a female voice shrieks. “She won’t take it off!”
