Katie knocked again—this time a little bit louder. They heard a muffled voice just before the door opened.
“You again?” said Ventura. His openness and manners seemed to have gone away. He sounded annoyed.
“Mr. Ventura, may we talk to you?” said Katie. “It will only take a few minutes.”
“What’s this about?”
“We wanted to ask you some more questions about the missing persons report filed by Ian Griffin,” she said.
“Ian Griffin?”
“Yes. You told us you took the report from Ian Griffin about his sister and niece going missing.”
“I don’t think so.”
“We were here last week?”
“Yes.”
Katie realized Mr. Ventura might be having memory problems or be in the early stages of dementia. She looked at McGaven, who raised his eyebrows as if to say he was thinking the same thing too. However, Ventura did remember the detectives being there before.
“You really don’t remember Ian Griffin? I know it was quite a while ago.”
“No, I don’t, but I have files here. Would that help? I forgot that I had more boxes here,” said Ventura.
“Yes, anything.”
“Well, come in,” he said, smiling. Ventura led the detectives to a hall closet and opened the doors.
Katie had expected it to be unorganized and messy, but there were banker’s boxes neatly stacked and identified by neat print in black marker.
“This is really organized,” said McGaven.
“What year did you say?” Ventura asked.
“It would be from about twenty years ago,” she said.
“Name of person missing?”
“Collins: Meredith and Misty.”
Ventura went to the area with cases from that time frame, which was the top shelf. “Hey, big fella, give me a hand.” He pointed at the box.
“Gladly,” said McGaven. He brought down the box and set it on the kitchen table.
Ventura flipped the lid off and revealed neatly printed labels on file folders. “Collins… Collins… here,” he said, pulling a file and giving it to Katie. “Is this what you need?”
Katie opened the file where the flyers for Meredith and Misty were and the report, but there was also a thin notebook filled with the detective’s impressions.
“Mr. Ventura, did you always take so many notes?” she said.
“Yep. My theories, ideas. What I saw. Things like that.”
“May we take this? We’ll bring it back, I promise.”
“Of course. I trust you.”
The detectives thanked Ventura and left. Walking back to their car, they couldn’t believe there was this much information. It would help to know Griffin’s mindset and the situation. It may not directly help with finding Junior, but everything played a part in finding the missing pieces of the puzzle.
