“He’s getting there. I think leaving town for a while helped.” We’d spent a late Christmas with my family in Chicory, Illinois, as soon as Alex recovered. My mother had immediately taken him under her wing and they still talked and texted several times a week.
“Good. That’s good,” Will said, but he still seemed slightly off, like something was still bothering him. I didn’t get a chance to keep pushing, though, because the chief let herself into our office at that moment.
“Parker, Dodd,” she said by way of greeting. “I’ve got something for you to look into.”
Will was closer to the door, so she handed him the slim folder she’d brought with her.
“What’s up?” I asked, coming around to read over his shoulder. The very top sheet was a homemade missing person flyer, with a picture of a teenage girl front and center.
“Rebecca Perez’s parents just reported her missing. They say she didn’t go to school this morning and they haven’t been able to reach her all day.”
“But they did see her this morning?” Will asked.
Chief Cornell nodded. “Rebecca has a history of running away. This is the third time in a year she’s disappeared. The last two times, she came back after a few days when her money ran out. That doesn’t mean we’re not going to look for her, though.”
“Agreed. We’ll get to work on it,” I said. “Are the parents still here?” I glanced at the flyer and saw the names ‘Joseph and Eva Perez’ listed at the bottom, along with what must be their home phone number.
“They’re in the interview room waiting. I told them you’d be right in.”
There was only one interview room here at the LCPD, and it doubled as a storage room. Thanks to Alex, I also now knew it was haunted by the ghost of an old detective.
The mystery of what was bothering Will would have to wait. I moved it to the back burner so I could focus on the case at hand.
“Alright, let’s get to work.”
***
A long day of chasing down leads on Rebecca Perez got me exactly nowhere. Her parents said they’d seen her walk out of the house on her way to school that morning, but somewhere along the way, she’d just disappeared into thin air. Everyone in the house had been running late this morning, so they hadn’t kept as close an eye as they usually did.
The Perez family lived just outside of town, so Rebecca usually walked down the road to her friend Amelie DeVor’s house and the two girls got a ride to school with Amelie’s older brother, Landon.
When we spoke to Amelie and Landon, however, they claimed Rebecca never arrived. They’d waited for her, but given her history of skipping school and running away, they’d assumed she was just being her usual self and left without her when it got too close to first period.
The two houses were less than a mile apart, but only if Rebecca cut across a stretch of trees between the two houses. Otherwise, a curve in the road doubled the distance. In bad weather, Landon said he’d drive up the road to pick her up, but Rebecca usually preferred to walk. When pressed, Amelie admitted that her friend usually used the walk to call her boyfriend. She didn’t know his name, only that he was older and Rebecca’s parents had absolutely forbidden the relationship. Naturally, being a teenager, that had just made Rebecca want him even more.
Since she’d run away before, her parents had installed a tracking app on her phone to keep tabs on her location. When they’d pinged it earlier, they’d found it sitting on Rebecca’s nightstand, still plugged into the charger.
Will and I spent the rest of the day walking the same path Rebecca would have taken, knocking on doors, and putting out word on the town’s social media to call us if anyone got any tips, but so far, we had nothing to go on.
Just before the end of the day, we reconvened in our office to go over everything. We were both tired, cold, and muddy from trekking through the fields, with nothing to show for it.
“What do you think?” Will asked. The case notes were spread out on our shared desk space; the office was so small we had to push them together to have any room to move.
“Honestly?” I sighed heavily. “I think she ran away again.”
“Me, too. I just felt like a dick saying it,” he admitted with a wince.
“Amelie said she always talked to her boyfriend on the walk, so it’s hard to imagine her forgetting her phone, even in the chaos of the morning they had. The most likely scenario is that she left it on purpose, knowing her parents could use it to track her.”
“I’d do the same thing if I were her and wanted to meet my secret boyfriend.”
“There’s nothing between the two houses but the trees and we didn’t find any signs of her or of any sort of struggle.” The ground was too frozen for any tracks to be visible, but there was a faint path winding through the trees. The Perez and DeVor families had been friendly for years, and generations of kids going to play with each other had created a trail of beaten earth between the two houses.
“That curve in the road would be a great place for someone to wait for her,” Will added. “Once it bends around, you can’t see it through the trees from the Perez house. If her boyfriend were smart, he’d wait there and pick her up.”
“If he were smart, he wouldn’t be dating a sixteen-year-old girl.”
“True.” Will glanced over at the door, which we’d closed this time upon arriving back at the department. “Hey… this feels weird to ask, but you haven’t heard from Alex, have you?”
