by P J Stanley
missing
Emily’s fingers tapped nervously on the wooden counter in front of her as her eyes darted left and right, scanning the deserted lobby of the Elwood Police Department. It had been four hours since she left Blair’s apartment complex. But there was still no word from Blair. This wasn’t normal. Something was wrong, very, very wrong. Emily stared down at her white sneakers as her stomach twisted, the pain radiating from her belly button to the center of her chest. Her legs trembled beneath her weight as she leaned forward, balancing herself against the counter as she waited for someone, anyone, to come and help her.
“I’m sorry, ma’am. I hope you haven’t been waiting too long.”
The thick, southern accent rang in Emily’s ears as she quickly looked up from her shoes and stared back at a tall, gangly officer behind the front wooden counter. A thick, gray mustache sat above his top lip, his gray hair slicked back beneath an Elwood Police baseball cap.
“No, I just got here,” Emily lied, swallowing as she felt her heart speed inside of her chest. “I think I need to file a report for a missing person.”
“Okay, well, who is the missing person?”
“It’s my daughter. Her name is Blair Bradley. She’s twenty-one, and she lives at 804 Maple Road, apartment 4B.”
“So, your daughter is above the age of eighteen?” the officer asked, resting his pointy elbows on top of the wooden counter.
“Yes?”
“Well, the standard procedure is to wait seventy-two hours before filing a report, ma’am.”
“Seventy-two hours? What am I supposed to do? She won’t answer my phone calls or my texts. She could be dead in seventy-two hours,” Emily snarled, shaking her head. “I need to fill out a report and I need to fill it out NOW.”
“Ma’am, I can’t do that. The law requires a seventy-two-hour wait for these types of cases. Have you talked to her friends? Does she have a boyfriend or anything like that?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to them all! They haven’t seen her or heard from her, either. This isn’t like her. If you knew her, you’d understand. She would never just leave town,” Emily said, shaking her head as the tears built in her hazel eyes.
“That’s what a lot of parents say, ma’am. But the fact of the matter is that young kids like the ones out there today don’t really take the time to think about how their absence can affect others. I’m sure she’ll return home soon. Until then, there is nothing I can do. But, if you come back in seventy-two hours, we can file a report.”
“You want me to go home, and sit on my couch, and wait for three whole God damn days while my daughter is out there! You want me to just sit around and pray that some psycho doesn’t have her?” Emily snarled. She felt her blood boil as her heart raced in her chest, faster and faster. Emily’s fists clenched as the warmth in her cheeks grew hotter and hotter. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Officer Paul Ferris, ma’am,” the officer said, tilting his head to the right as his tired, red eyes glared back at her from across the counter.
“Do you have a daughter?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Well, then, that clears it up. You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t understand the pain and the worry. You’ve never felt the fear grow inside of you, twisting and pulling on every muscle and organ it can reach. My daughter is out there somewhere and the longer we sit here and talk about a seventy-two hour wait time, the more danger she is in! Now, please can I just file a report? Please!” Emily begged as the warm tears trickled down her red cheeks.
“Ma’am, I can’t do that. I understand your pain and frustration.”
“No, you don’t! Don’t stand there and say you do, because you don’t! This is my daughter, God damn it. She’s just a kid, sir. Something is wrong! Something is terribly wrong. She would never do this. She would never go anywhere without telling someone!” Emily snapped. “Please, I am begging you. Can you please talk to the sheriff? Can you please talk to someone, anyone who can help me? I can’t just go home and lay in bed knowing she’s out there, that someone might have her.”
“The sheriff isn’t in right now, but I can have him possibly call you,” Officer Ferris said as he ripped a sticky note from the pad beside him.
“Thank you,” Emily said as she ran her hands over her cheeks, wiping the tears away.
“Can you describe her for me? Do you have a picture?”
“Yes, I do!” Emily said, nearly breathless, as she set her black purse on the counter and dug inside for her wallet. “She’s got blue eyes and blonde hair. She’s roughly five-three. She’s got a scar, a tiny scar on her forehead from falling off a teeter-totter when she was eight,” Emily said as she pulled out the high school photograph of Blair and slid it across the counter to Officer Ferris.
“All right, I will give this to the sheriff and it’s up to him. Now, I can’t promise anything, but I will have him call you.”
“Thank you,” Emily said.
“Now, just go home and try to get some rest. I know it’s hard. I know I’m probably asking the impossible from you, but try not to worry. We see cases like this all the time, especially with students’ parents at the university. More likely than not, she’ll show up. Just try to be positive and calm.”
“That’s easier said than done.” Emily sighed as she glanced to her right to see a large bulletin board mounted on the wall, every inch of the corkboard covered with missing posters. Emily swallowed as she stepped toward the board, her teary eyes scanning the faces, male and female, all around Blair’s age. Their smiling faces stared back at Emily as she felt her stomach sink deeper and deeper inside of her. “What about all of them?”
“Sometimes, people just don’t want to be found,” Officer Ferris said, barely audible, as he cleared his throat.
How did it come to this? Just yesterday, she was sitting across from Blair, eating and talking and laughing. Now, it was as if she just disappeared into thin air, gone in the blink of an eye. What if she missed the signs? What if Blair said something, anything that might point to an answer? Emily closed her eyes, playing their conversations over and over in her head. Nothing. There was not a single syllable uttered at that booth inside Joe’s Diner that would point to this.
She wasn’t scared.
She wasn’t angry or upset.
She was happy. Emily knew what she had to do. It was the last thing she wanted to do or needed right now. She swallowed as she dug into her purse that dangled from her shoulder and pulled out her cellphone. She scrolled through her contacts and pressed on her screen. She brought her phone to her ear as the rings echoed through her speaker.
“Hey, Mitch, it’s Emily,” she said, her voice trembling as her teary eyes stared back at the dozens of missing posters plastered on the corkboard in front of her. “It’s Blair, Mitch. She’s—” Emily had trouble continuing, as if speaking the words aloud would somehow make them true. “She’s gone.”
lost
“I don’t give a damn what the protocol is, sheriff! Blair is out there, and we are not going to just sit here and drive ourselves crazy!” Mitch screamed into his cellphone that he held to his right ear. Emily wrapped her arms around her body as she shifted in the chair at her kitchen table, watching as Mitch’s face grew redder with every syllable that spat out from between his lips.
It had now been thirty-two hours since Emily had last seen Blair at Joe’s Diner. Emily’s eyes drifted to the touchscreen of her cellphone that sat in front of her. She tapped in her passcode, praying to see a notification from Blair — a text, a phone call, anything. But nothing ever came. Emily leaned forward, resting her hot forehead on the cold, slick surface of the edge of the table, her heartbeat pounding in her ears as the throbbing in her skull radiated through her eyes and down the back of her neck.
Blair was out there.
All alone.
Terrified.
Her baby.
Her only child, scared and alone. She could hear
Blair’s voice in her head. She could hear the cries for help, the sobs and sniffles as she cried and screamed Emily’s name. They wouldn’t go away. They wouldn’t be silenced. It was like a record, spinning around and around inside of her pounding head, tormenting her with the horrific possibilities zipping through her mind. What if someone had taken her? What if she was already across the Illinois border? How could she let this happen? Her own daughter…
Emily knew there was nothing she could have done to stop this. She knew that whatever happened to Blair was beyond her control. But as a mother, she felt the weight resting on her tiny shoulders. Blair was her baby. She couldn’t even protect her own child from the monsters. Not the kind of imaginary monsters lingering beneath your bed, reaching under the covers, their fingers dancing toward your ankle dangling over the edge. But the real monsters.
The rapists.
The kidnappers.
The murderers.
She always told her to fight back. She always told her to scream and to shout and to do whatever it took to survive, to get away. Emily lifted her head as Zoey’s words played again inside of her brain. Why would Blair want to drop out? Why did Blair never mention it to Emily? She thought they were closer than that. They were mother and daughter, but also, the closest of friends. There had to be more to the story. She had to talk to Zoey again, before it was too late.
“Thank you! Now, call us if you find anything!” Mitch snarled as he yanked the phone from his ear and ended the call. He turned, his red eyes glaring back at Emily as she rested her elbows on the wooden table in front of her.
“What are they going to do?” Emily asked, her voice cracking from the hours of crying.
“The sheriff agreed to file the report. They’re going to have a couple of deputies drive around town and look for her,” Mitch said as he walked to the table and sat in the chair beside Emily.
“God,” Emily said, her voice breaking as she stared down to the tabletop, burying her face in her hands as the warm tears streamed down her red cheeks.
“Emily,” Mitch said as tears began to build in his brown eyes. “Emily, just try to stay calm. They’ll find her. We will find her. I promise. I’ll do everything in my power to bring her back home.”
“What— what if—,” Emily choked, the words clogging her throat. She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t dare utter the words.
“She is fine. I promise you she is all right. Blair is a strong girl, Emily, just like you,” Mitch said, his voice trembling as he placed his hand flat against Emily’s back, his palm moving in circles along the back of her black sweater.
“I am just so scared, Mitch, of what they might find,” Emily cried as she looked to Mitch beside her. “You see this all the time, all over the news. You think where were her parents? You think why didn’t they tell her to be more careful? You think something like this can never, ever happen to you, and one day it does. And you feel so helpless and so empty.” Emily sobbed. “I can’t just sit here and wait. I have to go out there. I have to find her. I have to find my daughter.”
“No, you need to stay here in case she comes back. Greg and Kate are on their way over here. Me and him are going to go drive around and see what we can find out. We’re going to talk to everyone, ask everyone if they saw her today.” Mitch nodded.
“I just never thought something like this would happen, not to Blair,” Emily cried as her red eyes fluttered down to her lap. “She was always so smart. What if someone she knows has her? She wouldn’t just go off with a total stranger.”
“Anyone here?” a deep voice rang out as the front door creaked open from the foyer behind them.
“We’re in here,” Mitch called out as he stood up, grabbing his black leather jacket from the back of Emily’s chair. Emily ran her trembling hands over her eyes as Greg and Kate McCallister walked into the tiny kitchen. Kate shuffled forward, making her way toward the kitchen table as she grabbed the straps of her yellow robe and tied it closed around her light blue maternity nightgown.
“Are you all right?” Kate asked with a frown as she rushed to Emily’s side and threw her arms around her.
“I can’t even believe this is happening,” Emily said as Kate sat down at the table beside her.
“Have you heard anything? Have the police found something?” Kate asked as Mitch and Greg stepped up beside the kitchen table.
“They’re filing the report as we speak and are having a few of the deputies patrol the area. I was thinking Greg and I could help them out, check around her apartment and downtown,” Mitch said, shoving his hands into his jean pockets.
“Go, go! I’ll stay with her.” Kate nodded, wrapping her arm around Emily.
“I love you,” Greg said as he leaned forward, kissing Kate’s soft, pink lips.
“I love you, too. Both of you be careful,” Kate said as Greg and Mitch turned, rushing out of the kitchen doorway.
“How are you holding up?” Kate asked, nearly whispering, as Emily turned toward her. Kate reached forward and ran her fingers beneath Emily’s eyes, wiping away the tears.
“All I keep seeing is her face,” Emily said as she shook her head. Emily tossed her head back as her eyes stared up at the ceiling, clearing the long brown strands of hair from her damp cheeks. “I just see her smile and her dimples, and the scar and her hands,” Emily cried as she looked to Kate beside her. “My baby is gone. My baby girl is out there all alone and terrified and there is not a God damn thing I can do about it. Mitch wants me to be calm and the police expect me to just shut up and cooperate and wait for answers. But I can’t do that, Kate. I can’t just sit here. You should have seen all the posters at the station. There were dozens and dozens of them, all of them, just forgotten. I won’t sit here and let Blair be forgotten. I won’t sit here and just let her become some statistic, some pretty girl no one could ever find. If Mitch can’t find her, and if the police can’t find her, then I’m going to do everything in my God damn power to find her. I won’t stop,” Emily said, shaking her head as her voice trembled. “I will never stop looking for her until one of us is dead.”
clean
Emily’s tired eyes stared forward at the outside of Zoey Duncan’s apartment door as she lifted her hand into the air and knocked. Zoey was probably going to think she was crazy. They had just spoken yesterday about Blair, and here she was again, on her doorstep, begging for more answers. Emily yawned as she heard the deadbolt turn on the other side. She hadn’t slept a wink last night. She just kept tossing and turning, checking her phone every five minutes. But no calls ever came. No texts ever arrived. Zoey pulled the apartment door open and stared back at Emily as her eyes widened.
“Oh, Miss Keller,” Zoey said, resting her shoulder against the door. “Did you find Blair?”
“No, we haven’t, not yet,” Emily said , fixating on the red carpet. She needed answers. And she knew Zoey had them. “Can I come in? I just wanted to ask you a couple more questions about Blair.”
“Oh, I’m really busy right now. I’ve got a final in two days and…”
“This will only take a couple of minutes. I promise I won’t take much of your time. I just—” Emily stopped as she swallowed, fighting back the tears as they filled her eyes. “I don’t know who else to turn to.” Emily nodded. Zoey tilted her head to the right, watching Emily in the silence that closed in around them.
“I guess I can take a break for a bit.” Zoey smiled as she stepped back, clearing the way for Emily.
“Thank you,” Emily said, stepping into Zoey’s apartment as she closed the front door. “I really am sorry for doing this. I just can’t seem to fit the pieces together, Zoey. Everything you told me yesterday was just shocking.” Emily nodded as she sat on the white sofa.
“I didn’t mean to upset you with all of that.” Zoey swallowed, shaking her head as she sat on the sofa beside Emily. “You are her mother, so I just thought you would want to know.”
“I did, and I thank you for that,” Emily said as she res
ted her hands on her lap. “I just can’t help but feel like there’s more.”
“What would make you feel that way?”
“Well, I mean, you and Blair were best friends for a long time, all through high school. And now it’s like you’re two total strangers to one another,” Emily said.
“I guess we both just changed a lot.” Zoey shrugged. “We just kind of went our separate ways.”
“Just like that? Over her going out to the bars a couple of times? Sounds like a childish thing to end a friendship over if you ask me.”
“I just don’t really think it’s my place,” Zoey spat out as she stood up and moved toward the window, crossing her arms over her chest as she stared out through the glass.
“What are you talking about?” Emily asked as she stood up, staring at Zoey’s back. “Something else did happen, didn’t it?” Emily asked. Zoey turned, her eyes glued to Emily, as she nodded.
“We had a tiny disagreement,” Zoey said.
“Over?”
“Over a guy,” Zoey said, her jaw tightening.
“Over a guy? Cole?”
“No, not Cole.” Zoey groaned, sticking her tongue out in disgust as she walked around Emily and sat back down on the sofa. Emily turned, sitting down beside Zoey as she grabbed a pillow and hugged it to her chest.
“It was a professor of ours,” Zoey said, almost whispering. “I went on a couple of dates with him and Blair knew I really liked him; she knew how serious I was about him. Well, I went to dinner with my mom one night and I saw them there together. They were all over each other, kissing and holding hands.”
“She was cheating on Cole?” Emily asked, her jaw dropping.
“Yeah, she was. I could have told him. I could have ruined her entire relationship, but I didn’t. Because I’m not that person. I wasn’t as heartless as she was. She knew how I felt about Professor Alden. I confronted her, and she lied straight to my face. She said it wasn’t her and that I was being paranoid.”