by Hunt, James
The woman had been through a lot, a history littered with pain; it was one of the reasons why she always wore those long-sleeved shirts, even in the summertime. It was a different kind of pain than Grant had experienced, but he always believed you never know about the rocks in other people’s shoes. She brushed the dark-brown bangs from her forehead to behind her ear, exposing the massive rock of her wedding ring, and gave the lighter another flick.
“I know you’ve been answering a lot of my partner’s questions, so I won’t waste time repeating some of the things I’m sure she’s already asked, but I just want to let you know I’ve already reached out to state and federal officials, and I’ve already spoken with my lieutenant about scheduling an Amber Alert if it’s needed,” Grant said.
“Of course it’s needed!” Dana blurted the words out like a machine gun, and the sudden outburst surprised even her, as she quickly covered her mouth and shut her eyes. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just—” She drew in a quick breath, and her lower lip quivered. “It’s just that this isn’t like Mallory. She doesn’t just skip school. She doesn’t run off. I’m telling you someone took her.”
Grant placed a hand on Dana Givens’s arm and nodded. “And we’re going to do everything we can to find out what happened. In the meantime, do you have anyone that you can call to come and pick you up, Miss Givens?”
“No. I’ll just take the bus home.”
“I’ll have one of our officers take you back.” Grant reached into his pocket and removed one of his business cards and handed it to Ms. Givens as he helped her up and out of the room. “If you need anything, that card has my cell number on it. Any updates that I have in regards to your daughter I’ll let you know personally.”
“Please, you have to find her.” Dana clutched Grant by both arms and squeezed tight, her nails digging through the cloth of the sleeves on his shirt. “You have to.”
“We’ll do everything we can,” Grant said then motioned to Banks, who came over and took Dana by the shoulder. Banks escorted Dana through the office, and Mocks gave Grant a gentle shove on the arm.
“You wanted to say it, didn’t you?” Mocks asked.
Department protocol was clear when it came to missing persons cases. No matter the circumstance, no matter the evidence or testimony, an officer of the law never told a victim’s family that they would catch the individuals responsible. It provided nothing but a false sense of hope, and it put the department in libel territory, especially in the digital age of social media where anything could go viral.
“When I’m not here I need you to take notes,” Grant said.
“Why? You can just read the report when I’m done.” Mocks reclined in the chair and stretched her arms back, her left hand still clutching that lighter.
Grant raised both eyebrows, waiting for his partner to speak. “Are you going to keep me in suspense?”
Mocks rocked forward in her chair quickly, her forearms thumping against the table. “Dana Givens, twenty-nine-year-old mother who got knocked up when she was seventeen. The girl’s father is Chet Hoverty, some bum that never stuck around. Girl is twelve years old and a sixth grader over at Southside Middle. Mother works over sixty hours a week at a diner in downtown Seattle, barely makes ends meet. Classic case of a single parent who isn’t in touch with her kid. No boyfriends, no family in the area.”
If the girl went to Southside Middle, then she lived in a rough area, but Grant imagined the mother’s waitressing job didn’t provide the best income. “Anything on the dad?”
Mocks looked up, the harsh fluorescent lighting of the office exposing the freckles that dotted her pale cheeks. “I ran a query on him before I took the mom into the room. The nutsack that provided the needed sperm for their union has a rap sheet like an encyclopedia. And you never answered my question.”
“What question?” Grant asked.
“Why you didn’t promise her we’d find her daughter,” Mocks said.
“Your realism has rubbed off on me, Mocks,” Grant said. Though the truth was that he’d tossed those promises around too frequently when he first joined the missing persons unit. And he found out quickly that he couldn’t keep all of the promises he made. At the time the promises were just something he had to do. It was his way of coping. It was how he worked through his own broken promises.
“You know I never skipped school,” Mocks said, lifting up the picture of Mallory Givens that her mother had brought in. “Until the first time.”
Grant took a seat and prepped the media package for the Amber Alert. “And I’m sure it wasn’t your last time.” He lifted the sleeve of his shirt and exposed his digital wristwatch and saw the timer already approaching the three-hour mark. The first six to twelve hours of a missing persons case were the most crucial. And if they wanted to find Mallory Givens alive, then they were going to have to pick up the pace.
3
Already into hour four, Grant completed the description of the girl and attached Mallory’s picture as the finishing touch. Mallory had short brown hair, freckles on her cheeks, green eyes, and according to her mother would have never left the house without her pink backpack and orange rain slicker. Though if someone did take her, Grant wouldn’t imagine those things would be around for very long.
All of the information had to be pried from Mocks’s mind vault, and she always reveled in the knowledge of things she knew that Grant didn’t. In a lot of ways she was the younger sister he never had or really wanted.
“You all caught up?” Mocks asked, taking a bite out of her frosted strawberry Pop-Tart. It was her midmorning snack. She said they helped her think better.
“Yeah,” Grant answered, finishing up the report and sliding it into the folder. “I think we’ve got all of our t’s crossed and our i’s dotted.”
Crumbs sprinkled onto Mocks’s shirt, and she brushed them aside as she took another bite that quickly replaced the Pop-Tart particles she wiped away. “So how do you want to handle this one?” Despite her God-given ability as a detective, and at times her inopportune mouth, she still looked to him for guidance.
“I’m heading over to the school,” Grant said, sliding his arm through his jacket sleeve. The last night’s rain had brought with it a new cold front, and even at the end of March it wasn’t going to get above fifty today. “I need you to go to the Givens’s house and scope out the girl’s room, see what you can find.”
“You hear back from any of the agencies?” Mocks asked.
“No, but I’ll call you when I do.” Grant walked backwards and pointed a finger at Mocks. “And be nice to Ms. Givens when you get there, all right? She’s unlikely to have made any progress in calming her nerves.”
Mocks devoured the last bite of her Pop-Tart, smacking her lips loudly, talking with her mouth still full. “I’m always nice. It’s just not always perceived that way.”
There were a few more congratulations on the way out the door from his previous case, all of which were ignored save for one, which came from the captain, who had stepped out of his office to shake Grant’s hand personally.
“Fantastic work, Detective.” Captain Hill was pushing retirement age and had accepted his fate as a desk jockey for however many months he had left. “You’ve made this department look very, very good.”
“Thank you, Captain.”
“Just got off the phone with the mayor, and they want to give you some type of award.” The captain gave a hearty laugh. “Seems that ambassador fellow from—say, where was the girl from again?”
“It was the ambassador to the Philippines, sir.”
“Yes, well, he wants to thank you personally for the matter. You have a date with him tomorrow morning.”
With the fresh case on his desk, it was hard to get excited about something that would interrupt the new investigation. Under normal circumstances he would have declined, but with the political persuasion the ambassador carried, he didn’t think it was something he could avoid. And in those situations, especially wh
en it came to politics, he found it best to go with the flow.
“Thank you for letting me know, sir,” Grant said.
“We’ll see you tomorrow.”
The captain waddled back to his office, and Grant lingered in the station’s foyer. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”
Grant stopped by the lieutenant’s office, and his direct supervisor wasn’t at his desk, which was a rarity. There were times when Grant thought the man was a part of the desk and chair he always sat at. It was hard to imagine him doing anything else other than paperwork, but the lieutenant had his own history with the department, one that involved a shootout from fifteen years ago. A bit of a taboo subject no one spoke about, and because of the hush-hush nature, the lieutenant had developed into a bit of an urban legend. Grant tossed the folder with Mallory Givens’s paperwork onto the lieutenant’s desk then went outside and hopped in his car.
The ride over to Mallory’s school took longer than he expected, the traffic already in full swing from the lunch crowd. The middle school was a more modern structure among the decaying neighborhood that surrounded it, an effort from taxpayers’ dollars to help perk up the zip code, though the new school didn’t fix the homeless or drug epidemic that was consuming the area.
With all of the kids still in class, the hallways were large and empty. Lockers lined the walls on the way to the main office, and when Grant stepped inside he was greeted by an elderly woman with thick glasses and knobby, arthritic fingers. She looked up from behind the receptionist’s desk with an expression that was no doubt intended to make kids feel like they were in more trouble than they actually were. “Can I help you?”
Grant flashed his badge. “I need to speak with the principal.”
“Yes?”
Grant turned and saw a woman dressed in slacks and a business jacket. She had short-cropped blond hair, wore no jewelry, but still looked like she could attend a high-price-ticket gala event somewhere, and looked nothing like the principal he remembered having as a middle schooler. Not in the slightest.
“I’m Detective Grant with Seattle PD,” Grant said, extending a hand that the principal shook firmly. “I was hoping I could take a few moments of your time and speak with you about one of your students.”
“Of course.” The principal’s heels fell silently on the carpet, and Grant followed her back into her office. She gestured to the seats in front of her desk and then shut the door. “I’m assuming this is about Mallory Givens?”
Grant reached inside his jacket and removed a notepad and pen. While Mocks didn’t have to take notes, he did. “What do you know about the situation”—he glanced down at the nameplate on the desk—“Principal Tanner?”
“You can call me Michelle.” Her red lips spread wide in a smile and contrasted heavily against her pale skin. She reminded him more of an attorney than a principal. Her eyes were focused, never straying off him. And they were bright blue. Beautifully blue.
“Michelle,” Grant said. “What do you know so far?”
“Mallory’s first-period teacher informed me that she wasn’t in class,” Michelle said. “When a student isn’t accounted for we notify the front office, and then Mrs. Harlow”—who Grant was betting was the old crow at the front desk—“cross-references that against any callouts from parents. If the student isn’t on that list, then we notify the parents via phone call. The same procedure was followed in this scenario, but after the parent is notified, that’s where our job ends.”
Grant scribbled a few notes down, nodding along while Michelle spoke. When he lifted his head again she smiled. His cheeks flushed, and he removed his coat. He was suddenly sweating. “Was Mallory in trouble often?”
Michelle shook her head, clasping her hands together, and Grant stole a quick glance at the bare left ring finger. “Mallory was an excellent student. Honor roll all year long. Never acted up in class. As principal you get to know the really bad students, and the really good ones.” She smiled. “Mallory was the best.”
“Has your resource officer noticed anything out of the ordinary in regards to adults in the area? Any irregular visits or sightings?” Grant asked.
“I have weekly meetings with him, and he’s never mentioned anything,” Michelle answered. “I can have Mrs. Harlow pull the visitor log if you’d like.”
“That would be very helpful.” Grant paused, and for a moment he forgot where he was.
“Anything else?” Michelle asked.
“Um, yes,” Grant said, tucking the pen and notepad into his jacket pocket, hoping that this second wave of heat didn’t flush his cheeks too much. “I wanted to speak with some of Mallory’s teachers.”
“I’ll have Mrs. Harlow print out a schedule. I’m sure one of her teachers is on their free period right now.”
It turned out there was a teacher on her free period. And it had been the same teacher that had alerted the principal that Mallory was not in class. Ann Colthern was a mousy woman and fit every stereotypical version of the eccentric English teacher. Her hair was wild and frizzy, sprouting from her head in random, untamed directions. She wore glasses as thick as coke bottles, and she curled her body inward as if opening up would expose her to an inescapable doom.
“I just can’t believe this is happening,” Mrs. Colthern said, dabbing a tissue under each eye, neither of which looked to be wet. “She was such a sweet girl.”
Grant ignored the show. He’d interviewed enough people in his lifetime to know when someone was playing it up. Not that he doubted the woman’s distress; he just didn’t think it was as bad as she was letting on. “And did Mallory mention anything to you about trouble at home?”
“No, but I do know her mother works a lot.” Mrs. Colthern shook her head. “Single mother. I heard the father is a deadbeat. Poor thing doesn’t even know him. That sort of thing can cause a lot of trauma, especially in the mind of a young girl.”
“Mallory told you this?” Grant asked.
“Well, no, but you know how people talk.”
“I do,” Grant replied, ignoring the scowl Mrs. Colthern made after the remark. “Is there anyone else she was close with here at the school? Friends? Other teachers?”
Mrs. Colthern shook her head, again adding a few dry dabs beneath her eye with the corner of her tissue. “She kept to herself a lot. Many things have changed since I was a student, but the intelligent loner as an outcast isn’t one of them.” She reached for a stack of papers on her desk, shuffled through them, then handed one of them to Grant.
A red A+ was circled at the top, accented with a smiley face, and Grant saw the name Mallory Givens written across the top.
“She was such a talented writer,” Mrs. Colthern said. “Always scribbling in her notebook. She was one of those students a teacher comes across maybe once a decade that makes you remember why you got into the profession in the first place.” She smiled. “Such a treat.”
Grant had never excelled in writing, but he could appreciate a good yarn. And from the small snippet he viewed of Mallory’s prose, he admitted that it was entertaining.
“Do you have any more of her work?” Grant asked.
“Of course!” Mrs. Colthern spun around and opened one of the drawers of a filing cabinet behind her desk. She shuffled through the folders and then pulled one out that was four inches thick. Still smiling, she handed over the documents. “Mallory was always doing assignments for extra credit. Not that she needed it for the grades. She just enjoyed the challenge.”
“Thank you for your time, Mrs. Colthern.”
“If you need anything else, please, let me know.” Mrs. Colthern grabbed Grant by the arm, her small hands unable to curl all the way around his bicep, which she squeezed tightly.
Grant gave a curt nod. “I will. Thank you.”
When Grant stepped out of the classroom and back into the hallway, there were a few dings over the PA system which signaled the end of the current period, and a few seconds later the empty hallway was flooded with middle schoolers.
&
nbsp; They traveled in packs, clusters of friends discussing anything but school. They chased after one another, the hall a cacophony of shrieks, laughter, and chatter. For a moment Grant was transported back in time, almost twenty-five years, to when he walked the halls of his own middle school. He could still remember his friends, the excitement, the drama, the fear that accompanied growing up in the jungle that was the public school system. He remembered students like Mallory, and while he didn’t participate in their ridicule, he didn’t do anything to stop it because it would have exposed him, and if there was one thing kids held onto during this phase in their life, it was safety in numbers.
Grant shuffled his way through the hordes of students and found Michelle speaking with Mrs. Harlow in the office. She stepped out of their glass-encased box of an administration office and handed him a folder.
“This was everything she had,” Michelle said. “If you need any—Jimmy! Slow down!” The boy did as he was told, and she turned back to Grant, giving a nervous laugh. “Sorry about that.”
“Remind me to never run in the halls,” Grant said then kicked himself for the stupid line. “I appreciate the help.” He reached into his pocket with his left hand and extended his card. “If you think of anything else, just call.” He paused. “I’d love to hear from you.”
And now it was Michelle’s turn to blush, but as she took the card from his hand, she paused when her eyes caught the gold band around Grant’s ring finger. He noticed her pause and then followed her line of sight to the ring. She let go of the card and took a step back.
“I can just call the department if I have anything,” Michelle said, crossing her arms. “I’m sure they can put me through to you.” The bell chimed, signaling the end of the transition into the next period. “Have a nice day, Detective Grant.”