by Steven Swaks
She peered at the car about fifty feet away, bringing her hand above her eyes to shield the strong head lights.
The driver opened the door. The silhouette was familiar. She knew that person.
Long is the Night
Tracy consulted her watch: 08:45 PM. Jessica was supposed to be home by 7:30, 8:00 at most. She didn’t really worry about her sister’s whereabouts, but a little voice was telling her that 45 minutes late was highly unusual. 45 minutes for Tracy was common, if not early. 45 minutes for Jessica was way out of the norm.
Tracy pondered on the course of action. Wait, or call? If she called, she would sound like their mother, Honey, I was getting worried. You need to call if you’re late. Yuck, she couldn’t lower herself to that level. She would wait.
Tracy was lying on her bed, headphones on, heavy metal full blast. These guys knew their music. She closed her eyes and enjoyed Accept, the best German heavy metal band. She reopened her eyes. Something was going on. She could sense it. She removed the headphones. The music was becoming loud noise. She picked up her phone. If she had to sound like her mother, she would. Big deal.
She punched the numbers and waited for the dial tone. The phone rang once, twice, she looked at her clock, 8:51 pm, highly unusual. The phone continued ringing another few times. The voice mail took over.
“Hi, this is Jessica! Leave me a message, and I will call you back as soon as I can! Have a blessed day!”
“Jess, it’s me, call me back as soon as you get this… thanks.” Tracy hung up.
What now? Dad was out of town. Mom would freak out if she found out that her baby was late, and Jessica had the only spare car. Call her ex-boyfriend? Was there anybody else? She wasn’t exactly Miss Popular in town. What about Pastor Rich? Calling him would be worse than calling the cops. Tracy might as well be on the pulpit on Sunday to confess that she smoked weed, drunk booze, and played Easter Bunny with her boyfriend, in front of that blood-sucking congregation. Most of them suspected it anyway.
She couldn’t wait there like an idiot, either. She picked up her phone and called Brad. She could picture his idiotic grin when he answered the call.
“Yes, dear? Did you change your mind about us?”
“There’s no us. I’d rather turn into a nun.”
“You? A nun?” Brad chuckled on the phone, “I’d like to see that. Sister Tracy, pray for us, poor sinners,” he exploded in a taunting laughter.
“And after you wonder why I dumped you?” she didn’t wait for an answer, “I need your help.”
“You need my help? Wait, you dumped me, remember? And after that, you need my help?”
“It’s for my sister–”
“You have to be on something, Honey.”
“Forget it–”
His voice became stern. “Wait, for your sister? Jessica?”
“I only have one.”
“What about her? What’s wrong with her?”
“She’s late.”
“Your sister is never late. She would call if she was. How late is she?”
“Almost an hour.”
There was a silence. “Did you talk to anybody else? Your mom?”
“No, she’d freak out.”
“Did you try to call her?”
“Of course I did, what do you think, that I’m an idiot?”
“Come to think of it, I’m kinda glad you dumped me.”
“Are you going to help me, or not?”
“Sure, what do you want me to do? Do you even know where she went?”
“She goes to the Pine Park on Tuesday after school.”
“Do you think she’s still there?”
“The hell if I know!”
“Relax. Let me pick you up, and let’s go up there. Maybe she broke down or something.”
27 minutes later, Brad was driving his black Ford F-150 down the highway. His high-beam lights illuminating the dark night like two projectors in the darkness.
“No luck?” He asked Tracy who hung up the phone trying to call her sister one more time.
“You should call your mother, Trace.”
“Let’s wait a bit. If we don’t find her by the time we get to the trailer park, I’ll give her a holler.” She was reluctant to call her. A call meant admitting that something had happened. They would find Jessica in a minute. Her junky car had broken down on the side of the road. That was all.
“Can’t you go any faster?” She asked Brad.
“I don’t want to pass her and miss her.”
“How can you pass her? It’s a two lane highway.”
“Maybe she stopped on a fire road.”
Tracy shrugged, “Why would she park on a fire road?”
“Because she had engine trouble, and she didn’t want to stop in the middle of the… there’s a light there!”
Tracy stretched forward to get a better view.
“There!” Brad pointed on the left, “There’re headlights.”
“It’s too dim.” Tracy couldn’t see anything more than two faint lights in the darkness.
“It’s a car. It’s in the ditch!” The pickup truck slowed down and rolled closer. “That’s her car!”
“Stop!” Tracy yelled.
“I’m stopping.” Brad parked his truck in front of Jessica’s car and turned his hazard lights on.
The Camry’s headlights were weak but still on. Tracy ran to the driver side and opened the unlocked door. She backed up. “She’s not there. Where is she?” For the first time, she looked at Brad with true fear in her eyes. “JESSICA!!” She screamed in the quiet night.
Nobody answered.
Brad walked out of his truck with a long Maglite flash light. He hugged her, “Trace, we’re going to find her. Maybe she went down the road to find somebody.”
“In the dark? She didn’t even turn her lights off.” Tears pooled out of her eyes.
Brad went to her car and leaned into the front. “The keys are still in the ignition. The car must have been here for a while. The headlights are dying.”
She shook her head. “It doesn’t mean anything. The battery was already weak.”
He swiped through the car with his flashlight. “Trace…”
“What?”
“Her phone is here.” Brad’s face was grave.
“Why would she leave her phone?”
Brad pulled out of the Toyota and peered around him with the powerful light.
“I’m scared, Brad. Something’s happened to her. I can tell.”
His beam stopped on a small object on the side of the road. Brad didn’t mention anything and walked to it. “Oh, God.”
“What?” Tracy said.
“That’s her shoe.”
Police Force
The first police cruiser arrived in twelve minutes. Not a bad time considering the isolated location. Officer Jameson took another minute to walk out of his car. He adjusted his belt, almost trying to delay the inevitable. His dispatcher had told him the basics, missing girl in the woods, at night. This was a bad combo. She might have tried to walk to town, which was closer than Pine Park, but nobody had seen anything. There were a few hunting cabins in between, but they were unoccupied this time of the year.
He introduced himself to Brad and Tracy.
They briefed him on what they knew: her time due back, the phone left in the car, and the lone sneaker fifty feet away.
“Are you sure it’s her shoe?” He asked.
“That’s all she wears, white sneakers.”
“Did you touch anything?”
“I sat in the car,” Brad said.
Another two police cars rolled in with lights flashing in the dark night.
“I’m going to ask you to stay by my car,” Jameson said.
“Aren’t you going to look for her?” Tracy asked.
“My sergeant is here. Let me talk to him, and I’ll let you know what he says.”
They both walked to the cruiser and waited while Jameson talked to his sergeant.
> The older man glanced in their direction while listening attentively. He had seen missing kids before, but they were mostly runaways because they had gotten into a fight with daddy or mommy.
This was no fight. This was something else. Bad karma was knocking on the door. He could tell that much.
Sergeant Berkley nodded a few times. He gave instructions to the two officers and walked to Tracy and Brad. He quickly interviewed them to clarify a few points about her trip to Pine Park, down to her clothing, a long white dress and a light wool sweater.
Brad and Tracy stayed by the cruiser without a word.
A few stars appeared between thick clouds in the night sky. It could have been beautiful if the night was not so stressful. They breathed out warm puffs of air in the cool night.
Berkley walked to Jameson. “No one touches anything until Delano shows up.”
Jameson nodded.
The sergeant picked up his mic, “Unit 55, S1.”
“S1 Go ahead, 55.”
“Go up the road to Pine Park. Check the fire roads on the way. We are looking for an eighteen-year-old female with blond hair. She was wearing a white ankle-length dress with a light sweater. I’ll send you back up as soon as they arrive.”
“10-4.”
“I need to tell my mom,” Tracy said.
Sergeant Brad looked at her with a slow nod.
The phone never even left her hand. She looked at it for a while, as if the screen was a piece of art.
“You need to call, Trace,” Brad said in a soft voice.
She dialed the number.
Brad would have liked to hear the talk. Or would he? He could only hear what his ex-girlfriend was saying in a one-way conversation.
“I know you’re busy, Mom.” Tracy was trying hard to hold her tears.
“Mom… Jess is missing…” she took a deep breath.
Brad could hear exclamations on the phone.
“She went to the trailer park… on Pine Road… we found her car in a ditch…” Tracy didn’t want to give too many details. She didn’t want to talk about the keys in the ignition, the cell phone in the car, and the shoe in the middle of the road. “You need to come, Mom… no, I can’t talk to Dad… you call him….” She hung up after a short while.
She gazed at Brad. Her black eyeliner trickled down her wet cheeks. “I’m scared, Brad.”
He laced his arms around her, “It’s going to be all right,” and kissed her on the forehead.
A black Crown Victoria with a single burning red light pulled behind one of the cruisers. Detective Delano stepped out of his car, coffee thermos in hand.
“How are you guys holding up?” He asked the young ex-couple.
“She’s shook up,” Brad said.
“I know you already told your story a few times, but can you run me through what you know?”
Brad repeated the briefing. Tracy huddled against him, unable to say much more.
Delano nodded a few times, asked questions to clarify a few details and the time line, occasionally jotting down a few comments in a pocket-sized notepad.
“Let me take a look at the scene for a moment. I’ll be back.” He walked to Berkley and Jameson. “What the hell is going on in this town?” He muttered.
“You don’t want to know what I think,” Berkley said.
“I have a few ideas, but let’s focus on this girl. Did we hear anything from your search units?” Delano asked Berkley.
“I have four cruisers looking for her.”
“We need to get her quick. I have a bad feeling about this one.” A fine drizzle started coming down. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This thing is going to trash the scene. Where’s the damn canopy?”
“It’s in the command post,” Berkley said.
“Well, where’s the command post, then?”
“We, uh, we didn’t call it yet. We didn’t think it was a crime scene. We just thought the girl was lost.”
“You’ve got to be kidding me,” he said quietly, “what else do you need to call this a crime scene? Her guts on the windshield? Damn it! This rain is going to wash off everything.”
Berkley stepped away and called dispatch.
Delano strode back to Tracy and Brad. “Let’s go into my car.” The detective sat in the front and turned around to face them in the back seat. “We haven’t heard anything yet, but we have several units looking for her. I don’t think it is relevant, but I need to ask you. Do you know if anybody would want to hurt her in any way?”
“There’s a guy from church who has been bothering her,” Tracy said.
“What’s his name?”
“Jeffrey Simons.”
“What did he do exactly?”
Tracy ran through what happened, the comments, the visit to the high school, and she finished with her father’s call to the police chief. “Do you think he has something to do with that?”
“That would be a stretch. The car has no obvious damage on the left side, so I don’t think that somebody tried to run her off the road. We found some skid marks as if she tried to avoid something, maybe an animal.”
“Can you talk to Simons?”
“I can do that, but hopefully that’s not going to happen, and my men are going to find her walking down the road.”
“With only one shoe?” Brad asked.
Delano didn’t answer.
“Do you know if anybody else would bother her?”
“There’s a guy who has been on my back for a while.”
Brad looked at her with inquisitive eyes.
“I didn’t tell you. They’re those three jerks from the factory. It’s no big deal, but they keep messing with me. They send me stupid texts, but I think they only wanted to mess with me.” She gave more detailed explanations to the detective, but she couldn’t provide a name.
Condensation started forming on the windows. Sergeant Berkley knocked on the driver side and motioned to the detective to come out of the car.
Delano did and closed the door behind him. “What is it?”
“We found the girl.”
Fire Road
Detective Delano drove to the scene four miles from Jessica’s car. Jessica hovered in his mind like a butterfly stuck in a glass jar. He had never met her, but she sounded like a nice girl. Gina Hawkins and her mother on the other hand were both nuts. Not that they deserved to die, but it was the logical ending to a sad dynamic. Larry Cherlin’s hanging case was ruled a suicide. They had done a quick investigation about him to rule out foul play. It was a suicide. Case closed.
Young Jessica was another story. He hated to see innocence stricken. Crooks, prostitutes, gangbangers, he didn’t care, but high school kids… it wasn’t right.
The family didn’t help either. They were usually loving parents who broke down at the simple idea of talking about what had happened. This was harder than anything else, harder than the investigation, even harder than the scene by itself.
Two police cruisers were already on the new scene, with red and blue lights reflecting in the night. He parked behind one of the two. He picked up his clipboard and black raincoat on the passenger seat, and extricated himself from the low Crown Victoria. Years of unhealthy eating were taking its toll on his weary body. How could he be on a regular diet when he was always on the go?
He slipped his coat over his white business shirt, tie, and older jacket. That was where the neat appearance stopped. A long time ago, he had learned the hard way to dump the dress shoes and pants. Blue jeans and work boots took over for the bottom. They were in Stone Falls, not New York City.
Delano stayed detached but methodic and was certainly unwilling to miss any details. The detective took a minute to survey the scene. It was a moonless night beneath growing clouds. A light drizzle was already falling on and off over the damp forest.
An officer with a yellow raincoat walked out of the woods close to a narrow fire road. “The girl’s down there,” He looked back and indicated the left side of the path. “She’s a
hundred feet away.”
“How did you get there?”
“I walked off the path to avoid messing up any tracks.”
“Good call.”
The officer shook his head. “The guy was careful. He brushed off his prints with a branch or something like that.”
Delano rolled his eyes. “Great…”
“Officer Gonzales stayed with her,” the patrolman jerked his hand toward a beam of light bouncing in the darkness.
“Did you cover her?”
“Not yet.”
“You do that ASAP. Go get a yellow tarp.”
“You got it.” The young officer ran to his cruiser parked at the edge of the road.
The detective walked to Jessica Miller, the spongy ground giving under each of his heavy footsteps. He took a deep breath. The cool air felt good, almost like an inner cleansing. A few fat drops of water from branches high above him fell on his hood.
Officer Gonzales was looking at something on the ground. Delano knew all too well what it was. Something in the order of nature was off. This was not supposed to be, but he was there to correct the wrong. He was there to make it right, as much as he could.
Young Jessica Miller lay in the middle of ferns at the edge of the fire road, face down in the moss. The scene was worse than he had expected. The young girl’s wrists were bound together, tied up behind her back with duct tape. Her white dress was torn, physical witness of the savagery that had taken her life.
What had happened to her? Delano knew, but even a hardened city cop had weaknesses.
“Did you check for a pulse?” he asked Officer Gonzales.
“No.”
“What are you guys doing? You said she was dead! I told the family she was dead! The sister is catatonic with the boyfriend, and the mother is hysterical!”
“They slashed her throat.”
“Good Lord…” Delano looked away for an instant and shined his flashlight on the injury. His gaze went back to the officer. “Tape up the scene. I don’t want anybody to walk on that trail. Block off the road, too. Nobody parks within one-hundred feet from the fire road entrance. The guy probably parked there and walked all the way here.”