Without a Whisper

"Caliber?" I ask, just to make sure I'm thinking of the right gun.

".22," she says. I never figured him for a .22 guy.

Chase's collection of notes is packed into four boxes. We leave the whiteboard after deciding it's just easier using the pictures to rewrite his handwritten notes. After everything is loaded up, I finally light a cigarette.

"Whatcha thinking?" Yvonne asks me. After a moment, she puts her hand out for a cigarette. I toss her the pack and she lights up as well. She's a former smoker, but still smokes socially. "We going to this town? Whisper?"

"If we go, we need someone working the case here. You remember Kaiser?"

"Of course."

"He's MP now, he could run down everything Chase did. Maybe find some stuff he missed," I say, then flick the ash. MP is shorthand for Missing Persons.

"Flying or driving?" Yvonne asks.

"I'd say drive. That's what Chase did. Pick up his trail the same way he got there," I suggest. Her thoughts exactly. "Let's drop this stuff off. Head out first thing tomorrow."

"Sounds like a plan," Yvonne says.

We finish the cigarettes and toss the butts into the trashcan outside next to Chase's porch.

--

Friday - March 27, 2020: Two Weeks Before

-Chase Kramner-

Thomas and Ruth Hollinger's address hasn't changed since Katie Grossman ran away from home. It's a large three-story townhouse in a more affluent part of town. At the door I provide my information, and Ruth invites me inside to talk in the living room without reservation when I explain why I'm here.

Ruth's once raven black hair has lost all color. This middle-aged woman looks like a sickly grandmother. She is only in her mid-fifties. The skin on her face sags like an oversized mask. Her clothing dangles off her body, her skeletal frame displaying her shirt as if it were held up on a hanger.

"I heard they found the gun she took. I was told the police couldn't do anything with that," she says after offering me water or some other beverage. She is drinking wine. It's the early afternoon.

"Any evidence on it would have degraded beyond use. It might not even have been her who put it there," I say. Ruth nods along and takes a long drink.

"You said you're a private investigator," she asks. I nod. "Who hired you?"

"An old detective who worked her disappearance initially," I say. "The gun was the only new piece of evidence in ten years. When a case like this goes cold, it often stays cold. He asked me to explore the recent discovery."

"I think I remember the detective. A Wilson, or something. Whitesman?"

"Whitaker," I say.

"That's the one," she says. She doesn't appear to know he's the Mayor now.

"Why did you never tell the police your daughter was pregnant?" I ask. Sometimes you must ease in. Today I'm going in without lube.

"She was pregnant? Are you sure? I think I would have known that."

"Her friends say you were trying to force her to have an abortion," I say. She looks even more confused.

"Those two? Lisa and Ashley?" she asks.

"Leland and Angela."

"Those two were trouble," she says dismissively.

"They said she was about two, maybe three months when she left," I say, and she takes another long drink, finishing her glass. She excuses herself to get more wine. I take the chance to stand up and look around the living room.

Expensive and artistic furniture fills the room. On the table between us was a vase with fresh white lilies. When I examine the walls, I see no pictures of her missing daughter. A few pictures with her and Tom. Their wedding day, a few out with friends. Any happy days they might have had, are long behind them. In these pictures Ruth is a vibrant beauty. Tom looks like he wants everyone to know he can afford things.

The front door opens, and a man freezes when he sees me. Unlike the woman, he looks the same as he did ten years ago. Tailored suit, Rolex, and other indicators of wealth. Salon quality blonde hair, a strong and bulky build, and crisp skin from a tanning bed.

"Who are you?" the man asks.

"Tom, this is an investigator. Talking about Katie," Ruth says while walking back into the room with her wine.

"Can I finally get my gun back?" he asks.

"I have no control over that. Private investigator," I clarify.

"Ten years later? Now you care?" he asks.

"It wasn't my case then. It is now," I say. Tom keeps his shoes on and walks toward me, his steps thudding as he approaches with the subtlety of a bull charging.

"Do you know something they don't?" he asks.

"Katie's friends helped her steal a car. A Buick Skylark," I say.

"Like I said. Trouble," Ruth says from the chair.

"Whatever those girls say, you can't trust them. They lied before, they'll keep lying," Tom says, then steps toward his wife.

"Did you know Katie was pregnant?" I ask. Tom hesitates a moment, then slowly sits down in his chair. He debates with himself for a moment, and nods.

"I knew," he says. His wife turns her entire body to him.

"You knew?" I was thinking she knew but was denying it. That was a sharp response, showing genuine surprise.

"That's what I said. I told Katie she needed to have an abortion, or she wasn't going to live here," Tom says. He's the one who pressured her.

"You kicked my daughter out?" Ruth says. I had seen enough domestic cases when I was a uniform, and these two certainly fit the bill. Tom is careful not to display his aggravation to her tone, but not careful enough.

"It was her choice," Tom says, and his wife turns her body away. "It was also her choice to steal from us. Likely with the help of those so-called friends who helped her, what did you say? Steal a car? Jesus."

"What else did she steal?" I ask.

"It's in the report."

"I'm not a police officer; I'm a private investigator. I don't have a full report. Just consider me a fresh pair of eyes," I say. Tom leans back into the couch and crosses his arms. He points his chin to the ceiling in thought.

"Some cash. A DVD player. A lot of electronics. A laptop, my video recording equipment, cellphone," he says, then huffs. "I had to pay to get most of it back. The law is backwards as fuck. I was the victim twice."

The girls were right; he's more concerned about his belongings than Katie. I jot down his abridged list of goods and proceed.

"She managed to sell the items so easily because you kept receipts?" I ask Ruth in particular. Ruth nods in response. "It's a good habit to get into. What inspired it?"

"Big ticket items I keep receipts for insurance and returns," Ruth says.

"What was her relationship with her father Roger?" I ask.

"Fine. The only problem they had was distance," Ruth says.

"What about your relationship with him?" I ask. The reason for their divorce could shed light on the motivation for Katie's departure.

"I divorced him when I found out he had another child with a different woman," she says while shaking her head. Her face holds an expression of contempt. "Why are you asking about her father?"

"The girls think she may have left to go to her father's," I say.

"The police checked with him. She didn't contact him before or after her disappearance," Ruth says.

"Does he still live in upstate New York?" I ask, and she nods. "Why would Katie run away? Aside from disagreeing with you on the baby?" I ask while looking directly at Tom.

"That's the only reason I fathomed," Tom said. He didn't even care she left.

"Why didn't you tell the police she was pregnant?"

"They never asked."

"Detective Whitaker never asked you to speculate why she would run?" I ask, and he shakes his head. Bullshit. Absolute garbage. I don't need to pick a fight right away and get thrown out. I do note his demeanor, however.

"Why would she feel a need to take a gun with her?" I ask.

"Figured she tried selling that too. It's a collector's piece," Tom says. Nickel plated with a rosewood grip. That's believable. "Saved my life once too. I had a home invasion twelve years ago. Shot the intruder with it."

I will look into that.

"Any more questions?" he asks.

I spend an hour in the house conducting the interview. If Katie had a boyfriend. Her academic history. What clubs or hobbies she had in school. I circle back to the relationship with her father. I want to have an accurate picture of Katie, and cross verify it with other people I will talk to later.

Katie was polite and passive, didn't have a boyfriend that anyone seemed to know about, and was the most active in band. She played saxophone in the regular band for school, and in jazz band. It didn't appear she had many hobbies outside of a narrow musical niche, but she did have a large collection of vinyl records from the sixties and onward. Her mother said her favorite was Wham! and that she had a small crush on George Michael in general.

I don't only take notes of what the two say. I also capture the way they say it, and their mannerisms. Ruth is clearly a distraught alcoholic who never leaves the house. She has no makeup and is dressed in clothes I'd wager she wore yesterday. Talking about Katie makes her smile, but the warmth of the memories is fleeting. The curl of her lips buckles under the weight of her grief. Tom is purely standoffish, daring me to accuse him of something.

Ruth notices her husband's anger, so leads me up the stairs to look at Katie's room. Maybe something will jump out at me, that hadn't for her. Katie certainly had a love for eighties music by indications of the posters. The room isn't overtly girly, but it was clearly a girl's room. Teddy bear on a floral bedspread. Posters of boys. Cork board with photos of her friends Leland and Angela. Under her bed are several milkcrates filled with vinyl records. Mostly pop music from the 80s and 90s. Michael Jackson. George Michael and Wham!. Madonna. NKOTB. She had personally written Katie on the back of each album in purple sharpie over the track listing. Another vase of white lilies in on her desk, and I ask her mother. They were Katie's favorite.

I look the best I can, but I don't see a saxophone, or even the case for one.

"Where is her saxophone?" I ask Ruth who is loitering at her door.

"Her saxophone?" she repeats, and I nod. "I don't know. I always assumed she took it with her." No saxophone or music records were sold at pawn shops when she sold the other valuables. She didn't part with those. She sold only the things that belonged to Tom and her mother.

"Maybe she sold that shit too," Tom says from the door. I sigh and turn to the man who is so broad shouldered he would need to turn sideways to step through the door.

"I can't help but notice, you and Katie don't appear to have gotten along," I say. His body takes a forceful lean into the bedroom, but Ruth touches his shoulder and coaxes him back.

"She was a teenager, and I was the evil stepfather," Tom says.

"Did you argue?" I ask.

"Of course, we did. I got her a car, and she crashed it. Clothing, electronics, gift cards. It was never enough for her. I'd cut off her allowance for bad grades, or lying, or breaking curfew. Bottomless pit of entitlement. When I cut back on her, it's like I stole directly from the pocket of the pants I bought her in the first place. Her final thank you? Stealing more of my shit and running away with a stolen car." There is no grief toward her disappearance. No emotion. Nothing. His wife says nothing in the defense of her daughter.

I jot my final notes down and close my notebook.

"Thank you for your time. If I discover anything, I'll keep you informed," I say. Neither of them see me out of their home. I walk down the stairs to the ground floor and exit the house without escort.

--

Monday - April 13, 2020: Three Days Gone

~Midge Appletree~

My promise of a locked door with my wife is broken well before I manage to get home. It's eleven when I put my gun in the safe. Before I do anything else, I pack for the road trip with Yvonne. We are going to drive to Whisper, Pennsylvania tomorrow morning.

My old partner Sergeant William Kaiser is brought onto the case with his partner Detective Ingrid Hazel. They're covering for both Homicide and Missing Persons. Will and Ingrid will handle the local portion of the case, interview Katie Grossman's family, friends, etc. Retrace Chase's steps locally, evaluate all of Chase's work on the case to see if he missed anything. While Kaiser finds his trail in the city, Yvonne and I will go to the last place we can confirm his presence.

Gianna does not hide her irritation as I pack my suitcase. The last time we slept together was three months ago. Our marriage has been hit with a deadly combination of work and kids. If the kids are gone, she or I have offset shifts. If we manage to align our work schedules and thus our sleeping schedules, we catch Preston sneaking inside from a place he shouldn't have been, and he thinks I don't know what marijuana smells like. We have the drug talk, and by the time we handle that, I don't fuck my wife.

I place my neatly folded shirts in the bag while Gianna sits up with her arms folded over her chest. Laying in the bed next to her is Shawn. Shawn being in our bed isn't new, but it is frustrating when we had plans to be physical.

"Shawn had that nightmare again," Gianna says. I pause to look at her, then resume packing. "You even gonna ask?"

"Is it the nightmare where he's alone, and can't find me in a crowd?" I ask. Shawn gets separation anxiety. He panics if someone he trusts isn't nearby. That list of people he trusts is low. His nightmares reflect that fear, but thankfully he doesn't get them often. Every time he has had the nightmare, was when I wasn't at home. Not exactly subtle.

"When you said you wanted a baby, your own baby, I was okay with that. I was thrilled because I thought it showed a level of commitment from you, I hadn't seen before. When you had post-partum, I understood. I had it with Wendy, it's terrifying, so I'm never going to judge you for that..."

"...get to the fucking point," I say. Gianna talks like this, when she doesn't want to piss me off before the fight even starts. The fight is still coming.

"I'm a married single mother right now," Gianna says. "I've been one before."

"I don't have any say when I catch a case..."

"...you fucking promised you were at the academy for three months, and that was barely a week ago."

"This case took priority."

"I try my hardest to have our schedules overlap so we can be married, and not roommates. It's starting to feel like you're my roommate," Gianna says. I stop packing and try to bottle it down for a moment. "I've been pretty patient with everything. The hours, the nightmares, the smoking."

Gianna is an ex-smoker herself. I think she's pissed that I'm making it harder for her to still be an ex-smoker.

"What do you want from me?" I ask. "Promotions come with more work, not less. I took a shitty duty at the academy, for you, and they still found a way to fuck me over. I'm sorry about Shawn, if my son's too much trouble, I'll send him to his father's for..."

"...why? Why do you do that? Have I ever spoken to or about Shawn, like he was anything less than my own son?" Gianna asks. She is nearly crying. I didn't mean to hit that hard. Shawn is my son in the literal sense, but he is every bit as much her son as he is mine. Once I start verbally swinging, I don't always know when enough is enough. I sometimes forget I'm a trained interrogator, and my jabs are designed to get a response.

"I'm sorry," I say. Damn I really want a cigarette right now. "You were his mother for the first six months, not me."

"No, Wendy was his mother for the first six months. She took such good care of him when I couldn't, and you were recovering," Gianna says.

I wanted to be a mother. Not just a stepmother. I wanted my own baby. My best friend Shane gave me some sperm, and we made a baby together. Throughout the pregnancy, I was stoked. I counted the days. For some odd reason, I even enjoyed the kicking. Then I gave birth, and I shut down.

I knew what post-partum depression was in the abstract. I had read articles on it and had seen it in the news. Hell, I had a case where a mother received a reduced sentence for drowning her baby, the defense using post-partum as a special circumstance. Never occurred to me that it could inflict me. Until it did.

The best way to describe it, is that it's scary. It doesn't make sense to yourself at an emotional level. Your baby shares the same level of attachment as a toaster. Only a toaster doesn't cry all night and shit its pants. Your mind tricks itself into viewing your baby as an object. A broken object.

When Shawn was two months old, Gianna came home to me having left Shawn in the bath alone crying while I was sulking in the closet. The water left him red with a fever, but not burned. Thankfully, he had bath floaties. Shane took care of him for a few months, as I slowly acclimated myself to my son. During her summer vacation, Wendy helped me the most. Instead of being a teenaged girl, she helped me bond with Shawn.

"Look at me," Gianna says. I take a few breaths and do as she asks. "I'm sorry for picking a fight. I know it's not you. You would love to be here for the nightmares."

"I would," I say. I walk around the bed and use my finger to move the hair from my son's face. He's an angel who wakes you up by pile driving your spine. "How about I take him to his room, and we try to lock a door?"

"You look beat. I'm okay. Really. Besides, he always wakes up on a nightmare night," Gianna says.

"If he cries, he cries. We'll handle it then," I say.

I carry Shawn to his room and softly lower him to his bed. I pull the covers to his chest and kiss his forehead. He doesn't even squirm. As quiet as I can, I tiptoe back to my room, and lock my door.

As tired as I rightfully am, I don't want to rush it. I need it too much to cheapen it that way. Gianna needs this more than I do, so I focus on her orgasm first. I kiss my way across her body. Toys buzz her clit while I work other places. She climaxes, but I don't stop so she can breathe. She tends to lose the ability to exhale when she has an orgasm.

The sex is about to focus on me when Shawn decides it's nightmare time. I knew it was coming, and I'm okay with it. My robe is on a hook on the bathroom door. Shawn sounds like he settles down before I leave my room. Walking down the hall, I look into his room and see Wendy sitting on his bed. She's incredible, and I stand at the doorway to admire her.

"I'll stay here until you fall asleep again. I won't go anywhere. Promise," she says. Wendy knows I'm there and looks over her shoulder at me. She gestures to let me know she's got it. I mouth 'thank you' and return to my room to fuck my wife.

--

Tuesday - April 14, 2020: Four Days Gone

~Midge Appletree~

Will and Ingrid had been up all-night making Yvonne and me a case book for travel. Something for us to review as we drive to Whisper, Pennsylvania. Chase had used his phone for directions, and the trip had synced on Jenn's devices as well. We have his exact route. He only took two pictures that automatically uploaded into his cloud. One was a photo of a photo, showing what looks like Katie Grossman standing next to the car in question. The other is a voyeuristic photo through a window, but the flash from his phone obscured the shot when it reflected off the glass.

We know he made two stops along the way. Likely for gas, food, or the bathroom. Without stops it was a four-hour drive. He took I71 until it reached I271. From there he took I90. He planned on staying on I90 all the way New York state, once he was done in Whisper off exit 4C. Not long after he took the exit, his tires blew out. Three tires in fact. The tow truck took him to Whisper, which was about twenty miles down the road.