Jodie arrived in Kauffmann’s Vale and pulled into the parking lot of the Ontario Provincial Police station, cruising while looking for a spot. She didn’t find one and decided to make one for herself. She parked her car half on the pavement and half on the grass. She turned off the car and stepped out. An officer was staring at her from the front of the building. A tall man, lean and looking like a runner. She couldn’t see much of his face because of the big Stetson police hat on his head. He must have seen her pulling onto the grass because he had the glass door open as though he was waiting for her to step out of her car.

“You can’t park there.”

“But there is nowhere else to park.”

He crossed his arms and held the door open with his back. He pointed with his chin and said, “Use the lot across the street. Like everyone else.”

Jodie followed the direction of his chin and saw a CTV news van in the lot. A large antenna protruded from the roof like a dark finger pointing into the night sky. Other white news vans were crowded around it. She sighed. The boss said this would be a media heavy investigation. Most times the media impeded investigations. Jodie would have to figure out a way to use them to her advantage like she had with the Francine case. She opened the door to her car to get back in and move her car and the officer said, “Thank you.”

At least he was polite.

After parking across the street, Jodie walked into the police station with her backpack slung over one shoulder. She stopped inside the door. A crowd of people stood in the lobby. An officer behind plastic glass wore a stoic expression as a man yelled at her, demanding information in relation to the murdered teen and the missing teen. The man yelling at her wore a nice suit and had perfect hair, the kind that looked almost drawn on. His white teeth glowed neon against his tanning-bed skin. Jodie didn’t want to bring attention to herself with that clown harassing the officer behind the glass, but she would have to introduce herself so she could speak to the station commander.

Behind her, “Wasn’t that bad of a walk was it?”

She turned. The officer at the door peered down at her still wearing his hat. It cast a shadow over his eyes.

“You know you don’t have to wear the hat inside. As per regulations. You can take it off.”

He tilted his head back and appraised her. She was used to this reaction. Being a woman in the profession was unusual. Being a black woman in the policing profession was a rarity.

“You the big detective we’ve all been waiting for?”

“Something like that.”

“Good. Gary is going to want to talk to you quick as he can.”

“Nervous is he?”

The officer removed his hat and ran a hand through his hair before putting it back on.

“Let’s just say he’s out of his depth on this one. We all are. C’mon, I’ll take you back to see him.”

“You know, you really don’t have to wear the hat inside. I wasn’t kidding about that.”

“I know. I like it. Makes me look more official, don’t you think?”

Jodie smiled and said, “I’m going to decline commenting on that one.”

“Huh.” He took the hat off and studied it. “You don’t like it?”

Jodie, refusing the bait, said, “Where is Gary’s office at?”

“I thought the ladies would like it.”

He excused himself through the crowd with Jodie trailing. He kept his hat in one hand. He pulled out his wallet and held it against a pad by the door. A light turned green and he pushed through.

Before the door closed, she heard the tanned journalist complain, “Hey! How come she gets to go back? Who was that? Is she from another news station?”

Staff Sergeant Gary Barnes leaned back in his chair with his feet up on the table in a large meeting room. Other officers were taping notes to a map on the wall. There was a gentle susurration of sound. People murmuring, people moving, all wearing the somber expression common to funerals. A lot of pressure on a group of people who were used to breaking up field parties of high school students in the summer, domestic fights between couples and arresting the occasional drunk driver.

Gary’s head swivelled when Jodie entered and his feet popped off the desk and he all but jumped out of his chair with his hand outstretched, “You detective Reyes?”

“Yes, sir.”

He waved away her formality and shook her hand. His eyes reflected hope and for a moment, Jodie thought Gary was about to hug her. She broke the handshake and turned to the board. She saw a small red dot on a satellite image map and concentric circles widening out from it.

She said, “Is that where the SUV was found?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He wiped a hand across his forehead and said, “A terrible thing.”

Jodie said, “Can you fill me in on what you have and what you’ve done so far?”

“Absolutely.”

Gary told her about Frank and Dwight and how they found the SUV. Fire trucks came and did their thing of ruining the crime scene by showering the SUV with foam and water. The abundant water turned the dirt around the vehicle into mud and their boot prints destroyed any other prints that may have been found. They left to return to their sleeping bunks and the police were left to guard the scene. Gary had arrived at the scene by the time the early morning sun was resting on the tops of the trees. Gary called for the Forensic officers to attend the scene and waited. Once the vehicle was cool enough to approach, the Forensic team found a second body curled into a question mark in the back portion of the SUV. The forensic pathologist showed up just after they found the second body with a medical bag in one hand and a lollipop in the other, took one look, ordered an autopsy, wrote the warrant for it, handed the paper to Gary and left.

There were no license plates on the vehicle but they did find the vehicle identification number on the vehicle. The owner of the vehicle was a Barbara Hanley. That’s when the dispatcher told him Barbara had called in because her son hadn’t come home. Shortly after that, Lynda Harrigan’s mom called in to say Lynda hadn’t returned either. Turns out Barbara had called Jamie first, Lynda’s mom, when Bruce didn’t return. They didn’t know the gender of the two bodies in the vehicle but the two teens went out last evening in Barbara Hanley’s SUV. Damn.Gary started to sweat. He called the hospital where the autopsy was to be done and asked them to put a rush on it. He believed he knew the identity of the two bodies in the SUV. He was right about one of them.

He drove over to Barbara Hanley’s house and sent Sergeant Letty over to speak with Lynda’s mom.

Gary said, “Barbara opened the door and saw me and her knees kind of went all loose. I managed to get a hand on her before she fell, but she screamed at me to let her go. She didn’t want me to touch her, I think. Because she knew what I was there to tell her and she didn’t want to hear it. Thank god Henry was there to help her.”

Gary told Barbara and Henry they found her car. It had been burned and two bodies were found inside. The bodies hadn’t been identified. A flash came into Barbara’s eyes, something like hope, like maybe it wasn’t her son who had been turned into charcoal. Gary got the name of the family dentist and called the hospital. Gary spoke to the forensic pathologist who said there was no smoke in either person’s lungs. Shit. They hadn’t died of smoke inhalation. He stepped outside the house to learn more from the forensic pathologist with Barbara and Henry’s eyes boring holes into his back. The forensic pathologist gave him a short synopsis of what they had found so far in the cursory examination. Both bodies had stab wounds. The one they identified as a female had her throat cut so deep she’d almost been decapitated. The male had a knife wound directly into his heart and had a few broken ribs and fingers. The dentist had sent them x-rays of Bruce’s teeth. It was Bruce. Barbara’s small hope was snuffed out. When he told her, she vomited into her hands. It leaked out onto their shiny hardwood floor. Gary asked Henry to call some friends and family over for support but Henry was staring at the wall. His eyes were glazed over while he rubbed Barbara’s back in small circles. So Gary walked next door and spoke with the neighbour. The neighbour nodded, her mouth a grim line and with a cell phone in her hand marched over to Barbara’s while dialling for reinforcements.

Gary phoned Sergeant Letty to let her know what the forensic pathologist had said. Sergeant Letty had Lynda’s dentist (the same as Bruce’s dentist) send her x-rays to the forensic pathologist for comparison against the other girl. Sergeant Letty sat at the kitchen table with a cup of coffee Jamie, Lynda’s mom, had made for her. Jamie’s knee bounced under the table. Letty kept glancing at the door. Her husband, Neil, was up north on a fishing trip with his brother and his friend. It was a yearly thing. She had called him, asked him to come home and even though she knew he was hours away, watched the door as though she expected him to walk in at any second. She had trouble looking Sergeant Letty in the eye and every so often, a shiver would run through her body. What felt like forever, but was only thirty minutes later, the forensic pathologist called and told Sergeant Letty the other body definitely was not Lynda. Her eyebrows dropped. She said, “Wait. Are you sure?”

The forensic pathologist, annoyed at all the phone calls she was getting from the medical staff performing the autopsy and the police, barked, “Do you think I would tell you that if I wasn’t sure?” Before Letty could answer, the forensic pathologist hung up. So, the forensic pathologist was sure. Letty told Jamie what the forensic pathologist had said. Jamie’s hands went to either side of her mouth and her glassy orbs pulsed from under her brow. She screamed, Letty jumped, and then Jamie started laughing. The laughed choked off and she looked at Letty and said, “Where is she then? You guys are looking, right?”

“We will be. You can count on that.”

Letty, with the help of the community, gathered a large search team made up of civilians and police. Hunters who used their dogs to track came out to offer their services. Almost all the student’s from Lynda’s high school showed up to help. For the first two days, work stopped in Kauffmann’s Vale. Schools were closed, people took the day off work to help search. Gary thought it was a great thing to see the community come together and wondered why did it always take a tragedy for people to help each other out.