Sharon smiled as she realized they all loved this work. Solving real-life puzzles mattered, and they weren’t the kind of cops to give up easily when a case hit a brick wall. They brought a wealth of experience to finding answers. It was going to be a good two years.
Two
Evie Blackwell
It was even colder in Ellis than it had been in Springfield. Evie, glad to be getting out of the wind, held glass doors open for David as he pushed a flat cart loaded with boxes into the building. “I’m curious,” she asked, “how do you prefer to begin a case?”
He wrestled against a stiff wheel that wanted to drift left. “I like talking to people. Once I’ve seen the facts I’ve got to work with, I like to get out and start asking questions, see where those answers lead. People point you different directions. The majority of the time they’re being honest and trying to be helpful. When I come across someone lying to me, I know I’m getting close to the answer.”
“You’re looking for the person who shades the truth, lies to you.”
“Pretty much. How about you, Evie?”
“I like to get inside the world of my victim, see what they were doing, where they were going, how they crossed with someone who did them harm.”
“Re-create the day of the crime.”
“The best I can.”
“A good approach.”
Evie used keys the security guard had provided to unlock the main doors for office suite 5, then flicked on lights. The space had recently been refurbished for new tenants—a design firm was moving in late next month—and it still smelled of fresh paint and new carpet. Having expected a small room at the police station, this was luxury.
David scanned the area. “You’ve got four boxes, I’ve got seventeen, so I call dibs on the conference room through there. I need the long table and even longer whiteboard.”
“A couple of desks and the rolling whiteboards will serve my case,” Evie agreed.
“An hour to sort through boxes and see what we’ve got, then bring in an early lunch, update where we are?”
“Sounds good.” Evie set an alarm on her phone. “It’s going to be fun—if I’m allowed to describe it that way.”
David grinned. “I like this job, though I’m careful how often I admit that. I’m sorry my PI is missing, but it makes for a fascinating puzzle, considering what he did for a living. I get paid to do work I love. Everyone should be so fortunate.”
“Ditto.” Evie lifted her boxes off the cart and over to a desk, and David pushed the remaining ones into the conference room.
The detectives who’d had these cases had been cordial, polite, but not enthusiastic about offering further help. They told them, “It’s all in the files,” without saying, Good luck with finding anything else. There were still two map tubes in transit from the archives for her case, but the bulk of the case materials were before her.
The lack of assistance from the locals was probably for the best, at least for now. The facts were in the reports. The theories of what happened . . . well, Evie would rather formulate her own, as would David.
In her experience, solving a cold case came down to looking at the existing facts in a different way, asking new questions, searching intently for a thread that would yield information overlooked in the past. Not an easy thing to do when a case had been worked aggressively, but inevitably overlooked items came to light if she kept digging. If the new evidence didn’t yield an answer, her second course of action was to dig deeper into the lives of the people involved with the missing person, and then push out to find more names beyond the family and friends in the record.
The passage of time nearly always brought out undiscovered truths about people. The “good man” with a terrible secret had been found out and was now in jail, the thief who never got caught had committed one too many burglaries and finally been arrested, and the woman who drank too much now had the DUIs to prove she had a drinking problem. Life reveals truth. That was what Evie depended on when it came to a cold case like her missing student.
Time changed circumstances. Close friends were no longer speaking to each other, families split apart, alliances shifted, people would now talk to authorities about things they’d seen or wondered about when past loyalties had kept them silent. The same interviews done today could yield a treasure trove of new information. Whichever approach worked—looking at facts a new way or finding new insights about those people involved—she’d push until this case yielded an answer.
This missing Brighton College student was her choice off a single line on a summary sheet. Now came the moment of truth. Would it turn out to be an interesting choice? Evie lifted the top off the first box, eager to dig in. “Okay, Jenna Greenhill, what have the cops already found for me?”