Kurt
Frustrated, he ripped his notes from the yellow legal pad, scrunched the page into a tight ball, and launched it across his desk toward the trash bin. Of course, it bounced off the rim and fell to the floor. Kurt had played baseball when he was younger, not basketball. And saying he played baseball might even be a bit of a stretch. He spent most of the games warming the bench for the good players like Tommy Donovan and Jimmy Simpson. Coach Little would put him in toward the end of the games whenever it was clear they were either winning by a landslide or losing by a country mile. But his mom and pop would cheer him on from the stands as if Kurt were Babe Ruth, even though he was standing out in the field, more interested in the ladybugs in the grass at his feet than anything that was going on in the infield.
“Hey, Whiskey. You going to pick that up or what?”
His partner, Lonnie Howard, had taken to calling him “Whiskey” the day they were first paired up five years ago. When they introduced themselves, he’d said, “Kurt Jamison? As in, Jameson whiskey?” Kurt had told him it wasn’t, but from that day forward, the stupid nickname stuck.
“Yeah, yeah.” Kurt pushed himself up out of his chair, which squeaked in response. He reminded himself to grab some WD-40 from the supply closet next time he went that way. When he bent forward to pick up the wad of paper, his back muscles screamed in protest. Instinctively, he reached his hand around and squeezed his lower back. Kurt groaned when he stood back up, and when he looked at Lonnie, the younger detective was staring at him with a smarmy grin on his tawny face.
“The hell you staring at, Lonnie?”
Lonnie chuckled under his breath and shook his head. “Just wondering when you’re finally going to retire, old buddy. Seems like that back of yours retired a long time ago.”
There were times when his partner’s ribbing didn’t bother him, but this time he’d touched a nerve. Kurt’s back had bothered him for nearly ten years, ever since he’d fallen hard on the pavement while chasing a cracked-out dope dealer down a dark alley. He’d had surgery in 2008, but it only helped for about a year. Since then, he’d tried everything. From drugs, to physical therapy, to chiropractors…even some homeopathic bullshit a former girlfriend had insisted on a couple years back. Nothing worked. The lieutenant had not-so-subtly suggested on more than one occasion that Kurt throw in the towel. But he was only eleven months shy of full retirement and wasn’t about to take some shitty half-pension and reduced benefits. Not when he was this close to the whole kit and caboodle. No, he was going to make it to the bitter end, if it was the last thing he ever did.
It wasn’t only the comment about his back that had Kurt’s hackles up. It was the one about his age. Lonnie, only thirty-two and in the prime of his life, thought it was “cool” to have such a “seasoned” detective to work with. Or at least, that’s what he’d told Kurt on their first ride together. Since then, however, he’d been cracking joke after pathetic joke about his age. He was only fifty-six! Older than most of the men in his unit, true, but it wasn’t like he was ancient, damn it. He couldn’t let on that Lonnie’s jokes bothered him, so he smiled, like he always did, and said, “Yeah, real funny, dipshit.”
The phone rang, and he ambled back over to his desk, picked up the receiver, and said, “Detective First Class Kurt Jamison here.”
The raspy, cigarette-marred voice of the unit’s receptionist told him he had a visitor.
“Who is it, Louise?”
“It’s Franklin Cartwright. Says it’s urgent.”
Kurt’s breath caught in his throat, and he couldn’t formulate a response right away. Franklin “Frankie” Cartwright had been his best friend, once upon a time. The two had barely spoken since high school, and they’d clearly chosen two completely different paths in life. While Kurt had gone into the police academy after four years in the Army, Frankie had gone straight into a life of crime. He couldn’t think of a time they’d spoken more than a polite “hello” in passing in over thirty years.
“Send him in,” Kurt said finally.
As he waited for Frankie to enter the office, Kurt fretted with the items on his desk, which were strewn about haphazardly. He was not a neat freak like Lonnie, but he felt an overwhelming urge to do something, anything to calm his nerves.
Seconds later, a tall, familiar-looking man walked in wearing a suit Kurt knew must have cost more than two months of his cop’s salary. The man’s hair was silver, parted to the right, and combed back into a slick coif. Though his face was now somewhat softer and a few worry wrinkles lined his forehead, Kurt could still see his old friend in those piercing blue eyes.
Kurt stood and extended his right hand toward Frankie, whose grasp was cold and firm. “Frankie. Good to see you.”
“You too, Kurt. Been a long time.”
An awkward moment of silence passed between the two men as they looked at each other, and Kurt tried to recall what his old friend had been like before things had gone so horribly wrong.
“What can I do for you, Frankie? What brings you down to the station?” What would have made things even more awkward was if he’d said what he was really thinking, which was, “Why would you show your face in a police department, of all places?”
“May we talk in private?” Frankie asked in response.
“Sure.” Kurt turned and gestured toward the interview room. “Right this way.”
The pair walked the few paces to the tiny room in silence. When they arrived, Kurt held the door open for Frankie, who sauntered in, leaned against the wall, and folded his arms across his chest. Kurt shut the door quietly behind him, grabbed the back of the chair, and leaned into it.
“Frankie, what’s going on?”
“It’s my granddaughter, Mollie. She’s missing.”
“What do you mean, she’s missing?”
“Exactly what I said. She’s missing. Mollie was supposed to be home from work last night around eleven, but she never arrived. Her mother—my youngest, Katherine—is worried sick. At first, we thought maybe she’d just spent the night with a friend, or some horny teenage boy.” Frankie looked at his watch, a Tag Heuer which probably cost more than Kurt’s classic Camaro. “But it’s nearly noon now, and no one’s heard from her.”
Kurt didn’t like where his mind immediately went. The case he’d been laboring over just before Frankie had arrived involved six young women who’d vanished over the course of the last two years. The girls, all of whom ranged in age from their late teens to early twenties, had been well-behaved with good reputations. They’d disappeared from dark parking lots, dimly lit parks, or isolated jogging trails. Each had been reported missing by concerned parents who had sworn their child would never consider running away.
Kurt had been assigned the cases after the third girl, Rachel Billups, had not shown up for her night shift at a twenty-four-hour grocery store, and though he’d exhausted every resource at his disposal, there hadn’t been a shred of evidence uncovered. It was the toughest assignment he’d ever been given, and not only had he lost hours of fitful sleep, but he’d also lost fifteen pounds. Endless questions plagued his mind every day, and the faces of the missing girls haunted him every night. He hated to assume the worst about Frankie’s granddaughter, but her disappearance fit the pattern.
“When was the last time anyone heard from her?” he asked as he pulled a small, spiral-bound notebook and pen out of his shirt pocket.
“Right around ten thirty. She texted her mother as soon as she clocked out from work at the mall. Kitty responded and asked her to pick up some milk on the way in, but Mollie never replied.”
“I see.” Kurt scribbled down everything Frankie said. “Which store?”
Frankie looked at him with confusion. He clearly had the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Hm?”
“Which store in the mall?”
“Macy’s. She works at one of the makeup counters. Kurt…you don’t think…”
Kurt looked at his old friend and was taken back to that awful day in 1983. The look on Frankie’s face back then had been permanently etched in Kurt’s memory, and now here he was, the same look of dejection and sorrow playing plainly across his typically stoic countenance.
Kurt pulled out a chair and winced when it screeched across the tile floor. “Frankie, just have a seat. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Take everything one step at a time.”
Frankie sat heavily in the metal framed chair, leaned forward, and rubbed his face with his trembling hands. Kurt sat in a chair on the opposite side and flopped his notepad down on the table. “Let’s start at the beginning. Now, tell me about Mollie.”
Frankie shook his head slowly and sighed. “She’s a great kid, Kurt. Beautiful, smart, ambitious.” He looked up at him with sadness, and some other emotion Kurt couldn’t place. “She reminds me so much of Addie.”
Kurt felt a tightening in his chest at the mention of Addie’s name. A name he hadn’t heard for thirty years. A name he thought he’d never hear escape the lips of Franklin Cartwright ever again.