Chevy Stevens - Still Missing

He pushed a stack of files to the side of his desk, set his coffee mug down, and waved me into the chair across from him. It took him a two-minute rummage through his drawer to find a pen that worked and another few were spent pulling out various forms and then shoving them back in. Finally he was settled with a working pen and a form in front of him.

“Your name, please?”

“Annie O’Sullivan.”

He looked straight at me, his eyes searching every angle of my face, then he got up so fast he knocked over his coffee.

“Stay here—I have to get someone.”

Leaving the coffee soaking into his papers, he went into the glass office and started talking to a short gray-haired guy I assumed was important because he had the only private office. Judging by his hands waving around, Pepper was pretty excited. When Pepper pointed to me, the older guy turned to look, and our eyes met. I already had that get-out-of-here-NOW feeling.

The cops near the television turned it down and looked back and forth between me and the office. When I glanced at the front desk, the woman there was watching me. I looked back at the office. The old guy picked up his phone and talked into it, pacing around as far as the cord would go. He hung up, pulled a file from a drawer behind him, then he and Pepper looked in the file, talked to each other, stared at me, looked at the file again. Subtle these guys were not.

Finally the old guy and Pepper—carrying the file—left the office. The old guy leaned down close to me with one hand resting on his knee and the other stuck out. He spoke slowly and enunciated every word carefully.

“Hello, my name is Sergeant Jablonski.”

“Annie O’Sullivan.” I shook his outstretched hand. It was cool and dry.

“Nice to meet you, Annie. We’d like to talk to you in private—if that’s okay?” Why the hell was he dragging his words out? English isn’t my second language, dumbass.

“I guess.” I got to my feet.

Grabbing a couple of legal pads and pens off his desk, Pepper said, “We’re just going to take you to one of our interview rooms.” At least he was talking at a normal speed.

As we walked away from the desk, all the cops in the room stood still. Pepper and Jablonski moved to stand on either side of me, and Pepper tried to hold my arm, but I pulled it back. You’d think I was being escorted to the electric chair—I swear the phones even stopped ringing. Pepper managed to suck in his gut slightly and walked with his shoulders back and chest puffed out like he’d hunted me down all by himself.

It was definitely a small town. So far I’d seen only a few cops, and the cold concrete room they led me into was the size of your average bathroom. Just as we sat down across from each other at a metal table, Pepper got up to answer a knock on the door. The woman from the front desk handed him two coffees and tried to peer around him, but he stepped in front of her and shut the door. The older guy nodded to me.

“You want coffee? A pop?”

“No, thanks.”

One of the walls had a large mirror on it. I hated the idea of someone I couldn’t see watching my every move.

I pointed at the mirror. “Is anybody there?”

“Not at this time,” Jablonski said. Did that mean there might be someone later?

I nodded toward the upper left corner. “What’s the camera for?”

“We’ll be audio-and videotaping the interview—it’s standard procedure.”

That was just as bad as the mirror. I shook my head. “You have to shut it off.”

“You’ll forget it’s even there. Are you Annie O’Sullivan from Clayton Falls?”

I stared at the camera. Pepper cleared his throat. Jablonski repeated the question. The silence continued for another minute or so, then Jablonski made a quick slicing motion across his neck. Pepper left the room for a couple of minutes, and by the time he came back the little red light on the camera was off.

Jablonski said, “We have to leave the audio recorder on, we can’t conduct an interview without it.” I wondered if he was bullshitting—on the TV shows, sometimes they use one, sometimes they don’t—but I let it go.

“Let’s try this again. Are you Annie O’Sullivan from Clayton Falls?”

“Yes. Am I on Vancouver Island?”

“You don’t know?”

“That’s why I’m asking.”

Jablonski said, “Yes, you’re on the island.” His slow, precise speech disappeared with the next question. “Why don’t you start off by telling us where you’ve been?”

“I don’t know, other than that it was a cabin. I don’t know how I got there, because I was doing an open house, and a guy—”

“What guy?” Pepper said.

“Did you know this man?” Jablonski said.

As the two spoke—at the same time—I flashed to The Freak stepping out of the van and turning toward the house.

“He was a stranger. I was almost done with the open house, and I went outside to—”

“What was he driving?”

“A van.” I saw The Freak smiling at me. Such a nice smile. My stomach clenched.

“What color was it? Do you remember the make and model? Had you seen this van before?”

“No.” I started counting the blocks on the concrete wall behind them.

“You don’t remember the make and model, or no you hadn’t seen it before?”

“It’s a Dodge, Caravan I think, tan and newer—that’s all I know. The guy had the real estate paper. He’d been watching me, and he knew stuff—”

“He wasn’t a past client, or maybe some guy you turned down in a bar one night or chatted with on the Internet?” Jablonski said.

“No, no, and no.”

He raised his eyebrows. “So let me get this straight. You’re trying to tell us this guy picked you out of thin air?”

“I’m not trying to tell you anything, I don’t know why he picked me.”

“We want to help you, Annie, but first we need the truth.” He leaned back in his chair and crossed his arms over his chest.

My arm shot across the table and sent their stupid little pad of paper and coffees flying. I stood up, leaned over the table with both of my hands flat on it, and screamed into their shocked faces.

“I AM telling the truth!”

Pepper held out both of his hands. “Take it easy! You’re getting all worked up here—”

I flipped the table over on its side. As they tried to get out of my way and scurry out the door, I yelled at their backs, “I’m not saying another damn word until you get me some real cops!”

After they left me alone in the room, I stared at the mess in shock—I’d even broken one of their mugs. I righted the table, picked up the note pad, and tried to wipe up the coffee with some of the paper. After a few minutes Pepper slunk in and grabbed the note pad off the table. One palm held out in front of him and the other clutching the note pad to his chest, he slowly backed out of the room.

“Just relax, we have some people coming in to talk to you.”

The front of his pants was wet with coffee from when I’d knocked the table over. I was about to hand him the broken pieces of mug and apologize, but he was through the door in a flash.

I laughed for a couple of seconds, then put my forehead down on the table and cried.

Not sure if you saw the article in the paper this weekend, Doc, but they recovered some stolen goods from a shed on that teenager’s property. Well, actually the parents’ property. Anyway, I called the cop who handled my break-in, wondering if anything was mine, but he said everything was accounted for. Later I remembered something else the article said, that all the robberies occurred at night.

So why would a burglar, especially a teenage burglar, change his pattern just to break into my house? He had to have timed it perfectly to know exactly when I went for my run, but then he didn’t take anything?