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“Let’s go to the school. Maybe we can talk to some of her friends before classes start.” Ryan’s command brings me back to the kitchen.
The click of our shoes echoes through the tall entry. Had Sophia been lonely? Had she been miserable in this formal, multimillion-dollar estate?
In the car on the way to the school, my left toe taps mindlessly against the floorboard of the automobile Jack loaned us. Neither Ryan nor I turn on the radio. Somber emotions cloud the horizon like a rolling, dense fog.
Sophia’s been missing for two days, and it’s as if she vanished. We have no good theories. Even if she got fed up with her father, I can’t imagine her staying away this long. The Sophia I knew would want to let him know she was okay. At Cassandra’s funeral, they may have been technically strangers, but there was still love between the two of them. He’s her father. She has to love him.
Look beyond the obvious.
Outside the car, the clear blue sky and palm trees conflict with the swirl of confusion and worry in my head. It’s surreal. The manicured lawns feel like utopia, and yet a fifteen-year-old girl is missing. This afternoon we will cross the forty-eight-hour threshold.
“If you would like to turn the radio on, please do,” Ryan says.
I don’t want to mess with the radio. What I want is a plan. When Jack asked me to help, I truly believed it had to be a misunderstanding, a teenage act of defiance, and we’d find her. And I said I would help. Sure, I want to be a criminal profiler. But at this stage, there is no criminal to profile. Unless we determine she has been abducted. And if that’s the case, where would I start?
A stucco sign with a tiled roof and golden letters spelling Palisades Day School comes into view. The road curves past the entrance sign, and small directional plaques lead us to the admissions building where Jack instructed us to go.
“What do you think is the best way to tackle this? We have about fifty kids to interview.”
“Unless one of them can’t look us in the eye or seems unusually emotional, I expect it’s going to go pretty quickly. If the teachers let us, you can video our interviews. The Arrow team can go through and compare with the police interviews. See if there’s any variance. But I’m not hopeful.”
“That’s your opinion from the groups?” Arrow has been monitoring the Searching for Sophia group chat and the private Facebook group a classmate created.
“Yes.” Ryan taps his index finger against the steering wheel. The beat of his finger oddly matches the tap of my toe.
“You think this is a waste of time?”
He side-eyes me. His sunglasses hide his irises, but the tilt of his head conveys condescension. “Waste? No. It’s a necessary step. Local police have already met with her close friends and teachers. But, given we have no clues, it’s worth backtracking. If one of these kids knows anything, maybe one of them will come forward.”
It is possible. If a student knows something, it’s conceivable one day in, it didn’t seem real. Maybe with two days missing, concern will override any fear.
Look beyond the obvious.
These kids could lead us down a very different path. This day and age, dangers can look seemingly benign in emails or chat groups.
“If we don’t learn anything at the school, what do you see as our next steps?” This fear gnaws at me. I fear an absence of next steps.
“We accessed street-cam footage. Our team will review the footage today. No matter how she left the house, at some point she had to come onto the streets.”
“Unless she went paddleboarding.”
“I’m focusing on the angles we can do something about. On the off chance she’s somewhere around the beach, I’ve got a couple of men searching the area. Yes, volunteers already did it, but I hired some folks who specialize in tracking.”
“You don’t sound optimistic.” Or maybe he does. His voice projection is business normal. Maybe I am projecting.
“No?” His angular jaw flexes while his eyes remain focused on the road.
I shake my head.
“Are you optimistic?” he asks.
I let out my frustration in a sigh. “No. I was really hoping for a crime scene. A struggle. Or fingerprints.”
“Did you find any prints at all?”
I dusted for prints yesterday afternoon while he was out and about.
“A few of her prints. The cleaning service is thorough. I mean, think about it. There weren’t even footprints on her carpet.”
