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“If it’s Squealer's cock, I really don’t want to know. Anything else, feel free to share.” She slides her glasses up into her blonde hair.
“Well…” I slouch back in my chair and rub my hand across the ridge of my stomach. I tell myself it gives the babies comfort when I do that. “Something’s not sitting right with me. Call me crazy, call it baby brain, but I just don’t feel comfortable about something,” I admit.
“Go on?” Maddy suddenly looks intrigued.
“When did the Farrowman’s move house?” I ask curiously.
“Um, give me a second.” Maddy gets to work typing at a speed my head couldn’t keep up with, let alone my fingers.
“October, four years ago,” she relays the information from the screen in front of her.
“Lydia went missing in June, right?” I remember the police report well. I studied it over and over looking for something that might help us.
“Yeah. Why?”
“When was the last time the case was updated? That missing poster you found. What date was it issued?”
“The case was archived. That’s why it took me so long to find it. Let’s see…” She focuses on her screen again. “The last update was in February after she disappeared.” Maddy looks back at me. “And the poster was issued in June, a few days after she was taken. Alex, where are you going with this?”
“I’m thinking that when a child goes missing, usually the parents are the cop’s biggest issue to deal with. Nothing is ever enough for a mother who doesn’t know where her kid is. The case files are constantly revisited, even if it results in no new leads. And that’s almost always under the pressure of desperate parents who want their kids back. Maddy, if your kid goes missing, you never stop looking for them, and you certainly don’t move out of the state.”
Maddy's green eyes widen as she takes in what I’ve said.
“You're right,” she agrees, pulling her glasses back down like she means business and looking back at her screen.
“What are you doing?” I struggle up onto my feet and make my way over so I can look over her shoulder. She’s got the police report up on the screen already.
“There was something I noticed when I read this. I thought it was strange at a first glance, but I was so excited to tell Lydia that we’d found her family I kinda forgot about it.”
“What is it?” I ask, scanning the report for something that I might have missed.
“Here, the person that called in to report her missing wasn’t either of her parents. It was Mrs. Cameron, a neighbor.”
“That’s not uncommon. Parents of missing kids are usually too hysterical to make any sense. Very often, it’s a family friend or a neighbor that makes the call.”
“The call was made forty-eight hours after the date the parents claimed she went missing.” Maddy looks over her shoulder at me.
“A teenage girl going missing. You’d think her parents would have been sick with worry. Why wasn’t it called in sooner?”
“You got a contact for the woman who made that report?”
“No, but I can get one.” Maddy smiles, flicking off the police report and clicking into one of her custom-made browsers.
Five minutes later, I’m listening to a dialing tone.
“Hello?” a man answers, and he sounds pissed off at being disturbed.
“Good afternoon, sir, this is deputy Alex Monroe,” I watch Maddy's eyes roll as she grins. It’s only a little white lie. I was a deputy once.
“What’s this about?” he grumbles back at me.
“I was hoping to speak to Mrs. Cameron.”
“Well, you’d be lucky. She died two years ago,” he snaps.
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“Is this about the girl? Did you find her?” the irritation in his voice suddenly softens.
