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* * *
“Dad?”I keep my voice quiet, not sure if he’s awake.
None of us have gotten any sleep since…
His head lifts from where it rested against his desk.
It takes his eyes a moment to focus. “Hans? Come in.”
I step through the threshold. “I… I have a name.”
* * *
It’sa different officer this time, and the sympathy on his face looks as fake as his hair.
“So…” He glances down at his notepad, like he can’t remember what I said twenty seconds ago. “You went to Comet, without telling anyone you were going, and then bullied some employee into giving you thisname.” He saysnamelike the one I gave him is alien, not French.
“I didn’t bully him,” I snap. “And I’m nineteen. I don’t need to tell people where I’m going.”
“You do when it interferes with a police investigation.”
“What investigation?” I throw my hands up. “You haven’t done anything!”
Dad settles his hand on my leg. I don’t know if it’s for comfort or to keep me from attacking the cop.
“I understand this is a trying time.” The fucking prick isn’t even trying to sound like he cares anymore. “But you need to let us do our jobs. And chasing after rumors”—he holds up his notepad where he supposedly wrote the name down—“doesn’t help.”
I keep my jaw clenched as he rises from the other couch.
“We’ll be in touch.” He dips his head to Mom, who’s been sitting on my other side, then he sees himself out.
Mom doesn’t acknowledge him. She doesn’t do anything.
The cop called the name a rumor. But Dad had heard the name Marcoux before.
It’s not a fucking rumor.
Fifteen years ago, when I was just four and Freya was three, we moved here from Sweden. Dad had an investment opportunity that utilized his mining experience, so he sold his company, and we came to the US. And in a bid to familiarize himself with Arizona, he took to reading the local paper, cover to cover, every day. He never stopped.
Which is how he knew about the uptick in gang activity in the Phoenix area in the past year. And he remembers Marcoux. He especially remembers it because the very next day, the newspaper published an article recanting the Marcoux name. He remembered it because it screamed of corruption.
It didn’t take Dad long to find the article, saved in a stack in his office.
He found it and read it to us.
The statement claimed that the previous story was an editorial error and that the namewasn’tassociated with the recent violence, drug use… or human trafficking.
It was that last part, those last two words, that broke Mom.
She hasn’t spoken since.
* * *
Lightning cracklesacross the night sky, and the responding thunder covers the sound of my car door slamming shut.
I thought I’d be scared. Thought my hands would shake. But that void inside me has grown since Freya disappeared a week ago.
Seven days.
