And Ruin Followed Behind Her

Chapter 3-4

THE BOYS AT Dragnet would laugh if they saw what Stubbins considered a police station. It was a single wood-paneled room with four metal desks. Even Chandler had a more impressive police station—though most of its deputies were burned alive by Aziolith so who knew what it was like now.

A fat officer with a receding hairline and thin mustache waddled over to me after I waited an hour for him to finish his lunch. He brought me back to his desk, where he had hundreds of manila file folders stacked around him.

“So, you see, Miss Freeman,” he said with a sigh, “it’s like I said on the phone. We don’t have time to go through all these cases. There are literally dozens of them from the last six months alone, and your friend’s kid is just not a top priority.”

“Can you tell me who is a top priority?”

“They are all equal priority.”

“I’ll bet it’s a little, blond girl, isn’t it? It’s always a little, blond girl.”

“What are you trying to say?”

“I’m asking you, if Kimberly is not your top priority, who is? Somebody must be top priority.”

He leaned forward over his desk. “It’s the one who goes missing last, Miss Freeman. Your friend has been missing for weeks. Do you know what the chances of finding a kid after they’ve been gone for forty-eight hours is?”

“I would assume—”

“They’re zero, Miss Freeman. They are effectively zero. All these children on my desk. They are gone in the wind. They might be dead, or they might show up tomorrow, but as far as we’re concerned, they’re not a priority. The only ones we have a chance to find are the ones that just went missing. It’s not a black thing or a white thing. It’s just a time thing.”

I leaned forward. “I don’t accept that.”

“You don’t have to accept it for it to be true.”

“Where is her case file?”

The doughy detective held up a file. “It’s right here. See, Miss Freeman. I keep it close to me, because it matters.”

“Bob!” a tall woman shouted from the front desk. “You didn’t chip in for food again! Gimme my money!”

Bob pushed up from his desk with a groan. “I’ll be right back.”

Detective Bob waddled through the bullpen. The other detectives were busy behind their own desks. Nobody was paying attention to me. When Bob ducked out of sight, I scooped up Kim’s file and as many others I could carry. Then, I thought of Mama’s house and vanished in the wind.