DETECTIVE McPHEE

Call it a gut feeling or cop radar or just a hunch. Detective McPhee switched squad assignments and gave herself the graveyard shift in the surveillance room at the downtown station. She wanted to personally examine all the camera footage, and it would give her time to think.

By ten, she was ready to admit that perhaps imagination was winning out over logic, because there was nothing going on. The Blums’ neighborhood had few cameras, just at the traffic lights leading into the development, but the old state hospital building housing the state mental health agencies had several. To prevent break-ins, they said, but McPhee suspected it was in response to local teenagers’ continued fascination with the old buildings, breaking in and partying in the creepy old spaces.

She scrolled through all the images since the old woman went missing, seeing nothing suspicious. Then she texted the two officers scheduled to drive through the neighborhood, part of the routine checks for a missing person.

Anything happening?

Nada

Thnx

McPhee stood up and stretched. Touched her toes. Winced. Sat down. She never did well with graveyard shift. Her wife loved working nights. She said the medical center was softer and more human in the dark. That comment always made McPhee smile; her world certainly wasn’t kinder in the wee hours.

She poured a cup of coffee and returned to the cameras. Nine hours to go. To keep herself awake she mentally reviewed the residents of Azalea Court, house by house. She was pretty certain she could cross the family in Number One off her suspect list. The gardener guy Eric with his unpleasant wife. She wondered how long that marriage would last, given the disdain in the wife’s eyes when she looked at her husband. The kids seemed pretty solid though. They’d do all right.

The husband was always on top of the suspect list, and the old man was certainly hiding something, but she hadn’t made up her mind about Dr. Blum. She didn’t think he had done something nasty to his wife. He was probably just a typical selfish old coot, rather like her own father. Harm done over years, almost inadvertently, without malicious intent. Still, she was remiss in not bringing him in for a formal videotaped interview. Sometimes things showed up on tape that you didn’t notice in person. She’d do that tomorrow.

She shook her head and finished the coffee. The couple in Number Three seemed pretty benign as well, despite the decades-old grudge the woman held and her husband’s frustration with it. They most likely had nothing to do with Mrs. Blum’s disappearance.

The couple in Number Four intrigued her. Once her contact at WITSEC swore there was nothing to the Witness Protection rumor, she allowed herself a short daydream about Gandalf Simon and Jess Simon. They seemed like interesting women, and McPhee and her wife didn’t have many friends. Most lesbians in town didn’t seem too interested in hanging out with a cop. It’s not like she ever talked about cases or interrogated people at the dinner table. Gandalf and Jess were older, but maybe sometime—after the case was solved—the four of them might get together for a drink. Don’t be silly, she told herself. This isn’t about your social life.

Who was next? The new family with the cute baby, but they moved in after the disappearance and had no reason to want to harm Mrs. Blum. Then there was the couple in Number Six, who stuck out like a sore thumb on the Court. In the whole town, actually. The bald woman with a hoodie and her odd husband. If this were a TV cop show, he’d be the villain with his sideways glances and sly grin. But this was real life, and he was just a guy with an unfortunate face.

She would have to talk with the Blum daughter again. Lexi Blum seemed genuinely worried about her mother. And she must know things that might help, even if she didn’t know she knew them. McPhee tried to concentrate on the interviews, searching her brain for the little thing someone might have said, the half-heard clue. If only she weren’t so sleepy.

Did she doze off? She must have, because when she checked the wall clock again it was almost ten thirty. And the surveillance camera at the Haskell loading dock had action. A person walked slowly across the parking area towards the dumpster. Her head turned from side to side as she faced the shadows. After a moment, a second person moved out from the darkness behind the dumpster. The two people, women probably from the shape of their silhouettes, appeared to be talking. If only these cameras were wired for sound! She would have loved to hear their conversation, to know who they were and what they were doing at Haskell.

They must have heard something, because both women turned their heads sharply toward the road at the same moment. A car, maybe? The women moved together, stepping out of the light and out of view. At last, she thought. At last something is breaking with this case.

McPhee took out her phone to notify the desk sergeant that she was going to a crime scene, but then she stopped. Protocol would be to send a patrol car to check this out. But strictly speaking there was no crime. Not yet, maybe not at all.

She thought about it for a few long moments. She had to admit that she was more personally involved in this case than was smart. If one of her squad brought up this scenario, she would tell them to follow protocol and not leave her post to personally investigate. But she wanted to know what was happening. She wanted to be the one to find Iris Blum safe and sound. Against her better judgement, McPhee asked the desk sergeant to cover the surveillance room and then left the station.