"I'm finding nothing," Maria said over the phone.
"I never thought I'd hear those words out of your mouth."
"I know."
Franco listened to the silence on the phone. "You've gotta give me something."
He listened to the typing of the keys for a few more minutes. "Nothing."
Franco pressed his palm against his forehead, fighting against the pressure building there with a headache.
"When was the last time you got a good night's sleep?" she asked.
He chuckled.
"Oh wait, I've got something," she said excitedly.
Franco straightened his spine and pressed his ear against the phone.
"He was found up on Steven's Ridge. Hang on, let me look that up."
Franco listened to her fingers clicking eagerly against the keys and he pictured her while she typed. He had seen the expression plenty of times before. When she was on to something good, a wrinkle formed between her brows and her lips pressed pursed together - as if all the energy in her face was drawn to the center.
"Jesus Franco," she paused and Franco grew impatient, wishing he was looking at her computer screen at that moment.
When she told him the elevation and distance, Franco whistled in response.
"How the heck did that little boy get there?" She asked the question he was already thinking.
"Looks like I have a Sheriff to speak to."
She laughed. "Yeah, good luck with that."
~
"He is not available to speak with you," the young rookie officer shared with Franco.
"Can you elaborate on that?" Franco asked. "He's not available to speak to me or he won't speak to me."
The young officer leaned forward on the counter, inches from Franco's face. "He won't speak with you." The officer stood ramrod straight and smiled at Franco. "Have a nice day."
"Well, I can understand that," Franco said, ignoring the officer's attempt at intimidation. "Let him know that I have some information that I think he'd be interested in regarding Christopher Isbell."
The officer quirked his head to the side, his smile disappearing. "Well then, let me know what that information is and I'll be happy to pass it on."
Franco leaned forward this time and spoke low enough that the officer needed to lean in and match his stance. "I'll be here for exactly six more minutes. If the Sheriff wants the information, he'll need to come meet me in that time. Otherwise, I'll just take it to my friends at the FBI."
Franco straightened back up and now smiled at the young officer who turned several shades of red. For effect, Franco looked down at his watch. "Five minutes now."
The officer disappeared behind the door and in four and a half minutes reappeared with Sheriff Moore. The Sheriff looked behind him, annoyed at the officer, who promptly retreated back where he came from.
"This better be good," the Sheriff said.
"Well, I've recently learned the distance of which Christopher was found."
The Sheriff narrowed his eyes at Franco. "Care to explain how you know that?"
"There's a lot of things I know and a lot of things I learned. However, as you know Sheriff, a journalist never reveals their sources."
The Sheriff leaned forward, his palms pressed against the countertop, and his face turned several shades of red. His jaw was clenched tight and the vein in his neck throbbed.
Franco waited. "Sheriff," he said, when he knew the Sheriff had calmed down. He decided to give something to the Sheriff to try to get something in return. "Yes, I'm a journalist, but it's not about that anymore. There's something going on and I want to get to the bottom of it, for myself."
Nearly a minute had passed as the Sheriff stood perfectly still. Franco was about to turn and walk out the front door, giving up, when the Sheriff finally responded, "Okay."
"Okay?"
"Come with me," he said, and he walked through the doors to where his desk was. Franco followed, apprehensive. The office area was rather small, housing only six desks. All of them, except for one, were covered in piles of paperwork, empty coffee mugs, and fast food cups. The one that was empty, Franco guessed, was unused and ready for a new officer.
Peeking out from the pile of paperwork was a name placard on the Sheriff's desk; Sheriff Moore. He somehow pulled out a sheet of paper from the center of the pile and handed it to Franco. How the Sheriff knew where to find that paper is something that baffled Franco more than the cases he had been investigating.
He peered down at the sheet. A lot of it was the same information Maria had dug up for him but there were a lot of details that he didn't have before.
"This is what I have," Sheriff Moore said, a three-day stubble on his face, accentuating the heavy creases caused by the stress that aged the Sheriff more than he already was. Franco guessed the Sheriff was already working past retirement.
"It's not much more than I have," Franco said as he looked over the sheet again.
"It defies the laws of physics," Moore sighed. "Not that I know much about physics. But I do know when things don't add up. There's no way that boy made it up on that ridge in that short amount of time."
"So what do you think it was?"
"Franco, I've racked my brain over this case day and night, nothing makes sense."
"A bear?"
"The injuries on the Isbell boy didn't coincide with being carried by a bear. Besides, it would be against a bear's nature to carry a boy up a mountain only to leave him there."
"Kidnapping?"
"We thought about that, but it doesn't make sense either." Sheriff Moore crossed his arms and let out a deep breath. "It's something we're not thinking of yet and I just can't figure out what."
"That's why you're letting me in," Franco said.
"Yes."
Franco scratched his chin. "Okay, but I have a condition."
Sheriff Moore let out a single laugh. "You're giving me a condition?"
"Yes." Franco smiled.
"Okay, shoot."
"We're completely open with each other about everything we found out or this won't work."
"Fine."
The answer came quickly showing that Sheriff Moore was on the same page before Franco ever gave the condition.