THE BODY

Gone

There is an old saying in police work. Never disappear on a Friday. Friday is a no work day for every detective. The work ethic is a casual as the clothes worn on that day and no one wants to start an important case that might not get looked at again until Monday. The day is usually reserved for catching up on paperwork. But today was one of those days. You just can't pick when to go missing.

I was in my office when Danny walked in carrying a file. Danny was one of the best intuitive cops I had ever met. He could read a file on a case and make a guess, and he was usually right. It just came natural to him.  The file he brought me was a missing person's case. An 18 year old girl had been reported missing by her family 4 days earlier and he had caught the case. He had done some digging around and pulled phone records, talked to witnesses, the usual stuff. He threw the file on my desk, pointed at it, then looked at me and said, "She's dead". I believed him. Not because of his instincts but because of his recent stats. Danny had worked maybe 20 missing persons cases in the last year and the last three missing persons cases that he said were dead bodies, ended up in dead bodies. Not all homicides, of course, but dead nonetheless. 

As if reading my mind Danny spoke, "This one's a homicide". I believed that too. I asked for the short version and Danny grabbed the file and pulled a picture from it. He then handed me the file and sat down. He explained that she had been missing for the last 4 days and no one had heard from her. No phone calls or messages had been made from her phone since the moment she disappeared. No one had reported seeing her or talking to her since then. She had also not gone to work or even picked up her purse or last paycheck since she disappeared. She left her home with an unknown friend and took no extra clothes with her. Still might be a runaway with a broken phone I thought. "What's the catch"? Danny handed me the picture. The picture was of 18 year old Jo Ana Maria Cardenas in her high school cap and gown. I understood what he meant now. She was absolutely gorgeous. I don't mean to be cruel here but there is a cynical understanding of human nature that cops have and most other people don't. This girl was a beauty. Beautiful girls are loved, wanted, needed. People need to see them and be with them. Had the picture been of an ugly girl Danny might still have called this a runaway. But a girl this beautiful cannot get away with not talking, texting, or somehow being in contact with someone who loves her. That's just the way things are. I knew she was dead too. 

I asked Danny what his next step was and he smiled and said "I don't work homicides", making quotation marks in the air as he finished the sentence. "You do today", I said.

We walked to his office where Jo Ana's parents, older sister, and brother-in-law were waiting. The parents were in their late 50's, didn't speak English, and looked like they worked hard every day of their life, and never in the shade.  The sister was just a couple of years older than Jo Ana and was almost as pretty. Her and Jo Ana had gone to school here most of their lives. The brother-in-law understood English but did not speak it much. I talked to the parents and let them know that we would do everything to find her. I didn't tell them I thought she was dead. There was no need for that right now, and I could be wrong, though I doubted it. The brother in law was named Jose. He was the last person to see Jo Ana alive. He explained that they were in the house and the parents and his wife had gone to go wash clothes. He said Jo Ana got ready to go out and someone in what he thought was an older model blue Buick picked her up. He explained that he didn't think she had permission to go anywhere so he borrowed her phone while she was in the shower and called her mom to let her know. He said he only saw the vehicle as it left and he argued with her to wait for her parents, but she didn't listen. 

I sat there and listened to him and the rest of them recount their last contact with Jo Ana. There is no secret to listening to people. There is no fool proof way to tell if they are lying.  One of my favorite methods of finding out if people are lying is to put them in a group with their family or closest friends. I have no baseline information to gauge your truth from your lies, but your close family and friends do. They have listened to you lie all their lives and they react to it in ways that sometimes even they don't notice. As each one talked I looked at everybody else. Mom, dad, and sister checked out okay with everyone else. When Jose spoke, though, his wife's body spoke even louder. She could not sit right, hold her head still, or find any place to put her hands. Everything about her told me she had a problem with him or his story. It could be she was just mad because he let her sister take off without permission, and this led to her disappearance, or it could be more. Whatever it was it was too early to divide and conquer anyway, assuming this was a homicide, but it never hurts to look ahead.