Sixteen (ON HOLD)

1.2 The Station

Police Chief Raymond Tanner looked out his office window at the boy slumped over the metal desk a few feet away. A patrol car had picked him up, wandering aimlessly down the center of a dark road in the middle of the night. A rookie officer, unlucky enough to pull the overnight shifts that week, had immediately phoned the Chief when he recognized the boy as one of the town's sixteen missing teenagers.

Anyone on the force would have known him immediately, Cole Parks, serious delinquent and budding psychopath. At sixteen years old Cole had already generated a juvenile offender record of serious length, been kicked out of the local high school and done two small stints in the detention center. Once he had been violent, cruel and unpredictable; but now he sat limp and haggard in his chair. His usually handsome face was slack jawed and he stared blankly at the floor with wide unblinking eyes.

The Chief rubbed his eyes and reached for the lukewarm cup of coffee on his desk. It was 3 AM and so far the kid hadn't spoken a word. Hell, he hadn't even lifted his head to look anyone in the eye. He placed a third phone call to Cole's house and let the phone ring seven times before giving up. Cole's father, and only guardian, was most likely sleeping off a drunken stupor somewhere.

Even at this early morning hour, the station was starting to fill up as word started to spread amongst his staff that Cole had been found. The curious officers were lining the walls and silently observing the young man. Tanner knew they were all thinking the same thing, that Cole could possibly have had something to do with all of the kids going missing. Alright, it seemed unlikely that one suspect had pulled off 15 separate acts of abduction and slipped away unnoticed, staying hidden for months. But the parents and the police force were desperate and any answer, no matter how far reaching, seemed like a good idea right now.

The boy, although his eyes remained open, was drifting peacefully in and out of consciousness. "Cole," was the name the police officers kept calling him. He was fine with that, although it didn't quite register. Everything up to this point felt like a dream that he couldn't remember and he was struggling to wake from it. The first thing he could clearly remember was walking. First there was blankness, and then he was looking down at his heavy boots hitting the pavement over and over. Lift, step. Lift, step. Lift, step. The world surrounding him was dark and offered no clues as to where he was, so he just kept walking. Lift, step. Lift, step. It seemed like a reasonable thing to do.

He walked until somebody told him to stop then he allowed himself without hesitation to be placed into the back of a black and white squad car. The claustrophobic feel in the backseat of that car was oddly familiar. Now he was sitting in a cold room where every flat surface was metal covered in scattered papers, maybe this is the place he belonged, the place he was walking to. At least, it felt like a place he had been to before and that was a start.

A heavy fist slammed into the desk in front of him, waking him at last from the zombie like trance.

"Where the hell are the rest of them, huh? Where the hell is my daughter Cole? Start talking or so help me . . ." Officer David Sellers had just about come unglued trying to be patient and watching from the sidelines. Finally, unable to restrain himself any longer, he had launched his verbal attack on the boy. He towered over him with his fists clenched and ready to strike. Of everyone in the room he felt like he was the most entitled to punch this kid in the face. His daughter was missing and Cole was now suspect number one.