Chicago PD: Hank Voight's Forbidden Love

All Cylinders Firing

Halstead and Upton were the first to arrive at the Voight home. Three patrol units were already on the scene but had not been able to gain entry.

"We rang the doorbell and knocked several times, but there was no answer " one of the patrolmen told the two detectives. "Without a warrant or exigent circumstances there was nothing more we could do."

"We have permission of the owner to break down the door," Upton yelled as she and Halstead ran to the van to get the battering ram to break down Voight's door.

But just as they were about to remove the instrument from the van, Voight screechingly pulled up to his house and jumped out of his Escalade.

"IS SHE IN THERE? IS ELENA INSIDE?" he yelled at his two detectives as he sprinted towards his house.

"We don't know, Sarge," Halstead said. "We just got here, and the patrolman says there was no answer when he rang the doorbell. We were just about to break down the door!"

Voight bounded up the front steps with his house keys, opened the door, and ran inside.

"ELENA!!  ELENA!!  WHERE ARE YOU?!!"

He knew instinctively that the house was empty. He felt it. He could always tell when she was there whenever he walked inside, even if he didn't see or hear her moving around. He just knew. He could feel her. He could sense her. Right then and there he neither felt nor sensed her, and his heart sank. She wasn't there.

Halstead and Upton searched the entire house from top to bottom, but there were no signs of Elena or of a struggle.  Everything in the house appeared to be in order.  For a brief moment Voight thought — hoped — that maybe she had gone out to run an errand and would come walking into the house any minute wondering what all of the commotion was about.  He whipped out his phone and called her cell again, and that's when he heard his ring tone — a police siren — in the kitchen.  He sprinted into the kitchen and saw her cellphone propped up on top of the microwave oven.  He grabbed it and held it in his hand, looking at it as if it held the answer to her whereabouts. 

By this time the rest of the team arrived and entered the house.

"Maybe she forgot to take her phone with her," said Atwater as he stood behind Voight. 

Voight shook his head.  "Elena seldom forgets her phone.  And if she had, she would've come back to get it once she realized she didn't have it.  Hell, if she were 10 miles away she would've  driven all the way back here to get it; she makes me crazy with that.  No, something's wrong, Kevin, something's terribly wrong."

Atwater placed his hand on Voight's shoulder and assured him they would find her.

"We're going to find her, Sergeant."

But Atwater was getting a sick feeling, too. 
                           ———————

Voight shook off his fears and growing despair and swung into action. He ordered his team to canvass the neighborhood for any eyewitnesses who may have seen Elena leaving the house and to get the pods and videos from the cameras on his street.

He wanted to kick himself for taking down the security cameras he had installed on his house several years ago. A couple of years back, however, Elena had told him she wasn't comfortable with the cameras, some nonsense about Big Brother watching like in George Orwell's book, 1984. He had let her talk him into removing the cameras — as she was able to do with almost everything— but this time he especially regretted it and was angry with himself — and her. Oh, how he wished he had stood his ground and told her to suck it up and live with it, Big Brother and all. But whenever she gazed at him with those luminous almond eyes of hers, he got lost in them and did her bidding, whatever she wanted.
———————
"WHERE'S YOUR DAUGHTER !!" demanded Voight as he stood over the terrified woman.