Murray Hill || A Superhuman Tale - 1

Chapter Thirty-One

Tommy smiled at his departing girlfriend, following her briefly with his eyes. As he turned back, he realized from the slight shock in Camille's eyes that she'd caught him checking out Rhonda's ass. He suppressed a laugh.

"Detective, it's really good of you to come today. I'm assuming Rhonda offered you something, but I'm a deader if I don't press food and drink on you."

"No. Thank you," she replied. "I have everything I need. But I do have a few papers for you to look at." She moved toward the front of the apartment, and recovered a slim file from the dining table. Tommy accepted it and motioned for her to sit.

"There's very little we could find on your friend," the detective continued. "She hasn't had any trouble with the law as far as we could go back, which was a little over 30 years. No convictions, no arrests, and no investigations. Not even a moving violation. There might be information going back further, but we'd have to go state-by-state, through paper files, to find that."

She glanced at her notes. "Amy Lascar has an Arizona driver's license, but we found no denials of any sort of state licenses or permits. There was one interesting thing, which we probably shouldn't have been able to find: she's been on a no-fly list for nearly a year."

Camille's last few words struck Tommy right between the eyes. He let out a burst of air that might have been a laugh. "How did I not see that?" he asked quietly. It was more a statement than a question.

"What do you mean?"

"Amy hates to drive, but toward the end of last year, she purchased a new car and began driving cross-country for work." He leaned forward onto the table, resting his face on his left palm. "Motherfucker," he whispered. "... oh, sorry."

"Don't worry. I've heard the phrase a time or two."

"It isn't ..." he hesitated. "It's just ... we have a couple of smart people working on her disappearance. One of them, a dear friend of mine, has always had an uncanny knack for finding missing people. And it feels like we're the Keystone Cops. We keep mis-stepping."

"Mr. Haas ...."

"Tommy," he corrected her, not for the first time.

"Tommy, all investigations have hiccups. I'm a cop, and I think I'm a good one. But I'm not a psychic. Sometimes you'll miss obvious things. The only answer is to buckle down, work the case, and go back over things again. Try not to make the same error twice, but sometimes we learn important things from our mistakes."

"What would you do?"

"To start with? That's easy. I'd find out who put your friend on this no-fly list and why."

"How do we do that?"

"People usually only find out that they're on a list because they've been denied the right to board an airliner." said Camille. "If you know you're on a watchlist, you can appeal to the federal government. I think that process is administered through the FBI. They're supposed to provide a notification of the general reason you've been watch-listed. That might be a problem here, though."

"Why?"

"Only your friend can appeal. If I were you, I'd find out if she's hired a lawyer and talk to him or her."

Tommy momentarily was at a loss for words. It just seemed to get more and more complicated. As smart as he was, the twists and turns of modern bureaucratic systems sometimes still confused him.

"And I'd do one other thing," added Camille.

"What?"

"How long since you've gotten on a commercial aircraft?"