Angel of the Void

Chapter Sixteen

Vince gives up on Missing Persons after two and a half hours. While he's been doing that I've been making myself look busy, ringing the crime lab every fifteen minutes to pester them into pushing our evidence ahead of everyone else's. For now it doesn't get me very far, but being just the right amount of annoying can get anyone anywhere in life. I'm in the middle of a heated discussion with one of the interns - it's barbed wire, for God's sake, how hard could it be to process? - when Vince snaps his fingers and gestures me over to his desk. I hold up a hand to tell him that I'm in the middle of something, and he responds by mouthing "prints are in," very slowly, so I'll understand. I hang up and kick my chair over to his side of our desks.

"Our girl's got a name," he says. "Felicity Conlin, sixteen, from Amherst."

Amherst is about an hour and a half away. Really it's not that far, but it's far enough to be a pain if we got into a jurisdiction dispute. "What's she doing out here?" I start running through the possibilities in my mind. I come up with everything from abduction to zen-hippy-smoking-shit-on-the-beach-day. It is, after all, my job to think of every possibility.

Mostly, though, it's the only way I can distract myself.

"Probably a runner, she's done it before," Vince grunts. "She lives in an all-girls group home run by Mike and Tamara Lloyd. Her prints were on file; she was in and out of juvie a lot. Shoplifting, mostly. Some possession, with intent."

"So somebody could have had a bone to pick with her." I'm nodding along as Vince is speaking, already drawing up a list of potential suspects in my head. Someone from the home - a foster parent, somebody who works on-site like a plumber - or from juvie. People from school, work (if she had a job). Maybe her supplier, if she did something to tick him off. Having her name and just a tiny hint of her past suddenly throws open all these doors, too many to deal with, but I have one thing working for me: whoever decided to tack her to that pole would have had to have the resources to do it. Surely that will narrow down the list, at least a little bit. "What do you think? Turf war or something? Drugs?"

"This far away? I doubt it."

There's a silence, but it's not uncomfortable. Not entirely, anyway, if I can ignore the sideways slant to Vince's eyes as he watches me. I cough. "Are we going to notify the group home? I mean, who do we contact for this?" If Felicity has parents out there and they still have their rights, we'll have to hunt them down and tell them, too. Assuming they haven't already seen it on the news.

"We'll have to stop by eventually, so we might as well get this over with first. Come on." He logs off of his computer with a tortoise-like efficiency and slings his coat off of his chair and over his shoulders in one fluid movement.

"I can't." It's out before I can stop it, before I can come up with an excuse, and Vince looks so unbelievably pissed that for a long time we stand there, staring at each other, and I am suddenly very aware that he's about to hit me. Backhand. Bitchslap. Something. "I have to - erm - I'll look into - I've been talking to Jackie, down at the lab...trying to get him to bump the evidence. And I was going to cross-check city employees...." I let my voice trail off, because it has no effect on Vince at all.

"I met him, you know." He brushes past me on his way to the door, leaning down so only I can hear him when he speaks. "And I'm not convinced that he's worth your job, kiddo."