Loves Me Not

THIRTY ONE

After speaking with Ben about the journal entry, I decide to give someone else a shot and see if it proves useful.

I show up to Belmont's place, telling him that there's been a development. I'm getting paranoid now that the paparazzi zoo is following me. I know what kind of shit-storm this will turn into if they follow me here and put the pieces together that Catalaina was having an affair. They will villainize her, turn this around so that she's the one at fault. And then I'll lose any and all hope of the public working together to help me find her. Despite how much I hate the press, I need them on my side. They play a crucial role in finding this girl.

I bring out the paper and watch his facial expression as he reads it.
"Where did you get this?" he asks me.
"It's from her journal."
He looks at it again. "Interesting."
"You don't find that odd?" I ask him.
He hands it back to me. "I mean, yeah, it's odd, but it's not completely out of character. I told you how she is. Very melodramatic like that. If you're asking me if I think she disapeared willingly, I'm not sure what to tell you. I'm inclined to say no, that she wouldn't do something like that. But then again, I didn't know her as well as I thought I did. She was always full of surprises. And no one ever truly knows what's going through her head."
"So it's a possibility then?" I say.
"Perhaps," he says. "Wouldn't that be the ideal situation? Give us all some peace of mind that nothing bad happened to her and she's not hurt?"
"A giant waste of police resources is what it would be," I tell him. "Did she tell you anything? Ever mention anything about packing a bag and leaving town?"
"No," he says. "I mean, she'd always talk about the future and where she'd see herself. But never vanishing suddenly like this."
"So you don't think she'd run off? Pull this stunt for attention?"
"I don't know," he says. "I haven't been able to sleep all week. I'm kept awake every night, the only thing I can see is her face. It's making me sick that I don't know where she is. I'm so fucking worried about her. But I don't know what to think. If she ran away, then that's great. It means she needed some time away to herself, and that she's okay. But the latter," he says. "Would mean that she didn't runaway. And in that case, something has happened to her." He looks at me. "You can't give up just because of this. A single journal entry expressing confusion doesn't mean that she actually ran away."
"The more things I find, the more it's looking that way."
"You don't have anything," he says. "Keep looking for her. Even if she did run off, she's still worth finding."