Addicted to Her Pain

Chapter Six

Detective Alec Caldwell sat behind his desk, listening to the rain as it pounded down on the street outside. The weather in Seattle was always dreary but today it didn't matter, Alec felt as though he was on top of the world. 

He had received a call from Anya Petrova, her voice coming through he speaker so loudly he had to hold it a couple inches away. 

"Alec, someone called about a key!" 

He had listened in confusion until she finished, her story finally making sense. There was no other reason they would have access to her phone number. He did question if maybe they had gotten a digit wrong but she assured him they hadn't. 

"It was Nemesis, I'm sure of it!" she insisted. 

This had been the first clue we had received, which came just in time. The agency Alec worked for had been pestering him to either close the case or move on to others cases for good. After a year they were a bit fed up that he didn't have any leads, but Anya bank account kept her case open. Her daughter had been taken out of no where. No suspicious boyfriends to go after, no drug problems and no crazy life style. She had led a quiet life for a 24 year old, and suddenly she simply vanished. Her apartment was spotless, no clothes missing, her car found locked in its assigned parking spot. 

The only clue Alec had gone off of was a comment Anya said her daughter made two days before she disappeared. 

"She said she though a man looked at her for too long while he ordered his coffee, I'm so stupid, I told her it was just because of how beautiful she was that day. I should have thought more about it"

Alec didn't have anything to go off of based on that alone, and the footage from the bakery didn't help either. No one had lingered and Nem had worn a smile on her face the entire time, leaving anyone to be a suspect. He had combed through footage from every camera available, even the ones from right outside her apartment. 

Every camera showed her arriving home from work and walking into her home as usual, and then nothing.  

He sighed and scrolled through pictures of bodega Bay California, a town made up of small groups of buildings and restaurants right on the coast. It was quaint in a small town kind of way, with hills to one side and the cliffs to the other. He picked up the phone as he enlarged the screen, typing in the phone number for Pascals Bakery from their google page. 

"Pascals, how can help you?"

He cleared his throat "Hi there I'm so sorry to bother you but I needed to double check if my daughter was there a couple days ago? she has long black hair, green eyes, Pale skin and -"

The waitress on the phone snorted "yeah I remember her, she was in here with her boyfriend."

Boyfriend?

He sat straight up in his chair "really?"

"Yup" the woman said, popping the p at the end of the word. "She was like, hella rude to me, no offense, why do you want to know?"

He flipped to another screen, the airplane ticket prices already beginning to load for a one way trip to California. "She lost her phone" the lies came easily, but it was much better this girl believe that he really was just looking for his 'daughters' phone. God, just the thought of going a year without knowing where your kid is was enough to confirm his belief that he should never have children. It was too hard to do his job anyway without worrying about the extra burden. 

The girl rattled on about never finding a phone and never catching either of their names but he was barely listening. His flight was booked, this was the only true lead they had been given and he wasn't going to let it go anytime soon. 

Anya burst through his doorway a couple seconds after he hung up. She must have received the text update he'd sent her. 

"She was there!" she cried out, tears streaming down her face. "I know" he replied, packing his laptop into a bag "I'm going to get your daughter back, you've been through enough after dealing with your husbands passing."

That case was still open, a murder not quite worth shedding light on. It wasn't really pushing any detectives to solve his case once they found out what hell he'd put his wife and daughter through anyway. 

"Do whatever you have to do, no matter the expense" she said, her hands clasped together as if in prayer. He nodded and held the door open for her as they exited his office. 

This new development, although good, led to a million new questions for him. The most important one had been though of during his conversation with the waitress from Pascal's. Why had she believed Nem to be with her boyfriend and why had she been rude? 

Maybe she was just playing a role, trying to gain this mans trust? Trying to piss off a worker at the bakery in hopes they would remember her face among the thousand visitors they served everyday? What if we were all completely wrong and she had run away? No that was impossible, she wouldn't leave her mother like that after the trauma they had shared as a result of her father. 

He had gone through a list of homes 30 miles around the town, looking over the registered owners but none seemed to fit the description the girl had given him. They all seemed to be in their 70's or 80's with a full life of retirement in front of them. the exact description this girl had given him was "really hot guy, black hair with tattoos, and gorgeous eyes, he looked kinda like a model, really tall too, might have been around 30."

At least, he knew his age and hair color, which was enough to go on for now. 

He waved Anya goodbye, reassuring her that he would send as many updates as he could once he arrived. His plane would be leaving soon, he only had a couple more hours to wait. 

His lead was finally here.