The Rule of Three

Chapter 17

Anna paces anxiously back and forth in her living room; Patterson left the house around 5:00pm last night. It was now 9:00 am Monday morning, and no one had slept well, Anna especially. Anna had just stayed up cleaning, organizing, and dusting; she was out of her mind with worry so she was trying to stay busy as she waited for news from Detective Williams. When Anna called him last night, he had sent out an immediate search for the car, and his men and he had been searching all night with no luck so far. Anna is terrified of the possibility of Patterson having gotten in a wreck. There is a knock on the door, and Anna sprints to open it. Copeland, who had been sketching in her room, bolts downstairs to avoid missing any news on her sister's whereabout.

When Anna opened the door, Detective Williams is standing in the doorway accompanied by a police officer behind him. Detective Williams is a little taller than average height and has short brown hair. "Detective, hello," Anna says as she steps out of the way of the entrance, "please come in."

"Thank you," he says with a friendly smile. The three of them stay in the foyer, with Copeland and Kerry standing in the door way that leads to the living room.

"Any news?" Anna says as soon as she closes the door unable to hold the question in any longer, "Have you found her? Is she ok?" Anna is trying to hold herself together despite the knots growing in her stomach; she is angry with herself that she could let this happen.

Detective Williams purses his lips together, looking around the room, "Is there a place we can sit down?" he asks. Anna feels her heart drop into her stomach. She loses the ability to breathe as she imagines the worst, Patterson is dead. Her eyes go wide as she prays and begs for it not to be true. Anna feels the need to breathe, but she can't make her lungs inhale.

Kerry, who is also wide eyed with worry, walks to her sister and wraps an arm around Anna's waste. "Let's go into the living room," Kerry offers as she guides Anna to the couch leading the detective behind her. Kerry and Anna sit on the couch side by side; Copeland stood behind the couch trying to process what was going on.

Detective Williams and his officer stand on the other side of the coffee table and look to the women. He takes in a deep breath and says, "We found the car on the side of Highway 47. I think you were right; she was headed for the hospital." He sees the panic in Anna's face and continues quickly, "It wasn't wrecked; the track marks suggest that she simply pulled off the road." Anna feels her lungs allow her a sharp breath; Patterson hadn't wrecked the car, so she should be ok. Anna looks up to the detective but his face doesn't show the hope Anna had been hoping for; she feels her breath stop in her throat again.

"Ok, so if she didn't wreck the car, where is she?" Anna asks in a very low tone.

"We don't know," the detective responds. Anna's eyes furrow together.

"What do you mean you don't know?" Kerry asks. "You found her car, so you should have found her," she tightens her arm around Anna when she feels her sister tense up even more.

Detective Williams gives them a sympathetic look, "The car was empty when we found it." He suddenly pulls out a few pictures; the one on the top of the stack shows the car on the side of road, and like he said, the car is empty. Anna furrows her eyes and investigates the photo that was placed on the coffee table. It looks like the car was just parked on the side of the road. "We took these photos as soon as we had enough light this morning," he says. Anna flips to the next photo, which is just the car with the front door open, but the picture was close enough that they could see the keys were still in the ignition. Anna's eyes furrow together as she flips to the next one which shows the dirt ground next to the car.

Anna looks up confused, "What am I looking at?" She looks back to the picture of the dirt to try to comprehend why it was included.

The detective takes a deep breath, "We found tracks in the dirt; we originally thought that Patterson had abandoned the car and walked but," his words trail off, and Anna quickly snaps her head up to look at the detective. She eyes him intensely until he continues. He leans down and points to the picture, "If you look here, the marks in the dirt don't resemble clean foot prints that would appear if Patterson had just walked off. It looks like there was some kind of struggle," he points to the marks close to the door of the car. "You see how these marks are long and there are sudden places where the dirt was kicked up?" Anna watches as he points out each of these markings on the ground in the photo.