Globe Tracers 1: The Case of Thomas Crain

Chapter 10: Automatic Rail Car

Kyle:

Jessica finally came back into the room. "Why didn't you come play with us?" she asked as she bounced onto the bed.

"I thought you were trying to distract her so I could work," I said offhand, paying attention to some paper I had been writing on as I thought.

"This is MY idea," Jessica pointed out. "Why wouldn't you be running distraction?"

"Cause you're better at it."

"Point." Jessica looked at the DNA tracker. "But that's still not why I played with her."

"Then why?" I asked rolling over on the bed. I was only mildly curious, but no sense in not satisfying that. 

"She needed it, Tity. She misses her little kid. She needed to play with someone like she was still a mother."

"She's not the kid in the relationship Je- I mean Karen. She doesn't need to be played with," I said sitting up.

Jessica just shook her head. "First off, she's out of earshot, if you want to call me Jessica, it's okay. Second off, playtime isn't just for the kids. That's just what the kids think. You'll understand when you become a dad."

"I call you Karen to get used to it so I don't slip up when it matters. Besides your parents haven't been around for a while... how do you understand parents?" I asked. It struck me after saying that how insensitive it sounded, but it was out now.

"I- I don't know..." Jessica looked back and forth a few times, confused, like the idea of being offended didn't even occur to her. "Well... I think I'm just deep- or so crazy I come full circle and just look like it anyway." She continued. "So, I trust you came up with something, right?" I showed her my notepad.

"I did. You're right, we need to start building a profile." I started going over my notes with her. "So I figured a few things out. First off, Tommy is a homebody. You see, aside from when he's at school, I gather his mother is used to knowing where he is."

"That's not too unusual for a human child."

"Maybe not, but it gives us something to go on. You're right, he was probably lost at school. You'll remember Janet didn't seem too surprised that he got lost when she wasn't around, so he was somewhere she expected him not to be watched too closely."

"Didn't we already clarify this?"

"Stick with me," I said, gritting my teeth at Jessica derailing my train of thought. I flipped a page. "If Tommy isn't used to being without his mother then she's going to be a security to him, meaning he's probably not going to stray very far unless he thinks he knows where he's going."

"Fair guess."

"Stop interrupting," I sassed. "Now with all that in mind, I entered his mother's DNA in here as well, you see I scanned her when she was in here before you two took off." I showed Jessica the scanner. "This thing can show me where both of them went up to a year back. I isolated it to just the last two months of course." I flipped between a few sketches in my notebook of the screen of the DNA scanner.

"Oh of course," Jessica said. I gritted my teeth- okay that one she didn't even try to disguise.

I closed my eyes. "The comments don't add anything, Karen."

"No, they don't, but it's fun to see you react."

I don't know what irritated me more, what she did, or that it worked. I shook my head to stay on track. "Anyway... in the last two months, like one would suspect, everywhere Tommy goes, Janet is usually with him. Every so often not, but usually not if he goes much further than a mile or so, except, nearly every single day at the same time, each day." I pushed a part of the screen on the scanner, making it zoom in. "Check it out. These red dots represent traces of Tommy as you know, basically, they're when he touched something or something with his DNA on it touched something in this area. But there's something weird about these particular traces. They're all made eight hours apart."