The Little Blurbs of a Questionable Character

Story #1

Genre: Mystery, Realistic Fiction

This case was slightly more different than my usual undercover work. Not the most action-packed or exciting, but not as black and white. It certainly gave my partner something to think about, and heaven knows he needs that from time to time.

I came into the office early Monday morning to find three missing persons reports and a blue sticky note with the words see me in Gabriel's cramped handwriting stuck to my desk. I grabbed a coffee for Gabe and a bottle of water for me before pulling an extra chair up to his work area, which was its usual organized mess.

The job was simpleー spend three weeks in a town on the outskirts of Detroit. Listen in, get to know the community, and see if anyone knew anything about the three missing people. This particular town had a reputation of not cooperating or trusting the police, so the best way to get information was to go in undercover. Both Gabriel and I had worked successful undercover operations before and Gabe had lived in the town for a short time before moving to Detroit, which gave us knowledge of the area.

We were posing as siblings. Both of us are tall with blonde hair, which made it easy to pull off and didn't arise suspicion. Elizabeth and Grant Moore had lived in Detroit their whole life until Elizabeth decided she wanted to move away from the chaos of the city. Her brother was there to help her move in. He would be there for two weeks, but if we hadn't made any major developments by that time, I would be on my own. We had finished the case with two days to spare, so it hadn't come to that.

The first day was tense. I was glared at by no less than four neighbors and a fat pit bull that made a point of following me along the fence, expressing his hostility in low growls. I have no problem with pit bulls, but this one definitely had a problem with me.

There seemed to be a grand total of three people who didn't view me as an outsider and how-dare-she-even-think-about-moving-here. A sweet old woman with a white bagel of a bun that happened to live across the street from the house we had rented, along with a young mother who lived next door, and her six year old son. The mother loved to gossip, and her child had an equally large mouth, which was great for me and Gabriel and eventually led to valuable information.

The pair of us were there for nearly a week before anything important had happened. We spent the time groaning and wondering what we could be missing. Other than the three people, that is. The first to disappear had been a woman who had rented a house a few blocks from the one we were staying in, and we had visited it a few times, but had come up empty. A man disappeared next, a traveller who had stopped at a local gas station for a few minutes and never made it back to his car. The Detroit cops finally stepped in to help when a visitor at a motel vanished without a trace a few days later. Either the townspeople really hated visitors, or something else was going on. Me and Gabe agreed that it was definitely something else.

It was a Friday afternoon when I managed to hit the jackpot in the information department. The rumor spewing mom, whose name turned out to be Nancy, invited me over for tea. She called her little boy Junior and yelled good-natured threats at him when he started to wander past the wooden fence surrounding the yard. She talked a lot about herself and some family members that I didn't know about, but she finally started in on the topic of the "mysterious kidnappings".

She started with what she knew already, then moved on the the most recent disappearance, the motel man- "You know, when my sister and her husband visited last year for our family reunion, they stayed in that very room that the missing guy was in before he, you know, went missing." She sipped her tea and stared out across the yard where Junior was crouched, happily turning over rocks and squealing. Nancy was a good story teller and I had surprisingly found myself quite enjoying the anecdotes and small snacks she had provided throughout the two hours that I had been there.