The Wishing Flower

Chapter 6

My phone rang as soon as I got into my car, I was on my way to the office.

"Clarke, we got something. Get here fast", it was Julio's voice on the other end, and he was tense with urgency.

I hit the gas pedal harder as I raced down the streets to get to the office as soon as possible. I wondered what sort of evidence they found. Did they get prints, or find the missing weapon, or better yet find the girl ? The suspense built up as I sped through the street. I dashed into the building and ran up the stairs instead of waiting for the elevator.

"Clarke" Julio jumped out of his chair as soon as I entered the room. "Don't bother taking your jacket off, we are going back in the car". I didn't get a chance to say a word before Julio, dashed right out of the office and back outside as I closely followed him on his heels.

"Julio. Tell me what's going?", I asked my partner once we were settled in the car, "Did we find the girl"?

"No, not exactly," he said, his eyes fixed on the road "but we finally got a signal on her phone".

"What!", I said a little louder than expected, catching Julio by surprise. "I thought the was a dead end, we've been trying to get a signal on her phone this whole time"

" I know", Julio said with a big smile on his face, "Her phone seemed was to be turned on at some random cell phone shop an hour and a half away from here. Maybe Someone found her phone somewhere and send the thing in to get fixed", he said

I turned to Julio, my face grave, knowing that this phone could be our lifeline. More importantly, Sajal's lifeline. Our only way to get more information on her whereabouts, "Julio, drive faster", I told him.

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We pulled up to a small shopping complex and got out of the car into a quiet parking lot. We were in a calm suburban area, even though not that far seemed so estranged from from the city. There were no angry pedestrians yelling and cars honking, it was peaceful

A big sign in red lettering sat on top of a small yellow store that desperately needed a paint job. HANKS ELECTRONICS it said in big bold letters, and underneath in smaller letters said WE FIX PHONES. Bingo. The chimed above out heads jingled as we opened the door to walk in.

"Hi, I'm Detective Julio. I'm the one who called in about a missing phone" Julio said, flashing his ID to the man in the store once we entered.

"Oh. Yes. Yes. Come in. I'm Hank", he said wiping his meaty hands on his shirt and extending it our to shake.

"Let me get it for you", he said afterwards, unlocking a box that rested on the floor behind him. He spoke with a heavy Mediterranean accent, and he wore thin-rimmed glasses just on the tip of his nose so he had to do that funny thing with his head when he wanted to look through them.

Ah, yes. Here we go", he said, putting the phone in front of us onto the counter. It was wrapped in a sandwich bag. I looked down at the device, it was definitely an older model seeing the miniature size of the thing. Sajal probably wasn't to care about things like that from the looks of it.

I glances at the man, who was looking back at his beady little black eyes. And as if he read my mind, "This model is the 5, it's pretty old, not many people walk around with this one anymore", he said with a big hearty laugh.

"Yeah. Considering the 11 already came out.", I said as I pressed the home button with a pencil I picked from the counter. Hank pulled himself closer over the counter, his protruding stomach pressed against the glass. "You will not find anything on the phone. When I opened the phone. It was restarted. Factory reset", he told us.