A Score & A Decade

Chapter 6

Two weeks. That's how long she had been working with the same evidence, trying to find a flaw. She looked out the window and saw that it was dark. She looked back at her desk and saw the files, notes, and pictures strewn all across. Sitting back down at her chair with a sigh, she went over the conversation once again, for the millionth time.

The story was so perfectly told. Everyone had a tight alibi. There was no motive, Nothing. It was an impossible case. At least, impossible if everything was the truth. But say there were some lies...

Zoe closed her eyes and concentrated on every single thing that Louise said, trying to find something odd.  And suddenly something flashed:

"Evelyn said that there were new residents in the neighbourhood and that they were in the park. I was quite surprised as I hadn't known about new residents at all. 

William and Diana Park. They were a young couple with no children. They got divorced not two days after Roselle's disappearance and Diana moved out. I never found out what happened to William because we moved out only a couple of months later."

From what she had seen in the case file, the neighbourhood was small, and the Rodneys had been living there for years. There was no way they wouldn't know if there were new neighbours. 

Zoe pondered this -  The Rodneys knew everyone in the neighbourhood, as the case file had said. Then the only logical explanation was that the Parks weren't residents at all. So was Louise lying, trying to cover the Parks up in some way? But that didn't make sense. Why would she want to help cover someone up in her missing daughter's case? The same daughter she loved more than anything?

Unless of course, she wasn't trying to cover them up. Maybe because she hadn't cared. Under normal circumstances, if there were new residents in the neighbourhood she didn't know about, Louise Rodney would have gone and found out about them, talked to them and figured out who they were. But these weren't normal circumstances. Her daughter had gone missing, and the Parks must have been the last thing on her mind, and maybe they knew that.

They had gotten divorced two days after Roselle's disappearance. The two affairs were maybe a little too close to be called coincidences. Diana had moved out and that was the end of the Parks. It all seemed a bit too shady.

Zoe felt like she was connecting everything haphazardly to form a complete story, but whatever tale she had just spun in her head, she knew one thing for sure - The Parks business, it was suspicious. Very, very suspicious.

She needed to meet a police officer who was in on the case 30 years ago. She cursed herself for not thinking about this 2 weeks ago. She could get some insight, maybe pick up a few clues on the way.

She dialled a familiar number on her office telephone. It rang a few times before the call was picked up.

"Hello?" the voice asked.

"Hi Hank, I need a favour."