Into Darkness

Chapter 7

“We have two more officers that are coming in.  Have you reached your other guy to help with the search?” The county officer said as he walked up to Rob.

Rob was leaning against one of the trees closest to the police tape that now surrounded the area around the squad car.  Even though he had already been near the car when they found it, he was till keeping his distance until the lab guys from the county were done going over the area. 

It was strange to be doing this type of investigation there.  It had been different when he had been Chicago PD.  There was local CSI that was called in and processed the scene.  Labs were not fully in house, but they were close enough and was close enough to the various precincts that worked with them that it could feel in house.  Everything was right there, almost feeling like it was at the detectives fingertips, information could be called upon and labs were easily working with each other.

Here, it was just him, small town police deputy.  When there was a crime that actually needed investigation, not just a little talking and harassing the local kids, he had to call the county.  The county then had to call lab techs that were shared with other counties.  Thankfully he was a part of an area where the three counties were large enough that it was only the three and there weren’t any more than that.  Still, it was more of a process to get them there and most the morning was lost just to getting people arranged to come there to tell them how to close off the scene.  

It had been just before eleven when the first lab tech had arrived and he had beat the person who had actually been at the lab when they had gotten the call.  He didn’t have any equipment with him, and they still had to wait for it.  At least the tech who showed up had told them how he wanted the scene closed down and how much of it to cordon off.  Rob had closed off half the coal dump at first, which had frustrated many of the town people that had come to help walk the woods looking for the boy that was also missing.

“Yeah, finally got ahold of him.  He’s getting with his dispatcher now to try and get off duty there and come here to help search.”

“Good.” The officer was nodding his approval as he continued to give Rob an appraising look, “because you need it.  You need to get your ass to a bed.”

“I’m fine.” and for now he felt fine.  The sun was up, he didn’t even think he could get more than an hour sleep if he had tried.  Too much was going on.

The officer nodded again and turned back to the scene that Rob was watching.  There really wasn’t too much exciting to what the techs were doing.  One was going over the car, dusting all the surfaces they could.  It was going to be hell to get the car washed but the town council can worry about paying for that.  The other was shifting through the ground around the car, looking at the dirt and called tree limbs and leaves around the car.  

Rob did not envy their jobs.  Especially with having to process a scene out here in the middle of the woods where there was so many different particles.  He couldn’t imagine them being this through if it wasn’t for it being another officer missing.  He didn’t know if they knew the chief or not.  One of the techs was a younger woman who didn’t look like she had been around for too long, but the older man who had the silvering hair, he had to know the chief.  They had both been around too long.

“Have you checked in with the boy’s search?” The officer asked, meaning the people on the other side who they both could hear yelling back and forth.  Ten people had arrived earlier, David having called much of his friends and their parents to come and help search.  With how red David’s eyes were and how he seemed to twitch, Rob wasn’t going to ask what he had taken.  He just wanted to hope that it was energy drinks and that the kid wasn’t on Adderall.  That’s all they needed was for the kid to OD on them while they were out there.