As the Wicked Watch(4)

Ramirez was looking up at the lights like he’d never noticed them before when Fawcett entered the room, clutching a notepad against his chest like it was Kevlar body armor.

“Hi, Jordan, thank you for coming,” Fawcett said a little too enthusiastically.

Phony does not suit this guy well. “Sure, Detective. I was surprised to hear from you.”

“Sit down.” He motioned me to the head of the table.

“Have a seat, Jordan,” would have been more appropriate.

The top of his pointy bald head glistened under the lights.

“Actually, Detective, if you could sit there instead, with the four-star flag at your back, and Jordan, you sit here.” Scott pointed. “If we face the other way, we’ll catch shadow from those blinds over there.”

“Sure,” Fawcett said.

“Detective, before we begin, I’d like to establish the focus of this interview,” I said half matter-of-factly, half “don’t try and play me, mister.”

“All right then,” he said. “Shoot.”

“Police have consistently called the disappearance of Masey James a runaway case. Is that changing?”

“We haven’t ruled it out,” he said. “Teens who run away from home can avoid detection for months.”

“But something’s changed. What?” I asked.

“Nothing’s changed, Jordan,” said Fawcett, his fake smile now transformed into a grimace of exasperation. “The young lady doesn’t fit the profile.”

I smile while thinking, You idiot. And you’re just now figuring that out?

From what Masey’s mother, Pamela Alonzo, had shared with me about her daughter, I was confident she was no teenage runaway. She reminded me too much of myself at fifteen—a girlie girl who took pride in her appearance, someone ambitious and sure of herself.

The interview began and ended in a flash. Fawcett’s admission off-camera that Masey didn’t fit the profile of a runaway wouldn’t come so easy on-camera. Typical.

“This is an ongoing investigation, but we’re adding personnel and considering some other potential scenarios,” Fawcett said.

“Can you elaborate?” I asked.

“I’d rather not, but I want to assure the community and all of Chicago that we will exhaust all resources to find Masey,” he said.

So that’s it? You called me here for this? Is this guy kidding me? I can’t take this back to the newsroom.

“Sir, with all due respect, did you lose valuable time dismissing this as a runaway case?” I asked.

“Not at all. We have a protocol and we followed it. But again, let me stress, this is a priority, and we want to assure Masey’s family and all of Chicago we are laser focused on this case and on finding Masey. We are working with the family to trace her every move.”

And there you have it—that’s the agenda. “We are working on it.”

I glared at him with the “That’s it?” look I’d mastered after years of interviewing cops, but he didn’t take the bait and ejected himself from the chair like a fighter pilot getting the hell out of the hot seat.

He didn’t even bother to walk us to the elevator. Where was Ramirez? Were we just supposed to pack up and leave on our own?

Scott looked at me shaking his head, his signature move when he had nothing to say or nothing he thought I wanted to hear. As he packed up his gear, I texted Ellen. What a bust!

She sent a quick reply. What happened?

But I just texted back Talk soon, because frankly reliving any part of what had just taken place was a waste of my time.

As Scott and I exited police headquarters, a familiar face stopped me in my tracks. It was Masey James smiling at me, her image captioned with MISSING in bold black letters tacked to a utility pole.

Perhaps Fawcett should pay more attention to what’s in his own backyard. It says MISSING, not HELP FIND A RUNAWAY.

Someone was sending a message, but it wasn’t getting through. I felt like grabbing the poster and running back inside and slapping it on Fawcett’s desk.

Masey’s mother had publicly rejected police assertions that her daughter had run away from home. But there still hadn’t been an Amber Alert issued by law enforcement, which was what the alert was meant for. This kid was looking at a future where she could write her own ticket. If it wasn’t used in a case involving a teenager any parent would be proud of, then when?

The missing posters were the community’s way of issuing an alert for one of its own. Fawcett might have tricked his mind into believing that police were doing their job, just following protocol. But I couldn’t ignore what I recognized as a plea for help, for the police to care, for attention from the media, and for answers.

Back in the news van, Scott and I headed toward King Drive, and I rolled down the window and tilted my head out and up toward the sky. The sunlight filtered through the trees that stood guard outside of the stately two-and three-flat brownstones—walk-ups, some people call them—that lined both sides of the boulevard. These houses were unlike any I had seen back in Austin, Texas, and portlier than the brownstones in Harlem. I was impressed with the architecture, though, the kind of regal, ornate design work most builders had abandoned years ago for sameness and simplicity.

The tree limbs, heavy with leaves changing into their fall brilliance, cast a shadow like an archipelago upon the ground below. If I was going to do my broadcast from here, the lighting had to be right.