Confessions on the 7:45(59)
“What are you working on, champ?” asked Andrew, the retired lawyer who now did pro bono work for at-risk kids in the system. He was another one who couldn’t let go.
“I got a lead on my runaway,” he said. “I’m on my way to check it out. Just gonna grab a coffee and go.”
“She ran away. Why not just let her go?” Jay, the other cop. Bitter as hell. Divorced. Estranged from his kids. The job had chewed him and spit him out.
Hunter shrugged. “Family’s still looking.”
Jennie had been missing more than a year. She was sixteen years old but looked much older. There was abuse from her biological father, though her mother and stepfather were good people, trying to help her. Jennie fell in with a group that was taking oxy. Her mother quickly lost control of the situation. And then she was gone.
Jay rubbed at his full salt-and-pepper beard. “They did a better job, maybe she’d still be at home.”
The other guys made affirming noises, like they were all parents of the year.
“Maybe,” said Hunter.
That was his way, easy deflection, allow other people’s negativity to roll over him and pass by. Hunter didn’t argue. It used to drive his wife crazy until she took up yoga and meditation. Now she got it. Hunter couldn’t touch his own toes, but he knew that you couldn’t win an argument. Anything you fight against gets stronger.
“He’s one of those everybody counts cops,” said Andrew. Andrew gave him a hearty pat on the back. “Reads too many Michael Connelly novels. Thinks he’s Bosch.”
“Everybody does count,” said Hunter. “Everybody counts to me.”
Mavis brought the food, stacked plates of eggs, pancakes, waffles, breakfast meats, donuts, and was greeted with enthusiasm from the group. They were like a bunch of kids at a birthday party when the cake came, lighting up and shouting.
She put a black coffee and an egg white and avocado on rye in front of Hunter.
“Hey, that’s not what I ordered for him,” said Bill in mock annoyance.
“But that’s what he gets every week,” said Mavis with a knowing smile.
He shot her a grateful look, because god knew if someone put a chili cheese omelet in front of him, he was going to eat it. He was only human.
“Thanks, Mavis.”
They all started to eat—and talk. As the conversation veered from politics to health care to reverse mortgages to sports, they got loud—shouting, laughing, ribbing each other. Hunter mostly just listened. This is why he came. He liked these guys, in spite of all their bad habits and rough edges. All of them had spent their lives on the front lines of humanity. Their combined knowledge, experience and earned wisdom were incalculable. He brought his cases here and “workshopped” them. They always had ideas—some of them wrong, some of them right, almost all of them leading him down a road he might not have found on his own.
It had been Phil who suggested that he Facebook-stalk Jennie Murray, his runaway. If he hadn’t done that, he might have missed the post from her ex. Hey, I thought I saw you at Tommy’s Cove the other night. Was that you?
Jennie hadn’t answered, but Hunter searched the place out online and discovered it was a bar a couple of towns over, a dive frequented by bikers. This was Hunter’s first lead in a month.
In a brief lull, he spoke up. “Anyone hear of Tommy’s Cove?”
“Tommy’s Cove?” said Phil, with a knowing nod. “Lots of truckers, bikers through there. Drugs. If she’s there, she’s probably turning tricks for oxy or meth.”
Hunter had figured as much. There weren’t that many ways for a drug-addled girl to get by.
“Even if you bring her back and get her into rehab,” said Jay, “she’ll be back out there within six months. They don’t get clean. Not from that.”
That was a typical cop’s attitude. Bad stayed bad. But it wasn’t always true.
“Everyone deserves a chance to straighten her life out,” said Andrew.
Hunter’s thoughts turned to Stella and Pearl Behr, his grudge match, as he’d come to think of it. The case he’d never solved, the girl who was still out there either living a life or buried deep. The woman who’d been murdered and forgotten by everyone but Hunter—whom she’d never met. A struggling single mother with a teenage daughter and a failing business, a string of loser boyfriends. She was strangled in her own bed, her child taken.
Everyone deserves a chance to straighten her life out. Some people never got it.
“Want some company?” asked Andrew. The conversation had gone on without Hunter, who was staring into the muddy circle of his coffee.
“Sure thing,” said Hunter. It was always good to have a partner.
He drained his cup, polished off his sandwich, grabbing a single piece of bacon from Phil’s plate. Then he left to jeers and shouted goodbyes. No doubt the other restaurant patrons would be happy when they all left.
They were walking out the door when something on the television screen mounted in the corner of the restaurant caught his eye.
The tagline across the bottom of the screen read: Missing Nanny.
He walked over to the set, reached for the remote that sat on the counter and turned it up a little. “Twenty-five-year-old Geneva Markson didn’t turn up for work yesterday,” said the newscaster, “after her sister reported her missing this weekend. On Monday, police discovered her abandoned car in the well-heeled neighborhood of her employers. And so far, there are no clues as to her whereabouts, no immediate indication of foul play. If anyone knows the location of this young woman, police are asking that they please call this tip line.”