“So, your daughter is above the age of eighteen?” the officer asked, resting his pointy elbows on top of the wooden counter.
“Yes?”
“Well, the standard procedure is to wait seventy-two hours before filing a report, ma’am.”
“Seventy-two hours? What am I supposed to do? She won’t answer my phone calls or my texts. She could be dead in seventy-two hours,” Emily snarled, shaking her head. “I need to fill out a report and I need to fill it out NOW.”
“Ma’am, I can’t do that. The law requires a seventy-two-hour wait for these types of cases. Have you talked to her friends? Does she have a boyfriend or anything like that?”
“Yes, I’ve talked to them all! They haven’t seen her or heard from her, either. This isn’t like her. If you knew her, you’d understand. She would never just leave town,” Emily said, shaking her head as the tears built in her hazel eyes.
“That’s what a lot of parents say, ma’am. But the fact of the matter is that young kids like the ones out there today don’t really take the time to think about how their absence can affect others. I’m sure she’ll return home soon. Until then, there is nothing I can do. But, if you come back in seventy-two hours, we can file a report.”
“You want me to go home, and sit on my couch, and wait for three whole God damn days while my daughter is out there! You want me to just sit around and pray that some psycho doesn’t have her?” Emily snarled. She felt her blood boil as her heart raced in her chest, faster and faster. Emily’s fists clenched as the warmth in her cheeks grew hotter and hotter. “What’s your name?”
“My name is Officer Paul Ferris, ma’am,” the officer said, tilting his head to the right as his tired, red eyes glared back at her from across the counter.
“Do you have a daughter?”
“No, ma’am, I don’t.”
“Well, then, that clears it up. You don’t understand what it’s like. You don’t understand the pain and the worry. You’ve never felt the fear grow inside of you, twisting and pulling on every muscle and organ it can reach. My daughter is out there somewhere and the longer we sit here and talk about a seventy-two hour wait time, the more danger she is in! Now, please can I just file a report? Please!” Emily begged as the warm tears trickled down her red cheeks.
“Ma’am, I can’t do that. I understand your pain and frustration.”
“No, you don’t! Don’t stand there and say you do, because you don’t! This is my daughter, God damn it. She’s just a kid, sir. Something is wrong! Something is terribly wrong. She would never do this. She would never go anywhere without telling someone!” Emily snapped. “Please, I am begging you. Can you please talk to the sheriff? Can you please talk to someone, anyone who can help me? I can’t just go home and lay in bed knowing she’s out there, that someone might have her.”
“The sheriff isn’t in right now, but I can have him possibly call you,” Officer Ferris said as he ripped a sticky note from the pad beside him.
“Thank you,” Emily said as she ran her hands over her cheeks, wiping the tears away.
“Can you describe her for me? Do you have a picture?”
“Yes, I do!” Emily said, nearly breathless, as she set her black purse on the counter and dug inside for her wallet. “She’s got blue eyes and blonde hair. She’s roughly five-three. She’s got a scar, a tiny scar on her forehead from falling off a teeter-totter when she was eight,” Emily said as she pulled out the high school photograph of Blair and slid it across the counter to Officer Ferris.
“All right, I will give this to the sheriff and it’s up to him. Now, I can’t promise anything, but I will have him call you.”
“Thank you,” Emily said.
“Now, just go home and try to get some rest. I know it’s hard. I know I’m probably asking the impossible from you, but try not to worry. We see cases like this all the time, especially with students’ parents at the university. More likely than not, she’ll show up. Just try to be positive and calm.”
“That’s easier said than done.” Emily sighed as she glanced to her right to see a large bulletin board mounted on the wall, every inch of the corkboard covered with missing posters. Emily swallowed as she stepped toward the board, her teary eyes scanning the faces, male and female, all around Blair’s age. Their smiling faces stared back at Emily as she felt her stomach sink deeper and deeper inside of her. “What about all of them?”
“Sometimes, people just don’t want to be found,” Officer Ferris said, barely audible, as he cleared his throat.
How did it come to this? Just yesterday, she was sitting across from Blair, eating and talking and laughing. Now, it was as if she just disappeared into thin air, gone in the blink of an eye. What if she missed the signs? What if Blair said something, anything that might point to an answer? Emily closed her eyes, playing their conversations over and over in her head. Nothing. There was not a single syllable uttered at that booth inside Joe’s Diner that would point to this.
She wasn’t scared.
She wasn’t angry or upset.
She was happy. Emily knew what she had to do. It was the last thing she wanted to do or needed right now. She swallowed as she dug into her purse that dangled from her shoulder and pulled out her cellphone. She scrolled through her contacts and pressed on her screen. She brought her phone to her ear as the rings echoed through her speaker.
“Hey, Mitch, it’s Emily,” she said, her voice trembling as her teary eyes
