April 20, 2014

He was blonde and wore glasses. He looked as though he and Bruce Willis were cousins. He chewed mint gum that I could smell was stale and walked as though he were the king of the police department. He wore his badge proudly on his chest, but everything else on his slender frame was a mess. Hi shirt was untucked and had mustard stains on it. His pants were wrinkled. His shoes looked as though he dragged them in the mud before he came to work. He stood before me, clutching a folder in one hand and taking a drag from a cigarette with the other. He’d introduced himself as Detective Kollin Long before escorting me and Raegan into separate rooms. As soon as we were in the room, he swapped his gum for a cigarette and stood staring at me. He finished smoking, snuffed out the dull cigarette on the cold metal table, and sat in the chair across from me.

“So, what makes you think your sister is missing?”

“No one has heard from her in almost two weeks,” I replied.

He could sense the desperation that tainted my words. He took out a legal pad and a pen. “Do you have a picture of her with you?”

“It’s not very current,” I stammer as I reach for my wallet.

At the twitch of my hand, he’s up and in the corner of the room. I stop to make sure he’s okay, and he pauses to let me do what I’m doing. I pull out my sister’s graduation picture with two shaky fingers and set it on the table. “That was last year when she graduated,” I explained. “She looks the same except her hair was red and not blue.”

He looked at it as if he were sizing her up. “Pretty,” he mumbled around another unlit cigarette. “Where did she go to college?”

“The University of Houston Victoria. She was studying to be a teacher.”

“What grade?”

“What?”

He looked up at me. “What grades?”

“Elementary school. Ana is great with kids.”

“Hmm.” He set the picture down. “So, what makes you think something bad happened?”

“What?” My heart stopped and for an instant, I felt like my lungs had collapsed.

“I mean, people go to the police with something bad happens. What made you come here?”

“No one has seen her,” I replied.

“Well, I looked at your sister’s record,” he said, plopping the folder down, “and turns out she has ran away sixteen times between the ages of twelve and eighteen. She has had four missing persons’ reports filed on her even though they were all recanted because little Annie had gone to another state. So, let me ask you again, why do you think she has gone missing this time?”

“She swore she wouldn’t leave like that again.”

He nodded halfheartedly and continued to circle the room. “Why did you wait so long to file a report?”

“Well, I had to be sure. I called her friends, her roommate, her professors, her bosses, our siblings, our stepsiblings, our father, our mother, our stepparents, her friends, her coworkers, and her pet sitter. No one has seen her! I had to come here.”

He was unmoved. “What about her boyfriend?”

“I don’t know him.”

“Well, her record also says she was in a domestic abuse situation.”

“That was someone different. He’s in jail now. Our stepdad made sure of that.”

“What happened to the child?”

“She went to her mother. That wasn’t Ana’s problem. The black eyes and the isolation was her problem.”

“Well, we interviewed her boyfriend, and we found out that he has this.”

He turned the page of the file to reveal an unmarked white van. My heart sank.

“Now, what was your sister into?”

“What?”

He made a sour face. “Come on, now. Lowly teachers who work two jobs and know people with unmarked white vans don’t disappear without a reason."

"My sister is not a criminal!"

he shrugged again and I wanted to hit him with the metal chair. What the hell does he know? Ana was no crook. His arrogant voice rang in the background of my angry stupor.

"Are you familiar with a woman named Leila Alvarez?”

A week ago, an eighteen year old woman was thought to be missing for three weeks. The investigators were able to get into her house and found her decomposing in her hall closet. She had been stabbed multiple times, before being choked and having her head bashed in. The police officers on the scene called it one of the most gruesome cases of all time.

"The little girl who was killed? What does she have to do with my sister?"

He nodded. “It seems like your sister had a connection with her. Do you have any idea what that might be?”

I shrugged. “Ana was just really friendly. She probably offered her money or something. Why?”

“When we searched her apartment, there were samples of someone else’s blood in her apartment along with her own. Do you have any idea at all what could’ve happened?”

“Wait, are you trying to pin a murder on my sister?”

“The DNA was a match to your sister.”

My throat constricted and tears that had been welling in my eyes were pouring from my cheeks like a broken faucet. “You’re saying my sister murdered this girl and fled?”

“We really don’t know. Which is why I need information. When was the last time you saw her?”

“March 29th.”

“Was anything out of the ordinary?”

“No, not at all.”

“Hmm... One last thing, do you know a man named Kyle McLeod?”