“It’s so huge, I don’t know if we can,” I murmur.
“We can,” my mom says, in a voice so strong I almost believe her.
She leaves me standing alone in the center of the living room for a moment and then zips back into the room, keys in hand.
Before I have time to think about it anymore, my mom is pulling me toward the car.
“Let’s go.”
One good thing about living in a small town is that it’s possible that, way back in high school, your mother was friends with the man who is now police captain. It means that he might listen to you when others might not.
“So you just remembered all this?” Captain Moeller asks, looking back and forth between me and my mom.
Captain Moeller may have a potbelly and a bald head, but he’s got a kind face and, frankly, he’s our only hope.
“Yes,” I say sweetly. “I remember the day of the kidnapping now very clearly. I could help a sketch artist. Or look in a book?”
“They’d be a lot older now,” the captain says softly.
He doesn’t know what I see.
“We’d like to try,” my mom says warmly. After exhaling loudly, Captain Moeller gets up. He grabs a binder from the shelf and tosses it on the small table in the corner. Then he retrieves two more, each filled with photos, from the outer office.
“Start there, London,” he says, then turns to my mom and offers her coffee. She agrees, and he leaves us alone.
“I don’t think this is going to help,” I whisper.
“Just try,” my mom whispers back, bringing her chair over to join me at the table. She eyeballs the faces of criminals with me, even though she wouldn’t know the culprits if they walked up to her at the bank.
The captain returns and does paperwork while my mom and I examine the photos of criminal after criminal. An hour later, my butt hurts from the hard chair, and I’ve got nothing except that creepy feeling you get from looking at people who might want to do you harm.
I want to go home and forget all of it. I want to watch a Disney movie to scrub my brain clean. But I know now that I can’t. I’ve regained these horrible memories; all I can do is try to change the ones that are yet to come.
“How about doing a sketch?” I offer again.
“Like I said before, the couple you remember will be much older now. It probably won’t do any good,” Captain Moeller says.
“Couldn’t you try that age-progression software on it?” I ask. I’ll watch way too many crime dramas in my lifetime. “Do you have that here?”
The captain laughs a little.
“Smart kid you have there, Bridgette,” he says to my mom.
“She sure is,” Mom agrees.
Captain Moeller looks back at me. “Yes, we have that here,” he says. “I’m just not sure it would work with a sketch. And besides, our sketch artist has gone home.”
I glance at the industrial clock behind his head, as does my mom.
“Oh, Jim, I’m sorry to keep you,” Mom says. “You need to get home to your family.”
“It’s okay, Bridgette,” he says with compassion in his eyes. “Anything for you. I remember the incident like it was yesterday.”
I break away mentally and force myself to remember anything that might help the situation. There is one thing: the piece of paper. The problem is that I remember it from the future.
My mom chitchats with the captain as I ponder ways to get him interested in the address. In the end, lying wins.
“Back when it happened, when they took Jonas, the woman dropped a piece of paper with a note on it in our car,” I blurt out. Both adults snap to attention, Mom because she knows I’m lying and Captain Moeller because he seems to be the type of person who responds to carrots.
“What did it say?” the hound dog asks.
“Well, I’m not positive, but I think it was an address. There was something about Beacon Street. I remember because I thought it said ‘bacon’ at first.” I blink twice like an innocent child. My mom’s lips purse but she doesn’t say anything. “I really like bacon,” I add, feeling idiotic as soon as the words leave my lips. Thankfully, Captain Moeller ignores that part.
“No city?” he asks.
“No,” I say, shrugging. Does he expect this to be handed to him on a silver platter?
“Well, I’ll look into it,” he says before his phone rings. He answers, talks briefly, and hangs up. My mom stands to leave. I follow suit. The captain walks us out and shakes both our hands. We leave, dejected and exhausted.
Halfway home, before we’ve finished ordering our drive-thru meals, Mom’s cell rings. She answers, listens for a moment, and then pulls out of the restaurant sans food. We’ve turned around and are heading back toward the station before I have time to ask why.
“He said he’ll explain when we get there,” my mom says, sitting straight and gripping the wheel like it might fly off at any moment.
Captain Moeller is waiting for us at the front desk.
“Thanks for coming back,” he says as the three of us rush to his office. I wonder what the hurry is.
Once we’re settled, he explains.
“I did a quick search on Beacon, London, and it turns out it’s a street in the city,” Captain Moeller begins. “A squad there has been keeping an eye on a building on that street… suspicious activity, I guess. A friend down there was still at his desk: he told me that a man and wife recently rented the space—it’s an office downtown in that older area—and anyway, there have been odd complaints, so they’ve been watching it.”
“What type of complaints?” Mom asks, and I notice that she is clutching her purse like a life vest.
“Crying children late at night… in a business registered as a pawnshop,” he says quietly. “The squad has done routine checks twice now and there’s no sign of wrongdoing. But like I said, they’re keeping an eye out.”
Captain Moeller stops talking a moment and clears his throat.
I’m confused. My mom might be, too. I can’t be sure.
“What does all this mean, Jim?” she says aloud. “Why did you want us to come back down here?”
“Well, that’s the thing. It’s touchy, and maybe I’m wrong, but this new information piqued my interest,” the captain says, leaning back in his chair and running a hand through what hair he has left. He checks the clock and continues.
“You never did an autopsy on Jonas’s body, did you, Bridgette?”
The question slugs my mom in the gut, and she looks visibly hurt for a split second. Then she recovers.
“No, you know that, Jim,” she says. “There were his clothes—definitely his clothes—and with the decomposition, we decided it was enough.”
My mouth is ajar now. Hasn’t my mom seen a single crime drama? Maybe she just wanted it to be over. Maybe she just needed to believe, to bury him and move on.
“What does that have to do with anything?” Mom asks, seeming agitated now.
“I don’t know. Kids late at night… at a pawnshop that the locals say isn’t open in the daytime. It’s just suspicious.”
“Say what you mean, Jim,” my mom barks, and suddenly Captain Moeller sits straight in his chair.