We drove to the uncle in question’s residence, a dilapidated mobile home on the edge of Wiggins. Apparently he wasn’t home, for there wasn’t a car out front or a light on in any window. The place looked dead. We tried the door and peeped in through the windows. If he was in there hiding, he was doing a hell of a job. There wasn’t a single rustle and the place felt cold and unlived in. Well, not much choice but to wait and see if he turned up. Attempts to contact him thus far had proved useless, as his phone was either dead or off and he wasn’t working today so no one at his job knew where he was. The fruitless tedium of the task of sitting in front of his house all night and possibly not even encountering him had not escaped the attention of Oak.

“What are we supposed to do if we can’t find him? Send out a warrant for his arrest?”

“Perhaps. He’s our only solid lead so far, but I think he’s actually far from solid. Sounds like being out of town is common for him. He’s a partier,” I jabbed a small passage in the file. “Drinker by all accounts and doesn’t have much contact with Luna generally speaking. Hard to see why he would suddenly want to kidnap his niece. But the only way to rule him out is to find him and question him.”

Oak sighed. “I suppose we couldn’t really do much else tonight anyways. But don’t you think our time could be better spent?”

“In all honesty, yes,” I said bluntly. “But look, we don’t have any idea where to go from here. The only thing I can think of is questioning all the people Luna knew again for ourselves and that won’t be possible until tomorrow. Or walk straight into the woods where we think she was kidnapped. Either way, we’re going to need daylight.”

I heard a telltale grumbling from Oak’s midriff. “And dinner wouldn’t hurt. We need to take care of ourselves as well. Cases like this are slow, and maddening I know. But we need to be patient and use our best judgement when the time comes.”

“Sounds like you’re not just a beat cop from the big city,” Oak said, folding her arms. I glanced at her. I didn’t want to talk about myself at the moment, but I recognized the signs of needing the quench the curiosity thirst before it got ravenous.

“I worked missing persons cases for a number of years. And I was a field cop for ten years before I became a detective.”

“Meryl left out some, well actually all of those little details,” Oak said, narrowing her eyes.

“It was upon my request. I’ve been looking for a nice quiet office to move to for a while now and I didn’t want everyone gossiping about my past in the capital. I had planned to tell people on an as need to basis.”

“I see.” She sounded skeptical, but I didn’t much care.

“How about I order us some take away. I’ve been enjoying Singh Bou’s lately.”

“You’re on.”

So we ended up ensconced in the darkened car working our way through three entrées of Indian food, occasionally glancing up to see if any of the passing cars along the lane looked like they were making for Roger Lampour’s home. Oak tried to prod a couple more details out of me concerning my former job, but I turned the conversation smoothly back to the case at hand each time she did this. She was a smart woman and took the hint, but I’m sure she wasn’t giving up indefinitely. The hours ticked by. I was just starting to wonder if it might be better to get a hotel room and perform the observation in shifts alternating sleeping and watching when yet another pair of headlights moved along the road in front of us and this time, they stopped in front of the house. Oak looked at me and I nodded slowly to her.

If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

“Wait until he’s inside. We don’t want him near his car if he wants to run.”

She nodded and we waited. The driver, presumably Roger Lampour emerged from his truck, hauled something brief case sized out of the back of his bed and then headed towards his door, which he unlocked and entered through. We hopped out of the car as soon as he had closed the door and headed forwards. We had no reason to expect Roger would be aggressive, but I kept my hand ready to grip my glock if the need arose. I knocked and nodded at Oak again, who called, “Mr. Lampour, are you home?”

There was a loud groan and a hacking cough. Then the door was thrown wide open. Whatever Roger had expected to find on his doorstep, it wasn’t us. He squinted down at us for a moment. “What’s going on?” he asked in a moderately slurred tone. “You guys cops?”

I took from his quick perception that he had faced the law a few times before, as was confirmed in his background check.

“We’re detectives, Mr. Lampour. Can we come in? We have a few questions for you.”

Roger squinted at us. It looked like he was already a few drinks in tonight. Probably shouldn’t have been driving. But he shrugged all the same and headed back inside. I followed first, Oak bringing up the rear. The inside of the home was a wreck, as we had observed earlier in the day. Clothes, junk and tools were littering every surface. There was a strong smell of burnt food and an even more pungent one of strong laundry soap which I saw had spilled out of its container in one corner.

“If you wanted me to clean, you should have called ahead,” Roger said laughing humorlessly. “So what’s this about?”

“Have you spoken to your brother or his family in the last 24 hours Mr. Lampour?” I asked.

“Naw. My phone’s been dead. Why?”

Oak and I glanced at each other. “There’s been a situation Mr. Lampour, involving your niece Luna. She appears to have gone missing.”

Roger’s reaction was slow. At first he just looked confused. “Missing? Like what, she didn’t turn up for some school class. Ditching?”

“No. Actually we have reason to believe she’s been kidnapped,” I said evenly.

“Kidnapped. What? How? When?”

It was starting to hit him and I wasn’t questioning any of it. His reaction was as jumbled and panicked as anyone’s would be upon arriving late to a situation such as this.

Oak explained a few of the lighter details. Roger sunk down onto a nearly collapsed couch and ran a hand over his bald head. “Oh god. Someone took little Luna?” he said at last, and the sorrow and pain in his voice seemed as genuine as I had ever heard. “Oh shit man, I need to go by my brother’s. Oh god, I should’ve been here to help them.”

“Unfortunately, Mr. Lampour, we need to confirm your whereabouts yesterday from the time Luna went missing to current. Where were you yesterday from 3pm until this moment today?”

Roger appeared to be suffering from an intense amount of guilt, but he swallowed and choked out, “I was at the casino in Telere, one district over. They got a good one there. I-I got a bit of a gambling thing going with some buddies. I had today off so I figured I’d hit the tables with them last night. Oh shit.”

“Please focus Mr. Lampour. Can anyone confirm this?”

Roger swallowed again. “Yeah, plenty of folks. I was there all night with my crew, the staff served me, I have bills to prove that. And um, last night I, well there was an escort, if you must know. She spent the night with me in a hotel room which I paid for.” He shook his head. “God I should have been here.”

I shrugged, already done with the scene. Either this man was the world’s most impressive psychopathic liar or he clearly hadn’t been involved. “Thank you for your time Mr. Lampour. Please wait a few hours and get some rest before driving to your brother’s house. I think a simple phone call will suffice to help them for now.”

We left the man to his misery and hopped back in the car. Oak sighed. “Well, that was a strike.”

“Baseball?” I asked her curiously.

She rolled her eyes. “Ah, it’s an old habit. My dad was a huge fan. So is Meryl, he encourages it.”

“Well, let’s hope the Sheriff had more hits than us.”

But by the time we were back in Cresel and had both headed home to get a few hours of sleep, there was no good news. Salas had sent us both a text explaining that they hadn’t found anything noteworthy in a mile radius search of the area. Of course they could have missed something small in the dark, but we needed big at the moment. Forensics hadn’t turned up anything else interesting either, though they were still running some samples. Oak texted me a few moments later.

Three strikes. Now what?

We find out where the ball landed. And we talk to the players. Something like that.

Talk to the family and search the woods some more? Got it.

Goodnight Oak.

Goodnight Senel.