“Hey,” I answered on the first ring as Oak called me later. I had done miles of walking to little avail in the otherwise apparently empty woods of the area and was now returning to the car. “How’d it go?”

“Hey. Not great. We talked to the teachers, some other members of the class, people from both parents works. There’s just no leads. How’d it go with you?”

“Not much better. I ran across a nomad living out in the woods behind Ronnie’s house in a trailer but I searched his camp and found nothing. I questioned him a bit. He’s shifty, could have been involved but there was no obvious evidence.”

“Well that’s something at least,” the voice of Meryl cut in. Apparently they were on speaker phone. “Did you detain him?”

“No. I had nothing on him. He said he would be in the area.”

“Akh you can’t trust these nomad types much Senel. They shift camps faster than racoons can shit and they flat out lie to the badge. They hate cops, law, government all of it.”

I ran a hand through my hair uncomfortably, doubting my decision in part but also trusting my instincts. They hadn’t failed me yet.

“Well, not much we can do about it now. We’re heading to speak with the parents. You want to come?”

I glanced at the time. It was nearly 6 pm. “Yeah, I’ll meet you there,” I said, clicking off.

Twenty minutes later I was in front of Luna Lampour’s house. It was a little townhouse, part of a larger complex downtown. Clearly this was a lower class neighborhood but the Lampour’s home was nicely kept from the outside and looked respectable. Oak and Meryl appeared moments later and we headed to the front door and knocked. A tall dark man answered the door and I could see instantly that this was Luna’s father by the bags under his eyes, which gave him the impression of having aged many years in short time. His woeful gaze passed over all of our faces and I saw the briefest light of hope in his eyes at seeing us before they were cast back into shadows. He stepped back without any preamble so that we could enter.

“Mr. Lampour, thanks for having us. I regret to inform you we have yet to locate your daughter,” Meryl informed him as we filed by. “But we are steadily making progress in the case. We want to ask a few questions of you and your wife, if that would be ok?”

“Of course,” Mr. Lampour said in a raspy voice. “Anything. Susan, the inspectors are here again.”

A short blonde woman emerged from what was probably the kitchen. Her face was puffy with recent tears and her hands looked to be trembling. We all took seats in the living room and I looked around. As with the outside, the interior of the house was well kept, orderly and clean. Everything from the furniture to the windows and floors looked well cared for and maintained. It was clearly a home that they had put effort into over the years to make better.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lampour, these are my colleagues, DI Senel and Inspector Oak.”

We all nodded at the introductions. “DI Senel, would you like to ask any questions?”

I nodded, taking out my notepad. In truth, there wasn’t much to add really but just hearing the words from their own mouths always gave me grounding in a case.

You might be reading a stolen copy. Visit Royal Road for the authentic version.

“Mr. and Mrs. Lampour, I’m sorry if any of these questions seem redundant. Sometimes even the smallest detail can change the course of one of these cases.”

“Have you had missing children a lot recently?” Mrs. Lampour burst out, sounding shocked.

“No ma’am. I was stationed in the capital before this and I was assigned to the unit working missing persons cases. So I have some experience with these matters unfortunately.”

Mrs. Lampour didn’t look as though it was unfortunate at all. On the contrary her eyes brightened a bit. Perhaps she thought my experience would tip fate in their favor. But I had seen too many tragedies to be certain of anything.

“Could you please tell me about the night Luna went missing. Especially anything that you did or noticed that night that would have been unusual.”

They glanced at each other before Mr. Lampour started. “Well I was working down at the shop until my usual time, 5 in the evening. It’s just down the street and so I walked home around then. Susan had gotten here a little earlier, we ate dinner. Um,” he shook his head slightly, as if trying to loosen up something he might have missed. “It was a Tuesday, Luna always went to Ronnie’s place on Tuesdays for tacos. We had talked about it with Ronnie’s parents last week and so we thought that was the plan. But come 8 o’clock, she wasn’t home, they didn’t drop her off. We left it until 8:15 and then called them. That was when…” his voice trembled slightly. “That was when we realized our baby hadn’t even gone to their house.”

Tears sprang in Mrs. Lampour’s eyes. “We should have called sooner, confirmed with Ronnie’s parents. The investigation would have been started hours earlier!”

While this was probably true, the was no way the Lampours could have known this time of all the times would be more important to check up. And anyhow, it did no good to play the should have game.

“What’s important now is that we know everything possible going forwards so that we can bring Luna back to you,” I said, calmly dismissing her hypothetical. “Please continue.”

Mr. Lampour glanced at his wife. She sniffed and then said, “Well I worked at the diner til around 5. Came home, we ate, watched a little TV.” She paused here as though the thought of watching TV while her daughter was being kidnapped was too grotesque to contemplate. “Like my husband said, we start calling around. Then we think, what if she got lost but she managed to find her grandma’s house. That’s when we decide that I ought to go to her grandma’s to check while Henry waits here incase she returns. So I go out there but she’s not there. Then we’re thinking Henry’s brother Roger, but we can’t get ahold of him. By then it’s close to midnight and we’re thinking call the police. So we try and try, but we don’t get through til about 2 am.”

I nodded. The story was the same all over again.

“Did Luna have any other close friends where she might have gone?”

“A few, but we checked with all of them,” Mr. Lampour said.

I gritted my teeth slightly. Now things were about to get choppy.

“Did you ever have the sense that Luna was uncomfortable at home, and would have rather been elsewhere?”

There was a long drawn out silence. I watched as Mr. Lampour’s eyes turned to slits and Mrs. Lampour’s face crinkled in confusion.

“What exactly are you insinuating?” Mr. Lampour thundered. “That our daughter was unloved or abused? I never laid a bad word on her, much less a hand.”

Mrs. Lampour shook her head. “We love our Luna to the bottoms of our hearts. She’s our one and only.”

I nodded. “I apologize, I had to ask. And no one you are aware of has a grudge against her? Not a classmate perhaps?”

They looked at each other, evidently thinking hard.

“Naw,” Mr. Lampour said at the same time Mrs. Lampour said, “I don’t know who would possibly have a grudge that bad.”

I glanced through my remaining notes. Nothing else came to mind. “Thank you both. I assure you we are doing all we can to find your daughter and we will let you know as soon as we have news.”

Mr. Lampour nodded, still looking mistrustful. Mrs. Lampour merely dapped at her eyes. As the other declared similar assertions and we all turned to go, Mr. Lampour said, “Please.”

We turned back. He cleared his throat. “Just tell Luna when you find her that her Papa and Mama bear love her and want her back, ok?”

I gazed into his careworn face and nodded.