Detective Ginson raised his morning coffee to his lips and drank. What craziness would the day bring? Ever since he'd stopped the mayor's son driving drunk it had been like this. The shit detail. Investigating stuff a tabloid editor would scoff at. How the chump had even gotten his vehicle into manual mode while that drunk was a perpetual mystery. Ginson wasn't a beat cop, but he wasn't about to let some idiot joyride his way into murder.

He scrolled through his emails. This one had some footage. A merman. "My jurisdiction doesn't cover the damn ocean," he said to no one in particular. A missing person canned up like a sardine. The address, 542 Houston Avenue, Apt 19. Now that was something he could work with, though he wasn't sure why he would bother.

He scanned through the rest. Something about that merman story pulled him back. There was something very familiar about the name. Jonathan Sneiderman was a pretty generic name, to be sure. He pulled up the ID Vault and looked him up. There were 10 with that name in the area. But sure enough, one was registered to the complex on Houston Avenue, with the same apartment number. It had a picture. "I'll be damned. He used to do tech support here." That must have been almost 10 years ago, when the kid was a freshman in college. He'd been one of the good ones, quick with a fix and patient enough to explain what you did wrong.

Ginson didn't have a partner for his particular beat, he just sent the chief a quick message that he was going out to investigate a case.

The officer rang the doorbell. No answer. He called out, "Mr. Sneidermann, I'm with the police department. Can we talk?"

Again, no answer. He leaned down, noticing something odd. The door was damaged. Looking closer he saw a faint boot print on it. It was a big print.

A single rap on the door in lieu of knocking made it creak open. He drew his service pistol and walked in. "Anyone here make yourself known. I don't want any surprises." Into his radio, he spoke to dispatch, "Possible break-in on my current location."

A laconic voice answered back, "Reliving the glory days, Ron? Pigs will fly before they give you a case with action."

Inspecting the room, he immediately noticed a blood smear on the opposite side of the door. "Is that why I'm smelling bacon and wings, Lizzy?"

"Now you're just making me hungry. Whatcha got?"

"DNA."

The rest of the house told a similar story. A kettle of cold water next to an open cup noodle. A phone on the desk. He moved the mouse to wake up the laptop attached to a large curved screen. Password protected. He picked up the phone. It was locked, but messages peeked through.

"Dude, no call no show..."

"Your rent is past due."

"Notice of termination"

All signs of a life interrupted. Ginson wasn't sure he believed the rest of that hoo-ha, but he was pretty sure there was grounds for a missing person's case.

There was nothing much else of note in the apartment. He went outside to look for cameras. The kid, or man he supposed, didn't have his own security system. Not even a doorbell cam. The complex had cameras, but when he talked to the owner found out they didn't record anymore. The carrier had raised cloud storage fees and the owner didn't feel like paying them.

That left the quickie mart on the other side of the street. It was a combination beer-tobacco-wine store, and he spotted several cameras to go with the heavy steel blinds that were currently rolled up.

The owner was amenable enough once he flashed his badge. Ginson handed them a flash stick and they put the recordings on it. The detective went out to his car to review the footage.

He went straight to the date the original email had indicated. They didn't know the precise time but just said it was in the afternoon. He scrubbed through, sipping a fresh cup of coffee he'd gotten from the shop he'd just exited.

It all looked normal enough, until a large black van with blacked out windows rolled up. A number of men in suits came out. He couldn't see them break open the door, but a few minutes later they came out dragging a man that matched the ID photo he'd gotten.

He paused the video and took a screenshot. Bold as brass kidnapping, with no attempt to hide the crime. He sent the screen up the chain along with a request for traffic cameras in the area. They'd likely have a license plate.

Ginson finished his coffee and waited for a response, rereading the email in the meantime. He noticed that the sender had included her phone number, and geo-tagging had provided her location at the time she sent the email.

He went to call her when his phone rang. It was the chief. He spoke without preamble, "Bury the case, Ron."

"Sir? Why would we do that?"

"Because word came down from the top. The moment you looked up that guy it pinged something in the system, and someone that has considerably more pull than me got very interested in us keeping our noses out of it."

"But sir, I know the guy. He interned with us a decade ago. He was a good kid."

The chief's voice got a bit more threatening. "You're gonna drop this one. End of discussion." The call ended.

Detective Ginson looked back at the email. Defiantly, he called the number. Voice-mail. The address was on the other side of town, but it was that or some BS busy work task. He decided to go there.