I reached across the table and touched her hand gently. “We will need you to come with us to identify the body.”

Tom leaned forward. “Do you have anyone, a relative or a close friend, we can call and who can go with you?”

She seemed so lost, it broke my heart. A tear escaped her eye, and she wiped it away, but more came and it was soon hard for her to stop them. Her hands were shaking, and her breathing had become ragged.

“It’s okay to cry,” I said.

She sniffled and wiped her cheeks, then looked briefly toward the ceiling while biting the tears back.

“I have a sister. She works downtown at Café Surfnista. She can go with me.”

“Okay, give me her number and I will call her and have her meet us,” Tom said. “You shouldn’t be doing this alone.”

Mrs. Perez nodded. Her eyes were filling, but she was obviously fighting her tears. I don’t think I would have been able to stop them if I were in her situation.

“And then maybe you’ll want to call your husband,” Tom said.

“We can call him for you, if you prefer,” I said.

She shook her head. “N-no. I will do it.”

She breathed heavily to calm herself down, then looked up at me. They had taught us that it was okay to show emotion when doing death notifications, but I knew that if I did, I probably wouldn’t be able to stop.

“What happened to her?” Mrs. Perez asked.

“She was found in the retention pond. We don’t really know a lot right now, but the autopsy will—”

“Autopsy… so you think she was killed?” she said with a small gasp.

“We don’t know that as of right now, but yes, we do suspect foul play,” Tom said.

“We will know more after the autopsy,” I repeated.

Mrs. Perez shook her head slowly. “I just don’t… I can’t… are you sure she’s not in school? She always goes to school. Maybe you got the wrong—”

I shook my head. “We called them. She didn’t show up today.”

“So, she was dead already yesterday? I don’t understand.”

“We don’t know when time of death occurred yet, but we will know more soon. For now, I just need you to come with us to the morgue.”

TENBILLIE ANN

I was back at the police station, writing my report, when the Chief came to my desk. It was late in the afternoon, and Tom and I had just come back. I was exhausted. Mrs. Perez had identified her daughter at the morgue, and that wasn’t easy to watch. There were crisis counselors there who then took care of her, while we went back to open up the case. But to be honest, I wasn’t feeling great.

“I need your help,” he said.

“Sure, boss, what’s up?”

He sat at the corner of my desk. “It’s a little delicate.”

“Okay?”

“There’s a woman. She came in a couple of hours ago to report her child missing. I haven’t had the time to talk to her myself, but Steele talked to her earlier.”

Now he had my full attention. “A missing child?”

“Yes, but the problem is that… well, we think she’s a little”—he made circles by his temple—“a little crazy.”

“Why? If a child is missing, then why aren’t we all over this?”

He exhaled. “Well, the thing is… we can’t find out anything about this child.”

I frowned. This made no sense. “What do you mean?”

“Supposedly she has a four-year-old girl named Emma. But she has no information to support that the girl even exists. And get this, the woman doesn’t have a driver’s license or any form of ID, so we can’t run a background check.”

“That sounds a little strange.”

“Yes, it does. The child is not registered anywhere, no preschool, the woman doesn’t have a birth certificate, heck, she doesn’t even have a photo of the child on her phone to show us. I had Officer Steele go with her back to her home and look in the neighborhood, but when he talked to the neighbors no one had ever heard or seen the kid. I don’t know how to deal with her. I can’t just dismiss her. But I can’t send out an Amber Alert either because I have no proof she exists or even a photo to send out. She wants me to start a search party, but how can I?”

“But you think she’s lying? You think that she doesn’t have a child?” I asked, puzzled. It all sounded very odd to me.

“I think she might be a little… um… confused, if you know what I mean,” he said, rolling his eyes.

“You think she invented a child and now she can’t find her, so she thinks she is missing?”

He exhaled again. “Like I said. It’s a delicate matter. One that I would like to go away. We’ve got a lot going on here today.”

“And you think me talking to her might help?”

“I don’t know how to deal with her. She keeps claiming that she has a child, and that she has been kidnapped, and no one knows how to help her. You’re a woman, can’t you…?”

He made a noise with his cheeks, like I was a horse that he needed to move forward. It pissed me off. But he was my boss, so I didn’t say anything. I respected Doyle greatly and had worked with him as my Chief for the past three years.

“Talk to her?” I asked. “Woman to woman?”

“Yes, do that. Whatever it takes,” he said. “So, if you do find solid evidence that there really is a child who has gone missing, we have to take her seriously. If not, then we might need to take her to psychiatric emergency to be evaluated. I’m leaning more and more toward that solution.”

“Of course, Chief. I will take a look at it.”

He rose to his feet with a smile. I received a friendly clap on my shoulder. “Great. I knew I could count on you. She’s in the lobby downstairs.”

ELEVENMARISSA

Marissa looked at her fingers. She was tapping them nervously on her leg. The woman behind the counter in the flowery top smiled at her again. It was one of those phony smiles, showing compassion, yet not really meaning anything.

Marissa got up and approached her again. She could tell by her expression that the woman was annoyed by her, and the fact that she was—once again—coming to talk to her, but she did it anyway.