set the basket in the center of the desks and looked around. The room was empty save for one patrol officer doing paperwork at one of the shared desks. Bob Chitwood’s voice boomed from behind his closed office door. Josie wasn’t surprised. As the detectives liked to joke, Chitwood had two volumes: loud and louder. Josie took a few steps toward his office, catching some of his words: “… I don’t give a rat’s ass if the Mayor lives in that development. Or you, Dutton. You’re just a candidate. That doesn’t mean anything to me. City council? I don’t care if you’re on the damn UN. I don’t care if the goddamn queen of England and the pope have houses in Quail Hollow. You can’t divert public resources away from areas that need them…”
Josie rolled her eyes. The “Quail Hollow Estates Scandal”, as a local reporter had dubbed it, had been the bane of the Chief’s existence since the flooding began. Quail Hollow was a section of the city where more wealthy residents lived, including the Mayor, Tara Charleston, and her surgeon husband as well as her mayoral opponent, Kurt Dutton, and his wife. In the last few years, Dutton had built the area up, adding more luxury homes for the city’s rich to flock to and a small creek around the development. The Quail Hollow Estates’ surrounding neighbors called it “the moat” even though Quail Hollow’s residents took great pride in it. It was lovely, Josie supposed, and its banks were beautifully landscaped. What the builders had not foreseen was the issue of flooding. One particular section of the moat had been badly affected by the recent rainstorms, spilling over into the yard of an unfinished luxury home at the back of the development. City engineers had deemed that the lot was too dangerous to continue work on in its present condition. There was also concern about a possible landslide, which would be catastrophic to the Quail Hollow residents not to mention the neighborhood adjacent to Quail Hollow.
It had recently come to the authorities’ attention that the residents of Quail Hollow had been stealing resources from the city stores such as barriers, portable pumps, and other equipment. When one of the WYEP reporters exposed what they were doing, the Mayor had stepped in. She had changed the word stealing to “diverting,” as if that were any better. The rest of the city’s residents were enraged, but that hadn’t stopped Quail Hollow residents from “diverting” more and more resources to keep their homes from being flooded.
Chief Chitwood’s voice blared even louder from behind his door. “Those are public resources! They’re not for you rich assholes to take at your discretion. That’s right. They do belong to the city, and the city gets to say where they go and when. Who? The head of Emergency Services, that’s who. Oversight? I’m giving you the oversight right now. I’m telling you to return those barriers and the pumps and the rest of the supplies by the end of this week or I’m going to drag my people out of rescue boats to come and arrest the lot of you!”
There was a moment of silence. Then Chitwood hollered, “Don’t threaten me, son. I’ve been doing this job since you were in diapers. You can’t intimidate me. I’ve got a job to do!”
She heard his receiver slam down, and she scurried over to her desk. Gretchen had appeared, sitting at her own desk, riffling through the baked goods. “Chief’s at it again, is he? With the Quail Hollow folks?”
“Yeah,” Josie said. “I think that was Dutton. He broke out his ‘I’ve been doing this since you were in diapers’ line on him.”
Both women laughed. It was one of Chief Chitwood’s signature lines, one he used when he was most incensed. He was in his sixties, past retirement age, and well past caring about the politics that went with his job. Josie hadn’t agreed with his heavy-handed approach at first but now that she and her team had earned his respect, he backed them up consistently and they’d grown to accept him.
Josie handed Gretchen the yearbook. “I’ve been through this. Nothing jumped out at me. No missing girls.”
Gretchen popped a cookie in her mouth and paged through the book until she found Ray’s photo. “What about anyone Ray was friends with during that time?”
“You mean other girls? He wasn’t friends with many girls at that time. The two of us had a few friends, and I