“Mrs. Hamm, what happened?” Wade asked, frowning.
She wiped her nose with a crumpled tissue, staring at Wade in confusion. “Who are you? Are you FBI?”
I felt Wade’s elbow nudge me, instantly kicking me into lie-your-ass-off mode. Based on how quickly we searched through our jacket pockets for the right fake IDs, we were all on the same page. We were no longer introducing ourselves as Social Services workers for the Hamms. We were whipping out the FBI personas.
Wade was the first to flash his badge. We carried four types of ID in our jackets, at all times—Homeland Security, FBI, Social Services, and the local PD.
“Special Agent Johnson,” Wade said. “We were told you’re having some trouble. Mind if we come in?”
“No, please… please, do,” Anna said, then stepped to the side.
We went in, and I immediately caught the frayed emotions of the father, Frank Hamm, who was in the living room. He, too, had been crying and was genuinely distraught. I saw the photos on the mantelpiece—the Hamms with Marjorie Phillips, a seventeen-year-old they’d adopted a year back. I skimmed through their file to get as much information as possible before handing the folder over to Wade.
We had to be quick in our answers, so as not to give the Hamms any impression that we didn’t know what we were doing. Professionalism was key here, even when we were lying through our teeth.
“Thank you for coming,” Anna said as she motioned for us to step into the living room, where she joined us. “Police sent you over, right?”
“They told us to come, yes, but they didn’t give us details,” Wade replied. “Would you mind walking us through what happened from beginning to end?”
Anna took several deep breaths and picked up a photo album from the bookshelf. She showed it to Wade. Frank sat down, his hands trembling. They were both worried sick. Something terrible had happened here.
“That’s Marjorie Phillips,” Anna said, pointing at one of the photos. “She’s an only child. Her father disappeared before she was born, and her mother killed herself when Marjorie was five. She’s been in the foster system ever since.”
“She’s a good girl,” Frank added, his voice breaking. “She wouldn’t… She wouldn’t have…”
“We took her in about a year ago,” Anna continued, flipping through the photo album pages for Wade to see them as a family. I stood next to him, catching glimpses of Marjorie, a curly redhead with bright green eyes and a splash of freckles. “She warmed up to us, albeit gradually. It took a while to get her out of her shell, I suppose.”
“Let me guess, the foster system wasn’t easy on her,” I replied, giving her a sympathetic smile.
Anna nodded. “She had trouble with some of the previous families, but she never said why. I wasn’t blind, though. I saw the scars. I saw how she flinched whenever Frank got close… She’d been through some terrible things, and Frank and I made it our mission to show Marjorie that life didn’t have to be that way for her.”
I looked at Frank, whose eyes were tearing up again. “So, what happened, Mrs. Hamm?” I asked.
“A couple of nights ago she went missing,” Anna said. “She was supposed to be home at six, but she never came back from school. Her phone is off. I left her dozens of texts and voicemails. We put up missing posters, we’ve alerted the police. They said they were going to hand the case over to the FBI because they didn’t have enough resources in the city for a wide radius search.”
“Marjorie is missing,” I breathed the dreadful conclusion. I glanced at Santana and Raffe.
Santana had brought her duffel bag, filled with small leather charms. “Mrs. Hamm, do you mind if my colleague and I have a look through the house, including Marjorie’s room?”
“Yeah, sure,” Anna replied, and shifted her focus back to Wade and me, while Santana and Raffe disappeared upstairs. “She wouldn’t have left on her own.”
“The cops said she might’ve run away. That’s nonsense,” Frank said, shaking his head.
“You don’t think there’s any possibility of that?” Wade asked.
“Absolutely not!” Anna blurted. “Just last week she was telling us about how happy and relieved she was to be living with us. She was safe here. She had nowhere else to go.”
One of the photos drew my attention. It showed Marjorie on the beach wearing a dark green hoodie, her red curls fluffed up by the breeze. She was laughing. Her eyes twinkled in the sunset. I gently pulled the photo out of the album and inhaled sharply when my fingers touched it.
Fear… Blood-freezing dread… So much emotional pain…
I didn’t understand how it was possible for me to get a feel for someone from a photo like that, but I was certain that these were all Marjorie’s feelings. The horror was real. The sheer terror cut through me like a knife. She’d felt so sorry to leave the Hamms behind.
Marjorie had, indeed, run away, but she hadn’t made that choice easily. Something had driven her out of this safe haven.
I decided to follow my Empath instinct and this weird little glitch with the photograph. “Mrs. Hamm, do you know if Marjorie had any enemies? Anyone she didn’t get along with, maybe?”
Anna thought about it for a moment, then shook her head. “She had a few friends but kept mostly to herself. She’s an artist, you see. She likes being alone. When she paints, it’s just her and the canvas, you know? She didn’t stir any trouble, nothing like that, no.”
“So, there were no threats made by anyone toward her, directly or indirectly,” Wade replied.
Anna shook her head again. “No, definitely not.”
“Do you remember anything out of the ordinary that happened in the past week?” I asked. “Anything strange? Anything at all?”
Frank and Anna looked at each other, then back at me.
“Last Sunday we were having dinner, and she was telling us how happy she was,” Frank said. “That’s when we both knew that Marjorie felt safe here. It was like a ‘Mission Accomplished!’ kind of moment for us.”
“Monday was fine. Frank took her to the art supply shop. Gosh, she was beaming when they came back,” Anna added, smiling. “Frank got her pastel chalk, and she was eager to try it out. Then, Tuesday, all okay, she got home on time, had a school friend over for homework help. She was in bed by midnight.”
“Then, Wednesday we had a Social Services visit after school,” Frank murmured.
That rang an alarm bell in my head. “Social Services?”
“Yes. Part of the first two years after adoption. They come by every month to check on us, make sure we’re okay, that Marjorie is fitting in. Stuff like that,” Anna explained.
“Okay, and how did the visit go?” Wade asked.
We were both concerned. We’d already seen a similar pattern. I looked around, noticing a marble bowl on the mantelpiece next to the framed photos. Anna’s brow furrowed as she and Frank exchanged glances once more. They were both realizing something they hadn’t noticed before.
“The people were very nice. Two men in their late forties… Decent type, nice suits, soft voices. They gave us their card—it’s in that bowl over there,” Anna said, pointing at the marble piece I’d been eyeing already. “They were twins, which I found interesting.”
My stomach dropped as I approached the mantelpiece and saw the business card sticking out from between several knickknacks.
“What were their names?” Wade pressed.
“John and Steven Ryder,” Anna said.
I picked the card up and showed it to Wade. The Ryder twins had been here. We were both chilled to the bone over this. What was really confusing to me was their choice of first names, which seemed to vary from one family to the next, along with their age and appearance, and now, even gender. Was this deliberate, just to mess with us?
“What did they do and say?” Wade asked. “I need you to remember very carefully, Mrs. Hamm. It’s important that we get as many details as possible.”
“Well, they asked the usual questions. We go through this with Social Services every month, so there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary there.” Anna sighed, getting frustrated.
Frank, on the other hand, was on to something. “Remember they wanted to talk to Marjorie in private?”
“Yeah, but they do that every month, honey,” Anna replied.
“Something was different this time,” Frank insisted, his brow furrowed. “After they talked, and Marjorie came back with them in the kitchen, she seemed… different. We were supposed to sit down for dinner once they were gone, but Marge said she wasn’t hungry anymore and went to her room.”
Wade and I looked at each other. They must’ve said something to her. What if we were looking at another Kenneth Willow scenario here? My stomach shrank into an uncomfortable little ball as I thought of the implications.
“What about the following days?” I asked.
“Oh, God. Frank, you’re right,” Anna croaked. “She was different after that. Thursday came, and Marjorie barely ate anything for breakfast. She wasn’t too chatty in the evening, but she blamed it on a headache.”
“Then Friday… She didn’t come back from school. No one saw her leave school, either,” Frank continued.
“Did she go to classes?” Wade replied.
“Yeah. All of them. Her teachers confirmed. Police checked CCTV, too. It’s like she vanished into thin air. She was last seen in the hallway with the rest of the kids as they left the school. But there was no sign of her outside,” Anna explained.
“And you haven’t heard from her since,” Wade concluded.
“Nothing. Her phone is off, so they can’t trace it,” Anna said, rubbing her face in frustration.
A sense of urgency took over, my heart skipping beats like a dog at an obstacle race track.