Beneath Blackwater River Leslie Wolfe (me reader txt) 📖

up Kirsten had driven by between 3:15 p.m. and 5:00 p.m., on October 28, exactly one week ago. With that time frame in mind, he’d asked Leach for some help. The deputy was working speed enforcement on that stretch of highway every day, except Mondays and Wednesdays when he was off. Since Kirsten was last seen on a Thursday, he hoped the deputy would offer some insight.

“So, Detective, what can I do you for?” Leach asked, wiping his mouth with a paper napkin and letting out a heavy sigh of satisfaction, loaded with heavy scents of hot sauce and guacamole, barely discernible in the stuffy, smelly air of the diner. He leaned forward, pushing the empty plate aside and resting his elbows on the greasy melamine surface of the table. After cleaning his teeth with his tongue and belching a couple of times, he managed a smile.

“I’m trying to locate a young girl,” Elliot said, showing him Kirsten’s photo on his phone. “She was last seen by the Hilt exit, heading south.”

He shook his head, still staring at the girl’s photo. “Nope, haven’t seen her.”

“It was a week ago, today,” Elliot specified.

He shook his head again. “I usually stay on the side road right at the bottom of that valley, so they won’t see me. The speed limit changes at the state line, and they come rolling down that hill, right to papa.” He chuckled, rubbing his hands together. “I made last month’s quota by October twenty-third; can you believe it? Great spot, that one.”

“What traffic have you noticed?” Elliot asked, hiding an eyeroll under the brim of his hat.

“Traffic?” he asked, while his eyes scanned the diner’s posted menu.

“Any marked vehicles that caught your attention? Any traffic stops you pulled that day that I could interview?” Elliot paused for a moment, but Leach was staring at the menu, sucking his stained teeth. “Come on, man, give me something I could use. This girl’s been gone a week.”

“UPS drives by every day at about four,” Leach said, seemingly thinking, but Elliot wasn’t sure he wasn’t trying to decide between another burrito and some dessert. “I see Amazon Prime trucks too, but those never speed.”

“Why don’t you pull your notebook and give me the tags for the vehicles you pulled over a week ago between three and five?”

Leach glared at him but kept his mouth shut. He leaned to the side to ease the weight off his right buttock, then extracted a curved, leather-bound notebook and threw it on the table. “There, Lieutenant,” he said, marking Elliot’s rank with venom in his voice.

Elliot picked up the notebook; it felt warm to the touch and carried a slight odor that he didn’t want to identify. He flipped through the pages back to October 28, and found no entries for the entire afternoon. Only one car, late that evening at about seven, had driven 12 miles over the limit and was issued a $238 fine.

“That’s it?” Elliot asked frowning.

“No one was speeding that afternoon, sir,” Leach replied, his sarcasm heavy, right in Elliot’s face. “What’s a good cop to do if people won’t break the law?”

He’d probably napped the entire time, brought down by a meal such as the one Elliot had just paid for, knowing he’d already made his quota for the month. If one thing was accurate out of everything Leach had said, it was he hadn’t seen Kirsten. That tends to happen when people sleep; they don’t see much.

Closing the notebook, Elliot set it on the table calmly, then stood. “Thank you, Deputy. I hope you enjoyed your lunch.”

He stepped out of the diner, glad to breathe the fresh, chilly air of the evening. Right across the highway, over the hills, the sun was getting ready to set, elongating the shadows of everything and everyone, as if darkness advanced slowly, throwing patches of night here and there, slightly thicker where shadows touched and overlapped.

He reached out for his phone, hoping he’d see a message or a missed call from Kay, but that couldn’t be. He would’ve heard her call or the chime that alerted him of new messages. He’d listened out for them the entire day, and nothing had disturbed the solitude of his fruitless search for the missing teen from Oregon.

He resisted the urge to call Kay and ask her where she would go next to find Kirsten. Instead, he thought about what she’d do if she were in his shoes.

So far, no one had seen the girl, no one had heard a peep from the runaway, and all he knew was she was headed into San Francisco. She might’ve reached her destination the same day, last Thursday, at the earliest about six or seven in the evening. He didn’t have any idea of what vehicle had picked her up or who was driving it.

All he knew was that all vehicles needed gas. The one who’d taken Kirsten might’ve stopped somewhere along the road to San Francisco, and someone might remember. There might be some video surveillance showing tags if he was lucky enough. Or someone might’ve seen something, one of the regular drivers who hauled the same route. Those drivers had their favorite fuel stops, and that’s where he needed to go.

Unfortunately, Kirsten being a runaway, an AMBER alert could not be issued. But he could do the next best thing: post flyers.

Fifteen minutes and a few dollars spent at UPS cost him the typing and printing of flyers with Kirsten’s photo and the sheriff’s office tip line number printed in a large, bold font. The flyer stated clearly her last seen location with date and time. Now all he had to do was beat the pavement from one gas station to another and paste those by the restrooms, the one place no driver failed to visit.

It was already dark outside when he’d finished interviewing the first gas station attendee and had pasted the first flyer. At that rate, it was going to take him a while.

“Thank you,”