There’s a saying
back from where I’m from – Old World Blues.
It’s used to
describe a person who’s so stuck within the past that they can’t
seem to see through anything else. I remember that’s what I was
thinking about that summer morning. The Old World Blues.
I opened up the shop
early, not out of necessity or desire but simply out of convenience.
When I drove down that morning I had just happen to arrive a few
minutes early, and instead of waiting it out I felt I should just
open it up instead.
Private detective
work doesn’t get too many customers – at least not on a daily
basis. Standard investigations usually last two to three months,
padded by small moments of hiatus in between. This was one of them.
My last investigation – with which I can’t recall the details of
– had ended a few days before. Now, I sat, waiting, thinking about
those Old World Blues.
It was two minutes
before the office usually opened that I heard a knock. The sound
scared me, because I had grown so accustomed to later day calls –
not early morning visits – that I forgot about the possibility. I
had expected it to be some delivery man ready to give me a package
that had been coming a few days late. What I ended up getting wasn’t
that at all.
The woman at the
other end of the door was clearly in some mix of distress and
depression. I thought her to be on the older side, though that
could’ve just been due to the stress in her eyes. It was clear that
she didn’t choose me first – she had seen a couple of other
agencies and all of them had declined. I’ve seen that look of
desperation before. It worried me – most of the time when I’m not
the first call it’s because they asked for too much, which is
usually much more than I myself can handle. And yet the woman had a
sort of urgency to her, and urgency that lead me to want to at least
humor her in case.
“You’re here a
bit early.” I told her, pointing to the Business Hours sign
out front.
“Oh, I’m sorry…
It looked like the lights were on.”
“Well they’re
certainly on now,” I beckoned her, “Come on in.”
Either of us had
barely gotten seated when she began her story. From the beige letter
bag she had at her side she pulled out a folder, slightly worn, with
the slightest dab of a coffee stain on its front center and filled to
the brim with what I could only assume she was about to tell me.
“Listen, I’ve
contacted a lot of place about this, but… My daughter is missing –
she has been for a long time, you see – And I just-”
“Cold case?”
She stuttered.
“W-what?”
“Has the official
investigation ceased?”
“I mean, yes,
but-”
“Sorry, I don’t
follow through with cold cases.”
Already I could see
her frustration boiling back up once more. She knew exactly what I
meant – she had heard it many times before. But she was hoping I
wouldn’t have said the same. Now, I did; and she came back to that
ever present state. “What? Why?”
I got out my
cigarette holder from amongst a pile of old scans, pulling out a very
specific card – the only yellow one in the bunch, an old aged
Japanese Musumi. They had always given me an age in heated
negotiations. And so I lit it.“They’re dead ends. Nothing anyone
can do about it. That’s just the painful truth.”
“Could you just…
just listen to what I have to say? Please?”
The Musumi always
works. Always did work, I should say… but Old World Blues was still
on the mind. I struggled to resist the force that had already
overtaken me. Following her up, giving her more hope – it was a
mistake. But I couldn’t help it. The air was too thick with the
scent of cigarette smoke and mystery. I had thought about my own
life… the own mysteries I had experienced, as well as the closures
I hadn’t. I decided it was time to break the rules.
“Alright, give me
the foundations.”
Her eyes perked up.
She was never able to convince anyone else. She began: “We were on
a trip… we stopped, at a hotel not too far from here, just the two
of us. There wasn’t anyone else there, not from what I could see.
We got our room together, got ready and went to bed. Last thing I
said to her before I dozed off… she was playing with her tablet,
and I told her to get to bed or else she’d be tired in the morning.
She nodded to me, and I turned and fell asleep. The next morning...”
“She was gone?”
“Yes. Out of
nowhere. Tablet and everything was still there. The bed looked fine
too… looked like she had just gotten out of bed and never came
back.” The nameless woman began to quiver to herself under the
recalling of events passed.
“Did you not hear
anything during the night? Like her getting out of bed, anything?”
“I heard the bed
ricket – her getting out of bed, I think – but nothing else.”
The guilt that weighed her down was clear. I felt a tinge of
sympathy; but I had seen and heard of many worse cases before, and my
empathetic thought had been sanded down by so many years of hearing
the same dreadful things over and over again.
“Did you hear the
door open or close?”
“No. I heard
nothing.”
“And what did the
official investigation come up with?”
“That she must
have wandered off during the night, or worse… someone got her. I…
I just want to see my daughter again, that’s all.” I could feel
the mood dampening even lower. She began to shed a tear.
“How long ago did
this happen?”
“Not… not long.
Almost exactly five days since.”
I thought about it.
I thought about the case, and about the mother, and about her missing
daughter. I’ve been brought people wanting closure before. Even I
myself have felt the pain of not knowing the end of a story. Perhaps
that was what brought me into thinking about the Old World Blues that
morning in the first place. It was either luck or fate for that
women, for in the first time of my entire investigative career, I sat
down and decided to accept a cold case request.
“Oh, thank you
sir! Thank you so much.”
I shrugged it off,
pretending it had less meaning to me than it actually did. “Don’t
mention it. I’ll get on it soon.”
I watched her slowly
leave her seat, leaving some trepidation behind her, and move
silently towards the exit. But right before she turned the brass
knob, I recalled one case that I could get closure to.
“What is your
name?”
She turned back to
me, her panicked hair created a shadow that guised true meaning in
her face. “Maria. Maria Cartwell. My daughter’s name is Susie
Cartwell.”
No one else came
that entire day. No one else needed to. I grabbed the stained
portfolio she had left on my desk and flipped it open. It turned out
to be a mistake, for the first thing I laid eyes upon was Susie’s
smiling face. A smiling face that, perhaps at the time, was meant to
have joyful meaning. Meant to be relaxing and peaceful, to calm one
that was feeling particularly neurotic. But the context had changed
now. For what I now saw in the young daughter’s face now was a
beckoning. A plea. Save my mother,
she told me. Save my mother, for I am already dead. But if
you cannot save her… then at the very least, go and save yourself.
[END OF EPISODE 1]
