My partner, a young officer named Miller who had only been on the force for two years, stepped into the kitchen doorway. His shoulder radio gave a tiny, silent blink of its red light. “People don’t run without their phones, Vance.”
“Not when they have two kids,” I said.
I tapped my heavy flashlight against my leather belt, the metal-on-metal click echoing against the linoleum. The sound was sharp, a habit I had never been able to break when a call started going sideways. I had missed a call by ten minutes once, three years ago, and that ten minutes had made all the difference in the world.
Who leaves their entire life behind on a Tuesday night without taking the one thing that connects them to the world?
A single red notification light on the top corner of the phone remained dead, waiting for the current that never came.
On the other side of the thin kitchen wall, in the empty spaces of apartment forty-four, a floorboard gave a tiny, dry squeak. Neither of us noticed the sound, but the silence that followed it was heavy and absolute. Grover Sterling, the building superintendent, stood in the dark of unit forty-four, his calloused palms rubbing against his canvas trousers as he strained to hear every word.
“Let’s talk to the girl again,” I said, stepping past him into the living room.
We walked back into the living room, where the air was growing colder by the minute. Toby, the four-year-old boy, lay curled on his side under a gray sweatshirt that belonged to his sister. He was deep asleep, his small chest rising and falling in shallow rhythms that barely disturbed the worn fabric.
He rubbed his eyes with both fists, mumbling something about his toy under his pillow, his small legs twitching as he drifted back into a restless sleep.
