Page 5 of All the Missing Pieces

I shook off the chilling memories and did a mock salute even though he couldn’t see me. “You got it.”

He hung up without a goodbye, just another waste of time for him. But I didn’t mind. Anything to get off the call quicker. And I didn’t mind the social posts either because that forward progress on a case came from getting the community on your side. Activating them to become a force of amateur sleuths.

That public involvement had its downsides for sure. False leads and people getting in my way. The occasional safety concern. But I took precautions. People didn’t know who I was, not really. I used my middle name, Sawyer, as my last on the podcast. And I never spoke about what had spurred me into the world of true crime to begin with—knowing what it was like not to have the answers you needed and feeling like no one gave a damn.

I was careful about more than the links to my past. I was cautious about the here and now too. I never posted around where I was staying. Never took photos or videos of my vehicle. Bessie was unique after all. Her teal-and-white paint job, the paddleboard fastened to her side, the cat almost always perched in the window.

Since taking care with those safety measures, I hadn’t ever had someone find where I was staying. Probably because anyone interested enough to look checked hotels or short-term rentals. But I was always staying in Bessie.

It was necessary. Because with that first breakthrough case, there’d come attention. Just over a million followers on Instagram. One and a half on TikTok. And we averaged over two million monthly downloads of the show between all platforms. It was a community. There were some kooks for sure. There were some folks who thought they were the next Sherlock Holmes. But mostly there were people who wanted justice for those who had been forgotten.

Theywere my people.

It might have been because they too had lost someone. Or maybe they had been victims themselves, unable to speak up in the moment or even now. Or they could simply be empathetic humans who wanted the world to be better than it was.

No matter the reason, I was grateful for them.

As the road straightened out then dipped down a bit, I caught sight of a sign in the distance. I could see the white letters spelling outWelcome to Shady Cove. The paint was chipped in places, worn by weather and time.

I quickly tapped the camera app on my phone from where it was in the charging dock and hit record. People loved the rolling-into-town footage that meant I was on a new case. As I got closer to the sign, I could see more of its details. The waves that marked the large lake the Northern Californian communitysat on, the trees carved into the wood and painted a dark green for the surrounding forests. All of it aged, raw, real. And followed byPopulation 2,033.

Small. Almost minuscule.

But I knew that the most horrific things could happen in the places you least expected.

2

RIDLEY

I pulledinto the downtown of Shady Cove, my camera app still rolling. My listeners loved getting a feel for the place I was working, and they would look for clues everywhere. I’d gotten used to small towns across America. They were different than the suburbs of Dayton, Ohio, where I’d been raised, where I’d returned for one torturous year after Avery had gone missing, whereSounds Like Serialhad been born in that time when I so desperately needed purpose.

A true small town had a feel. People knew instantly when you were an outsider. They’d welcome you in but with caution just the same. They’d tell you where to eat and what sights to see, but they wouldn’t open up about the underbelly of their community until they trusted you.

And I needed that underbelly.

That was where the secrets lay. Where revelations came from. Where the hidden truths needed to be exposed. But often those truths were ugly, and there were others who’d do anything to keep them buried.

You wouldn’t guess that by the images greeting me as I drove down Old Miner Road, the main drag through town. It looked exactly like the name suggested, as if the town was straight outof gold-rush times. The building facades screamedOld West. A mixture of wood and stone but with the exaggerated fronts that looked more like the set of a Western than an actual town.

“We might need a Clint Eastwood movie marathon,” I said to Tater as I reached over to scratch her ears. She purred and then bit me.

I scanned the row of buildings lining the main street. There was a quaint hotel, a bar, restaurants, and tourist shops. When I spotted a small grocery store, I flicked on my blinker. I pulled into an open parking spot and grinned. “This has to be a good sign,” I said as I took in the coffee shop next to the grocery store.

The sign readCowboy Coffee & Café. There was a cowboy boot painted below the script. I hoped Cowboy Coffee didn’t mean that instant crap brewed over a campfire, but judging by how full the café was, I doubted it.

I put Bessie in park and switched on the battery-operated air-conditioning to keep Princess Tater comfortable. It was only in the seventies, but the sun was shining, which meant the van could be baking in a matter of minutes. “You going to behave while I’m gone?”

Tater sat up, exposing her three-legged status, and meowed at me. But the meow was more like a yell, and I knew exactly what she wanted.

“Oh fine.” I opened the console and pulled out her toy mouse, stuffing it with a dash of catnip. She instantly swatted it out of my hand and onto her bed like a star batter for the Yankees. “This is why we should’ve said no to drugs. Makes you aggressive.”

She just let out another yelling meow in my direction.

Chuckling, I reached behind my seat for the reusable grocery bags I had stowed there. I grabbed those, my phone, keys, and wallet, and hopped out of the van. Every inch of the vehicle had purpose. From my makeshift podcast studio in the back,to my paddleboard storage on the side, to the bike rack on the rear hatch that held my e-bike for getting around town in good weather. It might’ve been small, but it was home.

I snapped a couple of quick shots of the town, making sure I got some good ones of Cowboy Coffee. I’d be spending a decent amount of time there since it had been where Emerson Sinclair worked after school when she’d been abducted. But first, groceries. Nobody needed me getting hangry.

A bell jingled as I opened the door to The Hitching Post, the sound just a bit rusty as if the bell had been there for decades. A woman looked up from her newspaper, tanned skin crinkled with age and her hair more silver than black. “Afternoon.”

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