Page 29 of Swerve
I start writing.
_____Contacting the police and file reports
_____Provide the police with information about the missing person
_____Keep a record of the report.
_____Contact the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).
_____Contact the person’s friends and acquaintances.
_____Check with hospitals and coroners in the area.
This one brings me up cold, a feeling of panic skittering along my skin. Call a coroner and ask if my sister is there? It is unthinkable. I leave this one for now and go on to the next one.
_____Check with your local county jail.
_____Check social media sites.
_____Put up fliers with a picture and description of the missing person.
_____Ask people to spread the word.
_____Alert the local media.
_____Consider hiring a private investigator.
Once I’ve written down all the suggestions, I stare at the list, a staggering despair washing over me. I push it aside though, relieved to have something to focus on, anything to take my thoughts off where Mia might be and all the awful possibilities for what might have happened to her.
I can’t go there. I tell myself to complete the list, and it is very likely that someone will come forward with information that will lead to finding her. And so I go back to the top of the list. The first three I’ve done. I check the boxes. Number four.Contact the National Missing and Unidentified Persons System (NamUs).
I find the link and start entering the information.
~
IT TAKES THE entire remainder of the day to get the next-to-the-last box checked. I’ve personally contacted every friend and acquaintance I am aware of as someone Mia interacts with on a regular basis. I ask each of them to please let me know if they hear anything at all from her.
I’ve called every hospital in the DC and northern Virginia area. That was painful, but calling the coroner’s offices within a fifty-mile radius, that was excruciating. It is only when I’ve hung up from the last call that I breathe a sigh of relief for the fact that neither office had anyone there who matched Mia’s description.
I call every local jail within a fifty-mile radius. I cannot imagine Mia doing anything that would have landed her in any of them, but I’m following the list. There is no one in any of the jails who sounds like Mia.
I log on to her computer and check every social media site saved in her Bookmarks. I check the messages of each, find nothing relevant. Her posts are typical of what I would imagine her posting. Positive memes, funny animal videos, photos of Grace and her, several of Pounce.
Next, I write up a press release with as much detail about what has happened as I can come up with. I include one picture of Mia and another of her with Grace. I email it to sixty different editors of TV news stations, newspapers, and radio stations.
Once that’s done, I make up a flyer and use my printer to print two hundred copies. I leave the house with the stack of flyers in my arms and drive to the location of the festival where I start posting them on every light pole within a mile of where I’d found her phone. I post the rest of them at local grocery stores, a fitness club, and the restaurants that allow me to leave one on a community bulletin board.
It’s after ten o’clock when I get home. I’m so tired that I can barely drag myself back to the desk chair where Pounce has not moved since I left. I pick him up, arrange him on my lap, and stare at the to-do list I had spent the day completing.
There’s one suggestion left.
Consider hiring a private detective.
The thought of pursuing this tonight is more than I can process. I will call Detective Helmer first thing in the morning and see if I can get a feel for whether or not he thinks they’re making progress.
If not, I’ll start researching private detectives.
Pounce meows, stands on my leg, his paws kneading back and forth, his nails pricking my skin. He hops down then and heads for Mia’s bedroom, and I’m sure he expects her to be home in a bit. Why would he imagine anything different? This is the routine they follow every night.
