Lima #2
“So, the question is, Gabby, can you get a message to her or help us find her or a person who can get a hold of her?” Tessman asked.
“You said something about a finder’s fee?” Gabby asked.
Both men smiled. “We did. We have one hundred dollars from her parents for the person who gets us in contact with her.”
“One hundred? Now that sounds like her parents. They can afford more. Make it two, and I’ll see what I can do.”
“We can do that,” Tessman said. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a card. Like all the business cards carried by the Operators, it had only a phone number on it, the phone number to a second phone line.
“No name,” Gabby remarked. “And I didn’t catch your names.”
Burke flashed his best melt a girl’s panties model smile at her. “He’s Carter and I’m Rich.”
She smiled too. “It’s nice to meet you, Carter and Rich. I’ll call you later tonight.”
“Oh, one more thing,” Burke said. “Her parents really wanted us to take a look at her room and see if anything jumps out to us, and since they pay the room and board, they technically have the right to allow anyone into the room they want.”
“See, dicks,” Gabby said. “It’s her room and her things, not theirs, well, mine too.”
“Would you mind? Could we please take a look?” Burke asked, still giving her a flirty smile.
She shrugged. “I guess. Hold on.” She went back into the room and grabbed a laptop, a lanyard with keys dangling from it, as well as an ID card, and her phone. “I’m going to go. I’ll catch you guys later,” she told the other girls.
They followed her to the elevator and rode down the one level to the second floor.
She unlocked the door and invited them in.
“That’s Zoe’s side of the room.” She pointed to the left as she sat on her own bed to the right.
“But I’m not sure what you think you’ll find.
Her parents searched through her stuff, and then the cops did. ”
“Her parents found her phone in her desk, I understand,” Burke said.
“Yeah, they took it with them,” Gabby answered.
“Did she have another one? I can’t believe she’s out there without a phone,” Burke said.
“You can get a phone just about anywhere,” Gabby said without confirming if she had another one or not.
That answered that question for Burke, though. She had one and Gabby probably had the number. He started to look through the desk.
“So, are you two close?” Tessman asked.
“We’re friends,” Gabby said.
“Do you think she’s in any kind of trouble?” Burke asked.
“I don’t want to say too much,” Gabby said.
“Anything you say won’t get back to her parents.
As we said, all we care about is making sure she’s not in trouble or danger and helping her if she is.
And if she’d not, we want to get word to her that her parents want a conversation with her.
That’s it. Then we get paid and move on to our next case,” Tessman said.
“Zoe isn’t the first college student to have a falling out with her parents about leaving school and cut them out of her life. Is it about a guy? Did her parents not like a new boyfriend or something?” Burke asked.
Gabby twisted her lips but didn’t answer.
“Let me put it to you this way: are you worried about her at all?” Burke asked.
“She’s my friend, and I know she thinks she knows what she’s doing, but I’m not sure if she really thought it through all the way. I mean, she was getting good grades and liked her major. I tried to convince her to at least finish the semester.”
“Yeah, dropping out this close to the end could be foolish if she ever wants to go back, a whole semester wasted and Fs in all her classes,” Burke agreed. “You have a way to reach her, don’t you?”
She stared at them in a way that made them both believe she did. “I might.”
“Can you try?” Burke asked. He pointed at her phone, in her hand.
“What, right now?”
Tessman was searching through her closet. He slipped his phone from his pocket and opened the pairing app.
“Yes, please,” Burke said.
She appeared pensive, as though she was rolling something around in her thoughts.
“What is it you aren’t telling us,” Burke pressed when she hadn’t dialed or typed out a text message.
“Nothing,” Gabby lied.
Both men knew she was lying. They exchanged glances. Burke sat on her bed, facing her. He gazed deeply into her eyes. “Gabby, if you think Zoe is in any trouble, you need to tell us. We can help her. We’re on her side.” His voice was sincere.
“It’s just that I think there was something she wasn’t telling me.
Her decision to move out and leave school was abrupt, and she wouldn’t talk to me about it.
She just said it was something she had to do, the right decision for her.
And if you look at her stuff, you’ll see she really didn’t take much with her, just what she could carry in one trip.
I volunteered to help her move to wherever she was going, but she turned me down flat. ”
“Did she have a car here?” Burke asked, already knowing that she didn’t.
“No. Someone picked her up right outside of the building the day she packed her stuff. I thought she’d come back for another trip, but she never did. And before you ask, I don’t know for sure who it was, but I suspect it was a guy she was seeing who picked her up.”
“Do you know this guy’s name?” Burke asked.
“She was kind of seeing one of her TAs, Frisco Oliveira. She never admitted that she was seeing him, but I saw them together a few times.”
Burke and Tessman knew her parents had taken her phone, which had been left on her desk, and the police analyzed her calls and messages, even the deleted ones.
There were no calls or messages with a person of that name.
There had been many deleted phone calls and very vague messages exchanged with several burner phones.
“Thank you for telling us that,” Burke said.
“This is important, Gabby. Do you remember what day it was she left and approximately what time?” He knew there were cameras around campus, including several on the dorm building.
The report said that the police had already reviewed all camera surveillance on the campus and found nothing, but maybe their Digital Team would have better luck.
Gabby rubbed her forehead. “No, I’m sorry. I don’t. It was sometime that third week of October. I know she was gone before Halloween. And I think it was later in the afternoon, you know, as it was getting dark out.”
Burke nodded, disappointed she couldn’t narrow it down more. “So how might you reach Zoe?”
“I have a phone number I can text. I don’t know whose number it is, but I’ve gotten a few messages to Zoe that she replied to. It normally takes a few days for her to text back though.”
“May I see the messages with that number, please?” Burke asked.
Gabby unlocked her phone and brought up the text string. She handed her phone to Burke. Tessman stood beside him and looked over his shoulder as he scrolled through the half-dozen messages. She was correct that it took her several days to respond to each.
Gabby’s first message to her was to advise her that her parents had come to campus to look for her.
It took two days for a response that simply said, ‘They’re wasting their time.
I don’t want to see or talk to them’. Gabby’s next message was after the police visited her.
Three days later the reply was, ‘Sorry for the grief you’re taking.
Thank you for not telling anyone anything about me’.
The last message string was Gabby wishing Zoe a Happy Thanksgiving and asking her if she was with her family. The reply was one word ‘No’.
“So, you’ve had no actual phone call with her since she left, correct?” Tessman asked Gabby.
Gabby shook her head.
“Have you tried to call her on this number?”
“No, she told me it was for text messages only.”
“She told you that?” Tessman asked.
“Yes, she gave me that number the day she left. I thought it was weird she left her phone here, but she said her parents pay for it and she wanted nothing from them.”
“And it could be tracked and lead the authorities to her,” Burke pointed out. “Was she always so paranoid and against her parents?”
“No, this thing with her parents just started this semester. I’ve known her for a few years, and she never said anything bad about them until, I don’t know, September. I walked into the room a few times and heard her arguing with her mom.”
“About what?” Burke asked.
Gabby shrugged. “Mostly about money and wanting to leave school. Her parents paid for her first two years, and she had to take out student loans for the last two years. Except they did pay for housing this last semester, but said it would be the last they paid for.”
“So, money was the main issue,” Tessman said.
“Yes. They’ve always been dicks, holding the money they gave her for school over her head, but as I said, she never complained about it until September.”
“When she gave you this number you’ve sent the text messages to, how’d she give it to you? Did she text you from a different phone than the one her parents paid for? Did she already have a replacement phone before she left?”
“I don’t know. The number was written on a piece of paper.”
“I’m going to dial the number and see what I get. If I get voicemail, I need you to leave a message that asks her to call you ASAP, stating that it’s an emergency. Can you do that for me?” Burke asked.
Gabby nodded.
Burke made eye contact with Tessman to be sure he was ready to pair her phone.
Tessman nodded. Burke hit dial. The standard generic voicemail recording that said the user was not available activated immediately.
It did not even ring. The phone was off.
Burke handed the phone to Gabby. “Leave the voicemail.”
“Hi, Zoe, it’s me. I need you to call me ASAP. It’s an emergency. Okay, bye.” She hit end call.
“That was good. Thanks, Gabby,” Burke said.
“What do I do if she calls back?” Zoe asked.
“You tell her about us and that her parents hired us to deliver the message that they need one phone conversation with them and that they’ll provide her money to live on, and then you give her that phone number I gave you upstairs,” Tessman said. “And don’t tell her that you told us anything.”
Gabby nodded.
“Did you notice anything else about Zoe this last semester?” Burke asked. “Her mom said she started to have different thoughts regarding things than she did in the past.”
“Like what?” Gabby asked.
“Well, about vaccines and pharmaceutical companies being bad. And her mom said she developed strong thoughts about corporate greed and the inequity of wealth. What worried her mom the most was that she said Zoe even expressed anti-government thoughts and a belief that a second civil war was coming. Her mom said they argued about those things too.”
“I never heard her argue with her parents about anything but money,” Gabby said. “But yeah, those things sound like Zoe. She’s not wrong, though.”
Burke and Tessman exchanged looks again. Gabby may have had some of the prepper indoctrination too. Then Burke smiled at Gabby and nodded. “Okay, thank you for everything. We’ll go now. And remember, if you hear back from Zoe, please pass our message along and then give us a call.”
Tessman had his wallet open. He pulled two hundred dollars from inside and handed them to Gabby.