Page 85 of What We Bury

TWENTY-THREE

HOLDEN

The file lands on my desk at 7:42 a.m. Hernandez kicked it up to detectives because the father wouldn’t stop calling, and lucky fucking me, I’m next in the rotation.

DAVIS, BROCK ALAN. Age 24. Last seen Friday May 22 leaving a house party on Pelican Beach. Social media is active, but not answering calls and has not been physically sighted by friends or family. Parents report lack of in-person communication is out of character. Welfare check requested.

I pick up my coffee, take a slow sip, and set it down precisely on the ring it’s already left on my desk.

The note on the file says:

Mr. Alan Davis (father) called 7:18 a.m. (Monday, June 1) Requesting status update. Mildly irate. Transferred to Holden Cross as case detective.

Mildly irate is a desk-jockey euphemism that means he yelled. Mildly irate also translates to I’m about to spend an unspecified portion of my morning being yelled at by a man whose son I helped disappear.

Fine.

I check my watch. 7:48 a.m. Best to give the father a few more minutes to calm down before I call. So I hit up Milo instead. I doubt he’s asleep.

“Yo,” he answers after the first ring. “What’s up?”

“Alan Davis, name sound familiar?”

“Mm, Brock’s dad, why?”

I sigh. “He’s just requested a welfare check for Brock.”

“Da fuck? They’ve had every single text answered. My God. Get over yourself.”

I shake my head. “Is that Stephen guy still blowing up his phone?”

“Sure is. Clingy as fuck. Want me to look into him?”

“Maybe. I’ll talk to the father first.”

“Good luck. Hopefully you can piss him off.”

I hang up and turn back to the case sitting on my desk. I flip through the details. Family attempted to file a missing persons report only two days after he went missing. The responding officer noted that due to his social media activity and response time to texts, there wasn’t any cause for us to act.

After daily calls and pressure from the parents, officers were sent to the most recent tagged location on his social media accounts: Murphy’s, a dive near Founders, Saturday night.

“Jesus, fucking Christ. I’m gonna kill Milo.”

I flip the page. The responding notes are thin—a waitress, Rhonda, gave a statement confirming she saw him, but couldn’t identify the man he was with as any of his known acquaintances. She barely remembered Brock to comment any further. What shedidremember, in detail, was “the good-looking guy withthe mullet” who took her number and never called. Asked the officer, twice, if there was any way to track him down for her. The officers said no.

I put my pen down and pinch the bridge of my nose.

Of course she did.

Milo is dead. Dead!

On the next page is the parents’ statement—two paragraphs of sweet fuck all. Says they last saw Brock before they left for vacation. They’ve tried calling, no answer, unlike him to go silent.

The case was flagged as low priority after the officers confirmed he’d been seen alive and well at Murphy’s.

Good. Low priority means it sits in a stack. Stacks buy us some time.

Maybe I won’t kill Milo.