Page 10 of Venom's Sting

Ven is so startled he nearly tips his coffee cup over. He quickly grabs it and sets it aside. I open the book to the first page. It’s a copy of the missing persons form I filled out the day she went missing with her name printed in bold letters, Carol Ann Grayson

“I’m so sorry, Amy. I didn’t know your mother was an official missing person. Why didn’t you tell me?”

I’m more uncomfortable than I’ve ever been in my entire life. I shrug, wringing my hands in the bottom of my apron. “I don’t know. Probably because I didn’t think you would care. Unfortunately, I’ve driven just about everybody in my life off by talking about it and I didn’t want to lose the one normal relationship I had left.”

“Well, that’s absolute nonsense. As long as you’re willing to be friends with me, I’m not going anywhere.”

Tears begin to gather in my eyes, and I try to blink them away. “It’s just that it’s been eight months already. I’ve tried everything I can to find her, but so far, it’s been hopeless. It’s pretty clear that the police are just waiting for the one-year mark so they can close the active investigation. I’m starting to losehope that I’m going to find her alive, and I feel so guilty for having those thoughts.”

“You know, my club could really help you with this. We’ve found tons of missing kids and reunited them with their families. Two of my club brothers are married to social workers from Child Protective Services. Another one is married to a social worker from the local women’s shelter.”

I get excited. “Do you think she might have ended up at the women’s shelter? I didn’t even think to look there.”

He thinks it over for a minute and shrugs. “Anything’s possible. She might have had some kind of head injury or amnesia, forgot who she was and ended up getting referred there when she was discharged from hospital, for lack of better options.”

I roll this around in my head while he begins flipping through the pages. Halfway through, he glances up at me. “This is a whole lot of detailed information. You did a good job of keeping a hold of all the details. If you trust me to take your book to my friend Rigs, I’ll bet he could really help us drill down on the details that matter.”

“I brought the book with me because I finally saved up enough money to hire a private investigator to do exactly that. Maybe I could hire your friend instead? That’s if he’s not too expensive,” I wait, barely able to breathe while he thinks it over.

“I can practically guarantee he’ll take your case, but with Rigs and his old lady, Mattie, it’s not about money, they do it for the satisfaction of reuniting families. Any costs incurred are covered by the Savage Legion.”

“If you and your club can help me in any way, I’d be forever in your debt.”

“I promise you that we won’t rest until she’s rescued, or we find out what happened to her,” he states solemnly.

I’m almost too choked up to reply, so I just nod.

He closes the book and looks at me with such empathy. “Tell me what the police had to say about this case.”

I swallow the lump in my throat and speak freely about my experiences with local law enforcement. “The police sergeant at our local police department is David Pike. He’s a good man, but he thinks my mom ran away. He didn’t think of checking local homeless and women’s shelters either. When you go through the rest of the scrapbook, you’ll see that I came up with ideas and clues along the way although he became increasingly resistant to investigating each one. I think he’s super tired of dealing with me.”

Ven scowls, “Why would he be tired of dealing with the family of a missing person? That’s a crucial part of his job description.”

Quickly, I try to explain the whole situation before he starts to think that Sergeant Pike is a typical corrupt small-town officer. “I’ve been running him in circles. Every time I think there’s a new lead, I cajole him into investigating it. Every single time he comes up empty handed. I guess it gets frustrating for him.”

“Again, that is his job,” Ven says gruffly. “He should be accustomed to running down leads that turn into deadends, since investigations are conducted by the process of elimination.”

I press on with my story, “A while back, I found out my mom’s medications had been getting delivered to my grandfather’s farm. They’ve been estranged since I was a child.”

His frown gets deeper, and his lips press into a firm line before he speaks, “That’s weird. I hope Pike got a search warrant and checked it out.”

“Since her meds were going there, I asked him to do a wellness check on her.”

“Let me guess, it turned out to be another dead end.” His voice was about as aggravated as I felt at the time.

“Not only was it a dead end, but the whole situation blew up in our faces. My anger was off the chain when I first got the verification from the pharmacy that her meds were going to his place. I went out there on my own to confront him. I guess I pushed him too far because he sicced his dogs on me.”

Venom opens his mouth, looking for all the world like he’s about to tell me something important but he stops in his tracks, his mouth snapping closed.

“Needless to say, I had to leave my car behind. Since I can’t get to work or any damn where else, I talked Sergeant Pike into letting me go with him to get the car. He was reluctant but I promised to keep my mouth closed, get in my car, and leave while they did the wellness check,” I say.

Venom gestures for me to continue.

“By the time Sergeant Pike and I made it back to the farm, my grandfather and all his farmhands were weaponed up and standing in front of the house. Something about seeing them all standing there blocking the entrance to the house made me think for sure she was being held in there. When they tried to turn Pike away, I went a bit mental on the lot of them.”

His eyes pop open and he asks, “What the hell did that look like?”

I sigh, feeling my face get red as memories of that morning rose in my mind. “I just lost it and went flying towards them like a hellcat, but it didn’t do me any good as Sergeant Pike got me to sit in his car while he went inside. He found nothing there, no trace that my mom had ever been in the house.”

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