Page 1 of The Whisper Place
Max
The guy looked broke.
In the year and a half since I’d left the Iowa City police and joined my best friend’s PI firm, I’d learned to evaluate people through a very specific filter. As a cop I’d been trained to look for threats. Was someone a danger to themselves or others? Did the situation need to be de-escalated? That muscle was still there, underneath the veneer of my new private-sector loafers and laptop bag, but it wasn’t the first thing I thought when someone walked through our front door. Not anymore. Now, I checked for money.
My six o’clock Friday night appointment, a prospect who’d messaged us through the website, could’ve been an extra fromTrailer Park Boys. His stained flannel bulged over cargo shorts, his beard hadn’t been trimmed since Covid, and he glanced nervously around the office with partied-out, bloodshot eyes. Early thirties. Beer gut. A classic failure-to-launch, directionless white boy. I put his bank account balance at three thousand, tops. If he invested, it was strictly Dogecoin.
“Charlie Ashlock?” I pasted a welcoming smile on my face and walked around the desk, hand out. He shook it with a clammy palm. “I’m Max. Have a seat. Can I get you a water?”
We had a Keurig, too, and some fancy mugs courtesy of my wife, who’d taken the office space on as her personal Pinterest-board challenge, but I wasn’t wasting a K-cup on this guy.
He waved the water off and sat on the edge of the chair, setting an old backpack on the floor next to him.
I flipped to a fresh page in my notebook. “Your message said you’re looking for someone.”
He nodded and hesitated before speaking. “She’s been gone for a week.”
“She’s missing?”
He nodded, offering zero additional details. I sighed inwardly.
“Have you filed a missing person report?”
“No.”
“That’s your first step. The authorities need to be notified. They can conduct an official investigation whenever a person is missing.”
He leaned in and met my eyes for the first time. His were red but lucid and I realized it might not be from late nights at the bar. He looked desperate. Hopeless.
“I can’t go to the cops.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” his hands balled into fists in his lap, “she wouldn’t want me to.”
I put the notebook down.
“Start at the beginning.”
Charlie told me he’d woken up at his house a week ago—a farm south of Riverside—and his girlfriend wasn’t there.
“She’d started running in the mornings. Her running shoes were gone, so I figured that’s what she was doing at first. Then I saw her car was gone, too, but she left her overnight bag behind. She’s not at her place. She hasn’t been to work in a week.”
“How long have you two been dating?”
“A month.”
“That’s pretty new. Things going well?”
“Yeah.” He swallowed. “She’s the best thing that ever happened to me.” He pulled up a series of pictures on his phone of the two of them lounging on a couch. He was clearly trying to get her to look at the camera while she burrowed under a blanket. Only one picture had a clear shot of her face, snuggled into his chest and looking half amused, half resigned. She was pale with long, dark blond hair, delicate features, and freckles over her nose. She stared at something above the camera, dissociating from the experience.
“Was she happy, too?”
He got up and paced the space between the two desks. “Yes. She was.” He nodded, as if trying to convince himself. “I know she was happy.”
“But?”
“But she never got comfortable. I tried to get her to move more of her stuff to my place, but she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t tell me why.” He stopped pacing. “And she was scared.”
