Page 52 of Just Another Missing Person

Julia sits back in her chair, cross-legged, barefoot, and frowns. He’s angry with her, she thinks. Has disengaged for self-preservation. From concerned and engaged to this: hard to pin down, poor signal. Excuses, Julia feels, if she had to say either way. Perhaps somebody who is up to something. Something he thinks will bring his daughter back, but won’t. Whenever witnesses go off the boil like this, they are inevitably doing something stupid.

“Mr. Johnson, we just have a few more questions about your daughter.”

“I know—it’s just... if you... I know,” he says, the line so distorted Julia can hardly make any of it out.

“Can we set up a call somehow that’ll be better than this? Maybe not standing in a gale?”

“Sure.”

“Do you use Zoom?”

“Can do, it may be a few days, though.”

“Right,” she says, thinking. “You don’t think I’m doing a very good job,” she says. She’s seen it before. Sometimes, victims and victim’s families have no choice but to disengage.

She looks at the streetlights slanting in through the blinds. Last spring, Genevieve injured Zac and, simultaneously, Sadie went missing and was never found. She still thinks about that day she sat in the back office, not interviewing key witnesses. And everything after it, too. Reviewing documents without fully reading them, instead going over and over who might know about Genevieve, what other evidence might one day bubble up to the surface like a body in an estuary.Julia blinks. The sighting that amounted to nothing, but perhaps because of her negligence. She can’t let this happen with Olivia.

She allows her eyes to glaze over. Maybe she will leave on time, soon, watch a movie with her daughter, their legs tucked up on the sofa together, back doors thrown open.

“Just a few questions, though—if you can hear.”

He says nothing in response. “I wanted to talk more about the boyfriend,” she adds. “Olivia’s boyfriend? I’m just wanting to follow up some more on this...” she says, thinking, as she often does during a missing person investigation, that all she has to do is leave no stone unturned, and then she will find them.

“Go on,” he says, and she can hear something shift in his voice, some anticipation. “Do you have anything on him?”

“Not yet,” she says. “But I want to ask—”

“I’ll call—when I have a better signal, okay?” he says, though it sounds clear to Julia.

The line goes dead. Julia looks at her phone in frustration. She’s definitely pissed the dad off, then.

She upends her pen on her desk, staring at her phone, thinking, thinking, thinking. Art’s right: she can never turn her brain off. And, this time, it’s homing in on something. She can feel it. Marilyn. Working for a gang. What if she tried to find her? She puts it into the PNC, but it returns too many results; hundreds of Marilyns.

“All right?” Jonathan says to her, passing by her room. For a second Julia sees him as the young analyst he once was, her as the sergeant keen to rise up through the ranks. They’d leave on time together occasionally, get fish and chips and walk to their cars. Julia would take some home to Art. He’d leave her messages on the wrappers for weeks afterward. Hewas always good with missives, small things like that. The care and attention needed to maintain a relationship.

“Oh, yeah,” she says weakly, now that honesty, that integrity and innocence are long gone.

Her phone rings, interrupting the moment, and Julia startles. It might be Price, saying the footage has been deleted. It might be somebody in IT.

But it isn’t Price. It’s the desk sergeant. “Someone here for you,” he says delicately, and Julia can tell from his tone that it is somebody significant. Immediately, her mind goes to Genevieve.

“Who?”

“She says she is Olivia Johnson.”

23

Julia

Julia cannot believe it. There must be some mistake. But as she walks into the foyer, there she is, in the flesh. Tall, blond, a wide nose, slightly crooked teeth. Olivia Johnson. Julia feels like blinking, like pinching herself.

“Olivia,” Julia says, partly in wonderment.

Olivia nods, saying nothing. She’s exactly like her passport photograph. A strong nose. Blond hair. Eyes that crinkle at their corners, even while her face is at rest. Julia looks at her in wonder. Here she is: Julia’s savior. The mystery solved. So why does she feel like it isn’t?

“I’m not missing.” That’s the first thing Olivia says. Her voice is more clipped than Julia expected, her body language more self-conscious. This is how it goes when you meet somebody who’s only ever put their best side forward online, Julia supposes. She cannot stop looking at her. Back from the dead: that’s where everyone thought she was.

“Well—now you’re ba–”

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