Chapter Two
Parker entered the threshold for their first morning round up. Many of her fellow co-workers and police officers sat at their designated units. They discussed the most recent happenings and going ons’ within their neck of the woods. Many of the words she picked up involved some dastardly attempts on failed runaways and featured humans who sped over fifteen miles per hour over the school crossing zone. There didn’t seem to be nothing out of the ordinary with these occurrences, as many of them resulted in just a ticket or warning. Sometimes the occasional night in jail, but with such a small town it was rare.
“I see Parker decided to show up!” She heard her name getting thrown into the mix of conversation, and many of the officers turned to greet her. She smiled a toothy, white grin.
“I wouldn’t miss this meeting for the world, what’s going on topside? You know I’m devoid of all delicious tabloids in the basements.” This elicited a few chuckles from the officers to her right.
“I know the sergeant is coming to discuss a high profile case, so maybe you’ll get some spotlight!” The one who spoke up happened to be Parker’s friend in the task force.
“Heath if I’m needed it’s not high profile, it’s a magical profile.” Parker slid into her seat as the conversation flowed. “Maybe the fairies decided to rebel from all the enchantments.”
“Or the vampires are striking from hospital blood.” He remarked. Parker sighed, jokes aside, this would prove to be interesting if she were involved in the investigation. It wasn’t that magical creature cases were rare, far from it, it was more or less the cases that were unsolved for years that Parker worked on. She worked on cases that were difficult to solve in normal situations.
“Attention!” Everyone in the room quieted when Sergeant Lewis Drachman boomed. He stood a whopping seven feet tall, his furry hooves clacked lightly on the linoleum as he presented the case. His brawny arms flexed underneath his crisp, ironed uniform as the manila folder dropped out of his hands. His hair, tied back with a simple ponytail band still could not contain the massive amount of unkempt dark brown hair that tumbled past the shoulders. The beard and burly mustache covered the lower half of his face, making the sergeant seem older than he actually was. The centaur continued to address his staff with curt professionalism and brute Braun.
“We have a missing child’s case that has been transferred to our neck of the woods. Brackten, Terrill, and Willis—you’ll be in charge of the investigation. Gilmore and Zamora go meet with the federal bureau that will be working with our unit. All of the other officers be on the ready for potential call outs.” Their Sergeant dismissed their group huddle after a few inspirational remarks, and like clockwork the officers and detectives jumped into action.
Parker watched as everyone started to get up from their seats, and Heath clapped his hand upon her own uniformed shoulder. “I’m off to check with the FBI, text me if you want something from that Charmed Brew shop for later.”
“Only if you promise not to get lost on the way to my floor.” Parker chimed. She then gave a wave over to the halfling woman approaching them from the far side of the room.
Jill Zamora, a halfling woman with auburn hair and a twitchy trigger finger for all her shiny firearms. She worked well with Heath Gilmore and complemented his police work.
“Good morning Parker, do you mind if I can steal Gilmore? We’re gonna head out to talk with the fed’s once I collect my new guns. I wanted to test my new ranged rifle I tinkered with last night afterwards.”
“By all means,” Parker gestured to the male in question. “He’s all yours! Nab that jerkwad who kidnapped those kids and pop him a few times for me, would you?”
Jill smiled, “No one messes with our kids. Human children or magical beast children.”
Heath and Jill left the room, and Parker stretched her arms back behind her head.
Officer Colten, a quiet, shy guy with greased back blonde hair, and brown eyes sighed. His family hit the jackpot on always looking youthful, and no one really knew why. Parker had a sneaking suspicion it involved some sort of magical concoction, but could never prove it. “Missing children’s case? I want to be assigned on that case.”
Everyone in town knew who a Colten was, after all, most became police officers to protect the peace. Although he was quick to judge races that were different than his own. That was a major reason why she couldn’t prove him to have dealings with magical concoctions in the first place. It was apparent he hated anything magical.
“Maybe next time.” Parker replied and got up from her seat. She tried to recall if there were any cases that had not been solved had involved any missing children, but nothing seemed to jump out at her. “Let’s check the database and see.”
Her dark hair tied into a tight ponytail swished behind her as the heel of her boots clamored on top of the police precinct floor. She made it to the elevator and clicked the down arrow to head down to her office when the sound of hooves alerted her of another’s presence. It wasn’t too hard to guess that it was her sergeant waiting for the elevator.
“Good morning detective, I was heading down to your office myself. Wanted to have a chat.” Sergeant Drachman smirked. Parker didn’t know whether to be nervous or excited about this chat, but the elevator chime and the metallic sound of the door opening saved her mind from worry.
A brief elevator ride later, and the chime of the elevator doors opened up at the second basement floor. Here laid the old archives and cases that either did not have enough evidence or were unsolved. Most happened to be magical creature based, which Parker was assigned to organize and be a fresh pair of eyes.
Sergeant Drachman followed Parker into her office and shut the door. She shuffled some of her papers from an old case fifteen years ago off her desk to allow room for the Sergeant to sit at her desk.
“I didn’t say anything further about the high profile case in the Pow Wow meeting, but you’ll need to be on deck for this investigation. The possibility of this involving magical creatures is high, and may go beyond our normal investigation standards.” Drachman spoke with little concern. “I don’t think we’ll need to worry if everyone is on board and working together, but I have this gut feeling you’re going to get involved in this one.”
“And if your gut feeling is true, this could be quite the case.” She muttered, scratching beneath her chin in thought. Normally when the Sergeant had these feelings, it typically would come true. Sometimes good, and sometimes… not so good.
“Keep up the excellent work down here, I’m sure some of the officers will be down to chat with you to escape their normal duties.” He adjusted the collar of his uniform, before excusing himself from the room. As the hoof sounds of his gait disappeared in the elevator, Parker planted herself into her cheap and comfortable chair.
The wheels creaked under her full weight as she pushed up all of her paperwork from a case that dated back twenty years. It dealt with stolen art pieces from the museum but no one was able to discern what happened afterwards. There were no clues, and no evidences left behind at the crime scenes to even present a full case.
Under the dim light she worked through the materials, collecting pieces from the black market intel on art pieces to scanning ledgers from international art entrepreneurs that had dealings with the said black market. After several hours of grueling concentration, she had to rub her tired, blue eyes behind closed eyelids. Parker thought that this case was going to remain unsolved with nothing linking together.
She went back to work once more, deciding it might be best to open up another case to keep her mind fresh. She shoved the art case back into the manila folder and shoved it back into the threshold of other cases waiting to be solved.
“Murder of dwarves family from fifty two years ago, missing persons case from twelve years ago, increase of werewolf bites from seventy years ago”, She murmured a few more of the cases before coming back to the missing persons’ case from twelve years ago.
“Hello darkness my old friend.” She hummed as she pulled the folder out to further examine it. She dropped all of the five sheets inside of the folder onto her desk and read the contents.
“An entire family disappeared during a night stroll. The only evidence left behind was a shoe found outside their empty campsite.” She walked over to the town map where the entire town and surrounding forests were at. “Where was their campsite?” She murmured and scrambled over her desk in atypical slovenly fashion. Her entire upper body was stretched over to the other side of her desk space, as she pulled out thumb tacks and red string. She then shoved some of those items into her mouth before grabbing the papers of the case.
Mumbling with string in her mouth, she laid out the papers and placed thumbtacks where the family was last seen, where the family was last heard of, the campsite, and the shoe.
Once she had all of the thumb tacks and string laid out, she looked at her latest masterpiece and frowned. “This would be super confusing without any context.” Parker murmured. “Wait, isn’t this where the fairy circles are situated?” She looked closer at the map and knew exactly where on the map the family had gone.
“Time to make a roadtrip.”
