The Vanishing Page 3

  Phoenix took a deep breath. He couldn’t deny it; it was the best offer he’d had all day. All week. Actually, all his life. Phoenix levelled his grey eyes at her and after a pause said, ‘OK, where do we start?’

  Jazz grinned and said, ‘I almost feel like hugging you. Almost.’

  <38:26>

  ‘First things first,’ Phoenix said, ‘we need to get supplies.’

  ‘Supplies? You’re just like my brother, always thinking about food. We don’t have time.’

  ‘Not those kind of supplies,’ said Phoenix. ‘Swabs, evidence bags, we need to grab what we can from my mum’s lab. And we need to act fast so we can get the physical evidence from the PLS. That’s the—’

  ‘Point Last Seen, I know,’ smiled Jazz. ‘Maths isn’t the only thing I can beat you in, Phoenix.’

  ‘Watch it,’ said Phoenix. ‘Do you want these supplies or not?’

  Jazz put her hands up in mock surrender, and quickly followed as Phoenix hurried around to the back gate. As he let himself in via the glass doors at the back of the house, Jazz looked around. There was a patio and swimming pool surrounded by palm trees.

  ‘Where are your parents?’ she asked as she headed inside.

  ‘Mum’s car’s not here although usually she works at home in the lab,’ Phoenix explained. ‘Dad’s at work. As usual. And he won’t be back until really late. Still, we have to be quick. Mum could be back at any moment.’

  Jazz noticed Phoenix seemed nervous as he grabbed a large empty sports bag and beckoned her to follow him through the house. He kept craning his neck to look out the windows to the front driveway.

  ‘So your mum really lets you borrow stuff from her lab?’ she asked.

  ‘Um, yeah, sure, I do it all the time. This way,’ he said. Jazz followed him through the house until they came to a large fireproof door with an electronic lock. ‘The lab’s through there,’ he said. Jazz watched carefully as he entered a six-digit code on the electronic keypad. ‘We need to get some PPE.’

  ‘PPE?’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Phoenix smirked, as the door swung open to his touch. ‘It means Personal Protective Equipment. Guess it helps to have some contact with real forensics.’

  Jazz made a face behind his back, already wondering if getting him to help was such a great idea.

  They stepped into a long room housing tall lockers and several white coats hanging from hooks. Four pairs of gumboots stood neatly beneath them.

  ‘This is the clean room. The actual lab is through that door,’ he said. Jazz noticed how a fan had started up the moment he unlocked the door. The clean room smelled of antiseptic and bleach. ‘If we’re going to investigate a crime scene like Anika’s room,’ said Phoenix, ‘we’ve got to be properly kitted out. We can’t contaminate it.’

  ‘I know that,’ Jazz said, annoyed. ‘But we have to be quick.’ She glanced at her mobile. 9.36 am. ‘The clock is ticking on the first 48HOURS.’

  ‘What’s this first 48HOURS you so subtly brought up?’ asked Phoenix, unzipping the empty sports bag and opening one of the tall lockers.

  ‘You don’t know?’ mimicked Jazz. ‘Guess it helps to read books too.’

  ‘Oh, yeah? And what do your books tell you?’

  ‘That the first 48HOURS after a crime has been committed are vital to collecting the freshest and most useful evidence.’

  Phoenix handed her what looked like folded sheets but turned out to be a pair of white overalls complete with a hood. It was the sort of gear worn by forensic service personnel. Hair coverings, thin rubber gloves and booties followed. There were sterile swabs in sealed, single-use packs, together with a box of ready-to-use sealable plastic tubes. She put it all in the sports bag.

  ‘Equipment. That’s what’s vital to collecting the “freshest and most useful evidence”,’ Phoenix teased.

  ‘What exactly does your mum do again?’ Jazz asked, peering round Phoenix to get a closer look inside the lab itself.

  ‘Mum runs a private chemical analysis lab,’ he explained. ‘She consults for the police on investigations and does work for environmental agencies too.’

  ‘So she does fingerprint checking and DNA analysis?’ asked Jazz.

  ‘Yeah, lots of that, and checking out microscopic samples from arson sites and crime scenes. Sometimes she does handwriting analysis, or examines a document or cheque to see if it’s been forged.’

  ‘You’ll never be able to get away with forging her signature on a note then!’ Jazz grinned.

  ‘I could actually,’ said Phoenix, not taking the joke. ‘I’m especially talented with tracing paper and a backlight.’

  Phoenix took two containers of what looked like black dust and white dust and a small, soft brush from a cabinet next to the lockers and added them to the stash in the large bag.

  ‘Let’s go,’ he said.

  Phoenix led Jazz back through the house and outside. They set out for Anika’s at a fast pace.

  Jazz felt a mixture of fear and excitement about the prospects of helping to find Anika. ‘So what’s the plan when we get there?’ she asked.

  ‘Examine the scene? Take samples? Sorry, you were there a minute ago when we grabbed all the equipment, right?’

  ‘I’m not talking about the forensics; I’m talking about Anika’s parents.’

  ‘What about them?’

  ‘Oh, so we just barge in on two distraught parents and say, “Hi, mind if we swab for DNA?”’

  ‘Good point, actually; we’ll need to get elimination samples from the whole family.’

  ‘You’re unbelievable,’ she said as they reached Anika’s house.

  ‘Aren’t you going to knock?’ asked Phoenix, after they had been standing on the porch for a few seconds.

  ‘It just feels so weird. I always let myself straight in.’

  ‘You mean they don’t lock their door?’ said Phoenix. ‘Well, that’s the first stage of forensic examination finished—point of entry. The kidnapper could have just walked straight in.’

  ‘Well, my first rule of investigation is “know the victim”. Mr and Mrs Belmont are really strict about security and always lock this front door. I come here every day so I have my own key.’

  ‘Whatever,’ said Phoenix, impatiently. ‘Just knock already.’

  Anika’s mum opened the door. The look of disappointment that replaced the hope in her eyes was heartbreaking. Mrs Belmont forced her tear-stained face into a smile. ‘Jazz, dear, I know you must be worried, but I’m not sure this is a good time to be visiting. Unless, do you know anything about this—this jewellery box that the kidnapper wants? Did Anika say anything about it to you?’

  Sensing her opportunity, Jazz pushed the front door open further and stepped inside, aware of Phoenix following close behind her. Mrs Belmont didn’t even seem to notice him as she went to the hall cupboard and started searching amongst the jackets and umbrellas inside.

  ‘No,’ said Jazz, shaking her head. ‘Never.’ She glanced at Phoenix, who seemed engrossed in something on the ceiling. She was about to ask Mrs Belmont if she could get her a drink or some food when Phoenix spoke abruptly.

  ‘Where’s your CCTV monitor?’

  Mrs Belmont looked at him, confused. He pointed up at a discreet camera over the front door.

  ‘We’ll need to review the footage,’ he said. Noticing Jazz’s furious face, he added, ‘If that’s OK and everything.’

  Mrs Belmont nodded and waved them vaguely down the hall towards a dark green room. Long curtains brushed the floorboards. A leather chair stood in front of a large desk that supported an expensive-looking computer along with a huge and even more high-tech monitor showing footage from the Belmont’s top-end security system.

  Jazz was too antsy to sit down, but Phoenix was in his element amongst all that technology. He whistled appreciatively, grabbed the monitor remote and sprawled back in the luxurious swivel chair. He selected the CCTV record from last night and started playing the various camera angles on fa
st forward. The split screen showed views from cameras mounted over the front and back doors of the house, a view up the staircase, and a long view taking in the upstairs hall from which the bedrooms opened.

  As Phoenix whizzed through footage of the early evening, Jazz’s heart skipped a beat. She saw Anika practising a long jump in the upstairs hallway, checking her distance on the floorboards, ponytail swinging as she landed.

  As Phoenix continued zooming through the various camera angles from throughout the night, Jazz watched intensely, waiting for a sign of whoever had taken her best friend.

  But her expectation turned to disappointment. When all the tape had been reviewed, Phoenix turned to her, eyebrows raised. ‘OK. What do you make of that?’ he asked.

  ‘Nobody came into the house,’ said Jazz, incredulously. ‘Not by the front door, not by the back door, and certainly nobody came up the staircase or along the hall.’

  ‘And no-one went out either, including Anika. So, the big question is, how was Anika taken?’

  ‘Do you think it might mean something—some thing—took her?’

  ‘Something not human? Undetectable by CCTV? Is that what you’re suggesting?’

  ‘I know it sounds crazy.’

  ‘It is crazy. Sherlock Holmes used to say that once you’ve eliminated the impossible—alien abduction, teleportation and so on—what remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.’

  ‘Oh, so you do read?! OK, Sherlock. So?’

  ‘Well, Watson, there’s got to be another way in—and out.’

  ‘How? Where?’

  ‘When we track down the kidnapper, we’ll ask them,’ said Phoenix, winding the tapes back.

  ‘Let’s focus on the external footage,’ said Jazz, unsure if Phoenix was mocking her or not. ‘Because even if there’s a way in that we don’t know about, the kidnapper would still have to approach the house some way.’

  ‘This must be the most boring job in the world,’ Phoenix muttered. Jazz was about to retort when something on the screen caught her eye.

  ‘Look!’ she exclaimed. ‘You can just see something there near the middle of the frame. A blurry movement. What is it?’

  ‘The CCTV cameras did pick up someone after all.’

  ‘Give me that,’ Jazz said, grabbing the remote. She froze the sequence, frame by frame, until she came to the best view. They peered at it together.

  ‘It looks like an oddly bulky leg—in a boot,’ said Phoenix, head to one side. ‘But what sort of leg is that?’

  ‘See! It doesn’t look human,’ Jazz said triumphantly.

  Phoenix rolled his eyes.

  Jazz checked the timer in the corner of the footage: 12.01 am. She checked her watch—they’d lost over ten of the first 48HOURS already!

  ‘Enough TV watching,’ Phoenix said, as he jumped up from the chair. ‘We need to get up to the Point Last Seen.’

  <37:40>

  ‘This way,’ said Jazz, leading Phoenix up the stairs. They walked down the hallway they’d just seen on camera. One that Jazz had walked down so many times before. But this felt different. Jazz stopped as they reached Anika’s room. It looked so familiar. The walls were covered with posters of Anika’s favourite bands and ribbons from sports carnival triumphs. Jazz looked at the rug she’d sat on countless times, laughing and talking. She glanced at the corkboard over the desk and saw dozens of photos of her and Anika smiling back at her. Mack too. Long drapes hung over the tall window where she and her best friend had loved to gaze over at Deepwater. They liked to imagine the manor’s great hall in its prime, hosting elegant balls with dancers in fancy dresses.

  Jazz became aware of Phoenix holding the PPE out to her. She took the white suit and booties and started putting them on over her clothes and shoes. For all its familiarity, today this wasn’t the bedroom of a friend. Today, she was a crime-scene examiner.

  ‘Where do we start?’ Jazz mumbled, as much to herself as to Phoenix. She pulled her tablet from her bag and opened up CrimeSeen. She couldn’t believe that the real investigation she was finally getting to track was the kidnapping of her own best friend.

  A hint popped up on screen:

  Jazz started photographing the room from every angle. She panned around recording video, stopping as Phoenix came into shot, looking at her with a bemused smile.

  ‘If I wanted to play computer games, I could have stayed at home,’ he said.

  ‘You think this is a game?’ cried Jazz. ‘My best friend is missing! Forgive me if I don’t intend to rely just on what you’ve “picked up” from your mum.’

  ‘OK, super sleuth,’ he said. ‘Look around. What do you see that’s out of the ordinary? Anything that shouldn’t be here. Or anything that should be here—but isn’t.’

  Stepping carefully over to Anika’s desk, Jazz couldn’t help but think of the morning before, when she and Mack had come to pick up Anika. Jazz had given her friend such a hard time when all Anika wanted to do was finish a few more lines of her blog about the stupid journal. Tears pricked her eyes again.

  Wait, the journal! she thought.

  ‘The journal’s not here!’ she cried.

  ‘What journal?’ Phoenix asked.

  ‘Anika found this old journal—some woman’s diary—hidden behind that mirror. She became completely crazy about it. She blogged about it every day, putting extracts from it online. It was always here, just on her desk, next to her laptop.’

  ‘What was in it?’ Phoenix probed.

  Jazz felt fresh tears. ‘I never read it,’ she said quietly. ‘We actually fought about it. It seems so stupid now! She said I didn’t appreciate the magic of it—that all I wanted to do was pull it apart for clues. I thought she was being silly so I refused to read any of it. All I know is that it was old and apparently written by a woman and there was some big mystery—even a crime maybe.’

  Phoenix frowned. ‘Why would the kidnapper take the journal?’

  ‘There must have been something in it—something that made him want it.’

  ‘We are presuming it’s a “he”?’

  Jazz shrugged. ‘According to my books, they often are.’

  ‘So why didn’t “he” take the jewellery box at the same time as the journal?’

  ‘Something went wrong,’ Jazz said, thinking aloud. ‘Maybe they were interrupted. Or they couldn’t find it.’

  Phoenix nodded. ‘When Mrs Belmont asked you before if you knew anything about the jewellery box, you said no. Is that true?’

  ‘Of course it is! Why would I lie to her, especially when this has happened?!’

  ‘OK, OK. I just assumed that you and Anika would have told each other everything.’

  ‘Anika never mentioned a box. Then again, I didn’t exactly make it easy for her to tell me anything about it.’ ‘All right, let’s get on to collecting the samples to analyse back at the lab. Watch what I do and then do the same to all the surfaces, like areas around the bed, the desk and from the rug and the floorboards.’

  Jazz nodded, eager to get started.

  Phoenix opened the sports bag to reveal the sterile tubes he’d collected. ‘These are already robot ready,’ he said.

  ‘Robots?’ said Jazz. ‘You have robots in the lab?’

  ‘Not the sort you’re thinking about. But automated programs,’ Phoenix explained. ‘Once we’ve taken our swabs, they go into these containers which are self-sealing. Then we record the date and place, describe whereabouts in the room they came from and initial them.’ He handed Jazz a pen. ‘There are two types of swabs: one type has already been prepared for collecting DNA, while the other type is plain. The second one acts as a control and we need both of them. Then all I have to do is put them in Mum’s new DNA analysis program, and the results print out at the other end.’ He couldn’t resist adding, ‘Right up to the offender’s name and address.’

  ‘Wow! That is brilliant,’ said Jazz, before she realised from the smarmy expression on his face that he was teasing her about the last part.
‘Idiot!’ she whispered.

  Phoenix went around the room and swabbed the knobs on Anika’s chest of drawers, using a DNA-ready swab as well as the plain, control one. Then he moved on to the bedhead, the bedside table, the doorhandle, and the desk, labelling each sample with the location from which it had been taken. Jazz was doing the same, taking swabs with gloved hands, then carefully sealing them in and labelling the tubes.

  Jazz did a mental calculation of all the surfaces in the room. No wonder the experts insisted on the importance of gathering evidence as soon as possible. This was going to take a long time.

  ‘We also need to take fibre lifts,’ said Phoenix, ‘using this adhesive tape.’ He demonstrated, pressing the tape firmly along the surface of the desktop, then gently peeling it off with tweezers and placing the fibres from it into the smaller sterile tubes, before sealing them. Jazz did the same. On the label, following Phoenix’s example, she wrote:

  RUG, LEFT-HAND SIDE OF BED

  Soon she had quite a collection of tape-lifts sealed and annotated.

  On one tape, among several long dark hairs, Jazz noticed a much shorter, paler hair. Whose hair is that? she wondered. Anika’s hair was a vibrant dark brown, as was her dad’s. Her mum’s was a shoulder-length stylish grey. It was too short to be one of her own long blonde hairs, and definitely not one of Mack’s. Carefully, she lifted it off the tape and put it into a tube.

  As she took the last of the fibre lifts from the rug, she found another mysterious hair, that was different again, and added it to her collection.

  ‘Now we dust for fingerprints,’ Phoenix said. He started twirling a fine-haired brush over the black dust he’d carefully sprinkled on the surfaces of Anika’s desk and bedside table.

  Jazz caught a side view of Phoenix’s face, frowning in concentration, edged by the white hood covering his head. She had to admire his methodical approach.

  ‘Look!’ Jazz said excitedly. ‘I can see prints here. And here. And over there. That fingerprint dust is making them visible.’

  ‘My guess is that those belong to Anika, because they’re everywhere. What we are looking for is one that’s different. But we won’t know until we get back to the lab where I can load them into a program and zoom in on them.’