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 lap-top 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 from Trailer 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.”
“Of commitment?”
He shook his head. “No, not of us. It was something else. Something she wasn’t telling me.”
“Maybe she took off.”
“Yeah. I hope so.” He went to the front window and stared out at the parking lot of the office park. “That would be the best thing, right? That she was done with me, and left.”
“What’s the worst?”
He turned around. “That whatever she was scared of found her.”
I sighed and flipped the notebook closed. “Look—”
“No, please.” He came back to the chair, cutting off my rejection, and grabbed his backpack off the floor. “I just need her to be okay. It’s fine if she doesn’t want to come back. I’m not trying to stalk her or force her to do anything. I just need to know—”
He couldn’t finish his sentence.
“We’d like to help you out. Really. But this could require a significant amount of resources, especially if she left and didn’t want to be found. Our retainer alone is five thousand, and weekly billings on top of that.”
He opened the backpack and pulled out two bricks of cash, setting them on top of my notebook. “Here’s ten grand.”
I stared at the money. Questions flew through my head, momentarily overshadowed by the realization that I’d pegged him wrong when he walked through the door. Charlie might be a lot of things, but broke wasn’t one of them.
“I can pay weekly, too. The money doesn’t matter. I need your help.”
…
“Look, my partner is out on an assignment right now. We can’t take your case before we evaluate the scope and feasibility.” Big words that basically meant I needed to ask Jonah’s permission.
“How long is that going to take?” Charlie looked physically sick. “I can’t wait any longer. I’ve been going out of my head this week, not knowing where she is or if she’s all right. She’s gone. Like she was never here. And I can’t just keep living my life, you know? I filled out the online application. You’ve got everything you need to get started.”
“Charlie—”
He pulled out another two bricks of cash, lining them up next to the first stack. “Twenty thousand.”
I looked from the money—which could pay our rent and sala- ries for well over a month—to the red-eyed man who looked one step away from a complete mental break.
“Please,” he said, and the amount of raw emotion packed in that single word overrode everything my gut was telling me about this case. “Your website said you specialize in missing people. I don’t know where else to go.”
The website was right. I’d written it myself, after spending half my life taking orders from superiors who told me what I was and wasn’t allowed to investigate.
I offered my hand, which he shook fervently.
“Oh my god, thank you. Bill me for whatever you need, what- ever it takes. Overtime, expenses, anything.” He put the money back in the backpack and handed me the whole thing. It smelled earthy, like he’d dug it out of his backyard.
After brewing a few Keurig coffees, we sat down and got into details. I flipped the notebook to a fresh page. A fresh assignment.
“Let’s start with the basics. What’s her name?”
He swallowed a mouthful of coffee and looked down at the fancy mug.
“I don’t know.”
__________________________________
