Chapter 31

1st October 2015: 23:25 pm.

“About fucking time you got here!” Dad said as I was trying to catch my breath. I was trying to catch up with Will, which was surprising the way he was puffing on his cigarette as if his life depended on it.

I thought that he would be finding it hard to keep up with me seeing as I was the gym fanatic and with his lean frame, he looked as if he smoked more than worried about what he ate, but judging by the speed that he was walking, I was starting to feel as if I was the one that was out of shape. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing the closer we got. I tripped over a log and struggled to get up. Will stretched out a hand as threw his cigarette.

“Dad. What’s going on?” I asked as soon as I got to his side.

Before he could answer Detective Dwight was by my side. He looked as if he had just finished a donut. He was coughing and choking as he spoke.

“We need you to come with us Mr. Rogers,” Detective Dwight had a look on his face. The same one that was on Dad’s, as if they were mourning and as if the news was bad.

I said something stupid, which seemed to be my habit lately. “Which one?”

This time Dad did the talking. “You, you idiot!”

I’d thought that he was talking about Dad didn’t really make any sense, but I’d asked out of fear. I didn’t know how Dad had known to come here before me. Yet here he was and I wanted answers. I looked around to see if I could see Barbara. I couldn’t and that made me feel even more nervous. What was going on?

“Ted, do you mind me calling you that?” Detective Dwight asked as Will stood by my side. “Sorry, who are you? I just need Ted if that is okay?”

“No, he can come with me. He’s helping trying to find Barbara.” I pointed to Will.

Detective Dwight hesitated for a minute and then he kept on walking, “You see, we found some things.”

“What?” Will interjected before we arrived at the side of Detective Russell.

“Who’s he?” he asked Detective Dwight who merely shrugged, this was not the time for introductions and I didn’t have the patience for them either.

“Would someone tell me what they found please? My daughter’s missing and you’re worried about him!”

I pointed to Will, who seemed to be on the same wavelength as me.

“We just want to make sure that we’re not raising a false flag and jumping to conclusions,” Detective Dwight said to me, but it was too late for that. He’d called me to come here and I wanted fucking answers.

“About what?” I asked, losing complete patience. “Mysteries don’t sit well with me especially when it comes to my missing daughter. So, can someone please tell me what is going on?”

“We found a few things and we think that they belong to Barbara..” Detective Dwight sighed.

“How do you know?” I interrupted, because I didn’t like where this conversation was headed, but I had been driving for nearly two hours and I was none the wiser. I just wanted to know what they thought would make it Barbara’s.

“Can we just see it please? That way Ted could know.” Will offered a reassuring pat on the back. I could tell that he knew that I felt sick.

“We were waiting for you before we removed it. We needed to be sure that it was Barbara’s.”

I nodded, thinking that Detective Russell was making sense. But really he wasn’t and as I approached the house, the one that we had spent many summers at, when we didn’t feel like flying but just wanted to get away from it all. Emma and I used to come here all the time before Barbara was born and even a couple of years after. Fond memories of us being here together flooded through my mind. I was taken out of it by a phone call, I looked and saw that it was Li.

Will whispered, “Just turn it off.” I nodded as I passed it to Will for him to do the deed. He turned it off without hesitation as we reached a tree. There were clothes by the branch. Barbara’s straw hat, her jacket and even her shoes. I nodded as I confirmed to Detective Russell, “They’re definitely Barbara’s. She always marks the front of her shoe with a spot. She gets confused about which one is her right and which one is her left foot.”

Will asked, “But that’s not all you found. That’s not why you asked us to come here?”

My eyes bounced from Detective Russell to Will. That was when it dawned on me that Will was really the best person to have around. He was an investigator and had even worked with the police on a couple of cases. Not that he had told me. Emma had whenever we’d had a passing conversation, when we used to talk. She would tell me to get in touch with him. Right now, I wished I had, because as Detective Russell said, “There’s no easy way to say this, but we found blood on the clothes. We needed you here to identify the clothes and confirm that we can go ahead and do a DNA match.”

“Just do what you need to do.” And then I couldn’t hold it any longer as I broke down and started to cry.

How far had Li gone with Barbara?

She was a fucking monster and right now if she was here, I would be the one facing a murder charge, not Emma!