Chapter Text
“Ok, people. Here is the next case.”
Captain Locke's booming voice filled the conference room echoing off the walls and giving Ashlyn Harris a bit of a headache. She thought she should have been used to it by now after a year on the force, the last two months as a detective, but some things you could never get used to it seemed. The man seemed to have an impossible struggle with controlling the volume of his voice so that it always sounded like he was shouting at you; it had taken her three months of being on the force to realize he was just a loud talker and that he was not constantly ticked off about something. He was only ticked off about seventy-five percent of the time.
“Alexandra Krieger. She was an eighteen year old female who went missing after a barn fire at her parent’s farm six years ago. There were no remains found anywhere on the property and her whereabouts are still unknown. No one has been seriously suspected or apprehended in relation to this crime. It went cold quickly and after all this time it is colder than the darkest region of Pluto.”
Ashlyn immediately held up her hand. “I want that one,” she said with total conviction.
She had only been through a few of these cold case audits, where the department opened up cold cases when current casework slowed down enough that they could actually focus on these a bit better. The Captain went through the cases routinely and asked people who wanted to deal with them.
Ashlyn was a new detective and she was really out to try to prove that she deserved the job. So many in the Oklahoma PD looked down on her for rising through the ranks so quickly, but she chalked it all up to her never ending determination and the fact that she had great instincts. She typically wasn’t one to toot her own horn, but she knew that being a detective was in her blood. It was all she had ever thought about being and it was all she desired to be; she had worked her soul out to get where she was and now was a great chance for her to prove it.
Not to mention the photograph of the missing girl, Alexandra Krieger, was so hot. The picture they had of her was from about three months before she disappeared where she was letting one of her horses eat out of her hand. The girl was of average height and slender, with some great curves, a tight tush, and beautiful long flowing dark hair. She also had the most beautiful smile that Ashlyn had ever seen. It was like a beacon calling out to her to be set free with a sweet kiss; Ashlyn would have loved to have been that kisser.
Ashlyn felt a blush coming on as she stared at it; she was not sure how to deal with this, but as she stared at the photo of this woman she realized that she lusted after her, sexually. Ashlyn had never been much of a dater, despite being beautiful in her own right and having a lot of would-be suitors; she had just never been that interested in dating. She wasn’t sure why, but she’d always preferred other things.
Sitting there looking at that photo of this gorgeous woman was a new feeling for her; she realized that she lusted after Alexandra. She wanted to… be… with her. What did that mean?
“Wow, that was fast; I didn’t even have to hand out bribes for pizza and ice cream,” Locke said. He almost smiled when he said it but it still sounded like a military officer barking orders during basic training drills. Locke had been a military officer for a number of years before joining the police force; it might have been at this time that shouting became permanently entrenched in his throat to the point that he could do nothing else.
No one laughed at his joke; they didn’t know that they were supposed to.
“Ok, then. You can have this one,” Captain Locke said.
Ashlyn almost jumped up and cheered for herself, but somehow she was able to remain cool and calm about it all.
As she left the large conference room about a half hour later she practically ran to her office to get started on the case research. She closed the door behind her and settled into research mode. Alexandra had disappeared into thin air and no one in her family had heard from her since then. According to the research that Ashlyn spent the afternoon doing, Alexandra had no obvious reason for running away. Her family said she was a freshman in college, still lived at home, had excellent grades, was involved in a few social clubs on campus, didn’t have any significant others at the time, but was very happy. It just did not make sense why she would just up and disappear into thin air like she turned into some sort of a ghost.
There had to be something that everyone was missing; every case had a clue that was staring you in the face the entire time after you knew what it was. It always ended up making you feel stupid for not seeing it more quickly.
After going through all of the old evidence and still drawing a blank, Ashlyn decided to do a reverse photo search in the database to see if any matches pulled up. Nothing did. Then she ran a search in google to see if she might find any hits on social media. There were none. It seemed that Alexandra had even taken down all of her old accounts, which was not something that dead people did. So unless someone killed her and did this to further erase this person from existence, odds were that she was alive somewhere.
It had been six years… so she would be twenty-four now. She might look a bit different then the picture that they had.
Ashlyn went to their forensics division and talked with Wade Asher, their forensic photographer. He used some updated software to make a digital copy of the photo and alter it so that it would add six years to Alexandra’s appearance. She became even more beautiful and Ashlyn had trouble keeping her heart from melting every time she looked at it. She practically fell in love with the photo every two seconds; if she wasn’t able to get that under control then it was going to be a harder case then she thought.
“Let’s run the updated picture through PAV and we will see if it matches,” Wade said.
After a few minutes it reported no matches.
“Ugh…” Ashlyn groaned.
“We still have one other thing we can try,” Wade said. “Have you heard of the DET?”
“Not right off hand,” Ashlyn said.
“It’s awesome. Basically it runs the picture and cross references it to see if it matches any known video online or in our databases. It saves time when analyzing surveillance equipment.”
“Wow, that sounds interesting.” Ashlyn watched as Wade pulled up the new software and ran the scanned and updated photo through it.
“Yeah, we just got this software about two weeks ago; it’s blowing doors wide open. It’s pretty major.”
Ashlyn had the impression that Wade was trying to impress her with his smart techno geek talk; it wasn’t working.
A few minutes later they had a match.
“Bingo!” Wade said.
“What? You have one?” Wade asked. She could not believe it.
“Yep, looks like there is a match on a convenience store and a department store security footage in Miami, Florida. Wow, that’s a ways from Oklahoma.”
“This is fantastic! Thanks, Wade.”
Before he could even say “You’re welcome” she was running back up the stairs. She had to talk to the Captain ASAP.
She had to get to Miami.
“You want to go where?” The Captain asked after she told him the news.
“I have to go to Miami; this girl is there.”
“Well, it’s fantastic that we found this girl, but Miami is a bit out of our jurisdiction in Oklahoma City.”
“I know that,” Ashlyn said. “But I think her family would appreciate if someone from her own backyard found her instead of someone out there. Besides we don’t know why she is there or what she is running from. I don’t want to alarm the family yet; if we hand it over to Miami Metro then we might lose her.”
“I think you should give Miami Metro some credit; they do have a lot more citizens than we do.”
Ashlyn took a deep breath. She really wanted this case; it was hers and she had to convince the Captain.
“Let me do this,” Ashlyn said. “I really think I can solve this quickly and reunite this girl with her family.”
The Captain thought it over.
“Ok. I’ll make the arrangements for your flight. You should go home and pack.”
“Thanks, Captain!” Ashlyn said.
Little did she know that this was going to be the adventure of a lifetime.