The Spotters - (Part I of a sci-fi short story serial)

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Baby Bea would have been five today, if she hadn’t gone missing.

I know what you’re thinking, but you’re wrong. Just stop for a minute and listen. Missing doesn’t mean taken or walked away. They’re not just lost and need to be found. They are gone, gone. The world changed the rules. We went from alpha predator to plaything, and we didn’t even know it.

It was seventy-five years ago when it first happened. A person went missing, then another, then another. It kept happening, all in one area. After the tenth disappearance, the top detectives were brought in. They profiled and speculated, researched and investigated but they never found a shred of evidence that made any sense. There was never a body. Never a witness. Never a trace of blood or clothing, the victims were just gone. And none of them were ever found.

The only stroke of luck was that it happened in the small town of Stone in rural England. This made the suspect pool manageable. But it didn’t make the case any easier to solve. Strangely enough, it was at the behest of the perpetrator that they finally found him. Byron Evans reached out to the investigative tip-line with a cry for help. When investigators questioned him, he stated he had known each of the victims around the time of their disappearance, but he couldn’t say where they had gone. With no tangible clues he was written off and sent on his way.

When the best England had to offer ran out of ideas, they brought in an international task force to give the investigation a fresh set of eyes. World renowned agent Malorie Park took over. Having never left a case unsolved, it was clear the higher ups would spare no expense to get this case closed. Going through the records with a fine-toothed comb, Agent Park unearthed Byron’s statements. With the extensive resources bestowed upon her, she verified the veracity of his claims. But while re-reviewing Byron’s story, she found inconsistencies that her keen eye couldn’t ignore. She brought him back in for questioning.

At first, he reiterated the same claims. He had done nothing out of the ordinary. But Malorie was an accomplished interrogator ready to break him down slowly. Crack by crack, she hammered into his statements. He eventually copped to being present and feeling aggrieved with each victim at the time of their disappearance. But he insisted he hadn’t harmed them, which all evidence continued to support. Byron’s life was dismantled for the world to see, but nothing was found to implicate him further. Malorie had won the battle but was still losing the war.

Ms. Park was now under intense pressure to close the case, but her leads were drying up like leaves in the autumn wind. For a moment, it appeared Malorie would have her first unsolved case. A few months went by with no new developments but a tightness in her neck that wouldn’t relent.

I’ll cut to the chase for you; Malorie Park did solve the case. Though it was a bit of a pyrrhic victory.

With no new clues, Malorie couldn’t ignore Occam’s razor any longer. She returned to Byron Evans. Relentlessly, she put the screws to him until one could argue she crossed the line, both personally and professionally. She was in the interrogation room with Byron and her Chief Superintendent present, two aides in the observation suite and multiple video angles when it happened.

Byron Evans made Malorie Park disappear.

That was the moment when the world changed forever. The day the first Spotter was found.

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