Subj: deal with this shit [attachment: posters.zip pix.zip vid.zip]
Sometimes, Annie thought, it was possible to let yourself get too excited by a new idea or undertaking. She hadn’t wanted this position outside of Vegas, but she had steeled herself to it; she had made the decision that no only would she not give up her badge -- like they wanted her too -- but she would take this bullshit position they had given her, and she would make it a resounding success.
There would be some dead ends, of course, but there were always bodies to be found in the desert. She was sure of it; she would clear some of these cases and get back in the Bureau’s good graces, at least long enough to get her the hell out of this dead end and back into real work that actually mattered.
The enthusiasm had died off months ago. No one wanted to play ball. She could smile and lay on the sugar, or she could flash her badge and get angry, none of it mattered. She might as well not even be there. It was complete stonewalling on all sides.
The Miller case at least was a live hit. The girl had only been missing a few weeks now; there was still a trail, as quickly as it was going cold, and it was something. Again, no bites. There were still a few of the girl’s coworkers to follow up with, of course, but Annie had lost hope.
And now this hot mess got dumped in her lap.
“Check your fucking email and page through this garbage,” Brett had told her airily over a cell connection that fizzled and popped. “Looks like somebody fuckin’ around but some asshole high above your paygrade got his panties in a twist because there are some valid missing persons featured. Just do your usual half-ass page through and write up a report for me.”
He’d just hung up after that. Didn’t even give her time to respond, the dickbag.
But he was wrong. It wasn’t garbage. It was a mess, but it wasn’t garbage. She could connect several of the names and faces to documented missing persons cases and one… one... she knew where to find.
“Son of a bitch,” she muttered, shaking her head at the computer screen. This couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be. The video was dated -- not timestamped, no, but the clothes, the music. It was old. And so was the missing persons poster. That, at least, had real dates on it.
It didn’t make sense.
She glanced at the clock. It was late now and she was three bottles of boredom-based MGD into her evening. A long drive into Vegas just wasn’t in the cards.
But tomorrow?
Tomorrow, she was paying a visit to the employee of the decade.