dahlia palmer (blindingly) wrote in horror_story, @ 2013-03-26 21:53:00 |
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Entry tags: | complete, cycle002, npc |
Who: Anna Palmer (NPC) and Detective Simpson (NPC'd by the wonderful Pixie)
What: The official search for Dahlia begins.
Where: Crows Landing police station.
When: January 6th, afternoon. (After the Anna/Jenny thread)
Rating: Low.
The lunch with Jenny did nothing to sooth Anna's frayed nerves, and her short trip to the police station after was full of panicked thoughts and trembling fingers. She and Martin decided it would be wise for him to stay at the house in case Dahlia called. By now, they both doubted she would, but they hoped against hope that they were wrong. Anna kept half expecting to hear the jaunty little jingle that played every time Dahlia called, so she made sure to keep her phone in her pocket rather than in the sinkhole that was her oversized purse. Her entrance into the police was a forceful one to say the least, and without really knowing who she should talk to or how things worked around the office, she marched up to the front desk. "I need to speak to a detective."
Detective Paul Simpson had been born and raised in Crows Landing and despite it being a sort of backwater, one-stoplight town, he enjoyed the peace and quiet. It was rare that he had to get involved in anything too messy, but lately that certainly wasn't the situation. Murders, missing children, a gruesome suicide from a kid who'd never so much as shown a warning sign before... the odds weren't stacking up good on the corner of Simpson's desk. When the desk clerk brought a harried woman, middle-aged but still attractive, to his door with a brisk knock, Paul looked up from the cup of coffee he'd been pouring sugar into. "Come in," he said. A man in his late forties, his graying hair kept shaved neatly to his mocha-brown skull and a pair of glasses on the bridge of his nose, Paul had a kind but keen way about him. He stood to greet the woman, extending his hand. "Detective Paul Simpson, ma'am."
Anna wasn't interested in formalities or niceties, but she extended a well-manicured hand anyway and shook his own. "Anna Palmer. I spoke to someone yesterday about my missing daughter, but they said it had to be twenty-four hours before they would consider it a missing person case," she said with obvious disdain. For normal cases, that made perfect sense. There was no use jumping the gun only to discover that the missing person was an angry teenager who thought they could get back at their parents by disappearing for a little while. But this wasn't a normal case. This wasn't a normal girl. "But it's been over twenty-four hours, and my daughter is still missing." She didn't wait for an invitation to sit before she took a seat across from his desk, already reaching inside of her purse. "I have photographs, her social security number, medical records." Normally so well put together, Anna looked as if she were fraying at the edges, and every single one of her forty-six years weighing heavy on her features.
"Yes ma'am... twenty-four hours is the standard," Simpson said politely, but he could certainly understand her being agitated. He shook his head a little, then typed on his computer to pull up a file so that he could take notes. "Can you tell me a little about what you know?" He held his hand out for the information she'd brought with her, typing it into the computer to transcribe Dahlia's name, date of birth and more. "When was the last time you spoke to her?"
"Yes, I understand that it's the standard," she sighed, her agitation obvious but giving way to something else now that someone was actually listening. "But my daughter is blind, Detective Simpson. She can't go anywhere without her dog or her cane." Anna took a shuddering breath and leaned back in the chair, forcing herself to try and relax enough so that she was useful. Dahlia didn't need her to be losing her head right now; she needed her calm enough to tell him something that might help. "I spoke to her on Friday, the fourth, in the afternoon sometime." To be more exact, she pulled out her phone and went to the phone call in question. "At two. We had plans to go to lunch yesterday, but she never answered her phone, and when I went by her house, she wasn't there."
"Was there any sign of disturbance at the house? An unlocked door, an open window... anything out of place or overturned?" he asked as he made notes, only glancing over from beneath his brows once or twice as he typed. Simpson was very professional, and he was being damned sure he was thorough in his notes. "Her dog and cane, were they there or missing?"
"No, everything was in place," she said hesitantly, knowing how the police would take that as a sign that she just wanted to disappear. Dahlia might have left the house willingly, but she wouldn't have gone days without contacting anyone, especially not Jenny. "But she left her medicine at home, and it's not something she can go without. If she doesn't take it, her back spasms and her legs lock up. She was in an accident, and …" If Detective Simpson had been in Crow's Landing for more than a year, he would've known about the accident. It was all over their little town's news. "No, they were both gone. I think she left the house willingly, but after that, I'm not sure. She could've fallen, or someone could've …" Her voice turned thin, hitching somewhere in the middle. "It would be easy to hurt her, you know?"
He was quiet for a moment, then looked again at the photograph of Dahlia. Of course he knew who she was; every cop knew about the beauty queen who'd met an untimely twist of fate in that accident. "So no one's heard from her since the fourth?" he clarified. "Have you called the cell phone company to pull her records, see if she's had any inbound or outbound calls since then?" He looked over at her, his expression grave. "No one's reported any Jane Does or taken anyone meeting her description to the hospital, I can tell you that much as of now...'
"No, I-I didn't know I could do that," Anna said, embarrassed. She hadn't been able to do anything but worry. "Every time I've called, her phone has been off." She only knew that because it went straight to voicemail before it could even ring. Bleakly, she thought of Dahlia's bright, cheery voice on the message, and she wondered if it would be something she ever got to hear again. "Is that good? Is that bad? I don't--" Anna wasn't sure if it was a good thing or a bad thing that her daughter wasn't in the hospital. "Oh, um, Dahlia has been seeing someone. His name is Gilman Black. Her best friend told me that she didn't like him very much."
"Yes ma'am, but we'll give it a call and see... if it goes straight to voicemail I doubt she's been using it," he said apologetically. When he mentioned Gilman Black's name, though, he straightened up a bit and looked over at her. "Gilman Black... have you met him, ma'am?" Simpson knew Black, of course; the guy was sleazy, moonlighting as a freelance P.I.. He would've probably worked for one of the tabloid rags if they'd lived in Los Angeles. He was not the kind of guy he would've imagined with Dahlia Palmer, former beauty queen, but perhaps there was more to him than met the eye. "What's her best friend's name? Did she tell you why she didn't like him?"
"I haven't met him, no." Worried that the detective would think she was a terrible mother, she quickly explained. "They've only gone on a few dates, I believe, and she never really told me the details. She thinks I pry too much into her life and worry for no reason." But now that there was a reason to worry, Anna didn't even know which way was up and which was down. She felt like she was drowning. "Her friend's name is Jenny Parry, and she said something about Gilman being an ass. Dahlia said he was nice, but that was all she told me."
"He's... not unknown to us," Simpson said reluctantly, making a note of Jenny's name. "We'll talk to him, find out if he knows anything about Dahlia, when the last time he talked to her is." He took a breath, then looked over at the frazzled woman. "Mrs. Palmer, I assure you we're going to do everything we can to find out. Someone knows something. In a town this small, there aren't many secrets for long. Someone's spoken to Dahlia, or seen her, or knows where she might be."
The detective was kinder than she expected him to be, and she was just so relieved to have someone paying attention and caring other than Dahlia's family and friends that she found it hard to hold herself together. She'd been trying to be so brave so that Martin didn't have to carry all the weight of being the calm one, but she was scared. Terrified. "Thank you," she said, her gratitude sincere. They knew of Gilman Black, which meant he'd been on their radar before. "Can I -- Do you have a picture of him? I haven't met him before, and Dahlia was vague on the details. I just want to see him."
"I'm sorry, ma'am, I can't do that... it's a privacy violation. He isn't a suspect yet, just a person of interest," Simpson said apologetically. "Also, I'm afraid I'll have to ask you to please refrain from trying to contact him yourself, or anyone else involved in the investigation. We'll handle it from here, and if you say the wrong thing or tip someone off, it may hinder us finding Dahlia quickly."
It was a privacy violation to see a picture of someone that her daughter was seeing? There had to be something of him in public records, a fact she was about to point out before deciding that it just wasn't worth it. She just wanted her daughter back and if the detective could get her back, then Anna wasn't going to make things more difficult for him. "Fine," she said, reaching up to rub her temples. "How are you going to find her? I mean, what are you going to do first?"
"Talk to Jenny Parry and Gilman Black," Simpson said. "We'll see what we can get from there, especially Mr. Black since you say you've spoken to Mrs. Parry." He shrugged slightly. "I'll have an APB put out for Dahlia. If you can give me a description of her dog, I'll add that to it as well. We'll search the house, check for fingerprints or anything like that even though you said it seemed like she left willingly enough."
"Her name is Lucy," she insisted, perhaps a bit too vehemently. "She's a Golden Retriever, and she's very well mannered." She wasn't sure why the dog's temperament was of relevance, but it felt like good information at the time. "There's not much I can tell you about her. She looks like your average retriever. She and Dahlia are inseparable." There was a beat of silence as Anna leaned forward, dark eyes boring into Detective Simpson's. "I know you're probably thinking that Dahlia just … I don't know, took off, but she didn't. I promise. Something happened to my daughter. Something bad."
He was quiet for a moment, then replied, "Off the record, Mrs. Palmer, I think that's a reasonable assumption. If it was any other situation I'd say maybe she took off, maybe she went on a holiday with friends... but with her physical disabilities and the fact that she didn't speak to her best friend or her parents about her intentions... it doesn't sound like she was planning to take off at all." He met her gaze. "But I will do the best I can, and we'll keep you posted whenever we find out any information, I assure you."
Anna nodded slowly, solemnly, and gathered her purse in her lap once more. "Do you have children, Mr. Simpson?" It might not have been the normal question to ask at a time like this, but she was genuinely curious. If he did, maybe he would understand why she was so frightened. Not only was her only daughter missing, but her blind daughter was missing, and no one had the slightest clue as to where she was. There was no worse feeling in the world, of that Anna was sure.
"I don't," he said quietly. "But I assure you that I take my job very seriously. The other officers here--- Officer Donnelly, and Captain Avery, and everyone else--- we'll all be working on this and doing our best to find Dahlia as quickly as we can and get her home safely. We'll do everything we can."
Ah, so he wouldn't understand. There was no way he could, not really. "Is there anything else you need from me?" She'd given him everything she had on Dahlia, probably more than he would've needed, but she would have given him everything she had just to ensure her daughter's safe return.
"I'll be in touch," he promised her solemnly.