“So you just remembered all this?” Captain Moeller asks, looking back and forth between me and my mom.
Captain Moeller may have a potbelly and a bald head, but he’s got a kind face and, frankly, he’s our only hope.
“Yes,” I say sweetly. “I remember the day of the kidnapping now very clearly. I could help a sketch artist. Or look in a book?”
“They’d be a lot older now,” the captain says softly.
He doesn’t know what I see.
“We’d like to try,” my mom says warmly. After exhaling loudly, Captain Moeller gets up. He grabs a binder from the shelf and tosses it on the small table in the corner. Then he retrieves two more, each filled with photos, from the outer office.
“Start there, London,” he says, then turns to my mom and offers her coffee. She agrees, and he leaves us alone.
“I don’t think this is going to help,” I whisper.
“Just try,” my mom whispers back, bringing her chair over to join me at the table. She eyeballs the faces of criminals with me, even though she wouldn’t know the culprits if they walked up to her at the bank.
The captain returns and does paperwork while my mom and I examine the photos of criminal after criminal. An hour later, my butt hurts from the hard chair, and I’ve got nothing except that creepy feeling you get from looking at people who might want to do you harm.
I want to go home and forget all of it. I want to watch a Disney movie to scrub my brain clean. But I know now that I can’t. I’ve regained these horrible memories; all I can do is try to change the ones that are yet to come.
“How about doing a sketch?” I offer again.
“Like I said before, the couple you remember will be much older now. It probably won’t do any good,” Captain Moeller says.
“Couldn’t you try that age-progression software on it?” I ask. I’ll watch way too many crime dramas in my lifetime. “Do you have that here?”
The captain laughs a little.
“Smart kid you have there, Bridgette,” he says to my mom.
“She sure is,” Mom agrees.
Captain Moeller looks back at me. “Yes, we have that here,” he says. “I’m just not sure it would work with a sketch. And besides, our sketch artist has gone home.”
I glance at the industrial clock behind his head, as does my mom.
“Oh, Jim, I’m sorry to keep you,” Mom says. “You need to get home to your family.”
“It’s okay, Bridgette,” he says with compassion in his eyes. “Anything for you. I remember the incident like it was yesterday.”
I break away mentally and force myself to remember anything that might help the situation. There is one thing: the piece of paper. The problem is that I remember it from the future.
My mom chitchats with the captain as I ponder ways to get him interested in the address. In the end, lying wins.
“Back when it happened, when they took Jonas, the woman dropped a piece of paper with a note on it in our car,” I blurt out. Both adults snap to attention, Mom because she knows I’m lying and Captain Moeller because he seems to be the type of person who responds to carrots.
“What did it say?” the hound dog asks.
“Well, I’m not positive, but I think it was an address. There was something about Beacon Street. I remember because I thought it said ‘bacon’ at first.” I blink twice like an innocent child. My mom’s lips purse but she doesn’t say anything. “I really like bacon,” I add, feeling idiotic as soon as the words leave my lips. Thankfully, Captain Moeller ignores that part.
“No city?” he asks.
“No,” I say, shrugging. Does he expect this to be handed to him on a silver platter?
“Well, I’ll look into it,” he says before his phone rings. He answers, talks briefly, and hangs up. My mom stands to leave. I follow suit. The captain walks us out and shakes both our hands. We leave, dejected and exhausted.
Halfway home, before we’ve finished ordering our drive-thru meals, Mom’s cell rings. She answers, listens for a moment, and then pulls out of the restaurant sans food. We’ve turned around and are heading back toward the station before I have time to ask why.