Chapter 2:

            All three went quiet. At last, Griswold broke the silence by saying to herself, “Another facet of the case reveals itself…and our predicament becomes infinitely more dire.”

            “How bad is it?” asked Jamie.

            “Well,” said Griswold, “not only do we have information that Charlotte could be in grave danger, but, now, there is also the potential for August’s life to be at risk if we arouse the suspicions of whomever we’re dealing with. We should proceed very cautiously from here on out.”

            “Gotcha,” said Jamie. “What should we do now?”

            “I think we should interview the people in that apartment building and see if we can get anything from them,” Griswold replied as she pocketed the note.

            Jamie and Griswold went into the hallway, but August stood silently, his mouth slightly agape and a worried expression on his face. Jamie stuck her head back in the doorway and asked, “You coming?” August, face unchanged, silently followed the two out to the car.

            As they drove north, rays of sunlight shone through the parted clouds revealing the vivid blue of the late afternoon sky. Stormy gray cloud cover reflected and scattered the light, causing patches of it to turn amber and a great golden glow to envelop the city. Raindrops caught on the leaves of trees refracted the light before dripping and falling to the ground or onto the roofs of parked cars. As she continued driving, Jamie put on a pair of sunglasses to temper the glare of the light bouncing off the wet asphalt.

            Leaving the more forested south side of Youngstown behind, they were bathed in the bright, open air that led into the central downtown. Travelling from the top of a plateau to the bottom of a river valley, they came into a city composed of tall, modern buildings interspersed with the short skyscrapers from the early 1900s. As Jamie followed August’s directions to their destination, they passed by people congregated outside the run-down fronts of local businesses. Most were talking or smoking, a sad anxiety on their faces.

            As they neared the eastern outskirts of the city, August told Jamie, “North Champion Street’s coming up. Take a right.” After doing so, Jamie, continuing to follow August’s directions, pulled off the road and parked in front of a dated apartment building that was ten stories high and whose entrance was surrounded by large bushes. Each apartment had a set of French doors that led out onto a small, semicircular balcony. Across the street was a medium-sized parking lot that connected North Champion to a parallel street and that was shared by a food bank to the right and two churches to the left.

            As Jamie and Griswold got out of the car, Griswold gestured to August that he should follow them, saying, “You should probably stick with us until we figure out what’s going on.” Walking over to the building with Jamie and August in tow, Griswold took out a small notebook and pencil and asked August for the names of the witnesses they needed to interview. As he told her, Griswold wrote them down in her notebook, finishing the last name by the time they went into the lobby. There, she went to the directory and scoured it for a few seconds, copying the apartment numbers that corresponded to the names in her book.

            “Alright,” Griswold said to herself as she finished writing. “With that out of the way, now we can really begin this investigation.”

            The group then traveled up to the second floor and headed for the first apartment on their list. Griswold knocked on the door and a heavyset, middle-aged man dressed in dirty jeans and a red flannel shirt answered. He had a black mustache and black, curly hair that was beginning to recede.

            “Can I help you?” he asked.

            “Are you George Anderson?” asked Griswold.

            “Who wants to know?” he asked suspiciously.

            “Recently, you were asked to provide information relating to the disappearance of one Ms. Charlotte Moran,” said Griswold. “If it’s okay with you, I would like to ask a few questions of my own.”

            “Will you go away if I say yes?” he asked flatly.

            “You have my word, good sir,” Griswold replied.

            “Fire away,” the man said.

            “Splendid!” replied Griswold. “So, on the night of her disappearance, what time did you see Charlotte run by your building?”

            “I’d say around 10:30 at night,” he said.

            “Did you see why she was running?” asked Griswold.

            “No. I just thought she was trying to get out of the rain. It was pouring at the time.”

            “Was there anything else you noticed that night? Anything strange or out of the ordinary?”

            The man scratched his head. “Sorry, but no. I was getting ready for a night shift and I wasn’t paying attention.”

            Griswold thought for a few seconds before saying, “Alright then. Thank you for your time, my good sir.”

            “Sure,” he said as he confusedly nodded his head and shut his door.

            “Well, that was disappointing,” said Jamie.

            “But not the end of the line,” replied Griswold. “We just need to go to the other apartments and keep asking questions until we get some useful information.”

            Useful information, however, was hard to come by. The next three people that Griswold interviewed had about as much to say as the first. They had all seen Charlotte running late at night in the rain, but were engaged in other activities at the time and didn’t see anything else as a result. Even when Griswold pressed them, she got nothing. To add insult to injury, not only were these inquiries fruitless, but they also greatly irritated the building’s residents due to Griswold’s fervent insistence that they take place right that second.

            Frustrated and despondent, Griswold, Jamie, and August headed for the last eyewitness’ apartment on the eighth floor. Griswold wearily knocked on the door and a cranky-looking man in his early thirties answered. He was fairly thin, had short, red hair and a red beard, and looked like he hadn’t slept in days.

            “What?” he groaned as he stared at Griswold through glazed-over eyes.

            “Are you Andrew Levison?” asked Griswold.

            “Look,” he said as he rubbed his eyes, “is this going to take long? I’m fucking exhausted. I need sleep.”

            “If my previous experiences are any indication, it won’t,” Griswold replied drily.

            “Fine,” he sighed. “Just get on with it.”

            Before Griswold could ask her first question, though, she was interrupted by a muffled sound from the apartment above and an outburst from Andrew.

            “No! NO! Fucking shit! Not again!” he said frustratedly.

            “You good?” Jamie asked in a voice that suggested both concern and contempt for the nature of the outburst.

            “Sorry,” Andrew replied as he rubbed his eyes. “It’s just that the old lady above me is playing her damn music again. She’s partially deaf and plays it super loud. AND she always seems to play it while I’m trying to sleep. Especially late at night.”

            “Why is that?” Griswold asked.

            “I think she’s an insomniac or something.”

            From there, Griswold proceeded with the interview as normal. Unfortunately, she got the exact same information from Andrew as she did from the others with nothing new to add. When the interview ended, the three left as Andrew shut the door.

            “I told you they didn’t see anything,” August said as they all walked back to the stairs.

            “Yeah,” Griswold said with a blank look on her face. “You did.”

            “What’re we going to do now?” asked Jamie. “He was our last lead.”

            Suddenly, Griswold stopped walking and became lost in thought.

            “Griswold, you coming?” asked Jamie.

            “Before we go,” said Griswold,” I think there is one more person we should talk to.”

            “Who?” asked Jamie.

            “That old lady that Andrew was complaining about. I think she might be able to help,” Griswold said as a light returned to her eyes and a slight smile crossed her lips.

            “Why?” asked August.

            “Well, he said that she was always up late at night playing music and might be an insomniac. She might’ve seen something that the others missed. Besides, it couldn’t hurt to ask.”

             “Why not?” Jamie said as she shrugged her shoulders.