The Popsicle Police

“I have been alive a few centuries, fought in wars, defeated the wildest monsters, survived the madness of human evolution I will not lose to you,” I watched as a woman hiding in the shadows announced in a tone that would have made me run if I was on the receiving end of it. It must have been my lucky day because I wasn’t at the receiving end. The way she spoke I wanted to believe her despite all its absurdity.

“Maybe she needs help,” I spoke aloud before crossing over to her. My hand instinctively reached for the gun tucked safely in the holster on my hip, “ma’am,” she didn’t hear me and continued threatening whoever it was, “is someone bothering y- were you talking to your Popsicle?”

“No no, don’t you dare die on me,” the woman spoke trying to eat her Popsicle before it melted off the stick, “you stop right there.” The Popsicle, unfortunately, had a different idea because it melted right off the stick and fell to the pavement with a plop.

At that moment time seemed to slow down as I took in the surroundings, we were standing in a secluded corner of a relatively empty parking lot. The only reason I had noticed her was that I had parked my car in this corner of the lot. I could see the Popsicle cart on the other side of the road, it seemed to be closed though. The Popsicle had no chance of survival in this heat especially if she had spent five minutes crossing the road to this parking lot. All in all, nothing was threatening in our immediate surroundings, other than the Popsicle that is. “Ugh, I bought that with the last of my change.” Her voice made my eyes snap back to her.

“You were threatening your Popsicle then?” It looked like the woman hadn’t noticed me until then because she focused on me with a frown.

“Yes, as you do.” No, I don’t, I wanted to say but stayed quiet. She gestured at the puddle-sicle, “no amount of threatening has helped me finish it before it melts though.”

“Right,” I dragged the syllable out. “I’ll be off then since there is no mortal threat for me to fight.”

I stepped back slowly, still utterly befuddled by the woman facing me. As a cop I have met some strange people, it comes with the job but she had climbed up the ranks on the strange people chart in a matter of the few minutes I had known her for. 

“Why thank you officer Davis,” she waved in response. I didn’t realize until much later that I had neither told her my name nor that I was a cop. I spent the rest of the day fighting crime. We answered a domestic violence call and shop-lifting call among others. The woman managed to inch her way into my consciousness now and then.

The next day when I stopped to grab my breakfast I checked the parking lot to see if I could find the woman again. I even went as far as parking my car in the same corner as yesterday and loitered around hoping to catch a glimpse of her. She didn’t show and I begrudgingly went to work. Crimes don’t stop happening just like Popsicle don’t stop melting.

“Davis, your new partner is here,” the Lieutenant Boxer told me in a way of greeting. “You’ll see her during the briefing.”

I nodded following him along, “what’s her name?”

“Althaea Basil.”

“What kind of a name is that?”

I didn’t get an answer, instead what I got was the surprise of a century. Standing away from everyone else was the Popsicle-woman from the previous morning. I moved towards, “please tell me you’re Basil.”

She made a pained sound looking at me, her eyes lit up in recognition, “that would be me. It’s Bay-zil. You can call me Althaea.”

“Althaea,” I extended my hand, “Chris Davis, your new partner. But you already knew that didn’t you?” She gave me a knowing smile like she was hiding a secret.

We sat through the rest of the briefing in silence till we were given a case. A seventeen-year-old hadn’t joined a camping trip she was supposed to be in.

“She was supposed to go camping with her friends. It’s their last summer together. They head off to college in fall,” Daniella’s mother cried into her hands explaining the details of her daughter's plans, “she always calls me to let me know she reached where she needed to be.”

“I assume she didn’t yesterday?” I asked looking up from the notepad. I wasn’t necessarily making notes but looking down at the notepad gave me a reason to not make eye contact with the witness. A lot less awkwardness this way. 

Ms. Zielinksi nodded her head, “I figured she was just tired and fell asleep. Maybe they went overboard with the early celebration of her birthday. I didn’t worry until today when I called her friends and then you.”

“Ma’am, we’ll do everything to find Daniella but we need you to help us,” Althaea sat next to the crying woman and held the woman’s palms within her own. The woman seemed to calm down almost immediately. It was weird how quickly it happened. “Can you tell us when she left?”

“Yesterday morning. I have her friends’ numbers written down,” Ms. Zielinski pointed to a pocketbook on the coffee table. Althaea released the woman’s hands to pour her a cup of tea. As if a switch was flipped the woman started to freak out as soon as Althaea released her hands. She started worrying about telling her abusive ex-husband. I gathered from her ramblings that they had a messy custody battle that she won despite not having a steady source of income. From the looks of the house, things improved. They seemed to be doing pretty well.

Since Althaea had the woman handled I reached for the pocketbook and found the numbers I needed. I whispered to the mother that I was checking Daniella’s room to see if I can find something useful. It was in vain there was nothing atypical of a teenagers room. The friends too proved to be a dead-end, Daniella was supposed to meet them in a cafe downtown but never showed. She left a vague message telling them she had work. I took the name of the cafe. I called up the station asking someone to look through security footage from the cafe before regrouping with Althaea.

“Any luck?”

I shook my head, “dead ends. They were going to meet at a cafe if she went directly to the cafe after she left home. She should have gotten there before any of her friends.”

“We’ll check it out.”

“What’s bothering you?”

She shook her head as if breaking out of a reverie she didn’t know she was in, “it’s the girl. I feel like I have seen her somewhere. I just can’t put my finger on it.”

“It’ll come to you.”

We made our way to the cafe. It wasn’t far from the diner that I grab breakfast in more days than not. The street was crowded and the cafe’s parking was full so we had to drive further away. For the hell of it, I decided to park in the same corner where I had met Althaea the previous morning. She didn’t seem to notice, her attention was directed towards the Popsicle stand on the other side of the road.

“You want to see if you can finish one today?” I ask, trying to lighten the mood. I am not a great conversationalist and if this morning was an example neither was she. 

“That’s not the man who sold me a Popsicle yesterday.”

“What?” I squinted trying to get a better look at the man. There was no way she could see his face and make out enough details to recognize him. “Are you sure?”

“That’s it. She was at the cart with me.”

“Excuse me?”

I was prevented from asking further questions when a text message popped up on my phone. The security footage from the cafe didn’t show any signs of Daniella but it showed her friends waiting around for her.  Unfortunately, the cafe only had one functioning camera that covered the tables the other camera had malfunctioned and was never repaired. We had to speak with the staff ourselves to see if they had seen Daniella. Which was what we would do. I looked to Althaea and told her what I had learned and asked, “so what were you saying before?”

She didn't answer. Instead, she dashed towards the Popsicle man not pausing to look before crossing the road. She would have been run over by a car if the driver hadn’t swerved in time. She lost her balance and started to tumble to the pavement. Now, if this was a movie I’d have swooped in on time to break her fall. This was, however, real-life so I watched her land on her butt. “Did they not teach you to check for traffic before running onto the road?”

I thought she mumbled something in the lines of, ‘getting run over by a car wasn’t a problem before,’ but that didn’t make sense so I asked her what she meant.

“I said,” she dusted off her pants, “where I come from traffic isn’t much of a problem.”

“Huh, what kind of place has no vehicles?”

“You realize that there was a time when automobiles weren’t as common, right?”

“Yeah,” I shrugged and pushed her along when the road was clear of vehicles, “but this is the twenty-first century. Automobiles are an undeniable reality here.”

She muttered something that sounded like, “wish I could forget that.”

I chose to ignore her in favor of interrogating the Popsicle seller. He didn’t know the girl and had never seen her before.

“What time do you usually open?” Althaea asked.

“In the afternoon, that’s when I have the most customers.” Someone else must have sold Popsicle the previous morning.

“I bought a Popsicle here yesterday morning, do you know anyone else who sells in this area?”

The man shook his head, “just me, ma’am.”

I looked around trying to spot a camera from the many in the area that is pointed in this direction. We seemed to be in a blind spot, at first sight, I couldn’t find any cameras pointed this way. But a little bit of squinting later I hit the jackpot. A bookstore a little further down the road had exactly what I needed. Not a security camera but a video camera that should have the Popsicle stand in its frame. 

“Thank you for your help. We should get going.” I showed the camera to Althaea and she caught on. We spoke to the owner of the bookstore who was more than willing to help us. He explained that he had the video camera set outside the store to record the customers for promotional footage. He brought up the footage we needed and right there was the cart we were in search of, it was in the corner of the frame and barely even noticeable unless you were looking for it. Althaea seemed to be right, this man selling Popsicle was different from the one we spoke to a while ago. He was too tall and carried himself with an air of confidence that the one we spoke to didn’t have.

“That’s the man who sold me a Popsicle,” Althaea confirmed with a nod.

We watched as he turned down customer after customer, which was bad business practice. It continued until Althaea showed up and right after her, Daniella. That was when the man sold some Popsicle. Althaea left and Daniella started eating hers. She seemed to be fine until she reached the end of her Popsicle and licked the stick clean off when she started to shake a little. The man at the Popsicle cart took something out of the cart, a plastic bag of some sort. He seemed to ask Daniella something, she nodded and they disappeared from the frame.

“We need the footage, sir,” I spoke to the owner of the store who seemed all too eager to give it to me. “You cannot use this for promoting your store, at least not until we find the girl.”

“Sure, but after?” I sighed and told him we’d discuss that later. Of course, helping solve a missing person case that seemed to turn into a kidnapping case was great promotion. 

“That man is Daniella’s biological father,” Althaea announced getting off the phone. She explained how she took a picture of the footage and sent it to Ms. Zielinski. “She gave me his address. We should still be able to get the girl before it’s too late.”

Turns out we were too late. Aaron Andrew’s house was empty. He had vacated the place and methodically cleaned it up. There was nothing useful around except a couple of road maps of different areas, a clean wiped computer, and bare essentials in the kitchen. He could be anywhere in the country with his daughter in tow.

Althaea seemed to be taking it too hard. She was shivering, her arms wrapped around herself and she had her eyes closed. I realized for the first time that I didn't know if she was new to the force. I just assumed she had at least some experience because she was a Detective. It seemed unlikely now, considering how personally she was taking this.

"Althaea," I tried to be as gentle as possible when calling her name, I didn't want to surprise her. " We'll get the girl. We're tracking his phone and cards. He'll be found."

Althaea suddenly shook herself and announced, "they're going east." She pointed her finger on a map that was laid out on the table. "Look for Blonde man with Red-headed daughter," she managed to get out before promptly collapsing into my arms. This time I caught her.

If they were headed east on the highway they should be nearing the border. Every minute was precious. We wouldn’t catch him if he left the country. I didn’t know how Althaea knew the information but something made me trust her. I prioritized, Althaea seemed fine though she passed out so I laid her down and got to convincing everyone that needed convincing.  It wasn’t easy mostly because the people she said to look out for matched neither Andrews nor Daniella but I succeeded. If Althaea was right we’d have Andrews before he left the country. If she was wrong my neck was in line and I could kiss goodbye to my job. 

Turns out she was right, within the hour we had Andrews in custody and Daniella was on her way back to the city and to her mother. As soon as the chaos subsided a doctor checked up on Althaea to conclude there was no reason for her to have fainted except maybe exhaustion. Maybe the stress was too much for her. I waited next to her so I could ask her how she knew where to and who to look for. She woke up two hours later and I had to fight every nerve in my body to not throw questions at her immediately.

“We caught them. Daniella is safe and is on her way back.” Althaea who was trying to push herself up let herself relax at my words. “Andrews was bitter about losing the custody battle. He was in jail for a majority of the time after his divorce on domestic abuse charges. When he was released he got barely any visiting time. The girl didn’t even know her father, which I guess is a good thing. After she turns eighteen next week he’d never be able to meet her again.”

“So he decided to kidnap her?” Althaea turned her head to look at me.

I nodded, “the Popsicle stick was drugged. Which was why he didn’t sell to anyone else and why you were unaffected.”

“Because I never finished it.”

I nodded, “he was forced to sell one to you because Daniella had arrived at the same time. We were in a blind spot, he planned to take her out of the country, so he could make up for the lost time.”

“That’s sick.” Althaea looked up at the ceiling with a sigh. “I sensed his aura in the house. It used to be so easy when I was immortal but I could barely manage to figure out the route he was taking before passing out.”

“It was enough. So how did you do it?”

“Promise not to judge?” She looked at me with pleading eyes. I nodded urging her to go on, “I was born a long time ago when magic was still running rampant in the world. As a kid, I learned to use magic to track people by their auras. But I was a natural healer, one day while looking for a cure for a disease, I don’t know. I - I stumbled upon a potion that made me immortal. I lived for centuries shifting every few years, reinventing my identity.”

“So magic?” She nodded in response to my question. It explained how she calmed down Ms. Zielinski with just a touch. “Are you still immortal?”

She shook her head sadly. “I saved a dying child last year, I think the effort was too much for me. I lost my immortality. So I decided to find a job, actually live my life rather than just existing and grow some roots.”

I nodded. “There is just one more thing,” she looked at me questioningly. "We need to teach you how to eat a Popsicle before it melts down.”