Pursuit of Truth

+371 days

The key to the case was the distraught old man with the cabbie hat and the bouquet of roses – but Detective Ben Rainer didn’t realize it until long after he was no longer a detective.

“Let it go, Ben,” said Laszlo, his onetime partner, over the phone. “It’s been a year. What do you even want out of it?”

Ben cradled his cell against his shoulder and rifled through the papers strewn on his kitchen table until he found one with some free space. He grabbed a pen too.

“I want the truth,” he said. “All I need is a name.” He clicked his pen. Clicked it again. “C’mon, Laz. I know I talked to the guy. I just need something to jog my memory. And if it leads to anything, the case is yours.”

Laszlo chuckled bitterly and coughed. “No thank you. Didn’t spend a year hiding in the cracks just to get roped into this circus now.” He sighed into the phone, as always holding it too close to his mouth. “Fine, Benny. I’ll take a look. But this doesn’t come back to me.”

“Got it.”

Laszlo called back an hour later. “Walter Thompson is your guy.”

***

+35 days

Ben had never seen a room so sardined with press. A month of these conferences and they were just as hard as always.

“I want the truth,” he said into the mic, and the whole room strained with silence. “Regretfully, we don’t have any new leads today.”

And the dam broke. The room flooded with roiling questions, frothing at their peaks and crashing down around him. He could feel the waves sloshing through the room, settling into a rhythm, and gradually circling an insistent, repeating “Isn’t it true?”

The room hushed and gave the lone voice the floor, and so Ben had to do the same. His stomach sank when he saw it was Fiona Dalrymple, a woman he had barely known a month ago, a woman he had grown to intensely dislike since.

“Ms. Dalrymple,” he said, motioning.

“Isn’t it true,” she repeated, with the cold confidence of a lawyer that already knew the answers, “that you actually do have a suspect?”

The crowd murmured, and Ben felt a whole-body tense.

“Isn’t it true, that the driver – a Mr. Bijan Masoumi – is now a person of interest?”

The murmur crescendoed. Ben feared his teeth might crack if his jaw was any tighter. But Fiona wasn’t done.

“Isn’t it true, that the police are now considering this an act of terrorism?”

That set the room off like a bomb. Someone leaked to the press. The other reporters clamoured again for an answer to this revelatory question, and answers were what Ben was all out of.

It was the last time he stepped in front of a camera.

***

+373 days

The house was a beige box in a rusted neighbourhood, nestled in the shadow of the smokestack skyline. Ben let himself into the weed strewn yard. A shattered concrete path led to a door that was more for show than security.

He knocked, and a woman opened the door a crack. Before he could say anything, he saw it. Eyes first narrowed then wide. Recognition.

She thrust the door open. “You son of a bitch.” Her voice trembled, her body shook. “You have some nerve coming around here!”

“Ma’am, please.” He held his palms up, placating.

“How dare you come here?” She thrusted her finger at his face.

“I’m just looking for the truth.”

“Weren’t you fired?” Then she gasped and covered her mouth, and suddenly there were tears. “Oh my god! Did you find her?”

Ben knew this question would come up – it always did – but he still had no idea how to answer it well. Quick and honest was the best he had, and it felt like kicking them when they were down. He shook his head, not meeting her eyes.

***

+38 days

“I don’t give a flying shit!” Chief Tanner said. Then he slammed his palms on his desk. And then again, thrice more. “It wasn’t your fucking call to make!”

“But sir,” Ben said, his tone unraveling, “we don’t have anything on the driver. I’m just looking for the truth–”

“Fuck the truth!” Tanner said, rising. “You’re not paid to find the truth! You’re paid to close cases! And where the hell is the progress on this one?”

Ben locked his lips. He hated this question. He lived this question. “We have a couple leads–”

“You have jack shit!” Tanner ran his hand over his bald pate. “And people are noticing. The mayor’s riding my ass. Feds snooping around. I got a million and one relatives begging for any scrap of god damned anything, and twice as many reporters.” He grew pensive. After a breather, he continued. “So when I tell you to tell them that we think maybe oh maybe the driver’s involved, and that oh me oh my it could be terrorism, you fucking do it. It doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. We can fix it later when we god damn find something! Meanwhile it gets them talking about something else and we can breathe. But you? This thing where you just shrug and say you got bupkis? You leave us with our asses hanging out the window.”

Ben swallowed hard. After a moment of silence, Tanner let out a hoarse breath. “How the hell do three hundred people just vanish?”

“I don’t know, sir. But I’ll find out.”

Tanner looked at him with what might have been sadness, and shook his head once, curtly. “No, Rainer, you won’t. You’re done.”

And that was it for Ben’s career. Chief Tanner only lasted until +77 days himself, and his replacement only until +281 days.

***

+373 days

“So why come here today?” Rita asked. She invited Ben into her kitchen, because it was the decent thing to do. He didn’t seem as monstrous, as monstrously idiotic, as the press made him out to be. He didn’t want a coffee, but neither did he mind if she smoked.

Ben looked around at the cramped kitchen. Everything was mismatched, from the pots and pans to the floor and walls. His attention settled on a framed portrait photo of the old man, Walter Thompson. He had his arm around a woman with thick glasses. They were both grinning.

“You think you can still figure it out?” she asked. “You think you can find my mom?”

“Gotta try. I want the truth.”

Rita huffed. She didn’t dare hope. Not again, not after a year of being yanked around.

“And you thought Dad could help you?” she asked. Ben nodded. “Why?”

“He said something, back then. We were talking, and he said something about being on the phone with her. Then the press got involved, things moved too quickly and got lost in the shuffle. I’m sorry for your loss.”

Rita puffed on her cigarette and then ashed it. “He didn’t take Mom’s disappearance well. None of us did, of course. But Dad… I think it killed him. The lights went out, and then his heart gave. So, I guess he can’t help you.”

Ben nodded. He was no stranger to missed opportunities, it just hurt in a case where there were so few leads.

“Unless,” she said.

“Unless?”

“Well, I still have his things. I think I still have his phone, too. Would that be… would it help?”

“It’s worth a shot. Thanks, Rita.”

They were mostly quiet for the odd hour or so it took to charge the phone, keeping to small talk. But Rita did once ask the question. The one the whole country, perhaps the whole world, had been asking for over a year.

“How do that many people just vanish?”

Ben shook his head.

“C’mon, you’ve got to have some ideas,” she said. “You’ve probably heard all sorts of theories.”

He chuckled. “Oh yeah, I’ve heard it all. Terrorism was one they tried to push, but nobody ever claimed it. No demands. Aliens is another popular one.”

“Yeah, I heard that one too.”

“You got your fringe groups talking about divine ascension, except, this wasn’t a cult. Everyone was a stranger. Man, we looked at it from every angle. There was no common thread running through them. They couldn’t have been in on it, so that rules out conspiracy too.”

“Mom would have said something,” Rita said. “So what do you believe?”

He raised his brows. “Me? I believe three hundred and twenty two people collectively vanished one day last year, without a trace, and that we still have no idea why or how.”

When the phone was charged, they went through it together. In the call history, Rita confirmed the penultimate call was to her mother’s cell. “And nobody’s ever picked it up since. I used to call her hour after hour. Nothing. I wonder if he recorded it.”

“Recorded? What do you mean?”

“Dad was hard of hearing.” She started digging around on the phone. “He used to record his calls so he could review them afterwards. Oh! Here it is, I think.” She hit play.

“Hi, Laura. Can you hear me? There’s a lot of people here,” said Walter, over a faint din.

“Wally?” Laura said. “I can hear you.”

“I’m already at the platform, love. I hope you had a good trip.”

“Yes, yes, very good! I’ll tell you all about it. Is Rita coming for dinner?”

“She is. We’re on for six. And I have a surprise for you!”

“A surprise?” Laura laughed. “Oh Wally, you–”

And that was it.

“Hmm. It just stops,” said Ben. He played it again, and then one more time, each time the same. When he looked up, he saw Rita’s eyes were wet, and her shoulders trembled.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he said.

She shook her head, wiped her eyes. Let out a ragged breath. “I haven’t heard their voices in so long. Oh my.” She sniffed. “I remember that dinner. I… well. Does this, does any of this…” She motioned with her hands, dabbed her eyes again. “Does this help?”

Ben looked at the phone, at the time of the call, the length of the message. “Maybe. This call got cut off. Maybe it got cut off when, well, when whatever it was happened on the train.”

“Is that useful?”

“I don’t know, but it’s more than we had before. Three hundred people, and nobody else was caught mid-call. Everybody texts nowadays.” He jotted the times down on his notepad, added the time the train arrived at the platform. Looked up some facts about trains. “If we work backwards, maybe we can find out the exact spot where the signal cut out.”

“Couldn’t it just be a bad connection? The tunnels don’t exactly have great reception.”

“Could be. And it probably is. But we don’t have any other leads.”

“Okay,” Rita said, and nodded to underscore the point. Then she got up and put on a jacket.

“What are you doing?”

“Aren’t you going to find out what’s in the tunnel?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay then. I’m going with you.”

“No.”

“No nothing. You’re not a cop anymore. Let’s go.”

***

+0 days

The station was crowded when Ben arrived. It was rare he ever got called for things other than homicides, and little about this case gave him confidence. For one, the crime scene – if it even was such a thing – had been hopelessly contaminated by hundreds of commuters well before he got there.

The train had come in on time, stopping right at nine-oh-five. People boarded as usual too. Nobody disembarked, but none of them noticed it, save for an old man with a bouquet of roses who couldn’t find his wife. He called the police, but was effectively ignored.

But then the train didn’t depart. Delays cascaded throughout the whole network. Management investigated and found that the driver was AWOL. Nor did he respond to calls. They reviewed the security tapes and by chance noticed that nobody had left the train. The shift manager – who would go on to take his own life at +95 days – had a hunch. He verified that people got on at previous stops. Then he resisted calls to get another crew onboard, instead calling the police.

By the time the case was escalated to Ben, too much time had passed, too many people had seen nothing, and panic was getting out that three hundred and twenty two people vanished into thin air.

“I just want the truth,” he muttered, his head starting to pound.

***

+373 days

Ben returned to the station with an adamant Rita in tow. It was quiet these days, largely abandoned by the public. Lots of stories about curses. Some trains rolled through, few stopped. And the passengers that got off always offered prayers to their gods.

They made their way below, to the platform. Everything was run down, like they gave up on maintenance and cleaning. Only a handful of people were about, waiting on benches, leaning against the walls. A lone busker, strumming the classics on his guitar.

“It’s pretty quiet here,” he said. “I remember vigils, crowds.”

“People forget,” she said. “They grow tired. It’s not personal for most of them.”

He supposed that was true. “We got about half an hour till the next one rolls through. Let’s go.” He made his way to the tunnel.

“I hope the schedule’s right,” Rita muttered, and followed after him.

They made their way along the maintenance path running parallel to the rails. Their footsteps echoed in the claustrophobic tunnel, and soon even the busker’s twang faded. Maybe five minutes in, Ben stopped. He raised his flashlight.

“So, this is it,” he said, “more or less.” He scanned up and down the tunnel, running his light over the rails, the walls, even the ceiling. “Somewhere here, anyway.”

“I don’t see anything.” Nothing on the ground, no doors, no mysterious stains, no graffiti. No cellphone her mother might have dropped. She took out her own phone and turned on the LED flashlight. There weren’t even bugs.

“What if there is nothing?” she asked.

“Hmm?”

“I mean, what if this is it? They just vanished.”

“Impossible. People don’t just vanish, Rita. We’ll find the truth.”

“There’s lots of unsolved missing person’s cases.”

“Yes, but not like this. Not three hundred people disappearing all at once.”

“Maybe we’re not supposed to find them,” she said. “Like, there are things man isn’t meant to know.”

“I don’t buy that.”

“Oh!”

Ben turned to her. “What is it? Found something?”

“Sort of,” she said, tapping her phone. “So, I don’t have a signal. Which means…”

“Which means reception here is crap. A perfectly normal explanation.” He hiked his pants up and turned his light off. “Okay, let’s get. We’re not supposed to be down here, and I don’t have a badge anymore.”

They started walking back. “So what now? Are you closer to the truth?”

“Sort of. It’s one more thing we can rule out. But I’m out of leads again.”

Their chatter was interrupted when they reached the platform. They didn’t hear the busker anymore, and when they looked around, they didn’t see anyone sitting or standing around. As they mounted the steps, they didn’t hear any traffic from above ground, and when they emerged onto street level, they saw… nobody.

Buildings were there. Cars were parked. Leaves and trash blew through the air. But in the middle of the day, not a single engine was on. Not a single pedestrian was out.

His jaw tense, Ben grabbed Rita’s hand, and she held on with all her might as her eyes grew wide. Each could feel the other’s pulse quickening. They stood frozen like that for a long time, not daring to let go of the only other person around, and their calls out to the empty city echoed back hollow.