May 20th
Detective Jonah Rodriguez is on a case. A little girl had disappeared and her parents were desperate to find her. The local police couldn't find any evidence of kidnapping, but considering that the girl was seventeen and had been seen with strange bruises at school, it was assumed that she had run away. Her parents didn't believe that, though, so Detective Rodriguez had been called in. He works individual cases until they're solved. It's been his passion since he retired from the main police force.
The girl's name is Sarah Michelle Moore. She's currently seventeen. She's five feet seven inches tall, has long, brown hair, brown eyes, and is Caucasian. She was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia last August. Her parents, Rodrick and Marie Moore, are divorced. Sarah's father is a hard core alcoholic, and her mother is a nurse at the local hospital. Safe to say, Sarah spent her days alone. Her parents were either too drunk or too overloaded on work to be around for her.
On May 20th, three weeks after Sarah's disappearance, Detective Rodriguez visits Sarah's home where she and her father live. The outside of the house is nice. Painted a pretty sky blue color, vines crawl up the trellises on the side of the building. There's a small porch out front with chairs on it.
Detective Rodriguez knocks on the front door, and Mister Moore answers. He smells faintly of whiskey, like he'd been hung over from the previous night and hadn't bothered to shower. Rodrick Moore smiles, glad that the detective had turned up. "Ah, Detective! Please tell me you have news of my daughter. Did you find her?"
"Unfortunately, sir, no. But I'd like to look through her personal effects, to see if she was suspecting anyone of following her around, that kind of thing. It may give me an idea of where she's been taken." Personally, the detective just wants to know the girl better and see if perhaps she'd been killed by her parents. He doubts he'll find anything, but at least he'll get to know Sarah better.
Mister Moore replies, "of course, of course! Come in!" and gestures the detective to come inside. He steps in and looks around the living room. It's dark and simply decorated, but clean. It has a lot of older furniture, like an old wicker rocking chair and some antique looking tables. They've probably been in this house since it was built. "You wanted to see her room, didn't you, Detective?"
"Yes, sir," Jonah says softly, looking around as he's taken through the single level house. Sarah's room is at the back of the house, second to last room. The other room must be her father's. Rodriguez goes into Sarah's room, smiling a bit. It reminds him of his daughter's room. The walls are a dark, midnight blue, and there's white Christmas lights hung around the ceiling and the single window. The window is opposite the door, and the bed is on the right. Her closet, an easel, and a dresser are on the left. Under her window is a desk with a few pictures of friends and family on it, as well as some other little trinkets. The window itself has a nice view of the woods behind the Moore house.
Mister Moore leaves Detective Rodriguez to look through Sarah's room, and he sits at the desk. He opens up her laptop, using a hacking tool to get into her email and instant messengers. He doesn't find any messages of use. She seems to have had internet friends, but she never made plans with any of them to run away to come visit them. She also never mentions anything about being beaten or hit by her father. She does keep extensive documents on her hallucinations, though. Most are just odd things that only pop up once. But one hallucination pops up multiple times. It's a hairless, humanoid figure with elongated arms and a mouth that can come unhinged. He finds this disturbing, but then again, Sarah has also seen rotting corpses walking around. Terrifying visions seem to be normal for her.
He sets her computer down since he didn't find anything of use on it, then checks her phone. Nothing there, either. After that, he looks through the desk. Maybe she hid a diary somewhere. There's nothing of interest in her desk, or under her bed, or in her dresser. He checks under her pillow, but there's only a little velveteen rabbit. Then he checks her schoolbag and… bingo. There's a green spiral notebook with pages sticking out that seems to have personal writings. The papers have dates on them, and seem to detail her daily life. He sits back at the desk, then gets to desk reading.
What he finds… He doesn't think he'll ever look at a shadow in the corner of his eye ever again.