"Several dozen missing person's cases in the past month alone-"
"Gang activity on the rise-"
"Police Chief Sterns insures the public that the NYPD is doing everything in its power-"
"The highest number of gang related crimes New York has seen since the 90's, with-"
My eyes shifted from one image to the next, keeping up with each of the half-dozen news reports on display. They swapped places on the wall before me every minute or so, each one having its turn at the forefront of the wall. There were several walls like this, and in any neighborhood other than this one, they usually were smashed or otherwise in disrepair.
This neighborhood, however, would see nothing like that. With some effort, I pulled my focus away from the chilling stories and continued my trek down the sidewalk. I walked with all the intensity of a woman with a mission, my flat sneakers making small pat pat pat noises as they stepped through the mostly-water slush that congealed itself, in all it's ugly brown glory, to the walkway.
I glanced across the street, picking out a woman with a long, tan coat. Held in a gloved hand was a leash, and attached to the leash, ten or so feet ahead, was a beautiful dog, a Husky with a pure white coat. The dog was sniffing at the base of a stop sign, curious as to what had happened there recently. Its investigation was cut short, though, as the woman surpassed it and gave a curt tug on its leash, pulling it along without much resistance.
I focused my attention back to my side of the street. There weren't too many people walking on the sidewalk. Given that it was dead of winter, and the middle of the day, that made sense. People were probably working or else bundled up inside.
Damn, I would kill for a good book and some hot chocolate right now.
Ignoring the growing numbness in my fingertips, I continued to walk. The shops I walked past were nice places. A Starbucks with a fireplace, a few fancy sounding restaurants, a jewelry store, all of them with weak attempts at festive cheer scattered about. The paper snowflakes that hung from the ceiling of Starbucks were falling down, and the two-for-one sale at the jewelry store was only made slightly noel by it's red and green cardboard signs. I flinched as an Audi whipped past, spraying the left side of my face with cold sleet from the road.
No. There would be no broken telewalls in this neighborhood.
This fact came to my mind for the third time in the last half hour, as I noticed the blue glowing rims on the Audi, noticed the perfect paint job, heard the hum of its mighty engine. I even stole a final passing glance at the woman and her dog, noting the fineness of her clothes and companion.
This was a neighborhood with money.
That fact then tugged at an important question I had been turning over in my mind for a few hours, since I had opened the small envelope that had turned up in my apartment mailbox. The one that was addressed: To April O'Neil, with nothing else written on it. Since I had, with a nonchalant curiosity, opened the letter, and spilled its contents onto my coffee table. Since I heard the klunk of a small metal key falling onto hardwood, and since I had unfolded the notebook paper note that accompanied it.
An address. A place.
Second Time Around Antiques.
And, finally, at the bottom of the makeshift letter was a minute signature. The only sort of name I had to go off of.
Signed, a friend of your father's.
A friend of my father. My father, who had gone missing two weeks and three days ago. My heart sunk as I remembered my mother's voice, full of tears and desperation, calling at three o'clock in the morning to ask if I had seen my dad. Had seen Kirby. He'd been gone for four days with not so much as a word to mom. That was not like my dad.
I had obviously tried searching for him. I called up family friends, people I knew my dad was connected to, the police. Anyone who might have had a shred of evidence as to where my father had gone. None of them had a clue, and none of their empty reassurances and false sympathy was going to help me very much. I searched until I couldn't anymore. Until I ran out of vacation days, and Charles began to call, asking if everything was alright, if I needed more days off.
Then, just a few long hours ago, I had opened the letter.
And now, I thought, sighing a cloud of frozen air as I rounded the final corner, I was in some boujee neighborhood looking for an antique store.
Second Time Around wasn't hard to find. It was kind fo shaped like a weird triangle, jutting out of the corner of two streets. It was by far the ugliest building on the block, with misshapen brick and dark layers of dust on its windows. A single streetlamp hovered above the entrance, threatening to create an eerie shadow when night fell. A shiver ran down my spine. It wasn't from the cold.
Pulling tight the ridiculous coat that Charles had got me for a Secret Santa gift, (a gaudy, bright yellow ensemble with a double breast and too many pockets) I started forward, my eyes locked on the door of the building. I felt my heart begin to race, which is not something I ever expected it to do when approaching an antique's store. This was the only link left. A miracle in the search for my father. The anticipation was killing me.
The key fit snugly into its keyhole, after some coaxing. The cold metal had tightened, and I had barely let the key leave my grip since it had come tumbling out of the letter. My heart fell into my stomach as, with a gentle turn, the lock clicked open, a self-satisfying sound.
I must have stood at the door for an entire minute, just staring at the old-fashioned handle, made from brass or nickel or whatever the hell they used when this place was erected. That fact that it even used a physical key and a tumbler lock made it an ancient building. You didn't see too many of those in New York, and especially not on an upscale, ritzy block like this one.
I took a deep breath in, and turned the knob. It was cold, sticking to the sweat of my palm. The door creaked open with some protest, a chunk of ice dislodging itself from the space between the frame and the hinges. Beyond the door was a small entryway, nothing more than a hat rack and a black rug on top of brown hardwood.
I took a step inside. The floor groaned under my weight. Instinctively, I stomped and wiped my snow-covered feet on the rug, and then instantly felt ridiculous. Clearly, nobody had shopped here recently, why should I bother about tracking in a little snow? Shaking my head, closed the door behind me.
The room went dark.
With a sigh, I fumbled my hands along the wall for a light switch, found one, and then after flipping it a few times, realized that Second Time Around probably didn't have electricity. I pulled my phone from my pocket, turned on the flash light, and continued.
The building had an old, sort of 20th century feel to it. Lots of iron, dark wood, and wallpaper. There were two main rooms, one on either side of the entrance hallway, which led to a set of stairs going up. The room on the right was mostly bare, with the exception of an old fashioned cash register sitting guard atop an old fashioned desk. The windows that might have once let in a festive glow from outside were covered with grime and dust, and so let in little to nothing at all.
The left room was much more interesting. Everywhere you looked were piles upon piles of… Things. Books, instruments, sofas, ceramic plates, glass-blown tortoises, nick-nacks and curiosities abound. I pulled a long tarp from atop an old leather chair, covering my mouth and nose as a storm of dust cascaded into the air around me. Once the dust had settled into a rime on the floor, I tentatively took a seat in the chair. It was comfy and unfamiliar. I cast the light around the room, spotting a rack of rusted medieval weapons and a-
"Focus, April," I muttered to myself, my words practically forming in my frosty breath. The temperature, if anything, was colder inside the shop. No insulation, I guess. I rose from the chair, and doubled down on my search. I was looking for anything that might point me to my father. Unfortunately, nothing in the left room gave me any insight, unless it was buried under literal decades of junk, which was a job for another, warmer day. I could barely feel the tip of my nose.
The left room was clear, which left only the stairway at the end of the hall. I re-entered the middle section of the building, and forced a large swallow down my throat as I eyed the stairs. I'm not superstitious, I don't believe in ghosts or demons or whatever. But something about being alone, in a dark shop, staring up at a flight of stairs with my father missing…
It was frightening. I nearly peed myself when an alarm on my phone went off. Confused, I look at it. It was reminding me that I was on hair in twenty minutes… Or I would be, If I hadn't had Kennedy subbing in for me tonight, last night, and pretty much every night for a couple of weeks. I wonder why I never turned that alarm off.
Eventually, I worked up the nerve, and walked up the stairs. They, like everything in this place, creaked and whined as I put my weight on them, but they held, and soon, I was one flight up, the stairs curling at the last second to point me in the opposite direction of when I had entered Second Time Around.
Before me was a door, made of the same wood that outside door was, with the same brass or bronze or whatever handle. The same keyhole. I tried the knob, first. Locked. Obviously. I inserted the key, and turned. No dice. I turned the key over a few timed, tried turning it this way and that, gently, then with more force. Nothing.
I let out a grunt of frustration, heating up under the pile of yellow fabric I was clad in. I slammed my fist against the door, and to my surprise it rattled gently. I blinked. Could I…?
A few attempts later, and I successfully shoulder-charged the door down, its decades old wood, exposed to the elements with no maintenance, standing no chance against a twenty-six year old who does cross-fit… Sometimes. Huffing and puffing, I stepped over the door, and took in the new space.
An office, or something like it. The floor was covered in a shaggy, beige carpet, a departure from the formal hardwood the rest of the store boasted. A desk, more elegant than the one downstairs, dominated the center of the somewhat small room, an old chair perched behind it. On one wall, a cabinet made from carved wood and pristine glass displayed several trophies. On the other wall, a bust of some Roman woman sat on top of a worn, marble pedestal, her angular features leering at me, whispering You're not supposed to be here.
I ignored her. My eye had caught something unfathomably more important.
I maneuvered my way to the other side of the desk, and my heart skipped a beat. There were a few things on the desk, most of them unimportant; a few tax papers, a ceramic bat. One item, however, had my utmost attention. A small picture faame, barely bigger than a trading card, off to the right side of the desk. I wiped some of the frost and dust from the glass, and the moment I saw the frame's contents, I nearly dropped it to the floor.
The photo was of two men, both black, both with wide smiles. One was a taller, slender man, with a mustache and a tight knit head of curls. He wore a lab coat over a sweater vest combo. I didn't recognize him. The other man was short, bald, and clean shaven. He had deep dimples on both of his cheeks, a wide girth, and his thumbs were tucked into the belt loops of his dress pants. He too, wore a lab coat. I swallowed air. This man I did recognize.
My father. Doctor Kirby O'Neil.
My brain began to fire off a million questions, going into overdrive. Who was the other guy? Did he own this place? Where was he? Is he the one who wrote the letter? Where is my father? Is this related to the gang activity? Does mom know about this place? This picture?
That last couple of questions shook me out of it. I stowed the photo deep in my coat pocket, and quickly made my way out of the office, only pausing for a microsecond to think of propping up the door. Why bother? I was down the stairs in a heartbeat, out the door with just barely the presence of mind to lock it behind me. I would come back and search more later.
My mom answered the phone before my first ring finished.
"April?" She said, a little too quickly.
"Mom, I need to ask you something. Its important. Its about dad."
There was silence for a few seconds.
"What is it?"
I ducked into the subway, finding myself a bench that was away from the main crowd of people. For a New York subway station, this one was pretty clean, and pretty devoid of crackheads. Not entirely, of course, but what can you do? Its New York. I glanced up at the monitor displaying the stop times. A few minutes until my train came.
"Mom, I'm putting you on video chat, ok?" I asked, pulling my phone from my ear and letting it rest on my lap after pressing a button. A trio of dots whirred to life in the air suspended above my phone, a loading symbol, and then my mom took form before me.
My mom and I look more similar than my dad and I. She has narrow shoulders, a sort of upturned nose, and a face full of freckles. Her hair used to be a bright, brilliant orange, but has now faded to a reddish-brown with age and stress. My hair is the same color as my moms, but its tighter, curlier. That, I get from my dad. I have the freckles, of course, but where her eyes are vivid blue, mine are a chocolate brown. My skin tone is a bit darker than mom's, but not nearly as dark as dad's.
"What is it?" My mother repeated, the anxiety showing in her eyes, even through the hologram projecting from my phone. I dug into my pocket, producing the photo I had swiped, and pointed it towards her. She squinted, trying to make sense of the most likely poor quality holo her phone was making: she was due for an upgrade. After a few seconds, she furrowed her brow.
"That's… That's your dad and one of his old work friends… oh, I always forget his name. Maxwell Stockovich, I think," she finally said. Maxwell Stockovich. I stored that name in my brain. "Honey, where did you find that?"
"A place called Second Time Around Antiques," I said. Instantly, I saw a reaction. A look of recognition crossed my mother's face. She didn't say anything, however, so I pressed her. "What do you know about it, mom?"
She pursed her lips, and I groaned internally. As a reporter, it was my job to deal with tight-lipped people, to get information. However, that didn't mean I liked doing it. Especially not to my own mother, with her eyes worried sick and her voice trembling, her entire being on the verge of instant collapse if I pushed too far. I decided to play it safe for now.
"Oh, that's my train," I lied, "I'll call you up later, ok mom? I love you."
"I… I love you too, honey," were my mom's last words before I hung up. My train wouldn't be there for five more minutes, but there was no point in stressing my mom out entirely. I had a name. I had a lead. I had something.
It was time to do what investigative journalists do best.
Investigate.