"So, do you think it's a coincidence that the mysterious woman who met up with the plotting gang has a scar on her lip just like the maid at the mayor's house?" Ivan asked excitedly. No more dead ends, they now had a definite lead. Viola laughed, stretching her arms out above her head.

"I knew there was something off about her. It's weird though...If she's been working for the family for four years, why hasn't she acted before?" She chewed her lip thoughtfully. "We've still get a lot of investigating before we wrap this case up though." She pinched the bridge of her nose, closing her eyes in thought for a moment. Ivan waited patiently for her to sort out the next step. After a few seconds, Viola opened her eyes with an air of determination and strode confidently across the road, knowing Ivan would follow close behind her.

They had only gone half a block before they were interrupted by a door opening slowly in front of them. A shaggy head popped out to look at them. It belonged to a man with long, dirty brown hair and an equally long and tangled beard. He was smiling brightly with yellow teeth. As they watched, another head, this one less human, leaned out of the doorway beside the man. It was an Onyx and the look on its face was almost as exuberant as its trainer's.

"Hey, officers," said the man. Viola and Ivan exchanged looks. They both knew Arnold well as the town hobo, having had to arrest him many times for harassing others with his outlandish speeches about conspiracy theories and his tendency to frighten people by jumping out from dark alleyways. He wasn't exactly mentally stable, and the community worked hard to help support him, making sure he had a roof over his head and a job. However, the detectives weren't sure now was really the time for an inevitably long and confusing chat with Arnold.

"I know what you're up to," the bearded man said, nodding and winking. "I've got info you can't afford to miss out on." Viola and Ivan exchanged another look. It wasn't uncommon for Arnold to try and help out with their cases. The problem was that usually he drew assumptions that were far-fetched and based solely on his so-called "hunches," and so far he had always been wrong. Arnold seemed to sense their doubt, though, because he held up his hands in placation. "Hear me out, guys, I've seen some things. You gotta believe me. They dug underground, I saw it. They had a bunch of Pokémon working on it. They made a tunnel. I could hear them at night, tunneling through the Earth! They were going uphill. It was like an escape tunnel. I think they're going to use it as a quick exit route. That's what I think!"

Viola shook her head, frowning, ready to brush Arnold off and leave. They had actual work to do. But Ivan wasn't as impatient, and he was intrigued by what Arnold was saying. Sure, it seemed unlikely, but it wasn't unheard of for Team Rocket to do something drastic like that. "Who are you talking about, Arnold? Who dug the tunnel?"

Arnold grinned, pleased at the attention. "It was ghosts, man! They were ghosts. They're digging an escape tunnel so they can leave the city. I saw them myself."

Viola struggled to hold in a laugh, managing to reduce it to a strangled sounding cough. She motioned wordlessly to Ivan and began to walk away, leaving her partner to deal with Arnold. Ivan was unsure of how to proceed. "Oh," he said, articulately. "So...the tunnel was dug by ghosts...who had Pokémon?" He was already regretting his decision to pursue this conversation with Arnold. The other man was nodding his head eagerly.

"Yeah, that's right. The Pokémon were probably ghosts too, don't you think?" As Arnold bobbed his head up and down with an excited smile on his face, his Onyx copied the motion. It was a strange scene. Ivan sighed. It looked like Arnold was going to be continuing his losing streak in the arena of deduction. Luckily, he didn't have to find a way to tell Arnold this without hurting the bearded man's feelings because his Xtransceiver started to beep. Frankly, Ivan was surprised by this interruption. He hoped it wasn't his grandmother, who had been known to get herself into trouble and need Ivan to rescue her.

He excused himself to Arnold quickly, saying that he would check into the ghost situation. When he slid his Xtransceiver open, however, it wasn't his grandmother's face he was looking at. It was Chief Garrard's.

"Ivan!" she barked, her voice loud and jarring against the silence of the empty street. Viola heard it from all the way down the street and started to hurry back. "Ivan, where is Viola?" Before he could even consider his answer, the chief was already barreling on as if she hadn't meant for him to answer at all. "Ivan, do you have the new guy with you? That Ezra? Because he isn't here anymore. And I didn't give him permission to leave!" Viola arrived at Ivan's side in time to hear Garrard's question and she frowned.

"No, he's not here. Are you sure he's nowhere in the station?" She immediately regretted asking that question; the two detectives could see their boss's face darken with irritation. "I'm sorry, do you think I'm stupid? If I say he's not here, you'd better believe he's not here. Got it?" The pair of them nodded mutely, not daring to say anything that might anger Garrard further. "If he's not with you, and he's not with me, then I suppose he's effectively M.I.A. Postpone whatever you're doing and find him. Check his residence first, you know the drill. The sooner we get this figured out, the better. God, what else could go wrong today?" There was a short pause, and then Garrard promptly slammed her fist down on the table and said, "Well, you're dismissed! Go figure this out!"

The Xtransceiver went black, and Ivan slowly closed it. He and Viola stood on the sidewalk in perplexed silence as they tried to process the fact that the newest member of the force was already missing, on his first day of work. "Well," Ivan said, breaking the silence, "maybe that's acceptable where he's from. Maybe he didn't realise he needed to tell someone if he was going somewhere? Or maybe thought it wouldn't matter if he left early?" Viola made a doubtful face, but she had no possible theories of her own that made more sense. All she could think of was that Ezra had been kidnapped too, like the mayor's daughter. Of course it made no sense, but the disappearance was so odd.

The two detectives trudged forward to the snow, planning to check Ezra's apartment first and foremost, in case he really had just gone home. The feeling of elation from when they'd discovered the connection between Doreen White and the gang was gone.

-

Ezra's apartment was empty. Not just of any human life, but of any possessions, too. It looked like he hadn't been there at all since arriving in town. There was no furniture and a thin layer of dust covered the carpet.

After searching the apartment for any sort of clue, they finally gave up. With no particular goal to work toward next, Viola and Ivan took to wandering aimlessly through the city, checking every nook and cranny and asking any bystander if they'd seen the missing officer. By the time they returned to the headquarters, the sun had set and the two were exhausted. They had discovered nothing. It seemed that Ezra Eliot, newest member of the Pewter City Police Department, had disappeared into thin air. It was good that at least the press was on holiday. If they found out about this story they would go crazy with it.

Garrard wasn't happy with her top detectives' failure, but there wasn't anything she could do about it. In the end, the three of them went home dejected and perplexed. This case continued to get more convoluted and confusing with every new step.