Nowhere to be Found
June 21st, 2004
The home of the Jallarico's was well kept. It was a small bungalow with a green garage door and a green front door. Catherine could see the wind blowing through the curtains of the side bedroom. She quietly asked Nick and Sara to do the perimeter: footprints, disturbances… anything they could find. She and Grissom proceeded to the front door. Brass had beaten them there.
"Mr Leo Jallarico and Mrs Silvia Jallarico, Livvie's parents." Catherine nodded politely, her kit firmly in one hand.
"Can we see her room?" A teary eyed Silvia nodded, leading them up the small, four stairs to the main floor of the house. Catherine looked left and right down the hall. On the right was a bathroom and a corner. On the left, was what Catherine guessed to be her parents' room.
"You didn't hear anything?"
"The house creaks all the time," Silvia said around a sob. "Livvie knows everything about me and Leo, our footsteps, our breath, the sound of our pyjamas… she would have screamed." Silvia stayed at the door, as Catherine had instructed, and Catherine walked into the room. The signs of disturbance were little, only the bedside lamp had been tipped over, and Catherine sighed.
He held a gun to her head, or threatened her, she noted to herself. Then she set about printing the window. When she was done, she looked down. Sara and Nick were shifting through the plants at the bottom of the wall.
"Find anything?" she called down.
"A footprint or two. One small one big," Nick called back, waving to two white patches in the otherwise dark mud. "You?"
"Prints, but she didn't struggle hard." She watched Sara's mumbled curse.
"Why would someone want a little girl?" Sara called up. Catherine shrugged.
"Beat's me." She pulled her head back inside.
"Mrs Jallarico…"
"Silvia."
"Silvia, I need you to describe to me everything that happened here."
"Livvie always gets up at least once at night, to go to the bathroom or to get a drink, always around two. It's been like clockwork since she started sleeping through the night. She still comes to get one of us to go with her, because she's blind and all. She also does it because she knows we'd feel much more comfortable. Tonight, my internal alarm woke me up around two, like Livvie would normally do, but Livvie didn't come in. I waited ten minutes before I started to worry. I got out of bed and went to her room and her bed sheets were pulled back, but she wasn't in them. I immediately guessed she'd gone to the bathroom and went to check but she wasn't there either. Same thing with the kitchen and the rest of the house. I panicked and that's when Leo woke up." Silvia shivered as the memories flooded her mind again. Catherine nodded sympathetically, jotting notes down.
"I called 9-1-1…" she waved her hand as if to say 'and here we are'.
"You don't have any idea who could have taken her, do you?"
"Livvie didn't have enemies. She was a blind kid, every one was afraid of her." Catherine wrinkled her face in disgust. She didn't understand why people would shun people like Livvie. Livvie was such a sweet, sweet girl as soon as you got to know her.
Could it be someone playing a joke? Kidnapping a blind child… Catherine shivered at her own thoughts and the dark trail they seemed to have taken. Grissom entered the room and immediately bent down, retrieving a black hair from the fibres of the carpet. Catherine almost hit herself in the head. How had she missed it? Grissom dropped the hair into an evidence envelope. He then said something reminiscent of a very old case.
"Shall we do the room?"
What is that now, four chapters up today? They're short ones though and it's Thanksgiving… I was so excited to get to write today too! Look what happens, you get many many chapters!
Kavi Leighanna