Chapter 9:

"What is it?"

"It's a antipsychotic, specifically given to schizophrenic patients. It was prescribed by a Dr. Monica Lace – this is the school psychologist. We tried to reach her to question her about the medication, but we weren't able to reach her so far."

They had expected it – the moment Samantha had found the pills and had anounced her suspicion that this wasn't a simple nonprescribable medication to calm someone. The suspicion had been confirmed however, which minimized the possible reasons for Miranda's disappearance. But it didn't mean anything positive after all.

She was ill, severely mentally ill and there was no chance to predict how severe her state was and in which way it was intefering with her actions and decisions. The only person being able to help with that was a psychologist – the psychologist Miranda had been talking to, but she was not available by now.

"Did she take the pills after all?"

"Yes, for at least the past eight days."

"The psychologist from school talked to Miranda about two weeks ago...?"

"Yes, she did and the date of prescription is also 12 days ago."

"She stopped taking them."

"For whatever reason, but she did most definitely."

"Which means the effects of her illness probably came back much more intense then. The medication kept it at bay for a few days, but when she stopped taking it she was forced to cope with the full range of psychological consequences."

Possibilities to explain Miranda's disappearance were narrowing down to one probable outcome right now – the one outcome nobody had wanted to happen. But taking all the facts and evidence into consideration, there weren't many more explanations that were justifiable.

"So what? She killed herself?"

There wasn't an easy answer to this question, maybe there wasn't an answer after all, for they definitely couldn't be sure what had happened. But right now all the evidence caused them to at least be pretty sure of what had happened to Miranda Thomas and that she had done it intentionally...

"Evidence is at least pointing to it, but that doesn't necessarily mean she killed herself. There's no suicide note, she didn't try to say goodbye to anyone... that would be pretty uncommon. For someone as troubled as Miranda Thomas seems to be and as much as she had to hide her true feelings, I would definitely expect from her to explain her motivation."

Jack was right however – most people killing themselves left a suicide note of some sort – giving their relatives and friends a chance to understand what made them do it. Especially in cases like this – where nobody seemed to have noticed any danger of a suicidal tendency, these notes were most common. Miranda Thomas hadn't left one, at least they hadn't found one so far, which was the one thing not fitting the picture the evidence had created. It at least meant that there still was a chance of finding her alive.

"Maybe she wasn't able to – I mean if she actually had been schizophrenic... Chances are that she hasn't been able to control her emotions, has been driven to do whatever she has done. That would explain the total lack of any note of explanation."

"We won't know about that until we had a chance to hear about the diagnosis from her school psychologist."

It once again narrowed down to the one thing they actually couldn't effort to do in their job – waiting. Unfortunatelly there wasn't much of any other chance – they couldn't force the psychologist to come back here immediately or to hand her files to them.

But it once again showed each and every one of them how less Miranda Thomas had meant to anyone, especially at that school – no friends, no teachers that were actually interested in her state – except for the class teacher maybe, but as she had admitted she hadn't seen much of a chance to help the girl in any way – and the psychologist. She of all of them seemed to be the one with the worst attitude towards Miranda – letting them wait for her, although she perfectly knew about the girl's weakened mental state.

Nobody cared for this young woman's life at this school. As Violet Shavers had put it – they would be happy to lose their strangest part, which they had done with the disappearance of Miranda. Although Violet definitely was a superficial young woman, her words had more truth in them, than anyone sitting at this conference table would want to admit...

"So she took her father's rifle, shot herself and that's it then."

"As I already said – we don't know for sure..."

"Not until there's a body."

"Look – I know it pretty much looks like this is work put into an already solved case, but there are still other possibilities. The disappearance of Miranda and the fact that the father's rifle is missing don't naturally have to fit together. Maybe she just ran away – we don't know that. I'm aware that evidence is pretty clear on what happened, but it's not the first time and it doesn't necessarily mean anything. So as long as we haven't found her, we go on searching."

His word clearly stated that they were dismissed for the moment, but that there was no chance to put this case on hold just because of strong evidence. It was their responsibility to find Miranda and as long as they hadn't they would go on searching for her. It was as easy as this.

As Jack was about to leave the main room to get back to his private office and then get home for today, he was held back by Danny who seemed to be in need to ask him something in private. Jack wasn't exactly sure why he hadn't already asked when they had still sat down all together, but he didn't mind that very much, but gave him the chance to do so.

"What is it?"

"Do you really believe we are going to find her alive?"

It was a very direct question, not leaving any chance for interpretation or whens and maybes. Danny was simply asking for his opinion and as he was the one with the diploma for psychology, he definitely was the most skilled person to ask that question to. However he didn't like to be asked about something that delicate in the way Danny had done. It left him with nothing more but yes or no for an answer.

Which definitely wasn't much of a choice. But being honest with himself he had to admit that – at least for himself and his very own believe – he had pretty much already made up his mind on this case. There was just too much evidence pointing into one and the same direction, which didn't leave much of any more room for interpretation.

"Actually, I'm pretty sure that she commited suicide..."