The clock ticked, and the three adults looked at one another.
"I'm not good at this," Dr. Lamb said, which was not news to April. "I hate waiting for other people to do things. It's why none of my techs stay around very long. I mean, that, and the fact that most of them take it as a temp job while they're studying to be fully-licensed vets."
"We should rest," Splinter said. "There is nothing for us to do until Miss O'Neil and her… acquaintance have learned some new information."
"My soccer captain," April explained.
Splinter considered this. "One who has spent many years mastering the art of soccer, and who trains others in the discipline?"
"Um." April thought about whether that was an accurate definition. "Amanda was only a year older than me, but she was talented and bossy."
"These are the traits of a good soccer captain?" Splinter asked.
April shrugged. "She taught me a lot."
"Is there a reason we're discussing April's college-era extracurriculars?" Dr. Lamb broke in. "The question on the table was, what can we be doing now to find my son before he goes into diabetic shock and suffers serious medical consequences?"
"We can rest," Splinter repeated, gently but emphatically. "We do not know what we may need to do tomorrow, but we may surmise we will be better able to do it if we have slept."
"Any ideas what we might do in order to be better able to sleep?" Dr. Lamb asked. She did not look the least bit tired.
"I'll get you a fluffy pillow," April said, leaving it deliberately ambiguous whether this was a generous offer or a subtle barb.
She headed to the linen closet, pulling down spare sheets and blankets. In a few minutes, she had the bedding spread out on the couch. That only made room for one, though.
"Sorry, Master Splinter," she said. "My apartment isn't really set up for guests."
"That is all right," he said. "I have slept in far worse places than your floor, Miss O'Neil."
He curled up, and almost instantly was asleep.
"Where did you meet this guy, again?" Dr. Lamb asked.
"I'm not telling you a bedtime story," April replied. "Go to sleep."
None of them slept well. Splinter and Emma got up somewhere around sunrise to resume studying the maps and bouncing around other ideas for how they might determine the whereabouts of their missing sons. Occasionally April joined that conversation, but mostly she dozed at her desk. Late in the morning, she was decisively woken by the phone ringing.
"Hello?" she said blearily, barely lifting her head as she pressed the receiver to her ear.
"April, it's Amanda. I couldn't get a definite hit, but I found some possibilities. Do you want to take a look?"
"Absolutely." April sat up and rubbed her face, trying to pull herself together. She desperately needed a cup of coffee and a change of clothes.
"Okay," Amanda said. "I have a zip of orthophotos and a readme with the addresses. Where can I email it?"
April gave her the new address she had created for the shop.
"Second time around?" Amanda asked. "April, is something wrong?"
April laughed. "No, it's the name of my antiques shop."
"Oh, a small business owner," Amanda said. "Congrats, April. And - good luck. With everything."
"Thanks, Amanda," April said. "I owe you."
She hung up, and a minute later Amanda's email pinged into her box. It was practically the first email the shop had received. April really needed to study up on outreach and marketing strategies.
Splinter and Dr. Lamb didn't come to look at the screen. They knew perfectly well they would have had no idea what they were seeing. They watched attentively from afar, though, as April unzipped the image files and began to flip through them. "What do you think?" she asked. For once, it seemed like it might actually be useful to have the technologically-inept parents hanging over her shoulder. "Do any of these look familiar? Any of them seem especially likely?"
Dr. Lamb and Splinter came to look, shaking their heads and murmuring "no" at each image that flashed onto the screen.
"David has never been out of midtown," Dr. Lamb said. "He certainly has no connection to any of these places."
"Any of them look like a place my sons might choose to hide," Splinter said.
"All right," April said. "I've got one more play. In the meantime, why don't you both go take a shower? You need it."
To her credit, Dr. Lamb could take brutal honesty as well as she could dish it out. With no apparent embarrassment, she lifted her arm, sniffed underneath, and said, "Yep, you're right."
"You may go first," Splinter said, in his gentlemanly manner. "My sons complain that I take a long time because I always must clean the drain after I finish."
"Oh, I know," Dr. Lamb said. "My groomers tell me horror stories." And leaving it there, she headed off towards the bathroom.
"Please tell me you know how to make coffee," April said.
"I am sorry," Splinter said. "I have never prepared this beverage. If you like, I can attempt to -"
"No," April said quickly. "Maybe it's better if we just -" She pointed to the screen. "I'm going to work on this, okay?"
Splinter did not seem to be offended, and quietly withdrew to await his turn in the shower.
The work was painstaking. Someday, April imagined, it would be possible to just enter a street address into a search engine and get all kinds of information about the property - maybe, even, the kind of aerial photos Amanda had been able to obtain through her specialized software.
For now, April was limited to scrolling through government databases, copying down phone numbers. As soon as she'd gotten through Amanda's files and pulled herself together a little, she picked up the phone and started dialing Register of Deeds offices in Northamptons across the Northeast.
"Hi," she said, to each one. "I'm calling about -" and then she listed each address that Amanda had given her, and waited while the bureaucrat on the other end of the line took their time flipping through a filing cabinet, and wrote down the name that they gave her.
She almost broke the pencil when a municipal employee told her, "That property is registered to a Mrs. Anita Jones."
"Excuse me?" April said. "Can you please repeat?"
"Anita Jones," the clerk said. "Alpha November India -"
"I got it," April interrupted. "Thank you."
Splinter was just coming out of the bathroom, looking oddly fluffy, as she hung up the phone. "I think we've got it," she said. Dr. Lamb leaned out of the kitchen - she had also professed ignorance of how to brew coffee, but had promised she could make a mean cup of tea. "This house belongs to a Jones," April said, pulling up a photo from Northampton, Massachusetts. "I'm going to finish calling down the list, just because it's such a common name. But I think this is our destination today."
"How are we going to get there?" Dr. Lamb asked.
"I can drive," April said.
"A New Yorker who can drive?" Dr. Lamb set a steaming mug of tea at April's elbow. "I didn't think they existed."
"I'm just unusual in all kinds of ways," April said, and picked up the phone once more.
None of the other properties belonged to a Jones. As she prepared to leave the apartment, April felt one moment like a brilliant detective, and the next moment like this was a hopeless long shot. What if they barged in on the wrong people?
"Anybody could be in that house," she said, as Dr. Lamb gathered up the maps and notes - just in case - and packed them into a bag April offered her. "What if -"
"Oh, crap," Dr. Lamb said, though it didn't quite seem to be in response to the risk April had just been trying to describe. "Terri is still at my apartment. By now she'll have baked a pie for every windowsill and gone back for round two."
"Who is Terri…?" April asked, but Dr. Lamb had already pulled the cell phone from her pocket and dialed it.
"Terri, we think we know where David is," Dr. Lamb was saying. "We're heading out now to look for him. Go home, and take all those cookies with you." She paused, listening. "Don't lie to me, Terri. I know there are cookies." Another pause. "Okay, fine. If anything comes up, call me. Okay. Bye."
"What happened to not involving other people?" April asked.
Dr. Lamb fixed her with a hard look. "Don't even go there," she said.
In a few minutes, they were in the van, and on their way to what they hoped was the right Northampton.