Officer Barkin's boots were a little small. The rest of her clothes were a fortuitously good fit. She felt like a ghoul looting the dead girl's locker. However, as she had been the only female officer in SHPD, Cybil had little choice.
She had raided David's's candle stash once again, illuminating the 9am gloom. Thawing well in the front office, she perched on Ed's desk. It was unsurprisingly messy. Notes strewn amongst old articles from the local paper told a tale on him. Every scrap was concerned with the seven year old case of Alice; a local girl that had disappeared in the South Park fire. Hers was the only body never recovered. An article about the recently deceased mayor was kept for the small column next to it, detailing the seventh anniversary of the fire. The date of the memorial service had been circled, though Ed had not attended.
Cybil felt a little more warmth towards her ex-husband. She thought he simply hadn't cared, he never spoke of it, but this shrine to Alice proved otherwise. Clearly neither of them had moved on.
The blackboard was graced with his incongruously stylish handwriting:
'Product only available in
select areas of Silent Hill.
Raw material is white claudia,
a plant peculiar to the region.
Manufactured here?
Dealer=Manufacturer'
This was quite a revelation. The PTV investigation had stalled months ago. The makeup of the drug had long been a mystery, yet here it was…white claudia. The small, white flower that smelled sweetly of vanilla. Not only indigenous to the region but abundant too. No wonder she had drifted off at Wolf's house with Thom. After taking a deep breath of scented hallucinogen, she had gotten high! She was keen to take up the investigation again – PTV had made its way to Brahms in July.
Ed had kept this suspiciously quiet. Though, she supposed, he had other things on his mind. Despite everything that was going on she was keen to broach the subject with him. After a night of abject failure, she suddenly felt like a police officer again.
Carefully she blew out the candles, pulled on Barkin's standard issue jacket and set out for the hospital.