The Girl's Return, Chapter 1

One:  Isabella’s Return

            I could barely believe my eyes when I walked into the interrogation room.  The young woman was sitting at the metal table with her arms folded, her eyes staring straight into mine.  She was much older now.  The girl that I knew had blossomed into one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen.  Her youthful awkwardness was replaced by a presence that commanded respect before she even uttered a single world.  However, she still had the same rosy cheeks and sleek dark hair that I fondly remembered.    Over twelve years had passed since we had last seen each other.  In those twelve years, I had no cause to believe that she was still alive.  When I saw the emptiness in her eyes, I almost doubted that she was.

            “Hey Sherlock,” the girl spoke, as if she was reading my mind.  Isabella was the only person who ever called me by that nickname.  It was a reminder of the detective games we used to play as kids.  It was undeniably her.  Still, I could sense an infinite sadness that was unbecoming of the girl that I used to spend every waking moment of my life with.

            “Hey Izzy,” I replied.

            I could detect a very faint hint of a smile on her face.  “When did you become Sheriff Lawson’s deputy?” she asked.

            “About a year ago,” I replied.  I had joined the Holcombe Police Department right out of high school and quickly advanced through the ranks.  Of course this was not much of an accomplishment when the entire town’s police force consisted of four officers, and the former deputy succumbed to meth addiction. 

            “That’s great!” Isabella replied.  “You always loved mysteries, and now you get to solve them for a living.”

            “Isabella, you know as well as I do that the only type of mystery you get to solve in Holcombe, Virginia, is the case of the drunk who took a dump on the courthouse steps.”

            Izzy burst out laughing despite herself. 

            “That is, until now,” I finished.   Her laughter stopped at once.

            “Isabella, you have been missing and presumed dead since the year 2000.  All of a sudden you arrive back in town without so much as telling your mother that you were coming?  Speaking of your mother, she was so upset by your disappearance that she stopped eating for over a year.  I practically had to spoon-feed her!  Where the hell have you…” 

            “Sean!” she cut me off.  “First off, I want to thank you for looking after her for all this years.  It means more to me than I can even say.   I hope you can understand that you have always been the most important person in my life.    But I can’t tell you where I’ve been.”

            “Izzy,” I replied.  “I am your best friend, but I am also an officer of the law.  If somebody under my jurisdiction goes missing under mysterious circumstances and suddenly reappears, it is my professional duty to investigate the circumstances behind those events. “

            Isabella chucked.  “Sherlock, you are free to investigate all you want.  Call in the FBI if you want to, but I can guarantee that you will not dig up a single clue.”

            I looked at her imploringly.  “Isabella Contreras: up until today, I was under the impression that nobody on this earth knew you better than I did.  Now I feel like I may not know you at all.   I don’t know if you have been involved with drugs, gangs, prostitution or something else, but I know that it can’t have been anything good.  Please let me help you.”

            Isabella sighed.  “You’re right,” she said. “I’m a crack-head who screws gang members to get my next hit.  Come on Sean, you know me better than that!”

            “Do I?” I replied.  “Isabella, I need to get a statement from you for the official record.  This statement will be recorded.  You are not being detained, and you are free to leave at any time.  You also have the right to have an attorney present, and are not obligated to answer any of our questions without legal counsel.  Do you wish to exercise that right?”

            “That won’t be necessary.  Go ahead,” she replied with a resigned expression.

            I signaled to Sheriff Lawson from the two-way mirror to turn on the recording equipment.   “My name is Deputy-Sherriff Sean Ryan.  The date is the 10^th of March in the year 2012.  The time is 2:06pm.  This video is to document the interrogation of Ms. Isabella Contreras, age 25, who disappeared on July 13, 2000 at age 13.   Prior to her disappearance, Ms. Contreras had last been sighted in Los Angeles attending the Albert Einstein Summer Program for Gifted Students at the UCLA Gateway Campus. Ms. Contreras and several other young scholars were housed on the 8^th floor of Shelton Towers, a high-rise apartment complex approximately 2 miles east of the main campus. 

“At approximately 9:00 PM on July 13, a 9.1 magnitude earthquake hit the Los Angeles area by surprise, causing significant structural damage, a large number of fatalities, and several powerful aftershocks.  Shelton Towers was toppled during the earthquake.  Less than 20% of the residents managed to survive the collapse.  It took emergency crews several weeks to recover all of the bodies from the rubble.  The body of Ms. Contreras was not recovered from the scene.    Several attempts were made to locate Ms. Contreras in the months following the earthquake, but they were fruitless.   Authorities presumed that she died at the time of the earthquake.  This morning at 9:00am, Ms. Contreras arrived here in Holcombe at the house of her mother, Mrs. Luisa Contreras.  Her mother fainted from the shock, and is now being treated for minor injuries at the Holcombe Hospital.”

I turned to Isabella.  “Miss, for the benefit of the camera and you please confirm your name and date of birth for me?”

“My name is Isabella Contreras and I was born on November 12, 1986,” she replied.

            “Thank you,” I replied.  “Ms. Contreras, can you please confirm that you were indeed in Los Angeles on July 13, 2000?”

            “I was.”

            “What was your reason for being there?”

            “It was just as you said,” she replied.  “I had gotten a scholarship to a summer program for gifted children being hosted on the UCLA campus.  Mom was so happy.  There was no way she would have been able to afford that program on her own.”  That was true; being the only immigrant in a Southwest Virginia town is not a gateway to ample job opportunities.

            “What was your location immediately prior to the earthquake on that date?”

            “I was in my bedroom, doing my homework for the next day’s class.”

            “And just to clarify, we are talking about your bedroom at the Shelton Towers apartment complex, correct?”

            “Correct,” she confirmed.

            “Considering that no surviving residents were found that were residing on the fifth floor or above, is it safe to make the assumption that you were not inside your room at the time the earthquake hit?”

            Isabella paused for a moment.  “Under normal circumstances, that would have been a safe assumption.”

            “And you are implying that your circumstances aren’t normal?”

            She smirked, “Sean, my circumstances are about as far from normal as possible.”

            “Correct me if I am getting this wrong,” I said.  “You are telling me that you were on the eighth floor at the time that the building collapsed.  And that you survived an impact that multiple forensic investigators concluded would have been physically impossible to survive.”

            “I am saying that you are free to draw your own conclusions.  I am not going to lie to you, Sean, but there are some things that are best left unsaid.”

            “Based on all human logic, you should be dead right now!

            “Yes,” Izzy said darkly.  “I should.”  She stood up, “I have nothing more to say.  Can I go now?”

            “I said you are free to leave at any time.”  It was clear at this point that she wasn’t going to tell me anything.

            “Good, do you want to walk me out?”  I walked her outside of the tiny shack of a building known as the headquarters of the Holcombe Police Department.  We stared at each other in silence for a moment.  “Sean, I really am glad to see you again.  Whatever happens, I still care about you.”

            “I know,” I said.  “But I hope you know that does not mean I am going to stop my investigation.”

            “I know, always the detective,” she said with a smile.  “Sean, can you please come over for dinner tonight at seven?  I do want to hear about what’s been going on with your life, even if I can’t talk about mine.  ”

            “Sure,” I said.  “Izzy, I really am glad you’re home.”

            “Me too, she said.  “I should go to the hospital to check on Mama.  The doctor said the injuries she sustained when she fainted were minor.  She should be ready to be discharged by now.  She really was happy to see me after she got over the initial shock.”

            “When saw her face, she looked like she had just stared into the eyes of the devil himself,” I replied.

            Isabella’s voice hardened.  “Maybe she did.”