Method 15 33 by Shannon Kirk Read Free Book Online

in comic, dramatic squalor.
    So there I found myself, in the FBI, fifteen-sucked-away years later, as if on the day of admittance, I was placed into a time warp chamber. Laughter all but completely drained away.
    When the lens through which you view the world invites the surreal perspective, you may see life as is: undoubtedly amusing. Sandra still had her surreal lens, and, God love her, she neither pitied nor cursed my loss of humorous sight. Instead, she’d try in vain to draw me from black moods by re-painting what I could no longer see. “Actually, sweetheart, look closer, don’t you see…” Nevertheless, fifteen years into the thicket and once again I found myself holed up in a remote field office, scraping through miniscule leads about a kidnapped, pregnant teen. And Sandra wasn’t the only woman in my life. I had a partner, who I’ll refer to as “Lola” to protect her identity for reasons I will later reveal.
    Some cases have no leads at all, some cases have lots of leads, some cases have a couple of good leads upon which you can develop more leads, other cases have one good lead that requires tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The case of Dorothy M. Salucci had one good lead, the van, which required tremendous effort to develop into anything else. The black, low-top Converse sneaker was not evidence at all. How could I find a girl by having her missing shoe? There were no fingerprints or blood splatter on it from her assailant. The shoe was worthless to me. I devoted all of my efforts on finding a glimpse of the van, pouring over, obsessing over, scouring each second of every last videotape from every last camera in her town and the surrounding towns and any tollbooth leading from ground zero.
    On the eighth day of this effort, I finally caught the image of a 1989 maroon Chevy TransVista with Indiana plates, edging like a snake through a toll. The Hoosier woman confirmed my find: “Exactly. This is definitely the one,” she said. I rummaged a two-personteam back at headquarters to track the van’s route from any highway videos they could acquire. Meanwhile, in checking Indiana motor vehicle records, my partner, who was two grades below me and therefore reported to me, uncovered fourteen registrations for late-eighties to early-nineties Chevy TransVistas fitting our lead.
    I mention my seniority over my partner only for comic value, for she considered my rank un-considerable; she promoted herself above me and above the rank of God, I swear. As I mentioned, we’ll call her “Lola.”
    Whether the registrations were cancelled or current, revoked, or expired, we set out to visit each address associated with each registration. This effort took us around the entire state of Indiana, parts of Illinois and Milwaukee, and a sliver of Ohio, where people were either on vacation or to where they had moved to or sold the vehicle altogether. Each one of these registrants and current owners had to be cleared, which meant interviewing them, profiling them, checking their property, reading their body language, and verifying alibis.
    One registrant had died.
    One registrant had wrecked his van the month before when he collided head-on with a car carrier full of Porsche 911s. He showed us the newspaper clippings of the event and all, chuckling, “Damn Porsches. I hate those little bugs. How can you make any dump runs or buy gravel for your driveway in one of those dinky things anyway?”
    One registrant would not submit to a voluntary inspection of his ranch home, but who, upon better reasoning and advice of counsel, complied. He scurried to move a couple of pot plants as we walked through his house.
I don’t give a shit about your Mary Jane. I’m here to find a kidnapped girl, idiot
.
    Eight registrants were fairly normal, run-of-the-mill Chevy TransVista van owners, and by this I mean they were wholly unsuspicious and actually, were almost clones of each other. I suppose they each had their important