Ghost of a Girl by E L Oakes

Author:E L Oakes
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Epicenter Press Inc.
Published: 2022-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 12

Thursday Afternoon

Ihad a missing brother, a missing classmate, and a dead body in the trunk of my car. There was possibility that I was a murder suspect, or a potential victim. It was a mess . . . and what was I doing about it? I was sitting at my little folding desk with Hoover, watching videos of birds on YouTube. I like my cat. He likes chickadees. But I had no idea what to do next. When the office phone rang, I jolted upright. This was it. I answered it with a brisk, “White Legal Services. This is Kami. How may I help you?”

“Kami? It’s Hoser. You get my emails?”

I hadn’t even checked my messages since lunch. “Hold on half-a-sec.” I stalled while I closed Hoover’s video and opened my email. There were client messages, spam messages, and two emails from Hoser. It only took opening one to see that Hoser had come through in spades for me. Each message contained eight links to online albums full of pictures of the desert art festival.

“Hoser? I think you just officially became my hero.”

“Nice. I’ve never been anyone’s hero before.” Hoser hung up and I grabbed a fresh cup of tea and settled in for the long haul

An hour later, I was half-blind. Or at least some of the pictures made me wish I was. But I had to admit that some were intriguing to the point where I would forget that I was looking for a face in the crowds. I’d catch myself looking at pictures of incredible art installations; raw metal, wood, or brightly colored fabrics, all framed against dusty-yellow playa sands and blaze-blue skies, admiring the composition of the photo, and, in some cases, wondering what could possibly have inspired someone to build that and take it there?

I’d looked at six albums worth of photos when I gave up. There are only so many mostly-naked, dusty, weird people one can stand to look at in a day, and so far there was no sign of Trunk Girl at Burning Man. Of course, she could have been in a mask or full costume, or running around in a pedal-powered spaceship and would I even recognize her? Especially having only seen a head and shoulders shot of her sodden corpse; all I really had to go on was blond hair and a neck tattoo. I stretched out full-length on the floor to think while Hoover clambered all over me, rubbing his jaw over my hair and kneading my belly with his hard little paws.

Tallying up what I had, and what I didn’t, I scooted Hoover aside, grabbed my cellphone and called Detective Brittle, hoping I wasn’t making a terrible mistake.

“I’m sorry, Detective. I’d hoped that my idea would pan out, but it didn’t. I was wondering though . . .”

“Go ahead.” It was the long-suffering sigh of a detective with too much on his plate.

“Was there anything else in my car? I mean, besides Trunk Girl and whatever might

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