By the time the bell sang at 3:00 p.m., we still had some 250 students left to interview. We had all come to the agreement that the 1200+ we did manage was sufficient enough and that it was time to call it a night. Evan, who had left school grounds around one in a huff, never returned. I left him several messages just to keep him updated, none of which were returned, and began plottin' my next moves while we packed it up.
On Wednesdays all the high schools had minimum day, so that Tuesday night, after I finally made it back to the office, I began making my house calls to the families of the list of names I was given. The parents of the funny one, the fat one and the twins were the only ones to pick up the phone and had all agreed to meet with me within the 2-hour blocks of time I had carved out for each of them the following day.
Usually we like to bring in people to the station but I thought it best I meet with the kids in their homes. I wanted to get a better sense of how they lived and make them feel as comfortable as possible, in hopes they would be more likely to tell me the truth. I left messages for the other parents and gave Mallory, our Office Assistant, specific instructions if they called back, to schedule in any appointment time that was convenient for them no later than Thursday. I was going to be unable to make calls for several hours and didn’t want to risk delays with a phone tag type of situation.
It was getting late and I needed to try and attempt a few hours’ sleep, but I called Evan at home. He didn’t answer so I tried his cell again. It rang twice then was sent to voicemail. I didn’t know it at the time, I wouldn’t find out until a couple days later, but he was growin' unhappy with the direction the investigation was going. He was convinced Campbell didn’t have friends and thought anytime we spent on kids her age was time lost. I like to remember him during those five days as a grievin' father who was upset about his daughter’s disappearance. But when I am honest, I know that he, like the others, could never believe I would find her and so everything I attempted in order to try must be wrong.
My first appointment was with the funny one at 12:30 p.m. I pulled up to the house, if one could call it that, his property lines far exceeded the square footage of my childhood home and all the other houses that were situated upon my entire block. I rang the bell and a tall, burly, Black man answered. He was dressed in gym clothes and was offering bargains into the cell phone pushed up against his ear as he ushered me through the do'.
“Well think about it and call me back.” He said into the phone then pulled it away from his ear and hung it up.
He greeted me in the friendliest of manners, offered me several drinks of varying strengths, all of which I refused, and sent a howl loud enough for his son upstairs to hear. We waited in silence for some movement before I attempted to fill it. I addressed him formally only to have him interrupt me to insist I call him Maurice.
“Maurice, it’s so good when I get to see us living our best lives.” I flirted lightly.
He smiled, thanked me and replied that he was sure in my line of work that I didn’t get to see that too often. I confirmed his suspicions with a simple smile. He affirmed that he too doesn’t get to see it too often in his line of work, as a lawyer, either. He asked me about my accent and where I was from and told me he had family and spent his summers there as a kid.
“Looks like we’ve both come a long way.” He said and we laughed.
He asked if I had been back and I told him not for some time but that the last time I went my family had asked me if I even remembered what greens were. He laughed and said the last time he went back, his mother would find ways to intimate into every conversation that he was friends with celebrities, despite his insistence, at that time, that he had never saw a single one.
“No Mabel,” he said imitating his mother’s voice, “Maurice is too busy to take you to the Walmart today, he be in California minglin' with the stars now. He can't do things like that anymo'.”
We laughed a bit more as he added he was living in San Fernando at that time. Then the air grew silent once again. Maurice apologized for the delay then theorized his son probably had his headphones in and didn’t hear him, so he informally took me on a small tour of his house on our way to his son’s room. I complimented the design and décor and he told me he would forward my sentiments to his wife, an architect, as she was the one who designed and decorated it.
We stopped before a door that he tapped three succinct wraps into and then opened with no pause in between. Maurice Jr. was laying across his bed, sure enough, with his headphones in. He took them out, apologized, stood up and addressed me by shaking my hand. Then he offered me the chair at his desk while he took a seat on the edge of the bed. His father stood in the doorway with no intention of sitting down or leaving us be. I wouldn’t have expected anything less from a lawyer, so I promptly got to work.
I pulled out my notepad and read my questions off to him with little interference from his father. Maurice Jr. answered sternly and with strong eye contact. I noted his demeanor and his body position with each of my questions. He was serious yet concerned. I asked him if he had anything else to add. He said that I needed to talk to Bianca. She and Campbell were the closest. He said during school hours, and mostly lunch time, was their time as a group but that, usually, after school and on the weekends she would never stick around. He said Campbell only came out with them on a Saturday on one or two occasions. He didn’t even know where she lived but he knew Bianca had slept over Campbell’s house a couple of times.
I closed my pad and stood up when he said something I didn’t expect. “Find her please,” he said, “we all love her, and we miss her, and you need to find her.”
He looked clearly shaken up and the tears were beginning to form when he said this. He turned and faced his father who looked as surprised by his emotion as I was. I told him somethin' we are advised never to say. I promised I would bring her home alive.
I went to leave then stopped myself. It wasn’t a question in my notepad, but it was one that had been lingering since I walked in. “I talked to hundreds of students yesterday. They say you’re the funny one…”
I paused trying to figure out how to continue. I wanted to know if he thought their perceptions were true. I was beginnin' to question the accuracy of all the things I heard the day befo' and it was starting to get me worried about the things I assumed to be true. He never did answer, and I never did push the issue. I, instead, thanked them both for their time and told them I could find my way out and left.
I sat in my car for a bit afterwards. I dialed Evan again, then Mallory to see if Bianca had made an appointment yet. She hadn’t. So, I asked Mallory if she could call her parents again for me. I hung up, punched the next address into my phone’s map feature and pulled off.
The twins lived not too far from Maurice Jr. I rang the bell and a housekeeper answered. She spoke heavily-accented English but I followed her movements into a grand room with expensive paintings, vaulted ceilings and large, open windows. There the twins were seated on one of the couches. Their mother, dressed in a beige colored blazer with a matching pencil skirt and 6-inch heels with red bottoms, was sitting cross-legged between them. She had a tumbler in one hand filled with a dark liquid and ice cubes that rattled when she made even the faintest of movements; which she did quite a lot of as she was already drunk.
She didn’t get up to greet me when I entered the room. She didn’t smile or exchange pleasantries. She didn’t even remove her sunglasses which she wore proudly the entire time as though she wanted me to know how much natural light her windows let in though didn’t want to experience it for herself. I removed my notepad and flipped it to the appropriate page in order to jog my memory of their names. I introduced myself to the twins, showed them my badge, and explained that I knew Campbell too and that I was trying everything to bring her home safe.
Richard spoke first. Then Riley. Then Richard. Then Riley again. They carried on in this pitter-patter manner as I went down my list of questions. Their mother, who by then had positioned herself in such a way so that she was mostly facing Richard and had her back to Riley and I, began snorin' softly. The twins, who didn’t even look embarrassed, never broke rhythm.
I was curious about somethin' Maurice Jr. had said and asked the twins if they had ever been to Campbell’s house. They both shook their heads in the same direction without looking at the other. I asked if they considered her their friend. One said, kinda. One said, as much as was possible. I asked if they found it odd that they never saw her on the weekends or that she never hung out. They said Campbell was always a very quiet girl.
Then they said somethin' that really skipped my heart. Richard articulated that a lot of the times no one understood how close he and his sister really were. Riley continued that you could quite literally talk to her and understand him at the same time. That they were special in that way and that this advantage was somethin' everyone else in the world would never have with another soul. No matter how close two people are, they would never really fully know one another or what they were capable of.
They went on to relate this in some weird way to the group havin' gotten a false sense of security with Campbell that, they felt, tainted their perspective of her. The twins seemed to think that because Campbell never let anyone into her head or her life ever, that the bits and pieces she shared with them somehow made them all close. They felt, however, that if I was to ask any of the others if Campbell was capable of murder, they would most emphatically insist that she could never even form the thought let alone commit the act, but that they would sound just as silly as the neighbors of a serial killer when a reporter asks them if they had ever been suspicious. Richard closed by stating that Campbell was as much a stranger to them as she was to anyone else and no matter what the others said, to never believe otherwise.
“We ate lunch everyday together, all of us. We shared classes. We shared our lives. We talked and we laughed together.” Richard began the thought that Riley would finish.
“But ask them where she lives. Why she never talks about her mother. Why she never hung out with us after school or on the weekends or if her father even knows we exist, and you’ll see that all the things we think we know about her, aren’t very important things to know about anyone.”
I thanked them both for their time and had the maid see me out all without disturbin' their mother’s restful slumber. I checked my phone for messages, thought about dialing his line again but deferred to my better judgment and instead made my way to my last stop.
Surprisingly, I was making good time when I arrived at Desiree’s house. It wasn’t in the same neighborhoods as Maurice Jr. or the twins but was still central enough to the high school, nonetheless, and was situated in a much older housing tract with much smaller houses on them though they were still quite large. I was greeted by at least three different aromas which reminded my stomach of its neglect when her father opened the do'. He was a very large man and I couldn’t help but brush past him as I came through the entry, but he was much kinder than the twins’ mother. He escorted me to the kitchen and prepared a chair for me at the kitchen island to sit where his wife, who was also a very large lady, was measurin' brown sugar for her pies.
She had a rosiness to her cheeks and a warmth about her that was very welcomin'. She told me Desiree would be right out as she offered me the glass of lemonade she was already pourin'. Though this time I didn’t refuse it. I drank it down quite voraciously until my stomach was pacified. Her husband stepped outside via the slidin" glass do' where I identified one of the smells as some kind of barbequed meat. It smelled delicious and my stomach and I both hoped that I would get to sample it as well.
I could hear singin' off in a distance and it wasn’t on the tv that happened to be blarin' some country cookin' competition. It was quite a bit a ways away. The house was definitely the homiest of the ones I visited so far. There weren’t any unnecessary rooms with unnecessary items that nobody played. No large open spaces, grand foyers, or windin' staircases. It all felt lived in, unlike the other rooms I saw befo', with the exception of Maurice Jr.’s, which felt quite unused.
Desiree rounded the corner mid song on one of those motorized scooters and smiled at me as she entered. She introduced herself as she reached for a sliced apple her mother was currently coatin' in brown sugar and crumpled butter. Her mother insisted Desiree take me into the dinin' area to talk where it would be much quieter. I think so she could catch the end of her show. I waited for Desiree to circle the island and head out the room before I got up and followed her to the dinin' area. I sat down on one of the chairs closest to the assortment of snacks—deviled eggs, various cheeses and meats with crackers, chips and dips, mini cupcakes and quiches, pigs in a blanket, and a fruit tray. I picked up a snack plate, filled it with a variety, pulled out my notepad and started munchin' while I gathered my thoughts.
Desiree was indeed a fat one. The three of them easily weighed 1800 pounds. But she was a pretty girl that I am sure the boys who were superficial would find quite stunnin' with a little less weight on her. She had eyes the color of Jesus' tears, a buttery voice you could dip a biscuit in and rosy cheeks just like her mother.
I introduced myself and got down to it. I asked her how long she had known Campbell and how that came to be. Desiree explained that she was the last member to join the group. That it was Maurice who had introduced her to them. That they had already been friends befo'.
I asked if she knew how they met. I wanted to compare her version to what the others had said. She told me she was 99% certain that it was a group project that brought them all together. In an English class, she couldn’t remember which grade or which teacher, but that he had told them all to form groups for a class project and, as high school students do, those that knew each other “clicked up.” Apparently, they were the leftovers. So, the teacher told them to form their own group.
Desiree then addressed her lack of surety by explaining that she is quite a shy girl who suffers from depression and that when she joined the group there were already customs, traditions, history and rituals that had been established long before she was even a thought. She said on the day she joined, they talked like she wasn’t new. They didn’t try to explain things and because of her shyness she didn’t ask any questions for fear they would kick her out. She was just so happy to have a tribe.
So, she's been able to piece together from retellin's much of the history that happened befo' her. She said, from what she understood, Campbell enrolled in the school in the middle of the semester and joined the same English class they were all apart of but that they had already been grouped for weeks by then. The teacher assigned her to their group and that’s how she first started comin' to know 'em. She went on to explain that the group had already started hangin' with each other during lunches and on weekends but when Campbell first joined, she would only talk to them during class and about the project otherwise she sat alone in the quad.
It had been sometime after Desiree joined, which was sometime after the class had already ended that Campbell had officially joined the group. In fact, Desiree thought Campbell was new when she sat down at their bench and was taken aback when they all cheered and talked to her like they’d knew her.
Her story was pretty consistent with Maurice’s version, she just provided a few more details, so I continued on down my list. I asked her if she knew anything about Campbell’s disappearance and if she heard anything strange on the days leading up to it. She too mimicked Maurice Jr. in that she suggested I talk to Bianca. Desiree said she had been trying to get ahold of her since Monday but that she hadn’t been able to reach her.
Then she suggested I try Sonny. Sonny was a new name. I quickly rechecked my notes and then clicked my pen in order to write down what she said next when I asked if she knew his last name.
“Sonny Samuels,” she said, “works for the high school. He is the Assistant Janitor to Mikey’s father who is the Supervisin' Janitor.”
Mikey. Mikey. I had heard that name before. Michael? I flipped through my notes again. Michael Malabarista was listed next to the over-achiever. So I repeated back what I had heard in order to confirm.
“You all’s friend Michael, his father works for the school as a Janitor?” She nodded while adding in supervisin'. “And Sonny Samuels, is he related to anyone you know?”
She said no and added that Sonny had been working for the school district long before they were even freshman but that he and Campbell were friendly and sometimes, when none of the school personnel were watching, he would sit at their table and chat.
“Friendly? As in they were datin'?” I clarified.
She shook her head fiercely and corrected that sometimes she would notice Sonny stare at her, or he would flirt with her but that he flirted with every girl really. Campbell and the other girls would never even acknowledge it. Bianca always had some smart remark. They all mostly dismissed his advances with harmless teasin'. She added that when they first met Campbell, she thought she had overheard Maurice say that one of them used to have sex with him. She also heard a rumor Campbell and Sonny had a thing. But from what she could gather she still hasn’t been able to confirm whether or not this was true since no one has ever said anything remotely like that since.
I made a note to contact Sonny Samuels. Then I asked her the same question I had asked the twins: if she had ever been to Campbell’s house. She too answered just like the others. I thought about what the twins had said and mentioned it to Desiree. I told her that one never ever really knows a person and asked if it were possible that Campbell could’ve run away or done somethin' to hurt herself. She seemed genuinely hurt that I could suggest such a thing, especially since I had already told her I knew her too. Desiree felt very strongly that she knew Campbell well, despite knowin' her for the shortest amount of time. But insisted that she didn’t have to know a bunch of facts about her in order to know what kind of person she was. I felt quite sorry for the offense because I really didn’t mean anythin' by it. I just wanted to know her thoughts.
I apologized again, stood up, and told her if I had more questions, I would give her a call. Then I picked up my plate in order to carry into the kitchen for disposal. Her mother was packing up three large containers of Tupperware and placin' them in a grocery bag. She handed the food to me by the handle and smiled. Against my better judgment, I told her I couldn’t dare take it, but she said she would find it rude if I didn’t. I gave her a hug and thanked her for her generosity. I told her I hadn’t eaten all day and looked forward to her treats; that it all smelled so good. She walked me to the do' and said she hoped I found that missing girl. That her Desiree had found a real friend in her and the others and that she will be praying for her safe return.
When I returned to my car, I peeked inside the tupperware. It was quite a spread. One container had the variety of snacks that was on the dining table with a few more additions. The second had an assortment of barbecued meats, salads and sides. The third container had a whole apple pie topped with caramel crumble. I broke a piece of the crust off and slipped it into my mouth. It melted in seconds. I called Mallory to see if she had gotten ahold of Bianca, but she didn’t answer. Then I called Benji and asked him to find out all he could on Sonny Samuels and that I was on my way back into the office. After I hung up, I did a quick google search, typed the address into the maps and drove off.
This work is created by, written by and belongs to Aecko and shared here for entertainment.