The fluorescent lights of the precinct hum, a sterile counterpoint to the frantic rhythm that is hammering in Candy's chest. Perched, she is sitting on an edge of the uncomfortable plastic chair.
The cheap material is digging into the back of her thighs, despite the layered flamboyant dress that she is wearing, a piece of clothing that, in her opinion, makes her look less a working girl and more like the concerned citizen that she needs to embody, faced with the detective across from her.
Judging by Detective Harding's expression, however, the effort was wasted.
"So, Miss… Carter," Harding drawls, skepticism trembling in his deep voice. He steeples his fingers and studies her over the rim of his half-moon glasses. "You are saying you found this… ahm, this note... on what? A cat, was it?"
Hoping to rid herself of the metallic tang of fear that is thick on her tongue, Candy swallows. She reaches into her worn leather purse, and carefully takes the pendant out. It looks tarnished, scratched, and tiny. But the crimson letters on the shred of pale clothing that her fingers fimmel out of it thereafter are holding a weight that belies its size.
"Yes," she says, her voice trembling slightly despite her best efforts. "I found it in the pendant on a black cat's collar. That was yesterday."
She places the torn piece of fabric on the cold, steel surface of the desk. "Look at it, it looks like a shred of a dress. And the note on it… It is written in blood.."
Harding sits back. He doesn't reach for it. His staring gaze is unwavering when he crosses his arms and sighs.
"And what does this blood-written note say, Miss Carter?"
She hesitates. It feels like the words are catching in her throat. The urgency of the message and the desperation that is etched into the barely legible scrawl drove her to come here today, but the detective's dismissive expression is building a wall around her that she will fail to surpass.
"A woman called Sherry Jones is asking for help in the note. She says the cat's owner took and hurt her."
Sherry Jones. The name resonates in Candy´s head, a ghostly echo in a sterile room. She doesn't know her, but she knows the desperation that she must be feeling.
As Candy looks at the heart-shaped pendant, the scent of cheap perfume and stale coffee around her gives way to the sickeningly sweet aroma of honeysuckle and dust. All of a sudden, she is no longer in the harsh reality of the police department, but back in the well-kept garden of her grandfather's estate. A child, small and vulnerable, who is hiding behind flourishing rose bushes, the thorns of which scratch across her arms and legs. They would leave scars that would forever remind her of it.
"Hannah, my darling," she hears her grandfather´s murmur, a shiver across her back. "Where are you, honey? Come to me, my beautiful, I have been looking for you."
The memory, unbidden and unwelcome, slams into Candy´s face with the force of a blow. All at once, she is gasping. Her breath catches in her throat, while Harding is still talking, his voice a low drone.
"…and you want us to test the note on the shred of what you think was a dress for DNA now, do you?"
She forces herself back to the present, and focuses on the detective's skeptical face.
"Yes, I do," she replies. "If the blood on it comes back a match to Sherry Joneses DNA, then you know that the note is legit and have to look for her then."
Even though Candy keeps on pushing it back down, into the darkness, where it belongs, the memory of the rose bush day keeps on flooding back to her. Right there, right now, in the police precinct, the worst place and time of all for it. She swallows, and what is rising in her throat is the desperate need to be believed. Hardening, however, fails to notice it. He rattles open a drawer on his desk and gloves his hand. Leaning forward, he picks up the pendant and the note with latex-gloved fingers. He turns it over in his hand, but his expression is impossible to read.
Hesitantly, his eyes flicker to the computer screen on his desk. When Candy follows his gaze, she catches a glimpse of a familiar-looking picture. It is her picture. Underneath it is written in bold letters, CRIMINAL RECORD – PROSTITUTION.
The blood drains from her face. All of a sudden, she feels as exposed and vulnerable as she felt in her grandfather's garden, before she fled behind the flourishing bushes. A butterfly that is pinned to a board where it is left to die.
Harding laces his voice with contempt.
"Miss Carter, are you aware that making false statements to a police officer is a crime? We have had a few of you ladies come here this morning. We know that your bosses are sending you here under false pretense to distract from the escalating problem that is prostitution down at the riverbanks."
"I'm not lying!" Candy´s voice rises in desperation. "Sherry Jones is missing, I'm sure of it. Can you please just look it up on one of your servers? You have to help her!"
With a dismissive gaze, Harding leans back.
"We'll look into it, Miss Carter. Thank you for your time."
He doesn't look like he will look into anything. He is looking like he cannot wait for her to leave. Like she is trash to him, just waste, and in an attempt to dump it, he gets up to hurry her out of his office.
The door slams shut behind her. As she's walking out of the precinct, her head bows. Until the cold night air stings her cheeks. The lights of the town blur through the thin veil of tears that wells in her eyes, as she starts drifting away in her thoughts.
Harding didn't believe her. Just like she feared no one would back then, after the rush bush day. He didn't see her for what she is, a woman trying to do the right thing, but only took notice of everything that she has been made into. By the cruel course of her life and by people just like him.
With a chilling certainty Candy knows that it is on her to find Sherry Jones. She will have to look for her herself. Otherwise, no one will.
She sighs. The pendant and the piece of fabric it held are a start. She still has the pictures on her phone that she took of both, with great foresight, just in case they would be taken away and dumped somewhere, because no one would believe her. She fibbles in her purse, pulls her phone out and stares at them. They are the only clues that she has, aside from the cat who carried them directly to her, as if believing in her faith.
The longer she looks at the blood-written note on the creme-coloured tatter, the stronger she feels the urge in her chest to find out who Sherry is. Slowly, the veil of tears lifts off her eyes, and she can see straight again.
When she puts the phone back into her purse, she is determined to investigate. Preferably not on her own, she could use some help, and she knows well where to go looking for it. To a person who knows how to dig deep. A person who knows how to follow leads. Someone with award-winning research techniques, even though it is the last person who Candy wants to see at the moment. Corey.
As little as she wants to face him after his reaction to the pendant, she has to suck it up and ask him for help. The life of a stranger called Sherry Jones is more important than what is going on between them.
Even if she returns to the bridge, looking for him, how is she supposed to convince him that the note, in fact, is real?
Telling him that she can feel it, won't be enough to break his wall. Candy needs a lead. Something tangible that kisses the journalist awake that is buried under suffocating bitterness and disappointment somewhere inside him.
The clatter of a stand-up sign tears her out of her thoughts. A pretty young sales assistant is trying hard to bring it into the cosy and intimate looking shop across from the police precinct. When it draws Candy´s attention, she gasps. "Gems & Baubles", the shiny polished letters above the revolving door state.
It is a jewelry shop. Her eyes start lighting up, and their glimmer wipes the faint traces of desperation off her face, as if she takes the shimmering glint of polished gold that is displayed in the window as a twinkling promise.
What if it is right there, across from her? The lead that she needs to win Corey for her investigations?
What if the cosy little shop, with the expensive diamond rings in the window, and the pretty, but clumsy sales assistant who has trouble putting the stand-up sign away for the day, is the very place where the cat-owner bought the pendant once?
Candy remembers Coreys derogatory eyes the last time she saw him, and afterwards, the sound of the precinct doors that just slammed shut behind her, a hollow counterpoint to the insistent thrumming in her ears. She remembers the condescending smile and dismissive wave, with which Detective Harding treated her concern. As if to him she is a stray that would easily be shooed away.
Guess again, Detective!
Candy won't be shooed away and as if to prove to him and Corey that the note is real, she walks out from the precinct´s parking lot, focused on the other side of the road. She desperately needs to cross the street, give the clumsy saleslady across from her a hand, and show her the pendant. She might know where it could be from. Or if, perhaps, she herself was the very person who sold it to the man who took Sherry Jones.
Candy tugs her leopard-print scarf tight around her neck and slowly catfoots over the empty street. As she approaches, the sales lady just overpowers the stubborn standup-sign and tugs it under her arm, gasping. She twists her head towards Candy, when she hears her footsteps behind her. With a smile, Candy takes a chance.
"Look, I don't mean to sound patronizing or anything, but I saw you from the other side of the street and was wondering if you maybe need a hand?"
Candy is still talking, when the woman - her name-tag reads Tiffany - fully turns towards her. The cascade of her strawberry-blonde curls is swirling through the air, and because she pays no attention to the stand-up sign for a second, it pops open.
"Ah, come on now, really? She growls at it, and her high-heeled foot kicks one of its legs, before she realises that what she said could be taken up the wrong way.
Meeting Candy's eyes, she gives a smile. In stark contrast to the practiced smirks that Candy encounters most days, hers is a genuine one.
"Oh, sorry, I didn´t mean you, in case you were wondering," she adds. " I was talking to this dick of a standee that is trying to make me look like I cannot count to ten." She tugs on her slightly slipped skirt as she goes on. "Your, ahm, concern was legit, given that this freaking thing takes it absolutely out of me, maybe I do need a hand, thank you for the offer."
She takes a step back from the sign, and casts Candy a grateful glance.
"If you want to give it a try, please, go for it! It would doubtlessly make my day, and just in case you wouldn't have guessed, it hasn't been a particularly great one so far."
"Oh, don´t worry," Candy replies, as she reaches for the standee. "Neither has mine."
Its polished chrome feels cold against her skin and the flimsy cardboard edges dig into her fingers, when she picks it up, but unlike Tiffany, she manages to turn it upside down, and press it closed under her arm to take on the revolving door. In the department behind her, Tiffany follows her inside, while she pushes her way into the shop. Her oily handprint is stuck to the glass when they make it to the other side, where the scent of lemon polish and whispered elegance washes over her.
"Thank you so much again," Tiffany chirps as she is returning behind the counter, her voice a touch breathless, like she'd just narrowly avoided disaster. "You are a lifesaver, no kidding. Let me help you find something special now, that is the least I can do to repay you."
"Be careful, making promises you cannot keep," Candy scoffs, pulling her phone from her purse, before she opens the picture of the pendant and adds, "I might take you up on that one."
"What's that?" Frowning, Tiffany takes up the phone to have a look. "Can I see?"
Even though Candy gives her a nod, curiosity kills the cat, they say. She isn't quite sure yet what she is willing to share with a clumsy saleswoman who she only met today, and if it is only because she likes her and does certainly not want her killed.
"I found this on a cat," she goes with half the story. "Have you seen one like this before? Or even sold it? I was hoping you might know who bought it, or where it was bought…"
Tiffany leans closer to the screen, her brow furrowed in concentration. She zooms into the picture, and takes minutes to take it in. Then she looks at Candy, her finger tracking the pendant's outline, as she talks.
"See, the heart shape is crudely formed, The metal is thin and almost flimsy. I presume it is a base alloy, and the craftsmanship is…" A pause, before she gives the phone back to Candy with a shrug.. "Well, it is certainly not mass-produced."
"What does that mean?" Candy asks. "Are you sure it is not from here or some other joint in town?"
"Positive, yes. We definitely don't have anything like it, it is, well, let's say unusual."
Candy's hopes start to deflate.
"Would you mind checking your inventory, either way? Just to be sure…"
"No, I can, of course. But I´d say don´t get your hopes up, I would be shocked if I found it.."
She disappears into a back room. For a few minutes, the rhythmic clinking of metal drawers is the only sound in the otherwise quiet shop. When she returns, Candy´s tension is palpable. Until Tiffany´s apologetic headshake puts a sudden end to it.
"Sorry," she says. "I checked literally every supplier. We don't have anything even remotely similar to it. I went back several years in our purchase logs, but still nothing."
Disappointment settles heavily on Candy's shoulders. "So, that's it? There is absolutely no way to trace it?"
Thoughtfully, Tiffany taps her manicured nails against the counter and sighs.
"Well, it's possible that it was custom-made. A local artisan perhaps, or even someone working in their own home. The inscription, that C on the inside… That looks hand-etched. It wouldn't be hard for someone with basic metalworking skills to create something like this."
Candy's mind raced. Custom-made. That narrowed the possibilities down, but it also deepened the mystery.
Who would create such a rough, almost desperate, piece of jewelry? And for whom? Hardly for a black cat. Maybe it just inherited it, so to speak, and it was made for someone entirely else. A former lover, perhaps. Or victim.
"Do you know any local artisans who work with metal?" She asks, and a flicker of renewed determination ignites within her.
Tiffany purses her lips and exhales a loud breath.
"Well, there's old Mr. Abernathy down on Bleecker Street. He mostly does repairs, but he might recognize the style. And there's Sarah Hardin, a relation to the Detective, I presume. She works with upcycled materials, very artistic. If you want to drop by, her studio is on the East Side. But honestly," she hesitates,"this looks more like something someone's grandpa made in his shed."
Candy's lips curl into a determined smile. Grandpa's shed or Bleecker Street, she doesn't care. She has a lead, and she won't let it go.
Her quest has begun.
Her quest has begun.
"Why are you looking for this pendant anyway?" Tiffany asks, but her voice barely reaches Candy´s ears. "Is it about a former lover who won´t tell you who bought it for him?"
On the way out of the revolving door, Candy gives Tiffany a half-smile, her voice laced with resolve.
"Something like that," she replies. "Thank you, anyway, really! You have been more helpful than you know."
When she turns and walks out of the jewelry shop. the faint noises of the sleeping town give way to what she hears in her head.
Bleecker Street is calling.