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Missing pieces. Wrong angles. Things that don’t sit flat no matter how many times you turn them around in your hands and try to smooth them out.

Maggie Sterling feels like a missing piece I can’t stop turning over in my head.

Her name sits on the screen of my laptop as if it knows I’ve been staring at it for three hours and have learned nothing useful.

Maggie Sterling. Twenty eight. Mother. Redwood Run born. Moved one town over years ago. No steady public job history I can find that makes sense. No recent social media that isn’t locked down tight or abandoned. No court filings or obvious debt. No arrests or even traffic tickets recent enough to mean anything. No trail that says where she went.

No trail that says she’s alive.

I don’t want to think that last thought, so I shove it down.

The office at the back of my place smells of black coffee, dust, and hot printer ink. It’s not much of an office. Desk. Chair. Filing cabinet. Locked drawer. A second chair nobody uses because I don’t invite people over to watch me glaring at multiple screens.

There’s a legal pad beside the laptop filled with names, dates, and questions I have no answers to. Not yet.

I stare at the pinboard I stuck up on the wall above the monitors. Maggie’s name is written on a card in black marker in the center. Another with Tom White’s name sits next to it. Beneath them is one for Lucy White, beside an image of the little girl’s face printed from a school newsletter I probably shouldn’t have accessed.

Laurel Sterling’s card is pinned to the side, because I don’t know where she fits yet.

Ben’s name card is at the bottom. I don’t need a picture of him.

There’s a photo of Maggie printed from an old community page stuck above her card. Redwood Run Market, maybe six years ago. She’s standing near a stall, laughing at something outside the frame. Dark hair. Pretty. Bright in a way people call ‘free spirited’ when they don’t have to clean up after it.

Ben had that brightness. His was steadier though. Less spark, more flame.

I stare at the missing woman’s picture. “What did you do, Maggie?” I ask her, as if she’ll talk back and tell me her secrets.

The board stares back at me. Maggie’s face, Lucy’s face. Tom’s name.

My phone buzzes beside the laptop.

Unknown number.

I answer on the second ring. “Purnell.”

There’s a pause.

People pause when I answer like that. They expect hello. Maybe some warmth. Not my fault their expectations are too high.

“Uh… this is Randy?”

I look at the name written on the notepad beside me.

Randy Kline. Bartender. The next town over. Works at a place Maggie used to visit sometimes. According to Tess at The Mile Marker, Randy likes gossip, cash tips, and women who laugh at his jokes.

Tragic set of interests.

“You called me,” I say.

“Yeah. You left me a message?”

“I did.”

Another pause. Longer. I can hear noise behind him. Music. Glasses clinking. Voices. He’s at work or pretending to be. “You were asking about Maggie White?”

“Sterling,” I correct him.

“Yeah, but she goes by White sometimes.”