So Yesterday

Chapter 10

ONE THING ABOUT BEING A COOL HUNTER, YOU REALIZE ONE simple fact: Everything has a beginning.

Nothing always existed. Everything had an Innovator.

We all know who invented telephones and lightbulbs, but the humbler innovations are made anonymously. But there was a first paper airplane, a first pair of jeans cut off into shorts, a first paper-clip necklace. And traveling back in time: a first back scratcher, a first birthday present, a first hole designated as the one to throw garbage in.

Once a good idea spreads, however, it's hard to believe it didn't always exist.

Take detective stories. The first was written by Edgar Allan Poe in 1841. (Spoiler alert: The monkey did it.) Over the next 163 years Poe's innovation infected countless books, films, plays, and TV shows. And like most rampant viruses, the detective character has mutated into every imaginable form: little old ladies who solve crimes, medieval monks who solve crimes, cats who solve crimes, even criminals who solve crimes.

My dad used to devour mystery novels (about epidemiologists who solve crimes, I'm sure) until one day he read an interview with a real homicide detective in Los Angeles. The guy had been on the force for over forty years, and in all that time not a single major crime had ever been solved by an amateur detective.

Not one.

With that in mind, we took Mandy's phone to the cops.

"Relationship to the missing person?"

"Uh, co-worker? I mean, she gets me jobs."

"And where do you work, Hunter?"

"Nowhere in particular. I'm a… consultant. A shoe consultant. Mostly shoes."

Detective Machal Johnson looked me up and down.

"Shoe consultant? Good money in that?"

"I mostly get paid in shoes."

One eyebrow was slowly rising. "Okay. Shoe consultant." The detective typed as he talked: sleepily. I could have input the letters faster into my cell phone (if I'd had one). Johnson's ancient computer looked equally slow. The screen was all one greenish color—the glowing letters fireflies trapped in mint toothpaste. "So this Mandy Jenkins is also a… shoe consultant?"

"Yeah, I guess that's what you'd call her."

"And when do you guess you last saw her?"

"Yesterday, about five."

"Less than twenty-four hours ago?"

Jen nudged me, and Detective Johnson looked like he was about to take his hands off the keyboard, but I didn't let him. It had taken us an hour to get to this point, past desk sergeants, metal detectors, and a wide variety of unimpressed expressions.

"She was supposed to meet us this morning," I said. "At Lispenard and Church."

He sighed and typed, mouthing the street names. "Any evidence of foul play?"

"Yes. We found her phone." I placed it on the detective's desk.

He turned it over once in his hand. "That's all? No purse? No wallet?"

"That's it."

"Where?"

"Where we were supposed to meet her. It was just inside this abandoned building."

He put the phone down. "You were supposed to meet her inside an abandoned building?"

"No, on the corner. But the phone was inside, nearby. And there's a picture on it."

"A picture on the building?"

"No, on the phone. It's also a camera. That's the picture on the screen."

Putting on half-lens glasses that seemed to suddenly age him, the detective peered at the phone. "Huh. What do you know." He took in the tiny lens next to the antenna, squinted at the screen, and gave it a New York cop's version of the Nod. "And what exactly is that a picture of?"

"A face in the dark. We saw that guy."

"What guy?"

"The guy in the picture."

"There's a guy in the picture?"

"You have to use wax paper to see it."

"He chased us," Jen said.

Detective Johnson looked at her, then his eyes swept back and forth across the space between us a few times, an alien watching a tennis match and trying to grasp the rules. "Have you tried calling your friend?"

"We can't. That's her phone."

"At her office? At her home?"

"Sure, her roommate too. But we just got machines."

"Okay." Detective Johnson pushed his glasses up higher onto his nose and settled back from the rigors of typing into the creaky comfort of his office chair. "I know you're concerned about your friend, but let me tell you this about missing people: Ninety-nine out of hundred aren't missing. They had a personal emergency, or got stuck on a train, or went out of town and forgot to tell you. With adults we don't even start looking for twenty-four hours unless there's a reason to believe foul play was involved."

I felt Jen twitching next to me. She was dying to get out of the cop shop, back to her new job as an Innovator who solves crimes.

"Now, you did find her phone, which you are sure is hers…" (I nodded like a puppy)"… but that's not really a sign of foul play. Until she's been missing for twenty-four hours, it's just a lost phone. At which point you should have her roommate or a relative or some other adult call me if she's still missing. I'll keep your information on file."

I could tell from his tone it was useless arguing. "Oh. Thanks."

"So, do you want to turn in this phone as lost property, or would you like to save your friend some paperwork when she reappears and hold on to it?" He held out the phone, making it clear who was being saved from paperwork.

"Sure," Jen said eagerly. "We can give it to her. No trouble."

Detective Machal Johnson nodded slowly, ceremoniously handing the phone back to me.

"Your public-spiritedness is appreciated, I assure you."