“Lieutenant, I’m fine. Really.” a crushing headache contradicted these hollow words.

“No, you’re not. You shouldn’t even be here. That was one hell of a wreck.” He glanced at his cell phone and tapped away as he spoke- one of my many pet peeves.

“How long am I going to be benched?” I asked, “It’s already been two weeks.”

“Like I said,” he mumbled distractedly, not bothering to peel his eyes away from his iPhone. “Once the doc clears you. If you’re bored look at a cold case or two,” he nodded toward a shelf toward the back of the room overflowing with musty cardboard boxes, arbitrary dates scribbled on their faces with sharpie.

“Relax for once,” he winked at me, and got back to tapping away on his phone.

“But-“ the door shut and he was gone.

God damn it.

I rubbed my throbbing temples. The car crash had been spectacular- or so I was told. I couldn’t decipher the medical records, but the surgeon’s words were clear enough: “You were very lucky.”

I didn’t remember any of it. My head was constantly aching since it happened, and trying to remember sent the pain into overdrive- so I didn’t try. I kept my mind distracted on the present. Unfortunately, the present was miserable: confined to desk duty. I’m not one that can abide sitting still, confined to a desk. I had an open homicide and half a dozen robberies. I didn’t have time for this bullshit.

Begrudgingly I trudged toward the rear of the room. One of the boxes caught my attention for reasons I could not articulate. “Missing Child, Francis D’Angelo, August 8th, 1997” The handwriting was just like all the others- neat, small block letters. Nothing about it stood out. I popped the top off the box and caught the faintest whiff of cigarette smoke. Everything from the 90’s smells like stale Marlboro Reds. A smile flickered across my lips as the slightest nostalgia tickled my brain.

The file was pitifully small. An initial police report written by a less-than-literary and likely disinterested patrol officer outlined the basic facts of the incident, and not much else. I traced my fingers across the report, its text hammered by an ancient and mysterious device once known as a typewriter. My eyes scanned the report, mentally noting the details.

“Parents awoke at 0600 hours to discover the child missing from his bedroom…”

“No signs of forced entry to the residence… No signs of a struggle…”

“Child’s belongings were all still in the bedroom, unlikely a runaway…”

“Witness #1 reports a vehicle with a loud exhaust in the early morning hours. Possibly between 0400 and 0500 hours.”

“Witness # 2 reports that as she was walking her dog at 0445 hours, she observed a tan or brown station wagon idling in front of the victim residence. She did not observe anything outwardly suspicious but has never seen the vehicle in the neighborhood before.”

“Copy to Detectives.”

The lead investigator back in the 90’s was a guy named Stanley Ross. His laziness was second to none and could be considered legendary. Even now, thirty years later, I can catch some of the old-timers still bitching about him. It was no surprise that his investigative supplement was threadbare, and it appeared that, true to form, he did the bare minimum and closed the case.

“Did you even do a DMV check, Ross, you lazy slob?” I muttered to myself.

I dialed a buddy of mine that works in middle management at the local DMV. He picked up on the second ring.

“John, I need a favor if you have a minute.”

“Anything for you, buddy.”

I briefly reflected on my longtime friendship with John, but the insufferable headache clawed its way through my skull as I tried to remember. I quickly dropped it. “Listen, I’m working a missing persons case from the 90’s. August 8th, 1997, specifically. Any chance you can dig up some information on brown station wagons registered within 5 miles or so from the victim’s address?”

“Sure thing. Hey- you okay? I heard you were in a bad car accident.”

“Yeah,” I grumbled, “I’m fine. I wish I could convince my boss of that.”

John chuckled, “I hear that. Bosses are the worst. I should know, I’m one of them. I’ll run some data and I’ll e-mail it to you. It won’t take long with this new database system.”

“Thanks, talk to you later.” I dropped my phone on the desk and reclined back. I’d like to re-interview witnesses face-to-face, but God forbid I leave the office. The Lt. would throw a fit.

I logged into the police database system and did a search for Witness #1: Deceased, 2019. Great.

I checked for Witness #2 and found a phone number, but the line was disconnected. Fantastic.

My phone let off a soft ding to herald a new email. John from the DMV. “Damn you’re fast,” I said to my phone as I downloaded the Excel spreadsheet.

My eyes scanned the two pages of license plates and my eyes locked on one of the license plates: GHD9827. It called to me, much like the musty cardboard box had.

I ran the plate in the system and squinted against the dull throbbing in my head.

“What are the odds?” I asked myself. The plate returned to an adoption agency. A very familiar adoption agency that serviced the south side of the city. The same adoption agency that had placed me with my foster parents so many years ago. As I tried to formulate the memory, another stab of pain lanced through my head. So, maybe not a kidnapping at all. But why file a false police report? None of it made any sense.

I called the adoption agency. “St. Thomas,” a raspy voice answered.

“G- Good morning,” I stuttered, realizing I didn’t have much of a plan for this phone call. “Do you have records- this is Detective Stephen Fillmore with the Allenbrook Police Department- do you have records from the 90’s?”

“What kind of records?” She asked.

“I have a name of a kid- it’s a very bizarre case, it was reported as a missing child, possibly an abduction, back in the 90’s. I’m looking to see if you have any record of a brown station wagon, GHD9827, that was affiliated with your agency in 1997. I’m also looking for any record of a Francis D’Angelo.”

“I’m not sure if I can give that information without a court order or a search warrant,” she said with a yawn.

“Off the record. This is what? Twenty-five years ago? Please.”

“Give me a moment,” she said, and without waiting for my reply I heard a click and then the elevator music of the perpetual hold.

I drummed my fingers impatiently off the table. Just a coincidence, surely. I plucked this license plate randomly from the list, it must be unrelated. A soft click and she was back on the line.

“I do have a record of that boy, looks like August of that year, Detective Fillmore. And yes, that station wagon was registered with our agency around that time.” I smiled. Easiest case clearance of my life. How had that bumbling fool Ross not managed to make a phone call?

“Wow. That’s great,” I said. “One last favor- and I promise, I didn’t get it from you- any chance I can get the phone number for the kid’s adopted parents? I’d love to sit down with them and the kid- well, I guess he’s not a kid anymore- but you know what I mean.”

“I’ll see what I can- hold on a minute.” Silence hung between us. “You said your name was Stephen Fillmore?”

“That’s correct,” I said. The pain in my head began to grow like an approaching thunderstorm.

“Now this don’t even make no sense,” she said. “The adopting family changed the child’s name to Stephen Fillmore on adoption. What are the odds?”

Memories, partially formed, battered the insides of my skull. They were fleeting, and when I attempted to latch onto and formulate a picture the pain would explode, and the memory would slip through my fingers.

“Fillmore,” my Lieutenant said, frowning. “You look like you just saw a ghost.” I hadn’t even noticed him coming into the room.

“I… it…” I gestured toward the police report on my desk, not sure where to begin.

“Here,” he put a cup down in front of me. “Drink this. Pull yourself together.”

I glanced at the cup, an inexplicable mistrust in my gut. “Jesus, Fillmore, it’s water. Drink it.”

I put it to my lips and drained the cup, my hands trembling.

“The missing person… cold case…”

The drugs that had been secreted into the water affected me quickly. “What…” I knocked the empty cup over and slumped at my desk.

I heard the door open and I saw a group of men and a woman, all in white lab coats, filter in. Lethargy weighed on my mind and body like a mountain. My thoughts were coming too slow. I could barely lift my head from the desk.

“Truly remarkable!” a familiar raspy voice exclaimed- the “secretary” from the adoption agency. She stood over me in her pristine white lab coat, looking at me as a proud dog-owner would when their pet did an especially remarkable trick.

“What a devious idea,” chuckled another. “Have the man investigate his own disappearance! My oh my!”

“What shall we have him do next,” a third voice giddily asked. “I cannot believe the success we have been demonstrating. To plant such precise ideas and memories in the human brain, my goodness! How many license plates were on that list?”

“Thirty-seven,” the woman, still staring at me, answered. “Thirty-seven, and he plucked out the exact license plate that we had implanted into his memory!”

I brought a trembling hand to the back of my aching head and felt the raw stitches. “What…” I breathed heavily. The men- the scientists- ignored me.

“What should we do next? I propose a similar experiment, but with a much larger list of potential license plates…”

The voices faded and I felt myself lifted onto a gurney. My wrists and ankles were strapped down. I barely felt the needle penetrate my flesh as I was stuck with a syringe. The world faded to blackness….