Free The One That Got Away by Simon Wood

There were four during those months, and judging by the addresses, they’d all occurred in and around her neighborhood. The interesting feature to these call outs was the responding officer. Officer Javier Martinez had answered three of the four calls, and he was the arresting officer in one of the disturbing-the-peace cases. He’d also tagged Zoë’s name, asking to be contacted if she was picked up on a charge. It looked as if Zoë had a guardian angel. Greening picked up the phone and left a message for Martinez to contact him.
    Greening ran Zoë’s name through the national crime databases, and her name came back clean, other than her and Holli’s abduction. Databases were limited in their reach. They gave him the official account of a person—what they’d done, how much they were worth—but they didn’t tell him about a person. Social media was the place to get a window into someone’s personality. While some saw social media as a twenty-first-century scourge, it was a godsend to law enforcement. People forgot how public they made their lives—even criminals. You were what you retweeted, for better or worse.
    He plugged Zoë’s name into Facebook, Pinterest, Tumblr, Google+, Twitter, and all the other usual social media suspects. Zoë had Facebook and Twitter accounts, but both were dormant. The two had been pretty lively until fifteen months ago. Zoë’s last post on Facebook simply said: Vegas, baby! In the string of replies was a comment from Holli that said: What happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas.
    And it had , he thought sadly.
    Zoë hadn’t posted since. Others had. There were comments from friends, asking where she was and what had happened, but no responses from Zoë. Michaela Shannon looked to be a persistent friend. Every few weeks for the past year, up until three months ago, she’d dropped a note on Zoë’s status page. Messages included: “How are you doing?” “Hope you’re OK.” “Call me.” “Where are you?” Her last message had been: “I’m worried about you. Please call.” All her pleas had gone unanswered.
    Greening shot Michaela Shannon a private message from his account, introducing himself and asking her to get in contact with him about Zoë.
    Greening saw a shadow descend over him. He turned to find a uniform containing a barrel-chested man in his fifties with thick salt-and-pepper hair.
    He smiled. “You know, I can cite you for social networking on police time.”
    Greening smiled back. “It’s work stuff. Honest.”
    “Javier Martinez. You called?”
    Greening stood and shook Martinez’s hand. He gestured to his one and only visitor’s chair, and Martinez sat.
    Greening didn’t know Martinez but instantly liked him. His friendly manner put Greening immediately at ease. It was such a great asset for a beat cop. Invariably, people encountered the police at the worst moments in their life. It made all the difference if the officer was viewed as someone who was there to help.
    “What can I do for you, Inspector?”
    “Zoë Sutton.”
    Martinez’s smile disappeared. “She in trouble again?”
    “Yes, but not in the way you’re thinking,” he said and explained the events from the previous night.
    “Poor kid. Is there a connection?”
    “Possibly. I’m checking into her, and I see you’ve been asked to be contacted in case of trouble—may I ask why?”
    “I picked her up on a disturbing-the-peace thing a year ago. It should have been for assault. She’d gotten into it with some guy who was hitting on her in a bar, and she hit him when he wouldn’t back off.”
    “Why didn’t you push for the assault?”
    “I felt sorry for her. I could tell there was something more to the situation than a girl who wasn’t slow when it came to throwing a punch. I got her to open up, and she told me what’d happened to her friend. It was still raw for her back then and continues to be so. The girl needed help, not prison time, so I changed the dynamic of the