《This Book》Chapter 22: Missing Person (Detective Nelson)

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The sun had nearly set behind the waters of The Atlantic ocean, the sky orange in the waning hours of the day. It made me realize how long I’d been sitting here pondering this case. I’d been doing this long enough to know that not everyone was found, not every story had a happy ending. Some eventually turned up dead after the fact, a few seemingly never turned up entirely, as if they’d vanished off the Earth entirely.

It was those cases that intrigued me the most. One had to wonder what exactly happened to these people. Were they simply dead? Or had they started new lives somewhere, some place where the world would never truly know what happened to them. It was the lack of closure that killed me I suppose, it was horrible to find someone dead, but at least you knew, with this… it was like reading a book only to find the last few pages missing.

This case especially bugged me for some reason. It wasn’t because this kid had made national news, I’d never heard of them before, it was something I couldn’t put my finger on… something fishy.

Leigh Leblanc, 29 years old, born 11/1/92. Identified as non-binary. No wife, no kids. Lived right here in Virginia Beach. Practically a recluse, mostly kept to themselves. Worked at home writing books and producing internet videos. The landlady of the apartment complex said they weren’t late with rent even once and described them as almost a perfect tenant.

That was pretty much all I had to go on. I watched one of the videos this person made, to be honest I found it to be conspiracy theory gibberish, but what do I know. The note they left certainly screamed “conspiracy nut”, talking about secret societies and cults and other such nonsense. This was a side they seemingly never showed to their landlady or family, at least not until the days before they left. The mom recalled their last phone conversation just before they disappeared, where they ranted about how “they found out” and “were coming for them.”

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There was still almost no explanation for the disappearance itself. Leigh just left their apartment as normal one day and… never came back. Nobody knew where they went, I asked seemingly everyone they knew, all across town, nobody had a clue. There was no video, no sightings, nothing. Even the most desperate cases usually had something, even if unsubstantial. All I had here was the camera footage of them leaving the apartment. It was genuinely like they’d literally disappeared.

I’d done all I could, the trail was cold as ice, I’d done all I could but… that wasn’t much. Even as I knew I had to move on to another case… I couldn’t stop thinking about this one, there had to be something I was missing, some shred of evidence that would lead me down the right path.

The sun had almost set entirely in the distance, so I picked myself up and walked back to the car. I thought back to those weirdo conspiracy videos… what exactly was a seraph anyway? The more I thought about it, the more questions I had.

Better not to think about such things I suppose. At any rate it seemed like this Leigh Leblanc didn’t want to be found. And so I put it out of mind, filed it with every other person still missing, every story without closure, every abrupt en-

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