Found Missing: Day 4

 Word Count: 24,057

Summary of Events:

Dallas took Det. Sgt. Nash to talk to Mrs. Hardwick's son and daughter-in-law, who were both shocked to hear that that Mrs. Hardwick was suspected kidnapped, with her son being clearly more distressed. Unfortunately neither they nor the other neighbours were able to offer any clues as to what the kidnapper might've been looking for, who they were, or why they would've kidnapped Mrs. Hardwick. A stop at the Alfredsson home again yielded the most information, including some more details fleshed out by the presence of Mrs. Alfredsson about both the community and the last recorded instance of activity at Mrs. Hardwick's property . . .

Excerpt of the Day:

“Nonetheless, I guess it does make it clear that this is not a community rife with crime,” Det. Sgt. Nash said.

“Not on the surface, no,” Mr. Alfredsson replied.

“Meaning?” Det. Sgt. Nash asked.

“If you’d get a warrant to search any farm around here you’d probably find unregistered guns and enough ammunition to recreate the Halifax Explosion,” Mr. Alfredsson replied. “That and like I told young Dallas here yesterday, sloppy tax work, health and building code concerns, animal welfare questions; not anything organised or malicious, but still lawbreaking. You can probably find the same thing about anywhere.”

“These were people highly resistant to the registration laws then?” Det. Sgt. Nash asked.

“Yes,” Mr. Alfredsson replied. “They don’t use their guns for crime, but they felt a little bit like their rights were infringed on.”

“Well, except for Fred Hansen,” Mrs. Alfredsson said.

“But he was caught,” Mr. Alfredsson said.

“Doing what?” Det. Sgt. Nash asked.

“Poaching,” Mr. Alfredsson replied. 

Det. Sgt. Nash nodded.

“But to borrow his idiom from yesterday, this is probably doing a lot more rabbit chasing than actual, productive work,” Mr. Alfredsson said, gesturing to Dallas for a second time. “Even if it has established that this community is not like Chicago or anything, just a typical sort of rural community.”

Det. Sgt. Nash nodded, glancing toward Dallas with a strange look, probably about the rabbit chasing idiom, which Dallas had actually picked up from Ded and enjoyed using.

“I did tell young Dallas most everything I could recall about Zelma, I don’t know, do you have anything else?” Mr. Alfredsson asked, looking toward his wife.

“I think I’ve seen less of Zelma lately than you have,” Mrs. Alfredsson replied. “I’ve been spending a lot of time with the grandkids and riding and I know for a fact that my schedule has always been quite different from Zelma’s so we hardly ever crossed paths, if we even saw each other. Outside of seeing that truck in the yard on the way to Kemsley I don’t know of anything strange happening with Zelma.”

“Truck in the yard?” Det. Sgt. Nash asked, turning toward Dallas.

“That’s why they thought she was moved into a home,” Dallas replied. “I’m pretty sure I told you that because I told you that I checked all the seniors’ homes in the area and came up with nothing.”

“Do you recall what make it was?” Mr. Alfredsson asked his wife. “I know it was red like Osborn’s.”

“That’s about all I saw,” Mrs. Alfredsson replied.

“But anyways, Detective, we thought Zelma had been moved to a home because we went down to Kemsley to visit our daughter on the twenty fifth of January, and as we were going past Zelma’s yard we saw a red pickup in the yard, and Osborn Hardwick drives a red pickup. His is a Ford, though, and we don’t know if this one was or not.”

Det. Sgt. Nash nodded. “Was anything loaded into it?”

“No, I’d presumed they’d just arrived to get started, I mean, it was just after sunrise,” Mr. Alfredsson replied.