The coffee cup in front of me gave a blank stare, matching my face. I sat in my favorite greasy spoon cafe watching the rain dry up and the sun rise in the distance. I still couldn't get my mind to process the fact that last night was real and happened. Part of me wished very badly that is one of the nightmares that had frequently been interrupting my sleep.

The truck had plates on it from another vehicle. A car with those plate numbers had been reported stolen two months earlier. All the information in the glove box, registration and insurance paperwork was phony. Only thing real about the entire situation was that a little girl had been abandoned on a desolate rainy road in the middle of the night.

Without anything to go on, the department had no choice in the matter. The little girl was turned over to child protective services to become part of the foster care system. I wished against all hope that I would find something in that truck that was real, a clue that could lead me to people who might care.

The truck sits in our impound yard. The forensic team will go through it since it is considered a crime scene. Hopefully somebody left behind enough material to get some DNA. Even with DNA, the person still has to be in the database.

“Hey partner,” a steady voice snaps me out of my trance, “You look like you've seen a ghost or something.”

“Hey,” is all I can say back to Thomas McClain, the “big T” for short.

“I heard about what happened last night,” T remarked as he helped himself to a seat on the other side of the booth from me, “That's some weird twisted stuff.”

“If the license, registration and insurance hadn't been phonies I'd say we are looking for a body somewhere,” offering my thoughts, “Like the adult got kidnapped and the kid was left behind.”

“That's what I would come to at first thought as well,” T said as the waitress filled his coffee cup and put a blueberry muffin on a plate in front of him without asking, “Thanks Suzie Q.”

“Anytime,” the middle aged woman remarked as she moved on to the other more demanding customers.

“Weird thing is,” I say as T bites a quarter of the muffin away in one pass, “Since they left it in the middle of the road there are no foot prints.”

“Even if there were,” T says after gulping down the muffin bite, “They are long gone by now. We got almost an inch of rain between yesterday afternoon and this morning.”

“No chance of a witness.”

“Oh, somebody might have been out there.”

“Are they going to talk to us?”

“And risk getting deported? Probably not.”

“You're going to die choking some day,” I observe as he finishes his muffin.

“Bad habit I picked up as a rookie. Eat quick when on shift because you never know when that damn radio is going to come calling.”