A Time to Run by J.M. Peace

rough track. It suited his purposes.
    He started being a little more judicious with his victims. He wanted girls with some spirit, who could keep the game going longer than some blown-out old whore. He was very pleased with today’s choice. Samantha Willis had not yet started crying and had shown a stubborn streak. He would enjoy it that much more when he broke her.
    Saturday 10:21 am
    Janine had switched on. Her mind ticked over as she made a mental list of what to follow up. This was going to be the mother of big jobs – a missing police officer.
    The pressure was on now, all the boxes had to be ticked. The occurrence report had to go on first before the official investigation could start. The report had to be made in person by the informant, the boyfriend, who had first reported it. Jake had made the call to his academy buddy at Angel’s Crossing to get that moving. She had also called her sergeant friend in Angel’s Crossing to give him a heads up. It was a small tight community and he appreciated hearing the news from Janine rather than from the gossip machine. He was going to go to the station, let the senior sergeant know and provide support to the junior staff. As soon as the missing persons report went on, the staff out there would start buzzing.
    The bosses at headquarters would get wind of it too. Someone would call the local inspector and it would get passed up the line. Part of Janine hoped this was not a false alarm. If they were acting too quickly and not giving her a chance to surface of her own accord, Sammi would have a lot of explaining to do. Her name would be known by the top bosses at headquarters and for all the wrong reasons.
    However, if she was missing, if she did need help, then everyone would regret not taking action as soon as possible. Especially Janine. Whether or not Sammi was in The Job was beside the point. The sooner an investigation started, the fresher incidents were in people’s minds, the more details they would find, and the better the chances of finding her.
    For Janine, it was also a case of CYA – Cover Your Arse. If the worst-case scenario was true and an officer had been abducted, then an internal investigation would also be initiated. Would her actions and decisions stand up to scrutiny? Many, many officers had been burnt because they had acted too slowly or fobbed someone off because they thought nothing would come of it.
    Janine knew this intimately, had experienced the rough end of the pineapple. No one had all the answers at an internal investigation, even when everything had been done by the book. There were no such things as clear-cut right and wrong answers. It was explanation and justification. But Janine had been caught once flick-passing a complaint. She had completely misjudged the seriousness of the information and had been left with no answers when the tough questions were asked. Her career had been left teetering.
    So now she tended to overreact rather than underreact. Where a lazier cop may have delayed and made excuses for Sammi, Janine kicked off the investigation.
    Now that the woman was officially listed as missing, Janine could start the formal process. Triangulation to try to pinpoint the location of Sammi’s phone. Put together a profile of the barman. Check out the bar and see if they had any CCTV footage. Check out the bouncers on duty. Get a statement from the girlfriend.
    And look for the barman who had left work so suddenly.
    Op Echo also warranted a phone call. Based at headquarters, this was the operation room investigating the Corbett case. They generated the op names at random now, rather than calling it something to do with the case. The staff were pulled from different stations to provide ongoing manpower until the case was resolved one way or another. There were similarities which jumped out at Janine. Would the Op Echo staff be able to identify some more? The same instinct which told Janine to act on the