Page 147 - Musings 2020

Vidya if she knew where Susan and Zucc lived which to his surprise she didn't. He decided to
head back to the police station to search for the location of Mr. and Mrs. Hard.

On his way back, Jabaar thought of the cases he had solved before he was transferred here.
Back in Brooklyn, he had solved many kidnapping cases but this one felt different. He just
didn't know how. Upon arriving at the police station, Jabaar sat down at his computer and
started running a state search on the Hards. He tried five times, but the names didn't seem to
exist in the database. It became clear to Jabaar at that moment that something extremely fishy
was going on. The Hards didn't exist. They were living under false identities. Jabaar took a
deep breath and covered his head with his hands, as he knew that to find Rakunde, he'd have
to start from nowhere.

Jabaar decided to go back to meet Ms. Kapoor and ask her if the agency had given any way
of contacting the Hards. Jabaar went back to the house, to find a panic-stricken Vidya curled
up on the sofa. She looked as though she was ready to throw up, as though she can't spend
another moment without her Rakunde.

“Vidya, I know that right now, things are not looking bright. But I assure you, I’ll do
everything in my power to bring Rakunde back’” Jabaar said as he tried to console her. He
realised that one can only be so strong on the outside. Once Vidya had calmed down, Jabaar
started asking her more about the agency and the Hards. Vidya revealed that the agency had
not told her anything other than that they could be trusted, and broke down into tears. Jabaar
realised that Vidya wasn’t going to be of much help, in her current condition. He decided that
the best course of action was to go to the Head Office of the agency itself.

As he was on his way out he saw that one of the artifacts that he had seen last time on display
was missing. He recollected that there used to be a collection of glass plates there. He asked
if anyone had come while he was away or if she had recently moved any artifact. She replied
saying that she had anger issues since her divorce and that losing her son made her feel so
useless and angry that she broke all those plates to relieve her stress. Jabaar felt sorry for her
but felt sad at the same time as yet another possible clue came to nothing.

Jabaar on his drive back tried thinking of various ways to find the Hards and then essentially
Rakunde. He was still perplexed about how the kidnapper entered and exited the house when
everything was locked, to begin with. He felt as though the rent-a-child agency will be able to
shed some light on the problems he was facing.

It was a three-hour trip but Jabaar finally managed to reach the agency headquarters. He was
surprised at what he saw in front of him. The place was bigger than the biggest apartment in
Pacifica. He went inside and was treated warmly until he was told that he was not a customer
but instead was here to investigate a kidnapping. The moment they came to know that he was
the police they had a very changed attitude in behavior. He was offered to directly meet
Officer Johnathan Santorini. The attitude of the officer was very different though. He told
him that he had legal papers showing that he had the right to refuse to show who the Hards
were until and unless he got a court-mandated order. Jabaar tried to squeeze as much
information as he could out of them but all he managed to get was that the names Zucc Hard
and Susan Hard were just aliases.

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