(Continued from Searching for Katrina)

Claire walked up to the front door to the police station. This was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done. As she pushed open the door, she turned and waved at Hans and Jean to indicate that she would be fine, and they drove away.

Claire walked into the station and waited at the front counter, clutching her purse. She couldn’t believe she was here, of all places, asking the police for help to find her daughter when it was their fault she was gone. But it had to be done. They were the most likely to know where she was. Claire waited.

Jimmy Barnes was supposed to be on duty at the main desk. Then again, this coffee machine was supposed to work. He had eight hours left on his shift. He needed—please you pretty little machine—he needed coffee. Ten minutes was a long time to leave the desk unattended. It was just a small fraction of the time which he’d spend accidentally dozing off if this stupid piece of—oh come on, baby, gorgeous, precious—crap didn’t give him his freaking coffee. One cup. He wasn’t an addict, he wasn’t blowing half his pay check on Starbucks, he just wanted one cup at the start of each shift. Was that too much to ask for? I love you, I love you, please work.

...Fifteen minutes after abandoning his post, Officer Barnes returned to the main desk. He returned with an empty cup and a hollow pit of despair.

He tried smiling, but it was a sad attempt. “Hello, ma’am. May I help you?”

His beautiful coffee.... it was not meant to be.

After a few minutes of waiting, a short, red headed young man returned, an empty coffee cup dangling in one hand. He seemed to be doing his best to appear awake, even attempting a smile, which turned out more like a grimace.

“I hope so,” she responded to his query. “Last night there was a police raid at Xavier’s Sister School for Gifted Children. My daughter was there, visiting a friend that had just enrolled. She is currently missing and I was wondering if you have any information… I mean, your officers were there…” Claire trailed off. This was harder than even she had expected. Her daughter was missing, dammit.

Jimmy immediately straightened up, and set the empty cup down. He was behind the desk and hovering both over the computer keyboard and a pad of paper in a blink of an eye. "Don't worry, Mrs. ...?" He paused to let her fill in, and stood ready to copy her name down. "We'll find your your daughter. Could you give me her name and a description? Also, the name and description of the friend she was visiting." His mind was already listing possibilities:

If she'd been brought in to Registration with the mutants:
- Check in at registration for any humans who'd been accidentally brought in; the blood tests should have turned her up, though probably not until she'd been shipped to the camps (Crap. Now there was a lawsuit.). Check if anyone matched her description with the registers, while he was at it.
- If they hadn't run all the blood work yet: check the camps
- Check with the officers on site to see if anyone in the group of children who'd been teleported from Registration matched her description
- Check the morgue

If she hadn't been brought in to Registration:
- Check with the officers at the raid; see if anyone saw her or her friend
- Cross fingers that she hadn't gone with the freaks who'd escaped, because they had no clue where those had gone, and the muties weren't likely to let a human girl run off and spill their location
- Check the morgue

He decided on two courses of action right off the bat: make sure someone was covering their legal asses on this one, and check the morgue.

“I’m Claire Dumonde, Mrs.” She continued as he wrote down the info. “My daughter is Katrina Dumonde. This is her,” Claire handed the officer one of the pictures from her wallet. It was from their last weekend at the lake for the summer. It showed Katrina standing on the end of a dock, wearing a white sundress with a strawberry print. She was facing the camera, but her eyes were diverted, she had been watching a heron take off at the time. “She’s twelve, four feet, eight inches, small for her age.”

“Her friend is Rachel McDonald. She has chin length brown hair, and freckles. She’s taller than Katrina by, maybe six inches.” She looked at the officer hopefully, lines of worry etched into her forehead. What if she wasn’t okay?

The photo was on the copier behind him in a blink, and three names—Claire Dumonde, Katrina Dumonde, and Rachel McDonald—were going through preliminary searches in the database as he turned to scribble down the girls’ physical descriptions. Scribbling complete, he turned to the copier, and handed the original photo back to Mrs. Dumonde as his other hand put the copy onto the fax machine and dialed, in rapid succession, the numbers of the Missing Persons unit, the Mutant and Mutant-Related Crimes task force, the registration building, and the morgue. As the fax machine picked up the copy and began to feed it through, he scribbled a quick note—“Human—Katrina Dumonde—possibly caught up in Mansion raid.”—and the station’s number, and put the paper in to feed after the photo. As he turned back to Mrs. Dumonde, his eyes briefly glanced over the initial search results from the database—stopped briefly over the word cross-reference to “Senator Dumonde”—and went back to the woman before him.

“Here’s what I’m going to do, Mrs. Dumonde.” He spoke softly, and confidently. “I’m going to get the word out about your daughter, and we’re going to find her for you.”

This was Officer Jimmy Barnes without his coffee. You should have seen him with it.

“Thank you,” Claire responded. “I truly hope that you can help.”

As Claire was speaking, the door to the police station opened behind her, and Claire turned to see who was coming in. It was her husband, carrying two Starbucks glasses.

As Jean caught her glance, he grumbled, “That idiot detective up and moved his office, so we didn’t get anywhere with that. Any luck here?” He handed Claire one of the coffee cups and looked at Officer Barnes with an expectant look on his face.

Co... Coffee...

The jar of a phone ringing next to his elbow shook Jimmy out of his sudden jealous daze. He scooped it up, with a be-back-with-you-in-a-moment look at Mrs. Dumonde. “Central Park Precinct; Officer Barnes speaking.” The sudden careful control on his face probably did not go unnoticed. “Thank you,” he ended the brief conversation, carefully returning the phone to its receiver. He took a breath, and returned his gaze to the parents standing on the other side of the desk from him. “Mrs. Dumonde, Mr. Dumonde, I cannot stress enough that this is not a certainty.

“That was the city morgue. Earlier this morning, a Jane Doe was brought in who is approximately the age of Katrina. They would like you to come down, and...” ‘Identify the body’ was far too stale. “Identify the body.” But any other phrase that came to mind was just too stupid.

Claire set her coffee down on the desk as soon as Officer Barnes had stressed that it wasn’t a certainty. Somehow she knew what was coming, she would have done anything not to hear his next words. Morgue. Jane Doe. Identify the body.

This couldn’t be happening. Her daughter couldn’t be dead. She was only twelve and had only barely begun to live. How could she have let this happen? She swore that when she got Katrina back she’d never let her out of her sight. If she was alive, Oh God. She felt Jean steadying her. She hadn’t realized that she had been sinking to the floor.

Jean set his coffee next to the other one as her steadied his wife. Apparently it was her turn to be in shock. Jean just simply couldn’t believe it. Was it just two days ago he had kissed his daughter goodnight? Was it just yesterday that they had decided to send her to that God forsaken school? Why had they been in such a hurry? Really they had been concerned for the safety of their daughter. You can never trust the safety of your children to the care of others. Look at what had happened.

Realizing that he would have to be the strong one, Jean responded, “I hope they are wrong. I hope it isn’t her, but… we will go down there. To… to be sure.”

God, please don’t let that be Katrina lying in that place. He felt bad hoping that it was someone else’s child that had died, but it didn’t change the way he felt.

There had been two cups of coffee set in front of Officer Jimmy Barnes. Therefore, an inconspicuous splash from each had found its way into his orange coffee mug as he turned the desk over to another officer and went to check out a car. The parents were distracted with distress, and maybe it was a little below-the-waist of him to steal their coffee while they were vulnerable, but...

...But Jimmy needed his coffee, and chances were good both those cups were going to go to waste. Besides, he was making up for it by being a good guy and driving them himself, instead of playing the shuffle-the-parents game. They wouldn’t have to deal with anyone else, they wouldn’t have to explain their situation again, they wouldn’t have to listen to inane comments of sympathy. So really, he was being a good guy, right?

...Coffee should not come with this many moral questions.

In any case, they were at the morgue now. Jimmy had led them over to the main desk, and the worker there had led them to the doctor in charge, who had greeted the parents politely and distantly before leading them down into an examination room. A morgue’s sort of examination room. Officer Barnes was glad he’d gotten his coffee before he’d stepped into this.

On a metal table before them was a white sheet that covered a small form. The doctor gently pulled the sheet back over the girl’s face, and stood back to allow Mr. and Mrs. Dumonde space.

Most of Claire’s concentration was on remembering to breathe. Inhale. Exhale. There was the figure on the table. Her breath caught again. Remember to breathe. Nothing seemed real. It was all an act. Jean steadied his wife and tried to mentally prepare himself for whatever… whoever was under that sheet. There was no way to prepare. He could only let it happen.

After an eternity and all too soon, the doctor pulled back the sheet. It took a moment to register. She was young, petite, and had blonde hair, but she wasn’t Katrina.

Claire let out a sob and clutched her husband. She cried tears of tension and relief. Not Katrina, not yet.

“It isn’t her,” Jean told the doctor, seeing the expression on his face. His own emotions were stirring, but he didn’t let them show. One of them had to be strong. “It isn’t her,” he repeated, to make it more real.

He was relieved and happy that it wasn’t Katrina that had died. At the same time, he felt his anger returning. If she wasn’t here, where was his daughter? This was all the fault of those mutants; what did they want her for anyway? Katrina could be anywhere, and Jean had no way to track her down except to rely on the police to keep looking. If only there was a way to get his daughter back. She was more important to him than anything. He loved her and wanted to protect her at all costs. Jean would do anything to get her back, anything to protect his family from the mutants that were trying to tear it apart.