Lies Left Unsaid

Detective Brandon

There was something about Dr. Patrick that seemed off. I couldn't put my finger on it. It could have just been, that like many doctors, his bedside manner was lacking. But there was something in my detective gut that told me to dig a little deeper. So I asked for video surveillance of the year Caitlyn interned at the hospital, as well as any surveillance from time spent there during her senior year. Obtaining it was a bit of an uphill battle at first. They tried to say it violated patient confidentiality, but I merely wanted to see Caitlyn's movements around the hospital to determine who she spent time with. I also, not-so-kindly, reminded the head of public relations at the hospital, that should the media get wind of their uncooperative attitude, then it could be a PR nightmare for them. Caitlyn's case continued to be in the forefront of nearly every news program across the country. The media's fascination with her was what we called "missing white woman syndrome." There's nothing the public enjoys more than a beautiful white woman who disappears and is possibly murdered. They were salivating over every twist and turn of the story, taking any little detail that was leaked and spinning it into an all day event in which newscasters and "experts" weighed in on whether or not this was the next big clue in solving the mystery. Given the country's obsession with Caitlyn, it was in the hospital's best interest to protect their reputation, by showing the media that they were doing everything possible to aide in the investigation.

I gave Martìnez the mundane task of searching through endless hours of the hospital's video footage, a task that he was less than thrilled to accept. I believe his exact words were "fuck you Brandon," to which I simply grinned. His charm was beginning to grow on me.

In the meantime, I decided a trip to St. Louis was in order to find out more about the year that Caitlyn went to boarding school. It just didn't seem to make any sense. Why would a girl with popularity, beauty and excellent grades, all of a sudden decide to leave it all behind her junior year? She wasn't being bullied. She hadn't gone through a horrible break-up. She wasn't failing classes. None of the typical reasons for switching schools that late in the game, made any sense. If anything, changing to a different school would bring a host of new problems. She'd have to make new friends, a daunting task for a teenage girl, especially since most students have established their cliques by junior year and are less than accommodating to newcomers. She might have even needed to take extra classes since not all credits transfer from one school to another. Something had to have happened to make her want to leave Highland Park High and go to a school in an entirely different state. Whatever it was, it must have been bad; bad enough that she wound up dead just one year later. Maybe she would have been better off staying in St. Louis her senior year. Maybe she'd still be alive. Or maybe Caitlyn Coates was the kind of girl that was headed for a tragic ending no matter where she went.