Previously on The Vanishing Years, when the news breaks that socialite and heiress Lydia Fairfax has gone missing, the newsroom spirals into chaos. Reporters swarm around TVs, hungry for scraps from a police press conference.

Assigned to the story, reporter Ethan Cole digs past the official line, reaching trusted sources for rumors no one wants on record. What makes this case unsettling isn’t just Fairfax’s celebrity, it’s that her powerful family doesn’t seem particularly concerned. Behind the glamour and headlines, something stranger lurks in the silence.

**

Lydia’s disappearance was suspicious, but I couldn’t prove it, not yet. And truth be told, it wasn’t even the story that had my full attention.

For weeks, I’d been tracking something else, something quieter but far stranger: a string of elderly women vanishing across the city.

While skimming our site archives, I’d noticed a pattern no one else seemed to care about: seven women, all seventy or older, all listed as missing, presumed dead.

Each story was a throwaway: a couple of paragraphs filed by some junior reporter. No follow-ups. No outrage. Just a shrug.

The details were slippery, the circumstances vague. But the pattern was obvious, glaring even. Most of the women lived in the rougher parts of town, places the news cycle barely touched. I kept asking myself: why was I the only one connecting the dots?

I wasn’t completely alone, though. My best source inside the department, Detective Terrence Graham, about a year from retirement, had noticed it, too.

“We don’t know much,” he told me over the phone. His voice had that gravelly edge it always did when he didn’t want to say something out loud. “But I dug a little for you. Truth is, the department doesn’t care. A couple of detectives are assigned, sure, but it’s nothing.”

“Why not?” I asked, though I already knew the answer.

“Because these women were nobodies. Poor. Mostly Black. Lived alone. No families, no headlines. You know that old saying, if a tree falls in the forest …”

He trailed off. I heard papers shuffle on his desk, the kind of stalling noise he made when he was sitting on something bigger. I kept quiet, let the silence do the work. Terrence always broke before I did.

Finally, he exhaled. “We do have one lead.”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“They all worked for the same place. A company called Temex. Biotech firm. Got a plant out by the edge of the city.”

I sat up straight. “That’s not a lead, Terrence, that’s a bombshell. What the fuck?”

He sighed. “I know. But like I said, no one upstairs gives a damn. It won’t matter until somebody like you makes it matter.”

That was all I needed to hear. Thank you, Terrence.

To be continued …

Read Part 1 here