Her Silent Cry

Twelve

The Amber Alert went out moments after Josie hung up with her contact at the State Police. All of their phones started blaring alarms. Ten minutes later, Josie’s phone rang. Bob Chitwood’s name flashed on the screen. She hit the answer icon and barked, “Quinn.”

Without preamble, Chitwood said, “This your doing, Quinn?”

Josie girded herself, waiting for his tirade, for him to possibly fire her for insubordination. “Yes.”

“You call the FBI, too?”

“Yes, sir. We have reason to believe now that this may have been a kidnapping.” She started to launch into an explanation, but Chitwood interrupted her.

“Shut up, Quinn,” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear it.”

“Sir?” Josie said, perplexed.

“I never said not to follow the evidence. But Quinn, by God, you’d better be right about this, or—”

“I know,” Josie cut in. “Or you’ll have my ass in a sling by the end of the week. Duly noted, sir.”

There was a long beat of silence. Just long enough to make Josie a little nervous. Then Chitwood said, “I’m glad we have an understanding, Quinn. Now get to work.”

He hung up, leaving Josie staring at her phone as though it was some alien object she had just discovered.

“What was that about?” Gretchen asked.

“I don’t know. Maybe he’s taking anger management classes or something?” Josie mused.

Gretchen, Mettner and Noah all erupted into laughter. Noah said, “Maybe we can get him into etiquette classes after that.”

“We can try,” Josie joked. “Come on, Mett, we’ll go interview some of these other moms. You know where they are?”

Mettner followed her to her car, scrolling on his phone as he walked. “Amy only gave me the names of two moms. Is that normal? For a seven-year-old to only have two friends?”

Josie glanced back at him. “I don’t know, Mett. But let’s start with them. We can always ask them if there are any other moms we should approach.”

They got into the car and pulled away as Mettner rattled off a nearby address. “Ingrid Saylor. Her daughter is in Lucy’s class.”

When they arrived at Ingrid’s home a few moments later, all the downstairs windows were lit up. Josie and Mettner stepped onto the large wraparound porch. Voices could be heard from inside as Josie reached for the doorbell. A woman in her thirties with short, stylish brown hair answered, smiling at them. As she took in their Denton PD polo shirts, the corners of her mouth drooped. Her bottom lip quivered. “Oh no,” she said. “Is this about Lucy?”

Mettner said, “It is about Lucy, but we don’t have any news.”

Josie extended a hand. “Ingrid Saylor? I’m Detective Quinn, this is Detective Mettner. Amy Ross gave us your name. She said your daughter is friends with Lucy. We were just hoping to ask you some questions.”

Ingrid pulled the lapels of her gray knit cardigan tight across her chest and stepped aside so they could enter. “I’d be happy to speak with you. Actually, quite a few of the mothers are here right now.”

“Mothers?” Mettner said.

Ingrid waved them deeper inside the large home, through a foyer to a spacious kitchen where several women gathered around an island countertop, nibbling on an array of finger food and sipping from fluted glasses. Ingrid said, “These are some of the mothers of children in Lucy’s class.” Josie counted six mothers altogether, and every one of them stared as she and Mettner entered the room.

Ingrid introduced them and offered them something to eat or drink, which both Josie and Mettner declined. Mettner tapped furiously on his phone, taking down each woman’s name, address, phone number and child’s name for the reports he and Josie would need to prepare later.

“We were all at the search today,” said Ingrid. “We’ve been out all day helping look for Lucy. I invited everyone back for a drink.”

“It was a long day,” one of the other mothers noted.

Josie managed a tight smile. “It’s been very difficult for everyone involved. We’re grateful for your help. In a search like this, every person is a big help. We were wondering what you could tell us about Lucy and Amy Ross. Do you see them often?”

A short, curvy woman with curly blonde hair lifted a hand to draw attention to herself. She had introduced herself as Zoey when Mettner was taking names. She was the other name on the list of mothers that Amy had given them. “My daughter and Lucy are best friends. I try to get them together at least once a week. Usually, I go through the nanny.”

“For playdates?” Josie asked. “Amy doesn’t bring Lucy?”

Zoey shrugged. “Well, sometimes but not usually. I take my daughter to the park and they meet up there.”

Mettner raised a brow. “You said once a week? What does the nanny do while the kids are playing?”

“She’s usually on her phone. Most parents are. I mean, the playground is pretty safe—” she broke off and her face flushed. Stammering, she added, “I-I-mean, it—it was.”

“It’s okay,” Josie said. “I imagine at seven years old, the girls don’t need that much supervision on the playground.”

“They’re pretty self-sufficient,” Zoey said. “And they know we’re right there if they need anything or if they fall or anything like that. I mean, it’s not like we ignore them completely. We just don’t follow them around every inch of ground they walk.”

“Of course,” Josie said. “Tell me, have you ever noticed Lucy talking to any other adults at the park?”

Zoey thought for a moment. “I don’t really remember. I guess she could have.”

“I saw her talking to an adult,” Ingrid volunteered.

All eyes turned to her. Mettner asked, “When was this?”

“A few months ago—January fifth. We had a birthday party for my daughter at the funplex near the mall. Amy brought Lucy. The kids were running all around. Lucy and a few other kids had gone into the arcade. Amy was getting tokens from one of the change machines for the games and Lucy was on the other side of the arcade, playing skee-ball. I walked by and saw a man talking to her.”

One of the other mothers said, “You never told us about that.”

Ingrid took a sip of her wine. “I didn’t think it was important. As I got closer, I saw he was getting a ball out of the ball return for her. It was stuck. But then he seemed to linger so I called out for Lucy. She turned toward me, and he walked away.”

“What did he look like?” Josie asked.

“He was young. Maybe mid-twenties. Caucasian. Tall. I couldn’t see his hair because he had a baseball cap on.”

“How was he dressed?” Mettner asked.

“Casual. Jeans and a sweatshirt. I really didn’t think anything of it.”

“You thought enough of it to intervene,” Josie pointed out.

She didn’t miss the eye-rolls of at least two of the other women. Ingrid said, “I only ‘intervened’ because Amy is insane about Lucy talking to people she doesn’t know.”

One of the other mothers laughed. “She never lets Lucy do anything. That poor girl. It’s no wonder she had no friends.”

“Jaime, stop, you’re drunk,” Zoey chastised.

Jaime waved her glass in the air, the liquid sloshing around. “You know it’s true. Amy is a helicopter parent. She hovers constantly. It’s a wonder she even has a nanny, the way she is with Lucy.” She looked around the room. “Colin’s not so bad but he’s hardly ever home. Tell me, has Amy ever just dropped Lucy off to any of your houses so she could play with your kids? Has she ever let Lucy come to anything unless it’s parent-attended? Have she or the nanny ever not gone on a school trip?”

A ripple of discomfort ran through the room, each woman shifting their weight and looking everywhere but at each other.

“She’s overprotective?” Mettner asked.

Ingrid said, “It’s more than that. We’re all overprotective. Amy is… it’s like she doesn’t want anyone else to get close to Lucy, even other children.”

“You have to let them bond,” Zoey added. “That means giving them time together without micromanaging. She hardly ever does play dates. She really only brings Lucy to birthday parties.”

“Does Lucy get invited to many birthday parties?” Josie asked.

One of the other moms laughed. “At this age, everybody gets invited. Even the ones we don’t want to invite.”

Mettner looked up from his phone. “Is Lucy one of the kids you don’t want to invite?”

“Oh no,” Ingrid said. “Lucy is very sweet. Very quiet. It’s just that Amy keeps her on such a tight leash, it’s like she can never have fun. Well, unless the nanny brings her.”

“I think she’s very lonely,” Zoey added.

“You mean Lucy?” Josie asked.

All the women nodded.

Mettner asked, “Does Lucy have trouble making friends?”

“Oh no,” Jaime said. “Like Ingrid said, she is the sweetest little thing. Always the best-behaved child at any party. I’ll say that for Amy—she raised a well-mannered, pleasant little girl. She must rule with an iron fist.”

The other women chuckled. Josie raised a brow and Zoey quickly said, “We’re laughing because Amy is way too nice to do anything with an ‘iron fist’.”

“Lucy just takes after her,” Ingrid explained.

Josie asked, “Do you ladies spend much time with Amy?”

Jaime gave an immediate eye-roll, drawing an elbow in her side from Zoey, who said, “Amy is a closed book. She keeps to herself. Her husband? Very sociable but never around.”

“Amy’s nice,” Ingrid said. “Very nice. Just hard to get close to. Our kids have all been in school together since Pre-K. We’ve become close. We always include Amy—”

“But she never takes us up on our invitations,” Jaime said.

“I think she’s lonely, too,” Zoey said.

“I feel like she isolates them,” Ingrid said thoughtfully, garnering more nods. “Even more than they already are with Colin out of town ninety percent of the time.”

“We don’t even know what she does with her time,” Jaime complained. “I mean she’s home all day, and she has a nanny. We don’t even know if she has hobbies—or maybe she’s having an affair.”

Ingrid laughed. “Please, not Amy. She and Colin are still in love with each other.”

“If I only had to see my husband a few days a month, I’d still be in love, too.” Zoey quipped.

Laughter erupted around the countertop. Josie had the feeling that the discussion was about to turn to gossip, so she said, “Would you ladies be willing to talk to your children? Ask them if Lucy ever said anything to them about talking to or being around adults besides her parents and nanny?”

“Of course,” the women murmured.

Josie passed out several business cards. “My cell phone is on there. Don’t hesitate to contact me. Any time—day or night.”

Back in the car, Mettner was still tapping furiously into the note-taking app on his phone. As they pulled away, he said, “None of that sent up any red flags.”

Josie sighed. “No, not in terms of the parents. I still can’t see either Colin or Amy being involved in Lucy’s abduction, but it seems there were enough opportunities when Lucy was with the nanny for a kidnapper to get close to her and prepare her to leave her parents behind.”

“You think the guy who helped her with the skee-ball machine at the funplex was prepping her?” Mettner asked. “Planning this whole thing out?”

“It’s impossible to know. You can call the funplex and see how long their security footage goes back. If it goes back that far, we might be able to get video of the encounter.”

Mettner tapped into his phone. “Here’s the number,” he said, before dialing. Josie listened to Mettner’s end of the conversation with the manager of the funplex. After several minutes, Mettner said, “So you only keep your CCTV footage going back one month? Okay. Yeah. Well, thanks anyway.” He hung up.

“Another dead end,” Josie muttered.

Back at the command tent, Noah continued rechecking the photos and video while Gretchen paced behind him, flipping through her notebook. Josie and Mettner filled them in on what little they’d learned.

“You think someone was approaching her while she was with the nanny or while Amy wasn’t paying attention?” Noah asked. “Getting her ready for this? Talking her into leaving her parents behind?”

Josie nodded. “I think it’s looking more and more that way.”

“She retrieved a sweatshirt from inside the column,” Gretchen said. “Put it on and ran away from both her parents. Getting a seven-year-old to do something like that would require a lot of preparation.”

Mettner said, “This guy could have been talking to her every day while she was at the park with the nanny for all we know.”

“Doing the prep here would make the most sense,” Josie said. “It’s possible he even got onto the carousel with her at some point to show her the door.”

“They would have had to have some sort of signal,” Noah said. “So she would know when to do it.”

Gretchen said, “She had to have seen him when she was on the ride. He had to be here. She saw him. He gave her a signal and she jumped down off her horse, opened the column, put on the sweatshirt and raced out of the park.”

“I’ve been over this footage and these photos at least one hundred times,” Noah said. “I can’t find a damn thing.”

“Maybe we should look again,” Mettner suggested. “None of us—not even the parents—saw Lucy skipping around in the sweatshirt the first dozen times we looked at that one video.”

They gathered around the laptop and Noah took them through every photo and video they had gathered. They combed over them, watching the videos multiple times, but found nothing amiss.

“Maybe we should have another look at the carousel,” Josie said. “From Lucy’s point of view.”

They walked slowly, allowing Noah to keep up with them, although he’d gotten quite fast on his crutches. He stood outside the fence, leaning on his sticks, watching from the approximate position the video they’d been relying on had been shot. Gretchen stood between the two horses that Amy and Lucy had occupied. “This guy could have been anywhere,” Gretchen said. “The ride was spinning. There are portions of the park we can’t see in any of the photos or footage we’ve got.”

Josie went over and climbed onto the blue horse, panning around. With a sigh she climbed down. “You’re right.”

Noah said, “By the time the ride stopped, he would have been outside of the park anyway. That’s where she headed—out of the park—if the K-9 unit is to be believed.”

“The video footage backs that up,” Gretchen remarked.

Josie retraced Lucy’s steps. Gretchen and Mettner followed her. She left the blue horse behind and followed Lucy’s path until she reached the door. She opened the door until Noah shouted for her to stop. “Right there. That’s how it was in the video,” he said.

The door was only open six inches. Plenty of room to reach in and snatch up a sweatshirt from the floor. Gretchen said, “That might be why no one noticed the door opening. She didn’t open it very far.”

“Only far enough to reach her hand in,” Mettner agreed.

“She was quick about it, since only seconds later she appeared on the other side wearing the sweatshirt,” Josie added. As she went to close the door again, something colorful caught her eye. She froze.

“Boss?” Mettner said from behind her.

“Oh Jesus,” Josie mumbled.

Mettner and Gretchen crowded in beside her. Slowly, Josie opened the door all the way. “What the actual—” Gretchen didn’t finish.

“What’s wrong? Mettner asked, craning his neck.

Josie and Gretchen parted so that he could get a good look inside the column.

“Oh damn,” Mettner blurted.

There in the center of the column floor lay Lucy Ross’s bright, sequined butterfly backpack.