Where Are You Now?

26

H e wondered if her father had heard the message yet. He could just imagine his reaction when he listened to it. His little girl was alive and didn’t want to see him! She said she would call on Mother’s Day! Only fifty-one weeks to wait!

Daddy must be twisting in the wind, he thought.

By now the cops undoubtedly had a wiretap on Dr. Andrews’s phone in Greenwich. He could just imagine the frenzy they were in. Would they throw up their hands and decide that Leesey has a right to her privacy and drop the search for her? Maybe. It was just the kind of thing people did.

It would be safer for him if they did.

Would they tell the media she had phoned?

I like the headlines, he thought. And I like reading about Leesey Andrews. They’ve known since Tuesday that she’s missing. She’s been in all the headlines the last three days. But today the story about her was buried on page four, which was disappointing.

It had been the same thing with the other three girls-within two weeks the story was dead.

As dead as they were.

I’ll play around with what to do to keep Leesey on everybody’s mind, but for now, he thought, I’ll have my fun moving her cell phone around. That must be driving them crazy. “Goosey, Goosey, Gander,” he whispered. “Wither do you wander? Upstairs? Downstairs? In my lady’s chamber?”

He laughed. All three places, he thought.

All three.