A childcare center had a weird feel to it when there were no children there. Likely she felt it even more acutely because she was so used to the noises, the smells, the laughter, the tears. It was probably time for all of them to get out of there for the night.
“Alice, there are two parent signatures on the sign-in sheet that was next to your office door.”
“I know. I checked it once Troy relayed to me what his mother-in-law had said about dropping Emma off in the lobby with Kara Wiese. Elaine Broadstreet never signed it.”
“Right. For the two parents who did, do you know who escorted them to their rooms?”
“I took Nathan Opal to his room. As I’ve said, I was filling in for Olivia Blow. Once Tanya Knight arrived at 7:30, I told her that I needed to run down to the office for just a couple minutes. Check my voice mails, my emails, that sort of thing. I was just headed back when Nathan’s mom flew in and asked if I’d get Nathan to his room. I wasn’t sure who had taken Gabby Bridge to Kara and Claire’s room, so when I spoke with Kara, I asked her. She said it was Benita, who happens to be Gabby’s grandmother.”
Rena had been right. There was a reasonable explanation. It was enough to make anybody crazy. Everything was so fucking reasonable and yet there was a missing five-year-old.
“Okay. I think we’re done here tonight. Are you going home?”
“Soon. I’ve sent an email to every parent and called them, too, letting them know the day care won’t be open for business tomorrow. While I’m sure they will understand, some of them will have to scramble to make other arrangements. I had to leave messages for a couple. I asked them to call me here once they got the message. I’ll wait a bit.”
“Okay. There is an officer posted at both the front and back doors. When you leave, make sure one of them knows it.”
“I will. Thank you, Detectives. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done tonight. Everything that everyone is doing. It’s...” She stopped, obviously choked up.
“We know,” Rena said, her voice soft. “Good night, Alice.”
A.L. knew that Rena wouldn’t offer any promises. None of them knew how this was going to turn out. It was already awful and it might just get damn horrific before it was over.
When he and Rena got outside, he stood for a minute, taking in the evening air. It was dry and fairly warm for a Wisconsin fall night. High fifties, maybe even low sixties. There were stars in the sky and a half moon.
“Nice night,” he said.
Rena didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go talk to some neighbors. See if anybody was out and about this morning at around 7:15,” he said.
“And saw a five-year-old wandering around?” Rena asked.
“Saw anything.”
On their way to the next-door neighbor’s house, they detoured through the volunteer setup area. They found Ferguson giving some instructions to a couple retirement-age men on where to set up some food that had been ordered and would be delivered soon.
“How’s it going?” A.L. asked.
“It’s been a madhouse,” Ferguson admitted. “But the FBI guys know how to do this. They’d got everybody who wanted to search organized pretty quickly. Christ, they already got porta potties delivered and set up down the street. They started the search behind the day care.”
That made sense. Especially now that they had verification by the street cameras of Elaine Broadstreet’s travel. It was likely that Emma had indeed arrived at the day care. What had happened after that was the unknown.
If Emma had strolled out of the day care without someone seeing her, it was possible she’d exited via the back door. If somebody had somehow taken her out of the day care, the same was true. Once the searchers got past the parking lot, it was going to get a lot tougher. On open ground, they’d be walking in straight lines, so close that their arms would touch if they extended them, in hopes of stumbling upon something of importance. In the not-yet-harvested fields, they’d each take a row.
There were probably fifteen or twenty more people in the immediate area. “These the searchers who didn’t want to traipse through a cornfield?”
“Only a couple. Most of them arrived after the initial group had launched. The FBI is about to get a second group going. They’ll walk the immediate area to our right, try to cover as much as a mile in that direction.”
“Okay. Did you get a chance to eat something?”
“No. But we’ve got food and bottled water coming in. I’ll grab something. I can get you guys a plate, too.”
“No thanks,” A.L. said. “We’re going to talk to some of the neighbors. We’ll hit the panini shop across the street at some point and can get something there if the mood strikes us.” Hard to think about food when a child was missing. But people needed to eat and have something to drink. And then someplace to take a piss. Those were the mundane things that had to be considered at a time like this.
He and Rena walked toward the next-door neighbor’s house. It had probably been built about the same time and maybe by the same builder as the learning center because it looked very similar with the exception that somebody had added a front porch along the way. It was getting dark but the streetlights were on, giving off enough light that he could see there was an older couple, maybe in their midseventies, sitting in lawn chairs on the porch.
He stopped a couple feet away from the front steps. “Evening,” A.L. said. “I’m Detective McKittridge and this is my partner, Detective Morgan. May we have a word?”
“Rena Morgan?” the woman asked, her voice rough.
It wasn’t the response he’d been expecting.
“Yes,” Rena said.
“Come on up. We know your mother-in-law. She sold us this house more than twenty-five years ago and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. She’s always talking about her daughter-in-law and how proud she is of you.”
A.L. moved aside to let Rena take the lead up the steps.
“Why, you’re just as pretty as she said you were,” Grace said.
“Well, thank you,” Rena said. “And you are?”
“Grace and Jim Stern. In all the years we’ve been here, there’s never been nothing like tonight,” Grace said. “A child. It’s just horrible.”
“It is,” Rena said. “And given that your house is located right next door to the day care, we wanted to stop by and ask a few questions.”
“We’re happy enough to help,” Jim said. “Considered joining the other people who were going to search but decided it wouldn’t be helpful to have a couple of old people falling down and getting in the way. Earlier we had a nice young gentleman and his dog look around our backyard just in case, I guess, that the little girl had come this direction.”