* * *
Baywood Memorial was a level-two trauma center, an accredited chest pain center and a certified stroke center. All that meant that they could treat almost any emergency from a sore throat to a heart attack or stroke to a gunshot wound. The most serious traumas or any burn victims generally got airlifted to Madison.
There was a marked police vehicle in the lot. Parked and empty. That probably wasn’t unusual. Sometimes there were disruptive people who required a police response. Sometimes, officers accompanied inmates from the county jail.
They entered through the emergency room doors that opened as they approached. There were at least ten people in the waiting area, one with a service dog sitting quietly at his feet.
A.L. and Rena stepped up to the glass window. A.L. suspected it was bulletproof. “We’re looking for Sam Wiese. Is he working tonight?”
“Are you a patient?” she asked, not answering the question.
“No.”
She looked at him as if expecting him to offer up more. When he didn’t, she pointed to the chairs in the lobby. “Have a seat. I’ll see if he’s able to take a break.”
“He must be working,” Rena murmured.
It was almost ten minutes before a man wearing blue scrubs and tennis shoes came through a door from the back. He glanced around the waiting room. A.L. stood up. “Mr. Wiese?”
“Yes.”
A.L. passed him a business card. “Could we maybe step outside for a minute?”
“Okay,” he said. He didn’t sound too concerned. It was hard to rile an emergency department nurse. They’d seen it all.
Once outside, Rena also passed him a card. “Thanks for talking with us. Did we catch you at the end of a shift?”
“Yeah.” He ran a hand across his short hair. “Long day.”
“We’ll try not to keep you long,” A.L. said. “We are the detectives who are investigating the disappearance of Emma Whitman.”
He nodded. “I recognized your names. Kara mentioned it. She’s torn up about this.”
“We understand that you were working this past Wednesday?” Rena said.
“Yeah. I do three or four twelve-hour shifts a week. And I’m going to grad school to be a nurse practitioner.”
“Had you ever met the missing child, Emma Whitman?”
“No. I’ve never been to Kara’s work.”
“So you don’t know anyone from there?”
“I know Claire Potter. She’s been at the house a couple times.”
“She and Kara are friends?”
“Yeah. She’s cool.”
That reminded A.L. that it had been Claire Potter who had originally mentioned that Kara had been interested in buying a house. Kara had later said that she was talking to the bank about refinancing.
“With working and going to school, that doesn’t leave time for much of anything else,” A.L. said.
“Not really.”
“Kara mentioned that you were recently looking at refinancing your house but decided not to pursue it. That can be a pretty time-consuming process,” A.L. said.
Sam shook his head. “We’re not refinancing.” He didn’t sound concerned. Probably just thought A.L. had his facts mixed up.
“Really? I thought for sure that it was Kara who’d mentioned that. But we have talked to a lot of people.”
“Yeah. Not us. We just bought our house a couple years ago when we got married. We got a really good rate. We’d be fools to refinance so soon.”
“Okay.” A.L. looked at Rena.
She smiled at Sam. “Thanks for your time. Good night.”
Once they were back in their car, Rena turned to A.L. “What are the chances that Kara was pursuing a refinance without her husband’s knowledge?”
“Possible but not likely. Couples talk about things like that. Maybe one person does all the work to gather the documents but it’s with the other person’s knowledge.”
“Agree. What’s the likelihood that Sam is going to tell Kara that we came to see him tonight?”
“Pretty high. He knew our names. Maybe Kara had warned him that we might want to talk to him. He’ll tell her we came to his work. She’ll want to know what we asked him and he’ll tell her about the refinancing questions.”
“I think so, too. So she’s going to know that we now have doubts about what she told us.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence, both pondering what the next best step would be.
“Did you see the yellow ribbons?” Rena asked.
Up and down the main street around the trees. They’d gone up this morning. “Yeah.”
More silence.
“You know who I want to talk to?” Rena said.
“Claire Potter,” he said.
“How did you know?”
“She’s the right one.”
“Okay. Tonight?” Rena asked.
“No time like the present.” He didn’t need to add that tomorrow was Sunday and it would be four days since Emma had been seen.
It was past eight when they arrived at Claire’s door, getting dark. Lights were on in the back of her house. They rang the bell.
Then A.L.’s cell phone rang. “McKittridge,” he answered.
“Are you at my door?”
He recognized her voice. “Yes, Claire. It’s me and Detective Morgan. Can we have just a few minutes of your time?”
“Sure. Hang on.” Then she disconnected. In fifteen seconds, the door was opening. She smiled at them. “I thought it was you but I scratched one of my contacts and so my vision in that eye isn’t good. I didn’t want to open the door to a stranger.”
“Good thinking to call first,” A.L. said.
“A week ago I might not have,” she said. “But this whole thing with Emma has me second-guessing everything. How the hell does a five-year-old just disappear?”
“We share your frustration,” said Rena. “We’re continuing to follow every lead, which has brought us back to your door.”
“Okay.”
“On Thursday, when we were here, you said that one of the reasons a teacher might leave the room is to make or receive a phone call. Specifically, you said that you thought Kara was buying a new house because you thought she was talking to her banker or her lawyer.”