Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(19)

Colin ran up behind his wife and looked over her shoulder. Josie rewound the footage again to when Lucy disappeared. As the other parents gathered their children and slowly made their way off the platform to the exit gate, a small child came skipping out from behind the column from the same direction that Lucy had disappeared while on the opposite side, Amy had just untangled herself from the safety strap and was now looking around for her daughter.

A large, black sweatshirt covered the small child’s torso, trailing down to the middle of her thighs. The hoodie was pulled up, but a flash of golden hair showed as she half-ran half-skipped her way off the platform and then weaved around the bodies between the platform and the fencing, until she came to the exit gate which was also opposite to where Amy was now more actively searching for Lucy, though she hadn’t started calling for her yet. At the exit gate, a little boy dropped what looked like a stuffed elephant and his mother stopped to pick it up, backing up the entire line. A dad went around them, dragging his toddler by the hand. Then came the small figure in the sweatshirt, skip-walking out of the exit gate followed closely by a mother holding one small child on her hip while pulling an older child by the upper arm behind her. The mother’s head was turned over her shoulder, and it looked like she was saying something to the older child. It had been chaos.

Josie rewound it, and they all watched it several times. Lucy ran through the exit gate and off to the right, out of frame. Immediately, Josie went to the photos, scrolling through each one. They found the girl in the sweatshirt in the background of two other photos, one in profile and one of her from the back. In each one she was headed in the direction of the fence that separated the playground from the street on the other side.

“Oh my God,” Amy cried.

“Where did she get that sweatshirt?” Colin asked, voice trembling.

“Can you be absolutely sure it’s her?” Mettner asked.

“Well, no,” Josie conceded.

“It’s her,” Amy insisted. “I know it’s her. I would know her.”

“With all due respect, Mrs. Ross,” Metter said. “You did see this video several times yesterday and failed to identify her.”

“Mett,” Gretchen cautioned.

Amy shot him daggers. “I was looking at where she went. I was looking for her pink shirt or her backpack. I didn’t—why would I notice a girl in a sweatshirt? Lucy wasn’t wearing an adult’s sweatshirt.”

“We all missed this,” Josie pointed out.

“You can’t say for certain it’s her though,” Mettner argued. “Where did she get the sweatshirt?”

“I think—” Josie broke off because the idea sounded borderline absurd when she decided to say it out loud. “I think it was inside the column.”

“And she just knew it was in there? Decided to take it and throw it on? Then race out of the park?” Noah said.

“If this was planned,” Josie said. “If someone took her and planned this out…”

“Someone would have had to prep her,” Gretchen said.

“Prep her? What do you mean?” Colin asked.

Gretchen looked at Amy. “Would you say that you and your daughter are close?”

Amy put a hand to her chest. “Of course we are. She’s my little girl.”

“Does she tell you things?” Josie asked.

Amy’s expression became pinched. “What do you mean? She’s seven. What ‘things’ are there to tell?”

“Things about her day,” Gretchen said. “About school. About people who talk to her.”

Amy looked mystified. “I—I guess. I mean, she mostly talks about bugs.”

“Bugs?” Josie said.

“Well, not really all bugs. She’s obsessed with ladybugs, moths, and butterflies. She made her own luna moth. I didn’t even know a luna moth was a thing.”

“Where did she learn about it?” Josie asked.

Amy shrugged. “Where else? School.”

“Who else besides you, your husband, and your nanny is she exposed to on a regular basis?”

“I—I don’t know. She’s seven. She goes to school. She comes home. Sometimes she comes here to the park. Sometimes we go to the mall. She goes to her school friends’ birthday parties some weekends.”

Gretchen asked, “Have you ever seen her talking to any adult at any place you’ve been with her? An adult you didn’t know?”

“Of course not,” Amy answered. “I wouldn’t just let her talk to a stranger.”

“What about your nanny?” Josie asked.

“Jaclyn is very attentive. I doubt that she would allow that.”

Josie looked around. “Who talked to Jaclyn?”

Mettner piped up, “I did. I called her and interviewed her. She’s due back in town tomorrow.”

Gretchen said, “Great. When she gets back, I’d like to talk to her at the station.”

“The station?” Colin said. “You think our nanny had something to do with Lucy disappearing?”

“No, not necessarily,” Gretchen answered. “But we have to consider all the possibilities here. If Lucy didn’t wander off, then she was taken. If someone had enough contact with her to come up with a plan where she was supposed to get a sweatshirt from inside the carousel, put it on and leave her parents behind to exit the park, then we need to find out who that person is—and we have to assume that person took her.”