Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn Book 6)(57)

A few seconds later, another figure entered the frame, walking up behind Lucy.

“Look at this guy,” Noah murmured.

It was a man dressed in jeans, boots and a sweatshirt with a ballcap pulled low over his face. From under the back of the cap, Josie could see brown hair. “It’s hard to say, but I think he looks just like the guy from Lucy’s school. The bug expert impersonator.”

“Let me see if I can pull some stills,” Noah said.

“Let’s watch this first. We should also check the other cameras to see if we can get a clearer shot of his face when he was coming in and leaving.”

Noah let the footage play. The man watched Lucy for a few seconds. Then suddenly, she turned, looked up at him and beamed. She moved off the platform, arms raised as though to hug him, but he stepped away from her and motioned with one hand toward her mother.

“My God,” Josie said. “She already knew him.”

“Quite well,” Noah said. “She looks like she was about to run into his arms.”

But on the screen, Lucy froze, then nodded and returned to her game, this time dancing with much less enthusiasm.

“He’s already done a lot of work with her by now,” Josie noted. “All he had to do was give her a small signal—just a little hand movement in Amy’s direction—and she knew to act like she didn’t know him. She knew not to alert her mother.”

“This is scary,” Noah said.

The man let her play for a few more seconds, every so often turning his head slightly to check on where Amy stood. Then he joined Lucy on the platform. They danced together for a few moments—only their backs visible on the camera. Lucy’s movements became more enthusiastic. When fireworks exploded across the screen, the two of them high-fived. Then the man glanced in Amy’s direction again, took something from his pocket and handed it to Lucy. He leaned down and whispered in her ear before rushing off.

“What’s scary is knowing how much work it must have taken for him to gain her trust and have her this well-trained without any adult in her life knowing about it,” Josie said. Without even realizing it, her hand went to her stomach.

On the screen, Amy walked toward the Dance Off game, no longer on the phone but now searching through her purse for something. She never even saw the man.

“Pause it,” Josie said. “What did he give her?”

Noah took a moment to turn the footage back and try to get the best view of the object before zooming in. It was grainy but Josie was fairly certain by the size and red color that it was the ladybug keychain that Lucy had in her butterfly backpack when she went missing.

“That’s the keychain,” Noah said, as if reading her mind.

“Yes. Keep going.”

He zoomed back out and pressed play once more. Lucy watched as her mother walked toward her, clutching the small object to her chest. As Amy came within a few steps of the Dance Off game, Lucy turned away from her and thrust the keychain into her pants pocket. Amy reached her and held out a hand, which Lucy took, skip-walking beside her mother as they walked out of the frame.

“Jesus,” Josie said.

Noah pulled up the rest of the footage, searching for the man. They found him arriving shortly after Amy and Lucy, lingering at one of the change machines without using it, following Lucy until she started playing Dance Off, and then leaving immediately after the interaction.

“He doesn’t appear on camera at any angle where you can see his face well—especially with that hat,” Noah said.

“Of course he doesn’t. He knew what he was doing. Pull as many stills as you can get,” Josie said. “Then let’s look at the other footage.”

“This is unbelievable,” Noah said. He gestured toward the screen where he had paused the video just as the man walked up to Lucy at the Dance Off game. “Amy is right there. Right there and she doesn’t see this guy.”

“She doesn’t register him,” Josie clarified. “Because he blends in. He’s not a threat. She never actually sees him talking to Lucy, and her mind is elsewhere. Just like at the playground on the day that Lucy disappeared. She was in clear view of everyone. No one registered her presence. Every one of us goes through our days looking straight at people and things but not really taking them in.”

“How many times do you think he did this?”

“A lot. Enough that she saw him as a friend. Someone she wanted to run to; someone she was excited to see.”

“Most of the time had to be at the park, don’t you think? While she was with the nanny?”

“Yes, and one of the other mothers said that Jaclyn was often on her phone.”

“And there are no cameras at the park,” Noah said. “And the carousel is there. This guy got to her without anyone ever knowing.”

Josie thought about it, about all the planning that went into it. “The nanny had a mystery guest—a woman—staying with her at some point. That mystery woman’s prints were found in Lucy’s room.”

“So we know she was involved,” Noah said. “By the way, Oaks’s team did manage to track down one of Jaclyn’s friends who said she thought someone was staying with her for a while but never met the girl. That friend had asked Jaclyn about it, and Jaclyn said she was just helping someone out that she had met on campus. Said the girl was between apartments. That was five or six months ago.”