The Vanishing Season (The Collector #4)(12)

“I asked her where Rebecca was,” says the last guard to see her. He’s an older man, his face as weathered as shoe leather beneath thinning white hair. He turns his fluorescent-banded hat in his hands as he speaks, fingers worrying the rolled brim. “She said Rebecca had to go home sick and Daniel was on a field trip. She was one of the last kids to leave, just before our shifts ended.”

“What time was that?”

“Three-fifteen? Three-twenty? Thereabouts. We’re off at three-thirty. She said she thought her parents were going to pick her up, but they weren’t there. I suggested she go into the office, have the secretaries call her folks just to be sure, but she walks it every day.” He stares down at his large-knuckled hands in their white cotton gloves. “She said she’d be fine. She promised that she’d go straight home, or to Rebecca’s. No stops or shortcuts.”

“So the last you saw of her . . .”

“She jogged down the road here, on the sidewalk, and turned into her neighborhood.”

“Did you notice anyone else who seemed to be watching her?”

“Just Edith here,” he says, jerking his head toward one of the other guards. “She had the leg across the pick-up circles yesterday, so she could see her too.”

“She seemed fine,” Edith offers. “She didn’t start jogging until we told her to hurry home. She didn’t seem scared, though. Didn’t notice anyone else. No cars slowing down or anything. No one turned into the neighborhood just after her.”

“Before you left for the day, did you see any cars or people come out of the neighborhood in a hurry?” asks Eddison.

The two guards look at each other, then shake their heads. “No, sir,” the man answers. “Not saying there weren’t, but not that we noticed.”

“Thank you.”

“Whenever she and her mother make cookies, she always brings a little bag for each of us,” Edith says. “Always says hello and goodbye, and thank you, and nudges Rebecca if she forgets. You’re going to find that precious girl.”

Eddison swallows hard.

“We’re going to do our best,” I tell her. I take Eddison’s elbow and lead him away. “Come on. Let’s head back into the neighborhood, see if anything looks different from this side.”

We start retracing our steps, looking for anything that stands out. The ground is a mess from all the previous searches, but there aren’t even any hedges or rock piles to duck down behind. There are some fences, but few of them are up to the front property lines. Most block off backyards or form a half boundary between neighbors. The only ones that come up to the front edges are half-height with the kind of open slat-work you can see through. More decorative than functional, except to keep in ankle-biter dogs.

“Car parked in front of one of the houses?” Eddison posits.

“Maybe. Friend of a neighbor, or some kind of repairman. You’d think the owner would be at the house, though. I mean, a house isn’t an apartment; there isn’t generally a maintenance key.”

“Unless you have a regular handyman. Work together long enough, it’s not unreasonable to give someone a key or tell them where a spare is.”

There are other people on the sidewalks, coming to help or just mingling to stare, even before we get back onto the Mercers’ street. Out of habit, I lift the tablet and resume taking pictures of groups and individuals. Sometimes, unsubs will try to be part of the investigation in some way, either to try to derail it or to get off on the fuss and furor. Or, in a community effort like this, to blend in and divert suspicion.

It would be nice if we could just look for someone whose participation seems insincere or disingenuous, but there are a lot of people here who fit that description. There always are. People who are coming just to get the story or have secrets in their pasts, grief-tourists who come to get a contact high off the pain and panic.

Kearney and Agent Burnside join us as we draw close to the Mercers’ house. Watts and Captain Scott stand side by side as Watts issues a statement to the gathered reporters. We stop on the edge of the Coperniks’ property to watch.

“How was the school?” asks Kearney.

“They did assemblies all day to talk to the kids about what’s going on and reinforce Stranger Danger,” I tell her.

With a huff, she crosses her arms under her bust. “Stranger Danger. It was a great way to make an entire generation of kids terrified to say hello, and they wonder why we grew up to hate interacting with strangers. You wouldn’t remember that; you’re too young.”

“I’m five years younger, savta, not fifty.”

She kicks at my ankle, but I slide out of range.

Across the street, Watts says she’ll take a few questions, and the reporters all yell over each other. Watts hates speaking to reporters, or to cameras. Frustration flashes across her face before she calls on one of them.

“I have a bad feeling about this case,” whispers Kearney.

Eddison leans into me slightly, subtly.

I let my hand drop between us so I can hook my pinky through his. “Me too.”





6

We finally pack it in for the day around ten-thirty, because we still have to drive the hour and a half back to Quantico and another half hour after that to Manassas, where most of us live, and about that to Fairfax, where Kearney lives. We get yelled at when we decide sleeping in the office is more practical than going home.