In Her Tracks (Tracy Crosswhite #8)(15)

“I thought about it after everything went down—you know? I mean, not that night, but when I started getting asked all these questions. I thought that if he had it set up, you know, that maybe that was why he wanted to go so badly. And maybe that was why he timed it so close to the end of the night.”

Tracy was thinking the same thing.

“Had you sold tickets to anyone before the father and daughter?”

“I didn’t. I’d just gotten transferred over there to shut it down.”

“Do you know if others were still in the maze?”

“There were still a few cars in the parking lot, so I guess it’s possible. I can’t say for sure.”

“Can people get into the maze without going past the booth?”

“Well, yeah,” Ingram said, suppressing a grin. “I mean, it’s just a big cornfield.”

Tracy smiled. “Tell me about the next time you saw the father and his daughter.”

“You’re asking about when I saw the girl and the woman?”

“What did you see?”

“Well, like I told that other detective, it was only like a couple of seconds. I was picking up the trash and putting it in the can, and I thought I saw the little girl walking with a woman and a man—not really with the man as much as the woman. I mean, he was like a few feet ahead of them.”

“What else do you remember?”

“She was holding the woman’s hand.”

“The little girl was holding the woman’s hand?”

“Yeah and then, bam. The lights went out.”

“You said in your statement the little girl didn’t have her wings on then?”

“My memory is she had a dark coat on.”

“And the woman?”

“Also a dark coat.”

“Did you see their faces?”

Ingram shook his head. “No.”

“How do you know it was the little girl you saw earlier that evening?”

Ingram started to answer, then stopped. The prior detectives had not asked him this basic question. “What do you mean?”

“You didn’t see her wings or her face. How do you know it was her and not another little girl?”

His face contorted. After a moment, he said, “I don’t know. I guess . . . I guess because given the time, and I don’t recall any other little girls at that time . . . Not that age.”

“But you had just been transferred over there.”

Ingram again looked stumped. “I guess it could have been somebody else. Another family. I never really thought about that.” He shrugged. “I guess I don’t really know.”

“You recall the little girl holding this woman’s hand, at least in that brief moment you saw her. Did she appear to be walking with the woman willingly?”

“Willingly?”

“Did the little girl look like she was struggling or resisting, trying to get away?”

“No. They were just walking along together.”

“And you didn’t hear the little girl scream or yell?”

Another shrug. “No. Nothing like that.”

Which was why, when Tracy read Ingram’s statement in the file, her first thought was he had been led to his conclusion that the little girl had been Elle Chin by the detectives questioning him. The facts were, Ingram never saw the little girl’s face, she wasn’t wearing the colorful butterfly wings Elle Chin had been wearing, and she wasn’t resisting. In his police statement, Bobby Chin said Elle had been proud to show off her wings, so much so that she wouldn’t let him put on her coat. He’d also said that she had become upset when he initially would not play hide-and-seek, that she had sat in the dirt and cried. The little girl was clearly capable of being defiant—or Chin was lying.

Either way, Tracy didn’t put much stock in what Ingram claimed to have seen.

“Can you describe the woman?”

“Not really. She was wearing a baseball cap.”

“What about the man?”

“I didn’t really see him either, but I think he was wearing a baseball hat also—I mean the style, you know.”

“You didn’t see his face?”

“No.”

“What do you recall happening next?”

“After the lights shut off? I heard a man yelling. You know, ‘Elle! Elle! Come out!’ Like that. The father came running out of the maze like it was on fire. I mean, he was going crazy—telling me to turn the lights back on and to have everyone lock down the parking lot and stuff, but we couldn’t really do that.”

“Why not?”

“The lights were on a timer and it was a farm so, I mean, there was a parking lot, yeah, but anyone could have just driven in or out. Anyway, people came running, and the father was telling us where to go and what to do. He was telling everyone what his daughter was wearing, how tall she was. And then there were a lot of police. I mean, they were everywhere, and they had dogs. They kept us all there most of the night asking us questions.”

“Did you see the car that the little girl got into?”

“No. Like I said, everything went dark.”

Tracy thanked Ingram and stood from the table even more convinced that Ingram had not seen Elle Chin. Kidnappers would have picked Elle up, or covered her with a coat or a blanket. And, at five, Elle would have been terrified. She would have been screaming, kicking. Something. Tracy was about to ask the next question but paused at a thought. Terrified, unless perhaps she knew the woman and the man.