Everyone Here Is Lying(11)

She sits on the sofa and watches her husband now, as he stares out the living-room window into the dark, all nerves. Beyond the raw, visceral terror they both feel about Avery—Where is she? What is happening to her?—there is another fear running alongside. What if she isn’t found quickly—what will happen then? The detectives will look at them. They will tear away at all the careful layers they’ve constructed in their family and expose them for who they are. William won’t come out of it particularly well.

Bledsoe disconnects from another call, glances meaningfully at Gully, and asks William to come back and sit down. Erin’s heart falters; he has something to tell them. William complies and falls back against the sofa as if exhausted. He looks awful. She must look the same; she feels like she’s aged years since her son phoned her at work that afternoon.

“We’re treating the house as a possible crime scene,” Bledsoe says carefully.

Erin looks back at him, trying to grasp what he means. She glances at Gully. “What?” she says.

Bledsoe explains. “We now have confirmation that Avery has been accounted for at school all day today—she was in detention over the lunch hour and present all day in class. She could not have returned to the house and left her jacket here at any time except after school, after she left choir at three forty-five. She would have arrived home at around five after four.”

“We know this,” William says impatiently. “She must have come home, used the key under the mat to get in, and gone back out again and forgotten her jacket. And someone took her.” He’s grown visibly agitated.

“Try to remain calm, Dr. Wooler,” Bledsoe says.

Erin watches her husband, feeling frightened.

“The thing is,” Bledsoe says carefully, “we don’t think Avery was alone in the house today after school.”

“What are you talking about?” Erin says, her stomach turning over.

Gully says, “We think someone was here, inside the house with her, after school today.” She adds, “That’s why we need to treat the house as a crime scene. We’re going to have a forensics team come in and go through the house thoroughly, as soon as possible. We will need your cooperation on this.”

Erin is dumbfounded. “Why do you think that?” she asks. Her husband, beside her, has gone completely still.

Bledsoe says, “Because someone else hung Avery’s jacket up on that upper hook; she wouldn’t have been able to reach it herself.”

Erin feels the blood rush from her head; it makes her dizzy. They’re right. How had she missed that? The jacket is on one of the upper hooks. Avery always uses the lower hooks, she has to. “But who could get into the house?” she asks. She feels hysteria approaching. This can’t be happening. She looks at the two detectives. She turns to her husband; his face has gone ashen.

“The doormat isn’t a very good place to hide a key,” Gully points out. “If someone wanted to get in, it’s probably the first place they’d look. And someone might have been watching Avery, and seen her come home alone, and use the key to enter a presumably empty house.”

Bledsoe adds, “The key is still there. The forensics team will want to look at it.”

William is now cracking his knuckles beside her, looking like he wants to jump out of his own skin.

“Oh my God,” Erin whispers, fighting nausea, realizing how easy it is for someone to take a child. Even if you think you’ve done everything to keep them safe, it’s never enough. Because the world is an awful place, full of evil. It’s just hit home, and she can hardly breathe.

“Or—might she have let someone in?” Bledsoe asks.

“Like who?” William says, still agitated.

Gully answers, “A stranger? A family friend? The parent of a classmate? Anybody?”

Erin feels even more shaken than before. It was bad enough that Avery might have been snatched on the way home from school, but this—this is too much to bear.

“Would she?” Gully prods. “There’s no sign of forced entry.”

Erin swallows, tries to focus. “I don’t know. Probably. If the doorbell rang, she would answer it. She wouldn’t stop to think that she was home alone. She’s not afraid of anything.” And then she begins to sob. Because now, Avery must be absolutely terrified.

Bledsoe says, “It’s unfortunate you don’t have a porch cam.”

While Erin sobs, she feels her husband put his arms around her.

Gully asks, “Is there anyone—anyone at all—who has shown an interest in Avery? Anyone hanging around your house lately? Offering to do odd jobs, that sort of thing?”

Erin stifles her sobs and tries to think. But her brain is stuttering, unable to function. She shakes her head helplessly. She glances at her husband beside her for help. But William seems as overwhelmed as she is.

“Does she take any lessons? Piano, anything like that? Any extracurricular activities you haven’t mentioned?” Gully asks.

Erin says, “No, only choir. She couldn’t settle to anything.”

Bledsoe says, “We need to go through it all again—friends, family, acquaintances, anyone who knows you, even slightly. It’s likely that she has been taken. And when a child is taken, quite often it’s someone known to the family. You’d be surprised.”