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.”
Seven
William excuses himself to go to the bathroom. There’s a powder room on the main floor, but he goes upstairs instead. He can feel the eyes of the detectives on his back as he leaves. He makes his way along the upstairs hall and closes the bathroom door and locks it behind him. And then he leans over the toilet and heaves into the bowl. He remains there, sweating, thinking he wants to die. He pictures his little Avery, not as he last saw her, but smiling and happy, and he cries silently. Finally, he struggles to his feet and flushes the toilet, runs cold water over his face, and washes his hands. He can’t bear to look at himself in the mirror; he hates himself.
He must decide what to do.
The damn jacket.
He’d hung up the jacket, which Avery had dropped on the floor, tidying up on autopilot while he was asking her why she was home by herself. He’d forgotten all about it until the detective found it. And now the police know someone was in the house with her, and he’s missed every opportunity to say it was him. If he now tells them he was here, and saw her, that he hung up the jacket, and tries to tell them that she was fine when he left, they will never believe him. So he must continue to claim that he was never here. But where will he say he was? He was gone for a long while that afternoon—he was with Nora and then he came home—and he can’t admit to either of those things. He wasn’t at his practice or at the hospital, and he has no one to confirm he was with them. He’s fucked.
The police are going to search the house. They won’t find strange fingerprints or anything else, because nobody else was in the house. And then they will focus on him and Erin. Isn’t that what they do? Accuse the parents if they can’t find anyone else? And he doesn’t have an alibi.
Then it occurs to him that he has another problem, something they will find. His burner phone. For a moment he can’t even breathe. Nora will be dragged into this, too, they will be found out, her worst fears realized. Oh, Christ. Nora had ended it—today, of all days. It’s like she had some premonition of the shitstorm that was about to come. He wonders what she will think if it starts getting reported that the missing girl’s father is the number one suspect.
They must be wondering what’s taking him so long. He straightens up, takes a deep breath. As long as no one saw him—saw his car coming and going from the garage. He feels a disorienting surge of fear that he must deliberately tamp down. There’s a good chance he wasn’t seen, because someone would have mentioned it by now, surely? They’ve already had cops questioning neighbors up and down the street. It’s a calculated risk, but one he must continue to take. Worst case, he can deny it, say they’re mistaken.
Their house is at the top of Connaught Street, which runs north-south, parallel to the river, ending in a cul-de-sac. The only other street it connects to is Greenley Avenue, which leads east toward downtown. To the north of their house is undeveloped land, just scrub, that meets up with the forest as it curves down to the river. The houses are set some distance apart, and as far as he knows, nobody has cameras. There’s no crime in Stanhope. It’s a small place. Safe as houses. Until it isn’t.
* * *
? ? ?
Gully remains at the Woolers’ house as the difficult night wears on, yielding nothing about Avery’s whereabouts. The family has been moved to a downtown hotel—the Excelsior—for the night, the female police officer accompanying them. Bledsoe has returned to the station to set up a command post. From there he will run the investigation, in constant contact with the search parties, the officers in the field, the ones in the station running down sex offenders.
Gully observes the technicians doing their meticulous work. They’re looking for fingerprints, evidence of blood that has been cleaned up, fibers, hairs, anything. Of course, the scene has already been compromised. But maybe they’ll get lucky. Gully feels that the area is too tidy if the little girl was home after school. Wouldn’t she have had a snack? Perhaps she didn’t have time. Or perhaps whoever was here with her tidied up so it would look like she was never here and simply screwed up about the jean jacket. Not everyone thinks clearly when they’re committing a crime. Gully can’t help thinking that hanging up a jacket is the sort of thing a parent would do.