“This is where—” Billy began, gesturing to the basement door, his voice cutting out with a gulp. Krissy snapped her head to look at him. “This is where we, um, think somebody may have gotten in. There’s a broken window. You’ll see.”
Robby nodded, gripping the brass knob to open the door wide. Billy followed him down, but Krissy hesitated. Bringing Jace around the house with them was one thing, but the thought of having him down there was too much. It didn’t feel safe to have him in that basement. She led Jace by the hand to the kitchen table and perched him on one of the wooden chairs. She didn’t want to leave him here either, but her heart was racing at the idea of Robby and Billy alone in that basement. She needed to see what they were seeing. Yes, she’d already been down there during her and Billy’s search, but what if she’d missed something?
“Jace?” she said, hating the quiver in her own voice. She gripped his shoulders. “Mommy needs you to sit right here and not move for one minute, okay? I want you to close your eyes and count all the way to a hundred and then I’ll be back.”
Jace looked at her in that strangely solemn way he sometimes did, a look that made him seem much older than his six years. He nodded slowly.
“Stay here.”
The bare bulb in the basement ceiling was on, illuminating the room with a dim, flickering glow. Krissy looked around at the space, which was cluttered with unlabeled boxes of stuff—Christmas decorations, clothes and toys the kids had grown out of, financial records of the farm. There was an old plaid couch and a few errant toys scattered around: a small trampoline, a plastic pole for a ring toss stacked with fat, multicolored rings. Robby was holding Jace’s Etch A Sketch, idly rotating it in his hands, his eyes on the shattered glass on the floor. One of the three small, horizontal windows, the one closest to the bottom of the stairs, had been smashed.
Without Jace’s warm body against hers, Krissy felt cold and crossed her arms over her chest. In some small part of her mind, she realized it was summer in Indiana and the cold couldn’t possibly be real.
“Well,” Robby said. “It does look like someone could’ve gotten in this way.” He toed one of the pieces of glass and Krissy’s eyes widened in surprise. Even she, stay-at-home mom that she was, knew you weren’t supposed to touch pieces of a crime scene. She’d seen enough Law & Order episodes to know that.
“Mommy?”
The voice, so small and soft in the big space of the basement, made Krissy jump. She spun around, her heart in her throat, to find Jace, standing in the middle of the steps, staring down at her with wide eyes.
“Jesus!” Krissy clapped a hand over her chest. As ashamed as it made her to admit, her heart filled with resentment at Jace for not being his twin sister. “Jace, you scared me. What is it? I told you to stay where you were.”
Her son’s round eyes began to fill with tears and guilt billowed through her. “I’m scared,” he said, his voice like a tinkling bell. “I’m scared of the men upstairs.”
* * *
—
At the mention of a missing child, Robby’s supervisor, Sergeant Barker, had apparently called the state police, because by the time Billy, Robby, and Krissy—her hand clasped firmly around Jace’s—had made it back up into the kitchen, their house had transformed. Every room in Krissy’s periphery crawled with men in uniform, and through the kitchen window, she spotted one of them walking a wide perimeter of the house, a fat roll of yellow caution tape unfurling from his hands. Even the air had taken on a different quality, tense and crackling.
Suddenly, as if they’d simply materialized there, two people were standing directly in front of her. One was a man with hair like a private school boy’s, perfectly combed with a part so neat it looked as if it’d been done with a straightedge. His button-down strained against his muscled upper arms. His eyes were a shocking blue. The second was a woman with an average build and thin, soft-looking brown hair pulled into a ponytail. The man was probably in his late forties, the woman ten or fifteen years younger. They were the only two people not wearing uniforms and despite this, or perhaps because of it, Krissy got the impression they were the ones in charge. The man emanated an air of authority so strong it was as if he put it on with his morning cologne.
“I’m Detective Max Townsend,” he said, extending his hand to shake Krissy’s then Billy’s as they introduced themselves. “This is my partner, Detective Rhonda Lacks. We’ve heard your little girl, January, is missing. Is that right?”
Detective Townsend spoke at a fast, businesslike clip, and Krissy found herself gaping mutely at him. Beside her, Billy cleared his throat. “Yes, that’s right,” he said.
“We’re awfully sorry for what you folks are going through,” the detective continued. “We’re from the Indiana State Police and we’re gonna take things from here, all right? I wanna assure you that we’re going to do everything in our power to bring your daughter home safely. Detective Lacks and I have a pretty good track record for these things.” He paused, looking both her and Billy firmly in the eye. If his intent was to reassure them, it wasn’t working. “First things first. We’ll need a description of what January was wearing to bed last night. Then I’d like you two to take me to her room, so you can spot anything that’s missing or out of place. This will help our people know what they’re looking for. All right? And while we’re there, we’ll want to take something of hers with us—a worn article of clothing’s best—for our tracking dogs.”
He flashed a solemn, bolstering smile and Krissy touched a finger to her temple. She wanted to hold on to his words, to look each one over and understand what it meant, but they just fluttered around her in an incomprehensible blur. It felt as though everything was suddenly happening too quickly, as if she was in a movie that was being fast-forwarded.
“In the meantime,” Detective Townsend continued, “I think we ought to get Brother out of here. This is Officer Patricia Jones.” He gestured to a uniformed officer who had also magically appeared out of nowhere, a tall woman with big everything: big hands, big breasts, even her ears were big. “She’s gonna stay with Brother in one of our cars, all right? Get him out of all this.”
Krissy blinked. It took her a long moment to realize that when Detective Townsend said “Brother,” he was talking about Jace. “Oh,” she said. “I’d prefer it if he stayed with me. This is…confusing for him. I don’t want him to be any more scared than he already is.”
Detective Townsend’s understanding smile flashed on and off his face so quickly Krissy couldn’t be sure if she’d really seen it or not. “I understand. But we’re gonna need a lot from you and Dad right now, and I’m going to need you focused, all right? Officer Jones has three little ones of her own. Your son’s going to be in very good hands.”
The big woman stooped down to get her face closer to Jace’s. “Hi, Jace,” she said, and Krissy wondered how she knew Jace’s name. Had she told them? “My name’s Patricia. What do you say to some lemonade? And I think I might know where to get some cookies too.”
And then Jace was nodding and the big woman was taking his hand out of Krissy’s and leading him away from her. As she watched her son’s tiny body retreat, Krissy felt a fear so sudden and strong she thought she might crack in half.