Girl, 11

by Amy Suiter Clarke

  Elle:

  I doubt it too.

  Elle voice-over:

  As many of you know, I plan as much as I can, but a lot of my investigation happens in real time. I get more information and tips as soon as I start airing episodes, and this case is no exception. This is a lead we’ve only been working for a couple weeks, but we have already turned up a huge break in the case. It’s very possible that this couple Tina uncovered were that couple in the cabin. If that’s the case, given his use of a fake name, it seems that TCK was a cuckolded husband who killed his wife and her lover, then burned them in that cabin to cover his tracks. We don’t know, but we have shared the information Tina gathered with Minneapolis PD, as well as the Bureau of Criminal Apprehension, and they are looking into it now. We have new evidence. We are breathing life into this case. And TCK, if you’re listening, we are going to find you. This time, it’s you who’s on a clock—and your time is almost up.

  14

  Elle

  January 15, 2020

  On the way to the missing girl’s house, Ayaan filled Elle in on the case. Yesterday morning, on her way to the bus stop, an eleven-year-old girl named Amanda Jordan disappeared. The police hadn’t been able to locate any eyewitnesses, and the bus driver said that Amanda was not at the stop by the time she pulled up. Only one of the five kids waiting for the bus remembered seeing any adults in the area: a young man standing on the sidewalk down the street. She had described him as being tall, Caucasian, with black hair. The girl’s parents had been asked yesterday, but they couldn’t think of anyone they knew that matched the description.

  “But I was having a hard time getting anything useful out of them,” Ayaan said as she pulled onto a quiet residential street. “They were both bordering on hysterical. There’s an officer with them now, just in case of a ransom call, but apparently they have barely spoken since I left yesterday afternoon.” She shook her head. “It never gets easier, cases like these, but her parents seemed particularly unstable. The mother blames herself.”

  “Why?” Elle asked, shuffling through the notes Ayaan had taken on the case so far.

  “She usually watched her daughter until she got on the bus, but yesterday she got a phone call, so she walked away for a moment. When she came back, the bus had come and gone. She just assumed Amanda was on it.”

  Elle shook her head. It was natural for the mother to feel guilty, but guilt was a useless emotion. More than that, it was detrimental. Paralyzing. They wouldn’t get anything from her until they could push her past it.

  Ayaan parked behind the squad car on the street, far enough from the curb that Elle could get out without stepping into a snowbank. The commander stood at the foot of the driveway and pointed at a right diagonal across the street. “The bus stop is there. Between five and ten kids get on each day; it varies since a few of their moms work part-time and drive them to school some days. From the Jordans’ front door, you can kind of see the spot where the kids wait, but it’s partially obscured. Mrs. Jordan says usually there’s enough kids waiting in a group there that she can at least see when Amanda joins up with them after crossing the road.”

  She turned back to the house, and Elle looked with her. “Sandy Jordan was standing inside her porch with the storm door shut, watching through the glass. As soon as Amanda left the house, their landline rang. From the phone records, we know the call came in at eight twenty-seven. The bus driver showed up less than three minutes later, at eight thirty. Somewhere in that time, Amanda was taken.”

  “And no one actually saw the kidnapping?”

  Ayaan looked across the road again. The bright glare from the snow made her brown eyes glow. “Not as far as we could tell. Officers canvassed the neighborhood, but none of the other parents saw anything. Since Amanda’s house is around this slight bend, we figure there must have been blind spots from where the parents were watching. We interviewed the parents, the bus driver, and all the kids at the bus stop yesterday. A couple of the kids seemed nervous, of course, but they just wanted to help. The only other information we have is from the bus driver. She said she’s sure she saw a van in the area that she didn’t recognize. A dark blue van, unmarked, no plates. She keeps an eye out for that kind of thing. Watches too much SVU. We’ve asked around, but so far no one has claimed it or explained its presence here. We’re looking into security footage in the area, but every house we’ve found that has a camera has it focused on their own driveway, and most of them don’t even have systems. It’s considered a pretty safe neighborhood.”

  Elle crossed her arms as the wind kicked up. “They always are.” She looked up and down the street. Ayaan’s sedan and the squad car were the only vehicles on the street; everyone else either had cars in the driveway or a two-car garage. The front lawns were open, blending into each other without fences. Clean paths were shoveled up to the wooden decks or brick stairs that formed the welcoming entries of Colonial-style homes. These houses would mostly belong to upper-middle-class folks with teenagers or grown children, considering so few elementary students were getting on the bus. By eight thirty, it was a good bet most of them would be at work, but certainly no guarantee. If most of the parents watched their kids until they got on the bus, that meant the kidnapper had to know exactly where to be to remain unseen. And he had to know that Amanda’s mom would be distracted.

  It was a risky way to kidnap a child—already a fraught mission in itself.

  “What are you thinking?” Ayaan asked.

  “He must have made that phone call.”

  “We got the phone records this morning,” Ayaan told her. “The call came from a prepaid cell phone, bought two months ago from the Target in Shoreview. A burner phone, basically. The customer paid in cash. We’re trying to see if we can get security camera footage, but the store managers aren’t sure it has been saved.”

  Elle nodded. “It probably hasn’t, but if they do still have it, I’m betting the guy went in disguised. He planned this carefully. He’d have to know the neighborhood, the behavior of the parents, what time people left for work. Let’s say the blue van did belong to him: if he got Amanda to get in it that quickly, you know what that says to me?”

  “That she knew him.” Ayaan met her gaze. “Maybe you can get something out of her parents that I couldn’t. It’s not a very detailed description, and we don’t even know if the man that girl saw was our kidnapper, but it’s the best lead we have at the moment.”

  Elle turned toward the house. “Let’s go talk to the parents.”

  * * *

  The Jordans’ house was a cozy little two-story with every light on, even in the late morning sun. Like maybe their daughter just got lost and the light would help her find her way home. When Ayaan knocked on the front door, a local patrol officer answered. He let them in after confirming Elle’s ID.

  The white couple huddled together on the sofa were Dave and Sandy Jordan. Sandy’s blond hair was in rumpled knots around her shoulders, and both of their flushed faces were streaked with tears. Sandy stood as soon as she saw Elle, dropping her husband’s hand. For a moment, she just stared, tears streaming down her face. Then she launched herself at Elle, hugging her so tightly Elle felt her ribs adjust.

  A memory flashed through her head from when she was a child: waking up tangled in urine-soaked sheets and screaming from the terror of a nightmare. Her mother had come running, ready to attack an intruder. Instead, she found her daughter sitting up in bed alone. The only enemy that night was inside Elle’s mind, and that was a place her mother could not reach. Elle had grasped for her then, hoping for soft arms wrapped around her like Sandy’s were now, but her mother had just looked at her, eyes hot with pain that Elle would never understand.

  Elle blinked as Sandy’s embrace tightened. Awkwardly, she patted the woman on the back.

  “Okay, okay,” she said, rubbing a gentle circle between the woman’s shoulder blades. Her frail body shook. Elle guessed she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything since yesterday morning.r />
  “Thank you for coming,” Sandy said when she finally pulled away. Her body hunched forward, as if the act of standing straight was painful. “I just . . . I’m friends with Grace Cunningham’s older sister. The girl from your season one case.”

  Elle nodded. “Right.”

  “I know what you were able to do for them. I thought maybe you could help. It’s not because I don’t trust the police.” At this, Sandy gave Ayaan a desperate glance, as if to reassure her of her faith in the force. “I felt like I had to do something. We’ve both been so useless, trying to think of anyone who could have done this. I’m going crazy thinking about what might be happening to . . . I just . . .” She trailed off into a sob and collapsed back on the sofa next to her husband. When Sandy looked up again, Elle made eye contact with her.

  “Can you tell me what happened?”

  Dave Jordan had yet to say anything, but he put his beefy arm around his wife in a gesture that nearly swallowed her tiny body whole. He gave Elle a doubtful look. “I saw you outside. Wasn’t Commander Bishar filling you in?”

  “Yes, she told me what happened, but I’d like to hear your story. Please.”

  Dave finally handed a box of tissues to his poor wife. After wiping a few handfuls of them across her face, Sandy spoke again. “I was going to watch Amanda walk to the bus stop, just like every other morning. It’s freezing, so I stayed inside like I usually do in the winter. As she was walking down the driveway, I went . . .” She paused, wiping away a fresh flood of tears. “I went into the kitchen because my phone rang. No one ever calls us on the landline, so I thought maybe there was some kind of emergency. I answered, but no one was there. By the time I got back to the window, the bus had come and gone. I just assumed . . . I just assumed she’d gotten on. Didn’t think twice about it.”

  Sandy looked up at Dave and shook her head. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”

  His jaw clenched, but he reached out and put a hand on her knee. “You didn’t do anything I wouldn’t have done. This isn’t your fault.”

  Elle tried to catch his eye, keep him present while his wife tried to compose herself. “What happened next? How did you find out she was missing?”

  “The school called,” Dave said. “They rang us when she didn’t show up after first period. We were obviously shocked, so we called 911 right away. When the officers looked around, they found her school bag in the gutter. We couldn’t see it from our window because of the snowbank, but it was out there, in front of the house two doors down.”

  “So, whoever it was that took her didn’t mind making it obvious she was gone.” Elle said the words more to herself, but when she looked up, she saw that Ayaan was watching her from her position leaning against the door frame. She nodded.

  Ayaan said, “Officers found the bag right away when they got here, but nothing else. It was in the same vicinity as the van the bus driver thought was suspicious.”

  Goose bumps prickled along Elle’s arms, even though the heat was blasting in the house. “So, if the van was used to kidnap Amanda, that means she was in the vehicle when the bus arrived?”

  Sandy sobbed again, the sound grabbing at Elle’s heart. Ayaan simply nodded, her lips pressed together.

  Elle leaned forward, hands clasped in front of her. “Mr. Jordan, do you and your wife have any money? Any wealth that you’ve come into recently that someone might know about?”

  “What? No. I’m a building contractor. My wife is a stay-at-home mom.” Dave’s eyes welled up with tears again, and he knuckled them away. “All we’ve got is this house and two beautiful kids. I just . . . This can’t be happening.”

  “You can’t think of anyone who would want to take Amanda? No relatives, acquaintances who have shown special interest in her? Nobody strange following you recently?”

  They both shook their heads, and then Sandy started to cry again. “I don’t know! Everyone keeps asking me that. I don’t know. I don’t know. I don’t know who would do this to us.” Her last word trailed off into a wail.

  Wanting to give the couple a moment, Elle looked around for the patrol officer who had greeted them at the door. He must have gone to the kitchen. “Excuse me,” she murmured as she left the room.

  The officer was filling the kettle at the kitchen sink and held it up when she walked in. “Thought I’d make them tea. I’ve tried twice, but they let it go cold without drinking it every time. They’ve basically been just crying and asking me if I’ve heard anything.” The short Black man cracked his knuckles after he put the burner on under the kettle.

  “I gathered that—” Elle broke off. “What’s your name?”

  “Hamilton. Before he was big.” He winked and she smiled.

  “I think Alexander Hamilton might be offended by that disclaimer, but okay,” she said. “I’m Elle Castillo; I’m a police consultant.” The words felt good coming out of her mouth, but she held back her smile. “You’re telling me you’ve been here, what, four hours and they haven’t said anything?”

  Hamilton looked at his watch. “I’m telling you, I took over from Officer Eastley at eight a.m., and these folks have barely said anything that wasn’t an answer to a direct question. The dude has been staring out the window the whole time, and the lady goes back and forth between sleeping and crying. I’ve never seen people so devastated.”

  “What have you asked them?”

  “Just if they had seen anyone strange in their neighborhood recently, or if anyone had a grudge against either of them. You know, maybe someone at work or something?”

  Elle nodded. “And what did they say?”

  Hamilton scoffed and shook his head, looking disappointed. “Nothing useful. They can’t think of any reason why someone would do this to their daughter.” He met her gaze, brown eyes thick with worry. “I’ve seen some shit, but I’ve never seen folks messed up like this before. I really hope we can find her.”

  He stayed in the kitchen when Elle went back into the living room. Dave was standing by the window now, looking outside as if Amanda might walk up the path to the house at any moment. Ayaan sat across from Sandy, ramrod straight and looking more uncomfortable in a recliner than anyone Elle had ever seen. Her face smoothed out with hope when Elle walked through the door, but Elle shook her head. Ayaan gave an almost imperceptible nod.

  Rather than sitting in the chair next to Ayaan, Elle took the empty spot on the couch next to Sandy. Her body shifted with the new weight on the cushions, sagging in toward Elle. It was enough to snap Sandy out of whatever trance she was in, and she sat up at last, lifting her head from the back of the couch. She looked at Elle, and her eyes took a second to come into focus.

  “Where did you go?” she asked, her voice shredded.

  “Just to talk to the officer,” Elle said. She looked at the commander. “Ayaan, you mentioned there was a description one of the kids gave of someone they saw in the area, right?”

  Ayaan nodded as she pulled out her notebook and flipped several pages over the top. “Yes, a ten-year-old girl told us she saw a man standing next to the street while she was waiting for the bus, although she didn’t see him approach Amanda. She said he was really tall with dark hair and pale skin, and he was wearing a tan jacket. She didn’t recognize him.”

  Elle looked at the Jordans. “Does that sound like anyone you know?”

  “I don’t know. Commander Bishar already asked us this last night. I don’t know . . . I can’t—” Sandy’s face crumpled. She leaned forward, putting her face in her hands and wiping away a fresh batch of tears. “I can’t think. It’s like . . . it’s like my brain keeps going blank.”

  “I know,” Elle said. “I honestly can’t imagine how this must feel, or how frustrating it must be to try to answer questions like this, that you never thought you’d have to answer.”

  Ayaan spoke softly. “No one likes to think of this, Sandy, but sometimes the ones we trust most around our children are the people who put them most at risk. We don’t see that our children a
re scared of them, that they have reason to be. Is there anyone in your life, anyone at all, that Amanda might have demonstrated fear of in the past? An uncle? A cousin? A friend you’ve had over to the house? Someone who works with you, Dave?”

  When neither of them responded, Elle spoke again. “Think about whether you have ever had to encourage Amanda to say hi to someone, to give them a hug, maybe. Someone she didn’t want to engage with, and you thought she was just being disobedient. It probably didn’t seem weird to you at the time, but kids don’t always tell us important information in alarming ways. But there was something about this man—this tall, white man with dark hair—that Amanda didn’t like. She didn’t like him. Do you know someone like that?”

  The redness in Sandy’s eyes grew worse, but she didn’t blink as two tears streamed down the right side of her face. Dave continued to stare out the window, unresponsive. Elle took a deep breath, clenching her fingernails into her palms.

  Hamilton came out with a tray loaded with a teapot, teacups, and cookies. He set it down on the coffee table and smiled at Elle, whispering, “Attempt number three.”

  This one seemed to be a success. As if on autopilot, Sandy reached out and poured herself a cup of tea, her eyes focused somewhere in the middle of the room. She narrowly avoided sloshing the scalding liquid on her hand, but she didn’t spill a drop. Without shifting her gaze, she raised the cup to her lips, blew into the steam, and sipped. Then she took a deep, whistling breath through her nose, and said, “You know, she never seemed to like Graham Wallace.”

  Elle’s body went rigid. Hamilton stopped midstride and turned his head, mouth agape. Ayaan was the first one to move; she reached for her tablet and started typing, likely searching the name in the police database.

  “Who is Graham Wallace?” Elle asked.

  But before Sandy could answer, Dave sank to the floor with a long, stricken moan. Sandy leapt from the couch and ran to him, cradling his head on her lap as he sobbed. The backs of Elle’s hands prickled; she looked at Ayaan, but she was too busy staring at her tablet. Hamilton watched the couple on the floor, as if to make sure they weren’t physically hurt.