Three Days Missing

by Kimberly Belle

  I pivot around, the fury that’s been growing in me like a tumor erupting in a voice that is not my own. “Where’s Miss Emma?”

  The sheriff and detective raise matching brows at my tone, but neither of them answer. Their clothes drip matching puddles onto the rickety floorboards.

  “His teacher. Where is she?”

  My hatred for that woman is a hot, pulsing thing inside my chest, shocking me with its sudden intensity. I want to slap her, to tear at her shiny hair, to scream at her until this rickety building shakes on its cinder block foundation. I want her to look me in the eye and tell me how she let this happen to my son.

  The sheriff moves to one of the picnic tables, grabs a towel from a pile, tosses it to the detective and takes another for himself. “I know you want to cast blame,” he says, his face disappearing behind the scratchy material, “and believe me, so do we. But first things first. Let’s focus on finding your son. We can sort out all the finger-pointing later.”

  “I deserve answers.”

  He whips the towel over a shoulder. “And you’ll get them, but right now we’re wasting daylight. Sun’s been up for over an hour.” He drops onto a bench and hollers into the empty room, “Dawn, you in here?”

  A ponytailed woman in a Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office T-shirt leans her torso around the corner of the industrial kitchen that runs along the entire back side of the building, separated from the rest by a low wall and a metal prep table. “Just making a fresh pot of coffee, sir, and then I’ll be right in.” Her gaze catches mine, and she gives me a warm smile, then disappears back behind the wall.

  Detective Macintosh nudges me toward the table, and we sit.

  “Now,” the sheriff says once we’re settled. “We’ve moved the kids and chaperones over to the Days Inn on Chestatee for questioning. The last thing we need at this camp is a bunch of scared and hyped-up eight-year-olds. The woods are already a ragbag of scents from when they were out there earlier. Some kind of scavenger hunt, apparently, which is part of what’s holding up the dogs.”

  “Is the scent holding?” I say.

  “Let’s just put it this way. I’d do cartwheels down the center of this room if someone told me the rain stopped an hour ago.” He points a finger up at the metal roof, still being hammered by a loud and determined downpour. My heart sinks at the sound.

  The sheriff searches through the pile of papers on the table, maps and printouts and scribbled notes scattered across the wooden surface like a tornado dropped them there. They’re held down with a couple of soggy towels and a handful of foam cups, the rims chewed and stained with what smells like burned coffee. Nobody seems bothered by the chaos, but I am. What kind of operation is this?

  Finally, he locates a yellow legal pad, then flips to a fresh page. “All righty. Let’s start with any personal identification marks Ethan might have. Birthmarks or scars. Something that’s unique to your son.”

  I touch a finger to my right temple, just under the hairline. “He has a scar on his forehead, right about here, and a birthmark on his left thigh. It looks like two overlapping nickels.”

  “What about medical conditions?”

  “He’s allergic to peanuts. He carries an EpiPen.”

  The sheriff’s pen freezes on the notepad, and he and the detective exchange a look. “How allergic?”

  “That depends on how much he eats. Trace amounts typically only result in hives and wheezing, but a spoonful of peanut butter could kill him. He’s had the allergy all his life. He’s well aware of what he can and can’t eat, and he knows how to use his EpiPen.”

  Sheriff Childers curses under his breath. “Dawn,” he barks so sharply that I startle. “Get his teacher on the line. I want to know why this is the first time we’ve heard of this allergy. And reconfirm there were no pens found among the kids’ stuff. I want to be one hundred percent certain that Ethan’s is still in his backpack.”

  Her voice calls out from the kitchen. “On it.”

  The sheriff makes a scribble on his notepad, then turns back to me. “Does Ethan know how to swim?”

  A new terror seizes my heart, squeezing it to a standstill. Ethan can swim, but he doesn’t like to go where he can’t touch the bottom, and he has the tendency to panic. I think about the pond we passed on the drive up, the way the raindrops shimmered on the smooth, dark surface, and I feel sick.

  Sheriff Childers must read the answer on my face, because he writes NOT A SWIMMER in big block letters across the top of the page. “What about sleepwalking? Does he ever get confused in the middle of the night, start wandering around the house?”

  “No. Never.” My gaze bounces between the sheriff and Detective Macintosh seated on the bench beside me, and I remember his advice in the car. To share every detail I can think of about my son. To question every fact presented to me. “How did Ethan get out of the cabin? Wouldn’t somebody have heard him? Wouldn’t the chaperones have been guarding the door?”

  Suddenly, it occurs to me that these are the kinds of questions a good mother would have asked prior to signing the permission form. Who’s manning the exits? What are the safety precautions? How do you know—absolutely know with 100 percent certainty—that my child won’t disappear in the middle of the night?

  “There was a fire,” the sheriff announces, and my heart gives a hard kick. I have so many questions I don’t know where to start. I open my mouth, but the sheriff waves me off with both hands. “I know, I know, but let me just get through this, and then I’ll answer every question you’ve got. Like I was saying, there was a fire just outside the cabin. Not a big one, but big enough to wake up some of the kids. The father chaperone—” the sheriff checks his notes, flipping back a few pages for the name “—Avery Fischer ran back to the offices for assistance while Ms. Quinn rounded up the kids. She conducted an initial head count at that time, and the numbers checked out. Every child was accounted for. Once Mr. Fischer returned and the fire was put out, she did another one, and this time she came up one child short. Ethan was gone.”

  The only thing I know about Avery is that he runs the school’s capital campaign, one he’s called me for a number of times, even though my answer is always the same. If he’s as dogged with his chaperone duties as he is with funding the front office renovations and Promethean boards in every classroom, I have no idea. What kind of mother doesn’t know the people responsible for watching her child?

  The detective is the first to jump in. “Was the fire intentional?”

  “Yes. Whoever set it used an accelerant. An arson investigator is already on the way, but she’s coming from Chattanooga so we’ve got another hour before she gets here.”

  “And the teacher remembers seeing Ethan at the first head count?”

  “Negative,” the sheriff says, and I force myself to focus on his words, and not the way his eyes are tight and strained. “She remembers counting eighteen bodies, but according to her last statement, she can’t one hundred percent guarantee that one of those belonged to Ethan.”

  I shake my head, trying to clear the cobwebs, but I still don’t understand. “Who else could it have belonged to? Surely she wouldn’t have counted another kid twice. And what about the other kids? Doesn’t anybody remember seeing him?”

  “Some do, some don’t. It was dark and the kids were in a tizzy. The chaperones, too. We’re still in the process of questioning everybody, but most of our witnesses are children operating on a few hours’ sleep. That all goes to say this is taking more time than I’d like it to.”

  “What about tracks?” the detective asks. “Any indication which way they went?”

  The sheriff grimaces. “The rain started coming down shortly after the fire, which is part of what helped put it out. Any tracks were washed out.”

  “But he has a compass.” I slap my palms to the table and lean in. “If he has his backpack, it’ll be in it and he knows h
ow to use it. He’ll be able to navigate his way to safety.”

  For the longest time, no one speaks. No one quite looks at me, either.

  The sheriff shifts on the bench, restless and uncomfortable. “Ms. Jenkins, I know it’s not what you want to hear, but in all likelihood, the compass is not going to help your son. Now, it’s still possible that Ethan wandered off in the confusion of the fire, but it’s not looking that way. Every indication points to his having some help.”

  The sheriff’s words fall into the room like a bomb, and the ugly fear that’s been creeping through my veins grows and pulses with heat, clawing at my consciousness. I think about the helicopters swooping over the trees, searching between the branches for one, maybe two glowing bodies, and I feel unsettled, panicky.

  “Has somebody called Andrew?”

  This gets everybody’s attention. The sheriff cocks a brow, and he grows an inch or two on the bench. “I assume you’re referring to your husband.”

  “Ex-husband. Has somebody talked to him?”

  The sheriff shakes his head. “So far, we’ve been unable to reach him.”

  “Well, send somebody by,” I yell. “Tell them to pound on his door until he opens it.”

  “We’ve done that, just like we did with you. So far, nobody’s answered.”

  I flip through the logical explanations in my mind. It’s still early. Andrew is not a morning person. He’ll have his phone ringers off and his noise machine on. There’s no waking him once he’s out.

  But still. The suspicions sneak in like smoke, silent and deadly.

  “But why?” The question is as much for me as for anyone here. “Andrew loves Ethan.”

  The sheriff hikes a shoulder. “When people are desperate enough, they’ll do all sorts of things they wouldn’t do otherwise.”

  “How is Andrew desperate? He’s paying me bare-bones alimony and stretching out the divorce just long enough to hide all his assets.” I turn to the detective. “You saw where I live. If anybody is desperate here, it’s me. And before you start accusing me of having something to do with Ethan’s disappearance again, I was at home asleep.”

  “I wasn’t accusing you. I was questioning you, and I’m not going to apologize for it. Like I told you in the car, we’re looking at every possible scenario. That includes close family, starting with the parents.”

  Of course, they are looking at Andrew. If I’m a scenario, then so is a soon-to-be ex-husband with an arrest record.

  I shake my head, speechless. No matter what Andrew thinks of me, he adores his son. He’d never do anything to hurt him... Would he?

  The sheriff reads my expression. “Parental kidnappings aren’t all that uncommon, unfortunately, especially when the parents are estranged, which I understand you and Andrew are.”

  “We’re estranged, but he and Ethan aren’t. Andrew can see Ethan anytime he wants.”

  “According to a court order filed with the DeKalb County clerk, Andrew’s visitation is every other weekend.”

  “Yes, but that was what the judge decided. Not me. When I told him I wanted a divorce, I promised Andrew we would share custody fifty-fifty. This arrangement is only temporary. And why go to all the trouble to kidnap him here? Why wouldn’t he just... I don’t know, not bring Ethan home one Sunday night? I mean, it’s not like he doesn’t have plenty of other opportunity.”

  “I don’t know, but like the detective said, we’re looking at every scenario. Including the possibility your son might be lost out there in the woods, or that he’s with someone unrelated. We also have to consider that it might have been a stranger.”

  “What kind of stranger kidnaps an eight-year-old little boy?”

  The sheriff doesn’t respond, but I hear the answer in his silence.

  A predator.

  A psychopath.

  A monster.

  I dig my phone from my pocket with shaking hands, pull up Andrew’s number on the screen. Screw the restraining order. No, screw him if he’s done what I think he has. The phone rings once, twice, three times. It flips me to a recording, Andrew’s slightly nasal voice asking me to leave a message. I call him four more times, each time with no response. The same happens with his home line.

  The sheriff reads the answer on my face. “Keep trying. We will, too. In the meantime—”

  The walkie-talkie on the sheriff’s hip crackles to life, a deep voice spouting something in fits and starts. I squeeze my eyes and strain to make out the words, but I don’t catch them all. The dogs caught a trail. They tracked it a mile and a half to the northwest. Something about a mountain.

  “Goddammit.” The sheriff slams a fist to the table, rattling my frayed nerves and toppling one of the cups. A brown liquid, the remnants of someone’s forgotten coffee, creeps across the papers like sludge.

  He heaves himself to his full height and hustles off.

  “What?” I call out, but he doesn’t slow. Two seconds later, he’s out the door.

  “The dogs are confused,” the detective says. “They’re all over the place. Running around the woods then back to the camp, basically heading in opposite directions. One of them caught a scent, but it dried up at a place called Black Mountain.” He shuffles through the papers until he finds a map, then spreads it across the table. His fingertips fly over a sea of green to the north of Dahlonega, decorated with swaths of black squiggles—the Chattahoochee National Forest.

  I clamp on to the edge of the bench, my knuckles going white with fear, with hope. If the dogs caught his trail once, if they tracked him up a hill, then surely they can track him down the other side.

  Dawn rushes back in the room, and her expression punches a bright red panic button in my chest. She heard the update, too. “Black Mountain’s not a place,” she says, and she looks sick. Physically ill, and now, so am I. “It’s a road.”

  Detective Macintosh’s hands freeze on the paper, and he looks at me with a compassion that clamps around my heart like a vise.

  The realization, one I’ve been battling since the detective showed up at my door, dawns in brilliant, horrifying color.

  Ethan is not out there, wandering the woods or huddled from the rain under a tree. He’s in somebody’s car.

  But with whom? Going where? I think about all those movies and TV shows featuring children shoved into a trunk or the back of a van, then push the images away. Those stories never end well, the real-life statistics too grim. What is it all those advocacy groups say in their warnings? Scream, kick, fight, but whatever you do, do not get in that car. Because the minute that door is slammed with you on the inside, it’s too late. Statistics say you’re already dead.

  A vibration starts up somewhere in the very core of me, somewhere deep and primitive. It rattles my bones and throbs in my veins, pushing outward in quakes as violent as a seizure. My mouth fills with bile and a scream, but my frozen lungs can’t push it out. It echoes, loud and horror-movie wild, through my head.

  Dawn sinks onto the bench beside me, wrapping a hand around mine. “I know it’s scary, but this development changes things.”

  I look at her. Shake my head.

  She nods hers. “We will be doubling down now, expanding the roadblocks and the canvassing area. We were already going door-to-door at every home within a five-mile radius of the camp property line, but now we’ll concentrate on the homes and trailers on Black Mountain Road. Hopefully, one of them saw something and can give us a description of the car.”

  Her words electrocute my heart, sending it into a panicked dance. “Oh my God. Oh my God.” I press my free hand to my mouth and try not to throw up.

  “I need you to start thinking of the people you know both a little and a lot, okay? People you run into during a normal day. People who might be looking for more time with Ethan. The vast majority of children are taken by someone who knows them somehow.” She pauses, and I k
now from her expression, from the way her mouth straightens out and tightens, what’s coming next. “I need you to tell me about Andrew.”

  Her words make me dizzy. My soon-to-be ex-husband. The man who once told me he would love me forever. Who brought me lunch at work and flowers just because. Who even in our worst moments could always make me laugh. And now these people are suggesting he might be behind this? I’m as repulsed by the idea as I am tempted to believe it. At least if Ethan were with Andrew, he’d be safe. Andrew wouldn’t hurt him.

  But pushing up through all the chatter are two questions I can’t escape, no matter how hard I try to smother them.

  Where is Andrew?

  Why isn’t he answering his door?

  STEF

  5 hours, 13 minutes missing

  I pause on the top step, listening to the voices drifting across the foyer downstairs, trying to identify them. My husband’s, deep and powerful. A male voice I don’t recognize. A softer, higher tone that can only belong to a female.

  I turn around and head back up.

  People who don’t know me, those who see me trailing Sam around town to openings and fancy fund-raisers, assume that Sam chose me because I’m arm candy. A pretty little wife selected for her sample-sized figure and red-carpet smile, curated with the sole purpose of elevating the mayor’s standing. I’m supposed to cheer him on, champion his causes, boost his popularity, hike up his poll numbers.

  Yes, I look good on his arm, but most people don’t know I once had dreams and plans that had nothing to do with Sam. A master’s in Art History from Columbia, a love of all things French, a holy grail goal of one day working at the Louvre. People don’t know this about me because they don’t ask, and sometimes, I get so caught up in this life as the mayor’s wife that I forget it myself. Dreams don’t die as much as they fade into the background.

  Sam and I met at the tail end of grad school, when I was here for a monthlong internship at the High Museum. My mother had just moved to town, and I was staying with her, sleeping on her pullout couch and pounding away at my thesis, the visual hagiography of St. Margaret of Antioch in thirteenth-century stained glass. I was biding my time here, a quick pit stop on my road to Paris.