by Beverly Long
“I have a sign-in sheet in front of me that indicates that you dropped Landon off at 6:42 this morning. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Was there a teacher in the room at the time?”
“Of course. Kara Wiese was there.”
“Okay, thank you. Just one more question. How did you know what time to write down?”
“Uh... I guess I looked at the clock on the wall.”
“Okay, thank you.”
His remaining two calls went about the same. Each verified that the time written on the sheet was correct and that Kara Wiese had been in the room. The only difference was how they knew the correct time. One had checked his phone and the other admitted that she’d guessed based on the time her car clock showed when she pulled into the parking lot.
He finished at about the same time Rena got through her calls. “Anything?” he asked.
“I was only able to reach two of the three. Left a message for the other one. But nothing odd with the two that I spoke with. The first one verified that Kara Wiese was the teacher in the room and the second one said that both Kara Wiese and Claire Potter were in the room.”
“What time did the parent sign in?” A.L. asked.
“7:27.”
“That makes some sense if the second teacher starts at 7:30. She might have been a few minutes early.”
“But well after Emma was dropped off,” Rena said.
A.L. looked at the classroom sign-in sheet again. “Right. The one you didn’t reach is the one who signed in closest to when Elaine Broadstreet supposedly saw Kara in the lobby.”
“Yeah. Michael Purifoy. His son’s name is Jake. And he noted the time as 7:18. Hopefully he’ll call back soon.”
“For now, let’s call the two who signed the clipboard by the front office. Want to split them?”
“Let’s just do it together on Speaker,” Rena said.
A.L. matched the first name on the sheet to one on the list that Alice had provided. “Jasmine Opal,” he said. “She works at Wiseback Plumbing.” He dialed her cell. She answered on the first ring.
“Hello.”
“Is this Jasmine Opal?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice substantially cooler. Probably thought he was a telemarketer.
“This is Detective McKittridge from the Baywood Police Department. My partner, Detective Morgan, is also on the line.” Always better to be truthful if her statement ended up being important. “We have a few questions about Lakeside Learning Center.”
“My son isn’t in Emma’s class,” she said quickly, as if she thought that might be her get-out-of-jail-free card. Nobody really liked talking to the police.
“No worries,” he said. “What we’re interested in is your drop-off this morning. I am looking at a sign-in sheet that shows your signature at 7:52. Does that sound right?”
“Yes.”
“And where was that sign-in sheet when you signed it?” he asked.
“On the hook, by the office door, where it always is,” she said.
“And do you normally sign in there?” he asked.
“Well, no. I like to walk Nathan to his room. But I was running late. I saw Alice in the hall, she said that she was working in Nathan’s room, and I asked her if she could do me a big favor and walk Nathan down. I’ve already been late to work four times in the last three months. If I’m late again, I’m going to get another warning in my file. I cannot lose my job. It’s ridiculous, really. Like, what’s the big deal if I’m a few minutes late? I answer phones. Is the world going to end because somebody has to call back for their PVC pipe?”
A.L. rolled his eyes in Rena’s direction.
“Maybe,” she mouthed.
A.L. turned in his chair so that he couldn’t see her. “Do you recall, Ms. Opal, whether there were any other signatures on the form already?”
“No. I know that for sure because when I signed it, I remember thinking that there were no other losers who had to shuffle their child off at the door because they couldn’t get up in time.”
“Okay, then. We appreciate your time,” A.L. said.
“I really hope Emma is found. Every parent I’ve talked to is so nervous.”
“We’re doing our best,” A.L. said. “Goodbye.”
He looked back at Rena. “I’ll bet her boss is looking for a reason to fire her.”
“Perhaps. But she was pretty confident that she was the first signature.”
“At 7:52. Only way that could happen, if Elaine Broadstreet really did sign in around 7:15, is that somebody took that sheet and replaced it with a fresh one,” A.L. said.
Rena stared at him. “I don’t think Emma Whitman thought to do that before she made a run for the back door.”
“Yeah, me either.”
“If we only knew if Elaine really had signed the sheet.”
“We’ll go back at that if we need to,” A.L. said.
“Let’s call the other one,” Rena said. “It’s a lot later in the morning.”
A.L. pushed the paper her direction. “Your turn.”
Rena smiled and dialed. She rang several times and was expecting it to roll over to voice mail when it was answered.
“Hello.” The man on the other end sounded a little breathless.
“Devon Bridge?” she asked.
“Yes. Who is this?”
“This is Detective Morgan with the Baywood Police Department. I’m here with my partner, Detective McKittridge. We’d like to ask you a question about your drop-off process at Lakeside Learning Center this morning.”
“Sure. I’m in a cornfield right now, looking for Emma.”
“Thank you for volunteering to search. Your daughter, Gabrielle, is in Emma’s class, right?”
“Yeah. They’re friends. Hell of a thing. All I keep thinking is that this was a good day for us to be late. It could have been Gabby.”
“You were late?” Rena followed up.
“Yeah. Gabby had a dentist appointment at 10:00. It was probably close to 11:00 before we got there.”
“I’m looking at a sign-in sheet that indicates 10:50. Does that sound right?”
“Sure. Close enough.”
“Where was this sign-in sheet when you signed it?”
“By the office. I saw Benita and she said that she’d walk Gabby to her classroom. So I signed the sheet and left.”
“Benita?”
“Benita Garza. She’s my mother-in-law. Gabby’s grandmother. She works part-time at the learning center as their cook.”
“Okay, thank you. Do you recall, Mr. Bridge, if there was any other signature on the sheet when you signed it?”
“You know, I’m pretty sure there was. I remember looking at it to see if I recognized the name as one of the kids from Emma’s room, but I didn’t. I wouldn’t be able to tell you who it was, though. Can’t remember that.”
“That’s no problem. Thank you very much for your help. And thank you again for being part of the search party.”
Rena ended the call. “That’s that,” she said. “I suppose we should verify with Alice Quest and with Benita Garza that they escorted children back to rooms.”
“Odd given that Alice was in a room.”
“Yeah. But if it’s like everything else tonight, there’s probably a perfectly reasonable explanation.” Her tone was bitter.
“Don’t get discouraged, Morgan. It’s early yet.”
“It’s dark and she’s five.”
“I know. Let’s go talk to Alice.”
Four
Alice was in her office. Her back turned to the door. Filing papers into hanging folders in the cabinet behind her desk. She turned when she heard them. “I never get a chance to do this,” she said, with no inflection.
A childcare center had a weird
feel to it when there were no children there. Likely she felt it even more acutely because she was so used to the noises, the smells, the laughter, the tears. It was probably time for all of them to get out of there for the night.
“Alice, there are two parent signatures on the sign-in sheet that was next to your office door.”
“I know. I checked it once Troy relayed to me what his mother-in-law had said about dropping Emma off in the lobby with Kara Wiese. Elaine Broadstreet never signed it.”
“Right. For the two parents who did, do you know who escorted them to their rooms?”
“I took Nathan Opal to his room. As I’ve said, I was filling in for Olivia Blow. Once Tanya Knight arrived at 7:30, I told her that I needed to run down to the office for just a couple minutes. Check my voice mails, my emails, that sort of thing. I was just headed back when Nathan’s mom flew in and asked if I’d get Nathan to his room. I wasn’t sure who had taken Gabby Bridge to Kara and Claire’s room, so when I spoke with Kara, I asked her. She said it was Benita, who happens to be Gabby’s grandmother.”
Rena had been right. There was a reasonable explanation. It was enough to make anybody crazy. Everything was so fucking reasonable and yet there was a missing five-year-old.
“Okay. I think we’re done here tonight. Are you going home?”
“Soon. I’ve sent an email to every parent and called them, too, letting them know the day care won’t be open for business tomorrow. While I’m sure they will understand, some of them will have to scramble to make other arrangements. I had to leave messages for a couple. I asked them to call me here once they got the message. I’ll wait a bit.”
“Okay. There is an officer posted at both the front and back doors. When you leave, make sure one of them knows it.”
“I will. Thank you, Detectives. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done tonight. Everything that everyone is doing. It’s...” She stopped, obviously choked up.
“We know,” Rena said, her voice soft. “Good night, Alice.”
A.L. knew that Rena wouldn’t offer any promises. None of them knew how this was going to turn out. It was already awful and it might just get damn horrific before it was over.
When he and Rena got outside, he stood for a minute, taking in the evening air. It was dry and fairly warm for a Wisconsin fall night. High fifties, maybe even low sixties. There were stars in the sky and a half moon.
“Nice night,” he said.
Rena didn’t say anything.
“Let’s go talk to some neighbors. See if anybody was out and about this morning at around 7:15,” he said.
“And saw a five-year-old wandering around?” Rena asked.
“Saw anything.”
On their way to the next-door neighbor’s house, they detoured through the volunteer setup area. They found Ferguson giving some instructions to a couple retirement-age men on where to set up some food that had been ordered and would be delivered soon.
“How’s it going?” A.L. asked.
“It’s been a madhouse,” Ferguson admitted. “But the FBI guys know how to do this. They’d got everybody who wanted to search organized pretty quickly. Christ, they already got porta potties delivered and set up down the street. They started the search behind the day care.”
That made sense. Especially now that they had verification by the street cameras of Elaine Broadstreet’s travel. It was likely that Emma had indeed arrived at the day care. What had happened after that was the unknown.
If Emma had strolled out of the day care without someone seeing her, it was possible she’d exited via the back door. If somebody had somehow taken her out of the day care, the same was true. Once the searchers got past the parking lot, it was going to get a lot tougher. On open ground, they’d be walking in straight lines, so close that their arms would touch if they extended them, in hopes of stumbling upon something of importance. In the not-yet-harvested fields, they’d each take a row.
There were probably fifteen or twenty more people in the immediate area. “These the searchers who didn’t want to traipse through a cornfield?”
“Only a couple. Most of them arrived after the initial group had launched. The FBI is about to get a second group going. They’ll walk the immediate area to our right, try to cover as much as a mile in that direction.”
“Okay. Did you get a chance to eat something?”
“No. But we’ve got food and bottled water coming in. I’ll grab something. I can get you guys a plate, too.”
“No thanks,” A.L. said. “We’re going to talk to some of the neighbors. We’ll hit the panini shop across the street at some point and can get something there if the mood strikes us.” Hard to think about food when a child was missing. But people needed to eat and have something to drink. And then someplace to take a piss. Those were the mundane things that had to be considered at a time like this.
He and Rena walked toward the next-door neighbor’s house. It had probably been built about the same time and maybe by the same builder as the learning center because it looked very similar with the exception that somebody had added a front porch along the way. It was getting dark but the streetlights were on, giving off enough light that he could see there was an older couple, maybe in their midseventies, sitting in lawn chairs on the porch.
He stopped a couple feet away from the front steps. “Evening,” A.L. said. “I’m Detective McKittridge and this is my partner, Detective Morgan. May we have a word?”
“Rena Morgan?” the woman asked, her voice rough.
It wasn’t the response he’d been expecting.
“Yes,” Rena said.
“Come on up. We know your mother-in-law. She sold us this house more than twenty-five years ago and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. She’s always talking about her daughter-in-law and how proud she is of you.”
A.L. moved aside to let Rena take the lead up the steps.
“Why, you’re just as pretty as she said you were,” Grace said.
“Well, thank you,” Rena said. “And you are?”
“Grace and Jim Stern. In all the years we’ve been here, there’s never been nothing like tonight,” Grace said. “A child. It’s just horrible.”
“It is,” Rena said. “And given that your house is located right next door to the day care, we wanted to stop by and ask a few questions.”
“We’re happy enough to help,” Jim said. “Considered joining the other people who were going to search but decided it wouldn’t be helpful to have a couple of old people falling down and getting in the way. Earlier we had a nice young gentleman and his dog look around our backyard just in case, I guess, that the little girl had come this direction.”
“Were you around this morning, say about 7:15?” Rena asked.
“We get up about 5:30,” Grace said. “Have coffee and breakfast by 6:00. So, yes, we were here. I made some banana bread this morning so I was probably in the kitchen. What were you doing, Jim, at 7:15?”
“I was downstairs, fixing that old toaster.”
“We’re just curious if you saw anything unusual at or near the day care?” Rena said.
“Unusual how?” Grace asked.
Rena shrugged. “Anything that might have seemed different. Different people. Different noises. Different smells. Anything that might have struck you as odd.”
“I can’t think of anything, but then again, we weren’t paying attention. The day care has been there for years. It creates some traffic on the street, which we weren’t crazy about in the beginning, but we enjoy watching the little ones on the playground, and sometimes they take them for walks right past our house. They got a rope that they have the littler ones hang on to and when they get a little older, the kids hold hands. It reminds us of when our kids were young.”
A.L. could easily imagine the scene. Lots of innocence had been lost tonight.
Rena pulled a card from her pocket. “If you think of anything, I’d appreciate a call.”
“Will do,” Grace said, reaching for it. “Tell your mother-in-law we said hello.”
“I will.”
They walked down the steps. When they were far enough not to be overheard, A.L. said, “You really can’t go anywhere in this town that somebody doesn’t know at least one of the Morgans.”
“They were sweet. I’m sure Gabe’s mom will remember them. I swear she’s stayed in touch with every buyer or seller she ever worked with.”
“Let’s go to the sandwich shop. I doubt he’s very busy. Nobody can get down the street.”
“His business is called Panini Playground,” Rena said, with one eyebrow raised. “You think that maybe affects his business?”
“Yeah, I’ve heard better. Maybe it’s a play off the learning center.”
“You’re thinking that somebody there might have seen something?”
“I don’t know. Doesn’t hurt to ask.”
“They wouldn’t have been open that early,” Rena said. “It’s a lunch and dinner place.”
“You never worked in a restaurant, did you?” A.L. said.
“No. Why?”
“People are in hours earlier than it opens. Prepping for the day. Then they work all day.”
“Sort of like police work,” she said.
* * *
A.L. ordered a panini with salami and pepperoni and Rena chose a chicken and pesto from a tired-looking sixtysomething guy wearing a once-white apron over jeans and a chambray shirt.
“Slow night,” she said as she paid for her order. A.L. had hit the bathroom.
He shrugged. “You a cop?”
“Yeah.”
“That’s about all we’ve had tonight. Plus a few volunteers. Hell of a thing. A missing kid.”
“Anybody from here around this morning?”
“I got in about 9:00.”
Early but not early enough, thought Rena. “Are you the owner?”
“Yeah. Going on seven years.”
“I’m Detective Morgan. What’s your name, sir?”
“Antonio Gibacki.”
“How’s the neighborhood, Mr. Gibacki?”