By eight, our quiet residential street was lined with vehicles, their blue and red lights sweeping across the white siding of our house. Neighbors stood on their lawns in small, silent clusters, their faces illuminated by the passing beams.
Rick paced the damp asphalt near the mailbox, his boots making a dry, scraping sound on the gravel. He kept his hands deep in his pockets, occasionally pulling them out to wipe his palms on his trousers before checking his heavy wristwatch.
“She probably just took the path by the creek,” Rick said, his booming voice cracking as he spoke to the deputy standing by the patrol car. “She’s eleven, she gets distracted by the frogs.”
“We’ve already sent two men down the creek bed, Mr. Rhodes,” the deputy said, writing on a small notepad. “They didn’t find any footprints in the mud.”
I stood on the bottom step of our porch, holding Hannah’s spare sweater against my chest. Rick did not look at me, nor did he offer to hold my hand, his eyes scanning the dark wood line at the edge of our property with a frantic, darting motion.
The county detective, Arthur Palmer, arrived just before nine in a plain brown sedan. He did not join the searchers in the field, but walked straight up to our porch, his movements slow and deliberate. He clicked his ballpoint pen twice, then looked down at his yellow legal pad.
“Mrs. Rhodes,” Detective Palmer said, his voice dropping into a flat, legal cadence. “I need you to tell me exactly what your daughter was wearing when she left the house at four.”
“The blue denim skirt,” I said, my voice trembling as I struggled to keep it steady. “And the gold piano-key earrings her father made for her.”
Palmer wrote the words down, his pen scratching against the paper. “Your husband tells me she usually takes the shortcut through the old orchard.”
“She never goes that way,” I said, looking over at Rick, who was now talking to Denise near the patrol car. “I told her to stay on the main sidewalk. She always obeys me.”
Palmer looked up from his pad, his gaze moving from me to Rick, then back again. “We will clear the orchard first, just to be thorough.”
