Page 31 of My Child is Missing

“No.”

Gretchen said, “Mind if we have a look at your vehicle?”

He looked at the clock on the cable box. “You serious? My girlfriend will be here any minute. You promised me—”

Josie stood up. “We did, but you’ve been so helpful that we’re going to need a little more from you. A look at your storage unit in the basement, your vehicle, and also, we’re going to need you to show us where your traps are located.”

He put his head in his hands. “Shit.”

TWENTY-ONE

Morris Lauber was considerably more freaked out by the police inquiries than Henry Thomas had been, but he was equally as cooperative. He showed them his storage unit in the basement of the apartment building, pacing nervously outside it while Josie and Gretchen went through its contents. It was neatly kept, almost like a workshop. For a lifelong trapper, he certainly didn’t have many traps left, just as he’d said, although he did have all the equipment needed to skin, tan, and cure pelts. Next, he led them to his truck. After taking an initial look in the cab and bed, Gretchen called Hummel and asked that the ERT come out and process it for any evidence of Kayleigh Patchett. Finally, Lauber led them to his traps, which, as promised, were nowhere near Henry Thomas’s cabin. Hummel and his team were finished by the time they returned him to his home. When Josie and Gretchen broke it to him that they would need to speak with his girlfriend after all, he showed the most distress he’d exhibited all day.

By that time, Noah had arrived at the stationhouse. Gretchen sent Josie home to sleep while she interviewed Morris Lauber’s girlfriend. Everything in Josie wanted to object, to stay for that one last interview, but she knew that there was never just one last interview. Not in big cases like this. She had now been awake for over thirty-six hours and knew that the best thing she could do for Kayleigh Patchett was to go home and get some sleep so that she would be alert and clear-headed when she came back to work on Monday morning. Noah picked her up at Lauber’s apartment and dropped her back at her car.

Fifteen minutes later, she was kneeling on her foyer floor, petting their Boston terrier, Trout, while he wiggled his butt uncontrollably and licked her face. Luckily for her, Noah had walked and fed him before he reported for work. Trout waited dutifully on the bathroom floor while Josie took one of the longest, hottest showers of her life. Tonight she felt exhausted enough that she might actually get rest. She was just getting under the covers when the doorbell rang. In the second it took for her to consider not answering it, Trout began barking. As he ran from the bedroom and tore down the steps, Josie dragged her heavy limbs from the bed and followed.

Misty, Harris, and their little chiweiner dog, Pepper, stood on her front stoop. Trout moved past Josie to greet Pepper. The two were old friends. Harris clutched his mother’s hand. There were two bags hanging from her other hand along with Pepper’s leash. Wisps of hair escaped the loose ponytail she’d tied her blonde hair into, blowing against her cheeks in the light May breeze. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you’ve had the worst day.” She looked down at Josie’s sweatpants and the oversized T-shirt—one of Noah’s—that she usually wore to bed. “You’ve been up since the last time we saw each other, haven’t you?”

Josie waved them inside the foyer. Harris dropped to the floor and started scratching behind Trout’s ears. Misty stared down at him, brow creased. Josie’s mind was slowed from fatigue. It took a moment for her to realize that he hadn’t greeted her with his usual enthusiasm, jumping into her arms and yelling out, “Aunt JoJo!”

“What’s going on?” she asked Misty quietly.

Dropping her bags at her feet, and letting Pepper off her leash, Misty said, “He wanted us to sleep here tonight. I’m sorry. I hoped you—or Noah—wouldn’t mind. I know I should have called but I was afraid…”

Josie smiled. “Have we ever said no to you guys?”

Misty shook her head.

“You have a key,” Josie reminded her.

“I know, but I don’t like to use it unless you know I’m coming over or we’ve talked about it.”

“Misty, you and Harris—and even Pepper—are family. You know that. What’s going on?”

Misty reached down and tousled Harris’s blond locks. He kept his attention on Trout, who was now on his back, legs spread wide as he accepted gratuitous belly rubs. Pepper’s tail wagged as she observed the activity. Misty lowered her voice to a whisper. “He’s terrified, Josie, and I don’t know what to tell him. You know he’s been having nightmares over this stupid Woodsman thing for months. He was doing better after you and Noah talked with him and told him the Woodsman wasn’t real, but now with that girl missing…He was hysterical earlier. I’ve never seen him so scared.”

Josie pulled Misty to her and hugged her tightly. “You guys did the right thing coming here. Stay tonight. Tomorrow. As long as you want.”

Misty squeezed back. “Will you talk to him?”

“Of course.”

“I’ll take this stuff to the spare bedroom,” Misty said, picking up the bags.

Josie waited until she was upstairs before getting down on her knees and trying to get Harris to meet her eyes. “Hey, why don’t you tell me what’s bothering you? Your mom said you were pretty upset earlier.”

“You lied to me,” he mumbled.

Josie felt the words like a spike in her heart. “What?”

“You lied to me. You said the Woodsman wasn’t real, but he is real and he took a girl yesterday and now she’s gone and she’ll never go back to her mom.”

Josie took a deep breath, trying to focus her muddled mind. “Harris, I didn’t lie to you. The Woodsman is not real.”

Finally, he looked at her, his blue eyes so much like her late first husband, Ray’s, that her breath caught in her throat. “He is, too! He took someone! I went to Liam’s birthday party today and he told me. I didn’t believe him because you and Uncle Noah said the Woodsman wasn’t real, but he showed me on the news!”

“Harris,” Josie said evenly. “A teenage girl was taken by a bad man yesterday. That is true. She was taking a walk in the woods at the time. That is also true. But the Woodsman did not take her. The Woodsman is not real.”

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