Page 32 of My Child is Missing

His lower lip quivered. “How do you know?”

Trout squirmed and turned back onto his stomach, ears pointed now as he looked back and forth between them, his soulful brown eyes filled with concern. Bored with them, Pepper wandered off in search of Misty.

“Because the Woodsman is something kids made up, like a ghost story.”

“But you said a man took a girl! How do you know it wasn’t the Woodsman? The Woodsman is a man! How do you know it wasn’t him?”

“Because I—” Josie stopped.

How could she explain to a seven-year-old that he shouldn’t be afraid of the Woodsman when a man had, in fact, kidnapped a girl in the woods? It didn’t matter that the Woodsman wasn’t real. It was a meaningless distinction. The reality was that a man had abducted a girl from the woods. Even if Josie convinced Harris that the Woodsman hadn’t done it, what was the alternative? Another bad man had kidnapped her. That wouldn’t make him feel any safer. Even though the Woodsman wasn’t real, monsters were. The kinds of monsters who hurt children. Josie had dedicated her life to putting those kinds of people in prison. But she couldn’t stop them. No one could. She couldn’t even tell Harris that Kayleigh Patchett would be found safe and returned to her parents because she didn’t know that, and these cases didn’t usually turn out that way.

No wonder Misty hadn’t known what to say.

How did you reassure a child that the world was safe when it wasn’t? How did you convince them that you could control things about the world when you couldn’t? She was supposed to be the adult. She was supposed to have all the answers.

She didn’t.

Was this what it would be like to be a parent?

“Harris,” Josie tried again. “I know that you’re scared. It’s very scary when bad things happen. A bad person took that girl, and me and your Uncle Noah, and Gretchen, and the Chief and everyone we work with—including Luke and his dog, Blue—we’re all doing everything we can to find her as soon as possible.”

His voice was small. “What if you can’t?”

Now it felt as though some vital piece of her heart had been torn to pieces. She tried not to let her body slump under the weight of the feeling. Trout whined and jumped to lick her face. “It’s okay, boy,” she murmured, petting his head. She stood up and extended her hand to Harris. His palm was cold and clammy in hers as she led him to the living room couch. She sat and pulled him close to her, one arm wrapped around him. Kissing the top of his head, she said the only thing she could think of: “We keep trying. We just keep trying.”

He slid an arm across her middle and rested his head on her chest. She stroked his hair, inhaling his scent. It took her back to when he was just an infant. Back then, his entire body had fit on her chest. As one of his primary babysitters, she’d spent hours rocking him to sleep in the glider chair at Misty’s house.

“I’m afraid that the Woodsman will get me, and I’ll never see my mom again,” Harris whispered.

Josie felt the breath leave her body. Holding him more tightly, she said, “Your mom is one of the smartest people I know, Harris. Everything she does is to protect you and keep you safe. She also has me and Uncle Noah to help her. If we all stick together, we have a very good chance of staying safe.”

It didn’t seem like enough.

“What if someone took me?”

This was an easy one, which made Josie wonder what that said about her—and the world. She thought about what Noah had said to her months ago during a case involving a married couple. The wife had been murdered and the husband, while upset, wasn’t particularly focused on finding the killer. Noah had made it clear that if he were in that situation, he’d respond very differently.If anything ever happened to you, I’d burn this entire city down finding the person who hurt you.

If anything ever happened to Harris, if anyone ever took him from them, Josie would burn the entire world to the ground to find him—and punish the person who hurt him. But she couldn’t say that. Not to a seven-year-old.

She kissed his head. “Then we would do everything that we could to find you. Absolutely everything, and we would never stop looking. Not ever. No matter what. Not for a million years.”

“You can’t live for a million years,” he said, and she heard the sleep in his voice.

“For you, I would try.”

A few more seconds ticked by. Trout jumped up on the couch and snuggled up to Josie’s other side. Drowsiness began to overtake her. When she heard Harris’s snores, she let herself fall deep into the darkness.

TWENTY-TWO

Josie slept for several hours before memories of Mettner’s death replayed in her dreams, the echo of the gunshots that took him startling her awake. She was in her bed with Trout pressed against her. Outside her windows, dawn was just a blue and purple whisper. As the last vestiges of the dream-memory left her, she felt the phantom sensation of Mettner’s hand sandwiched between her own. Sitting up, she stared at her palms. How was it that all these months later, she still felt his hand squeezed between hers? She stood abruptly and wiped her hands on her sweatpants. Still under the covers, Trout sighed and shifted. Before the flood of images from the night Mett died inundated her, Josie cast about for one of the breathing exercises her therapist had insisted she try. The only one that worked—sometimes—was the four-seven-eight breathing exercise. She inhaled, counting to four, held her breath for a count of seven, and then exhaled while counting to eight. After several of these, her mind settled, thoughts turning from Mettner to Kayleigh Patchett.

She checked her phone but there were no updates. She turned on the television. The local news was just coming on, its top story Kayleigh’s abduction. Josie went to her dresser and began pulling out clean clothes as the anchor recapped the weekend’s developments before sending the broadcast over to a reporter in the field. “WYEP’s own Dallas Jones is at police headquarters with the latest developments in this case. Dallas, what are you learning at this hour about the investigation?”

Josie stopped on her way into the bathroom and looked back at the television. Dallas Jones was young, only a few years out of college. He was stocky and wore his dark hair slicked back from his face and lacquered into what she was sure was a hard shell. Like most young reporters, he was hungry to make a name for himself, which meant he liked to dig way beneath the surface of every story, even if there was nothing to find. Standing in the municipal lot a few feet from the entrance, he spoke into his microphone. “So far, the police are being very tight-lipped about the results of their investigation, giving only scant details about Kayleigh Patchett’s abduction. What we do know is that it happened in the woods behind her house. Police have not given a description or any details at all about the man they think is behind this. However, after speaking with many local parents and students who attend Denton East High School with Kayleigh, it seems there is a fear that this might be the work of someone called the Woodsman.”

“Son of a bitch.”

Trout’s head popped up beneath the blanket. He stood and scrambled to find the edge so that he could get out from under it. Josie walked over and uncovered him. Scratching his head, she murmured, “It’s okay, boy. Just me talking to the TV.”

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