Page 88 of My Child is Missing

Under the car, she started clearing gravel away.

Luke’s face appeared on the other side, also upside down. “If there was something under there, wouldn’t the ERT have seen it when they impounded the car? Or brought it back?”

Josie kept pushing gravel away. “Not if it was hidden well enough.”

Her hands were raw from digging through the gravel. She was about to give up when she felt something smooth under her fingertips. She tapped a nail against it. Plastic. She tapped again, harder.

From deep within the earth came a shriek.

Josie’s heart did a double tap.

She squirmed out from under the car, heart pounding so hard now that she was sure both Luke and Noah could hear it. Standing, she wiped dirt from her clothes. “She’s under there,” she said, voice high-pitched.

Blue barked.

“She’s under there. I heard her. It’s plastic. There’s some kind of structure under the car. Noah, I need those keys.”

He spun away from her and jogged up the steps of the cabin, disappearing inside. Moments later, he emerged, holding them high over his head. His feet pounded back down the steps. Throwing open the driver’s side door, he slid inside. His fingers trembled as he fit the key into the ignition. For a split second, Josie wondered if the car would really start. It took a couple of tries but finally, it roared to life. Noah pulled the door closed and threw the gear shift into reverse. “Watch out,” he yelled.

The officers in the driveway scattered as he backed up the car. Josie and Luke were already on their knees, clearing more gravel until a plastic hatch came into view. Noah joined them.

Luke said, “This is a septic tank. She can’t be in here.”

“Shhh,” Josie said. “Listen.”

She banged on the lid. The screams were clearer now.

“Jesus,” Noah said. “Get the rest of this cleared. We have to get in there.”

Moments later, they cleared the rest of it and Josie yanked the lid open. Light cut through the darkness below. Eyes shut tight against the light, pale, dirty, with her curls pasted to her cheeks, was Savannah Patchett.

FIFTY-SIX

Josie stood at the edge of the crime scene tape that the ERT had erected around Henry Thomas’s cabin and watched as Hummel’s team moved around, taking photos, laying evidence markers, and making sketches. She heard the crunch of gravel behind her from the direction of the road. She didn’t turn. It was one of her team. The area was safe now. Noah drew up beside her. “Ambulances just left. Savannah seems uninjured but pretty traumatized.”

Josie shivered at the thought of the girl in the small, dark space. It was literally Josie’s worst nightmare. Because she had lived it. In a closet, not a chamber in the ground, but still, it had left psychic scars that would never heal. “Of course,” she said.

“But she’s alive.”

It was a miracle.

In their line of work, children weren’t found alive and if they were, the damage done was so severe, they had no chance at having a normal life ever again.

“Did she say anything?” asked Josie.

“You were right. She saw Kayleigh in the woods and followed her. Kayleigh tried to get her to go back home but Savannah wouldn’t leave her. When they got here, Kayleigh convinced her that she had to get into the tank so the Woodsman wouldn’t get her. She never saw Thomas.”

More gravel crunched behind them, the steps faster. Gretchen this time. “I checked the property records,” she said. “When this place was built, they installed the tank that Savannah was found in, but it was never operational. There’s another tank out back, from one of the old properties. That one is in use.”

They watched as Hummel emerged from inside the house, a clipboard in his hands. He walked over to the septic tank hatch. One of his officers had lowered himself inside. For a long time, the flash of light from a camera was the only thing they could see from the hatch. Then another officer stationed himself on the ground at the opening. Soon, the officer inside was handing up evidence bags to the officer outside. Hummel had a brief conversation with them, peeked inside the bags and scribbled on his clipboard.

“How did she breathe in there?” Gretchen asked. “She was in there for hours.”

Hummel walked over to them. “We found a lot of drugs in the tank. Weed, ecstasy, Oxycontin, and we think some Adderall, too. It was clearly where he kept his stuff. We also found a large amount of cash as well as some clothes and a few snare traps—some of which have dried blood on them. We also found two pairs of digital night vision goggles used for hunting. In addition to that, it looks like Thomas rerouted the pipe that connected the tank to the house and built out some kind of makeshift ventilation system. There was also a small storage space in the wall where it came into the house. It looks like a heating vent, but inside is a space to keep things and the pipe that leads to the tank. More cash and drugs and a few oily rags.”

“Like the kind you use to work on a car?” Noah said. “Maybe that’s where he kept his torque converter.”

“It was right in front of our faces this entire time,” Josie said. “All of it. Blue knew it. Those weren’t false alerts. The girls were right under his nose. Kayleigh probably hid in there the night she staged her abduction. We were so far behind that Thomas would have had time to get the car moved, get her inside, and cover it up. Then all he had to do was wait until things settled down and then take her out.”

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