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“I’m going to hang up the phone now, Andrew,” she said. “We’ll get people moving on this end. We’re going to get cars out looking for her right now, and we’ll check the bus station. Go home. We’ll meet you there.”
“There was a guy at the school gates today. A crazy fucking guy. He had some insane ideas about me being a danger to the girls. Could he have taken her?”
“You say you saw her walk through the doors into the school?”
“Yeah.”
“Then it doesn’t seem likely, but we’ll check it out.”
I gave her a description of the guy and then I drove home. I drove past the reporters at the gate and parked in the courtyard. I found Lee on the floor in the kitchen. She was sitting with her back up against the cabinet. Her phone was on the floor beside her, the screen cracked. Rufus had curled up to her, as close as he could get. He’d pressed his head into her lap, but it was like she didn’t see him. Like she didn’t see me. I picked her up and carried her into the living room. I sat with her on the couch in the living room, and I held her. She rested her head against my chest, but she didn’t say a word.
“It’s going to be okay, baby. I promise you, it’s going to be okay. We’re going to get her back. We’re going to get them both back.”
I kissed her head and I held her close and I cried. That’s what I did. Two daughters gone. My wife broken. And I sat on the couch, and I fucking cried.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Matthew
The high school was twenty-one miles from headquarters. Matthew asked Sarah Jane to drive. He needed his hands and attention free, so that he could call around with the description Andy had given them of the stranger who’d accosted him at the school gates that morning. Sarah Jane was a good driver. She drove fast, which was required in the circumstances, but she didn’t take unnecessary risks. Matthew managed to reach Dr. Karen Sears, a psychiatrist at the UVM Medical Center who specialized in forensics. Sears was part of a task force that regularly assessed high-risk individuals in the Vermont system, and they’d worked together on a previous case. Matthew quickly filled her in on the background and gave her the description Andy Fraser had provided.
“I can’t be sure, but that sounds like it might be James Mannion. He’ll be in your system. Borderline personality disorder. He has a history of fixating on high-profile individuals.”
“Have you treated him?”
“Not personally, no.”
“Do you think he might have taken her?”
“I can’t answer that question with any confidence. I believe he’s been charged in the past with stalking and harassment, but he has no history of violence that I’m aware of. He’s only in the system at all because he sent a series of threatening letters to Hillary Clinton. He believed that she was part of a pedophile ring. He threatened to kill her. But he never took any concrete action. It was all a fantasy.”
“Clinton would be a pretty challenging target. The Frasers are local. Easily accessible. Do you think he might have escalated?”
There was a pause. “I don’t know. Like I said, I haven’t treated him. Let me call his care team. I’ll get back to you.”
They ended the call. Sarah Jane gave Matthew a quick look of inquiry, and he shook his head.
“Unclear,” he said.
They reached the school. Sarah Jane pulled up in front of the administration building and parked. They went inside. The doors opened into an outer office, with a long reception desk and a row of four chairs opposite. There was a bulletin board with posters advertising various extracurricular activities—signup sheets for a ski team, a production of Guys and Dolls, and an after-school homework club were the most visible. There was a young blond woman behind the reception desk. She seemed to be expecting them. She pointed them nervously toward a closed door marked PRINCIPAL. That door opened before they could reach it and a woman came out. She was wearing a knee-length navy skirt with a pale pink sweater. Her hair was short and tightly curled, and she wore very pink lipstick and tortoiseshell glasses. She offered her hand to Matthew.
“I’m Cally Gabriel. I’m the principal of this school.”
“Detective Matthew Wright. This is Officer Reid. Is Mr. Fraser still here?”
“I don’t believe so. I think he left.”
“He’s looking for Grace?”
“I really couldn’t say.”
Matthew was picking up a definite attitude. “What time did Grace get to school this morning?”
“Her father dropped her off at eight thirty A.M.”
“When did you realize that she was missing?”
“You have to understand, we have hundreds of students in this school. We can’t keep tabs on every individual student.” Gabriel didn’t seem to be aware that she’d raised her voice. She didn’t like being questioned. “We have to have a system. Students go to class. The teacher takes a roll call on her tablet and the results of that roll call come back to the office, here. If a student is absent and a parent hasn’t called ahead to let us know, or logged their absence through our system online, then the discrepancy is flagged. That’s when we call the parents.”
