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“You’re Alex Cross’s son, aren’t you?” he asks.
“Yessir,” I say.
“Good luck on that debate you got coming up,” he says. “It means a lot to us folks on the force.”
Cedric, Gabe, and I watch the officers walk over toward a very skinny girl in short shorts and a Georgetown T-shirt.
I stare into the Anacostia River. It’s one ugly sight. Especially this part of the river here. The water is brown where I’m standing, and it’s filled with all sorts of nasty stuff—tires and old bikes and plastic trash bags, even a car. If you stand near the crumbly shore, you can see the world’s largest collection of empty bottles of no-name cognac and Dr Pepper.
Cedric bows his head and closes his eyes. I know how he feels. It’s that nauseating feeling you get when you’re afraid. I look out at the river. I keep thinking of what Nana Mama has told me and Jannie more than a few times: “It takes only two inches of water for a person to drown.”
The stink from the Anacostia is getting to us. So I’m not surprised when Cedric suddenly throws up. I’m just surprised when I manage not to do the same thing.
Then Gabe speaks, and he sounds impatient, almost angry.
“Get it together, dudes. We’ve got to help look for that kid.”
SO WE LOOK.We look hard. We have a strategy. Wherever we donotsee cops or other searchers, then that’s where we go looking.
We crawl under an unbelievably big willow tree at the river’s edge. The tree has hundreds, maybe thousands, of droopy branches that practically touch the ground. The area under the tree is muddy and smells awful. Enough garbage and chicken bones and old cigarette butts to get us nauseous all over again. No Yo-Yo. No little girl.
“Look in here,” Gabe shouts. It’s a very big square hole in the ground that’s covered by a rotted wooden doorway. The lock on the doorway is broken, and we shoot rock paper scissors to decide who should climb down inside and take a look.
I lose.
Once I’m inside, the muddy floor squishes and oozes beneath me. There is still enough afternoon light from above that I can make out a few dirty catcher’s masks, a lot of beer cans, and—what the hell?—two books: a really nice leather-bound Holy Bible in good condition and a soggy falling-apart copy ofThe Call of the Wild, which my dad had been telling me forever to read. This sort of freaks me out. The Bible and the other book are surprisingly clean. Someone has been here recently. But there’s no sign of a kid.
I climb back out, and we check some areas where other searchers have probably already looked. Because, hey, you never know.
“Maybe we’ll catch something the adults missed,” says Gabe.
“Yeah? Like what?” I ask.
“Man, I don’t know… a shoe or something.”
That doesn’t make any sense to me, but what do I know?
“You know. A shoe. Like a clue. A shoe or a glove or a necklace,” says Gabe.
“Yeah,” I say. “We get it. We know what a clue is.”
We all keep looking.
I replay the officer’s words:I don’t hold out much hope. I don’t hold out much hope. I don’t…
“Over here, clowns,” Gabe says. He’s standing on a small hill. The hill is not much bigger than a pitcher’s mound. Cedric and I rush on over.
“Look at this,” Gabe says.
Embedded in the grassy little mound is a handle pull. As Cedric lifts the handle, a dirt-covered door opens. We look into it. It’s some sort of storage hole.
I know. I know.
You’re expecting me to tell you now that something wonderful happens, like we hear a child sobbing or snoring or crying. But we don’t. We don’t hear a thing.
This underground area, no bigger than a closet, is filled with the same kind of junk that we saw in the other storage area. And, get ready for this, there are two moldy copies ofThe Call of the Wildresting right here, on a pile of crumpled beer cans. I guess some school nearby assigned that book.
Searchers keep searching, but the day is starting to turn a little darker. The sun is a tiny bit weaker. I guess there are a lot of police officers and volunteers walking and looking. But the fact is, a four-year-old, Yo-Yo, with her little legs, could only get herself so far. And I know that Gabe and Cedric and I won’t say out loud what we are all thinking. Did she fall into the river? Did someone scoop her up and take her away?
