“Majority of the kids get picked up by 5:30. According to Alice, she covers the center by herself from 5:30 to 6:00 most days to save on payroll costs. Emma Whitman is generally one of the last ones to be picked up. Everybody else was gone tonight and she’d already locked the outside door around 5:45 when the father pulled up and pounded on the door. At first, she assumed that somebody else had already picked up Emma. But once Troy called his wife and the grandmother, the only other people allowed to pick her up, she called Kara Wiese, one of Emma’s teachers, who said that Emma hadn’t been there all day. That was the first time Alice had thought about the fact that the parents had not reported an absence. She’d been covering for an ill staff member in the classroom that Emma is not assigned to.”
Perfect fucking storm.
“She quickly called the other two teachers and the cook, everyone who’d worked today, just to verify that nobody had seen Emma. When they hadn’t, she called the police,” Rena said. “Officers Pink and Taylor responded and secured the scene and began a room-by-room search. I arrived at the same time as Leah Whitman, mother of Emma Whitman.”
“When the parent or grandparent or whoever drops off, do they deliver that child to the assigned room?”
“I asked that. Alice said that’s what they want to have happen. But there are times, when a parent is in a hurry, that they will leave the child in this general area.” She waved her hand toward the front door. “When they do that, they are supposed to do two things. One, sign a clipboard that normally hangs there,” she said, pointing to the wall, right outside the office door, “and two, make sure they connect to a staff person, that somebody knows there is a child who needs to be escorted to his or her room.”
“What happened with Emma?”
“Again, according to Troy Whitman, Mrs. Broadstreet supposedly arrived around 7:15 this morning. She walked Emma into the building. There she saw Emma’s teacher, Kara Wiese, standing in the doorway of the office, and left Emma with her. Then she went to work at her job at Milo’s Motors.”
He knew the place. It was a used car dealership on the south side of town. “Did the grandmother sign in?”
“There’s no record of it.” Rena crossed the room and picked something up from a table. She returned with the clipboard and sign-in sheet, already in a closed and tagged evidence bag. She showed it to A.L. There were two signatures. Neither of them were Elaine Broadstreet.
“I’ve also already bagged and tagged the sign-in sheets located in the two classrooms,” Rena said.
“Mrs. Broadstreet isn’t here?”
“No. She’s on her way.”
“Where are the parents right now?” A.L. asked.
“Troy and Leah are in Classroom 1. They’re shook.”
It was a parent’s worst nightmare. He studied the space. The office was maybe six feet from the front door. “You said that Alice called Kara Wiese to see if Emma was here today.”
“Yes. Because Alice already had Mrs. Broadstreet’s version of events via Troy, she asked Kara about it.”
“And what did Kara say?”
Rena’s eyes looked troubled. “That she never saw Mrs. Broadstreet or Emma this morning.”
Somebody was lying or had a real shitty memory.
“Height and weight of child?” he asked.
“Three-feet-two-inches and forty-four pounds. They had a well-child visit just three weeks ago,” Rena added, to explain the exactness. “She was wearing blue jeans, a pink shirt with a unicorn on it, a gray lightweight hoodie and pink-and-white tennis shoes. And we’ve got a ton of pictures, off the parents’ phones. I had them send me a couple of the best ones.” She held out her phone for A.L. to see.
He looked. Sweet kid. Brown hair to her shoulders, more curly than straight. Round face. Big blue eyes.
“Cameras?” A.L. asked, looking around.
“No.”
“The whole building has been searched?” A.L. asked.
“Yes. Inside and the immediate perimeter of the building.”
It would have been too fucking easy if she’d been hiding in a closet. “So we’ve got a five-year-old who hasn’t been seen for over ten hours?” A.L. said. That had to be their priority. Find the kid. Then figure out what had happened and who was at fault. The temperature in Baywood had been a pleasant seventy-six today, according to the weather app on his phone. He’d checked it at the airport. Tonight it would get down to midfifties. Not great for a kid wearing what Rena had described.
He looked down the long hallway that led to the back door. Behind the center was a parking lot for staff and beyond that was rural Wisconsin—lots of corn and beans that hadn’t yet been harvested and even some pastureland for dairy cows. If the child had been dropped off this morning but never found her way to a classroom, was it possible that she’d somehow made her way out the door and wandered off somewhere? Or had someone taken her?
Both were terrifying thoughts.
“I’ve already reached out to the state police,” Rena added. “And made a request to the state Justice Department to issue an Amber Alert.”
That was how it worked. The police couldn’t unilaterally issue an Amber Alert. They requested and the Justice Department approved. Most people thought about Amber Alerts in connection to motor vehicles, assuming the purpose was to get as many eyes watching for a particular vehicle on the road. However, it could be used anytime a child seventeen or under was believed to be at risk of serious harm or death and if there was enough information to make it worthwhile. Here they had location and time of disappearance and a good description of the child. More than enough.
The Amber Alert would be broadcast on radio and television every thirty minutes for the first two hours and then every hour for the next three hours.
Also mobile phones would be lighting with a text message and signs on the highway would also share the information.
“Other social media?” he asked.
“Post is getting written right now, asking for volunteers to immediately report to this location, but once I knew you were on the way, I waited. Just wanted to make sure we were on the same page. I let Chief Faster know what was going on and he’ll contact the FBI.”
She’d accomplished a great deal in less than fifteen minutes. But that was how it worked with missing kids. Balls to the wall from now on out. And while he wasn’t a big fan of Faster, their new chief of police who’d been on the job now for about six months, he should be capable of reaching out to the feds. Getting resources quickly from them would be very helpful. They had experts who could lead the search activities and provide everything from flashlights and snacks to scent-trained dogs.