“Not much, I’m afraid. The victim was a four-year-old and she was able to tell us that it was a man and he was wearing a baseball cap. The mom, who literally chased the car and hung on to the driver’s side window until she was able to attract enough attention that the guy stopped and pushed the kid out of his car before speeding away, wasn’t able to give us much more. Perp was twenties or thirties, white and thin-faced.”

“Red hair?” A.L. asked. “Maybe bushy or long.”

“Nope. Neither could describe hair. In the sketch that we had rendered from the mom’s description, the hair was close-cropped, hardly visible under the baseball cap.”

Hair was easy to cut. Easy to grow. “Was he driving a white Jeep, the kind where the sides come off?”

“No. Four-door sedan. I think it was a Ford. My guy was pretty brazen,” Detective Baker said. “Lured the kid to his car with the mom no more than fifteen feet away. She had her back turned, looking at some flowers in her neighbor’s yard. If she hadn’t turned when she did, he might have made it out of there with the kid.”

Brazen. Like somebody who would take a kid from a day care in broad daylight.

“That’s all very helpful,” A.L. said. “Thank you for your time.”

“Good luck.”

A.L. hung up. Tapped his index finger on his desk. “That didn’t get us much.”

“No, it didn’t,” Rena agreed. “You’ve got a lot on your mind,” she added gently. “Focus on that.”

Before he talked with Traci, he wanted to make sure that he and Jacqui were on the same page. Given that the temperature between the two of them had been downright frosty the other night, he wasn’t looking forward to it. But this was too important. He picked up his phone.

“Hey,” he said when she answered. “Do you have a minute?”

“Yes.”

“Good. I...found out something just this morning. I stumbled upon it when I went to breakfast at Pancake Magic. Traci and the guy from the golf course are still together.”

“No way,” she said. “That little shit.”

“She admitted it. Listen, Jacqui, I think we need to rethink our approach on this. We told them to end it but they didn’t. I think we could tell them that again and we’re going to get the same result.”

“So we just give in? Is that the kind of parenting we do now? Is that the kind of parenting that Tess does?”