“I took Nathan Opal to his room. As I’ve said, I was filling in for Olivia Blow. Once Tanya Knight arrived at 7:30, I told her that I needed to run down to the office for just a couple minutes. Check my voice mails, my emails, that sort of thing. I was just headed back when Nathan’s mom flew in and asked if I’d get Nathan to his room. I wasn’t sure who had taken Gabby Bridge to Kara and Claire’s room, so when I spoke with Kara, I asked her. She said it was Benita, who happens to be Gabby’s grandmother.”

Rena had been right. There was a reasonable explanation. It was enough to make anybody crazy. Everything was so fucking reasonable and yet there was a missing five-year-old.

“Okay. I think we’re done here tonight. Are you going home?”

“Soon. I’ve sent an email to every parent and called them, too, letting them know the day care won’t be open for business tomorrow. While I’m sure they will understand, some of them will have to scramble to make other arrangements. I had to leave messages for a couple. I asked them to call me here once they got the message. I’ll wait a bit.”

“Okay. There is an officer posted at both the front and back doors. When you leave, make sure one of them knows it.”

“I will. Thank you, Detectives. I really do appreciate everything you’ve done tonight. Everything that everyone is doing. It’s...” She stopped, obviously choked up.

“We know,” Rena said, her voice soft. “Good night, Alice.”

A.L. knew that Rena wouldn’t offer any promises. None of them knew how this was going to turn out. It was already awful and it might just get damn horrific before it was over.

When he and Rena got outside, he stood for a minute, taking in the evening air. It was dry and fairly warm for a Wisconsin fall night. High fifties, maybe even low sixties. There were stars in the sky and a half moon.

“Nice night,” he said.

Rena didn’t say anything.

“Let’s go talk to some neighbors. See if anybody was out and about this morning at around 7:15,” he said.

“And saw a five-year-old wandering around?” Rena asked.

“Saw anything.”

On their way to the next-door neighbor’s house, they detoured through the volunteer setup area. They found Ferguson giving some instructions to a couple retirement-age men on where to set up some food that had been ordered and would be delivered soon.

“How’s it going?” A.L. asked.

“It’s been a madhouse,” Ferguson admitted. “But the FBI guys know how to do this. They’d got everybody who wanted to search organized pretty quickly. Christ, they already got porta potties delivered and set up down the street. They started the search behind the day care.”