That made sense. Especially now that they had verification by the street cameras of Elaine Broadstreet’s travel. It was likely that Emma had indeed arrived at the day care. What had happened after that was the unknown.

If Emma had strolled out of the day care without someone seeing her, it was possible she’d exited via the back door. If somebody had somehow taken her out of the day care, the same was true. Once the searchers got past the parking lot, it was going to get a lot tougher. On open ground, they’d be walking in straight lines, so close that their arms would touch if they extended them, in hopes of stumbling upon something of importance. In the not-yet-harvested fields, they’d each take a row.

There were probably fifteen or twenty more people in the immediate area. “These the searchers who didn’t want to traipse through a cornfield?”

“Only a couple. Most of them arrived after the initial group had launched. The FBI is about to get a second group going. They’ll walk the immediate area to our right, try to cover as much as a mile in that direction.”

“Okay. Did you get a chance to eat something?”

“No. But we’ve got food and bottled water coming in. I’ll grab something. I can get you guys a plate, too.”

“No thanks,” A.L. said. “We’re going to talk to some of the neighbors. We’ll hit the panini shop across the street at some point and can get something there if the mood strikes us.” Hard to think about food when a child was missing. But people needed to eat and have something to drink. And then someplace to take a piss. Those were the mundane things that had to be considered at a time like this.

He and Rena walked toward the next-door neighbor’s house. It had probably been built about the same time and maybe by the same builder as the learning center because it looked very similar with the exception that somebody had added a front porch along the way. It was getting dark but the streetlights were on, giving off enough light that he could see there was an older couple, maybe in their midseventies, sitting in lawn chairs on the porch.

He stopped a couple feet away from the front steps. “Evening,” A.L. said. “I’m Detective McKittridge and this is my partner, Detective Morgan. May we have a word?”

“Rena Morgan?” the woman asked, her voice rough.

It wasn’t the response he’d been expecting.

“Yes,” Rena said.

“Come on up. We know your mother-in-law. She sold us this house more than twenty-five years ago and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. She’s always talking about her daughter-in-law and how proud she is of you.”

A.L. moved aside to let Rena take the lead up the steps.