A.L. said nothing. Just sat behind the wheel and stared at the day care across the street.

“What?” Rena asked finally. “And why did you ask her if she knew Corrine Antler’s parents?”

“I keep thinking about Traci at five. If we believe the grandmother and assume that Emma was at some point in the building, it’s possible for me to see her getting distracted by something she saw outside the back door and going to investigate. Kids are very curious at that age. Now she’s outside. I see three possibilities. Somebody set something up to deliberately lure a child outside. They scooped her up. Or, it wasn’t deliberate but somebody just happened to be there, saw an unaccompanied child, and took her. Crime of opportunity. Or, nobody was there and she simply wandered away.”

“Of those,” Rena said, playing along, “I see the crime of opportunity as the least likely.”

“Agree. And if she wandered away, why haven’t we found her? Lots of people looking for her. I don’t think she’s out there.”

“So that leaves number one,” Rena said. “Somebody lured her outside and took her.”

“Which brings me back to Traci. Earlier I was thinking this but now I’ll just say it. At five, she understood stranger-danger. I don’t think she would have willingly gone with anybody she didn’t know or at least hadn’t seen before.”

“So the bad guy either was a known guy or...took Emma against her will.”

“Both possible,” A.L. said. “But if it’s against her will, wouldn’t there be some struggle? Some noise. Something that someone noticed?”

Rena shrugged. “Not hard to overpower a five-year-old child. To silence.”

“I know. But my mind is hung up on the fact that I think she had some familiarity with whoever took her. That’s why I asked Rosemary Bracken if she knew Corrine Antler or Corrine Antler’s parents. To see if she had any familiarity.”

“Don’t you imagine that Doug Franklin asked her that?”

“I suspect so. It might well be in the file. Which we should go review.” He put his SUV in Drive and pulled away from the curb.

“What if it was somebody Emma knew very well who lured her outside? Somebody she wouldn’t have any qualms about going with? Somebody like...one of her parents?”

“Ugly goddamn theory,” A.L. said, without emotion.

“I know. But you and I both noticed the strain between the Whitmans. It wouldn’t be the first time that a parent harmed a child to hurt a spouse.” They’d both seen that just two years earlier when a child had been beaten severely by his father to make the mother pay for her infidelity. It had been a gruesome, ugly case that had been horrible to investigate.

“I know,” A.L. said. “We can’t discount the parents.”