The day after Christmas, the two-year-old accompanied her mother to the Buy-Rite Plaza in Panorama City. The promise of MEGA-SALE!!! DEEP DISCOUNTS!!! had stuffed the shabby, fading mall with bargain-hunters. Teenagers on winter break loitered near the Happy Taste food court and congregated among the CD racks of Flip Disc Music. The black-lit box of din that was the Galaxy Video Emporium pulsed with hormones and hostility. The air reeked of caramel corn and mustard and body odor. Frigid air blew through the poorly fitting doors of the recently closed indoor ice-skating rink.

Kristal Malley, an active, moody toddler of twenty-five months, managed to elude her mother’s attention and pull free of her grasp. Lara Malley claimed the lapse had been a matter of seconds; she’d turned her head to finger a blouse in the sale bin, felt her daughter’s hand slip from hers, turned to grab her, found her gone. Elbowing her way through the throng of other shoppers, she’d searched for Kristal, calling out her name. Screaming it.

Mall security arrived; two sixty-year-old men with no professional police experience. Their requests for Lara Malley to calm down so they could get the facts straight made her scream louder and she hit one of them on the shoulder. The guards restrained her and phoned the police.

Valley uniforms responded fourteen minutes later and a store-by-store search of the mall commenced. Every store was scrutinized. All bathrooms and storage areas were inspected. A troop of Eagle Scouts was summoned to help. K-9 units unleashed their dogs. The canines picked up the little girl’s scent in the store where her mother had lost her. Then, overwhelmed by thousands of other smells, the dogs nosed their way toward the mall’s eastern exit and floundered.

The search lasted six hours. Uniforms talked to each departing shopper. No one had seen Kristal. Night fell. Buy-Rite closed. Two Valley detectives stayed behind and reviewed the mall’s security videotapes.

All four machines utilized by the security company were antiquated and poorly maintained, and the black-and-white films were hazy and dark, blank for minutes at a time.

The detectives concentrated on the time period immediately following Kristal Malley’s reported disappearance. Even that wasn’t simple; the machines’ digital readouts were off by three to five hours. Finally, the right frames were located.

And there it was.

Long shot of a tiny figure dangling between two males. Kristal Malley had been wearing sweatpants and so did the figure. Tiny legs kicked.

Three figures exiting the mall at the east end. Nothing more; no cameras scanned the parking lot.

The tape was replayed as the D’s scanned for details. The larger abductor wore a light-colored T-shirt, jeans, and light shoes, probably sneakers. Short, dark hair. From what the detectives could tell, he seemed heavily built.

No facial features. The camera, posted high in a corner, picked up frontal views of incoming shoppers but only the backs of those departing.