D.D. decided to declare that interaction a draw. She paused again, trying to find her bearings in a conversation that should be taking place in person and not by phone.

“When you first arrived home, Mr. Jones, were the doors locked?”

“Yes.”

“Anything out of the ordinary catch your eye? In the kitchen, hallway, entryway, anything at all as you entered your house?”

“I didn’t notice a thing.”

“When you first realized your wife was not home, Mr. Jones, what did you do?”

“I called her cell. Which turned out to be in her purse on the kitchen counter.”

“Then what did you do?”

“I walked outside, to see if she had stepped out back for something, was maybe stargazing. I don’t know. She wasn’t inside, so I checked outside.”

“Then what?”

“Then I checked her car.”

“And then?”

“Then … what?”

“What you described takes about three minutes. According to the first responders, you didn’t dial nine-one-one for another three hours. Who did you call, Mr. Jones? What did you do?”

“I called no one. I did nothing.”

“For three hours?”

“I waited, Sergeant. I sat on the sofa and I waited for my world to right itself again. Then, when that didn’t magically happen, I called the police.”

“I don’t believe you,” D.D. said flatly.

“I know. But maybe that also proves my innocence. Wouldn’t a guilty man manufacture a better alibi?”

She sighed heavily. “So what do you think happened to your wife, Mr. Jones?”

She heard him pause now, also considering.

He said finally, “Well, there is a registered sex offender who lives down the street.”

CHAPTER SEVEN

On October 22, 1989, a boy named Jacob Wetterling was kidnapped by a masked man at gunpoint, and never seen again. Now, in 1989, I was only three years old, so you can trust me when I say I didn’t do it. But thanks to the abduction of Jacob Wetterling nearly twenty years ago, my adult life was changed forever. Because Jacob’s parents formed the Jacob Wetterling Institute, which got the Jacob Wetterling Crimes Against Children and Sexually Violent Offender Registration Act signed into law in 1994; basically, Jacob’s parents helped create the very first sex offender database.

I know what you’re thinking. I’m an animal, right? That’s the conventional wisdom these days. Sex offenders are monsters. We should not only be denied all contact with children, but we should be ostracized, banned, and otherwise forced to live in squalid conditions under a Florida bridge. Look at what happened to Megan Kanka, kidnapped from her own bedroom by the sex offender living right next door. Or Jessica Lunsford, snatched from her unlocked home by the sex offender living with his sister in the trailer just across the street.