“In the early stages of the investigation, the police and FBI worked from the theory that Suzanne had been snatched off the road around the family beach house outside the hamlet of Pamsrest, Virginia. Grace Lombard and her daughter often spent the entire summer there while the senator commuted back and forth between Pamsrest and DC.”

Pamsrest was a small community of the “everybody knows everybody” variety. Mom-and-pop stores, two ice cream parlors, a boardwalk, and an award-winning no-frills barbeque pit. A throwback to a simpler age that people got misty about but could never quite pinpoint in time—the kind of place where families felt safe enough to let their guards down.

“Definitely,” Vaughn said. “The last summer I spent down there, Bear was maybe twelve? And she already had free rein to come and go as she pleased.”

“Bear?” Hendricks asked.

“Sorry. I mean Suzanne. Bear was just what I called her.”

Hendricks made a note.

“Suzanne biked everywhere,” Jenn continued. “That summer she had a job at the local pool and usually left in the morning and was gone all day. This was before every kid had a cell phone. It wasn’t uncommon for Grace Lombard not to speak to her daughter during the day. So she didn’t get really worried until almost six in the evening. It took two calls to establish that Suzanne hadn’t shown up for work. Her third was to her husband in DC; Senator Lombard called the FBI. That got the ball really rolling. By morning, the town was inundated with law enforcement—local, state, and federal. By noon, the story broke nationally and Suzanne Lombard became the latest obsession of cable news.”

“Pays to be white,” Hendricks said.

Jenn nodded. That was inarguable. Social scientists referred to it as MWWS, or Missing White Woman Syndrome. Suzanne followed in the footsteps of Elizabeth Smart and Natalee Holloway—if you were going to go missing in America, it certainly helped to be white, female, and pretty. Throw in daughter of a US senator for good measure, and you had a recipe for America’s next obsession. The press descended on Pamsrest like a plague on Egypt. TV trucks formed a gleaming shantytown in a field on the edge of town. Any resident who cared to stand still for more than a few seconds was guaranteed to wind up on TV. The story ran round the clock for months on every media outlet in the country.

“On the afternoon of the second day, Suzanne’s bicycle was found two towns over in a covert of waist-high grass behind a general store. The area was canvassed multiple times, but no one remembered seeing Suzanne Lombard. Local law enforcement went to work on registered sex offenders in the region while the FBI explored the possibility that it was a politically motivated kidnapping. Of course, no ransom call ever came.”