There’s a long silence on Emilia’s end.

“Can you check with your caseworker?” Kateri asks. “To see if maybe he got the days mixed up?”

“It’s a woman,” Emilia interrupts her. “The caseworker is a woman. And she wouldn’t have checked her out.”

“Is there any chance someone else from your agency might have thought she needed to be picked up?” Kateri asks.

“There shouldn’t be,” Emilia says, “but I’ll check. I’ll also check with the officials at Mercy,” she says. “I don’t understand how this could happen.”

“Me neither,” Kateri says, but she tries to picture a man, any man, who might have come to sign out Birdie. Shannon doesn’t fit the description in any way, and he certainly isn’t forty. The man Kateri pictures looks like a movie star. Something unreal. She thinks of the drawing in the closet, the tall man in black, with a circle head and no face, and she hears Birdie’s voice in her head. He’s the angel.

She calls Hurt.

“Officer Dillon was at Mercy overnight guarding the girl’s room,” she says as soon as Hurt says hello.

“Yes,” he says.

“Can you find out who was supposed to replace him?”

Hurt is at his desk. She can tell by the quiet around him, the click of his fingers on his keys.

“Craig O’Neil,” he says, “was on at eight this morning.”

“No he wasn’t,” Kateri says.

“Well, who was?”

“No one,” Kateri says. “The girl is gone. She was checked out by someone who said he was her legal guardian.”

“Shit,” Hurt says. “Really?”

“Can you find O’Neil?” she asks.

“He should still be there,” Hurt says. “He’s scheduled until six. Hold on.” She can hear him rolling his chair. “Let me have Dawn call his cell,” he says.

She listens while he gives the instruction, waits while Dawn dials, and gets nothing.

“His phone is off,” Hurt says.

Kateri rubs at the back of her head where her hair is tucked in and loosens it; the pull of the bun is giving her a headache. “We have a missing deputy,” she says. “And a missing child.”

She hears him sigh. “Are you sure?” he asks.

“Hurt,” she says. “I saw her discharge papers. Fuck. Would you ask someone else if they were sure? I’m sure.”

Hurt breathes. “Let me do some searching,” he says, and hangs up.

EIGHT: SHANNON

FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 8

I bypassed the car. It was later than I usually arrived, and I couldn’t see well on the trail, much less off it. I thought I knew the way blind but kept stopping; the creak of the trees, the movement of deer and raccoons in the brush, every noise freaked me out. I thought I felt breath on my neck. I thought I heard whispering. When I came out the other side of the woods, Baby Jane’s backyard was lit with a yellow square from the kitchen window.

I had told Birdie to say I was taking care of it. “When Mom gets up,” I’d said, “tell her I went to take care of it.” I told her not to worry. I lit a candle inside a hurricane glass and put it up on the counter so she couldn’t knock it over. I hoped my mother didn’t sleep through until morning. All I could picture was Birdie alone in the dark house, her body curled next to my mother, who was dead to the world.