The Disappearance (3 page)

A team of forensic experts have been studying these various sets of footprints since they arrived. Almost all of the prints will be accounted for, they know from past experience; they’ve worked countless locations like this one. Some of the prints are from steel-toed work boots, others are from rubber-galosh types, and there are some running-shoe prints. All are the trackings of gardeners, pool men, other physical laborers. None of these shoe prints have unique enough markings to be able to single out the one that would have been worn by the abductor who entered Emma Lancaster’s bedroom in the darkest hour of the night. If, that is, she was abducted.

“Here’s some fresher sets.” One of the forensic cops is pointing out to another detective, his partner, footprints that lead onto Emma’s bedroom patio from the lawn. The shoes the girls wore when they went out are strewn near the doorway.

“Three sets,” the other cop observes quickly.

“Three girls, three pairs of shoes, three sets of prints,” the lead cop agrees. “Stands to reason.”

They follow the prints across the expanse of lawn, where they wind up at the stairs of the gazebo, the farthest point from the house. “Still just three girls,” the senior cop observes quickly. He’s a good tracker, he’s part of the county search-and-rescue team. He’s tracked and found lost children and hikers all over the Los Padres National Forest to the north. Compared to that kind of tracking, this is child’s play.

“Let’s see what they were up to,” he says. Presciently, he adds, “Whatever they were doing, they didn’t want mommy or daddy to know about it.” He heads up the stairs, his partner following.

The scuffed wooden floor of the gazebo is littered with cigarette butts. A stack of Coke, Pepsi, Dr Pepper, and Snapple bottles and cans have been haphazardly pushed into a corner. There are a few beer bottles and cans scattered among them as well.

“My college dorm room wasn’t this grungy,” the lead cop observes.

The other picks up one of the empty beer bottles. “Sierra Nevada. These kids have taste. Money, too.”

“It’s what their parents drink,” his partner says. He stands at the gazebo railing, looking at the back of the sprawling house, the clusters of detectives combing it for clues. “A place this size has three or four big refrigerators. You could take a truckload of beer out and no one would ever miss it.”

His partner spies something in a crack in the floor. “What have we here?” he asks aloud, bending down to pry the object from between two floorboards with the point of a key. “Check this out.” He holds the roach up to the other cop’s face.

The lead man squints at the found object. “Big fucking deal.”

“It isn’t licorice.”

“Go by Santa Barbara Junior High any day during lunch break,” the forensic officer says. “This is the least of what they’re indulging in. Anyway, who says it’s one of the girls—or any of this shit, for that matter? It could be some of the servants, a gardener. Places like this have a gazillion people working at them.”

The other man drops the roach into a plastic bag. “Worth checking out.”

“Oh, yeah. We’ve got to.”

While this is going on outside, Sheriff Williams is inside the house interviewing Doug and Glenna in a private study away from the working cops.

“When was the last time either of you saw your daughter?” he starts out.

“When she came home last night,” Glenna says straight away.

“What time was that?”

She thinks for a moment. “About a little before eleven, I guess. I wasn’t looking at the clock. I had people over. Her curfew’s eleven, she’s good about making it.”

“Do you know how she got home? Did a friend bring her, one of the mothers of the other girls?”

Glenna shakes her head. “She took a cab. They did. The girls.”

“You know that for a fact? Maybe she told you that because they were with a boy? Or some boys? That you wouldn’t be happy about them being with? Or even if you didn’t mind who the boys were, but they wouldn’t want their mothers to know about it?”

“Emma’s only in the eighth grade. She doesn’t date.” She takes a sip of wine. It’s her second glass. She needs it to keep her nerves under control, so she doesn’t all of a sudden start screaming. “Besides, she hit me up for the cab fare. Twenty-two dollars.”

Williams makes a note. “Do you remember what cab company?”

“No. I didn’t go out to pay them. She did.”

“Does your daughter take cabs fairly often?”

“No.” Glenna glances at Doug. “Normally one of the people who work here picks her up—if we can’t,” she adds hastily, not wanting to come off as a rich, uncaring parent.

“But not last night?”

“They were busy with other things,” she says, feeling apologetic and not liking it.

“How large a staff do you have?” the sheriff asks. “That live here?”

“We have four people who live with us, and staff is too formal a word. There are two that drive her. I gave both of them the evening off. Emma knew to catch a cab ride home if she couldn’t get a lift from one of her friends.”

“That doesn’t count the gardeners,” Doug Lancaster interjects.

“The gardeners don’t live here,” his wife answers. She feels defensive about all the people who work for them, although she knows she shouldn’t; she pays them well, people love working for her. Everyone gets a bonus at Christmas, even if the revenue from the stations is down.

“How many gardeners are there on a steady basis?”

“Two,” Glenna answers.

“How many times a week do they come?”

“Every day during the week,” she says, beginning to feel annoyed. “They don’t work weekends unless it’s a special occasion, a party for charity, things like that.”

Another note. “I’ll get their names later. Could you tell me what you yourself were doing?” he asks her.

“I was hosting my monthly women’s consciousness group,” she informs him.

Williams waits for her to go on.

“A dozen or so women. We pick a different topic each month and we talk about our experiences on that topic. Personal stuff—feelings, emotions, things that matter to us. It’s normally Tuesday nights, but this month worked out better for Saturday.”

“The other women in the group were here when the girls got back from downtown?”

“Yes, they were here.”

The women’s group broke up around twelve-thirty. Glenna called good-night to Emma and her friends, volubly chattering away in Emma’s room behind the closed door. Glenna doesn’t intrude on her daughter’s space. It’s important to Glenna that Emma have her own space and her mother’s confidence in her, with no prying or spying.

Glenna did her bedtime preparations and was asleep by one.

“And you didn’t hear anything later on?” Williams asks. “No out-of-the-ordinary sounds?”

“No. I slept straight through until seven-thirty. I’m usually a light sleeper. If there had been anything loud, I’m sure I would’ve heard it. The master bedroom is on the opposite side of the house from the other bedrooms.”

Williams starts to say something, then decides not to. “If you could give me the names of those women,” he asks her. “It might be helpful.”

Glenna nods. “I’ll make a list for you before you leave.”

“Appreciate that.” He turns to Doug, who’s sitting immobile, cracking his knuckles, looking impatient. That’s okay, Williams thinks, let him stew a bit. “And you, Mr. Lancaster?”

“The last time I saw Emma?” Doug isn’t drinking. He feels like one, a stiff one, but he doesn’t want to drink with the police here.

“Yes.”

Doug thinks for a minute. “Yesterday morning? Did I see her then? You know, I don’t remember now. I think so, but maybe I didn’t.”

“When was the last time you could definitely say you saw her?”

“Friday night,” Glenna answers for him. “Two nights ago. We all had dinner together, the three of us.”

“That sounds right,” Doug agrees.

Williams scribbles in his notebook again. Looking up, he asks, “And you were where last night, Mr. Lancaster?”

“L.A. Beverly Hills, to be specific, until pretty late, then I was in my hotel in Santa Monica.”

“L.A.?”

“I had a business meeting,” Doug explains. “Some of my affiliate associates from the network were out for the weekend from New York and Atlanta. We worked Saturday, had dinner Saturday night, then some of us played golf this morning.” He paused. “That’s where my wife finally tracked me down, on the golf course.”

“Right,” Williams responds, his face betraying no interest. “You’ll give us the names?”

“I don’t carry a cell phone on the course,” Doug adds apologetically. Then he rattles off the names of the men and women he had dinner with last night, the name of the hotel he stayed at, the names of the others in his golf foursome.

Williams writes it down. “That’s all we need for now. We’ll be looking around for a while. If we find anything, we’ll come and tell you.”

As the sheriff is leaving the room, Doug stands in the doorway, blocking his exit. “That was some pretty inquisitive questioning just now,” Doug says, not bothering to conceal his displeasure. “I almost felt we were under suspicion of something, the way you were probing.” The intensity of his voice forces Williams to look at him. “I understand you have to find out what’s going on, but what was that? Or am I misreading you?”

The sheriff responds directly. “You weren’t misreading me.”

Glenna’s intake of breath is sharply audible. Her husband puts a supportive arm around her shoulders.

“We have to do this,” Williams explains. “Anytime a family member is missing, particularly a child, the other family members are the first ones to be”—he fumbles for the right word—“suspects,” he finishes. “Like the Ramsey family, back there in Colorado. I hope you understand.”

“Maybe I do,” Doug answers slowly, tightening his grip on his wife’s shoulders as he feels her tense up. “But I sure as hell don’t like it.”

“Yes, I can understand that,” Williams says. “But we have to do it,” he repeats himself, uncomfortably holding his ground. “This is the way it works with every police department in the country.”

“If you say so.” Doug isn’t conceding anything.

“It’s for your benefit—sir.”

“
Our
benefit? How in the hell is that?” Doug’s angry. His daughter’s missing and the cops are screwing him and Glenna around. Don’t they have better things to do, like figuring out who did this? If, in fact, she really was abducted, which by now he has to believe. There aren’t any other plausible options.

Williams keeps his cool. Doug’s is a normal reaction. “In a kidnapping without any witnesses, family members are the first suspects,” he explains patiently. “
Especially
in a situation without any witnesses.”

“There was a witness,” Glenna protests. “Lisa saw it. Detective Garcia took her testimony. You know that.”

“She didn’t see anything,” Williams says dismissively. “A tall white man. No face, no nothing. It could be her father,” he goes on, looking at Doug.

“Hey!”

“I’m not saying it’s you, Mr. Lancaster,” the sheriff comes back, “but we have to look at that. It’s how we’re trained, and with good reason. Or it could be one of your staff, or someone else who’s worked around here and knows the lay of the land.”

“It wasn’t anyone who works for us,” Glenna says adamantly. “I’m sure of that.”

“Don’t be sure of anything,” Williams cautions her. “For your own good. You’re a high-profile family, you’re in the media, there are people out there you might have—excuse my French—pissed off.”

Doug starts to answer in the negative, but stops himself. “You’re right about that,” he concedes. “Anyone who has control over a piece of the media is going to make enemies,” he says, as much for his wife’s benefit as the police’s. “I’m sure I have.” He pauses. “I know I have.”

Williams puts a consoling hand on Glenna’s forearm. The woman’s skin is cold to his touch. She could be going into preliminary shock. He’d better have a doctor check her out.

“We’re inoculating you, okay?” he says to them. “If your daughter really has been abducted, there’s going to be a lot of heat coming down. We want you to have a clean bill of health so you aren’t hassled later, in case things turn out …”

“To be ugly.” Doug Lancaster finishes his sentence for him.

Williams nods. “This is for
your
good—believe me when I tell you that.”

Glenna too nods slowly. Her breath is coming hard. “I hear you.”

“Good.” He’s going to call a doctor, right now. He’ll get the name of the family physician from her husband, out of her hearing. “I know you didn’t have anything to do with whatever happened,” he assures them (and himself). “This way we’re all protected, you and us.”

“I understand.”

As he’s about to leave, Williams catches himself. “There was one thing I meant to ask you and it slipped my mind.”

“What’s that?” Doug asks.

“You have an alarm system here, don’t you?”

“Of course we do.”

“If an outside door to your daughter’s room was open, wouldn’t that have tripped the alarm?”

Doug nods, comprehending. He turns to his wife. “Was the alarm set? Do you remember setting it?”

She thinks, her fingertips pressed against her forehead. “I thought I did. After Audrey left—she was the last one to leave.” She thinks some more. “I’m sure I did. I always do.”

“You couldn’t have forgotten this time?” Williams probes.

“I suppose I could have, but I’m usually diligent about that.”

“Who was the first person up this morning, Mrs. Lancaster? Who would’ve gone outside.”

“I … I suppose I was. Although one of my people could have, earlier. I did go out for the papers myself.”

“Was the alarm set when you went out?”

“I …” She shakes her head. “I honestly don’t remember. I do it by rote. I just … don’t remember,” she says, feeling feeble and stupid and guilty.

“It’s not a big deal.” Williams, sensitive to her feelings, stops the questioning. He hands Doug his card. “My home phone’s on here,” he points out. “If you can think of anything, if anything comes up, call me. Anytime. I mean that.” He pauses. Here comes the hardest part. “Particularly if anyone contacts you.”

Both parents visibly flinch.