Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,27

for us to find. What if we hadn’t come back out here? The carousel would probably be closed a few more days and even then, does the operator actually need to go into the column to start the ride up?”

“No,” Josie answered. “He does everything from his little booth.”

“Maybe he disabled something inside the column so that when the operator tried to fire the ride up, it wouldn’t work and he’d have to go inside,” Mettner suggested. “Like Fraley said, assuming he wanted us to find this.”

“He wanted us to find it,” Josie said. “I’m sure of it. Why else take the chance of coming back here to this crowded scene to put it here?”

“The boss is right,” Gretchen said. “I’m going to call the park director, get him out here to have a look inside the column once Hummel’s done processing to see if anything has been disabled.”

She stepped away to make the call. Noah limped back to the tent so he could sit down. Fifteen minutes later, Hummel arrived with Officer Jenny Chan, another member of their Evidence Response Team, and all the equipment they’d need. Josie and Mettner hung back, waiting and watching as they processed the inside of the column and Lucy’s bag. An hour later, all of them gathered in the tent, standing around a table as Hummel set a brown paper bag in the center of it. With gloved hands, he pulled out the butterfly backpack and put it down on the table. “We didn’t get anything from this. No prints, obviously, cause it’s impossible to get prints from this cloth. No DNA, nothing. But, you’ll definitely want to see this.”

He pulled out several items in plastic bags and laid them out: two tiny toy caterpillars, a watermelon-flavored lip gloss, a hair tie, a tiny stuffed ladybug on a keychain and finally, a sheet of white copy paper with some writing on it, scrawled in blue ink. “These are the contents of the purse,” Hummel said. “You can confirm this with her parents and we’ll know for sure it’s hers, although given the circumstances, and this note, I’m one hundred percent sure this is Lucy Ross’s backpack.”

Josie leaned over the table and read the handwritten note, her skin growing colder with each word.

Little Lucy went away.

Little Lucy cannot play.

You can see her if you wait.

You must go home without debate.

Answer each call or

See Lucy not at all.

Mettner gave a low whistle. “Boss was right,” he said.

“I’ll get the paper in and process that for prints,” Hummel said.

Josie took her phone out and snapped a picture of the note. She could barely hear over the thundering of her heartbeat. She tried to slow her breathing. Beside her, Gretchen said, “This isn’t typical. People who abduct children do it for selfish reasons—usually to gratify their sick, sexual needs.”

“So what are you saying?” Noah asked.

“I’m saying I think this is a kidnap for ransom.”

“Call WYEP and get any footage they took today for their newscast,” Josie said. “There’s a remote possibility they might have picked up the kidnapper heading toward or leaving the carousel.”

“On it,” Mettner said.

“We need to have a much longer conversation with Amy and Colin,” Josie added.

From outside the tent came the rumble of several large vehicles. Josie and Gretchen looked at one another and hurried out. The FBI arrived in force, driving in a caravan of large vehicles including what looked like a tricked-out camper and a van marked Evidence Processing. As they pulled up outside the park and began to emerge from their vehicles, Josie counted well over two dozen agents. A tall, burly black man strode across the playground, his face grim and determined. When he reached them, he extended a hand in Josie’s direction. “Detective Quinn?”

She shook his hand. “Yes, that’s me. This is detective Gretchen Palmer.”

He shook Gretchen’s hand and introduced himself as Special Agent Ruben Oaks of the FBI’s Child Abduction Rapid Deployment team. “We understand you’ve got a missing seven-year-old girl,” Oaks said.

Relief flooded through Josie at the prospect of having more bodies and more resources to help find Lucy. “Yes,” she told him. “And we now know that she’s been kidnapped. Please, come inside and we’ll brief you.”

Fourteen

“Please,” she told the man. “We need heat. It’s too cold in here for a child.”

“Shut up,” the man said. “All you do is complain.”

“An extra blanket then. Please.”

From under the door, I heard the sound of a slap and then the yelp that issued from her throat. I