Her Silent Cry (Detective Josie Quinn #6)- Lisa Regan Page 0,3
was nowhere to hide. She thought back to when Amy’s voice first caught her attention. A crowd of people had flooded through the exit gate. Josie didn’t remember seeing Lucy among them, but she could have raced out before Josie looked over.
“Amy,” Colin said, approaching his wife. “Where the hell is she?”
“I don’t know!” his wife shouted. “She was right here. She was with me. I only looked away for a second. Oh my God.” She reached both hands to her temples, and her next words were a screech. “Somebody do something!”
Josie shifted Harris on her hip and moved inside the gate. She caught the eye of the dumbfounded worker. “Shut the ride down,” she told him.
“What?”
“Shut the ride down. No one gets on or off until this child is located.” She turned to the Ross parents. “If she’s not here, she’s elsewhere in the playground.”
Amy’s eyes searched the playground behind Josie. “I don’t see her. She’s not out there.”
Josie said, “Look at me, Mrs. Ross.”
Amy met her eyes.
“Let’s fan out, we’ll check the rest of the playground. She could be inside one of the jungle gym areas.”
Colin and Amy raced out of the carousel enclosure, calling for their daughter. A few people who were in line to get onto the ride joined them, calling out Lucy’s name. Josie followed, shifting a squirming Harris from hip to hip. “Down, JoJo,” he said.
“Just a minute, love,” Josie told him. “We’re trying to find a little girl, okay?”
“I help?” he asked.
She smiled at him. “You stay with me. That’s how you’ll help me.”
Amy flashed a photo she had taken of Lucy only minutes earlier when she climbed onto her carousel horse. Josie’s arms ached with Harris’s weight, but her anxiety wouldn’t let her put him down. A feeling of dread seeped into her skin, making her feel clammy and uncomfortable.
“She probably just wandered off,” Josie told Amy when she started to become hysterical again, but with each moment that ticked by with no sign of Lucy, Josie began to suspect something far worse.
Josie walked the perimeter of the playground. Behind the carousel was a tall chain-link fence that separated the play area from the softball field on the other side. A few people played toss in the outfield. Josie walked the length of the fence to make sure there were no breaks in it. Where the fence ended, waist-high shrubs separated the park from a strip of pavement and the street beyond. Bungalows sat peacefully across the street. Although many cars were parked along the sidewalk, no traffic went by in either direction. She followed the shrubs to the play area’s entrance, a wide walkway beneath an arch that read ‘Denton City Park Playground’. Beyond that more shrubbery separated the play area from the sidewalk for several yards until it terminated at a wooded area. Josie knew that on the other side of the trees was one of the jogging paths that ran through the dense forest of the park. A child could easily slip into the woods. The treeline ran the rest of the length of the play area until it met with the beginning of the fence on the other side. Still, Lucy would have had to exit the carousel and cross a significant area before running into the woods. Surely someone would have seen her.
The tightness in Josie’s chest only increased as she studied the trees. The area at the back of the play area was larger and hilly and led deeper into the park which extended a few miles in each direction.
Too much ground for her to cover, even with the Ross parents helping.
She used her free hand to pull her cell phone out of her pocket and called dispatch.
“Detective Quinn,” she said when the officer answered. “I need two to three units over at the city park playground. I think we’ve got a missing child.”
Three
Fat tears rolled down Amy’s face as she stood next to the jungle gym, phone in hand. Colin paced nearby, his face pale and lined with fear. A dozen parents gathered around as Josie gave them instructions. “Please don’t leave until you’ve given your name and phone number to one of the officers,” she told them. “I’d also ask that you check your cell phones for any photos or video you may have taken in the last hour to see if you’ve captured Lucy Ross in the background.”
Josie catalogued their faces in her mind. She wanted to make sure her team didn’t miss