Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
I looked toward the barn, where my father George was working. He had a blue savings bond folder in his desk, the one he had kept for thirty years, but I could not bring myself to ask him for it yet.
“I will go to the town office,” I said.
The sheriff’s outer office smelled of floor wax and stale coffee. Deputy Miller, a heavy-set man who had been a grade behind me in school, sat behind the counter sorting through a stack of yellow vehicle registration forms.
“Andrew,” Miller said, looking up with a brief nod. “What brings you town?”
“I need to see the file from six years ago,” I said, keeping my hands flat on the wooden counter. “The search reports from the pond.”
Miller stopped sorting the papers. He cleared his throat, his eyes shifting toward the closed door of the sheriff’s inner office.
“That file is archived, Andrew,” Miller said, his voice dropping. “It is locked in the basement vault. We cannot just pull those records without a formal written request from the county prosecutor.”
