Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
“It is my daughter,” I said, my voice rising slightly. “I just need to see the search log.”
“I cannot do it,” Miller said, leaning forward. “The sheriff is strict about the old closed cases. Unless there is new evidence, those boxes stay taped up.”
I looked at his clean uniform, the brass star on his pocket, and felt the last of my trust in the local office slip away. They had given up after four days, and now they would not even let me look at the map of where they had dragged the water.
“Thank you, Miller,” I said, turning for the door.
I drove back to the farmhouse with the steering wheel hot under my palms. Clara and Patrick were waiting in the kitchen, the blue-lined paper sitting in the middle of the table like an open wound.
I picked up the receiver of the kitchen wall phone, my fingers shaking as I dialed the ten digits from the note once more, hoping to hear the voice again, to offer him whatever we could scrape together.
