Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
The deputy stepped behind him, pulling Vince’s arms back with a quick, practiced jerk of his wrists that made the yellow slicker bunch up around his shoulders.
The cold metal of the handcuffs clicked shut in the quiet of the gravel pit.
The green metal desk in the back of the county station had a burn mark from an old cigar on the corner where Deputy Miller laid his pen.
He opened a buff manila folder and smoothed down a sheet of blue-lined paper, the wide lines matching the school supplies we bought every August.
“This is the ransom note from the mailbox,” Miller said, his thumb tracing the jagged edge where the sheet had been torn from a legal pad.
I looked at the blue ink, the handwriting trying so hard to look like a stranger’s script, but the loop of the letter L was too familiar to ignore.
“We have enough here to charge him with grand larceny,” Miller said, looking up from the desk.
