Forty Thousand Dollars Demanded to Bring Our Lost Daughter Home
Forty thousand dollars in cash by Monday morning.
The blue-lined paper felt heavy in my hand, the blue lines running straight and true under the jagged black letters. There was a telephone number written below the amount, ten digits long with our local area code.
But it was the very last line that made me stop breathing.
If you call the sheriff, we will put her back in the water.
I walked back into the house, my thumb rubbing my left temple where the headache was starting.
Patrick was already waiting by the rotary phone on the hallway table, his fingers twitching near the dial. He held his sister’s silver pocket watch tight in his other hand.
“We have to call them, Dad,” Patrick said, his voice coming in those quick, breathless bursts. “We have to know.”
I looked down at the blue-lined paper. The ten numbers were written in a jagged hand that looked like someone trying to write with their left glove still on.
“Let me dial,” I said.
